skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This sounds a little too far in the other direction to me. From working with a handful of advertising platforms interested in the web property that I've worked with for the past 8 years, I agree with your point re: incompetence. However, I disagree that it's _only_ the big boys who are gathering large portfolios of data on individuals that span multiple web properties, apps and spheres of data. It seems to me that your data is part of the marketplace and anyone can play.

Regulations would be nice. A technological solution that fundamentally obfuscates an individual so that they can buy their groceries without being big-brothered would nicer.
Is it also not a human being? Is it not a life?
Paris Exasperates Fiat Chrysler as Renault Merger Flops – Financial Times
Funnily enough, the Pocket logo is present in the thumbnail for the Firefox Family video on https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ Pocket does not however feature in the video (which is unironically hosted on that Google video hosting platform...)
We’re Running Out of IPv6 (and That’s a Good Thing)
If one wants to delve deeper into the murkiness and absurdist hilarity ot the society in the freshly minted Soviet empire, I can't recommend Ilf and Petrov more, their books about the charming and combining hustler Ostap Bender are a great read for entertainment alone but also a good picture of the 20s and the great changes that the Revolution brought.
Also related:

> Understood as senior: Communication skills matter most.

The reason people dismiss comments is usually that they or others around them aren't good at writing useful comments.

Especially when there are linter rules requiring comments you'll have something like def open_thing(x, y): and a comment, "defines a function that opens thing."

Yes, those are pointless. Often what's going on is a person is dumping their stream of consciousness into the comment field.

It takes practice to understand what a reader needs to know. You have to actually practice reading comments and thinking things through (another reason code review is important in your team) to get good at undertanding what you should write down.

All that said, if you truly hate commenting, at least build a habit of descriptive naming and exploiting your type system as fully as possible.
From the article:

It was the culmination of weeks of increasing FCA exasperation over the behaviour of Renault’s largest shareholder.

Several months earlier, when the private discussions between Mr Senard and Mr Elkann graduated from co-operation into merger talks, the French state had been deliberately brought on board, including a meeting in Paris between Mr Elkann and Mr Macron.

[...]

One person said the process was accelerated over the weekend after the Financial Times reported on Saturday that the two groups were in talks. Once the news became public, the attitude of the French state changed, according to several people.

Questions that both sides believed were resolved were reopened, and new concessions requested.

“It was never enough, the goalposts were being moved constantly,” said one person involved in the talks.

[...]

“This deal will hurt the credibility of Macron in Europe and globally,” said a person close to FCA.

“This was his chance to play Europe’s kingmaker. Instead, he made everything harder. If he was hoping to lift France’s image as a place to do business, that’s over.”
That part is not silly. But the way it happened in this case (and most cases like this) makes it silly to think they did it on purpose because they didn't actually do anything, no active choice or action on their part was required for it to happen. You could suggest that they are dragging their feet on implementing safeguards and just hoping that one of their customers leaks some routes to them so they can capture some random data, but I would call that silly as well. When they do it will be targeted and effective.
Good writup.

>Imagine 50+ comments on your PR with all the semicolons you missed!

Depends. You should have a style guide and it should document what the expectation is. If it was decided that semicolons are mandatory, then code review should be failed. If they are optional than the code reviewer shouldn't flag it. The alternative is to use a linter/formatter and either auto-fail during a pull-request or have the tool fix it up.
Unless you're in solitary confinement, people will invite you to connect with them. It may not take the form of "Hey, let's have a beer after work." It might not be directed specifically at you. But the opportunities are there.

I'm not saying "you must do this, it is the only way." It worked for me at a specific place and time in my life, and that isn't a universal condition. But I don't think we are helpless. Modern urban life may be alienating, but it's not inescapable. If you find that you value human connection more than likes or RSUs or Game of Thrones, you can find a way to have more of it.
Goldman CEO: If Marcus was a startup people would be ‘throwing money at us’
Right, but who decides what "good enough" is? If I weren't code reviewing, then it would have passed as "good enough". And that's the point of why just saying good enough isn't good enough. There should be a threshold that no one fights over.
You'll notice, I didn't say that immigrants "founded" America. I said immigrants "helped build" what it is today.
Show HN: Comress Data with JPEGs and Steganography
I am not sure what you did there, an Ouroboros argument about a continual and inseparable membrane between the owners and the workers?

Is it _really_ not possible to have employee representation? I find that hard to believe.
Same experience, it's not clear if it's just one advertiser blowing a lot of cash at once, or Google deciding I really need whatever product, but man oh man when I hit one of those ad loops it puts me off of that product forever.

