skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Funny, our company recently turned our wonderfully positioned Platform Engineers into Dev Ops Engineering concerned almost entirely with Chef.
Also there are many system admins who can code quick shell scripts in bash/powershell, setup build and CI pipelines, love doing performance analysis with Unix tools and know how to harden systems but have utterly no desire to learn 'industry' languages and large frameworks and spend day-after-day inside an IDE developing software products.

DevOps generally means developers doing sub-standard operations work.
I'm involved in a few different areas at my company, but when I get involved in hiring DevOps types, I try to look for the person you described as a "Platform Engineer." There are far too many times where I talk to people who know what tools are, but its just a black box that they plug things into, and they only know to use it because that's what someone at their local DevOps meetup group said was cool/useful. I want people who can help devs, not just deploy their code, or give them a system to run on. They shouldn't be afraid of learning a new language (or just looking at it), and should have competency in one already.
Quick poll: https://linkto.run/p/NGWCZJO1
Think Anti-Vaxxers
So you are part of the problem then. You've globbed onto a bastardized concept of "DevOps", and refuse to allow other people into your walled garden.
data can still be signed.
I can't imagine why electric cars had such a bad reputation until 2011...
The most surprising thing to me was nixing the transpiration cooling with methane and switching back to heat shielding tiles for half of it.
This is a possible Fermi paradox answer, or at least factor. Maybe the vast majority of habitable worlds are larger than Earth. The inhabitants of those worlds might find space flight too hard or even impossible. They also might have less interest in it since they would make the natural anthropic assumption that worlds capable of supporting life are probably huge like theirs.
An interesting challenge is to try to generate this puzzle, or one like it, once you know the answer.

Given any existing grid, you can implement a "step" function in code that generates the next grid describing it. You'll always find a cycle by stepping over and over (the numbers can never get too high, so the space is finite, so you'll always converge to a cycle rather than diverging). The goal, then, is to find a cycle of length 2 (or, better yet, a fixed point that maps to itself).

I just coded this up to try it out, and one simple starting point gave a cycle of length 27. I tried randomly generating starting points and I can generate a 3-cycle but haven't hit any 2-cycles yet. So maybe there's another trick to get the configuration from the puzzle.

Edit: nevermind, I misinterpreted the puzzle. All letters in the grid count, so "FOUR F'S" has two Fs and an S. Accounting for that, a randomized approach quickly finds a 2-cycle. But I guess it's interesting that a relatively minor tweak like that has a different outcome.
This is problematic even for people who don't mind linking to an online Microsoft account (I'm one of them). There is a long-standing Windows bug where local user directory names are created using a truncated version of the online account's name. This is rarely what you want. The work-around has long been to create an offline account first to name your own local directory, then convert it to an online account.

This will break that work-around, and this is universally bad.
I looked through the Amazon preview and couldn't find anything interesting. The whole book seems to be discussion of historical sources within the decency vs pleasure kind of framing. If he does discuss the fact that prostitution happened mostly in the evening when there weren't many people around I expect it would be a few paragraphs at most, and quickly forgotten in the course of the book, since his focus is mostly on male prostitutes / pederasts.
Ground laser propulsion has been considered. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_propulsion
The B2B Elements of Value
Nice find! Near the end, the author directly addresses this question:

> If the radius of our planet were larger, there could be a point at which an Earth escaping rocket could not be built. Let us assume that building a rocket at 96% propellant (4% rocket), currently the limit for just the Shuttle External Tank, is the practical limit for launch vehicle engineering. Let us also choose hydrogen-oxygen, the most energetic chemical propellant known and currently capable of use in a human rated rocket engine. By plugging these numbers into the rocket equation, we can transform the calculated escape velocity into its equivalent planetary radius. That radius would be about 9680 kilometers (Earth is 6670 km). If our planet was 50% larger in diameter, we would not be able to venture into space, at least using rockets for transport.
I've often thought the same thing. If I'm looking at treatment that doesn't seem worth it, why should my only other option be to die on cancer's terms? Why not choose my own terms? I've talked to my wife about this, and of course our agreement is to do it in a way where she doesn't have to find me or deal with the mess — but you're not alone in this idea.
He cannot start a new college. The CS program for undergrad in Havard is exactly the same as your closer public college.

It is about signaling, not education.

And for that, you need time for the college "image" to become elite.
there were no forced updates

I have attempted to disable those "for real", and the lengths that MS has gone to in an attempt to stop people from doing it is extremely disturbing; there's half a dozen different services and scheduled tasks with various names which are involved, and if you don't disable all of it quickly, it all comes back. This Hydra-like persistence is something that hitherto was only seen in malware.

