skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Rather long, but I think important. The views are my own, based only on my own limited experience.

I've been a web user since the early 90s and I honestly that we are going a little astray from the original spirit of the web. Back then, it didn't matter what you posted, anonymity was the default and people used to say that no personal information should ever be shared. This move by the United States government feels like they are crossing the Rubicon towards a highly regulated and almost dystopian view of the web.

It is my opinion and I think a lot of others on HN would agree that privacy should be the norm. Certainly, law enforcement has a right in some cases to extra information but when governments are able to reach across the ocean and pluck personal data from each other then there is a serious problem. This happened to my friend who ran a startup in the financial sector who was compelled to reveal a user's data. There was no recompense for him as he didn't have the resources of a big company like Microsoft at his disposal.

Tech companies and law enforcement should more of a conversation about these issues before they are forcibly put into law.
Location social security offices
Amazing Cosplayer Turn Herself into Auriel from Diablo
@projectramo (cannot reply to that): I have very good experience with Hetzner, speed is very good even if you ignore prices, considering the price it's by far the best I've used. I still have backups at other providers but switched to only using them for everything I do, saved me a lot of money. I already had an account so didn't need to provide ID but wouldn't see that as a deal breaker. You'd need to pay with credit card anyway so they'll get your name sooner or later. And it has helped with the spam problem they apparently used to have (for a while a lot of their IPs were on blacklists).
Even though the "basic" telemetry data is quite the list [0], I agree that it's not nearly as intrusive as the "full" set.

> only when you have it set to Full level
"you" (probably any users) won't set the level to "full"; this is the default setting (source [1]). MS only offers "basic" as opt-out (which it really is not).

[0] - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/basic...

[1] - https://www.ghacks.net/2018/03/12/configure-telemetry-window...

update: formatting
And when will Push Notifications be implemented?

Maybe ask jon at apple
Are you one of the people who bring up https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... ?

The big re-write seems to be what you are proposing...
It depends on who you are and who you deal with. We house a lot of our stuff in Azure, but we entered into an agreement with an European based Microsoft child company.

If the us wants access to our data, they’ll need to go through the Danish courts.

We spend a lot of money though, but it afford us our own private servers in the Irish farm, that we have physical access to and our data never enters the public part of Azure.

If the US government wants to get access, it probably can, after a few months in various EU courts, but all they’ll find by the in our little vault will be a tape recorder playing twister sisters - we’re not gonna take it on repeat.

Of course American companies will be replaced by an European competitor if the US government doesn’t wise up and stops being dicks. If there was a real alternative to American clouds we’d have left by now.
All right. I've removed it. Such is life
It's good enough for the CIA. Why couldn't it handle a glorified spreadsheet?
The article made no real case for the replacement of the IRS' computers. Sure, there's a case for updating their software, but this isn't the same thing as what the title says.

I think people seem to forget that newer does NOT mean better, and that an old, slow computer which is reliable is infinitely better than a new, fast computer which is either unreliable or idiosyncratic (or both).

Contemporary IT seems to have forgotten some wonderful things about mainframes. Most projects to "modernize" working computing systems are just about companies grabbing contract money, and if a proper job happens to get done, it's more or less incidental. This is why we could go to the Moon in a decade but can't build a replacement for the Space Shuttle in that time. If we had to rebuild the Hoover Dam or the Empire State Building these days, there's no possible way it'd ever be done in the timeframes of the original projects. It's a bit sad, really.
Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. Facebook's "monopoly" is at least subject to the whim of the market, as the Delete Facebook campaign shows.

Look at last week. The senate was on their high-horse, admonishing facebook for privacy infringements, totally unaware of the irony they are an appendage of the same entity which created the NSA and continues to eavesdrop on all of our conversations.

We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have. But NSA surveillance is involuntary.

Why are we more worried about a voluntary and foreseeable risk than an involuntary rights violation?

Don't interpret this as saying Facebook acted appropriately.
‘Avoiding lawful warrants’ is just not a service you’re easily going to get from a developed Western country.
This was recently discussed in https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2018/01/ir...
HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16377329
Rwanda and Nigeria as case studies of innovation and the future of Afrika
Copying ID cards in Germany has been made explicitly legal in July 2017 through a change of the relevant law.
I referred to the two data centers I had in the US.

How many data centers do you think Oracle operates in the US, presently?
You hit pause, 5 minutes later the webpage starts playing again.

So now we need to add a "block webpage" button to control center?
I would think if a business use more than 500 servers, it would make sense to start considering having your own datacenter?
Start with really simplifying the tax code, and then do a complete rewrite.