The most recent was Grammarly, for about a month straight 80% of the video ads Youtube showed me were the same two Grammarly ads going back and forth. I'm not sure why Google decided that I really need to fix my grammar... but I know sure as shit I'll never have anything to do with Grammarly, ever.
Recording a hash of a video in the Bitcoin blockchain creates public evidence that the video existed at a specific point in time. If that point is very soon after the events portrayed in the video then it can increase confidence in the video's authenticity.
(Forgot to respond to part about a government organization to get secure products out. Here's response to that.)

It's been done before. It was the Walker Security Initiative. It resulted in some of the most secure products the market ever produced. A combination of lobbying for insecure products to be bought and NSA's actions destroyed what little there was to the market. Bell describes it:

http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-B...

Just found a link with examples of what they were doing. I haven't read this one fully, though. Linking it mainly because it talks about CSI and how market was responding.

https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/publications/conference-pap...

Here's some of the designs that came out of commercial sector of high-assurance security:

http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse443-s12/docs/ch6.pdf

http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Karger-et-al-A...

https://cryptosmith.com/mls/lock/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3504794_The_Army_Se...

http://cap-lore.com/CapTheory/upenn/

Note: I don't think KeyKOS itself came from that community. It was from capability-security field. KeySAFE extension was driven by TCSEC requirements, though.

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/virtual_disk_library/index.c...

Note: Although not first attempt, Trusted Xenix was first attempt at securing UNIX that made it to market. Available from 1990-1994 I think. Coincidentally, OpenBSD starts in 1994 to go even further.
The only problem is Duck Duck Go and every other search engine sucks ass compared to Google. Even DDG has turned to Bing (which sucks) for their searches.
I think I get your point. As someone who doesn’t have any particular specialty (I do webdev, “embedded” devices, image processing, tooling, design, etc.), I always hesitate when someone asks me what I do. I consider the things I can do as tools to get something done.

I interned at a research facility where I had to figured out obscure serial commands for a two axis objective stage, interface microscope camera, and image analysis. Then I wrapped it all in a python library for them to use.

From my mentors perspective however, the goal was “simple”: you find a microorganism swimming under microscope, and keep following it to record its trajectory. Make sure each tick is max 10ms because those little ones move FAST. They didn’t care if I used 4 space indents or 2. They cared about getting pandas dataframe so they could do all the analysis.

I can’t explain this in a word or few, and I still don’t know what to call myself! Am I a developer? I don’t know.
But that's the intent of rates that low, to try cause more activity for economic exploration to create or expand capabilities of businesses. The inflation only really becomes a concern if there is "too much" activity that yields too little lasting value creation. With too much being in quotes because that determination is a vastly complex and non-deterministic judgement call.
Landed on the moon, ok that one was hard. But let’s get realistic here. There are events like the Manhattan Project, the Operation Overlord/D-Day landings, the Apollo missions, and the Soviet response to Chernobyl... these are the things that required coordination and cooperation across tens to hundreds of thousands of humans, organised into hundreds of subgroups responsible for aspects of the overall outcome in complex interdependent ways... these are significant human achievements.

And then there’s things like Google, Amazon, SpaceX and Microsoft, these are for the most part companies driven by money. Either the accumulation of it for a secondary goal (SpaceX needs money to pay for a mars colony), or the accumulation of it as the primary goal (Microsoft has a quarterly earnings target to hit)

Comparing across these two categories feels horribly unfair to the people who aren’t in it for the money. The astronauts, the soldiers, the scientists and the liquidators (a term for the people involved in the Chernobyl cleanup)... this isn’t to say the achievements of today’s companies are nothing, just that these two categories are driven by two tremendously distinct drives and comparing the results directly as though 100% equivalent feels inappropriate.
What would you say is the best IRC client, or if it's more complicated than just a client, IRC setup?
I was all for bootstrapping until I raised 500k
But that money wouldn't be going to Nasa. They will get rides on private rockets. And so if they are going to be spending many millions on getting there, Nasa should be charging much much more than 40k/night. A million/night would be more than reasonable imho given what tourists will already be spending to get there.
If the cops present a warrant to search your house, and you know you have incriminating evidence in your home and you refuse to let the cops in, is the warrant a violation of your Fifth Amendment rights?
The individualism of the Enlightenment and the sexual revolution has gutted the meaning-making institutions of Western society. We threw out the baby with the bathwater, and are by-&-large culturally programmed to pursue individual freedom & self-actualization, while abandoning the truth that humans are tribal creatures.
> Are drug manufacturers still spending more on marketing than on drug production?

