skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Also, this seems to me to be utterly unfounded: “Which poem is better, the Iliad or the Odyssey? I don’t have hard numbers to back this up, but today it seems pretty clear that the Odyssey wins hands down in the mass popularity stakes.“

The "which is better" is unanswerable but in terms of popularity, the evidence seems to show that The Odyssey is more well-known to today's readers.

One reason is that many USA high schools use The Odyssey instead of the The Iliad in reading assignments.

As for another datapoint to popularity, compare the number of ratings & reviews of The Odyssey (~760k) vs The Iliad (~305k) on Goodreads[1][2]. Similar popularity differences can be found on Amazon for other translations.

The 2004 film Troy may have increased awareness of The Iliad but it still seems like The Odyssey is more popular.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371.The_Iliad
> There is no guarantee that your first party tracker does not relay information to a third party via your web server.

You have no guarantees at all, but that information is always sent across, and in many cases must be sent to even make a request. You literally can't prevent an IP address from being "sent" because it's needed to route the information back to you. Sending an "Accept-Language" header lets a website be translated into multiple languages. And virtually 100% of my users want times and dates in their local time, not UTC.

Just because it's potentially identifying information doesn't mean you can block it and pat yourself on the back as "stopping tracking". When you don't allow an IP address to be sent, you have just created a system where you can arbitrarily choose literally any request and block it under that rule. It's like making a law against breathing oxygen, then arresting anyone that you don't like for any reason because they are breaking at least that law.
I'm working on a new consultant biz, oriented toward "freelance CTO" for early-stage startups. It's general purpose but provide a non-technical client a better view of the technical aspects of their product. I'm convinced it has a lot of value for this kind of clients.
If you take all those pieces of information together you're very close to uniquely identifying the user, in a way which could be correlated with similar analytics from other websites if and when your analytics data is leaked or sold.

Sometimes people really mean it when they say they don't want to be tracked: they want to leave no footprint at all. Sometimes people just want the website to load as fast as possible by discarding as much Javascript and as many requests as they can get away with.

But don't forget the good old HTTP access logs, which give you all this information anyway without having to load extra scripts.
Hi, I'm a poster somewhere up in the thread, not crankylinuxuser.

However, I still have an impression from seenitall's and your comment, that you are solving the wrong problem.

- dependencies - that's something the traditional package managers solve very well :)

- temporary defer updates while running: not interrupting the user is a different issue than not updating. (In my opinion, Flatpak solves this elegantly: it can tell the running application, that a new update is installed, and when it is convenient to the application, it can restart itself. Until then, both versions are available.)

- not everyone uses EMS; I'd say that no SOHO and only some SMEs do; so here you are creating a problem for power users and small businesses; notwithstanding, that your competition (Flatpak) has the stable/beta/whatever channels too, without needing EMS or other tooling;

- device manufacturers were always able to do this with traditional package management (using a metapackage that depends on specific versions);

- some of the problems above seems to stem from the insistence of snap to have a single source of truth, under a control of single entity. All the other package systems avoid some of the issues by being decentralized. For example, you can have your own apt/yum/flatpak repository and you can control, what packages get in. AFAIK, this is impossible with snap, thus needing to implement it's own solutions for a defined scenarios.

- the above scenarios are still missing the crucial component, that crankylinuxuser points out: the user's consent to update. Neither poster in this thread addressed this concern.

The issue is, that you cannot rely on vendor/someone upstream to certify the solution for you, because they may be wrong. When it is wrong, it will break your system and the vendor will not be quick enough (or even willing) to un-break your system.

My example: we are using a certain well-known ETL tool (I won't name it here, no point in shaming them), that has a bug since some version, where it drops characters in certain Unicode range. Most customers do not have a problem, only those who are unfortunate enough processing data in a language that falls into this range. The vendor has a bug report in their bug tracking system, they are claiming to work on it, and they semi-regularly do new releases - without the bug fixed.

Of course, nobody that needs that specific Unicode range can update. Nobody in this context means a handful of users worldwide, i.e. a small fraction of percentage of customers, so that means the bug fix priority is not exactly a big one.

With traditional yum, it is easy enough to solve - just exclude that specific package from updating. With your competition, Flatpak, it would be easy too: just do not update that package. At installation time, they can still install the "old" version, when needed.

Here, the vendor certification would be not enough - the application works for most users, it's just too bad when it doesn't work for you. In the absence of EMS, there would be not much what the users could do.

