skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is actually a super-interesting problem. The complex scripts require "shaping", which increasingly is done by HarfBuzz. Companies used to maintain their own proprietary implementations, but that's increasingly not a good idea. A problem is that HarfBuzz is a large, complex piece of software, entirely because OpenType is complex and not well specified (there are a ton of edge cases).

I did some research a few years ago on defining shaping by composing several simple finite state machines together, and am confident it could be made to work. The problem is, it doesn't work with existing fonts, the rules for shaping would have to be redone. But for fonts shipping in an embedded device, this would be entirely practical, and would be a lot faster and a lot less code than a solution based on HarfBuzz.

I'd need some incentive to complete this research. If someone wants to pay for it, please get in touch.
At some point we need to sit down and map, exactly what kind of information can be extracted from which meta-data sets.

For instance, screen time is also sleeping habits, for some its toiletbreaks. If its toiletbreaks, its stomach/health related. Couple that with location, its eating habits and risk factors. Couple that with phonelogs its much much more.

Once we have that mapped out, we can do an honest evaluation of whats being tracked, because every extrapolation possible will at some point be turned into usable data (my theory).
That is not a result they want though. World hunger it good for a few stories every year, less people would buy papers without world hunger. (war is better than world hunger for selling papers but they need something else once in a while or people start to recognize patterns and quit buying papers)
I did, thanks for correcting me.
It's pretty useful when you use your phone a lot for navigation / GPS. Saves you a bunch of time, but true it does have the cost of letting Google know where you live (although there are so many other ways for them to get that information that I'm not worried about that part).
Thy can do this but they don’t want to.
I think the bigger debate is whether eugenics or anti-dysgenics should be a policy goal of the government.

Whether we like it or not - if we don't pass our best genes down to our children we are hurting future generations. I suspect the fact that we've turned so against eugenics goes hand in hand with the fact that we've also destroyed the environment, the financial well-being, and even the mental health of the next generation (especially here in America).
Hundreds, not thousands, of '.nz' websites now expected to fail
- I am an 11 year old who is 9 feet tall and have won a Nobel Prize for my work in physics.

- Elephants are big.

Which one of these is a fact? English is unusually elegant in this regard. A fact does not mean true, it means something that can be shown to be indisputably true or false -- something that is falsifiable. The first statement is the fact. Because the second statement has no defined or falsifiable meaning it is an opinion. An elephant may be big compared to a mouse, but they're infinitesimally small compared to a planet. What does big mean?

In the New York Times' Watergate article [1] you'll find every statement made is a fact. Compare this to their writing on contemporary issues, particularly ones that are politically charged, and you'll find it's a night and day difference. The articles generally severely lack for facts and what facts are provided are often in the form of quotations which, in turn, are often non-factual.

Of course facts alone are not the end of the story. Facts can be misleading: 'Uber drivers were engaged in 47,341 more accidents including 27 more fatal accidents than all the licensed taxi drivers in New York.' That implies one thing, yet it omits a rather critical piece of information - how many miles did both drive? And there is also a bias in the stories that are covered. A news organization that chooses to only cover stories that reflect positively upon one side of an issue, or those that reflect negatively upon the other side, would be actively misleading their readers even if each story was independently factual and in no way misleading.

So aiming for factual reporting is certainly just a benchmark rather than the finish line. But it's really pretty easy to do, and it's something that'd leave us with magnitudes greater reporting quality than what we have today.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/22/archives/4-being-hunted-i...
Additionally hypocritical since turning location history back on will restore your home address — Google's been keeping it all along and just denying you access to it.
It seems so. On Amazon I found Yoko Tsuno, Gomer Goof (English name of Gaston Lagaffe), Spirou & Fantasio, Valerian and Laureline. Personally I would like to add recommendations for stuff like Lucky Luke, Ekho and Blacksad.
That requires jailbreaking, which many people would not want to do (for good reasons).
MIT Self-Driving Cars: State of the Art [video]
It is when the people who don't move on are the people doing the "science."
This happens to me too, various opt-in nags on both desktop and mobile. Using google maps has become a chore for me. I used to like going to the site or the app and browsing around for fun to learn about a new place. Now I only use it when I absolutely need to.
I am not sure that is really a trustworthy source at this point. Particularly since it seems to focus a lot on involving Hillary.
Well, the sysadmin type of role does attract a specific type of dork! - but I think you rather unfairly stopped quoting just before the key point.
Not sure if sarcastic or not. Nowadays everything is possible. :-)
the problem with this whole line of reasoning is what is really "news". Example: I am happy to just wait for results of Mueller investigation and I have no desire to pay for play by play dribble of leaks that are technically newsworthy but I just don't care about.
So how do you expect adults to be able make an informed choice if Google is using deceptive design and misleading information?

