skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would replace OIDs with URNs. Textual identifiers are much nicer than OIDs in any APIs and in any UIs (if they must leak there, which often happens). This goes for things like GSS-API as well.

I do NOT like definite-length encoding. It's nice to have the full length of a PDU up front, but inside the PDU you want to use indefinite length encoding for everything as this greatly simplifies encoding.

Tag-length-value (TLV) is an anti-optimization that was only ever a crutch. By the time the ITU-T worked on PER this was well understood. I feel that the use of TLV encoding rules held back [open source] compiler creation for ASN.1.

Compare to XDR and rpcgen. XDR is a lot like a subset of ASN.1 with PER-/OER-like encoding that uses 4-octet alignment. XDR was long easier to use than ASN.1, but why? Mostly because a) it has C-like syntax and is fairly easy to build parsers for, and b) the encoding rules are very straightforward.

Protocol buffers makes some of the same mistakes as DER...

It's really difficult to reinvent wheels well. It really helps to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Specifically, here, there's a lot functionality in ASN.1 the _syntax_ that would be very good to keep. As for encoding rules, XDR is dead simple, so I'd use that for almost anything.

It's also good to know what's really missing. For my money, the most commonly missing feature is control over emitted types for the host language, and, specifically, lack of a way to emit private fields that are not to be encoded or decoded but which make it easy to keep state near relevant data.

XDR is so simple that as long as you have a decent buffer abstraction and support routines for encoding/decoding scalar types, it's easy enough to do without a compiler.

The most promising newish thing here is flatbuffers.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, I've seen some things on YouTube that point in that direction. Some random new creators have suddenly amassed millions of views and over a million subscribers with as few as 5 mediocre videos.

These creators have either found some way to game the YouTube algorithm, or they have been created by YouTube (or other media giants like Disney) and promoted heavily across organic channels in an attempt to create the kind of stars (that media companies can control) you see, say, on Disney Kids.

It's becoming clear to me that as we enter the fourth decade of the internet, the open, democratic nature of the internet is under siege.
Google is heavily involved as well, in both the client libraries and the agent development. In addition to Google, Omnition, Microsoft and others are also major contributors. All of the OpenCensus community is moving over to OpenTelemetry, Google and Omnition included.
Biked in snow plenty of times. It's fine. Also cities can plow bike trails even easier than they plow streets.

Plenty of bike options for little kids. Seats, trailers, box bikes, etc. etc.
Surprised by this news. Tumblr has lost a ton of momentum since its policy change, and the site itself doesn't have a very strong "brand" audience attached to it.

Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.
https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

"And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!"
This is interesting, given Automattic has one of the...weirdest views on free speech there is today.

Near-absolute free speech, within the means of the law, with really odd exceptions.
Low power points aren’t expensive.

Ultimately if it was the other way around, and gasoline cars were the new technology, people would think it was mad to put huge underground storage depots filled with explosive liquid dotted throughout residential neighbourhoods. Charging infrastructure will just become normal. If there are people willing to pay to use it there are people who are going to fit it.
This is a change in Chrome, so I doubt it affects windows.

Also, EV certificates are for bypassing reputation checks for smartscreen[1], not for UAC dialogs. If the user has smartscreen disabled, there's no difference.

[1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2012/08/14/microsoft-sma...
Thanks for the link. I never knew they google used a manual page/site quality as in input.

I can see the effect of the site quality in the search results if I search for something like "creatine benefits". Something like mayoclinic (high reputation) is #7 on google but #13 on duckduckgo. bodybuilding.com (lower reputation) is #10 on google, but #2 on duckduckgo.

selfhacked.com is #20 on google search results, but #4 from duckduckgo

examine.com is #52 on google search results, but #26 from duckduckgo

Google also ranks high results from healthline, webmd, menshealth, gnc, mensjournal, etc.

I can see how the site quality could improve results, but the effectiveness depends on the skill and neutrality of the reviewers, which I wouldn't expect to be that good. And over time it will tend to favor big, old websites, making it difficult for new websites to gain traction, even if their content is superior.

I wish google made this "Quality Search" an option just like "Safe Search". The default can be on, but we should be able to turn this off.
There are laws/expectations that state a company must optimize for profits (Dodge v Ford). Perhaps this what is meant.
This is how extradition cases are heard everywhere (including Hong Kong, which has extradition treaties with several countries)

They are not trials. They are meant to decide whether the person should be extradited following a request to do so from another country.
Sure, charging an EV is not the same paradigm as filling a car with gas. I'm just not sure it needs to be. If every Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods had a bunch of EV chargers that could charge your car to 80-90% in 30 minutes that would handle the charging needs for a lot of car owners.

For "everyone" to have EVs we will need chargers at apartments and work places, or for fast chargers to get into the 80% charge in ~5min range.

