skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you are right. It seems to me that the strength of representative democracy doesn't come from be able to choose who will be the leader, but from the possibility of removing that leader from power in a peaceful way.

Looking to history we can see how extraordinary that is.
> What the average American does not need to worry about is the Chinese coming after him because he smoked pot on the weekend. The primary threat to American civil liberties is their own government, not distant foreign ones.

Sure, your own government is responsible for not trampling on your civil liberties; that doesn't mean it's somehow not worse to be also surveilled by the Chinese government, in addition to your own.

When China is spying on you, that doesn't mean the U.S. isn't; it means they both are.

As far as I can tell, your argument is: Because governments in the U.S. don't recognize some things you consider civil liberties, like smoking cannabis recreationally, you don't care that the Chinese government is also spying on you, and you don't think the U.S. government should take a stance on that spying?

It seems pretty incoherent to me.

> Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans?

Roughly since they have had intelligence services. It's not like the Soviets invented Kompromat, and it's not as though they were the last to use it.
So you're a libertarian, I am to understand?
Excellent, clean minimalist UI that seems to work without JavaScript on first recce - unlike some of the projects showcased here.

Just the thing for my text browser.

Bookmarked!
Awesome work. Are you going to update it for the 10,000 satellites + Amazon? I'm guessing the answer is no.

Also, are you looking for a job after graduation? If so, please email me :)
In theory couldn't we introduce fresh copies of longer genes via crispr or a similar process? How many long encoding genes are there?
> $100m in 1946 dollars is somewhere around $1b in 2011 dollars

Greenland is definitely worth a lot more than $1b today. So even the main argument that it doesn’t make financial sense doesn’t hold!
It is a very American perspective assuming democracy is given. A democracy comes from the middle class, it requires a middle class. If that middle class is deteriorating, the democracy will change into something else.
It's been a few years since I used Duplicity, and while I liked it, I prefer the Unixy one-thing-well approach of composing several smaller tools to achieve what I need.

The big thing I'm missing from Duplicity are incremental backups, which is not a strong requirement for my use case as bandwidth is cheap and I can delete the oldest N backups to free up space.

But I gain a lot from using a combination of tools: I can easily replace each component, and easily improve my workflow by adding more components, such as deduplication or incremental backups if needed.
> Democracy is not about freedom nor liberty

Obviously. Democracy contains Kratos (=power to rule) so it's against unlimited liberty, but also it dilutes the power to a lot of people so it seems to be a stable way for people who are statist-minded to be ruled.

The author does not claim that Democracy is for freedom, quite the contrary:

> It doesn’t help matters that, once such an individual has been enthroned, others are only too eager to submit to him. It is as though, in his illustrious presence, they realize they have too much freedom on their hands, which they find suddenly oppressive
Right, Elon needs that to come down to work. The satellite part is very cool and all, but the ground station cost is where the uncertainty is.
Most of what we know about Socrates came from the writings of his student Plato. What is you opinion on why Plato writes that Socrates did not support tyranny?

Plato was supporter of the thirty tyrants led by the first cousin of Plato's mother. Plato also clearly supported of the idea that philosopher kings should rule, so I find it strange that he says Socrates was not supporting tyrants.
[I now see I mispelled "gold" as "good" in my comment, my bad]

As far as I know, none of those countries promises to redeem bearers of banknotes with an equivalent value in gold, which is what being on a gold standard means[1].

Plenty of central banks have gold reserves, that's basically a vestige from the past, but that's not the same as saying the currency is backed by gold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
Can anyone recommend some really privacy-focused VPNs?
My experience is not that most people are raging assholes. It is that most people are clueless assholes like elephants who aren't aware of the ants they step on until they become "enlightened". I didn't use to think like this. The older I get, the more confused and disappointed I get. At times, I find that I am the clueless asshole. But I still hope that we can and will do better.
Yes, indeed. Or just... How about just someone honest who would not enslave another, I guess?

How about respecting people's private property rights? I don't need to be the designer of a whole country (I might even be, if it's something small and peaceful as Liechtenstein) and explain how everything should work. I'm a software engineer. I can work on software efficiently, not city planning or economics. There are lots of theories about "how things would be without democracy" but I don't pick any in particular is the "real deal". Dozen of thousands of small peaceful countries like Liechtenstein that might be formed within the next 500 years is one possibility I believe might happen.
Worldwide satellite internet access provides more value to humanity than identifying stars. Maybe some telescopes should be put on the moon/mars anyway.
Try to use WPF from anything other than dotnet. It will be hard, given that you will have to hack its main loop to work with an external code. I'm not sure if that was ever done.
Somewhat related, what would you recommend for someone who has never programmed in C?
Excellent! I haven't followed the C standards as closely; glad they added this as well.
If you have less than 24hrs a day for fully-expendable time, at your own leisure, you are doing something wrong.