I'm sure most of the people here, have the know-how and information to make an informed choice. But wouldn't it be nice if people that aren't working in the field or have a degree in STEM could to?
> Is there no proper and legal way to share their invention that indicates exactly what can and can't be done(something like an open source license)?

Yes, this is usually done with broad cross licensing agreements and/or patent pools.
I think it's not about "understanding" cognitively, it's about really, deeply believing this is happening to us.
Google no longer has the benefit of the doubt...these things would have gotten traction a few years ago. Or, Googlers, must be doing this to cure cancer or something, they're so good and nice. Now, all that goodwill gone.
Test Coverage Is a Lie
The downside of free trade agreements is well studied: while overall it's a net positive for the economies involved, there are some individual losers.
That's not what they are complaining about. It's the manipulation, dark patterns and lack of information.
There is every possibility of something close to this coming to market. Not every device needs to sell in the millions.
This dark pattern seems to be spreading. Amazon recently pushed out an update to their (beta last I knew) web app that allows you to use their smile.amazon.com charity donation through the app. But in order to turn that on, you have to turn on all the notifications the app has, including their rather constant pushes of "deals I may be interested in". They're holding you hostage to their notifications because "it's for charity!"

Not that this is news, but clearly Silicon Valley has no intention of retraining itself in any manner. Every wheedling trick in the book will be used to track you, up to and including holding arbitrary charities emotionally hostage.
Just for some further context. Plough is a publication of the Bruderhof community which is Christian but in a much more radical sense than mainstream Christianity (no private property, radical non-violence, etc.).

I've visited their community in upstate NY and really enjoyed it.
What's it like to try to unsubscribe from the new yorker? Do they still track you digitally and show ads with a sub?
Android users are pushed through a variety of techniques:

Deceptive click flow
Hidden default settings
Misleading and unbalanced information
Repeated nudging
Bundling of services and lack of granular choices*

Deceptive click flow is the click-flow when setting up an Android device pushes users into enabling “Location History” without being aware of it.*

Hidden Default settings is [when] setting up a Google account, the Web & App activity settings are hidden behind extra clicks and enabled by default.

Third one is users not given sufficient information when presented with choices, and are misled about what data is collected and how it is used.

Repeated nudging is users being repeatedly asked to turn on “Location History” when using different Google services even if they decided against this feature when setting up their phone.

And finally, bundling services when for example if the user wants features such as Google Assistant and photos sorted by location, Google turns on invasive location tracking.

I would believe most of us HN crowd are fully aware of the pros and cons of such tracking and make our choices accordingly (using these tools/software/devices). However, for the majority (yes, they may not appear to be interested in privacy as yesterday's FB quarterly report shows), are they aware of how much data is being collected, how it could be misused, etc.? We, as a society, should do our part in pushing back against such indiscriminate tracking. No specific call to action. For my older parents, I have switched them to iPhone 6S and have gradually gotten older family relatives to do the same as well.
It is certainly true that keyboard input can be much quicker when what you're trying to convey to the machine is logical rather than spatial/kinetic information. But it is entirely possible to use keyboard input to manipulate a graph instead of an array of characters.
Is this a good thing in the end?
Ecologically, hurting small economies (already happen in the eurozone)…
Also Eric Schmidt: https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/
Bookkeepers can order you books as well, and they get delivered to the shop in about the same amount of time it would take to get it through online stores.

In France, the software they use is more powerful than Amazon to buy books. The database is clean, deduplicated and well maintained by professionals that know each others.
That first point sounds a lot like you've conquered the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
I have my google home set to a place I often go to. Not my home.
There is, yes. There are only 3 ways to sign apps (ipa files) for iOS:

- using a Dev certificate, which does not require any Apple validation, but you are limited to 100 devices registered on your iOS development account

- using an Enterprise certificate (such as the one the article talk about), which allows you to distribute an app on any device in your business. The "in your business" part is in the conditions, not enforced via code. There is no Apple validation, but if you get caught distributing it elsewhere, your certificate might get revoked (exactly what happened there)

- using an App Store certificate, which allows you to send the app to the App Store/TestFlight, but you won't be able to install it directly on any device. There is an Apple validation for both.

As you can see, there is no way to side-load an iOS app at scale (excluding rooted devices, most people don't root their device).
Heroin is safer than Fentanyl. Therefore I am thankful for heroin.
Will consumers benefit from it? Can Japanese order from amazon.de without customs charges and vice versa?
Your carrier will know where you are (and have been). Are you saying this information is also available to apps?
It's fascinating how obviously smart people can rationalize their actions.

