skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am surprised more programming language research hasn't focused on problems like this. Perl had taint mode back in the day (presumably it still exists), but it didn't quite do enough to really be helpful. I am glad to see this idea resurfacing because I think it can solve a lot of problems, not just security-related.

A long time ago, I remember people having an insane amount of trouble with character handling; when you read binary data from a TCP socket or UNIX file, you're reading bytes, not characters. But many people would treat the bytes like characters, causing all sorts of trouble. My favorite was the double-encoding, where you read UTF-8 encoded characters as bytes, treat the bytes as Latin-1, then encode the Latin-1 characters as UTF-8. This was a perl quirk because Latin-1 was the default, but the same bug happens in other languages. Anyway, a good tainting system could prevent this sort of bug. The language can say "hey, this is a TCP socket, you can't treat those bytes as characters!" But it doesn't. And the bug occurs again and again.

(The corner cases that people don't think about are the real problems. What charset are those bytes in your URL? What about filenames? The answer is: it's often undefined. So rather than hope for the best, a compiler error would be ideal.)

The state of the art, as far as I can tell, is to just treat everything as UTF-8 these days. Since everyone seems to love UTF-8, it just works. Maybe that was the real solution. But I know there are a lot of Japanese-speakers with names that can't be encoded as UTF-8. I wonder what they're doing about that.
One of the worst offenders has to be Newark, NJ and New York, NY. How confusing is it for an international traveler, especially considering how international the area is! On top of that, a major train station in NYC is New York Penn Station, and a major train station in NJ is Newark Penn Station.

Someone can land at Newark Airport, and have to figure out the difference between going to Newark Penn Station or New York Penn Station, which are in opposite directions from the airport.
I'm going to name my future daughter "Alexa" as a lifelong prank. And if I have a son, I'll name him "Ok, Google" :P

Jokes aside, I have been using voice commands more frequently in public and I've noticed most people are able to differentiate the tone you speak to AI vs. the tones you use to speak to people (irl or on the phone). Though, I still do accidentally troll bystanders once in a while.
There's always an exception. While running a brick and mortar business for 3 years, I found that when parked around the corners (out of a courtesy to my customers) I looked either out of business, closed, or dead.

Our business ran on weekends. Everyone else in our complex was closed on the weekends.

We started parking our cars up front because people were FAR more likely to come inside if it looked like other people were there.

Otherwise, we noticed that they would sometimes drive by slowly, try to peer in our windows, then drive off.

So, parking up-front for us was just marketing.

But I get it. Give the best spots to your customers if possible. The customer experience must be optimal. They aren't always right, but it can still feel good.
Bose announced they will be shipping wireless noice cancelling earbuds. Next year though.

https://www.bose.com/en_us/better_with_bose/new-headphones.h...
Increasing capital costs and consequent dependence on huge volumes have been a defining feature of the semiconductor industry since the invention of the integrated circuit.

AFAICT this technology will have no impact on the low end hobbyist end of the market, but rather (if all works out) enables those $zillion behemoths to produce ever faster systems since they won't be as bottlenecked by off-chip bandwidth as they are with today's PCB's.
Military healthcare sucks. You dont get a say you get told what to do.
I don't think negotiating power is debunked.
That would kill a lot of people as the market adjusts...
Do you carry a phone?
It's been fun to see Dr. Subu present this concept and prototypes at several conferences, and the level of integration possible is absolutely insane. I think the industry is definitely moving toward chiplets, such as the latest AMD release.

I definitely think we will see more chiplets and more standardization on interfaces between chiplets. The focus will be on how to minimize energy per bit transferred (a big topic in Subu's talks) and how to minimize the die area used for inter-chiplet communication. In monolithic silicon, you don't have to think about die area, since your parallel wires between sections might just need a register or two along the way. With chiplets, you typically can't run wires at that density yet, so you still have some serialization/deserialization hardware. But, since it's not crossing multiple high inductance solder balls and PCB traces, you can get away with less. Hopefully also you can get away without area-intensive resynchronization, PLLS, etc.

