skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The new balloons promise a cheap surveillance platform that could follow multiple cars and boats for extended periods. And because winds often travel in different directions at different altitudes, the balloons can usually hover over a given area simply by ascending or descending.

Stepping back from the details of this story reveals a striking pattern that most public discussions on mass surveillance miss entirely.

Cost has protected citizens of the world's liberal democracies from sliding into totalitarianism for a long time. Now the brakes are off. Surveillance technology costs are plunging across at the board and capabilities are skyrocketing.

Regardless of size or jurisdiction, there isn't a law enforcement agency out there that doesn't want to (or actively seek to) increase its observational capability.

Tumbling prices allow these organizations to indulge these urges.

Suddenly, basic assumptions about what governments can and can't do go out the window. The equipment is bought and put into production. Better to ask forgiveness than permission and all that.

There is no limit to the appetite for greater visibility into the private lives of citizens. Today it's the war on drugs and terror. Tomorrow it's something else. The justifications change, but these are just thin veneers over the ugly truth. Every government tends toward totalitarianism unless kept in check by something pretty damn powerful.

This train has one destination, and it's not even clear if there will be any stops along the way. To understand where we're headed, try reading the Bill of Rights with the assumption that your government knows everything there is to know about you, and where those who attempt to reveal the extent of these capabilities are imprisoned or executed.
IMO animation should only be used in cases where the change of state is inherently difficult to understand. Animations help users understand what happened after an action.
It's the same logic as refusing delivery of a shipped good when it comes to contract law (IANAL). It's expected that when a good arrives, the buyer pays. If the buyer refuses to pay then the good is not 'delivered.' In the transition to services the 'delivery' is the invoice you get and that is the moment you are compelled as the buyer to pay that invoice. If you start paying it then you have accepted the invoice as valid because you paid for part of that invoice. Given this the context of being sued would be that the seller observed that the invoice was valid by the buyer paying something towards that invoice, and therefore they should be compelled to pay the rest of the invoice.

On the other hand if an invoice is never realized because it's in dispute, then you have a stronger leg to stand on. A different way to look at is in sit-down dining. You receive service, you are delivered a bill, you are then expected at the moment the bill is delivered to review it and pay it, and if you pay it the bill is settled. If you have a dispute because nobody ordered a diet coke, then the bill is rejected and hopefully sorted out before a final bill is presented and people pay for it. The same sort of logic ends up applying here. If you paid for half the meal and left that has different outcomes compared to not paying the bill and causing a stink.
>This is a rather blanket claim. My step-dad grew up in crazy-rural Oregon. His dad refused to take a bath more than twice a year.

Did he live there during medieval times? The post is about a specific era, and the prevalent norms, not about absolutely everybody at any era (or even absolutely everybody at the era it concerns, for that matter).

It's about statistics (what most did) not physical laws (what everybody absolutely had to follow).
While I don't think any time taken is necessarily a great indicator of general understanding, I was struck by a great feeling of unease while reading 1e-9's comment. Initially I sought to understand the apparent contradiction in the measurable reduction in arbitrage opportunity as a generally accepted proxy measure for increasing market efficiencies with my general understanding that HFT generally massively increases volatility and does not generally appear to result in the reduction of instrument pricing due to lower trading overheads and losses. I also sought to explain the seemingly unending profit stream made possible by such strategies - when, paradoxically the more efficient the market becomes, the less profitable all HFT stratigies should become globally - and yet, it does not seem they do.

All in all, about 10 minutes or so of consideration, followed by about an half an hour of editing.

That said, I'll likely spend much more time looking for existing models of financial markets under the information relativistic conditions created by HFT activity - it occurs to me that as trading moves closer to speed of causality in the market the models underlying market understanding may need to be adapted, perhaps using relativity as a prototype. With any luck they already have and I can elaborate from those to solve for conditions of such markets with information asymmetry and agents capturing value. If such markets are inherently volatile and that volatility increases geometrically nearing the speed of causality - presumably, the speed of light, then this may provide the mechanism for the apparent global inflation of instrument prices via distributed profitable high-speed trading activity while preserving lessened arbitrage opportunity and other visible market behaviours.

