skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In the very early days, you didn't need a search engine because there weren't that many web sites and you knew most of the main ones anyway (or later on had them in your own hotlists in Mosaic). Nowadays you need a search because there is so much content.

The problem is that the amount of content and the size of the potential user base are so large that is is impossible to offer search as a free service, i.e. it has to be funded in some way. Perhaps instead of having a free advertising-driven search, there would be space for a subscription-based model? Subscription based (and advert free) models seem to be working in other areas, e.g. TV/films and music.

Another problem though is that more and more content seems to be becoming unsearchable, e.g. behind walled gardens or inside apps.
it wouldn't be useful for a social science class because it is not precise enough.
Because I couldn't see anything, all I could see were flashes every direction around me.

And yeah, trashing is a never ending issue. You should see the early morning clean up at Times Square, on new year's day - it is quite a sight
The West’s Failed Fight Against China’s ‘Cloud Hopper’ Hackers
We are talking about HTML. It's really-really easy and I don't think there is a problem at all that the author claims.
So they're state sponsored attacks and then they deny any and all culpability? Europe needs to join the hard line on China.
the smile links look different, burt I am not entirely sure about the referrer IDs.

They look like:

- fsclp_pl_dp_12

- fsclp_pl_dp_11

with each link having a distinct number, counting down to 1.

It doesn't look like a typical referrer ID, so it is probably something that Amazon generates, although I don't know under what condition.
I hate clickbait titles like this where there is no current age listed for comparison to the age referenced. Is the student 18 or 9.5? The time scale matters.

This reminds me of how Apple notoriously omits axis values during presentations just to make prettier-looking graphs.
Android has mouse support. Be it phone or tablet, it doesn't make a difference. Even more fun: my Nexus 4 had no issues when I used my Apple Magic Mouse on it. Felt truly magic.
I guess nowadays the web IS the internet
bring on the regulators of content. what could go wrong?
LG and Qt partner up to expand webOS to automobiles and smart home devices
Iceland is pretty damn expensive, probably one of the most expensive nature destination you can find, together with Norway (although Switzerland probably still wins the prize).
> I wouldn’t be so quick to indict an entire profession, especially given your admitted use of anecdotes.

This point is very well-taken, despite what my earlier comments may have sounded like, as is your point that I may be misunderstanding the scope of the problem as deficiencies in the solution process. Believe it or not, I am sensitive to these possibilities and didn't arrive at my current conclusion hastily or lightly. I didn't lazily interpret the system failing to solve my problem instantly as an indictment of the system, particularly given my small firsthand sample size. As I said, I've also talked to a lot of doctors who I'm acquainted with, and the only facts I'm working off of are fairly uncontroversial among them. I'm talking about specific failures like irrational institutional biases against some types of specialists (that both the doctors and the specialists that I've spoken to in a non-patient context admit exist).

When I say that a competent doctor would have been able to solve my problem _more_ quickly, it's because of the multiple challenges that required retreading the steps that a doctor is ostensibly trained in. The economy is built around paying people to do jobs that you are capable of but haven't spent the time to specialize in: it would be considered a failure of each industry if I needed to become a domain expert to get my cable fixed, or have my shirts tailored, or fly on an airplane. I get that medicine is devilishly more complicated than any of the above, but again, I'm talking about specific problems with either the ability or the will to take the time to apply that medical training through critical thinking. Since those with training abdicated their opportunity to do think critically, I had to bring (a very narrow form of that training) to the only person willing to think critically about the patient: me.

I don't think it's a very controversial statement that the healthcare system has lots of issues: the doctors I've spoken to about the way the system works and has worked for me pretty much all agree with me once they get over their defensiveness and realize that I'm not interested in putting most of the blame on individual doctors and their behavior within a difficult system. Slapdash, cookie-cutter engagement with patients is IMO a lot more reflective of the constraints that doctors operate under wrt time and the average patient[1] than it is a commentary on individual doctor's level of intelligence or something like that.

[1] hell, I don't even judge doctors with the all-too-common undercurrent of almost-contempt for their patients, given the average patient they probably have to deal with
Learn the difference between Git merge vs. Git rebase
In my bit of Lancashire our secondary schools are usually officially called xxx high school and everyone says high school rather than secondary.
It's like saying that USA is mostly taiga, and tundra, because there's Alaska. Most of those collectivist societies have very dirty cities (both in terms of ecology, and esthetics). And nobody seems to care. Singapore, and Japan (and Korea, but only in south) stand as exceptions.
Show HN: A live map of sunlight on earth
you're assuming a dichotomy was presented. Again, what does one person putting forth extra of their funds do in the big picture?