I too preferred the Windows GUI, and have been a Windows user since the 3.x days, but the gradual destruction of options (especially in appearance preferences) and increasing user-hostility has pushed me towards experimenting with Linuxes and BSDs more. I've always liked the Unix CLI and filesystem layout, however --- sh/bash is so much more powerful and consistent than COMMAND.COM/cmd.exe (and PowersHell feels more like an overengineered obese clone of the Unix shells), and the "everything is a file" metaphor and single-rooted filesystem is very elegant. I guess my ideal OS would be a combination of a Linux/BSD kernel with a Windows GUI.
I'm open to hearing additional facts, but it's difficult for me to imagine what new information could come out that would change this situation.

Regardless of whether or not the employees were actually fired for purely performance reasons, multiple workers have come forward and said that they believe the firings were related to union organization. It doesn't really matter what the intentions were, that's going to end up creating a hostile environment between workers and managers.

Let's assume for a sec that Kickstarter is completely acting in good faith -- well, there's being right and there's being smart, and the smart choice would have been to recognize that they're in a very volatile situation, and to temporarily hold off on making moves that could be misinterpreted as adversarial by their workforce.

Maybe that doesn't sound fair, but it's Kickstarter's job to maintain a functional work environment, not to be fair, and all evidence I've seen suggests that the current work environment is suffering.

In regards to other facts -- that Kickstarter won't voluntarily recognize employees decisions until required to through a legal vote, or that Kickstarter is openly campaigning against the union efforts -- again, I'm open to hearing another side to this, but this is first-hand information coming from press releases from Kickstarter itself.

Again, you don't have to be pro or anti union to think it's crappy for a company to insert itself into its employees' conversations about bargaining decisions, and then to claim that it won't recognize those decisions because doing so would somehow corrupt the neutrality of the process.

I'm not sure what facts could come up in the future that would make that turn into a good faith argument?
Astonishing story, thanks for sharing. It actually says a lot about their level of customers support and care.
I bought a computer that can't run whatever code I want. That's not ownership. That's buying a fork that hangs on a chain in the manufacturer's house. Yes, I "own" it, yes it's better than no fork, but if I can't eat whatever I want with it, it's not really mine.

I don't know what people aren't getting about this. You bought a computer that can only run code that Apple has explicitly approved. How is this ownership?
Isn’t LTSC better as a desktop? It’s just Windows 10 without the user hostile crap.

But I have never run Windows Server
Ok so doing super-approximate maths:

A fully fueled and loaded Saturn V weighs about 3,000,000 Kg, and has a payload of about 40,000 Kg to the moon.

So that means once you've put all the bits of the rocket together that collectively give you sufficient thrust to get you to the moon, you've only got about 1.3% left for actual payload.

S if earth's gravity had been ~1.3% stronger, then the weight of the "getting us there" bits of the rocket would have left no room for payload. Any more gravity, and we wouldn't even be getting to the moon.

Equally, if the earth's gravity had been 1.3% weaker, we could have doubled our payload to the moon (or done things way easier).

Contrast that with a Boeing 747 which has 50% of total mass as payload, and so is relatively insensitive to changes in gravity.
> your own non-existence -

Why is it so hard to accept this? Why is it so scary?
Theory.

The php script and the log in question are probably in the kernel's aggressive block layer cache. The new files created by rust are potentially new and uncached, mean that it must be loaded from disk. Therefore the rust version is probably just losing time on disk access.

Quick test: review whether or not the rust version runs faster on the second execution.

Also or alternatively: use a profiler or copy the rust program to an in-memory block device (ramdisk) prior to access.
I don't think you're meant to remove warrant canaries when you get a secret court order, you're just meant to continue renewing your warrant canary at a regular interval as long as you don't get a secret court order.

My understanding is that they can prevent you from removing warrant canaries but they can't force you to continue announcing "I have not received a secret warrant".
Awk and sed can provide a better integration with "modern" formats like JSON/YAML/Protobuf/etc. And with corresponding tools like jq/pq/rq. It would help to keep them popular still.
I am not one to believe what I read on Bloomberg but the story does say "will be forced to share encrypted messages..."

If that's all this is, good luck to them doing anything with those.
> which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy

Sorry, but if you use microsoft products you either do not actually care about privacy, or do not understand how microsoft is not taking your privacy seriously.
haha, i was going to count and report the number of analogies to beauty, nature, painting, etc. but Chrome gave up on me. (come now Chrome, a PDF inside an HTML page making you crawl like a baby turtle!)

glad to find this comment though. it's the other thing that's a little bothersome with the FP community -- at least for me. to be honest, i don't think they realize they are doing any of this. they just seem like the PHD level mathematicians, so to speak, of the programming community!
I use vscode on Windows with the remote ssh plugin. It's amazing, and I'd never go back. I can kick of compilations of large projects on an 80-core server instead of my laptop. When I need to, wsl works great for small compilations.
I think that is a gross mis-characterization because I see a ton of "get it done now, make it right later" bullshit among DevOps-y start ups.