I really must formalise this so that it may be thoroughly and logically evaluated - both symbolically and under simulation. However, I'm at a disadvantage in that I am merely a dabbler in the field of economics and game theory. I also have no formal background in stochastic finance or physics. I am but a Systems Engineer. So, fun challenges ahead.
You clearly don't know anyone suffering from depression and/or anxiety.

If you think money relieves anything—regardless of the amount—you're quite mistaken.

Robin Williams was a literal multi-millionaire, and if money relieved anything, he'd still be here.
yeah, no shit... who would'e thought. like homo sapiens ain't an animal.
Hong Kong has just gotten to that point.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/technology/hong-kong-prot...
https://gizmodo.com/how-hong-kong-s-protestors-are-hindering...
What I find fascinating Is how people view the future as some sort of progressive utopia. But if you look at history actually that’s not true. The Roman Empire was more supportive of woman’s rights than 18th century America. It’s entirely plausible we could experience a regression of social norms, and that could last hundreds of thousands of years. History isn’t linear.
> Barring a simultaneous complete and total collapse of all civilizations on Earth

Many archives are not replicated, at least not including all important pieces. Also note that what's worth keeping vs what's unimportant might change over time. Bach and Vivaldi only became famous after their death. I don't say that everything should be preserved forever, just that it's kept in mind.
A mobile app that at least 1 billion people use to communicate with one another.
I think of high contrast areas as having the strongest mood boosting. By that I mean river fronts, visible mountain ranges, the beach, the edges of forests. No doubt trees in cities are visually pleasing, living in the middle of dark dense forest not so much.

'round these parts, trees seem to perform two useful functions. They fall on houses during storms (quite common) or they burn down whole towns. Be careful what you wish for.
Or your city council. I got a personal reply from one of my council members this morning in response to an email I sent based on this: https://www.seattleindivisible.com/daily-actions/2019/8/1/no...

She promised to investigate and follow up on a policy front. Good use of two minutes of my time.
I'll look into it! Thanks for sharing!
oh yeah, it's a typo and someone is using the typo-squatted domain for nefariousness!

1) correct: reservecalifornia.com

2) incorrect: reservecaliforrnia [dot com]

Note two 'r'
We see a lot of people trying to justify medical salaries due to the cost of education and malpractice insurance, but an integrated program could work around that.

We should treat it like the infantry. If you want to drive a tank and blow up people, you don't apply to a college and get a Doctorate in Blowing People Up. You don't buy insurance to cover if you blow up the wrong people. You join the army.

I'd like to see health care reform inspired by military structure. A high-schooler eager to get into medicine joins the Health Corps, and gets their education covered in exchange for n years of working in state-run facilities. There's strongly restricted legal recourse if the Health Corps hospital cuts off the wrong foot-- here's $500 and a really nice wooden peg.

As a self-contained system, I could also imagine it working around some of the structure that's restricting the industry. I'm picturing programmes to advance in both through direct study and training, and where appropriate "field promotions" (think of the 20-year term nurse who knows more than most of the doctors from experience, but will never be able to escape their position without expensive and onerous formal training/certification)
Animated – Disturbing True Block Party Stories (Vol.14)
Alright then. What do you recommend we do about it?

Honestly. You've got the top comment on a top-10 topic. The floor is yours. What do you want to say?

This is why I hate the Occupy movement - congrats, you've raised awareness. Now what?

Remember - we've already got https://concentrationcamps.us - and the same agency has enough fentanyl stockpiled (admittedly, it is hard to break down) to execute each person in the US 2.5x over.

This is looking less and less like coincidence that Donny Drumpf had "Mein Kampf" by his bedside.