Concerns of virtue signaling? The ramifications of what he is proposing is that if he gets his wish, he (and others like him) have their taxes go up. He's coming out in support of policies already being discussed (and attempting to persuade other politicians to also champion those policies). This isn't changing one's profile picture in support of the cause of the moment.
You are wrong here. California has the worst homelessness problem in the country, and SF is leading within California. It is just not a national issue. I travel for work...no where is like SF for homeless. Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, NYC, DC,... nothing.

Roads: down town is like a warzone! Huge potholes everywhere.

Traffic...ummm, east bay/south bay are where most people live. Also traffic in the city is terrible too. Your Saturday routine sounds like you don't leave Marin...which sure, yeah, not a ton of traffic.
are humans included?
Especially when IT is more interested in outsourcing every possible service to a different company/domain. Office 365 alone involves a pretty staggering number, including such self-evidently trustworthy gems as "microsoftonline.com", "azurewebsites.net", and "aka.ms". It's hard to keep up with what's legitimate when seemingly everything you do involves a different domain with a different design language and account management process. Then there's the increasingly popular practice of running things "in-house" but actually on some half-assed cloud stack (What the heck are those stupid CloudFront subdomains, anyhow?).
Its largely a scale thing too. When I was growing up I used to go on weekends away and camp overnight in rest areas, side of the road or private places. It worked great. A few decades later those areas are really popular with tourists but there is no room for hundreds of people to do the same. Meanwhile the new generation of locals can't do it any more and have to stay in hotels now - which they can't afford. Just another reason to leave the region and move to a big city.
How would you explain Singapore then?
The current search engines are also indexing books maliciously inserted in the library in a way to maximize their exposure e.g. a million "different" pamphlets advertising Bob's Bible Auto Repair Service inserted in the Bible category.

A "better library" can't be permissionless and unfiltered; Dewey Decimal System relies on the metadata being truthful, and the internet is anything but.

You can't rely on information provided by content creators; Manual curation is an option but doesn't scale (see the other answer re: early Yahoo and Google).
Inventing/extending a new NNTP is nice idea too.

The Internet has become synonymous with the web/http protocol. The web alternatives to NNTP won instead of newer versions of Usenet. New versions of IRC, UUCP, S/FTP, SMTP, etc., instead of webifying everything would be nice. But those services are still there and fill an important niche for those not interested in seeing everything eternal septembered.
8 of the 10 most polluted rivers in the world are in East Asia. Of the top polluted cities in the world 8 of 10 are in Asia. Your analysis falls apart with even a cursory search.
Account vetting, deposits, or actual identity verification would be a good start. It'll be hard but if your company is planning on making money off other people lending their expensive equipment out you should really make sure you're protecting those people because they're the heart of your business. Reimburse the lender then go recover that from the thief, if you're doing validation and security well enough it should be easy to find them and rare enough the extra costs aren't back breaking.
TensorWatch: Microsoft New Tool for Debugging Deep Learning Programs
Learning to Interactively Learn and Assist
Apple.com Gets F in SSL Test, vulnerable to zombie POODLE
If you are on Firefox, it actually recommends using another browser:

> It looks like you’re on Firefox. Because Firefox builds in all kinds of protections against malicious sites, it’ll only open 20 tabs at a time—and only if you allow pop-ups from this page. While 20 is enough, to see how wild 100 tabs can really get, try Track This on another browser.
Is "our inability to think fractally and nonlinearly" a linear or a nonlinear idea?
I live in CA near Santa Cruz and we have had mountain lions in our backyard.

I've seen them close up and was not scared for the reasons you mentioned, it wanted to be seen. I had a slightly scarier incident where I was hissed at from thick bushes by a mountain lion that I couldn't see, but I left and the lion did not follow.

It's extremely common in our area for lions to attack and kill small dogs and livestock. For that reason, there aren't many people that appreciate preserving these animals even though there have been no recorded attacks on humans in our area.

Bears used to be common in the area too, but were hunted to extinction hundreds of years ago and the ecosystem adapted and survived.

If lions weren't here there are lots of people who would definitely hunt to keep the population down.

I think people overestimate the danger of lions to people, but also overestimate the environmental impact if they left.

But overall I know many people who have seen lions up close or been followed while hiking and everyone ended up being safe.
> European society

If one defines 'European Society' as Bretton Woods + EU/EEC, then yes, you can make a case, although 'enemy' is likely debatable in strength.

If however one takes the view that EU is essentially the current incarnation of the 'western roman empire' then the discussion gets more interesting..
A few days ago I stood before the hand dryer in my office bathroom (or at least I think it was a hand dryer, as it was mounted waist high to the left of a sink) and puzzled at its labeling. I even took a picture:

https://ibb.co/mCNdGdh

There's no shower anywhere nearby, but this object which I consider to be obviously a hand dryer is labeled "hair dryer". Surely the people who make these know what they're for...

