skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This honestly really bothers me.

We're encrypting everything, we have "Let's Encrypt", we have browsers telling users that their connections are "secure".

Meanwhile your DNS lookups are public (which leaks what site you're accessing) and size+timing analysis leaks which static assets you've retrieved. Which gives away for example what article you're reading on what news site. Which the site itself is telling google, facebook and other malicious third-parties anyway...

How is anyone supposed to understand digital privacy? Everything sucks, and I'm not even sure what could be done to make it suck less.
Unless you're rich of course. Then it's fantastic!
Not bad if you’re poor, either.
Understanding Recursion
I've personally set this kind of thing up. Inherited an old PHP site for a webdev contract, and a couple weeks into development (before any of my code had made it to prod), the server starts hanging randomly, or spitting out seemingly random errors on every request.

I was told in no uncertain terms by the client that I had to fix the server hangs within 48hrs I'd lose the contract. This was in a million+ LOC custom Wordpress nightmare.

I wound up writing a script that ran on a little EC2.micro instance that would ping the homepage every 60s looking for the HTML comment `<!-- if you delete this comment, the server will reboot forever -->`, and if the request timed out or the text wasn't found it would hit their hosting API and reboot the server the site was running on.

I deployed the "fix", finished the contract without incident, and subsequently fired the client.
Mischaracterization in the title. Actual title, which I think matters, is: "California’s quality of life is the worst in the country: Says who?"

Perhaps correct? It does change the tone.
Void Linux: Into the Void
I disagree. Its undoubtedly a political issue. When it was used by Obama, the media lauded it as a genius use of tech and proof that his campaign was 'hooked in' to modern tools. Trump is obviously less popular in certain circles, which is the only reason why this is now a huge issue.
Which is more important to you, pointing out hypocrisy in others or taking advantage of an increase in the number of people who share you belief that this is something that should be fixed? I can understand possibly be worried that they may be "fair-weather friends" or some such, but by focusing on the common ground rather than on infighting, you may help build a non-partisan coalition that might effect real change. Yeah, I can understand the frustration, but quibbling amongst ourselves only serves a common enemy. Let's use the momentum to move forward.
Why would you want any of those on your laptop?
Its worth noting that there are some edge cases where this could lead to potential problems. Its enough of an edge case for many apps to ignore the possibility. Take your example with the addition of the fact that the field you're removing has a unique database constraint. With your deploy process this would look something like this.

1. Run predeploy migration in db/migrate to remove the unique constraint
2. Deploy new version of code that ignores the column
3. Run post-deploy migration that removes column
4. Remove the part of code that ignores the column

Failure to do step 1 would result in multiple rows being created with null values, which would cause errors for all but one (or zero) insert. The edge case, however, is a little more subtle. Between steps 1 and 2, there's a period where the database constraint doesn't exist, but the old code still expects the constraint. Validating uniqueness in the code can mitigate this, but doesn't ensure consistency.
the elephant in the room is the massive cultural problem the US has with firearms

There's no such problem. That's what the article is about.
> Netlify offers built-in prerendering which allows us to keep our code “serverless” while still making sure our blog is optimized for crawlers

This must be a new offering as Prerendering is listed as a paid beta by Netlify but the article doesn’t mention that
Neither of those have anything to do with censorship.
I feel exercise and practicing. usic are both very, very simikar. In the beginning they both really, really, really suck. You have no endurance so exercise is literally painful and it feels like you cant run anywhere or lift anything. playing an instrument in the beginning sucks because you have no ability so practice is awful and your music sounds like garbage.

Once you have at least some ability practice amd exercise isnt nearly so bad befcause it doesn’t feel like a waste of time.
If you're that paranoid about your privacy, then I recommend you choose a user agent whose philosophy on privacy more closely represents your own.

Tor Browser, for example, is highly likely to "choose privacy over convenience" whenever possible with it's default settings.
Oh my God, why are you acting like you are disagreeing with me when you are now saying exactly what my original comment said?

"Unlike Google, Microsoft tracks and profiles you online via their search engine and through all of the "telemetry" Windows sends back to them."

This is your original comment. Do you see how you are disagreeing with yourself now?

"So does Bing."
"Google’s privacy policy explicitly allows them to use queries for advertising, not “unlike Bing.”"