Or wait until the whole mess collapses, and start with really simplifying...
Thanks for the clarification. In this case I'm not sure how many agreements they'll actually sign? Safe harbour already wasn't very popular and public opinion in the EU has shifted a lot more towards privacy in recent months (from my subjective feeling).
The problem of replacing the general purpose proof of work in cryptocurrencies (finding partial SHA256 collisions in the case of Bitcoin) with something more useful is that the attributes for a good PoW computation are hard to find in real world distributed problems.

In particular you want something a problem with the following attributes:

- must derive somehow from the block data you're trying to mine, otherwise you could reuse your work for an different block and make double-spend attacks trivial. It's very important that once a new block is mined everybody else must start from scratch for the next one, otherwise you could "premine" an arbitrary number of blocks and later append them at an arbitrary position in the block "tree", potentially rewriting history.

- difficulty should easily be modifiable to account for the current "hashrate" otherwise your blockrate will go whack as the amount of computing power available changes. It also means that you should be able ahead of time to guess the difficulty of a problem and the average amount of processing power required to solve it.

- easy to validate: the nodes of the network should be able to check that the proof of work is valid using a tiny fraction of the computing power necessary to actually produce the proof (finding hash collisions is hard, verifying them is comparatively trivial).

- doesn't require access to a centralized resource. If you need to connect to some central repository to fetch the work set then not everybody is on equal footing. You have a single point of failure and some miners could have privileged access to the work data.

It's very difficult to find real world problems that have all these attributes.
The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science
Author here.

This is an opinionated boilerplate that I use to create my own packages [1].

Feedback is appreciated.

[1] https://github.com/diegohaz?tab=repositories
> They made a mistake when configuring their web server. It's obvious that this was a mistake because some of the documents contained private information from Canadian citizens.

Per the tech article, it was an open archive of public documents that the government published periodically. The reasonable assumption is that the files were all public, and there's no reason to suspect the teenager in this case thought otherwise. The fact that ~3% of the files weren't properly redacted (whatever that means) is hardly "obvious".

> Making a mistake doesn't revoke someone's property rights.

Let's keep things constructive please.
Japan and California are pretty comparable in terms of science and engineering for earthquake resistance. There are some differences on the public policy side, which influence how the engineering requirements are implemented, but Japanese buildings are not intrinsically safer. Note that the 1994 Northridge (Calif.) and 1995 Kobe (Japan) earthquakes were about the same side - the Japanese quake was ~10x as costly and ~20x as deadly (mostly due to population density around the epicenters).
More than 95% of world's population breathing unhealthy air, says new report
Windows Phone ran on NT since version 8.
It's not (solely) an issue of speed.

http://weitz.de/ieee/

Plug in 0.11 and 0.1 and click `+`. You expect 0.21, but since 1/10 isn't cleanly represented in base 2 using a finite number of bits... (just like 1/3 isn't cleanly represented in base 10 ~0.33..).

And when it comes to currency, rounding and "good enough" is probably not going to be good enough.
> You're criticizing him for disabling performance-lowering features for a software program that lives and dies in reviews by its performance?

Oh come on. The Linux Kernel also "lives and dies" based on its performance. Despite being one of the highest performance codebases ever written, Linux is still ASLR'd, Meltdown-patched, TLB-flushed and Reptoline-protected to all hell to mitigate against theoretical threats.

Web Browsers also live and die by performance numbers. Look at all of those Javascript benchmarks and shootouts that happen. And yet, web browsers are also taking advantage of the latest and greatest security features available on any OS they're deployed on.

Because security matters. And often, it matters more than performance.

7-Zip's DLLs / code are used as plugins everywhere. Not just in Windows 7z.exe, but also on Fedora Core, Ubuntu Linux, and more. There comes a point where we as a community have to recognize that security matters more than performance.

In most cases, there's a happy medium. I'm not necessarily saying that 7z needs to sandbox itself like Chrome, or needs to spin itself into a VM and isolate itself like MS Edge App Guard. Nor does it need to be Spectre-hardened with reptolines like the Linux kernel. All I'm saying that 7z should at least be compiled with the freaking DEP / NX flag and ASLR. Neither of these have major performance flaws and have HUGE security benefits. Is that seriously too much to ask?

Besides, ASLR + DEP/NX flags are the default compile option flags for the last 15 years. Most software uses these flags with no issues.
They did, it's called Wordpad
The "why"s (your prejudices) are irrelevant.