Come on comrade. Where do we meet to discuss it privately? Is there more to be done than "call your senator" or such? Keep tabs with RTL-SDRs? Launch improvised drones with hand-to-hand combat tech and solar panels?

Or shall we don the tinfoil hats of our forefathers, adorn them with IR-LEDs, and watch the world end in an every-hacker-for-theirself cluserfuck?

I'd really rather this world and humanity go on, rather than make our climate, our country, our freedom untenable. But its not up to just me. It takes a team to do much of anything worth doing - and our culture isolates us rather neatly.

So what'll it be comrade? If you wanna "meet for discussion" on some no-logging, private means of discussion, I'm in. Make sure to use a semi-private mid-layer meetpoint to gather, and point the team to somewhere even more private. If there's any dox involved in signing up for any of it, you're doing it wrong.

So, where's the first meet? And the vetting?
Two answers:

- Hygeine? That was invented by Louis Pasteur in the nineteenth century. :)

- In circumstances that allowed it, bread was often used as a plate (“trenchers.”) Would be nicely hygienic if the bread used in this way wasn’t traditionally then given as alms.
They ate off trenchers, hard pieces of bread which you could also eat. No dishes to worry about (and ceramic glazes plus metal utensils are tough to come by anyway).
https://outline.com/urvuEC

https://web.archive.org/web/20190803011609/https://www.econo...
Interested if places with evergreen trees (e.g. PNW) fair better than areas with mostly deciduous trees?
That struck me as weird as well. The article should have clarified it, since for all intense and purposes it is "unspecified damages." Their legal fees alone will probably be at least 10 times that.
The fact that you've summarized web development as just throwing up a web page, and that you've assumed web development is never performance sensitive, leads me to believe that although you're an embedded developer - you're likely an inexperienced one.
I'm a Python/C++ programmer and I think this is good advice. There are a lot of JavaScript programmers around, JS engines are fast and the tooling is great. I have rarely had an opportunity to share frontend and backend code, but it does happen.

If I were starting a new product I'd look into TypeScript. Haven't used it, but I hear a lot of "I tried it and it was a clear improvement" which I think is a good sign. I would also look into whatever the big companies are pushing as their storage layer of choice, though I'm normally a Postgres guy. Would give me peace of mind to still talk to it with SQL though.
If they are self directed, yes.
Memes aside... Sex has weird and sometimes offensive smells. This holds true for queer folks, straight folks, and even folks with good hygiene. I feel like most sexually active adults already know this.

You aren't always going to get a shower and a toothbrush just prior to bumping uglies.
Phoenix + Postgres, railsy enough to get it done quick and room enough to take the same codebase to a million user throughput. I wouldn't have it any other way.
There's theories out there that bacteria that oxidizes ammonia would have been pretty common. Before treated water and daily soaping.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/my-no-soap-no-sh...
I suspect at those times everyone reeked relative to today, but they just didn't have anything better to compare to.
Ask HN: Is a JIT Necessary for a JavaScript Runtime?
Hello! I am considering eventually writing a Web browser as an educational project.

I’m wondering if a browser with a JavaScript interpreter without just-in-time compilation would be too slow to be actually usable.

I think you could argue that if a site is unbearably slow in a regular interpreter, it’s probably also slow in v8 or another runtime.

I don’t doubt that I could write one... Just wondering if all the time is worth it.

Thanks!
Why would you force people to use nonfree proprietary software in order to contribute to an open project?
This is a great idea.

Another ebook non-profit I'd like to see is one that shepherds books through the copyright maze. No doubt there are scads of books in the public domain that no one has proven are actually there. Perhaps this exists already but it strikes me as a good separate, and highly targeted, kind of effort.
Imagine if someone will create an ideal ad blocking service.