And I agree, a large tank of compressed air with an on-demand heater on the human end would be pretty nice.
5' is also a notation of 5 Feet..
This is a good point. I often forget I've even been to a place until I look at a map of picture locations, then zoom in and remember that time. I'm not sure I'd put much stock in photos of a place leading to its destruction until there is real evidence. My friend telling me about his visit to Scotland did a lot more to make me want to visit than his pictures.
If that's the case though... what are they using it for? They haven't stopped mass shootings. They haven't stopped terrorism or bombings or domestic violence or child molesters. They never bring the evidence to court. There's zero indication they've done anything with the wide mass surveillance net they're supposed to have access to. So what is it there for?
Did we break it?
Yes, thank you.

EDIT: We are back.
Also, does this script even load with tracking protection enabled, which is now the default in Firefox for new users? It probably shouldn't? Which would mean GA and by extension Mozilla will catch less and less users here compared to first-party analytics.
My daughter is 4 months old and absolutely loves the sound of both our (very cheap) hair dryer and our (even cheaper) vacuum cleaner. I think it is essentially white noise to her, as she also loves the sound of running water. We know a couple where the father actually made a 30 minute mp3 of their hairdryer blowing to get their daughter to sleep.

That being said, even I cannot stand the sound of hand dryers in public restrooms. To me, it basically sounds like an extremely hysteric hair dryer. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that they are mounted on a wall, which gives them more resonance.
It seems to have been hugged to death (at least for me in Canada)
Heh - mine is similar but with a different “F” word. :)
These patterns get used because they work. It's game theory: if site A makes 10-50% more money because they do all this stuff, sites B-? are going to wind up doing it too.

If you want to get rid of marketing dark patterns, the solution is simple: just make sure all humans remove emotion and feelings from every decision, and give them the time and money to find all possible alternative sources for the desired product or service.

(/s)
Clicked 400 and got 500
The fundamental premise of the title seems misleading to me. Life existence doesn't depend on dimensions, it's perception that does. As the author later says, the paper is predicated upon an anthropic consideration of reality: if it can't be observed or compatible with the human mental model, then it doesn't exist. Has that been proven to be the case?
I got a status 500 error. With no cat :(
Paywalls are a great alternative to intrusive ads for a larger publisher. NYT has been doing very well the last couple of years on their digital subscription model.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/business/media/new-york-t...
Yeah, I've seen one while trail running in Oregon. While scary (came around a blind turn before sunrise and it was about 20' away), it clearly wanted nothing to do with me. Just stopped, looked at me, and wandered off the trail. One of the most memorable wildlife encounters I've had in my life.
Which ends up being darkly hilarious when they're whitelisted, leading to a situation where literally every "phishing attempt" an employee ever sees is a fake crafted to conform to the stereotypes given in the training.
It seems that social media is the scapegoat of the day for whatever social problem the media discusses.
I remember trying to get one of my company's sites listed on Yahoo! back in the late 1990s. Despite us being an established company (founded in 1985) with a good domain name (cardgames.com) and a bunch of good, free content (rules for various card games, links to various places to play those games online, etc.), it took months.
well clearly they're never going to allow that to happen, even if it means using underhanded tactics once again.

they're already at work, trying to minimize damage from the lawsuits in Indonesia and Ethiopia. you might say it's just a form of corporate survival. sure, but what makes this decision any different from when they chose to hide MCAS from pilots? It's all about the money.

https://www.businessinsider.sg/boeing-737-max-cases-worthles...
Many tourists have zero respect for local culture, people, environment etc - no wonder cities around the world are getting annoyed. We live in wonderful times, with travel being so accessible. If we are a bit responsible and respectful, travel can be a fantastic experience - but no, we have to abuse it, as with every nice thing in life. This might come off as bitter but it is also true, so I understand when you say this thread isn't helping your (our) attitude towards people.
> like shooting down the Malaysian Airlines jet over Ukraine were completely unnecessary

do you seriously think this was a deliberate action?

if so, what would be the rationale and goal of doing it?

ps: why is noone blaming the airline for flying over a warzone? this to me is the real 'culprit' in that one..
You do not have a right to not inhale someone else's smoke. Let's be very clear about the language you're just throwing around like it doesn't mean anything, because the Rights recognized by the Constitution aren't just something that have no meaning.

That's why I never said that I believe people have a Right to smoke, yet for some reason you quote me like I did say that. People don't have a right to smoke, just like you don't have a right to not inhale other peoples' smoke.

