skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I met with an NSA recruiter who was scoping out talent at a local hackerspace. It was one of the most awkward and out-of-touch experiences I ever had.

He began trash talking Edward Snowden within 60 seconds, and complained that anyone under 25 (pretty much the sole demographic present at the event) were averse to paperwork and would never make it in the "real world". He also uncannily romanticized doing paperwork and laughed aloud at the prospect of any employees doing any sort of creative work, saying that "engineers are just pencil pushers" (paraphrasing).

He mocked the media's representation of the NSA in a characteristically dissociative way, alluding to that he genuinely had no clue why the public perception of the NSA is what it is.

He finished it off by rambling about "quantum tunneling and metaphysics" (never knew the NSA was so interested in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer) and more or less begging the public at the event to come work for the NSA, saying they were desperately in need of talent.

Up until this experience, I had often considered the public perception of the NSA to be probably unrepresentative of reality, and my opinion could be summed up as "a big fan of Splinter Cell". Now, personally, I am entirely turned off to the prospect of employment with them.

Previously, I had envisioned that any issues within the agency could be remedied by new talent reforming internal policies, but I believe the problems that exist within it are pathologic, and I was enthusiastically informed that any position I had within the agency would be "pencil pushing", "paperwork", and a complete lack of creative fulfillment. What a way to kill prospective talent.
> People who want space spaces who don't think mainstream platforms moderate enough, and the alt-right and free speech crowd.

I've never really understood the 'safe spaces' line of argument. I'm a 30 year old white male, and whenever I log onto YouTube I see nothing but recommendations trying to force me down the alt-right rabbit hole.

Sure, Twitter has booted off a few high profile people on the alt right but I don't think I've ever seen anyone argue that the debate on Twitter isn't pretty robust.

Where's the censorship? And how attractive is a community of people only for people who have been kicked off larger platforms?
The narrative you're expressing, that the mainstream media as a complex exists to further propaganda on the part of the "elites" and that only the web has been able to provide an honest and unbiased form of news is undermining the actual subject at hand, which is the degree to which the web and those unwashed masses are being employed as tools for propaganda by the same elites.

The implicit (and arguable unjustified) trust in the mainstream media has simply been replaced by an implicit (and equally unjustified) trust in alternative media, resulting in greater obfuscation, deeper manipulation and more lies, rather than more truth.
> Gab is a festering pile of trash.

That's your opinion. To some people, Gab is an alternative source of information that's independent of the narrative exerted by the mainstream media.

> meme warning about the evils of feminism

Do you want people to be kept in the dark about criticisms of feminism? What about feminism is so fragile or deceitful that criticism of it must be suppressed?

In the end this is what free speech is: people having the freedom to express opinions that those in power would prefer to suppress.

I've been 50/50 on signing up for gab, but I think after reading your rather ignorant comment I'll join.
Does dns over https do anything to mitigate this?
Really? You have clocks you know to be right and clocks you know aren't. Sadly the same can't be said of news sources. The New York Times is probably the best newspaper in the world. And sometimes they do fake news. Do it regularly. And they bitch about the internet being the problem. It isn't. The problem for them is they get caught out in ways that we find out about now. We used not to.

When a big story breaks, set up a twitter a/c. Follow people who are involved in the story and the reporting of it. Read the links that come up. Use your intelligence and education to assess sources, look for corroborating evidence etc and see how far your opinion strays from what you thought of the quality of the nyt reports.

No time? Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, The Donald (may fleas infest his toupee) being an actual russian agent. You can't make this stuff up. But it was made up. And not in supermarket tabloids and faked facebrick screenshots. Anonymous government sources, insiders, reputable news sources.

The NYT is better because sometimes, not always, but sometimes the do correct and do the right thing, however late.
https://theintercept.com/2019/03/10/nyts-expose-on-the-lies-...

Fox is entirely fake news. MSNBC is entirely fake news. They should be prosecuted for fraudulently having the word "news" in their advertising. Uncle George's Racist Blog on facebrick is no better or worse but nobody with half a dozen firing neurones takes the latter at all seriously the way some seem to with the excrement that is MSNBC, Fox and their high-school cheerleaders impersonating tv journalists.

It's like complaining you found out someone lies to you when it suits them and you preferred life when you didn't know that. Nixon was a war criminal, J. Edgar Hoover was psychotic criminal at best, JFK tried to set records for the number of women he bedded and had the FBI and secret service cruise chicks for him. People knew who weren't beholden to a political side (eg NYT, Wash Post, WSJ etc) and didn't publish, instead they published fake news. All Zuckerberg's fault of course.
The linked fed report is a good read. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2019017pap...
You're absolutely right. The limits of the physical world certainly impose limits on the physical creation and distribution of creative works.