Mostly, yes. (This data[1] is from 2015, but likely not too far off what's happening today.).

> Don't they spend a good deal on simply trying to make a drug to work around someone else's IP, rather than making drugs where there is a new benefit -- that might account for most of the R&D for all I can tell, it doesn't appear to be included in this analysis?

Honestly, not so much. The big money these days is in drugs which offer a transformational benefit over the current standard of care - whether that SoC is another marketed drug (either from the same company, or another) or a not very good treatment (or treatments) that no-one has improved upon yet.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
Show HN: Heroes and Merchants – A Mobile MMOG
You liked the good old browser games? We also!
That's why we developed HaM. It is a fantasy-crafting MMOG in the style of the old browser games with new interactive content.
HaM is a hobby project of me and my husband. Now we wish that it continues to fill with life and many players enjoy it!
"Heroes and Merchants" is completely free (IOS/Android).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.oliverbohn...

https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/heroes-and-merchants/id14428...

What is the game content?
The game plays in a fantasy world, which was ravaged by rulers of dangerous monsters. The player can recruit heroes and do missions. For this he receives raw materials from which he can produce weapons and armor.

What additional game elements does HaM contain?
Players can team up in guilds, complete guild tasks, summon raid bosses and compete against other players in real-time duels. They can benefit from the guild shop and buffs.
There is the possibility to improve the craftsmen (influence the quality of the goods, selling price, production time).
Heroes have special abilities that can be selected, increased and actively played in duels.
There is also a chat area.

What makes HaM special?
The special feature of HaM is in any case the optical design. Because unlike most of today's games here is not set to digital glossy graphics. All the graphics in the game are handdrawn, the music has also been composed especially for the game. Also, the gameplay is not based on one effect chasing the other - the game gives a touch of nostalgia after the old days of browser games.

We need you!
Since the game is free, and even just a hobby project, we do not have the financial resources, like big game companies, to use expensive advertising. The game is known only by you! Download the game in the store, write a review (if you like it) and recommend it to friends. Give us feedback here.
Visit us at http://www.heroes-and-merchants.com

Thank you!
Sound-proof pods for open-plan offices
> seniors [...] complain about the low quality of junior code [...] their own code from 6 months ago.

What classes as 'senior' that their own coding style has changed that much in 6 months? O.o

> I still do write "cool code", for code that I will only use myself that doesn't go into production. But for all others, I write easy-to-read code.

Good dev. Remember, you are not your audience. Unless you're just writing play-code in which case go nuts and be as 'clever' as you want. :D

> When comments have a typo that alter the meaning of the comment, I insist that be fixed. Juniors hate me for being too picky.

Then they're wrong, and tbh that's not something I'd accept more than once from an employee.
line by line: table scan?
>In many situations you cannot be forced to provide evidence that would be used against you or information which would lead to such evidence. I would go further and say that in all cases you shouldn't be required to provide such information.

If you have illegal materials in your home, and the cops present a warrant to search your house, should you have the right to shut the door and not let them in?
I agree. I enjoy speaking to prospects and clients, but I know not everyone feels the same way. I would say instead of letting technical people handle the client/user, it should be done in a collaborative way. Filtering shouldn't be necessary as that has the potential of keeping possible problems/solutions in the dark.

Technical and nontechnical people should collaborate face-to-face on a daily basis. That includes customer interactions.
I think this article overlooks a crucial factor, which is ego insecurity. People with an exaggerated sense of overconfidence often learn and achieve more, because their overconfidence serves as a buffer against insecurity, and their inflated self-importance gives them motivation to work hard.

A certain amount of overconfidence is an integral part of being a healthy, thriving human being. People who are depressed have more accurate self-assessments than healthy people. Humility exposes a person to a lot of unpleasant, aversive feelings that can convince them that their energy is not being well spent, making it hard to continue investing at a high enough level to achieve much.

I think it's good to learn the ideas and skills of humility. I think it's important to recognize that it's unpleasant to find out that we're wrong, and we have a natural tendency to avoid unpleasant things, so we have to consciously and actively compensate for our tendency to preserve our own mistaken assumptions. However, I wonder if it's really healthy to internalize humility, to give up a subconscious way of thinking associated with high functioning and adopt a subconscious way of thinking that is associated with depression.

