skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"They are consistently bogglingly bad at human interaction -- communications, PR, management, UX, customer service."

I don't think that's actually true. In particular, I think that Google for most of its history was masterful at PR and communications - they managed to maintain a very positive public image all the way through 2011, despite being both far more powerful, more naughty, and more ruthless than the general public saw them as. I think management and UX are also quite strong at Google - they're known for sparse design and UX fails, but there's often a lot of subtlety to how Google products are designed that makes them very effective for their purposes. They did always suck at customer service, though.

Rather, I think Google's hubris is...hubris. They feel the need to have their fingers in everything. It's not enough to be the world's best Search company or even organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, they also need to be the best social network, and best cloud provider, and best AI company, and best mobile-phone OS, and best web browser, and best daily deals site (remember their aborted Groupon purchase, soon followed by a competitor?), and do government contracts for the military, and get into China, and build self-driving cars and robotics, and be a major payment provider and operate half a dozen different chat services.

Most of the PR, communication, management, and UX fails are forced errors. They happen because there's an inherent contradiction in Google's business model. You can't simultaneously market yourself to engineers with "Don't be evil" while devising ways to help the military kill people more accurately or censoring Chinese search results; hell, at some point the military is likely going to have an issue with China potentially hacking into Google's cloud infrastructure through their partnerships. A surprising number of the UX fails also come about because some executive is protecting their turf and won't let the obvious integration & UI simplification happen even though both engineers and customers want it.
The Trouble with Macroeconomics (2016) [pdf]
The solution to Twitter's bias, is the DOJ should sue them and make them enforce their terms of service for all parties equally (rather than allowing one side to freely issue death threats, racism, hate speech, etc. without having accounts get suspended or banned), which they're refusing to do right now.

Taken in whole with everything else you just said, are you suggesting (even if I'm not sure if I necessarily agree this is something that should reach the level of the DoJ) that Twitter gets this treatment as a precedent setting maneuver to push the others into getting in line?

If, as you say Facebook has an 'entrenched monopoly[...]over communication', why in your opinion should the DOJ go after the company you've also argued has up to a 5th the size of Facebook's reach and influence? Bigger fish, frying pan, etc, if you catch my drift.
You can get an awful lot of customers just by being in Ashburn VA with direct connects to to the big cloud providers. Most queries to a DB like mongo are slow enough that 1ms of network latency is just noise.
General advertising is not a problem.

I'm not sure why you would say that. e.g. There's a old silo building overlooking a bay near where I live, opposite a park, which has a huge billboard ad atop it the length of the building, which dominates the skyline. Calling that passive seems odd. It's aggressive, incredibly tasteless, and a symptom of a huge failure of civilization.

edit: And well, this is Sydney. Last night there was a rally at the Sydney Opera House to protest recent events: The head of the Opera House had refused to allow horse-racing ads (!) to be projected onto the sails of the Opera House. A well-known right-wing radio shock-jock got involved, and abusively insisted the ads be shown. Then, incredibly, the Premier of NSW (i.e. the leader of the state) forced the Opera House to back down, and show the ads. There's been widespread incredulity and outrage here about that! So, yeah, it is a problem.
"Datalog is a declarative logic programming language that syntactically is a subset of Prolog." [1]

"Datomic is a distributed database and implementation of Datalog.". Datomic seems to be quite succesful [2].

Related to datomic, I'm trying to learn Datascript these days ("An immutable in-memory database and Datalog query engine in Clojure and ClojureScript.") [3].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datalog

2: https://www.datomic.com/customers.html

3: https://github.com/tonsky/datascript
The program for tapping data center links had the internal code name MUSCULAR and was a partnership with the British GCHQ, who actually did the intercepting.

PRISM was at first reported as some sort of direct access to the servers of certain American companies, but it turned out to be the code name for a joint program with the FBI for using FISA warrants to request data from those companies.
More like that they invented a simple test protocol, called TAP. It's slow, because perl runs it, but you can also emit tap from C or C++, and it's much easier and more flexible than dejagnu or other low-level test frameworks.
It only doesn't support Band 12 but band 2 and 4 are the important T-Mobile bands which it supports. No other bands are used heavily. ATT is very compatible. Using T-Mobile around Seattle with the phone and have absolutely no issues anywhere.

For $159 I'm not sure what more you could expect. Band 12 would be nice, but I understand they need to cut some corners.
Habits are hard to break but I've also found it surprisingly easy to manipulate yourself by putting an annoying obstacle in the way. For getting work on time I can't snooze-beat the combination of a wake up light and a distantly located mobile alarm.

On internet use restriction the best solution so far has been to use a simple electronic plug timer connected to a laptop without a battery. Zap - no internet for you.