With that said, is it perhaps possible that creation and distribution might not quite be the same as value in every scenario? A given mass of aluminum can be formed - and recycled - into a functionally infinite series of unique artistic works. I can see no reason why the hard limits of the physical world you so wisely point to would inherently force an upper limit on the value of the artwork.

Have I misinterpreted you? Or perhaps I fail to understand your points correctly. Can you help me? I seem to have suffered a failure of imagination.
> free speech absolutism

I just did a cursory glance at Gab and I already found 4 antisemitic posts and that was just on the first page.
He did nothing of the sort. And his assessment is correct. Mastodon, and federated social networks, are the wrong direction for social media. I don't understand how more people don't see this; open-source or not, walled gardens only worsen polarization and demonization of the "other side".
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
This is actually normal, and is done in a lot of countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence. According to this, France acts "on the Saturday before the Sunday election; polling silence included"
People have been saying this since 2010.
>> buying it and only running it a fraction of the time is even moreso.

If you have an intermittent power supply, slap a battery on the system and turn it into a continuous power supply. Over a period of time the next amount of mining done will be the same. My point is whether you mine intermittently or continuously you will average out to the same amount of mining at the end of the day/month/year. The only issue is how you tune your battery/mining rig ratios to optimize the hardware investment.
Then, not than.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted? I honestly expected an article about ColdFusion when I opened it. Someone else even posted the same thing half an hour later...
These rapid growing movements seldom have any requirements to join and allow the spread of all kinds of misinformation really well.

Another group will pop up in x weeks and the facebook groups will have people doubting vaccines, blaming immigrants, blaming the current government, and as an average user you can't sort who's just an angry middle aged person or a russian bot.
A fully private market would be very small, because student loans don't work well with bankruptcy protection. Every MBA and lawyer in the world would just get their degree and then declare bankruptcy.

You're also confusing various kinds of ROI here. Education generates both individual and societal ROI. Governments can capture part of theindividual ROI through taxation. And the whole point of government is to create societal ROI. But what a fully privatized educational funding system would be optimized for is lender ROI. As we see with student loans, and even more clearly with loan sharks, who are the true unregulated lenders, maximizing lender ROI is not great for the health of either the loan recipient or society at large.
you can pretty easily whitelist those sites.
Geometrize Tweens – geometrizing images into geometric primitives
>alternative source of information

nice rebrand of "hate speech"
The main difference between GPLv2 and v3 is the prevention of “TiVoization”. The background is that TiVo I believe was using the Linux kernel in their devices, and despite the fact that they were contributing their changes back to the community, they used code signing, or some other technical measure, to prevent end-users from running a custom version of the Linux kernel. So in reaction to this, GPLv3 was released that explicitly prohibits this behavior — that is, there must not be any technical measure preventing the user from using a modified version of the GPL’d software.

On iOS, Apple enforced code signing on all apps, so a user cannot download an app’s source, modify it, and use it on their device. Code signing prevents that, therefore would be a violation of GPL.
A modern and more featured “echo”
Unless the jig is to go to the NSA for 5-10 years, build up contacts, then get recruited into a firm that pays insanely for your connections. As far as I can tell the near sole purpose of the NSA/CIA is national level corporate espionage.
Boeing admits it 'fell short' on safety alert for 737
This might save you a click: The problem they are addressing is that some people prefer not to date others of specific ethnic background or countries of origin.

They call it "sexual racism."
GP isn't recommending that congress ban Gab. They're just using their own free speech to condemn it.
Shoot yourself in the head.
TBH, I find the "no blacks, no Asians, no femmes" Grindr descriptions helpful, because then I know which assholes to avoid.

I strongly question whether banning that type of language will actually make people more willing to hook up with each other.
when they will stop abusing ad, delivering malware through unchecked ad (https://www.geoedge.com/meetus_university/65/what-is-malvert...) and respect the "do not track" then I'll rethink about ad blocking.
Using Cluster Analysis and DomainTools Threat Profile to Identify Risky TLDs
> Now I wonder if mastodon client app developers will start filtering the allowed servers users can put in...

This is not the duty of client applications. Banning instances is the duty of the operators of individual instances, and the instance(s) on which you have your account(s) are the instance(s) whose blocking policy affects you. This is a feature.

Most sane instances on the Fediverse already ban extremist and alt-right content, and Gab will be no different in that case - just another entry on the blacklist, next to https://freespeechextremist.com/ and https://rapefeminists.network and other instances who shamelessly abuse the right to free speech.
Incorrect.

> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by a government[5], private institutions, and corporations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
The conclusion I always seem to come to is you eventually want to be able to trust those within your network. I believe that requires some level of initial openness to prove who you are to a personally selected authority you decide to trust, who can verify your identity, and then allow you to communicate/engage with your real name or one-to-many pseudonyms, so if your actions are outside whatever rules exist for that network are violated then you could get a temporary timeout ("sit in the corner and think about what you did"), to permanent ban, to if it is considered criminal by society then reporting the person to appropriate authorities; we can't have inherent fear and distrust a chain of command, there is good in the world - we of course must stand strong, strongly together, and stand guard in order to fight against abuse of power, inauthentic behaviour - and so on - in chain of commands.

How will users of the Gab network know if it is INSERT_NATION_NAME agents, paid and incentivized to manipulate them and cause unrest in a societal structure we call democracy? Perhaps they're not even thinking or caring about it and its consequences, perhaps they're even simply happy they have a helping hand?

From what we've seen it takes very few bad actors to infiltrate a nation's foundational structures once the atmosphere of a population is disenfranchised enough, once we're disconnected and disengaged enough, and that has been accelerated by the cheap economies of scale the internet has afforded.

At the end what I hope for is that security services of democracies are being intelligent and allocating resources to fully and carefully infiltrating these groups (carefully as to not escalate the situation) to know who those who are involved is: this of course comes down to potential overreach, which must be addressed not because you may more easily know/discover who bad actors are - but because it may be bad actors who actually someday may get hold or access to these systems.
I asked that upthread; apparently the answer is "inspectability", they're updating the blog post to highlight that, and I have a hunch my suggestion is going to be the AD in AEAD :)
>Who is actually calling the shots over at Google?

I think there was a guy whose 20% project was calling the shots but he eventually replaced himself with a GAN or something.
Why specialization can be a downside in our ever-changing world
In law, the term is "invidious discrimination" to describe unjust discrimination.
All uses of energy create heat. That's practically what it means to use energy: convert it into heat. If you create more heat than can be radiated away from Earth, then you're going to create a very unsustainable situation.

There aren't any devices that operate by moving heat around unless they create additional heat to do so, or they do no work. If you're just shuffling heat around, you're not increasing entropy, and you're not achieving any observable mechanical objective, which is pretty much the whole reason we consume energy.
While apple does have some 'technology bars' you have to clear to get into their store. You can't use private APIs in the Apple frameworks for example. There are also 'content' bars that have to be surmounted. I don't think just because they use activity pub or whatever protocol that apple is going to roll over and play nice.

Their whole social network is literally a garbage fire, Apple doesn't want to associate their brand with garbage fires. I expect Gab management is in for a rude awakening.
Actually in France, the government has been way more often caught lying about the yellow vests than the opposit.
Roma (free) or Toot!/Mast (paid) are great apps.
Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...
The "fervor" you mention has more to do with ads becoming ever more intrusive, third party content slowing down page loads, consuming bandwidth, and potentially being used for malware distribution than it does with wanting to take food off another person's table.

I regularly try browsing without adblocking on, and it's a constant nightmare. If sites held their advertising networks accountable to any reasonable set of standards, they wouldn't be in this situation.

The content I appreciate, I have found ways to support it.
I'm not sure how you got from someone criticizing what’s posted on gab to suppression of free speech, but it makes me think you have absolutely no idea what free speech really is.
You're dramatizing other people's statements quite a bit. Nobody is saying that the use of Git should be the subject of lectures, unless you're using Git's source code or software design to exemplify some technical points. But grade based on projects and require the use of these tools - e.g. Git, GitHub, Maven, and Python - to work on them. Then, as a teacher, you should know how to use them yourself because you SHOULD use them in your own development. (Even if you're doing research you should use a version control system. VCS's are practically designed for the scientific method.)

Again, let's keep in mind the premise: CS and SE are separate departments in a uni. Professors who gravitate more toward forwarding computational science are in CS; professors who gravitate more toward the science of building software systems are in SE. I posit that such a division would put people where they belong and make people going for SE better prepared.
>> Servers however do filtering all the time already

> Mastodon server instances already have blocked lists of "banned" instances.

well, yes.
Hmmmm...not denying your experience, but I haven't used Windows routinely in years; my last several laptops have been Linux. Maybe I just use different websites?
I can confirm both.

Often, closing a tab in Chromium simply does nothing.

Chromium has lost my tabs multiple times (not by profile corruption, but not restoring them on startup). Firefox hasn't lost my tabs for over 10 years -- one big reason I use it (it did lose them ~5 times but I could always restore them from the backup file in the profile directory).
Maybe now they'll stop concern-trolling about the inevitable slippery slope into an Orwellian fascist nightmare the world will descend into every time a site bans them. They have their own playground where they can be as racist and edgy as they want.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/
The darkness is only ever undone by shining a light. By all means, people of reasonable sense should take a moment to look at Gab and realize what counter-factual nonsense it is, because banning it or censoring it will only make it more powerful.
I like my feed to not be flooded with racist/sexist replies. Mastodon has been a huge step in the right direction in this regard. "Free speech" doesn't mean "no moderation allowed".
There is a clear and definite trend of taking DNS out of the user's control, see all the hype with DNS over HTTPS etc etc.

