skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We should think about investing in smoke/heat sensors that can broadcast an emergency signal that can be placed in the wilderness areas close to human habitation.
Just thinking through here, we need to determine the max radius of fire that can be confidently contained by the nearest fire department (taking into consideration some metrics such as time taken to reach the spot, how prone the area is for fire, wind speed averages, number/ability of the fire safety crew).
Place a pole at the edge of such radius with sensors at different height , inbuilt GPS, and ability to broadcast its status to a remote control room. The number of poles in an area can be based on the above metrics.

I understand that some wood fires that start naturally, actually are part of the natural cycle and is necessary. So remote areas could be spared, but still monitored to check its spread.

Maybe a combination of such sensors and satellite data can help catch a fire when it is still small enough to be contained.
> If some search engine came and produced vastly superior results to Google, people would absolutely switch.

True, although that's unlikely to happen any time soon. (then again, how can we really predict any of this)

> That's how Google came to power in the first place: their results were just better.

That was also back when the barrier to entry was much lower, and there was a lot of low-hanging fruit for Google to pick both in search and other areas.

Let's say that someone today manages to get enough money and talent to build something that is at least equivalent to Google: I think people will overwhelmingly stick with Google because of the brand recognition and because "everyone else uses it." As both services would be free to use, there's nothing to force people to closely consider what merits their dollars will be spent on. Google could be highly censored and totally corrupt in other ways, but people will continue to use it because, as their wallets aren't being punished or used for nefarious purposes, they'll be willing to put up with seemingly benign abuse that they feel they have no part in perpetuating.

This is one reason why, even though I am not against advertising in and of itself, I despise what the state of digital advertising has done to the web and the world depending on it. And, as you stated, Google's advertising platform enables them to have many tentacles without the inherent need to own other companies; instead, they can have individuals businesses they don't own depend on their applications funded by ad revenue, making it a tremendously difficult choice for policy makers to split them up.
>TLDR yes, biometrics are the closest thing to a user ID

No, tl;dr stop trying to cram things you don't understand into random other categories you do and make analogies that actively cloud understanding. They simply have nothing to do with each other. Yet again, there are three basic classes of common authentication factors: something you know, something you have, and something you are. Biometrics belong to the "something you are" class. All auth factors impose an energy cost on an attacker trying to successfully utilize them, with that cost varying depending on the threat scenario. They also all impose costs on the user to varying degrees, depending on the specifics of how they are implemented and use case. Good security involves finding usable balances between value of information being defended to user cost of defending it and the time/resource attack cost.

Names/user IDs/handles are simply symbols, and public information, that humans use as pointers to other things. Often the whole point of authentication is explicitly to authenticate a user ID, to provide a positive assertion that yes the claimed user ID does maintain correlation to what it is pointing to.

>A given name is non-unique, and not chosen by you. Yet everyone refers you by it, if only by convention.

Uh, no. Most polities have processes by which you may change the name which the State refers to you by ("legal name") to whatever (non-socially disruptive) one you wish. And even beyond that you are claiming ("everyone refers to you by it[given name]") to have never heard of the concept of "nicknames"? Wow.

>People rarely choose their names, nicknames, or usernames.

OK so "nickname" isn't an entirely alien concept to you despite slipping your mind the previous paragraph. But on the contrary people commonly choose their handles. Or was "opless" assigned to you by your parents or manager?

All the rest of what you have to say is just bunk too. Every single thing a computer "knows" about a UID is just a string in a database. Policies or individual reluctance to change it has nothing to do with difficulty of doing so or policies for disclosure.
> In representative democracy, the true job of a representative is to convey the decision making to the people they represent. This includes heeding to the advice of specialists who have been assigned to help the "people", through that representative.

I'm not familiar with the structure of the Japanese government, but it seems like he's not a representative. Isn't this something like a cabinet level position in the US like secretary of defense or agriculture, etc?

In that case wouldn't he be the expert that the representatives are supposed to depend on to understand the things they don't?
Because the decision, and the damages are separate. You can win a case and have "damages reduced on appeal". Or a judge can be involved (depending on state). It can even be a separate hearing entirely.

And there's a litany of court cases where you can find 'unrealistic damages' due to a jury "sending a message".
I've a colleague who can barely put a sentence together much less conduct and understand a complex analysis, yet this person has twice the umber of QUALITY papers as me..HOW? This person is really good at getting other people to do the work. Once I realized this I disengaged from this person's schemes, but I found it frustrating.
Here's the difference.

For all the issues you had with Uber or Lyft. You can contact them and they'll refund you your ride. They've refunded my ride every time something bad has happened.

Cab driver hits on your girlfriend? Good luck doing anything about it.