How much wealth will be wiped out ...
Seeing a GP isn't necessarily a guarantee that you will get diagnosed properly. Most PAs know their limits and will consult with a doctor if they're not comfortable. Doctors complain about malpractice insurance, but the rates are high for a reason. I was misdiagnosed when I had cancer, my wife was mis-prescribed when doing fertility treatments. Hell, being rich doesn't help; look at Bill Paxton and Neil Armstrong.
Neither did I! But it surely had to be a visible threat. A road where you can drive 68MPH is going to have enough visibility that you’ll see a truck that might cross your path at least that far in advance. Especially in flat-as-a-pancake Florida.
Amazon allegedly scammed out of $370K by 22-year-old's return shipments of dirt
Haha, alas no. You have me curious about CRDT and immutability though and will be investigating it more for my application. If at all possible. Appreciate the talk!
Comment more
It would be nice if all the cloud vendors agreed on a key/value and/or consensus protocol that all servers in a cluster can connect to - and maybe even supported via docker, natively even if there's just one cluster member. Like plug-n-play for clustering tech. (Bonjour basically but suitable for cloud/enterprise software)
The casual assumption that it is appropriate for government to tax people in order to distribute wealth "evenly" is disturbing.

I'm reacting to the "even distribution" notion not taxing in general. I think there are legitimate reasons for government to collect taxes but ensuring even distribution of wealth isn't one of them, IMHO.
SuperLife STC30 (Superlife Total Care)
The Joy of Books Is Lost When We Treat Reading as Self-Improvement
If I were you I’d use the stack you are most comfortable with if it can satisfy your requirements.

Otherwise choose what would be easiest to learn. E.g. if you know python but not web python, learn a python web framework instead of moving to NodeJS.

I’d probably keep it simple for an MVP and use a cloud managed SQL database, a popular stack like rails or something equivalent and use minimal client side JS (not a SPA) because that’ll reduce your time to getting it done.

Use cloud services to save you headaches as much as possible: managed databases, VMs preloaded with Linux. Cheat by chucking cloudflare in front of it to get SSL, unless your cloud can do the letsencrypt for you.

Avoid Kubernetes, docker, nosql, lambdas and anything else that’ll complicate things.

You want a monolithic crud app that serves up HTML like it’s 2006.
Emergency medicine most definitely can be a profit center. That's why you see all of these new freestanding emergency rooms that look like an urgent care center but are open 24 hours and bill 2x as much.
To me it sounds like a badly trained foreign spy. Which is actually pretty good if the goal is to sound human-like!
> not as frequently as we do now

Evidence? (I'm legitimately curious; the OP seems well researched.)
If an overpass is falsely identified as the broadside of a truck, even a very small percentage of the time, then sudden breaking in the middle of the road would be very dangerous. Also, from a PR standpoint, I think there would be many articles about how AP caused a fatal accident rather than merely failing to prevent it...
Was it necessary to leave the names in the screenshot?
Ask HN:What would you like a list of links about?
I bet there is a direct correlation between how much good will someone extends DOD and how much they believe their history books.
In BotW, it's best to have all meals posible prepared already because if you get hit and ran out of meals, you'd be getting half the replenishment fro the raw ingredients.
I think we are at the point of risk where the volume of discoverable information is so great that the parties at "risk" are needles in the haystack. There may be some analytical value in combing the available data, but if a specific target were interesting, they are probably already compromised.

In a way, it is to say that few organizations have especially interesting information. The few that do can be compromised with social approaches. So exposures such as these are becoming less and less embarrassing. Every organization is dysfunctional to some degree, and every org has some communications that (especially taken out of context) might raise eyebrows; but that is life, and that is what happens when you gather numbers of people in one place.

Point is, stories like these are useful for adding to a corporate checklist of exposure safety, but they aren't worth much else (unless of course the org holds secrets that could hugely disrupt the world).
I've always found the chart of Rome's population [1] very thought-provoking. That's unimaginable collapse of cities, trade, arts...