Again, I think there's a large talent pool available, but startups who think they'll be the next FAANG act too big for their britches and actively discriminate against older tech workers who are likely experts in several pieces of the tech stack.

I routinely see these folks get passed over for younger, less experienced candidates (often for 1/2 to 3/4 the salary) who look good on paper because they wax eloquent about their pet project on GitHub, facial hair wax and kombucha.

Source: I make damn good money as a "fixer", and my primary customers are 5-30 person startups. I don't "code", and never will (useful scripts, and some automation/cloud API excepted).

I go in and practically beat the managers over the heads with the DevOps Handbook, and "engineers" with the NASA Systems Engineering Handbook. Most of my work is tearing out fucked k8s installs, and cutting AWS spending by 1/2 or more. (A few clients were billed based on how much I reduced their bill).

Have a standing job offer with one client, however it requires Azure certification pretty much immediately. Between not really using much MS stuff, and the exam focusing mostly on the Azure CLI, it might not be worth the trouble for a steady paycheck. They were nice enough to cover a training course though, so I'm willing to see where it goes.
Not sure I agree with this. Here's why: new tech stacks crop up every few months, and they're all competing for the same developer brain space. If PHP wasn't easy, I'm certain the interest in it would have evaporated to a large extent. Yet even today, people are choosing to start their projects in PHP. I think it's simplicity has a lot to do with it.
occasionally I'll reinstall Windows for something and use it as a daily driver for a while out of laziness
Generating power from very small temperature differences (2-3 degrees) with require gigantic surface areas to move energy. 25 mW/m2 is a TINY flux rate, and they are talking about how to get it to 0.5 W/m2? Need a bigger temperature difference...
So? A group of people all getting together to dig out the dirty laundry of someone together, doesn't make your participation any better. I'm not trying to single you out, but there is no "reply all" button.
> A. Being able to use some proprietary software not available on Linux

What software is this? Perhaps it runs under Wine?
Yeah but that has its own issues. Instead of worrying about your steel car rusting, now you'll have to worry about washing it regularly to keep whatever they make from landing on your car/siding/computer monitor/clothes/carpet/curtains/blinds/window molding/etc from being weakened.
Also a book!
Didn't someone here say we should judge a language by its community? Well the Rust community is not very nice.
If your proprietary product is in any way niche (i.e. not the usual adobe/autocad example) I would suggest petitioning the company to support Linux (or web) clients. Software developers are often pro-Linux and a few customer suggestions might be enough to force the issue.
I locked down my Alexa, and noticed it takes 2-3 “Alexa”s to get it to start listening. I know not having the “learn your voice” thing off lowers accuracy, but it seems really odd it doesn’t wake up instantly. I would assume that is what they train the ML stuff most for.

Has anyone else noticed the same thing?
If you can make it to orbit, you can make it anywhere (it just may take multiple launches to assemble/fuel the spacecraft going elsewhere).
MS has been open-sourcing a lot of stuff in the past few years, which I see more as meaning that their IP has little intrinsic value anymore. MS used to sell software, so code was sacred and not meant for others to see; now it's more about services, so code doesn't really matter much anymore, and if it's code that can help people use their services, open-sourcing makes sense.

You can see this with Google, Facebook, and all the others which release huge amounts of FOSS; they are not in the business of selling software either.
Is the Rust regex engine slow because it's written in Rust?
You could go the hackintosh route. Though I haven’t tried it in a decade or more, I’ve seen some people with pretty cool setups. Certainly more work to maintain than just Linux or an official Mac.
If the majority of frameworks for a language are vunerable it's the language's fault. Python definitely doesn't have that issue, Rust and Go don't either.
Once you are in orbit, anything else is possible. Because if you can get something small to orbit, you can get a lot of small things (such as additional fuel) to orbit, to reach escape velocity. That is because once in orbit you no longer have a need to reach the next velocity stage as rapidly as possible, which is why ion engines are so efficient but can only be used after LEO.
> In some cases, your ability to access or control your personal data will be limited, as required or permitted by applicable law. How you can access or control your personal data will also depend on which products you use.

> Not all personal data processed by Microsoft can be accessed or controlled via the tools above. If you want to access or control personal data processed by Microsoft that is not available via the tools above or directly through the Microsoft products you use, you can always contact Microsoft at the address in the How to contact us section or by using our web form.

Same source.
He had his company buy FAO Schwarz and keep it running for years at least partly so it would exist as part of their childhood. Billions of dollars distort reality, and it's hard to imagine a good long term outcome from that much distortion, even when it comes from a place of love.
Overall recommended. I enjoyed it, and it left a few trails to follow - like the surprise views of Adam Smith as I mentioned in OP. If you don't know the general history of empire and the age, or want more of a "The EIC and how India was colonised" and the impact on lives, the focus might be frustrating. Dry in places. Could be longer - it's about 1 page per year of EIC!