Same situation happens in a Lyft or Uber? You get your money back and the driver's rating gets lowered or they get kicked off the platform and you get unmatched permanently from that driver in the marketplace.

Cab driver takes a selfish route? Good luck proving it.

Uber driver takes a bad route? It's logged, and easily reportable. You'll get your money back.

Uber/Lyft drivers also commonly have chargers, water bottles, and other amenities and are generally accommodating because they know their rating matters. Cab drivers don't care at all.

I've even had cab dispatchers promise a cab will be at my house at X time, and I've had several drivers just not show up with no notice, no warning, nothing. Uber driver cancels? I know immediately.

As a customer, it's a far superior experience in nearly every way - even in cases when things go wrong. I'll pay more every time to take Uber/Lyft over a Cab, and so will my 20s/30s friend group - we'll do it happily because the world is changing and Uber/Lyft are more in line with what we expect from a car service in 2018.

Not only that - it's a similar experience I can get in LA as in NYC as in SF as in my small hometown. They all have Uber/Lyft and I can call the services from any curb at any time right through my smartphone and it works reliably with similar systems of accountability and trip reporting. It makes business travel and expensing dead easy.
Existing blockchain technologies. Historical knowledge is a mere speedbump on the path to number go up.
I dont have much sympathy for companies that turn down highly qualified intelligent workers by the truckload. There are so many people with MBAs who, for years struggle to get any kind of job at all.

I mean sure, paying more can help alot, but first of all, just fix your Hiring process. The hiring process at these some of the companies I've heard about are absolutely abysmal. I've heard first hand: They get great candidates who pass the phone screen and all the in person interviews: then at the last minute change their mind about hiring.

I've seen this at software companies when I was on the hiring side of the equation. HR told us we had an extra slot open. We don't wanna waste the slot so decide to hire somone. we wasted months turning down excellent candidates because engineers don't know how to interview a candidate because there's never time to train someone when teams are changing every year. Then we finally find a perfect one that everyone likes, and the manager above us decides to cancel the position and use the slot to hire a college buddy of his for a completely different role.

My theory is, a lot of these so called job openings are for jobs that aren't really needed. And the stake holders don't realize that the jobs aren't needed until the final hiring decision sign off is needed.
I am not sure what you are referring to by a "traditional" monopoly. Your definition, "control supply of a good or service, and where the entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted," sounds like the definition of any monopoly which seemingly covers Facebook and Google.

Monopolies are extreme examples of lack of competition in a market. One way non-competitive market equilibriums occur are when barriers to entry for potential competitors rises.

For Facebook and Google, the market externality that contributes to their monopoly-like market power is known as the Network effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). This effect was first observed with the rise of the Bell System which ultimately required anti-monopoly intervention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System).

For Facebook, the network externality is a bit more straightforward since it is a first order effect in that new users looking to adopt or join a social network choose to join the one which has the most other users they are interested in (typically friends, but could also be public figures). This tendency becomes a self-reinforcing trend as more and more users join the single largest network. This dominance in users attracts advertisers which are the primary source of revenue for Companies whose primary product is a social network.

For Google, it's also an information play. The more users they can have an interaction with the more data they can scrape to feed their advertising engines. Once again, advertisers are incentivised to pay the best/biggest data troves which gives Google the ability to invest even more in providing and improving services to attract users. Which again, becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

I wouldn't say that user loyalty/user's reticence for change is not a contributing factor, I think it is; I just don't think it would be correct to say Google and Facebook aren't the beneficiaries of monopoly-like market equilibriums. It's a stretch to call them true monopolies (actual singular market suppliers), but their market control and power are rapidly approaching, if not already equal to or greater than, that of historical examples of monopolies and targets of anti-trust legislation.
Under HIPAA at least, zip code is the only "protected health information" in that list - and even then three digits of it can be shared if they apply to a large enough population.

HIPAA permits two de-idenficiation methods. One, expert analysis, will presumably catch things like demographic identifiers. The other, safe harbor, offers a concrete list of data to remove - and that list leaves an absolutely massive amount of PII unrestricted.
The Perception of Top Level Domains and Abuse Considerations for Domain Buyers
A part of it is antisemitism. Specifically it's the Jews that supposedly led to WWI, WWII, and the financial crisis, blah, blah, blah. That undercurrent in some of the right, unfortunately, sweeps people along.

The rational side is Soros funds NGOs that actively seek to bring individuals from Africa and the Latin countries into the wealthier Western nations. His proxy organizations seek to undermine national sovereignty under the guise of humanitarianism. They've funded the flotilla from Africa to EU causing the migrant crisis. Many have pushed for their respective countries to open borders in general. They're doing the same thing with caravan to the US.