[1] https://i.imgur.com/bVjPVPK.png
We could have a discussion about the definition of the word Hacker vs Cracker - but people have been arguing about that since the 90s.
Apocryphal, see wikiquote.
It would, but China might be close to the point where it wants to start to transition to a more service-based economy. In that case, they can use the stronger currency to buy the resources they require and establish favourable trade agreements with nations other than the United States.
The guidance system will show the truck approaching from the rear. It will show it drive along side you, and pass, and it will show it driving in front of you.

GreenTheOnly posts lots of videos of internal captures from his Tesla AutoPilot (I believe he “jailbreaked” his Tesla to capture them. Here’s an example of what the software is tracking [1].

He was able to capture one case where there happened to be a trailer backing up / parking in front of him a couple months back [2]

[1] - https://youtu.be/7ztK5AhShqU

[2] - https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1118330606146998272?...
>Let's say soap actually is a medieval invention. (I see this debated, but the author seems to emphatically feel it is an important point) Doesn't that mean, pretty much by definition, that some medieval people didn't use soap? Unless they invented soap on the actual first day of the middle ages and it immediately went viral.

Well, the author already notes that in absence of soap earlier they used oil for scrubbing, and/or added herbs to the water for aroma.

>Unless they invented soap on the actual first day of the middle ages and it immediately went viral.

Well, whether it was unavailable for the first day or first couple of centuries of the middle ages is not really important for the general claim that medieval people had it. E.g. people in the last 4-5 centuries of the middle ages are still medieval people, still considered "non bathing" by many moderns, and half a millennium is still a good chunk of time.

Especially since the author already covered what e.g. Romans did pre-soap (or rather, in lieu of soap, as soap was available in the empire, but not preferred by Romans until towards the end).
Anyone remember that period where FREE dialup was everywhere - even freaking KMart had one- little ad appeared at the top of the screen.

Here it is:
https://archive.org/details/bluelight_201711
If you can find one, a LS-120 is a nifty alternative. Works with a $5 PATA-SATA adaptor.
I'm waiting for the first federal bill to require that all trucks over a certain size must be painted with some recognizable pattern, to these driving systems. All white, and perhaps all some other colors, will be illegal.

(I'm 1/2 waiting for this to appear in The Onion.)
Robolink | Lead Software Engineer | San Diego, CA | Full Time | ONSITE preferred | robolink.com

Here's our Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robolink/driving-into-t...

Full job description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O0z7uf-whsoxMlwtQlT8_xS2...

We are Robolink, we make robots meant to teach about coding and AI for the classroom. We're a small startup team of 7, with years of experience (and a few awards under our belt!) in creating educational robotics for helping kids to fall in love with coding. Our latest product, Zumi, is a small self-driving car kit meant to teach students about what AI is and how it works. We're looking for someone who can join our exciting young team to bring our software skills to the next level. We are seeking to build a best-in-class product that will be the first fully-developed product meant to make AI approachable for a 6-12th grade classroom setting. We are looking for a software engineer with experience leading a team of engineers to build software for a hardware product. If this describes you or sounds exciting to you, we'd love to talk:

You have experience working with educational technology and know how to see a technical project from conception to deployment, and through post-launch maintenance and further iterations. You will have full control of the entire cycle of software development and will seek to strive for reliability, efficiency, user friendliness, and ease of maintenance in the code and the work that you produce. You are ready and willing to guide our junior engineers as needed, so that our development team can jump to that next level of quality. Importantly, like us, you have a passion for teaching the world about coding and wanting to create the tools to make kids fall in love with coding and robotics.

Tech: Python/Flask, React, Pi 0, Arduino, TensorFlow, Keras, OpenCV

If you're interested, e-mail me: wes@robolink.com
"Sate their lust for blood"?
You mean that one can’t retrieve a list of links about using google?
Body odors are one thing. Not having showered for weeks is another.
Here’s a 5 hour documentary series: https://youtu.be/nO5vjmDFZaI