The first quote is from your comment, the second is from mine. Where on Earth do you see disagreement?
Here's a late version of Encarta.

https://goo.gl/6uX4Qu

Do you see that plain-looking dropdown menu with the rounded orange highlights? That is Internet Explorer. Just this one menu. It's an in-process instance of Trident, IEs old HTML rendering engine. So that little window is the equivalent of somthing like chromium embedded. I don't know why that menu is an instance of IE's HTML renderer. Someone wanted to style it with CSS, I think. So they embedded IE. That flyout to the right is probably another Trident window. In order to meet accessibility requirements, I had to grab the running instance of the root IE COM interface, and route keyboard events into it. With raw C++ COM. There were other hooks going in the opposite direction so the menu / browser window could tell the app about clicks.
Maybe we should pause and think what value does Facebook provide to the users? Is that value worth the $400B? Given how much we are connected through all kinds of channels, the answer is a clear no. Sure you can say their advertising business is worth that, but if they don't provide their users that much value it's not going to last.
That's a narrative (like the comment I was responding to), not backed by any studies as far as I can tell.

Sex trafficking has always been illegal, and the reasons for its under-reporting have little to do with prostitution being illegal.
In general, I agree with you. But I am concerned about a couple things. First is the recent law passed by Congress making the owners of such platforms liable for what users post there. This will have a massive "chilling effect". The next is the increasing propensity of people to sue those platforms for speech they don't like, and the social bullying applied to companies that don't conform to PC speech behavior.
Ask HN: way to work on research problem in nlp while working full time
I already have some background in nlp but I want to become an expert so I can work on harder research problems. I am mid career working full time. I don't have time for Ph.D. I saw one option to do MS Computational Linguistics from univ of Washington (https://www.compling.uw.edu/) is fully online. They have reputed faculty. But one things I saw is that their courses are very basic, and they teach diluted version of courses for professional masters program. Does anybody has any suggestion. Is there any way to work on research problem in nlp while working full time. (Please don't suggest Kaggle as it is not research).
It does set a tone, but after reading the article, I failed to find a justification for "says who?" There doesn't seem to be a defense or rebuttal for the quality of life assessment.
The AVCrypt Ransomware Tries to Uninstall Your AV Software
Wow, this brings back memories of running the theater in my school. Definitely a different situation, but I like to think we did a good job given what we had.

We didn't really have a budget, just some hand-me-down equipment that came from above sometimes. I and others on my team put together so many hacks to make things work. One memorable time, our light board had broken, but we still needed to run shows.

We didn't have enough time to wait for shipping on a real USB->DMX adapter, nor budget for a new board, so I created a hacked together DMX adapter with a serial to USB adapter and a NAND gate (I put schematics together here, if anyone's interested: https://github.com/magmastonealex/DMXAdapters).

It worked remarkably well for being a bit of a hack, but paired with software like QLC+, had more features than our old light board! It was still in use for controlling special effect lighting when I left, though thankfully not for main lighting and day-to-day use.
For that, check out MediaGoblin (also implementing ActivityPub for interoperability):
https://mediagoblin.org/
Perfect time to start moving (and contributing) to decentralized services.

I've been following the development of https://beakerbrowser.com and I really hope it captures wider attention. -- It's not just super user friendly already, it's actually easier to set up a Beaker website than one on the regular net (literally one click).
First job out of university and I had to fix a terrible crash that happens to our prod application every few hours running on Windows NT boxes. After lots of debugging and asking all the “senior” devs, no one knew a solution since it was all super old code. What I did notice, though, was the apps that I was debugging didn’t crash until I stopped debugging it.

Turns out that it was a memory issue and every time I minimized and maximized the app, part of the memory got cleaned up. So as a temporary fix, I just wrote a script to auto minimize/maximize the apps on all boxes until we found the memory leak.

Note: we never found the leak.
I don't think it's Google's fault really. Congress pushed a recent law that holds infrastructure companies like Google responsible for crimes committed by it's users. This is what you get in response - AI filtering out adult content and Craig's list removing personals
From a public behavior perspective, yes we have regressed. Women's rights are much better but you can show someone getting violently murdered on TV easier than you can show a tit.
I'm not familiar with the situation in other countries, so only spoke of my knowledge of the US and the legal case I linked to, though it does make sense that that's also true in the UK and elsewhere. Still, I would think that the reasons I mentioned should be valid or invalid regardless of the situation in other countries.
React for blog with SEO? Bad advice, hope does not become a trend.. It's like a using a big hammer for a small nail.

A better server less blog option would be a static site generator such as jekyll published and hosted on s3.
I didn't know that. But if Facebook still allows sign-ups with an email address only, it gives a way in.
any language older than 5yrs is a failed language. perl, ruby are recent memories.

i’m starting to realize the only industry more fashion conscious than software is... well fashion!

Ada?! ahahahaah
Asus Merlin is nice.
I did this once. A client wanted a website that mimicked the functionality of a complicated spreadsheet that he had created to calculate quotes for customers and didn't have enough money to pay to have all the logic rewritten in a webserver (not to mention continually updated).