So if you're on the left, you probably see this as perfectly fine. Why not embrace people from failing nations who want to be in your country? The right looks at many of those same people as individuals who don't want to assimilate, but rather mooch off the welfare states of various countries. They've warned about the ghetto-ionization of nations by peoples that are fundamentally opposed to Western ideals. Since Soros is a major proponent of the left, the right dislikes him.

Who knows how it will end?

https://sovereignnations.com/2018/03/24/soros-immigration-ne...

https://fdik.org/soros.dcleaks.com/download/index.html%3Ff=%...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6MrztGBmHg - longer, but attempts to prove his payment of the caravan.
This comment section rules. I love tech.
They're pro-Israel because they're pro-apocalypse, not because they like Jewish people.
For anyone running a business or otherwise involved in the selling process of any service or product, deleting FB/IG is foolish. You are letting your emotions distance yourself and your business from where the customers and prospects are.
I agree in spirit, but just-leave-now is the wrong remedy. Sorry. There is no rush -- quick outrages, emotional appeals and media frenzy are poor guides for major life decisions.

Do consider leaving if you think it is warranted (personally, I do), but do not rush. Write a short note to yourself on what you want to do and why, then think hard about this at least once a week, but keep going for a month. If in a month this still seems like the way to go, leave (and if not, stay; there is no shame it that).

That way you also build up resolve to stick to your guns if you get a last minute appeal to stay -- this is a lot easier if you thought about your decision for a long time and decided that what you are doing is right for you. My 2c.
ZFS Boot Environments Reloaded
My understanding is that Beaker initially supported both Dat and IPFS, but dropped IPFS in favor of Dat for a variety of reasons, some of which were discussed in this other HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16434057

From a user perspective, Dat (and ZeroNet) maps to folders and filesystems much more coherently than IPFS does. I evaluated a few systems for a single use case in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/vitor_io/status/1019271473771569153
I'm smart, but wouldn't say I am super smart...but I am pretty damn tenacious to perfect whatever I am doing...this makes people impressed with my work but frustrated at my slow pace...to the point where the latter is interfering with my career.
A huge amount of work was done to minimize the base set of packages (called "BaseOS"). Including rewriting parts of dnf from Python to C++.
> If it were run by the government, how would the government be held liable?

At the ballot box. You're correct that they can't be held financially liable even to the extent that corporations currently are. That's why I wasn't personally suggesting that the power grid should be nationalized. I'm just saying that "make PG&E pay for everything without limit" leaves no other option, so that's the debate people would need to have.
Not these current California fires. Anyone who thinks sprinklers will help hasn’t seen this hell-fire inferno up close. The Camp Fire was spreading at up to 80 acres per minute. It grew to 17,000 acres in 5 hours.

High risk fire areas should be made lower risk by proper forest management — forest management that has been ridiculously incompetent in California for a long time.
Crazy how many "sub-Saharan Africans" take the scenic route via the Middle East and Turkey/Greece - it's almost as if they are middle Easterners fleeing war and terror.

> The overwhelming majority of migration into Europe is not due to any war or terror

Wrong[1]

> you comparatively see so few women and children among the migrants.

Wrong, again - there are many women [2] [3] and children [4] [5] [6] migrants, even though it's traveling long distances on foot is risky and more suited to healthy (young) adults.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/26/boko-haram-nig...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/01/migrants-more-p...

3. https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/world/italy-nigeria-sex-traff...

4. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/aylan-kurdis...

5. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-cris...

6. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/26/boy-symbol-spa...
Jim Carrey Shreds Facebook's Zuckerberg with Explicit 2-Word Message in Binary
The argument they made in support of GDPR for reducing monopolies was pretty strong.
By looking at your profile I've been here on HN for longer than you. And experience has taught me that something that goes against the echo chamber gets flagged. Sometimes there's a comment that survives, but that's rare. If you have never that happen to you, congratulations on having the "right" opinions. :)
Ugh, it's a shame it's such a hype piece (especially the first 5 paragraphs), with no mention of security. While VM escapes are possible, generally it's harder than a container escape. Since plenty of people already run containers on bare metal, I'm really not sure what the post is trying to say or trying to sell, other than taking a dig at VMWare:

> That being said, VMs aren’t currently in danger of being replaced outright by containers; in fact, there are distinct use cases for VMs that containers aren’t well-suited for. However, for VMWare’s business, there is clearly a lot at stake.

After all this, I still don't really understand the value-add of Diamanti. So it's Kubernetes + a GUI? Why would I choose it over doing my own on-prem on one extreme, or using a cloud solution (AWS/GCP/Azure) on the other? (Except maybe to avoid doing Kubernetes upgrades myself :D )
> whatsapp (yes, I know)

Hold on a sec... what do you mean by this?