I think it will definitely be awhile before this kind of integration is used outside of niche cases though. The costs are just insane. You have to pre-test all manufactured chiplets before integration, and that test engineering is nothing to sneeze at. If you don't then you have all kinds of commercials issues about who is liable for the $500k prototype one bad chip broke.

On the bright side, I see the chiplet approach benefitting other integration technologies. For example, wafer level and panel level embedded packaging technologies can be used for 1-2um interconnects now. You won't get a wafer sized system out of it with any kind of yield, but it's probably the direction mobile chips and wearables will go.

Anyway, disorganized info-dump over.
They use regular speakers that are supposedly only sending the sound down (more info in The Verge's hands-on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCKstxDONWI )
Insurance is socialism for profit
Do you realize that smartphones also have mics and they have been around for more than a decade? Sorry buddy, but your voice has already been captured by random folks on the street without your consent for years.
Like the Bose that came first, these are not bone conduction, just speakers aimed into your ears.
> (I don't want to hear one thing about negotiating power. That is a debunked line of reasoning. Medicare/Medicaid cover more people than many single payer systems in other countries, and their costs are still outrageous)

It is illegal for Medicare to negotiate drug prices. That needs to be fixed.
If only GNOME was part of a foundation which worked to advance software freedom... Oh well, I hope the #cancelstallman team will be of more help than the FSF.
That doesn't necessarily follow. Whether or not it gets cheaper or more expensive depends on how likely the new people are to get sick compared to the other people in the pool. Adding a bunch of sick people raises the costs for everyone, adding a bunch of healthy, young people (and making them pay) lowers the costs for everyone else.

I agree that at this point, we'd be far better off with a single payer system, but it's certainly not cheaper for everyone.
Software Engineers in the US often make 2x as much as our European counterparts, yet we don't have any artificial limits on the number of people able to study Software Engineering. I'm not disagreeing with you the point on the AMA, but even if they removed their limits -- would many more people want to enter the field? It seems extremely intensive, not only during your education and residency, but on the job too. 12+ hours days, multiple days per week? No thanks.
equal access implies every participant has all known information, the key word here being 'known', so you're probably right, but it doesn't matter either way in the real world :)
> Doctor's are paid too much... why?

You can also branch off here: because malpractice insurance is insanely expensive. Why? Because people sue over absolutely everything. Why? Because lawyers in this country are vultures.

If anything is overly expensive, you can usually track it back to insurance costs somewhere, which can typically be tracked back to the fact that we live in a litigious society.
How is that prophetic?
> It is used mostly by those who resent the dominance and techical superiority of American tech companies, because it is based in france.

Or maybe because they are subject, as an European company, to GDPR?
> Medicare/Medicaid cover more people than many single payer systems in other countries, and their costs are still outrageous

I appreciate your reasonable breakdown, but I don't understand this one. I've seen many reports talking about how the costs of basic supplies and procedures are dramatically higher in the US (and vary wildly within the US). Things like X-Rays, MRIs, etc, being off by an order of magnitude or more (though I'm sure if the median price differences are less dramatic than the extreme examples, the results I vaguely recall said there was still a noteworthy difference)

How does this not indicate some fundamental difference between the US and other "developed" nations outside of the factors you list above? (Honest question)
"Written by British programmer David Simons in 1983, who was then just 16 years old at the time...."

Wow!
How much does Malta slow down the wind?
not only that... your healthcare provider has contracts with the insurance company and the insurance company can actually block you from simply paying cash for services.

Let that sink in a bit
Sympathy and support for the organisationis bleeding your bank account dry. Carry on, mate.
If this is the price of living in the land of the free (and the home of the brave), then count me in. Freedom isn't free, folks! /s
I've shipped hundreds of thousands of flats, I'm quite familiar with the requirements. Looking at the product you linked it seems small enough that it could be stuffed into a flat envelope and shipped.