Schmidt and Google claim to be "progressive" but that kind of rationale of "nothing to hide" would mean that every progressive movement would have been shut down in its early stages had this kind of tech and surveillance been available at the time because it went against what was currently judged as right by the people in power
Going viral: Anti-vaxx propaganda infects Facebook and YouTube results
Yes, the author is well-read in particle physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder
As far as I can see there's no real way to hook this into a DVR system, as it's all locked down to their apps. Maybe they can offer DVR services themselves? Not sure if that could cause some legal issues.
You really didn’t read the article, did you?
Old hacks strike again: Data from 2.2B accounts lands on the dark web
The new backed is overall faster according to that post.

No, according to that post, the new back-end itself is massively slower than current Racket by every single measure shown. To reiterate, I’m talking about startup and load times, memory use, expand and compile times, and build times (i.e. time to compile the back-end itself). All slower. (Are you sure you're not referring to code compiled using the new back-end?)

I grant that there is some benefit in that the longer compile times result in an improvement in some benchmarks, but that doesn’t negate that the new back-end is still slower than the old one by every measure.

> Racket is much faster than python or PHP.

This is funny because although you will find benchmarks out there to support this point, in my experience of writing and using Racket programs it has never hold up. Most recent example: I participated in Advent of Code this year, and there was almost never a Racket solution posted that wasn't ten times slower (and in my opinion harder to read) than the simple & idiomatic Python solution.

I love the Racket language, and there are some DSLs like Pollen that do things I simply can’t imagine attempting anywhere else. But it’s for sure my last choice for speed, based on personal experience.
Me too, but that's not why Google is tracking me.
Study Group for the Little Typer Book
Flourish of approval
The privacy settings user interface on my Android is deceptive. It lures you into thinking that you have changed all the settings and does not show all the settings in one go. Google is creepy.
Crypto Cutbacks Were in Order for Employees of Hosho
Kind of like, I'm going to stand here punching and if you get hit then it is your own fault?

Surely Google shares the responsibility at least?

At any rate, saying Google is at fault doesn't seem completely like nonsense.
and if you are born in India or China, you wont get a GC until you are in your 80's
I don't think it's quite analogous - everyone could hear the sound, the technology in Daemon just allowed it to appear to emanate from a specific, arbitrary location.

But very reminiscent, and a great series.
The Complete Guide to “Proof of Stake”
It’s surprising that there are 2500 staff at vice. I thought they mostly used freelancers.
But in this case, the answer is "yes".
As I allude to above - if your release cycle etc isn't great today, then today is a great time to start tracking cycle time. One you can show people how bad things are today ('look, idea to dev complete is 2 weeks, but idea to live is 2 months'), and you can also show how well the small changes you make to the release process, actually went towards improving things.

Also don't forget - try not to measure the 'amount of work' - instead focus on the amount of value released. x10 developers don't do 10 times as much work/code/releases - but figure out and engage in what they can do to make the company more money, and the most benefit - /with the LEAST/ work.

Focus your team on the problem at the heart of the user story, and not on the solution too early.
amazon.com is US based. This free trade zone is between the EU and Japan.
Why would it be defined only in terms of the government?

"Freedom of speech only applies to the government" exists as an argument that is technically true if one were to go to court over the matter, so it is often used as a philosophical escape hatch to avoid having the tougher conversation on the larger implications of what 'freedom of speech' practically means, why the framers of the Constitution bothered with it in the first place-I would wager because having that discussion would reveal some ugly truths about someone who responds to a discussion like this by saying "freedom of speech only applies to the government" and what their true goals and intentions are in the face of unpleasant or disturbing information and opinions.

The irony of such philosophical laziness isn't lost on me, but surely no one would say "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are only ideals that can be granted by the government-yet there they are, in one of America's operating manuals. Clear as day.

The argument falls apart at the surface, and if I'm being honest, sometimes I wonder if the people who like to deploy that tactic know this.

American political discussion, in observation, is full of carefully picked cherries it seems like.
Repeated nudging!: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18863660
Yes, a perfect Meritocracy. As long as you have a CS PhD from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley or CMU.
Most certainly. I would use them again as well.
Run of the mill Dell's suck, but the latitude line of laptops are pretty good. They are easier to service and find parts for as well.
I'm rather confused as to why you're harping on about whether or not developers "deserve sympathy". I'd be making the same points about pretty much any business regulation - that they impose costs, and that we need to be cognizant of them in order to make sure it's a net positive. If the costs outweigh the benefits, then the regulation is a good thing. If they don't, but you advocate for it anyways because don't care about hurting a specific class of people that don't "deserve sympathy", that makes you quite a mean-spirited person.

>If anything, startups benefit: they have less data and systems.