Also I don't really think there's a background you can have where you don't understand, or cannot lookup, the difference between dynamic and static if you really cared to understand. Seems more like self-important rhetoric than anything.
That magnetized mount makes it seem very easy to steal the camera.
I switched to using a spreadsheet. From that I create a P&L report. I understand the cash flow much better vs. when I was using a software package. I do miss seeing graphs and such, however.
Shellfish Gene: One piece of mobile DNA has spread itself throughout the oceans
Similar things long going on in Crimea for the same reasons established by the other side (whatsapp and viber are blocked by whatsapp and viber owners correspondingly). When I was there, everyone seemed to have a vpn on their phones and getting it installed was none of a problem.
Smarter people are better!
Interesting. I started taking B12 supplements this winter. I usually get swarmed by mosquitoes in the summer. It will be interesting to see if my experience changes this season.
What makes you think it is a gift to mankind?
I would have got no extra credit in the college I went to you only got dates if you cane from money those of us from the working class couldn't get a date to save our life.
I am not mad at them for asking for my ID, but in the US that is (in my opinion) the big sign of intrusiveness.

When they want to scare people, they say "the police will start asking ordinary citizens for ID". Its a huge deal when the pharmacist asks for ID for a controlled substance.

And add to that the privacy culture here (on HN and in tech circles). I would rather pay a few extra bucks for now. But if they dropped the requirement I would use it.

I bet I am not alone and there are many others who feel the same.
The new SEO is really branding just over a long period of time. Expect SEO to take 6 months to 2 years.
Themes for SurveyJS Editor
Debugging a TCP socket leak in a Kubernetes cluster
This is very thin ice. The kernel is far from "spying" a user, unless Google wants to track my syscalls.
This is a legal case about a company who got hacked, and a large amount of data was stolen, and the hackers are trying to blackmail the company for large amounts of money, and the efforts that the company is taking to reduce the damage.
On Marketing and Microservices
Windows is better for my kind of work.
I fully agree and also think it's not the cloud users that are most affected but their users. As a customer of a bank you have little control where your bank stores your data (although with GDPR they'd at least have to tell you if it goes to AWS). And yet, your data could be accessed by foreign prosecutors without confirmation by a local judge.
Another capitalist libertarian scum..
The article mentions something that always fascinates me: the extent to which branding and presentation influence taste perception:

"As complaints got louder, this became more obvious. Domino’s ran consumer tests and discovered that people actually liked pizza less if they knew it was Domino’s than if they thought it was a random unbranded pizza."

They 100% absolutely did start using better ingredients, etc. but if they'd failed to rehab their brand I wonder if it would have taken off.
The IRS has a $11,526,389,000 budget. Their Information Services division has a $2,237,659,000 budget, and 6,089 employees.

So the issue isn't a lack of funding or personnel, it's bureaucratic incompetence.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158897 (Feb 2016)

> game like this http://gameofbombs.com/

Apparently being offline has happened before:

> it was down and didn't get back up for at least 200 days
Facebook only exists as a surveillance and control tool. Everything else is just a means to an end. Zuckerberg is just the front man. Once they are done with him he will be in the ditch like Travis.
I think their garlic-seasoned crust did a lot of good for their perceived value in the market ... it just tastes good.
Dr. Dobbs Developer Library DVD 6
I subscribed to DDJ years ago, and only recently found out they had ceased publication. I went to buy their last Developer Library DVD 6 but their store is down.

While the site is archived, if it's ever taken down I'll lose access to it all.

I've spent a while looking for it, but have come up empty handed. This is a long shot but, does anyone have any suggestions on where I could find, borrow or buy a copy of this from?
Hi, HN, onen of the lead developers on dr-provision here. Ask me anything.
> I don't see how any of that is relevant to whether one has salary or not?

I suppose it's not specific to salary, more to the type of work. In the US with production workers, a salary would be quite unusual. I have friends working at many companies and have never heard of the production employees being salaried.

> * I also have flexibility to start/end my day when I want within reason

Generally production employees work specific shifts with specified start and end times. Showing up 15 minutes late yields a verbal warning, 1 point on a discipline tree, etc. This can happen with salary positions as well, but I can't say I've ever seen it. It's more a "get your work done" attitude than anything.

> * I never have to take time off for doctors visits

I should have said "If I get sick, my paycheck isn't any smaller because I had to go to the doctor or take 3 days off."
Silicon Valley Is Hot for Civil War
it isn't just lobbying dollars. Loopholes are created to drive behavior.

An example, if you want to do something about global warming you need to get people/companies to buy efficient things, but such things have a higher up front cost (in many cases the difference is not repaid if you invest the difference). One thing you can do to encourage the behavior of buying more efficient things is to make the tax code encourage it.