Ideally we'd all have such unassailable emotional security that we wouldn't be bothered by an accurate degree of humility. In reality, I think we have to fake it, and I think a lot of the people preaching this gospel of "you shouldn't feel bad when you find out you're wrong" are faking it too. But that's okay. Our full being is a combination of our messy human psyche that isn't designed for the things we try to use it for and the conscious ideas by which we interact with it. Sometimes these parts are compare to an elephant and a rider — the tiny rider on top is the part of our mind that we consciously control. I think it's okay if that's the only part that really practices humility.
Do you think there are users for whom this might be a valuable feature that protects them from snooping ISPs?

Any such feature, of course, must be something configurable such that any user wishing to use their own DNS provider can do so.
It’s on a hexagonal grid.
let's put the entire database on a ram disk (or at least the write logs)
Make it so the representative is paid directly by the workers via a mandatory fee (whatever sum is necessary to pay their salary), and then make it illegal for the company to pay or reward that board member in any way. If the latter is breached, put the company's CEO in jail. No weaseling out with "fines" or "settlements" -- straight to jail.

Maybe my version is slightly too extreme, but I think we can be creative enough to find a good solution for this. It doesn't sound impossible to me at all. Other countries already have similar laws in place.
> why isn't the fraud better tracked?

Because the people who are best-positioned to do something about click fraud also make heaps of money off of click fraud.

For example, browser extensions like AdNauseam that randomly "click" on ad links are maybe meant to be a middle finger aimed at the ad networks, but, realistically, if you, the person doing the advertising, are paying for clicks, then the main effect of such extensions is to transfer money from your pocket to the ad network's.
If you're turning off adblocking, you're letting them win.

Get a better adblocker and keep your lists up to date. For a site like FB any site breakage will be fixed in the lists almost immediately.
Ask HN: Do you think produce in the future will have stickers “made by humans”?
Just like we have "fair trade" stickers, do you think we will have "made by humans" stickers?
> HBM did an analysis of novel FDA approved drugs from 2008-2018

Could you share the link to this article, please?
Cynicism is one of the most effective tools of the powerful.
I've heard that the laws of your home apply in space, so some Californian should get a 30 day lease then force them to evict them :D
From the New York Times piece:

The panel's report veers from other factual records on several points, Mr. Hammerman said this was important proof that the police had not fed a story to the defendants, and that Mr. Wise was speaking from firsthand knowledge. ''We didn't know until now that one of the defendants mentioned a Walkman in a pouch,'' Mr. Hammerman said." In fact, prosecutors have long said that the victim was not wearing a pouch, belt or the kind of Walkman that would be carried at the waist. The victim had been wearing a radio headset that slipped over the head and did not attach to anything else, according to a court filing by the district attorney.

It's not nearly so clear cut that the Armstrong report is in the wrong here.

Reyes admitted to taking the jogger's Sony AM/FM headset Walkman (though not a cassette walkman that usually attaches at the waist). The jogger confirms that she is missing her Walkman. This is all in the Ryan report that vacated the prosecution, not the Armstrong report.

In the motion to vacate, the assistant district attorney Ryan specifically cites as reasoning that Reyes knew about the missing Walkman but that "None of the defendants mentioned the jogger's Walkman."

Reyes also says the jogger had a "fanny pack." The jogger says she had a key case attached to her shoe laces of brown Velcro. (This is in another part of the Armstrong report.)

The Armstrong report then says about the Wise interview notes:

Kharey Wise was questioned at 4:50 AM on April 21, 1989 by Detective Jonza, whose notes list what Wise told him regarding “persons present when girl raped.” (Exhibit E.) Included on the list is the reference “Rudy – played with tits/took walkman.” At the bottom of the page, it is noted, “female had pouch for Walkman on her belt.” Wise’s description of the walkman “pouch” is, therefore, similar to Reyes’s description of a “fanny pack.” At the time of this interview, neither Detective Jonza, nor anyone else investigating the events of the evening, had any way of knowing that the jogger had a Walkman, or a pouch.

So the interview notes show that Kharey Wise had accurate knowledge of the event insofar that she had a walkman, a guy took the walkman, and that she had a pouch. On the other hand Kharey Wise had inaccurate knowledge in that the guy was not named Rudy, and the pouch was a fanny pack, not a holder for a walkman.

The Armstrong report itself does not appear to be factually wrong in this case. You could accuse the Armstrong of emphasizing the parts of the police notes that match (the taking of the Walkman and the existence of the pouch) and overly discounting the parts of the note that don't match (the name of the guy and the nature of the pouch).
Cryptocurrencies are trustless in principle. You don’t have to trust that FB updated your balance in their database correctly or tampered with historical data when you can simply pull all the transaction history from the blockchain and verify for yourself and with peers from the network.
L. Peter Deutsch in Conversation with Stig Hackvän (1998)