Let the mexicans work, man, you are doing something wrong.

24 hour club. All day every day!
> In other words, not something to embrace, but something to fear

Those were times where strong Kings ruled, of course they would bad-mouth any dangerous idea, and most people went along with that.

Also, in modern times Democracy=Majorito-cracy, while they are not the same thing.
Why Z Shell Is the Best Choice for Beginners
I'm the author.

The QtSharp project used technology that couldn't really address the problem (MonoCppSharp).

QML.Net is different. It is purely a QML integration (no c++ wrapper), using a C interop.

There is extensive unit tests for QML.Net, including garbage collection tests.

I consider it segfault-proof.

It's currently used in production on embedded medical devices: https://medxchange.com/4klear-all-in-one-camera-recorder/
The issue with ebikes is on hills. Sure, regular bikes have no problem on flats and especially on downhills but if you are going uphill it can disconcerting when an ebike flies past you at 20mph.

I’m a pretty serious mountain biker and that is the main reason ebikes are being banned on a lot of trails.
Primarily it's due to function overloading. Different implementations may use different means to consistently and uniquely "mangle" function names on symbols to uniquely identify them in the library export. This mangling depends upon numerous factors, including parameter types and calling convention (if there are multiple conventions on a platform).
Nonsense. This is typical for someone that is uninformed on the dynamics of the industry. Only such a person would volunteer that the solution to the problem is... what created the problem in the first place: government

- it is regulation, not america being "slow" which prevents medicare from negotiating further discounts on drugs
- it is regulation, not america being "slow" which gives practicioners a bona fide monopoly on the market and prevents unfunded apprentices to join
- it is regulation, not america being "slow" which prevents, in most jurisdictions , anyone from opening a hospital unless you get approval of the.... incumbent hospital first. Yes you read that right

We are not slow. The problem is the regulatory machine was fast and working 24/7
I was talking about the VPN provider of course.
My experience with such a system has been that it would quote ridiculously high prices for generic medications, so I'd simply tell patients their drug is on the $4 list at WalMart. An information source that's unreliable is worse than no information at all, since it poisons the well for competing systems.
I think it’s because of name mangling (to enable polymorphism).

Name mangling wasn’t originally standardized, so every compiler did it differently, and now it’s too late to standardize.
Against terms indeed.
Over here in the real world, the primary use of this code is for harassment and abuse.

Upholding people's freedom to make authentic looking photos of women without their clothes on, regardless of their consent, is a pretty low form of "speech" and not a hill I'd choose to die on.

It's illegal to use that code for its intended purpose in some jurisdictions (such as the one I'm in) and will be illegal in more once the laws catch up.
The guardian article linked by the parent says the check list used was two minutes and asked basic questions like “patient has confirmed procedure being performed today”.
I'm sure many athenians were pretty bad at them and foolish, yet they were not excluded (they did have moral character exclusion laws). That's actually the beauty of sortition in democracy: you need state institutions so well built, that the foolishness of a number of people cannot break it.
Yes. I did. Honestly it is rubbish. Secret methodology. No baseline comparison (how does Huawei compare to other similar sized companies?). This is not social science. It is politics.
Yeah, the whole argument was pretty callous and based on a colonial view of territories. In modern times, once a population is ethnically characterised, selling their land is basically unethical.
My little project http://solarpi.tafkas.net/ runs on SQLite for over five years now. Never had any issues.
>> but does anyone seriously believe that having Huawei tech embedded in American infrastructure is a good idea?

It is a market decision. From the security point of view most vendors are the same.
Firstly, what's the opposite of asshole. Is there a name for that?

Secondly, this:
>Really, you can’t afford to keep assholes around - it’s better to have a hole in your team than an asshole.

That may not always be true. It may actually be better to have an asshole than a teamhole, particularly if project delivery is dependent on the asshole. It may be unpleasant but unavoidable - at least temporarily. It may also be a financial issue and financial issues affect shareholders, and shareholders can be assholes. You win some, you lose some.