That problem is not solved yet but is being tackled from both sides.
Its very serious, and it IS a problem and its not just "suckers". At the very minimum, they're preying on children who don't have the capacity to understand the depths of addiction - but in this case I'd say its extremely common in adults to lack the antibodies for this type of reward system. Its predatory pure and simple, in ways that we have legislated against in the past (think of the literal snake oil salespeople - the FDA was created to combat hucksters looking to make a buck).
I don’t see why he couldn’t sue the bank. Someone should try it.
Please don't respond to a bad comment by making the thread still worse. That helps nothing. Instead, you can flag egregious comments, as described in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
The utter lack of public transit is my main issue. Even the cities that have some tend to be very unreliable.

Though to your point, interstates tend to be pretty good, but but a lot of random cities’ surface streets can be pretty bad, there have been public health scares like the lead contamination in Flint, Michigan, and there was a often cited report by the American Society of Civil Engineers that rated the USA poorly on its infrastructure [1].

[1] https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/
It's not hard to wear rain gear or budget some time to clean up once you arrive at your destination. Any sort of plan to encourage active commutes should also include facilities in workplaces for this sort of thing.

Snow and ice: not as big a problem as you think. Cities and towns can plow and salt bike paths even easier than they do streets. You can also put studded tires on bicycles if you're in a particularly snowy area. See Oulu, Finland or Winnipeg, Canada for cities with plenty of winter cyclists: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/12/ice-cycles-no...
That's overly critical, one of cofounders was a very knowledgeable supplement expert who was getting his PhD in the subject. It's definitely not a fraud, its had great quality science based content for a number of years, I've been checking back in every few months for various questions.
I would pay a premium for the feeling of increased safety. If Uber had better cars and drivers it would be worth it for some people to pay the higher price as the stress of a bad driver at the wheel is horrible. The constant feeling of "will this next corner be my death?" No thank you.
Well that’s true… but for the purposes of this discussion, I think any residence that doesn’t have a garage qualifies.
I am also talking to the CEO of Automattic live about this story... not a duplicate.
I have my own issues with how the site presents itself, but I don't think it's correct to claim that the site is "clearly a fraud".

Digging in, the studies they link to do seem to correlate with what they're saying, but I'm not skilled at performing a meta-analysis of scientific research, nor have I fully examined all of the sources for any of their articles, or looked for additional articles that might contradict what they're presenting.

So it's ok to suggest taking the site with a grain of salt, but claiming they're a fraud is definitely unsubstantiated.
Isn’t that majority opinion in America? I only see opposition to free speech in niche communities.
What do you think about teaching people how the Internet technically works? Do you consider it useful? Would you recommend it to your (no-tech) friends? Do you consider it not so useful?
It's true indies and smaller studios can make some great games but there's yet to be a real way to make a large game with lots of detail and nice graphics other than throwing tons of people at it to place all the random street trash in The Division or figure out the building destruction in Battlefield and those people are expensive.

I'm not defending the microtransaction money grabs EA has been making recently but there is something to be said for the fact that games have STAYED $60 for years while getting more detailed and more expensive to make.
Perhaps you only infrequently read sentences not aimed at younger people? So much writing is these days. He seems very clear and straightforward to me. Aren't there sites out there which analyse text and determine the "reading age"? Perhaps perform some comparisons for yourself.
Sadly, if you started putting outlets on the side of street poles in the Bay Area you would attract camper vans rather than EVs. (cue the story of the guy who drove to LA using RV parks to recharge)

Its an interesting question though, EV parking lots would seem to make a lot of sense. And certainly it would seem that HOAs for apartments and condos could benefit from them if they charged a bit for the power.
Its not tinfoil. ICBMs are nearly impossible to stop, and the systems designed to shoot them down only have like a ~50% chance of working.
> Fun fact: I can't recall the last time I either opened a Tumblr link or saw one in the wild. But maybe that's just me.

I'm pretty sure I've never opened a tumblr link in my life, but I see screenshots all the time on Facebook and reddit, and I know what "rebloging" is. So I guess the brand has some value there.
It's 1.4 kW / Tesla charging at 120 V [1]. That's basically one 15 Amp breaker per charging station. A 30 Amp breaker buys you two cars at once. That's a lot of circuits to run out to the parking lot.

https://www.pluglesspower.com/learn/tesla-model-s-charging-h...
Many schools think $30k a year is a reasonable wage, which is part of why half of all schools in Montana employ uncertified "teachers": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcI2qyP_uj4&t

Offering terrible wages results in crazy turnover, but schools are unwilling to pay a living wage and would rather import teachers.
You can't put the kids on the ebike to daycare? Seems like that would be faster and easier than dealing with a car.