>And even then you're wrong: Paying any amount for shipping of items, even if the items cost the same amount as the Chinese version it's still more expensive. It doesn't matter if the shipping cost is $10 or $3.50 or $1: It's still more expensive.

Care to elaborate? If your cost was the same as the Chinese and your shipping cost the same as well then your overall cost would be the same. What are you trying to say here?
The lawsuit is laughable for 2019, especially section with importing photos.

I'll donate for easy, but hope IBM can defend their investments.
QC35's are bulky. If I'm taking the loud noisy subway and not bringing a backpack, something that provides the noise-cancelling of the QC35's together with the form factor of the Airpods (stick 'em in my pocket) would be heaven.
It might even be an effective strategy to add a few extra cars to your parking lot, so it always has at least a moderate number.

When I worked at a mall food court, I noticed something interesting: during slower periods, sometimes one restaurant would have a line while other restaurants would have no customers at all. And not always the same restaurant. I attributed it to customers seeing that one place had customers, then inferring that it must be open and it must be one of the better places to eat.

Popularity isn't a very reliable indicator of quality, but it's not totally invalid either. If a place is always deserted, it's probably not very good. If it's always busy, it's likely that people are willing to wait for a reason.
They're interchangeable depending on what literature you read. Funnily enough, like ATM machine, DIP package can be redundant, being equivalent to "dual in-line package package".
FWIW you could ship a 40ft container of mugs (something like 20,000 of them individually packaged) from china to Seattle, say for a rough cost of about 10c per mug.

Bulk freight of nonperishable things is cheap.
This is the one and true answer with regards to insurance companies.
> Not to mention the millions of people locked into careers they would otherwise get out of, if not for the health coverage.

Replying with a throwaway for obvious reasons. I work at one of the big tech companies -- I'm paid well, but the benefits are very good. I just got an offer from a startup that I really like. It's a job I would like to take.

I'm going to have to turn down the offer. Part of the reason I'm going to have to turn it down is that even though it offers insurance, its coverage isn't as good as what I have and the subsidy offered will add $15k a year minimum to my health care expenses. My partner needs surgery (an expensive surgery), and I'm the primary bread-winner (for now) -- I have to make pragmatic decisions because of stuff like healthcare, even at the expense of my own aspirations.

And to be clear, my scenario is significantly better than so many others who are stuck in truly terrible places (where I work is not terrible by a longshot) or in careers they would like to change, because the truth is, health care in the US is a joke.
Some people draw a distinction between simple comment threads and things like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
"slicing through red tape and NIMBY-ism with political willpower"

Red tape is there for a reason. Red tape is the rule of law, it's emissions standards, and fines for polluters, employment rights, and safe drinking water.

Red tape isn't something to be cast aside to get your own personal pet thing done.

I mean, what's the difference between your 'political willpower' and dictatorship?
Mutex specifically refers to OS/processor level constructs that protect critical sections using algorithms such as the bakery algorithm or special CPU instructions. None of these are required to protect the critical section in the example above.

You can just use a busy flag. I am not familiar with JS, so this is approximate syntax.

while (busy) {
await busyIsFalse
}
busy = true

Critical Section

busy = false

notify busyIsFalse

Simple boolean flags will work
/e/: the Pedophile Phone
Or host it for free in one of Oracle's cloud 'always free' tier VMs.

Disclaimer: I'm an employee
I mean I don't think they increase other rates to cover those costs, because they don't actually cover their costs at all. They spend more than they take in and their rates are still, for lighter packages anyway, significantly better than either FedEx or UPS.
I'd rather they worked on making regular prescription eyeglasses and frames less expensive. That would help a lot more people and could still be profitable considering the huge markups on frames now.
Apple needs to provide the user with the ability to ban software from google and other malign companies.

Problem partly solved.
Yep, solve global warming crisis, food crisis, insurance crisis

Life is harsh and the system we have setup will require this or war to change.