I imported the spreadsheet into google sheets, gave him access, and had the webserver paste the values in the spreadsheet via the google sheets api and read them back out.
From the article:

> In case it makes you feel any better, while California stinks in terms of quality of life at least it didn’t rank dead last in the overall rankings. We came in at No. 32 overall, although that’s well behind New Jersey (at No. 19), Florida (at No. 15), and Nebraska (at No. 7). Ouch.

> The bottom line? The state performed well in terms of its economy, coming in at No. 4 (hello, high tech boom) but it fared terribly in categories such as citizen opportunity (No. 46) and fiscal stability (No. 43) in addition to the dreaded quality-of-life assessment (that scarring No. 50). Of course, as anyone who has tried to buy a house in the Bay Area knows, fiscal instability is basically our motto at this point.

I think it's also interesting that Mississippi, Arkansas, and New Mexico were in the top 10 for "quality of life," but bottom 10 overall: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings
Given that we're talking about it on HN, that window might have closed. See also: sound from ultrasound (these already exist to some extent).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_from_ultrasound
Interesting to see this re-surface on Hacker News. This set of scripts has to be among the most useful things I've found on the internet, and I've used some of these in many of my projects!
Ask HN: Did Facebook/CA receive outsized response in comparison to Experian
How well do you think those students would fare if placed in normal class? Most of the normal people I meet either openly make fun of things I know or assume I'm full of shit for the volume of information I can pull out of things I've read. Most people also treat me as if I'm a geek because they wouldn't have a use for the things I remember.

You're thinking about this as if they're taking your resources. Let me turn this around for you. What if they aren't being given special treatment because they need the resources, but because they need an environment where the way they think is acceptable? How many of them would still show any talent or aptitude in normal class with normal classmates? Think about your reaction to negative numbers versus their own. Maybe gifted and talented classes aren't so much giving them more resources as they are giving them an appropriate education. Maybe it's about creating a safe environment for kids who tend to be more abstract to flourish.
The complement to this is that after you've learned something it is easy to forget the pain you went through. Empathy can be a powerful tool for pedagogy. If your learner can see that you understand the struggle they are going through it can help remove a layer of shame and self-doubt. If, on the other hand, an educator regularly calls things easy, basic, trivial, or simple (or worse demeans someone for not understanding) the lack of empathy will be apparent and learning will be impeded. One thing Sal Khan has said is that video lessons are uniquely effective because there is no chance the educator will become frustrated with the learner even if they need to repeat the lesson a dozen times. In person and in our writings it can be hard to remember the struggle, but it can be one of the most helpful things we do as we train someone new to any task or concept.
I'd love to know who left those comments for Quake III Arena in your referenced Wikipedia article. I had a good laugh.
When I was teaching English in a Japanese high school the other teachers often took the approach of "This is not going to be fun, but you have to apply yourself in order to get the rewards later on." In my own study of Japanese, I found that I really enjoyed learning -- which was diametrically opposed to my experience of "learning" French when I went to school. 13 years of classes and I still can't speak French. In contrast, I did complete self of Japanese and I'm totally functional in normal Japanese society.

Often the teachers would ask me to make an entertaining class, but I eventually decided that the fun of learning would be at least 10x better than any entertainment I could provide. At about the same time I was working with a teacher who urged me to start giving out surveys to my students to find out what they enjoyed most in my classes. Even I was surprised to find that my daily quiz was the most popular element by a huge margin.

I completely restructured my classes so that students had much more opportunity to apply their learning, rather than focusing on shovelling an endless stream of content into their heads. I think it's that realisation that you went from not knowing something, to understanding it and being able to use it easily that's fun.

Yes, as you get more advanced, there is considerably more grind, but I think if you build techniques to enjoy the process you are going to have much more success. Especially for languages, it's going to take a long time and you have to be consistent. If you are just grinding it out and pushing yourself every day, I think it will be very difficult to make any significant progress.

One of the things that I found illuminating was that the satisfaction of my students (as measured by my surveys) pretty much mirrored their performance. The better the average class grade, the more satisfied the students. This is all anecdotal, but at least for me it made up my mind that there is a relationship. All kinds of success is fun and learning is a kind of success.

Edit: I should point out that there is nothing conceptually difficult in language learning -- even exceptionally stupid people are fluent in at least one language. So the above may not apply to something that is really difficult as opposed to really big.
That’s not what the appeals court says. The appeals court says that they can’t really overrule a jury decision of the lower court, and the lawyers in that case screwed up by not contesting the case on the right merits.

This ruling has nothing to do with saying “it’s okay” and everything to do with the scope of potential judgments available to the appellate court.