The closing section made it all worth while. Probably the best 3 paragraphs I've read all year.
If you have a lot of followers, twitter can be a very effective loudspeaker even with the character limit. By the way, 10 year olds don’t tend to use twitter — boys or girls (why is it so often young girls who are held up as a negative example?)
Democracy fails, like any other system of government, with the centralization of power. If you centralize power then people inherently have to fight over it because it's the only way to have any. If people in California want free public colleges and people in Wyoming want lower taxes, it's possible for them to both have what they want, but not if they can't make different choices from each other. If the same choice has to be made for everyone then you require everyone to fight over which one to make. If you allow different communities to make different choices, and then allow citizens to move freely to the community they want to live in, that's really about the best we can do.

The inherent difficulty is that you need something strong enough to prevent someone else from accumulating centralized power, without that entity itself becoming corrupted and used to impose the will of whoever controls it uniformly on everyone else.

We tried that in the US and failed. The federal government was supposed to be small. "Promote the general welfare" was meant as a restriction on the use of government revenue for private use, not an enumerated power to spend money on anything alleged to be of public benefit. "Interstate commerce" was never intended to be equivalent to all commerce.

But the words on paper failed to resist the combination of a depression and a strongman promising to fix it if only it weren't for all these silly restrictions on centralized power. And they never give the power back even after the crisis is over.

It remains to be seen whether a lock can be forged strong enough to keep central power contained, but the first step today has to be to get it back into its cage to begin with.
I think this is a fantastic trend for capital markets. Hopefully as cost and complexity of these issuances comes down it will make the public markets somewhat more accessible as well.
> Four billion years from now, the increase in the Earth's surface temperature will cause a runaway greenhouse effect, heating the surface enough to melt it. By that point, all life on the Earth will be extinct.

4 billion years from now they are going to need our planet colonizing technology to get out. ;)

But, until then, they will be doing even better without us.
Yes. Or just liberal (if you're not in the United States - left-wings "robbed" the liberal word there long ago - to sell itself as people that praises liberty just to hide their real communist intentions).
> Like, what is Huawei going to do if it has information on you and you live in Boston, compared to the local police?

It could to take what your local industries you are researching and give it to a Chinese company that will take it into the international market. Is that not harmful? Do you think the US government would similarly take your work and send it to a Chinese competitor before it is made public?
Exception Handling – The Common Lisp Way
Arguing about which nation is spying on you better is like arguing about which cancer causing carcinogen is better for you. It all sucks and isn't going away anytime soon.

China will spy on you just as much as USA/Russia/UK/Israel/ad nauseum... if given the chance. So enjoy staring at your shiney tech and remember that any number of nation states are most likely staring back at you. Enjoy modern life.
Pretty weird that the dupe-detector didn't catch it. Thanks.
I simply responded to the point literally made in the post above which was

>you can’t really argue that America and China are equally bad to Americans.

Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government. And it's also not incoherent in a general context, because using China or some other cold war enemy as a strawman to divert attention from domestic civil rights violation is as relevant as it has always been in the US. The Soviet Union was no danger to ordinary Americans either (well nukes aside), because by definition ordinary Americans are.. well ordinary and entirely uninteresting.

Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government. As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
I somehow believe that our need for physical sex will not allow us to become gelatin in tubes. Even the world of Alita seems a bit farfetched. But who knows?
Why does it need to be US-centric? The exercise that I suggested is intended as a way to give you a perspective. Beleive it or not, not everyone lives in the USA and not everyone is US citizen and not everyone is obligated to put aside their own needs and act for the US interests.

This issue is relevant to non-US persons and countries because the USA is actively trying to prevent Huawei from doing business in these countries.

The US-centric views are so prominent on the HN that sometimes I wonder if ever anyone at the silicon valley intended to "Make the World a better place". How can you make the world a better place if you cannot recognise that a world beyond the USA exists? It's even in your statistic! Turkey or Sweden is not simply some data points, they are real countries, allies of the USA, with their own interests.

The Europeans are often accused of being anti-American but maybe that is not the case, maybe it's just that Europeans every once in a while need to protect their own interests and that is perceived as treason.
Democracy works if there is an option for a secession, if the part that doesn't agree can branch off into its own thing without bloodshed. The majority would have to find a balance or risk losing that part.
right wing authoritarianism
Do not trust your government or they associated partners.

Google, Facebook, Twitter all same organisation.

Same with VPN providers
If I've read any of the federalist papers before I don't remember it. But I checked out the first article [1] after your comment and now the play 'Hamilton' makes a lot more sense. What a lyrical style.

I'm half afraid to read more. Something tells me there's going to be insight to contemporary issues laid bare to the extent that I just lose faith in humanity.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Feder...
You must sign up for an account to use Boxcryptor because it is paid software. That is the only reason as far as I can tell. As far as I know their servers do nothing for you once you have installed the software on your devices.
> Being able to say that sort of thing with a straight face is the tremendous privilege of being an American.