You pick how the death happens. The fact death has to happen for change is inevitable ( channeling thanos here )
It does say so: "he told me the experience his customers have while visiting him was very important to him and it started when they pulled into the parking lot".
Facebook Reality Labs: Research Updates and Future of Social Connection
Yeah, I am curious about this as well. I can say that I _would_ be more likely to recommend a service that is easy to cancel, but I am curious if that is enough to offset the people who don't follow through. It probably depends on market and demographic, but it would be cool to see some data.
If you're willing to splurge a bit I recommend artoftea.com. Their purple oolong and earl grey are crazy good.
they sue and get awarded insane damages, which is probably something that could be regulated more strictly, but then what do i know.
frequency, impedance, sensitivity? aac or aptx HD codecs? Where are the tech specs?
Genmaicha is a wonderful green tea based on sencha, with brown rice and sometimes popcorn added. Tastes a little nutty.

Dragonwell is a nice take on green tea. It's easy to drink endlessly, and a good choice for your main drink.

Keemun is a subtle take on black tea. Good to have in the rotation when you've bored of breakfast tea.

Rose black tea is a great treat to rest with. I've found it hard to acquire lately.

Gyokuro is a super expensive green tea, impressive for special occasions.

Matcha powder is nice if you're in the mood, and looks great sprinkled on a coffee.

I tend to buy from Tea Makers of London.
>- Doctor's are paid too much... why?

Haven't doctor's historically had high salaries? Becoming a doctor requires years of training which leads to a low supply of doctors for a field that has always had high demand. Likewise, Doctors seem to be overworked so I'm not sure I can say they are being overpaid.

I don't think all the money that is being spent on healthcare is actually being funneled into doctors pockets.

You did say there are a top 15 reasons, but I think doctor salaries are a bad example.
Agreed. There should be law that forces all advertising to be within a dedicated HTML tag called <marketing> so that anyone can just opt in to a plugin that deletes all marketing tags.

Would that clean up the Web or what!
Without SIP this would have been caught in testing
I read that as sarcasm, especially with the leading qualifier ;)
To all the people who don't like/freak out about their data being harvested: would you use such a device, if it is completely open (both hardware and software) and the data is under your control?
Hacking Diversity with Inclusive Decision Making (2017) [pdf]
Yep, it certainly does. Single-payer and socialized systems are cheaper for a lot of reasons:

(1) Purchasing power of a large, single negotiating entity to reduce the cost of drugs (that's how Canada does it, and the US' solution was to allow importation of Canadian drugs, which, uh, seems circuitous).

(2) No marketing expenses, no executive compensation, no claims denials, no billing, etc. This amounts to 15-20% of all healthcare spending in the US [1] -- so an instant 20% reduction right there.

(3) National ability to set compensation, so you can reduce the cost of physician services too, as they're now public servants. Canadian doctors still make mid-6-figure salaries, and frankly, I'm okay with that.

(4) Complete pricing transparency. Wanna know how much medical care costs in Ontario? It's all right here in one big PDF [2]. PET scan for Thyroid cancer? J702. $237.50 CAD.

(5) Improved balance sheets and lower operating costs for corporations who now no longer have to deal with the medical care of their employees for no rational reason. Improved competitiveness of small businesses vs larger ones where small businesses need to offer medical care for competitive reasons and it represents a disproportionate burden.

(6) People can take the risk of starting businesses without fear of death due to lack of medical care.

The list of benefits goes on and on. It's time to take action.

[1] https://naic-cms.org/cipr_topics/topic_medical_loss_ratio.ht...

[2] http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs/ohip/sob/physser...
Are bluetooth ear buds really worth the cancer risks?
> What makes health insurance cheaper is a larger pool of people. There is no other mechanism by which costs can be reduced.