Not a lawyer, but this seems like it’s for the best in terms of the functioning of the law, and a similar trial would likely not reach the same verdict.
Dropbox would probably be a reasonable alternative to Google Drive. The TOS and Acceptable Use Policy seem reasonable and short. Regarding adult content they say:

"publish or share materials that are unlawfully pornographic or indecent, or that contain extreme acts of violence;"

https://www.dropbox.com/terms#acceptable_use

S3 would seem to be safe too, though it isn't as user friendly as Dropbox. I don't see any terms specific to adult content served from S3.

https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/
From a foreigner point of view who keeps reading about California, it seems both like a fascinating and terrifying place. So advanced yet so backward in some ways
I feel like the Facebook/CA affair has had more attention from the media than the Experian beach. Additionally, I don't believe Experian received as many legal and Congressional probes as Facebook is receiving. Why is this? Is Experian great at lobbying Congress?
I had a similar set up for a computer I overclocked to play games as a kid.
But is is one way. If government was to turn tyrannical, an armed society would have a chance to defend itself.

but the government has drones

Boots on the ground. Try to control a subcontinent of 325M people with drones and planes, when every corner could have an armed citizen. Ask the vietcong, or the afghani, how much they could do with small firearms.

"Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty."

edit: grammar
Californians: Please don't move to Iowa or any of the other top 10 overall. Please stay and fix your own state.
This is completely unsurprising. The question is whether they should be allowed to keep that data.
Try this: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/

Use it all the time when working from home/moving around and I don’t want my laptop to lock every 15.
This is a well known trope (especially in less palatable corners of the internet). A quick read of the "Rape in Sweden" [0] wikipedia page explains why these numbers are very high. Each separate relation is counted as a different rape, the definition of rape is broader, and the reporting rate is higher.

For people that lived in Sweden, this claim (that Sweden has some incredible rape problem) is surprising to say the least.

(with that being said, there has been an increase in sexual violence lately, probably correlated with immigration from regions where the rate is higher, but from what I could gather it was not a dramatic increase)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden
That's the "federated" part of the article's name.
But still... i cant delete my account. It's locked !! Why ?
You're saying that the rural community needs guns to stay safe?

Suicide kills more people than murder, and restricting access to means and methods is the first thing you should do to reduce the death rate.

One of the reasons the rural youth suicide rate is so high (double that of urban 10 to 24 year olds) is because of the easy access to guns.

"guns keep people safe" is, frankly, fucking stupid.
That's news to me. Any idea what would explain the red channel exhibiting much more burn-in than others then?

I've tested this by filling my screen with each color, and burn-in is by far the most visible with a red fill.
I have a dumb question - Can existing clients with the old TLS versions connect to a server with TLS 1.3?
Thanks for keeping me honest!
Seems like this gives some decent access to Apple's library.
Laysan Albatrosses’ Plastic Problem
This is also the reason Trump wants friendship with Russia. China would be easier to handle if Russia weren't so aligned with them
There are plenty of defense contractors near tech hubs. Defense was a big business in the SF Bay Area long before there were software companies there, and it's still big today:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_based_in_the...

In the NY metro area, there are lots of defense contractors on Long Island.
Do you mean Equifax?

For me the difference is that I feel like Equifax was just negligent carelessness, while the Facebook situation was more intentional on their part.
The rampant homelessness and drug use for one, the putrid mess that is downtown SF for another.
Google is as much to blame here as Facebook is. It shouldn't have allowed apps with "contacts" permission to scrape sms & call logs. I hope both of them are held accountable
San Francisco is one beautiful city with one very ugly downtown.
Don’t worry, the #1 quality-of-life state is North Dakota so clearly the methodology is wack.

Have you ever heard someone say: “man, when I finish my internship, I hope I can go to North Dakota where there is lots of happiness?”

No. Because it’s -40° there half the year.
I agree but I'd generalize this to Android. It is an open source system after all.
>The state performed well in terms of its economy, coming in at No. 4

This isn't surprising. The reality is California's good economy, relatively good school system, attractive West Coast appeal, and high influx of immigrants make California VERY competitive (i.e. overcrowded), which brings down the quality of life for all.

This is an end result of sorts of our global society. A California will always exist.
A TLS server and client can both support multiple versions. Clients which don't support 1.3 will continue to use 1.2 (or 1.1 or 1.0, if the server still supports them)
To my knowledge, credible threats are not allowed speech..
Don't underestimate the power of raw emotional reaction over the rational mind. There may be rumors that a tool like this exists, but if a religious insurgent hears the voice of God telling him to lay down his weapons, I wouldn't be surprised if he complied.
Slightly amusing that on the Quality of Life Rankings page [0], the hero image they went with is of.... California.

0: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/quality-of-...
The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention,Mitigation