There ought to be a solution that installs itself into the computer's firmware though. Most of us on HN install new operating systems at a much higher rate than the typical user so having a persistent solution would be huge.
Apple Watch Daylight Saving Time Crashing Bug
I'd add that most software systems compete on the market, which is as close to direct evolutionary process as you can get in modern environment. And that process has a fitness function that's quite misaligned with what a designer wants at any step of the process.
Go may very well have been through best fit for you. However, saying that Java's problem was that you couldn't upgrade from 1.6 yo 1.8 but you could introduce a completely different language doesn't make much sense to me.
If I was a high value target (and knew about it) I would definitely not let you know, if I was a high value target and did not know about it I would not be able to tell if I was or if I wasn't. So any high value target and anybody else would not be able to tell you they were a high value target.
Google could have copied Vivo Apex to beat Apple in bezel-less game once for all. Instead we get an ugly notch and a bezel at the bottom. Feels premium, I really fall for it, really! :-/
Some of these are really fantastic. Particularly the atomic file saving and cache utils, but I can see myself using a lot of these handy util modules.

A lot of this stuff is great to implement and test yourself in large codebases, but when you're prototyping or writing a quick notebook, this stuff ranges to very handy to very powerful.
But like, "let me confirm off hand on twitter what classified things we did or didn't do at the NSA", is exactly what you can't say. Why is he being allowed to confirm/deny specific actions of the NSA?
> If you have the models I think you do, they're as expensive as the Bose QC35 headphones.

Now you've got me curious; I don't remember them being too pricey.

Looks like I have the MC5. <$100. Specs say they are rated for a noise reduction of 35-42dB. For reference the safety ear muffs I use are 34dB. (I'm half tempted now to use the Etys for PPE :P )
About which part?
Doesn't mean it might not change hands again! (as unlikely as that would be)

As for latency, with Mlab you were able to specify the cloud provider and zone IIRC, not sure if other competitors like Compose have that
There are a good number of members at East Wind in their late 50's and 60's.

There are also a good number of long term members with memberships of 20,25,30, and one with 40 years.

At East Wind there is retirement after 25 years "on the system" as well as medical retirement.
I enjoy the idea that we can feel safe from attackers because we caught an attacker once, that time back in 2003.
What solved my tech addiction was losing my phone and buying a $50 phone at Best Buy to replace it until I could get a new iPhone. Using it was so aggravating that I started using my phone rarely. So I kept it. And hardly use the piece of shit at all.
Announcing the Open Data Initiative (Microsoft, Adobe, SAP)
I would suggest that the problem is too much wriggle room / dissonance during the design process (in nice safe meeting rooms admittedly) We can all persuade ourselves that as all items are ticked, the job is done.

But testing gives the lie to all this. The patriot system was battle tested in the 1990s and its deficiencies became apparent - and lessons seem to have been learnt.

So perhaps more adversarial testing is the right approach - set the marines to take out the air forces weapons, the navy to destroy the army.

If people know their beloved weapons systems are going to get roughed up, then the tick box stops being the determinant of achievement - it becomes "what would one of those navy/marine/air force/army bar stewards do?" That's a much higher bar.

tl;dr blow shit up and see if it still works
Oh, that's interesting. So they basically took one guys hypothetical and turned that into a news item positively seeded with images of the hypothetical, rather than an actual device.

The original article has now dropped into the real of SF for me until they show a detailed shot of an actual board with a parasitic device on it. Until then this is a wild goose chase.

Thank you for pointing this out.
Oddly enough, it seems the article no longer appears on their blog: https://blog.mlab.com/
Google is run by PMs, not engineers, data scientists, or economists. The problem is their PMs are universally bad, believing they know more than the user but knowing just as little at best.
Flatpak – a security nightmare
Blog post is missing but mLab is being acquired by MongoDB, here's the press release: https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/mongodb-strengthens-glo...
It's the only option with the current OAuth model, however, we only use the token generated in your web browser, and talk directly to GitLab's API from there. We use the token to add a deploy key and a webhook to the specific repository we're linking to, and after that it's discarded. That way there's no long lived token stored on our end that has access to your whole account.
> Google working on project Dragonfly, a service that-according to the article: 'would blacklist phrases like “human rights,” “student protest,” and “Nobel Prize.”'

> People are (rightly) bothered by this.

> Facebook and Twitter tell Alex Jones to pound sand.

> People argue "Private corporations don't have to give anyone a platform".