And that's where the issue "someone else has control over update process, not me" comes from.
And being in service of the patient often requires not doing what the patient wants, because the patient is not a medical professional and doesn't know shit.
>I'm really bad at rebase

Yeah, I hate rebase, but the git boys (a very clever bunch) seem to like it.
IBM Unveils Industry’s First Security Operations Center on Wheels
"The finance and tech world doesn't need to compromise for some vague fragile security arrangement in the middle east. "

Once they have investors from there aren't they pretty much beholden to them?
> Users MUST have ultimate control over software and not the other way around

You can build your own Firefox. You can even download the source and build an old version. What more control do you want?
How to write an RFC (2014)
That's a really strange viewpoint to me. By that logic we shouldn't really care about most things because of what they once were.

The U.S. because it was an up-jumped violent militia.

Linux because it was some Finnish dude's hobby project.

Nintendo because it was just some family company that made playing cards.

Things evolve, improve, and become far more than their initial incarnation. And they may do so for decades. Bringing it back to space sims, I'd rather a solid playable base that can be continuously improved, than a series of half-playable cobbled together tech demos. But hey, only time will tell eh? Maybe I'll revisit this comment chain and feel like a fool in a year. Or 5. Or 10.
Is this by any chance influenced by the "Out of the Tar Pit" paper?

Piggybacking on a SQLite backend was also how I have envisioned it ... very interesting project!
I sat through some early presentations of Augur at the big monthly Bitcoin meeting that's been running for years in Amsterdam, and my first thought upon seeing it was, "who says what the factual outcome is?".

Sure in some cases it's black and white, but like most things in life there is a lot of weight in the interpretation.

So it's back to the original problem with smart contracts - you still have to trust an oracle, and I would bet ;) that if the stakes are high enough, an oracle will be manipulated in some way.

Let's take an election for example. We've had enough madness just in the US in the last 20 years to be skeptical of initially reported outcomes. In fact, some elections get reversed after study and investigation. Augur isn't going to reverse a funds exchange. And if someone has enough riding on an outcome, they may find it worth spending extra money to at least temporarily cause the outcome to match their bet. They just need to win briefly, even if the results get overturned later.
I miss large tap targets and easy one-handed nav on those systems.
hinv form SGI IRIX.

With 5 keystrokes you could see what kind of hardware you were running. Very handy to open a support case with a simple copy and paste.

SGI IRIX was the second Unix I learnt. Cool OS, Cool Desktop, and I miss the blue SGI Indy box my boss had... and that I inherited when he left the company.
A lot of MTAs are improperly configured. There's still a lot of plain text email sent across the Internet. The secure mail servers often have trouble connecting to anything with a TLS version higher than 1.0 (if even that). Many mail servers also don't have a valid server certificate (self-signed, expired or even from the wrong domain). In my opinion, the email ecosystem is hopeless with regards to TLS security. Gmail started showing red padlocks for plaintext or insecurely sent emails a while back and I still see the red pad lock to this day.

Bexause of this, disabling old TLS versions could make your server unreachable for large parts of the Internet or have servers fall back to plain text if they're improperly configured. Nobody wants to be that one company that can't receive your grandma's emails so everybody just keeps accepting improper configuration.

Another problem is that a lot of MDA servers share their TLS config with the MTA side.

I know from experience (worked at a small company that upgraded their email servers to TLS 1.2, at least on the MDA side) that old Microsoft mail clients (Office 2007 and lower, Windows Live Mail 2012) have trouble with TLS 1.2, especially on older Windows versions.

Although these clients have all been deprecated for a long time, a lot of users with few tech skills still use them because that's what their PC was set up with years ago when they bought it, or because they don't want to waste their time learning how to deal with a new UI (you can see this with a lot of elderly people).

For programs that use the Windows 7 TLS libraries TLS 1.2 is even disabled by default in Windows 7 because at the time Windows 7 launched, other implementations had major bugs. It can be enabled using a registry key though. This includes Office 2010, which still gets security fixes from Microsoft.

So, if a large company would disable TLS 1.0/1.1 on their MTAs it might get a large amount of customer support calls from their least technical customer base. You can tell your customers that their program is out of date and that their program is the reason they're getting errors, but in the end the customer will still blame you for "breaking their mail program".

Aside from a massive blow to a company's reputation, this would also overload the customer support desk and cost a lot of man hours.

