skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Security researchers who solely reverse engineer closed-source software?
Here’s the context: I love and prefer to use open-source software whenever possible. However, a lot of times, it’s simply not practical when there’s plug-and-play software out there with amazing UX compared to the, unfortunately, shitty UX of a lot of open-source software.

As a concrete example: I’m a user of the macOS software “Little Snitch” and I feel like, at this point, I can no longer live without the functionality that it provides; it’s one of the quite few pieces of software that I’ve actually “happily” paid $ for. However, ever since the first day I started using the thing — years ago — I’ve constantly felt this very, very, very deeply uncomfortable feeling inside literally giving kernel-level access/authorization to this closed-source piece of software. This is something that I feel like a lot of folks don’t think about hard enough. (Side note: This is partially why I’m of the opinion that software engineers should, at least once in their career, write some low-level systems code — especially kernel code; the perspective that you gain is priceless.)

I’ve been wondering: Why isn’t there a group of security researchers who focus solely on reverse engineering closed-source software as new versions come out? I’d absolutely be willing to pay a subscription fee for a service like this! Maybe something like this already exists, but none of my searches have returned any legit results. E.g., if I could have a simple tool that would basically tell me that it’s okay to install this version of Little Snitch (I mean version here as in an actual hash of the binary or .app file/directory), because this specific group of reputable security researchers — with their careers on the line — have reversed engineered it and found nothing fishy going on, I’d be happy to pay probably even $50/month for a service like this.

Does this exist? If not, who’s going to start it and where do I sign up?!?
It isn't; it's only slightly more convenient from user's POV. But it offers an opportunity for a middleman to insert itself between the restaurants and the people making orders.
Agreed, but the majority are not setting the policy agenda.
Maybe we should consider one for arguments to avoid arguments like yours
Do you have evidence of a number of "leftist" activists that have approximately the same count of murders as right-wingers/white supremacists have?

I mean, something to balance and show some equivalence?

You don't.

Because the single biggest real threat to any US citizen today is an other US citizen that can grab a weapon at will.

And it happens that in the overwhelming number of cases, the person that becomes a mass-murderer is a white, conservative, pro-right, pro-weapon, pro-republican.

Not acknowledging this is either total denial - or total complicity.

And. This is totally about politics (how a government deals with its people). NRA politics; that serves a very specific ideology.

Look in Wikipedia this category: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mass_shootings_by_cou... - then browse by country.

All countries, but the USA have sporadic sub-articles. USA has whole sub-categories.

USA are the _single_ country in the world where there are as many mass shootings, every year. When there are been more than 250 in the USA in 2019, there hasn't been even 10 in any other country in the world.

(to the down voters: downvote as much as you want guys - facts are facts - you are only deluding yourselves - you should look in the mirror more and stop considering the USA as the center/perfection of all things, because it's not)
It provides a keystroke-based language for working with textual information. That language embodies concepts that we think of the information and operations relating to it in terms of -- words, sentences, code blocks, etc, and deleting, changing, etc these. This allows us to directly translate our thoughts "I want to delete this sentence" into actions "das".
You don't even need firearms to inflict mass causalities, so magazine limits are political theater imho.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/19/japan-arson-attack-on-anime-...

Firearm restrictions also inhibits civilians from resisting state violence if it ever came down to it. I've heard the tanks/planes arguments, but if those are so effective why are we still in Afghanistan? (hint: they have firearms)
Ask HN: Germans, how to work legally remote?
Hey there,

being a freelancer in Germany is possible and well-known if you have multiple clients throughout the year and follow some rules.

However, being a remote worker and employee of a US corp/startup seems to be a grey zone to me because German law requires to work maximum 80% of your time for one client only.

How do you solve that problem? Is there even a legal way to do that?

I also thought about incorporating a GmbH which then creates invoices to the US company. Nevertheless, this would introduce additional costs and probably risks (e. g. when you are no longer an employee of the US corp).

I asked some tax consultants. Nobody of them really understood what I want to do and additionally, the bigger problem seems to be the German Rentenversicherung and not only the Finanzamt.

More info: I want to stay in Germany and am a German citizen. I want to be for a significant time at the company (3y+).
Thanks for the detailed answer again. Clearly, there exists a business opportunity to innovate on these systems, make them cheaper and sell them in my new city.