One of the two actions you listed results in the families of school shooting victims getting harassed by Alex Jones social media following less and the other enables the imprisonment, torture and execution of millions of people in China.
Because, for example, your 3.5 year old phone has a way worse camera than a modern phone. It doesn't have wireless charging. Its hardware has deficiencies that are noticeable even if the raw speed of the CPU is still fine.
If the Bloomberg story is wrong then you could make a killing buying Super Micro stock. It's down 50% since the story broke.

https://imgur.com/a/Z1v3WgD
I've never understood why any company emails magic log-in links in anything except a password reset (which should immediately prompt for a new password and send the user a notice that their password has been changed)
The two projects have different ambitions, really. Kit is a "compiles to C" that adds on some nifty semantics. There are many similar efforts in that vein, and they benefit by reusing the leverage of the existing infrastructure and patching it up, but that isn't going to change the underlying environment - you'll still build and debug as if it were C. Zig is trying to replace the very bottom of the stack. Although it's bootstrapping off a C++/LLVM environment itself, the effort is more ground-up and will remove much of the undefined or vendor-specific behavior that currently exists in C tooling, while still adding some high-level niceties, just probably not as many as an applications-focused language.
timing the time is impossible for any market. It's easy to be contrarian but hard to be a contrarian that will be right (on time).

Reality is no one really knows, what will break the camel's back!
I don't think that +/- 1 more phone per person per two years is a terribly big deal in the grand scheme of things.
It's the problem of maximizing gross acceptableness vs. accuracy. If there is a term that has 1,000 results but could be a misspelling of a term that returns 100,000 results, Google will always go with mob rule. It's like when the bean counters take over and shave a nickel here, save a penny there, until everyone leaves because your product has become garbage. Optimizing for search happiness sounds good on paper but winning on edge cases SHOULD be Google's strength - instead, it is their biggest weakness.

I wouldn't even mind the mob rule if Google still had a way to clarify your searches by default. Instead, they continue to assume more and more user intent and remove more and more options for clear user input.
Good points, but physical access is a fundamental of security, and for good reason.
Specialization, metrics that don't capture true growth/success, and too large of teams also ends up to skilled workers that care less because they have less power or responsibility/ownership.

Small teams with skilled people, the startup model, works best even in large companies. Closer to the customer and more cohesive unit makes for a better project, that is why innovation happens at smaller companies or small research groups in companies or universities.

n(n-1)/2 is the formula to calculate the number of communication channels on a project where n=the number of team members/stakeholders on a project.

On a team of 1, it is all you, you make sure it works.

On a team of 2-3, it is just that few, you make sure you and others are doing their part.

On a team of 10, 45 communication connections, you might not have the same level of care because that isn't my role or someone else has got it. Beyond 7-8 team members communication becomes humanely impossible.

On a team of 100, you have so little power/responsibility that you feel out of place calling attention to issues, you don't know of everyone on the team even.

Metrics are a good thing, to use as an input, so is customer feedback, product goals/focus, usability, employee satisfaction and many other things that aren't always measured like technical debt, product quality, security, simplicity of processes/production, research and development and more.

If you measure the wrong things, it can give you the wrong idea that you are moving in the right direction while possibly overlooking aspects not captured in metrics.

If you only looked at revenue and employee head count for instance, growth might be deceiving. Profit and revenue per employee better, but also employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, the market, product quality, timing, security, long term direction etc etc get overlooked in the metrics department mainly because domain knowledge has less power than oversight in most mature organizations.
I just got a Pixel 1 planning to do that very thing. I thought I was getting a great deal; they're about $200 on Amazon.

I ran into an apparently common issue where it won't connect to Windows through its bundled USB cable (or any other USB cable...).

Plugging it into my external monitor, which is also a USB hub, solved that problem. Except that in bootloader mode, it is once again unrecognized, making it impossible to unlock.
Xiaomi got rid of the forehead entirely by moving everything to the (relatively small) chin on Mi Mix 2. While that is not great for the front facing camera usage since many (most?) apps don’t support 180 degree rotation, I don’t see why the design can’t be flipped. Just build a phone with a reasonable sized forehead. Although I don’t particularly mind the design choice for Galaxy Note 9 or Nokia 7 Plus — a narrow forehead and chin.
Firebase is just awesome. I have deployed several minor apps on the platform. With out-of-the-box auth management and the db, I can have a static client-side only app that is relatively featured. I used to actually "code server side" to manage data, and that seems so redundant now with firebase. Thanks!
I admit, I was curious about the `some_struct foo[1];` thing.

This is all I could find. It isn't terribly compelling.[1]

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6390331/why-use-array-si...
Translating Executable UML Software Models with Micca [pdf]
just wondering how much pressure it takes to compress wood to destroy the cellular structure. One might suspect more than enough to crack a mould that had lovely curvy shapes in it ...
"that works" for varying degrees of "works". I happen to think that the lightning-to-3.5 adapter doesn't "just work" in the Apple sense, but is rather "minimally functional", not aesthetic, not graceful.
Not very much. The resale value of a 4 year old iPhone is sub $100. Even if you get literally $0 for a 2 year old Android, you aren't changing the cost calculations very significantly.
You hit the nail on the head. As mercutio2 has been pointing out, there are basically three communities like East Wind in America, and together they form the backbone of the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, the FEC.