Just wait until you start in on the total mess that is school drop-off when every parent decides they have to drive their kid to school. Much faster to breeze past the stopped traffic on a bicycle, unstrap the kids and send them on their way, and bike to the train.
Saw a similar one on the road in front of me with a combination of N's, M's and I think a W ... man it was impossible to get straight while moving.
> or avoid high speeds on the highway

I constantly drive 75mph without ever using the engine. I even merge on extremely steep inclines without ever using the engine.

Yes, it turns on for hard acceleration, but that's not the kind of thing you need to do in day-to-day driving.
I'm not sure if tumblr can still be saved, but if it can, Automattic is probably a place where it could happen.

I wish them the best of luck.
Look for Daddy-bootcamps, as well as all the other kind of classes available. These classes are often times free or pretty inexpensive. You don't even have to belong to the Hospitals that they're presented at a lot of times.

I went to a daddy bootcamp, breast feeding with my wife, baby-care, etc... All of which were extremely informative and helpful.

Congratulations!
> Your examples predate <Advisory Committee>

Advisory Committee has no say in anything that AMP does. Everything is designed and specced inside Google (or Google-dominated work groups) and then vetted by the Technical Steering Committee. Advisory Committee's findings and advise is non-binding: https://github.com/ampproject/meta/pull/37 And all the WG's are assigned projects that have already been accepted into AMP (such as AMP 4 Email).

And yes, my example is important because it was a huge change that no one asked for, but now it's in AMP. As are all the other changes that already hurt the web.

> Why are they forced to use it? I would really like to see your position stated coherently.

Google has near monopoly on search. In order to compete with it you need to provide nearly all of the same features.

> How do you propose to achieve instant loading web pages, while working around all of iOS's bugs?

There are no bugs in iOS that preclude instant pages. And the bugs that AMP introduced are, well, the bugs that AMP introduced. AMP broke the behaviour on purpose and refused to implement any suggested fixes.

> This just demonstrates that you don't understand AMP, don't understand RSS, or don't understand both. AMP allows the link aggregator to cache and directly serve the article contents, exactly like RSS does.

I perfectly understand what AMP and RSS are. You don't understand what either one is. RSS was never about caching or link aggregators.

RSS is a web feed. That has a standard XML format and can be read by anyone: a client app on your phone, a client app on your desktop, a link aggregator that can be built by a half-decent engineer in about two evenings. Additionally, it is trivially discoverable by including a standard meta tag on a page.

Also, RSS always leads to the original URL.

AMP is not a feed. It's a collection of specially constructed HTML pages (which are not valid HTML5, by the way). They are not "instant". They are underperformant by Google's own standards (try running Google's own Lighthouse tools report against one from cold cache).

They are only "instant" when significant effort has been spent setting up an AMP cache so that some or all content is already on the client's browser before the client hits the AMP page.

They are not discoverable. A meta tag linking to an AMP version will only link one URL, that's it. There is no feed.

An AMP cache destroyes the very essence of the web: linking. You will not get the original URL, you will get the cache's URL.

Implementing an AMP cache is a significant endeavour, and only a handful exists (as far as I know, there are no opensource AMP caches).
Gosh, I wonder if our current civilisation has earned its enemies? I mean the internet is cool and all, but our fantastic civilisation can't manage to use it to coordinate a meaningful response to the existential crisis of our era...that it's inducing itself, at an ever-accelerating rate.

Capitalism has yielded a system that's accidentally optimizing for a dystopia of impersonal fractious hate, surveillance, psychic manipulation, and social isolation.

So I think many people would be quite happy to see this system dismantled. Unfortunately I fear that the subsequent system is going to be even worse :/
December 17th 2018, maybe? I know I stopped seeing a lot of tumblr links when that policy changed, even ones that weren't affected by the change. I'm curious how much traffic and posting changed when that finally went into effect.
Solar now ‘cheaper than grid electricity’ in every Chinese city, study finds
Techcrunch says the number is "nominal:" https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/12/verizon-is-selling-tumblr-...
Something like this? Rapidia apparently uses a water-based process instead of a binder.

https://www.rapidia.com/
I'm super excited to have the Tumblr team and product join the Automattic family. We've been evolving Automattic to be more of a Berkshire Hathaway-inspired model and businesses with a lot of autonomy, and this continues that trend.

I was very impressed with the engagement and activity Tumblr has continued to have, and I hope that with this new ownership and investment the product will blossom.
No, not for an online company, and especially not the exceptions it has.
There was a treaty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty

Summary: It was okay for each side to have a limited ABM capability but not an extensive one.