Both the systems you link to are reverse osmosis systems which require electric power to run the pumps etc. Solar radiation -> electric power is only 20% efficient. My understanding is that membrane distillation tech uses hot water (60 degrees in OP link), which can run on solar thermal systems + small amount of PV. Solar radiation -> thermal energy of water can be 80%+ efficient, so the price of the whole system might come down significantly from the $5000.
Actually Germany had strict hate speech laws and worked hard to prevent the Nazis from rising to power.

From this article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...

Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigor. As history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.

So it is not quite as you have claimed.
For the context: are you UK based?
Confused, why is the macro name necessary when the pattern itself already specifies the macro name?
I don't know about father figure specifically, but the dialogue you get from many on xChan sites really just makes me just want to talk to them. For every n playing it up, there must be a few who genuinely have these hateful views.

I've never been that far down the rabbit hole but I can imagine a lack of any human contact playing a role from my experience.
Imagine if records were still the best known music technology today. You'd buy a record ad half of it would be ads. People would make paper templates to tape to records to block ads.
Can you conceal these cannons when you walk into a mall before shooting others?
Even Bernie came against this reality: his workers demanded $15/hr, you know in line with his stated policy platform. So, he did concede the raise but cut back on their hours.

Now, I’m somewhere in the middle. I think shipping jobs overseas has had a catastrophic impact on wages and jobs (unions can’t protect against this in any meaningful way). Also unions will milk a company dry regardless of consequences. But they occasionally protect against some abuse. On the other hand they stifle innovation in very counterproductive ways.
Back in 1974, the 'Amateur Scientist' column in Scientific American covered electrostatic motors: http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Energy/ESMotors.pdf

There's a lot of electrical energy swirling around in the ionosphere!
A lightweight popup like tooltips, fully customizable with arrow and animations
Thank your for commenting!

> This immediately makes me want to read said postcard. Is there something to this effect? [Couldn't find it.]

I actually did not do such exercise, sorry :-) BUT: 1) almost all syntactic features are demonstrated in the first two examples/lessons in the wiki (and could be compressed further); 2) the formal context-free grammar can be found in the large PDF (caution: crude, work in progress!): https://github.com/rusini/manool/releases/download/v0.2-beta... It has only 25 rules. That's comparable with Smalltalk. Besides, Smalltalk was a source of inspiration for the syntax, since it is culturally a cousin of LISP, does not use S-expressions, but its syntax does allow for a kind of DSLs (think ... ifTrue: ...). MANOOL is similar in that respect, but its syntax is closer to S-expressions (allows you to express name bindings).

>I didn't see the advantage...

S-expressions have syntactic sugar to express lists: (A B C) -> (A . (B . (C . ()))) MANOOL has that and slightly more: infix/postfix operators (and one prefix), etc.: A[B; C] -> {A B C}, A + B -> {(+) A B}, {A: B C} -> {A {B C}}, A.B[C] -> {B A C}, etc... (it does not have dotted pair notation, but I hope the idea is clear).

That syntactic sugar is abstract and independent of what actually A[B; C] and A + B mean. The intention, for example, is that the syntax (at the context-free grammar level - surface syntax) does not need to change no matter what features we need in the future. It is said that context-free grammars are not modular: as the language evolves it is easy to introduce ambiguities (think C++). MANOOL approach does not suffer from that; features (like keywords if, while...) can even be made available selectively in a limited scope, if needed. I call it "universal grammar".

On the other hand, I strongly suspect that the resulting syntax is better than S-expressions "psychologically" (sorry LISP'ers :-). It is not a matter of our familiarity with infix notations (from mid school), but our brain has very limited "stack". Anyway, the point of MANOOL is not its syntax or homoiconicity; it was originally just a nice implementation strategy. The point lies deeper in some semantic features...

BTW that's not the first time that someone comes and suggests something to replace S-expressions and... fails. BUT one successful example is Smalltalk (albeit the result is not quite "homoiconic"), so that inspired me too.

As to why {} instead of ()... the main reason is that () had to be reserved for explicit grouping of subexpressions (just like in mid school or Smalltalk): (1 + 2) * 3. BTW that's why I had to use [] for "applications" and that might look ugly to people (but think about failed M-expressions).

As to optional ";", that was precisely one of those "design compromises" I am talking about. Personally, I am not a fan of "semicolon omissions" :-)
All citizens that wouldn't be killed:
* by mistake because it found one in a cupboard?
* by someone who gets to discharge his feelings?
The solution to ideologues who murder is not to listen to them more carefully.