I think this is a really important point. It's hard to be rational and idealistic when you're under the stresses of scarcity and oppression.
Sometimes clamshell packaging is used to make high-value-density, easily shopliftable items like microsd cards and fancy razors too big to fit into people's pockets.

Being impossible to remove by hand is a feature as far as these manufacturers are concerned!
Staying safe in the world wide web
Model Checking a C++ Software Framework: A Case Study
I find the US, the UK, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all absolutely horrific in different but often surprisingly similar ways. Europe, Japan, and a few smaller nations less so - moderately, but not trivially.

There are superficial differences in the tribal totems and rhetorical promises used to promote conformity, and in the mechanics of manipulation and repression.

Beneath that, the dynamics are very similar.

Life can be quite pleasant in any of the above if you're upper-middle class.

If you're on the wrong side of any of these regimes and on the receiving end of institutionalised government violence, it really isn't.
Yes, an option for those who doesn't know how to live in peace respecting other people's property rights. They should do the right thing and emigrate to the middle of nowhere in order to not do evil against innocents.
What a weird article. At scale, democracy has never been healthier in the history of the world. More of the world lives in a functioning democracy than ever has. Even in the west, the hold on politics of entities like organized crime is near historic lows.
... They're just numbers picked out of the air for one last illustrative attempt to explain why you need something special to entice HFTs to pony up way more than a standard internet plan so you can monetize them effectively.
Wow, great anecdote hah I never would have thought that’s how they did it
Great observation, I cannot recall where I read it at the moment, but I remember reading someone arguing precisely a difference in the individuals relationship to the state is why Athenian democracy seemed to succeed in areas that modern democracy seems to fail. From what I understand, to be an Athenian participating in statecraft meant you’d be willing to go so far as to more or less die for the polis and would always put the needs of the polis before your own. There are a couple of anecdotes about prominent Athenians sacrificing their own gain for the sake of the betterment of Athens. Contrarily, our times are so staunchly individualist I expect that the majority of politicians are not willing to sacrifice much and see their role as little more than a professional occupation—not as an existential gamble for the sake of their constituents.
Presenting Exit as the best option for anarchists is pretentious when coming from Democratic States. They have repeatedly attacked attempts to create a free state.
The Dutch Rudder is much more commonplace.
Mozilla set to offer ad-free browsing in Firefox for $5
Amazon: Carbon emissions from our Australian bit barns aren't for public viewing
after a quick review of this brief (aqrtb?):

Lua-based binaries are being delivered via a Metasploit module for Atlassian Confluence Server CVE-2019-3396. other vulnerable servers can also be targeted with this payload, though it's mostly Linux servers now. active news sources include #godlua

https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence

https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2019-3396/

https://twitter.com/hashtag/godlua?f=tweets&vertical=default
The five most genius applications of spatial analytics for businesses
Use Qt/QML for your next cross-platform application
What pressure was put on the NSA and what is the outcome[1]? Let's include all the FVEY[2] countires. Look at Australia's encryption laws[3]. It is actually better to live in China than in AUstralia from this point of view. I do not think that you can use the argument that we can apply political pressure to intelligence agencies or governments and have a better outcome. At least this is not the reality in many cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/australia/encryptio...
I'm not saying that traditional GUI development is worse. I'm saying that the users want shiny stuff that in many cases comes out of the box with Electron for example.

Do I want to code in 3 languages, let the app swallow copious amounts of RAM and break behaviours that users expect? NO. Will they do a hard pass on software if it's not pretty enough? YES.

If you want to chalk it up to not enough good themes in QT/JavaFX, that's fine two less languages and less packaging for them to worry about. But until those themes exist that makes the user turn its head...
Less abusive ex-boyfriends and abusive ex-husbands will find it. That's a win for each one of the victims that are spared. So it would make things "better" -- not perfect, but "better". And leaving it on github will make things "worse".
Damn I only got 116. How do you avoid sleep completely?
Yes, this story really got to me as well.

The Eve Online and E:D communities are very supportive; players truly do care about each other underneath all the other layers. The communities have existed now for so long that they go deep. Also there's a fair bit of commitment needed to get into them, from a learning cliff perspective, so perhaps this is a factor as well? Common to both is how they are highly social communities.

(For others seeing this) look up "Broadcast 4 Reps", how Eve players encourage each other not to stay silent, but to call out when you need help. This is referring to the in game mechanic of letting logistics (a supportive fleet role) know to direct repairs your way, that you are in trouble. It's really an amazing thing to see the message spread that it is _ok_ to need help and talk about it.

o7