Firefox is working on using DoH (opt-in at the beginning, but who knows) from "select" providers.
Chrome has a similar switch, surely.
Same with Android 9, opt-in DoH, but maybe it'll become opt-out or no-opt in the future.

In the name of privacy and security of course, but with the totally unintended side effect of users unable to dodge ads via DNS/hosts. Interesting, no?
Echoing other posters. I had the same concern about throttling internet, but realized that your traffic doesn't flow through the pi-hole, just DNS requests (and those are cached). I've noticed no throttling.
Agreed, I combined this with Cloudflare's DNS service (1.1.1.1). A great combo.
Fiber and colorectal diseases: Separating fact from fiction - World Journal of Gastroenterology
https://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/full/v13/i31/4161.htm

"This article reviews the physiology of ingestion of fiber and defecation. It also looks into the impact of dietary fiber on various colorectal diseases. A strong case cannot be made for a protective effect of dietary fiber against colorectal polyp or cancer. Neither has fiber been found to be useful in chronic constipation and irritable bowel syndrome. It is also not useful in the treatment of perianal conditions. The fiber deficit - diverticulosis theory should also be challenged. The authors urge clinicians to keep an open mind about fiber. One must be aware of the truths and myths about fiber before recommending it.

... a strong recommendation cannot be made for a protective effect of dietary fiber against colorectal polyp or cancer. Despite a lack of evidence however, current recommendations are still to increase dietary fiber. In the latest position statement of the American Dietetic Association[3], increasing dietary fiber is still promoted to protect against colon cancer despite stating that there is no proof of efficacy in this regard
...
Whilst it is not the intention of the authors to totally discourage fiber in the diet and the use of fiber supplements, there does not seem to be much use for fiber in colorectal diseases. We, however, want to emphasize that what we have all been made to believe about fiber needs a second look. We often choose to believe a lie, as a lie repeated often enough by enough people becomes accepted as the truth. We urge clinicians to keep an open mind. While there are some benefits of a diet high in natural fiber, one must know the exact indications before recommending such a diet. Myths about fiber must be debunked and truth installed."
5G: EE launches UK's next-generation mobile network
I wish Google did this for regular ads. I doubt they'd stop tracking you (videos while paying for YT premium still contributes to your ad profile for when you cancel it later) but even $25/month for no ads across all of the internet (while signed in) would be amazing.

Maybe there would be two tiers; $20 a month for just "Google" ads, and $40+ a month for all ads to be removed (Via AdChoices).
Do not use tracking ads.
I whitelist any site which is not using tracking/profiling ads.
It's a big company, it's not unlikely that different parts follow different, conflicting plans.
Seems like Indian Twitter. Replace Trump with Modi. Indian Twitter uses Hindi language to escape notice and censorship. Worst posts fester there.
Great point. I am constantly amazed by my conditioned bias towards trust even in the constant face of contradictory evidence regarding these groups.
Pi-Hole is a very simple DNS based blocker. You can not whitelist ad providers on a origin basis.
If you have Firefox sync on, you can also do a profile refresh from about:support and it will re-add your extensions via the sync. I did this last night and I think the only things I lost were userContent.css (which I'd backed up) and custom search engines.

Yesterday, whenever I closed a window, it would freeze for 3+ seconds. After refreshing my profile, it's back in full working order again.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I also lost all cookies (which is probably a good thing), notification settings, and my custom containers. tbh, the only thing that really matters is that I still have all my bookmark keywords. Everything else could have been wiped and I'd be fine.
The trouble with outlawing "hate speech" is: who gets to decide what is hate speech?
As far as I'm aware, there's really no way to add support to IDA Pro's decompiler for custom architectures, so I'm really glad that Ghidra has the tools to do this!
I disable my adblocking for sites that use reasonable ads.

If I go to a site and am bombarded with pop ups, auto playing video ads, etc., then yeah why wouldn't I block them? With the malware and tracking that is often injected into ads I have no problem using my adblocker at all times and disabling it for pages that ask politely.

I'm happy to click on ads on sites that I frequent and would like to support. I think there's absolutely a balance here, and for many years the advertising industry has abused their stay.
I didn't check all the examples but most of the ones I did seemed to lack basic support for keyboard operation or other capabilities to make them accessible.
Mine is both the DNS resolver and the DHCP server, due to limitations on my router, and I haven't noticed any big problems with latency/speed.