No one seriously suggests we need to be more respectful of the beliefs of ISIS.
Mocking Dependencies with PHPUnit and Prophecy
The first person to cross the English channel on a "flyboard"
Because then people will cheat and have a friend do the test for you. I have people pretending to have certifications they don't have.. or actually having the certification but somehow can't answer non obscure facts... (How can you be AWS solution architect, verified certificate, but not know that the general purpose EC2 instances is... Or what AWS service provides script execution in languages like python or node? And what service they provide for logging? I had a candidate that failed all 3 questions... My only thought is someone took the exam for him...

Other than that, there is teaching to the test. You can easily argue that's what happens now, and most systems suffer for it. People learn concepts they are required to, but rarely good application of those concepts because they only have 90 minutes to cover a large topic like composition vs inheritance. You get one or two examples about animals barking and cars. Good luck figuring out how to apply that to business topics!
> (hello UK!)

Brit here. What are you on about?
> What it needs is an open source system that stitches them all together, but let's the drivers choose whatever company they want. I use one app, every company has the chance to make money, drivers go with what works for them.

This is a general problem - for taxis, public transportation services, ordering food, e-commerce, movie streaming services, etc. Companies fracture the market on purpose, in hopes of exploiting the inconvenience of managing multiple service subscriptions or accounts.

What we need is some pressure[0] to force companies to relinquish the user interface. In a perfect world, all these services would be consuming API calls, and would be independent of the actual means users use to place orders. There should be a separate market for services, and a separate market for interfaces to those services.

--

[0] - which probably would have to be regulatory, since it goes against the short-term interest of any company.
PostgreSQL Fulltext Search with DBIx:Class
Okay. Let’s say we’ve gathered a list of the most dangerous ‘violent’ words (e.g. kill, harm, murder, cleanse, racial epithets, etc.) that could be used in a direct incitement to violence. Would you support a license requirement and word limit on these words? Nevermind that they have various legitimate lawful uses, people’s lives are at stake!
I watched a show on the NBC app and the first ad break played eleven unskippable advertisements. Eleven. That is just ridiculous.

I didn't even finish the show.
Because it's hard to not something if your job depends on something or other.
> The only thing Uber did that is worth admiring is fixing the "get a ride" situation

Every time someone says that I'm reminded of a pre-uber taxi driver telling me a "funny" story how a previous customer said he'll complain about some issue - "But what will he do? I'm just a contractor renting a radio. He can call the office all he wants."

Now we've got driver ratings. And the drivers are concerned about them. And I'm happy that giving a terrible/unsafe ride 1 star will have some impact.
Thank you for your valuable contribution to the discussion
Even Thatcher in speeches back in the 80s about CO2, NO2 and CFCs acknowledged the West should pay more by dint of being already developed. CO2 action was marked by how insignificant it was, starting with Chile that was ineffectual in the extreme. CFCs got backing from Reagan, though Carter had already started a phase out in aerosols, CO2 didn't. I've seen some claims that in part that backing was because Reagan had had skin cancer in the early 80s.

The current generation of politicians around the globe seem content to ignore any sense of responsibility either globally or locally.

Sure there's much to be embarrassed of being British, continuing into the modern era by our status as national laughing stock over the last 3 years. Yet there's much you don't mention, like the African slave trade having hundreds of years of African raids on European coasts, as far north as Britain and Ireland, occasionally Iceland, or the Barbary pirates and millions of Europeans having gone through. The Western Europeans didn't invent that, they continued it in developed markets that were endemic in the local culture.

I wish we hadn't, I wish we had abolished it earlier, but it's not as black and white as you paint it.

The earliest interactions of West and India was much more modern in outlook - intermarriage was commonplace, racism came later as we move well into the 19th century. So commonplace that it was actually encouraged. Many converted too. By the mid 19th century that history was being discouraged and whitewashed out of existence.

We are where we are, and cannot change the mores of English, Indian, or any other nation or continent, but trying to view the whole of history with 21st century outlook is a minefield, fraught with tripwires, "reasons" and exceptions. 300 years of every nation's history will reveal plenty we might wish hadn't happened.

TL;DR Britain and the other developed nations should be doing far, far more to aid the developing world on climate. Simply because we're developed. Britain could start by banning fossil fuel projects in our overseas aid, which is a bloody embarrassment, and replacing with more future oriented projects.