<edit>
Actually, I've seen the built in mail app for Samsung smart phones fail on TLS 1.2 for Android versions up to Android 8. Other Android vendors generally have trouble up to Android 5/6. With the lack of system updates on the Android ecosystem, this could be an even bigger problem.
</edit>

I believe disabling old TLS versions is the right thing, but not until large parties such as Microsoft and Google decide to take the first step if you still want your server to receive any email.
Anna: cloud-native, autoscaling, tiered storage engine
2013 vs 2018’: The Top Cryptocurrencies Five Years Ago and Today
As Pilotworks Shuts Down, New Brands Face Uncertain Future
Comment; I find myself using Nexmo and Mailgun a lot. Perhaps there's an acquisition that needs to happen there, too?
How to use VUI tech in marketing
Very true sentiment in this article. Also a corollary to this would be to deliver based on the value you provide the client, not the time it takes you to complete the problem. I've written about this before on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14942561
The might underestimate the backlash of 4 billion Muslims and Christians being unitedly antagonized by such transgressions.
Short answer: no.

Longer answer: actually another common feature is that both can execute code at compile-time (macros).

Full answer: really, no. They are fundamentally different: Lisp is a decent symbolic language, Forth is a decent portable assembler.
>We had a lot of coverage of the Myanmar genocide facilitated by Facebook and the comments were always very negative against Facebook here.

Not always. A surprising number of HN commenters in those threads supported both Facebook and the genocide.

Either way, HN was anything but disinterested.
9 Ψέματα Στο SEO Που Θα Σας Καταστρέψουν – WEB DESIGN|SEO|PARAMARKETING.GR
I can confirm what they say is true, but probably not with this specific sentence. It's also really not useful while searching for phone numbers (which it changes completely without a second thought).
Click of death
I miss the REAL ThinkPads from 2011 and earlier with REAL ThinkPad 7-row keyboards.

The ThinkPad 25 Anniversary Edition is a step in good direction but Lenovo does not plan to introduce more of them.

Same with Dell D630 with extended battery that was in front and server well as palm rest, very nice piece of hardware.

Same with ThinkPad X301.

Not to mention SparcBook or PowerBook ...
This article, like most other crypto related posts is a thinly veiled ad. Anyone who just focuses on how the price graph for something moves isn't worth listening to.
Boston Dynamics Spot mini dancing
One important thing is that the state in France owns most/all the churches built before 1905, so they end up paying a lot for renovation. Also keep in mind that the Alsace-Lorraine was not part of France in 1905 (part of the German empire), so the separation was never applied there.
What I have seen is that some people/consultants have the ability to talk to C*O or VP level in their own language. Once you get these people to trust you, you can hire people with expertise you need. You can probably also get contracts because of your specific domain expertise but I believe the ability to communicate with high level management is more important for a successful consulting business.
No, that restriction is gone. Peter Cawley did the hard work and added optional support for 64-bit heaps to LuaJIT upstream [1] and RaptorJIT adopted that exclusively i.e. dropped the 32-bit heap option which involved a LOT of #ifdef'ery in thousands of lines of assembler code.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeaDk9ElKws
Sooo...what would be the "programmer scurvy" Lisp (and especially Lisp) could help to prevent?
I have experience of great success and productivity in small teams with Common Lisp and Clojure. I don't have direct experience of dysfunction in a larger Lisp team. That was a guess based on how being a senior dev in a 50 man C# shop felt :)
Securing ASP.NET with free SSL/TLS certificates
I think there is a sizeable community of musicians for whom "doing things different than the mainstream" is a means by which important cultural development occurs. In fact for them, its probably more important than playing at the status quo.

And I don't think this is a modern idea. Music never stays in a single place.
According to the Bakkt CEO, we're about to see a crypto “revolution”
+1 was not enough, therefore verbal +100.

(Will be nice once comment systems allow multiple upvotes on a budget)
The Michener essay is a great read. Thank you for the link.

It has made me think about a problem, though: how to select that huge task in which to pour your energy. For him, it was his novels; but being in a 9 to 5 office job like I am, I'm wondering what are my options.
> Is there a market for general purpose software consultants?

Certainly is, as indicated by the continued success of for Accenture, McKinsey Digital, Deloitte Digital, IBM, EY, KPMG, PwC, Aon Hewitt, and probably a million more smaller consultancies and agencies.

Its certainly a suitable career choice if you enjoy a mix of technical solutioning, ideation and development work across a range of clients, geographies and technical domains. The caveats of course being sometimes your skills stagnate or the work-life balance isn't there when comparing service-organisations with product-organisations. But, depending on where you want to build your career, this kind of work for those kinds of places can be quite an accelerator.
A video game I contributed to, Gang Garrison 2, stores maps as PNG files where the image is the actual level background, and other data is hidden in a text PNG chunk. Hides data in the file format, not the image proper, but a similar idea.
Authority Issues [podcast]
When was the last time there was a school shooting using a Panzer tank or a MiG fighter?