Treaty was exited by USA side in 2002 and the stated reason was that ABM-like defense would be needed against "rogue states".
Though my employer doesn't care, but I once accidentally used my employers file header on my files instead of my own file header. My employer then suspected I placed intellectual property online. That was a fun conversation but my manager shielded me from me fortunately and at the end it worked out fine. It was a fun exercise using git rebase though. The most ironic part is that I actually use well working ideas I tried in my own code in the code I write for a living.
Or build out infrastructure in those areas too. In suburbs, there's plenty of room for separate bike paths and trains. It doesn't require everyone to move into Soviet-style superblocks and towers.
The thing with Uber is the reputation system. It makes it much more profitable for the driver behave well. Traditional taxi system doesn't have that. In a big city, you can scam customers all day long and be pretty sure that you won't meet those people again.
Is it just me or does Tumblr feel really heavy weight and bloated when you open even small blog posts the size of a tweet?

They had the opportunity to be the light weight blogging option. But its various design decisions seem strange to me as an outsider. Maybe it needs to revisit its past minimalism? ala old Twitter.
Well, not the largest. I'm doing something better. I offset all my carbon and drive an ICE SUV. I'm actually carbon-negative every year.

I do contribute sulphur oxides and all that stuff, but global warming is driven less by those.
Automattic will probably be much more effective at handling Tumblr since they have experience with content platforms. Whereas for Verizon, Tumblr was way, way outside their core competency.

It was always a shame at how Verizon seemed to mismanage Tumblr so it's exciting that Tumblr may become relevant again!
Could you elaborate on the "odd exceptions"? I see nothing controversial about "near-absolute free speech, within the means of the law".
> Any solution that requires a certain behavior is unnecessarily coupling that behavior to transferring energy into transportation.

Remember when we coupled health insurance to employment? (Also, what if I want to retire next month, but I still drive an EV? Now I'm stuck spending hours of my retirement waiting for my car to charge somewhere? First world problem, I know...)

These ideas are OK for a few people. But then wealthy people with wealthy employers are perhaps less likely to be "garage orphans" to begin with.
Currency War
Unpopular opinion here:

This probably did more to promote Ninja on Mixer than if this had not happened.

What if..a big IF here...but what if this was orchestrated by Ninja in some way? An excuse for him be "outraged" and multiple news sources picking this up and reporting on it talking about Mixer...
The majority of consumers, yes. Not majority of companies.

Whether tech giants or smaller businesses, they all do advertisers' bidding, and the advertisers themselves have the insipid idea in their heads that having their ads show up alongside non-PC content is going to somehow associate their brand with that exact content, as if it's an endorsement.
I used to work for an IoT startup on Boston that worked on this exact thing and then the company folded four days after I got married, two years ago. Fun times.

Anyhoo, we used Impinj readers and RFID tags to track things indoors. One of our clients was a Norwegian shipyard who wanted to keep track of their tools because apparently, tools for fixing ships are expensive and people like stealing.

You put the Impinj readers on the ceiling on both sides of a doorway and make sure your API throttles the reads so you can make sense of the data deluge.

I just wrote/designed the dashboards and interfaced with our internal API. If you have more questions I can ping the guys that worked on the back-end.
I managed to do this at my university. I had vanity plates with a design made by my local Australia shire, which had the shire emblem between two parts of the plate. The plate was something like "123ABC" but I'm guessing emblem read as an O, so their scanners saw "123OABC", which was not a plate registered with the uni.

Each day there was a 10-20% chance I would get a ticket on my windshield. I would collect them and take them to the uni security office once a fortnite to have them cancelled in bulk. I actually got pretty friendly with some of the staff there.

At least 4 of them were legitimate tickets because I parked overtime, over a line, etc, but the staff cancelled them anyway (:
Fair point. I have met Christians in that manner. I haven’t met any other religion in that way as it takes 90 days * 8 hours to see it — she was my elementary school teacher (she also adopted a student in dire need).
Good question, my main motivation is to learn more about how such a system would work. I am interested in signal processing and especially radar like systems so implementing one would be a fun experience.

In general, systems based on radar are trying to replace wearables for sleep states tracking, elderly fall detection etc. But I'm not sure yet what other applications it might have. The ability to track my location just seemed like a good first step.
How about this: We stop giving people free (or almost free) parking lots in public space?
I don't believe there are laws against taking it in Colombia. The law seems to be against driving one and the consequence for the driver is getting the car confiscated and having to pay a fine and losing their license if caught multiple times. Uber is liable for providing the platform for this unauthorized service.

Uber isn't the only black market ride-hailing app that's been competing at scale in Colombia either. There's also Didi Chuxing and some others. However, I don't understand how the legal department in a company like Uber permits such a brazen disregard of local laws. Yes, this is a case of regulatory capture and there is hardly any subtlety in the way the Transportation Minister has worked to maintain a monopoly on legal taxi services for Taxis Libres, but I don't understand how you just ignore the fact that your service in entire countries is illegal when you are a large multinational publicly traded company.