Out of the thousands that started in the 60's and 70's, these survived because they all had and have successful businesses.

Furthermore, I'd venture to say that most successful intentional communities run a business. The ones that don't probably rely on outside donations or government assistance.
I think you have a point. I tried many times to go to the gym, eat well, sometimes temporarily succeeding.

After moving out of my parent's house I lost 12kg in less than a year. I prepared my own meals before and after so that's a result.

Not sure how you'd maintain an iron will in relation to the internet - few computer geeks I know can say "I'll be done in ten".
I think you're completely wrong. You and I care about privacy and it feels like everyone does too because we're only getting signals from inside our own little tech bubble. People don't care about their privacy, it's a simple as that. At least not enough to stop using Facebook and whatnot. Most of my friends and acquaintances are software engineers and couldn't care less about Facebook's scandals and how it uses their data because they "use adblock, anyway". My less techy friends actually enjoy getting targeted ads since, at least, they're not completely inappropriate.

Apple is indeed invested in the "we care about your privacy" narrative. Probably not our of the goodness of their hearts. It differentiates them from the competition even more and is yet another justification for their premiums. I agree with you, they're the good guys for now.
To be fair, Clover Trail had all sorts of driver issues that never got resolved. I personally had to deal with the shitty GPU drivers for work. I can't speak to the power management since we were using the chip in a place where power management didn't matter, but I can see those being shit too.
(I felt bad about my comment and I'm removing it.)
Probably true, but gosh I sure hope not.

I know three different PMs at Google in a non-work capacity, and these three people in particular are the most 'intellectually self-righteous' people I have ever met in my life. Basically they're total bullies. I really hope this isn't exemplary of the rest of them, but your statement leads me to think that is not the case.
Hidden Camera Exposes Apple's Genius Bars Ripping Off Customers
Apple have an edge over its competitors because they can afford to go full-on tinfoil with privacy; it wouldn’t put a dent in their business model.

And while laypeople today care little about privacy, Apple can bring it into the collective consciousness. All it takes is a good meme (in the original Dawkins sense, not in the image-macro sense). A meme that tells people: “only the poor can’t afford privacy”. If they can get this into people’s heads then they’ll demand privacy, because nobody likes feeling poor.
>My wife and I recently bought a house and I've been finding that I'd rather spend time fixing it up than [engaging in things that many people get addicted to]

I propose that most of the hours lost to tech addiction will be lost by people with a severe life problem (e.g., they're paralyzed and in a wheelchair; e.g., they have an incurable disabling illness; e.g., they cannot get a job because they're ugly and have an IQ of 70) in addition to the addiction. Most of them will not be able to find anyone trustworthy and sane to marry them. Most of them will not be able to buy a house.

It is natural for a person to respond to the assertion that X is dangerous (or pernicious) by focusing on how dangerous X is to people sufficiently like themselves without considering the danger (or perniciousness) to people in different life circumstances.
> [...] as someone who's used GKE, AKS, EKS and Hetzner for kubernetes clusters.

How does Hetzner compare here? In terms of both, general experience and costs.
I've been a graphic designer for a photo lab, a php code monkey, an insurance agent, a financial advisor, a construction worker, a high school math teacher, and, for the longest stretch (over 7yrs), a software developer. The php code monkey part was a short stint in university and I kept up some skills since then until being a "real" developer.

Feels like a lot for someone who is in their mid thirties. I've been blessed by working at the company I do. I could not imagine doing anything else. The pay is great. I'm surrounded by smart people who I enjoy. I have a greater work life balance than any of the other jobs I've had. Construction work did not follow me home, so there's that.

I've gained better people skills and presentation skills via my earlier jobs. I've gained enough "handiness" to do projects around the house. These things are part of who I am and I value them. I would also have valued making _way_ more money during my twenties and being able to better support my young family.

Learn lots. Learn varied things. Much of that can be done as hobbies though. Pay the bills. Save for retirement. Have financial security.
You can pay attention all you want, but your managers and your co-workers don't care. That's the way it is for me, and I hate it, but there's literally nothing I can do about it, except turn up my music and hope I find a new job soon.
Ask HN: Are email providers required to give email access if locked out?
For example, if Google/Yahoo/Microsoft or whomever, locked you out of your account for 'suspicious behavior', breaking TOS, or some other reason are they required (legally) to provide you with copies of your existing emails? Regardless of if you've actually done anything?
This hasn't happened to me but I've heard horror stories about it happening to others. What are some mitigations that my not so tech savy grandmother could take to prevent this from happening?
> with Mlab you were able to specify the cloud provider and zone IIRC

That's correct, you specify a provider and region but can also set up VPC peering so all traffic remains within AWS' network within a region. I've used this setup - mLab on AWS with VPC peering and it worked great.