There are of course many other options, and each will get a different class of people to change behavior. Debating which is best is a side discussion you may have.
I know its parody, but the idea of Sliceline is objectively not a bad business model - lots of small pizza franchises could benefit from similar app-based delivery services, and would pay to be able to compete with Domino's on that front. I met a guy who manages an Indian restaurant that does dev work on the side - he's operating an online ordering/fulfillment service for 3 other small restaurants, and claims to take 7% commission from every order that comes through the system. Not bad if you ask me.
It does require commitment to keep track of the transactions regularly, but ultimately gnucash is really a great help for me as well.

I don't keep a detailed track of every petty cash expenses (just input an adjustment for the "cash" asset account each month based on what is left in my wallet), but based on the monthly bank statements most of the expenses are already covered anyway.
Yes. You can be tried as an adult, go to war, vote, and drink, marry, have children, and so on. You’re an adult, and fully accountable.
>We can all opt out of Facebook. Thankfully many have.

I'm pretty sure that is not accurate. We can't opt out of Facebook without significant effort which most people aren't even aware is possible and which can prevent some websites from working (NoScript, router rules, etc).

They use the 'share' buttons built into most websites to collect information about and profit off of people who never signed up for the service, never agreed to their EULA, and never consented to interact with the company.
How does respecting national sovereignty rather than letting your government be trampled over by international corporations run counter to a globally connected internet?

This sort of attitude might seem like "nationalist populism" now, but it wasn't that long ago that "the left" was on the same page. I still am personally, but there seems to be a disturbing trend where anti-Trump sentiment is being leveraged to promote a corporate agenda.
It's different for everyone.

If your 500 servers are for storage, S3/GCS will beat you in cost. For compute, that might be a different story, but then you still have to consider regionality, networking, etc.
All eyes on IBM’s cloud, cognitive solutions ahead of earnings
It's nitpicking. They existed in 1998, so "a couple of decades" is debating months in the scope of decades. Google incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998.
Google Domains includes private registration - no additional cost. The service is simple with transparent (although not the best) pricing. Have a few domains there now. And yes, I'm aware that Google and privacy are strange bedfellows in the same sentence.
The IRS is so behind. To receive data from the IRS, I have 3 options.

CD

Tape! TAPE! 70's style Tape

Paper.
In 2015 there were almost 467,000 bicycle injuries in the United States. This is a direct quote from the CDC regarding bicycles and helmets: "Bicycle helmets reduce the risk of head and brain injuries in the event of a crash." [0] This is a strong enough warning from an accountable and transparent source that I choose to wear a bicycle helmet every time I ride a bike and I believe people that do not wear a bicycle helmet are reckless. I believe that companies that encourage riding without a helmet do not care about the safety of their customers.

Perhaps bicyclist are more likely to have a head injury if they are struck by a car. I share roadways and crosswalks to with cars when I ride.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/bicycle/index.html
In Germany you can choose to not be listed in those, I assume it's the same in the UK .
BoxGraph – real time distributed graph based ML
I think the real problem here is that the mainframe assembler codebase is undocumented, and decades of idiosyncratic corner-cases and bug fixes are only present in the source code. If the system was fully documented, it could be trivially re-implemented in any language or platform of choice. That's why I think this kind of "modernization" project can be really useful, because it forces the organization to define its requirements.

Edit: Just to take this concept a little but further, I'd argue that "software" is an illusion. Most software, and nearly all 'enterprise' or 'business' software should be able to be fully defined and written on paper, by humans, before a single developer is engaged to translate those requirements to something a computer can run. The exceptions would be more elaborate things like video games, AI stuff, and things that rely on computers to do what they do. Anything that is automating what humans do (like the IRS here) should be written on paper first, code second. All too often non-technical management doesn't understand this, as it's boring and hard. It's easier to throw money at 'consultants' to pry the requirements out of them and then complain at how expensive the "software" is - while the real expense is just asking your business people what they actually do.
I think long term, Netflix needs redundancy, especially when the primary supplier is a competitor in the same space.
Is that still valid even though the European company is controlled by Microsoft? As I understand, the agreement they have in Germany basically hands over all control to Telekom, basically like a franchise model. As long as Microsoft Europe still controls access to the data, can't they be forced by Microsoft US to reveal the data? As I understood, that was the reason why OVH hesitated for so long to build US data centres and then used a separate company for it (not sure if they went through with that plan).

Not a lawyer so pure speculation but would be interested if anyone has details.
Can someone make a Telegram one
I didn't vote for Zuckerberg.