They will just take the extra money and return it to shareholders. They won't reduce costs to people.
I only need one bud, how about $65 for the left ear bud?
It seems to be more the exception, rather than the rule, that you will continue to be fine without medical coverage for eternity. One day, something is going to happen. Consumption of health care tends to be back-loaded in life.
Yeah, I really wonder where that $10,000/person figure comes from when you remove obesity and smoking related illnesses, so, the two highest and most preventable causes of death in this country.

I always believed you should be able to qualify for lower costs (or be charged higher) depending on how you take care of yourself. Annual physical fitness test. I'm a little sick and tired of paying high premiums for people to have healthcare that don't take care of themselves.
Sometimes people idealize academia though. It's important to realize that everything has its flaws :).
They did - explicitly in the section that starts "Obsessing with Customer’s Experience is a Win."

That being said, when writing engaging content, it's usually better to show, rather than just tell. That's also what they did here.

Last thing - they wanted to convey the message to as many people as possible. If the article was entitled "Put the concerns of the customer first before yours," virtually no one would read it (and no one on a site like HN, Twitter, or Facebook would click through to it).
Can't control issues be seen as a kind of victimhood? You can be victim of your own abuses.

One can also learn that he is not responsible for everything.

Take for example the politeness mentioned in the article. Isn't the hyper-polite person trained to feel "responsible" for how the abuser feels, hence she feel compelled to always be polite and act as a victim?
T2 is all about drowning out a mid-grade tea with random fruity flavors. Their actual high-quality teas are dangerously overpriced. I guess they make an okay Earl Grey, but I'm not a huge fan of the brand generally.

Try Lupicia (which has retail shops in the Bay Area), or Rare Tea Co, or Kettl, or something.
If nothing happened the changes would have happened at month 0 of that process, so yes, it's a long time.

The article also calls out that 75,000 tons as a criteria made up to include the US and basically no one else.
Speaking for Canada rather than Europe but I imagine the argument is mostly the same. The supply and demand ratios are different. Canada has very few pure software firms like Google or Amazon compared to the US, so there is significantly less competition for the engineers that work there. This drives prices down - or rather, prevents prices from being driven up.
Odd how it worked before insurance took over the healthcare system.

Care to share what you see would be different ?
Did you realise you are responding to the same Github user you're mentioning?
Part of the problem is that Medicare/Medicaid pays market prices. Its a pricetaker not a pricesetter, because of poor regulation, in spite of its larger position. If you pay market prices, expect inflation every year on top.
I'd rather see easy to use 3d printers and good designs that you can buy yourself and tweak if you want to.
The Sony WF-1000XM3 sounds like what you're looking for.
What's the value proposition relative to the alternatives?

It is adding weight, complexity, and limiting choice to your eye-wear while effectively doing a similar thing to half a dozen wireless earbuds already on the market. It isn't really comparable to Google Glass, because Google Glass used projection onto the glasses themselves (creating a unique value).

Plus Amazon are trying to integrate with the US's predominant eye wear monopoly (via insurance/out-of-network frames) instead of just bypassing it and producing the lenses themselves. So you're paying $179.99 for empty frames and then untold amounts for the actual lenses, and trying to ingrate with an insurance system that's designed to benefit only Luxottica (via their stranglehold of both insurance companies AND lens producers).
> There’s more retired old people.

Medicare is mandatory in the US for retired old people. It's universal, it's mandatory, and it covers everything. They're literally not in the insurance pools, so I don't know what you're talking about.

As for the "group plans", those "groups" are too small for insurance purposes—they do not spread risk effectively. The entire "group plan" thing is a scam, and it would be trivial for gov't to just outlaw them entirely in the US, and force individual pricing on business-purchased health insurance like we do for every other kind of insurance we have. Costs would go down for everyone, and individual plans would no longer "suck dickballs".

That said, that is not how I would "fix" the health insurance issues we have. But it's at least better than what we do now...
I think we agree. I'm just saying it's not a single fundamental difference between the US system and other systems, it's myriad differences that combine to make things way more expensive in the US.