It's not about the absolute costs of regulatory compliance, which are relatively small. It's about the relative costs of compliance compared to the economic value of regulated activity. Google has roughly a million times more revenue than a ten-person start-up will. Privacy compliance is not a million times more expensive for Google than it is for the start-up. If it costs a startup a day of engineering effort to comply, and it costs Google ten million dollars, this is a relative business advantage for Google.

This is a pretty general pattern; established businesses get a competitive advantage from regulation, since it prevents competition from arising. If it costs $400 to get your setup inspected before you can sell lemonade that you make, this helps Nestle sell more bottled lemonade at the cost of your kids' lemonade stand.
It was a trial in the court of public opinion, from which there is no appeal. (thx to Machiavelli for that nugget of wisdom.)
See here for a brief description and comparison of:

- the EU single market

- an EU customs union

- a free trade area

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36083664
Ice sheets, of which the West Antartic, East Antarctic, and Greenland ice sheets are the only current examples, are basically like very large domes of ice, on the order of 1000 kilometers wide and 1-3 kilometers high. Unlike mountain glaciers, they completely cover the underlying topography.

They flow outwards under their own weight into the ocean. In Antarctica, it is cold enough that melting at the surface is negligible. This means that almost all snow that falls ultimately must flow into the ocean. At some point at the edge, the ice loses contact with the ground and floats. This is the grounding line.

For a constant ice flow velocity, the amount of ice that gets spit out into the ocean is proportional to how thick the ice is at the grounding line.

Now, suppose that the slope of the bed gets deeper as you go from the grounding line into the interior of the ice sheet. Then, if the grounding line retreats, it's in deeper water. So, the ice flux increases. The increasing ice flux means that the ice sheet thins near the edge. Since it's thinner, it can't stay grounded in as deep of water. Imagine a big chunk of ice in a puddle of water that sits at the bottom of a puddle, versus a little piece that floats.

Now, since it can't float in as deep of water, the grounding line retreats because bouyancy is pulling up on the edge. This makes it go into deeper water, ice flux increases more, etc.

This could cause a collapse of the ice sheet, resulting in a few meters of rise. The timescale that this could happen is very poorly constrained (decades? centuries? a couple millenia?). It may have already irreversibly begun, or maybe not.
Jeez, that is truly terrifying. I hate Google even more now.

I can see my history years back. It seems that I cannot delete it just "pause" it? Seriously?

EDIT: Found it, it was just hidden several layers down.
Yes. Karl Popper's theory (from which we get falsifiability in the first place) declared falsifiability to be the necessary and sufficient condition for something to be scientific. He was obviously wrong on this point (plenty of good science doesn't start from a falsifiable hypothesis, and plenty of pseudo-science is falsifiable).
basically every claim is sourced as far as I can tell. Schmidt is pretty entrenched with Clinton considering he started a company dedicated to using tech to get her elected, Groundworks

https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...
> "Seriously considering buying some illegal drugs to try to turn them back into cold medicine."

Now that sounds like a project.
I think the ad-tech industry has tapped into what can only be called -- and no offense to anyone here -- "virtue signalling." There's no doubt studies done on this, hence the new "controversial" sort of nature of some of the advertising. Who knew that Gillette and Nike were so interested in social issues, and not a bottom line PNL result. In the same way, perhaps, Amazon marketing teams found some research to suggest that same "heart-string tugging" mechanism can be combined as a "sweetener" to get you to do things you otherwise wouldn't do -- like subscribe to "buy this too" notifications.
yep, you can do this with Fomo(.com) as well.
I have not mentioned .com. There are german and japanese amazon branches
They're noting that the way that West Antartica is laid out encourages a powerful feedback loop with negative effects. The more it melts, the more it gets into warmer water, which accelerates the melting.
I do lots of real work on mine. I wish it could do 4K output to an external monitor. But I run things like Emacs and VS Code for smaller projects, iTerm for SSHing into all my beefier machines. Battery life is still great for a machine almost 5 years old now: I still get about 5 hours. And then, I can also do writing with the keyboard I prefer, over the newer style.

I'm even keeping my eyes open for a used MB Air 11" with 8 GB ram, and 128 GB storage for when this one breaks, unles I find something more suitable.

Like the people talking about using old Surface Pros from eBay, I really like a low priced, almost disposable computer that I don't care about, especially since most my tool-chain is legacy at this point....
I meant more that it is very hard to completely avoid tracking and that the cell carrier is an often-overlooked part of the equation.
If anyone is interested in ad-free journalism consider thecorrespondent.com. I am not an affiliate, just a customer. I believe it's crucial for journalism to be independent of advertising revenue.
Welp my place in the west coast of Scotland will be gone in 2 metres :(