Mini review:

Author is a prof at LSE who's written other histories. It's light on some of the surrounding events, as it's focused on the company and the money. He threads forward periodically, to how some of those company things relate to a modern multinational, or a corporate survivor of that age or some regulation. Mostly that works, occasionally it's a bit jarring. Overall it's a feature to see what we think as modern capitalism getting out of control now, were just as out of control way back when.

Focusing on the company, you don't get a great deal of depth of some of the events, e.g. The Boston Tea Party, and the preceding tea boycott, just the company role in causing it and how they made it worse. You get to find out the EIC's part had English merchants writing to their colonial cousins urging them to restart the boycott - that had been petering out. You get to find out Adam Smith felt the invisible hand should be paired with an invisible fist of regulation, and really quite disliked the company. You won't get the depth of the events and consequences that those choices, share splits, or chasing dividends caused, or the impact on the Indians and company workers they were betraying.

It's opinionated. I think it's all the better for that. The couple of others I have read on EIC or Clive have perhaps been easier reads, but could fall into the trap of "they did terrible things, but it was another age, so...". Then give you the more of the events without the detail of the evil villain plotting the next way to line their pockets. Yet give you more a sense of the impact on regions.

There is a good deal on Clive, Plassey and Bengal. By the time you're done you get a visceral sense of why, in his later days, Robert Clive was one of the most hated figures in England (and no doubt India).
The article claims if you incinerate plastic with scrubbers, that prevents air pollution. I've seen it elsewhere claimed incinerating plastic still produces a lot of really nasty air pollution. Which is correct?
“Exclusive access to resources, buttressed by a legal system” is not historically or anthropologically the “natural state of man.”

Which is fine; lots of great stuff aren’t “the natural state of man.” But don’t bullshit about it, yeah?
WSL is one workaround after another
A: it’s simple and easy.
Are people really using these for work instead of just spinning up a cloud instance or using a desktop? I've always thought they were a horrible deal for gaming, and it seems like they'd still be a horrible deal for ML work or whatever.
Global Observations of Fine-Scale Ocean Surface Topography
Sony definitely phones home to sends digital fingerprints of media you stream from local servers. I was streaming a movie on my PS3 from a local file server and about 5-15 minutes into the movie the audio cut out and a banner popped up about not having a proper license for the media
> in fact running PHP via fastcgi was also quite common for a while.

Mind clarifying how this is different from the current hotness (from what I can tell, due to a decade-old shortcoming that no longer exists in mod_php/Apache MPM options) where folks are running PHP via the Fastcgi Process Manager?
Yes! That is the paradox. The narrower the focus of your group, the more people you can include because they don't have to agree on all these other issues, too.
Cracking product keys for... Uh... Research. You reverse engineer the binary, enter the conditions into an sat solver and boom. But I don't think most keys are implemented this way these days.

Also if you want cool, check out uc Santa Barbara's team for the darpa cyber challenge a few years ago for an autonomous hacking system. Their framework, angr, makes use a lot of sat solvers although I didn't quite understand everything when I read their technical docs
No, we spend so much so that companies like the one I work at can make billions and be in the Fortune 10. The huge costs are extraction of wealth and there isn't that much to show for it.

We also have a 2-tiered medical system where the ultra-wealthy and well-connected receive all the best treatments while the rest of us get fuck all.

We are perceived as nothing but ants in a giant colony to those who rule the world.
What if he's genuinely hilarious and we all benefit from his jocular brilliance?
So people can either care about privacy as much as you do, or not at all? There is an in between you know
> People were writing sloppy PHP before CSRF and XSS were even invented.

It is very very easy to write sloppy PHP, definitely easier than in many other languages and default frameworks.

> You're not acknowledging all of the gaping security flaws in contemporary web-development frameworks. P

I'm very aware of them, basically none have (had) as many high-impact vulns as PHP-based stuff does.

> Yet somehow, Python, Ruby and NodeJS have all had numerous CVEs despite those attack vectors being well known at the time a given framework was written.

You're not acknowledging the orders of magnitudes difference between the impact of an usual PHP vuln and those you listed.

> You think SQLi was bad? You should spend some time thinking about the numerous attack vectors available today in nearly every GraphQL implementation

The flaws in others are a very poor excuse for flaws in a thing itself.
There’s all sorts of bad journalism. Tabloid and click bait journalism are incredibly popular. When it comes to what’s misleading, false or unverified, that’s a topic open to endless debate. There’s nothing about your tastes or opinions that are universally correct, and to say that if only people were educated properly that they’d have the same tastes and opinions as you is most certainly arrogant and smug.