Even your usage of the language "rights allowed" shows a clear misunderstanding of how Rights work. Rights are not "allowed" or "granted"; they are "recognized". They are God-Given, assuming you believe in that kind of thing (our fore-fathers did).
That's true but I suspect most retirement accounts are worth the $100k.
This is a "Discovery Institute" video and article. Read and think carefully. Discovery Institute does not always promulgate the most careful science.
The grandparent is probably pointing to Singapore. That is a state that is infamous for being extremely clean and tidy. At the same time, it is highly consumerist, with so much of its traditional community infrastructure demolished and replaced with shopping malls.
Couldn't a burst of unusual activity like this be easily detected? Then again, advertisers probably don't go the extra mile to cover the 1% that's using this tool...
How Does Stan Work?
Happens all the time in Scotland - I assume people look at the height of the mountains and assume they are safe for a quick stroll if the weather is nice.

e.g.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-457...

"Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team said the walkers' attire had included shorts and leggings, but no jackets."

I've never actually said to people I've passed that I thought they were inappropriately dressed (though maybe I should do) - but I have given people maps and directions when they admitted they had no idea where they were or their phone batteries had died (I take backup printouts of maps so not a big deal to give a copy to someone).
I agree, that's part of the media's job, but the struggle with that is that there's no tool to give us a sense of normalcy - the news is what's new and newsworthy, but we have nothing to ground us, cause no one would watch it.
Which implies they also sold it for the highest possible price (I'd give $.25 to buy Apple - I don't think share holders will agree to that deal)
Is this sarcasm? Getting a PhD takes many folks well into their 30's. It's not a "low bar" by any means.
No needs to. You can live your life in ignorance all you want
There was a paper a little while back saying that if you took a photo of something you remember it less well. This was troubling to me as the designated photographer in my family, but not particularly surprising. Definitely made me consider sometimes to leave the camera in the backpack and just soak in the moment.
How would topic validity get enforced?

For example, if a publisher has a particular pro-Trump article, they would likely want (for obvious financial reasons) to push it to both etv2://news/anti-trump and netv2://news/pro-trump . What would prevent them from doing that?

Also, a publisher of "GET RICH QUICK NOW!!!" article would want to push it to both netv2://news/anti-trump and netv2://computer/engineering/electron/i-dont-like-it topics.

You can't simply have topics, you can have communities like news/pro-trump that are willing to spend the labor required for moderation i.e. something like reddit. But not all content has such communities willing and able to do so well.
Sorry, but this was too tempting: https://imgur.com/a/6UcAOnF

But seriously, I'm not sure it is feasible, I wish the internet could auto-index itself and still be decentralized, where any type of content can be "discovered" as soon as it is connected to the "grid".

The advantage would be that users could search any content without filters, without AI tempering with the order based on some rules ... BUT on the other hand, people use search engines because their results are relevant (what ever that means these days), so having an internet that is searchable by default would probably never be a good UX and hence not replace existing search engines. It not just about the internet being searchable, it would have to solve all the problems search engines have solved in the last ten years too
You can't get around the problem of manipulation if your trustworthiness metric for content will be the same for all people, as it is on reddit, hacker news, or Amazon for example. Having moderators just concentrates the issue into a smaller number of people and you haven't solved the central problem--manipulation is profitable.

But think of how we solve this problem in our personal interactions with other people, and this should be a clue for how to solve it with computational help. We have a pretty good idea of which people are trustworthy (or capable, or dependable, or any other characteristic) in our daily lives, and based on our interactions with them we update these internal measures of trustworthiness. If we need to get information from someone we don't know, we form a judgement of their trustworthiness based off of input from people we trust--e.g. giving a reference. This is really just Bayesian inference at its
core.

We should be able to come up with a computational model for how this personal measure of trustworthiness works. It would act as a filter over content that we obtain. Throw a search engine on top of this, sure, but in the end you'd still need to get trustworthiness weights onto information if you want it to be manipulation-resistant. This labeling is what I mean by manual curation. You can't leave that up to the search engine or the aggregator because those can be gamed, like the examples you gave for aggregators and SEO for search engines have shown.
>UK ICO's stance is fairly well known, but I don't think they can be held responsible for businesses that liquidate in the face of fine. That seems more likely to be an issue of UK company law.

You are confusing ICO's stance and responsibility with it's reluctance to enforce powers, which have already been granted to them by the government, in order to pursue negligent cases and collect fines under the UK law.

The Insolvency Service has general powers to investigate both insolvent and active companies, including those companies that undertake direct marketing activities. If a director has deliberately acted to the detriment of the company and/or its creditors, action may be taken against the directors under the Insolvency Act 1986 or the Company Directors Disqualification Act (CDDA) 1986.
Do you really want to be part of such circles then? Especially if you clearly state that it's an illustration, not a picture report made by yourself.

For a long time I've shared the same view that all the good pictures have been photographed, but with all this commercialization of the information it becomes nontrivial to find a good free hi-res image even of relatively known places without watermarks and outside of walled gardens.