How is using WhatsApp or Instagram not essentially the same thing as continuing to use Facebook?
A typical Berlin startup:

- hires devs with extremely low salaries

- gives 0.004% equity at best

- is run by people that are "better than anybody else"

- expects constant overtime and 24/7 employee reachability

- has managers with issues saying "thank you"

- hires friends/family to higher echelons of company

Does this sound like a recipe for success?
No. Manage the forests better. Don’t build in fire prone areas. A forest fire burning down your house is a warning from Mother Nature, not an attack.

Your system will just let debris build up even longer, leading to even bigger fires.
Lyft will offer automatic tipping and driver ratings
An Indian man in prison for cracking 'offensive' jokes
I'm guessing 20-25x revenue. Probably around 40m in ARR?
> Your comment is like saying no one should bother building basements in tornado country because a strong F5 will kill you anyway. The vast majority of tornadoes aren’t strong F5s so taking some precautions absolutely will save lives and property.

No, my comment is like saying clearing 30 feet around your house is an absolute no-brainer, of course do it, but don't expect that alone to miraculously save you from a fire.

Saying this as someone who's mountain cabin survived the Detweiler fire, largely because of vegetation control.
> if that's the case then surely Russia has agents masquerading as the far left too?

Yes; that's well established (while it's less talked about, the 2016 operation included promotion of Stein and Sanders as well as the more intense promotion of Trump, and also included false-flag promotion of in-person left-wing and right-wing demonstrations at the same time and place with the intent of fomenting political violence.)

Russia’s government also had connections to groups pushing “Calexit” after the election, including those pushing it as a defense against Trump.

Russia’s government also has connections, and has overtly funded, groups seeking restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy.
False equivalency. They are not the same.
Couldn't Soros sue for libel? I had the same question when high-level Republicans kept saying that the anti-Kavanaugh protestors where all paid by Soros.
He's the Koch of the left. He funds groups that agree with him politically, and has out-sized influence because of it. Since our own biases allow us to interpret people positively when they agree with us, and vilify them when they disagree with us, Soros and Koch are the various bogeymen and/or heroes depending on a particular point of view.

He also gave a very poor and ill-advised interview, where he once stated that (despite being Jewish) he helped Nazi's confiscate properties from Jews in a sixty minutes interview.

He stated that he didn't help later in the interview, but the damage was done.
USB Ethernet stick will cost you probably more than 10 USD, so just buy an RPI B3+ in case you need Ethernet...
> Then Microsoft was the unbreakable monopolist that would rule the computer industry forever

If Microsoft controller browsers, would Facebook and Google and Amazon and Netflix have had the neutral ground on which to grow and thrive?
IT's also the interactions. Think "likes" and website visits. All of which is packaged up and sold to advertisers.
This article gave me cancer.

Anyway, seems like a good way to increase antisemitism by linking globalism and judaism. Good job TJC.
At this point, Google in many cases offers the best service: DuckDuckGo is good, but Google is better. It is so good that it indexes the CIA's stuff: https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/416215-cia-operations...

This is without even considering google dorks, possibly one of the most powerful tools infosec researchers (or even average people) have to refine queries.

In the case of Facebook, it offers the best product because its product is really people (the whole "you-are-the-product" issue). Facebook has the most people, therefore the best product.

Offering the best product is not a monopoly. Don't forget that MySpace was "the" social network before Facebook, but was displaced. These are not necessary traditional monopolies, and therefore should receive consideration on how they should be treated.
I have a couple friends who work there. As far as I can tell they're not interested in all the political news about Facebook and are probably not aware of most of it. Their attitudes are typically "if the management messes up, but I'm just building cool useful tools, I'm not part of the problem". And honestly, I kinda sympathize. Facebook can be a shitty company regardless of whether they're also building good infrastructure.
Even getting routine care, I've had 0% success gaining any transparency at all. Maybe it works for generic GP services, but for imaging or other testing, I've tried and completely failed. "Contact our billing department and they may be able to tell you" is the best answer I get.

I'm ready to vote for forced transparency at all levels. I'm tired of this opaque negotiated pricing with insurance companies that manages to maximize my out-of-pocket costs.
Most sd cards are formatted fat32, and do not have a virtual filesystem cache and write scheduler buffering work in ram for them.

Also raspis do NOT like big fast SD cards with tight tolerances. I've had the best luck with old class 4 cards. Class 10 cards don't last nearly as long with regular power cycling.
"Seemless calls", so my calls won't seem? Seem to be what? What would it mean for something to be seemful?

Edit: I know it's a typo, but I figured it's a door to somewhat interesting line of linguistic thought.

You could have "seemful" which might be somewhat synonymous with "inauthentic" and "seemless" which might be in with "genuine"?