Eventually, hopefully soon enough, we're going to have to accept we can't let the developing world off the hook on carbon treaties. As they develop 10 or 20 years past the treaty to emit like India and China yet still count as developing countries with no commitment to meet. The developed nations will have to accept they're probably going to have to pay for that. Otherwise we're probably screwed, because I doubt anyone is going to accept "well you just have to stay undeveloped for the good of the planet".
It's like going to Amazon and getting paragraphs instead of books. Or how we get just headlines instead of deeply informative news articles.

If you are going to get defensive about someone pointing out something you didn't know, that might be a sign of insecurity.
We all lose if global temperatures rise, but it's true that those of us living in prosperous industrialised nations (North America, Europe, Australia & NZ, Japan) will be able to cope better with climate change than other countries.

We're simply too comfortable in our current lifestyles to make any changes that might challenge that comfort. Would you fly less? No, didn't so. Eat less meat? Nope. How about unplugging your smartphone from its charger when not in use? Yes! We'll happily do that, despite being utterly inconsequential. (Like bailing the titanic with a teaspoon, to use a description from the book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air.)

We look to governments for action, but if governments took measures to encourage less flying or reducing the farming of meat, we'd never accept it. Most of our politicians are too weak-willed to enact bold legislation and it's mostly because they know we the electorate won't stomach it.

The truth is we love to point accusatory fingers at others but never lift a finger ourselves. Are we all a bunch of hypocrites and simply not willing to admit it?
China already hit their 2020 goals years early. Their pledge was also far higher than the US's.
Perhaps check your sources there mate, because you are provably wrong and should acknowledge that.
There should be many apps, and there should be many services, and apps and services should be separate markets. This way you could choose the UX that works for you and use it to consume services you want. IMO, a situation in which you're e.g. forced to use Uber only through Uber's app should not be allowed.
You may be on to something, but what would "ready for it" have looked like? Are we talking technical, or social progress? Because social progress would appear to depend at least in part on technical progress (for example, automation making slavery obsolete), and technical progress depends on... abundant energy.
There may be some protections in place, but President Jair Bolsonaro just forced scientist Ricardo Galvão to resign from the National Space Research Agency for having the audacity to report an 88% annual increase in deforestation in satellite data. The President called the numbers a lie.

One can understand how this attitude undermines the integrity of the reserve.
You’re making it seem like it’s a super risky and tenuous approach, but it’s long been understood that discussing “why suicide is a bad idea” with certain populations increases the odds of suicide in the group.
Do you pay candidates for the day they spend working for you?
>Why? What makes you you?

My history until now.

>Maybe you are already being emulated, how would you know?

It doesn't matter.
It's very hard to find a partner nowadays. In the past, people dated within the local community, so women were limited to their local dating pool. With the advent of online dating, women can afford to be choosy and pick from guys all over the country, if not even all over the world. As a result, many men that would have found someone in the past are going to be lonely nowadays.

Now, the obvious reply to that is "but online dating is for men too, look at all these guys meeting a different girl every day". This applies to a very small minority of men. The confident, attractive types with great bodies. An average woman will still get lots of attention on dating website and have a lot of guys to pick from, an average guy won't really get any attention on such websites.
if you think people with automatic rifles are going to be anything other than a minor annoyance to an organized army you're in for a shock. On this very site there's been articles about the gorgon stare. Rifles don't compete against that technology.
CM Storm Quick Fire Rapid: http://us.coolermaster.com/product/Detail/gaming/quickfire/r...

Wouldn't have mentioned it if I didn't love it.
!g is wonderfully helpful (but not too common for me).

I find it pretty funny that I automatically add !g when the Google results suck as well.
‘You are bringing a musket to a drone fight’ - Jim Jeffries
They also crash incredibly often by civil aviation standards.
The Jupiter notebook kernel seems to be broken for it right now.
Document and Query Processing for the Browser
Vinyl also has hiss, and pop, and is why some people prefer it, like the motion blur of film, it feels more nostalgically arty, separate from reality.
Most evil corporations in history? Really? I mean they have nothing on the British East Indian Company, which took over and ruled over India as a private enterprises.
What guidelines? Never seen any vulnerability report that included how to trigger the vulnerability, what it gives the attacker or how to remediate it in the language/framework being used.
Sorry, I did not had time to add that content (I was in hurry to show my work and at least make an intro, after 4 years of silence and hard work :-) BUT thank you for the suggestion! I will include those benchmarks shortly.

Refs to wikipedia help me to focus on using common terminology as much as possible (and I actually wrote the Intro also for some of my friends that do not understand what "programming" means if I do not speak of "computer programming" and add a link to wikipedia :-). BTW personally, I also find hyperrefs annoying aesthetically...