I can't see the pragmatism in demanding equivalence of regulation.
One anecdote against another. My suspicion is that you were in a "bad neighbourhood" - ie. using a hosting or email service that didn't keep their IP's squeaky clean. AWS/EC2 is a common host among the HN crowd but is one of the worse places to host a own mail server at for this reason - they'd also rather upsell you SES than fix the EC2 IP ranges' reputation.

Microsoft is the pickiest email provider to get good delivery rates to - they require a gradual volume ramp-up over 1-4 weeks on a fresh IP to see it as good, in my experience, and SNDS is something to keep a close eye on during that time - it clearly indicates your IP's reputation with them and how much mail they see from it. That number being higher than expected plus the sample emails they provide may indicate something going wrong - through this, I once discovered an obscure feature in a software package I used that allowed visitors to send emails to arbitrary addresses.

Mandrill has better delivery than the other email services I've tried but is cripplingly expensive for a hobby project that happens to have a nontrivial userbase.
I agree with you in the case of old encryption methods (plain DES, RC4, NULL cipher) but not all protocol problems are because of the lack of a recent encryption algorithm.

There's heaps of old modems that use a weak DH key and will never see a firmware update. You're left with either accessing the device insecurely over HTTP, hoping your ISP will send you a new one (good luck with that) or paying for your own modem which will probably never be allowed on the ISPs network.

Weak DH keys should not be that hard to keep in the code base yet still most browsers will present an impassable TLS error screen.
Commodore (brilliant makers of Amiga and C64)
The download attribute is not supported on mobile Safari unfortunately - https://caniuse.com/download/embed/description
And printed copies are not?
>But don't forget the good old HTTP access logs, which give you all this information anyway without having to load extra scripts.

But that's my point, whole domains have been added to EasyList under these rules that break the entire application because the person who added it assumed it was tracking related and not part of the application. People see xhr requests which save the current timezone so the server can update calendar notifications at the right time as "tracking" and break the application entirely because of it. They see a request they don't understand and block it because "it includes the useragent".

Take Google shopping for instance, an entire service shut off because "it's tracking", while Amazon or eBay or any other online shopping service isn't blocked.

If you really want that blocked, I'm more than happy to not serve you! I don't want to track you if you feel that using your timezone is over the line! But when your feelings toward that are pushed to who knows how many computers and now my site is broken for a large number of users, who are now contacting me to fix it, it becomes a problem.

To use an analogy, I don't have any issue with people that are allergic to peanuts. I don't want to try and force feed you peanuts, I want to make sure everyone knows I serve peanuts, and I want to give you the option of not eating at my establishment if you are allergic or simply don't like peanuts.

But if you start removing my establishment from maps, and start putting road blocks in front of my building preventing others from getting in, now it's overstepped a boundary.

I don't pretend to have a good answer, this isn't an easy problem to solve, but giving a handful of devs a "break this website for all adblocker users" button seems like a lot of power, and it especially hurts those who are trying to accommodate you.

If I didn't care, I'd just work around it, use server logs and send them to 3rd parties, lie and actively route around your attempts to block. And I'd not only make more money, but have to deal with less issues from users...

My hope is that the devs that believe these things can give more options to the user to decide for themselves and make informed decisions about the tradeoffs, rather than saying "this is bad, I blocked it for you".
Ex-Google engineer describing the company's role in China censorship
Harris Corporation and L3 Technologies to Merge to Create Defense Tech Leader
we never left the recession. ignore that twaddle about the "jobless recovery".

point is, they had a depression II slated. so they did what any cunt would; they punted.

could have been 8-9 years of pain; ex-rich people throwing themselves out of windows.

instead, they screwd the next four generations.

it only looked like a recovery, because it stopped collapsing for a brief period. reality they've screwed the entire country for decades.

all this nonsense about growth? is what happens when you reinflate the bubble with QE. classic keynesian garbage.
Nope, and I explain it in the article, it's because of the weird behaviour you get with canvas and alpha channel. If somehow a value of 0 made it to the alpha channel, all of red, green and blue channels were reset to zero as well. It was a bit annoying to deal with and a total pain to change my code. Originally I was using all 4 channels.
Hetzner Cloud Volumes in beta
Waking up early is correlated to my happiness