skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> the problem is that most conspiracy theories are internally consistent; they tie up a lot of loose ends if you're willing to assume a couple wild premises

Internally consistent with uncertain if not delusional beliefs. This isn't insurmountable for all people, but I believe it is possible for a much larger proportion of the general public than is currently the case, with the right sort of education (logic, epistemology) of course.

> if you're willing to believe that every astronaut, airline pilot, and everyone else in a position to verify the curvature of the earth is in on it

Among many other things. This is a prime example of unnecessarily delusional thinking, I would say in part because the only place unrestricted group thinking actually takes place is within the conspiracy sphere, which is likely vastly over-represented by delusional people.

> to me the unreasonable premises are what make a theory have the "tinfoil" quality

To you, a poster on HN and therefore most likely a highly logical person. But can the same be said of the general public, who rarely exercise their logical capabilities, and whose mental model of reality is largely shaped by what they consume in mass media? And, is your assessment based on the ridiculous and often (but not always) misrepresented conspiracy theories that float into the mainstream, or is it based on a significant history of immersion in the culture? The difference matters.

> the idea that there's an international ring of powerful child sex traffickers is plausible; the idea that a specific person is involved is not as plausible until you have more evidence than a bunch of emails about pizza.

Might "a bunch of emails about pizza" be a good example of a conspiracy theory that was misrepresented?

Do you have any theories why there's so little media interest and outrage/suspicion in the general public about the Epstein affair, particularly considering there's plentiful evidence that protecting children, particularly when it comes to sexual matters, seems so effective at inflaming public emotions? And yet, when a case arises where there's plenty of smoke (although, very little of it that actually made it onto TV, which seems odd in itself), the result is little more than a collective yawn.

I think this situation is very interesting on many different levels.
This sounds like a response from a humanities or business major.

If you've never felt utterly defeated practicing a difficult passage in music
or pulling an all-nighter on a problem set, then I question the extent of
learning.

I've learned more from the chess and go games I've lost (leaving me in tears) than the ones I won.

Bandying opinions with one's peers is a form of learning, yes, but it's a
nonrigorous one that I wouldn't pay tuition for.
It's like flipping homes in 2007. You come for the ARM and the 20%+ annual increase and you get carried out in a body bag. (But, all the cool kids were doing it!)
"Actively exploited" by... law enforcement? Do all consumers really need to freak out about this the same way they would if hackers had access? Doesn't that detail change the calculus here?
There's no way 300000 people are actually reading entire books this way. Probably not even 3000. They're just clicking/swiping to get thru their entire stories feed, and these just happen to be in the mix.
> Why couldn't life itself be the causeless cause?

Because everything we know about this universe needs a cause, nothing in this universe is causeless, so you can't simply say that "something" inside that universe is causeless.

And everything we know about life screams causality, from the need to eat and drink to generate energy, to sex for reproduction.
If life can actually be causeless why is it so fragile and dependent on so many things to keep itself from death?

> A cell is much simpler than anything capable of inventing the universe.

A cell is also not capable of creating itself out of nothing.

Your lack of knowledge/understanding about how can something create the universe is not a justification for assuming that it created itself.

You need a causeless cause (otherwise we wouldn't exist), so you either choose it to be the universe itself (which is a wild guess with zero evidence and hence not even scientific as you claim), or it is God (and yes you can't
and will never understand how it is the first cause)

I'd rather believe in God and his messages to us that brought actual evidence, than believe in an unconscious universe creating itself with no evidence.
Here was the previous discussion when that was abandoned on July 16:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20454966
No one is saying quantum computing for practical use is upon us. Quantum supremacy is a well defined milestone that doesn't say anything about everyday use of QC.
You're reading him too literally, and in the process create a strawman. It's obvious he updates his software; Business software must be updated to match changing legal requirements, besides a nonsubscription business has nothing to sell without updates.

He's saying that Windows per se did not require extra work for compatibility after he got it done since forever, while Mac needs adjustments and rewrites every once in a while, and the last time was too much for him. I guess he'd rather spend the time doing features.
There was a 30 Rock episode that poked fun at exactly what you're saying. American business practices are steering more and more towards "consuming and repackaging" rather than producing. Which, I don't think the internet has really helped all that much... well... I think the whole influencer trend is more to blame, not the internet. For better or worse an influencer can make or break a product almost literally overnight. There were some wireless earbuds a year or two ago, where one guy on youtube said they don't work and were trash. Next day everyone... and I'm trying to remember here so a few facts might be wrong... cancelled their pre-orders or immediately returned them without even opening. Something like that. Well, it was maybe a week that company closed down. Then, some other people on youtube used them and said "They work fine and there's nothing wrong with them."

Whether the dump on the company was justified or not. I literally don't know, I hate all wireless earbuds to begin with, I'm no expert. That, by itself, is a terrifying prospect. One slight misstep can be blown to crazy proportions. So, why not just "fuck it, just repackage something else we know works and move on. I want no emotional attachment to any of this, in case it blows up in my face." Before someone hits back, yes, the system can still do good, like the LockpickLawyer on youtube, showcasing shit, overpriced bike locks.
If the "bad guys" were one team it would make sense, but there's a whole world of guys who can turn "bad" when the opportunity is given. And it is given, when a new vuln is unmasked.
Only popular science articles and marketing shticks discuss “imminent quantum computers” in the sense of a commercially viable machine that displaces existing classical computers. Quantum computers exist. They can solve real-world problems, like simulating molecules. They don’t, however, outperform your cell phone in any “practical”/“real-world” problem.

Google’s supremacy result is an indicator of progress, not an indicator of practicality or “advantage”. Google knows this, and hasn’t claimed anything more.

The supremacy result should be viewed only for its scientific meaning and merit and nothing more.
Do you have a citation for that? A quick Google doesn’t reveal anything obvious.
The Balloon Boy Hoax Solved
Even though the entirety of the stories are completely different, I couldn't help but start to picture scenes from The Dead Poet Society while reading the article.

How does it go? Oh captain, my captain?

Edit: PS: I did watch DPS in school in the US, but just heard of the third wave here today.
3 months maybe, 6 months definitely.
> As you know, I expect that quantum supremacy cannot be achieved at all.

There’s the source of his skepticism, not some specific flaw he’s identified in these new results.
My impression is that the network effect comes from where people choose to go to ask questions. You go where you know your question has a good chance of getting answered. As such sites grow as "bases of knowledgeable people", they become a Schelling-point pulling people-with-questions toward them.

That's the first-order effect. The second-order effect is that people who are familiar with one of the StackExchange sites, if they have a question about something that doesn't fit there, might default to looking at the sibling list of sites to find a good place to ask their question, even if that sibling site is smaller than some out-of-network Q&A forum on the same topic. The smaller sites in the network don't quite gain cachet from being associated with their larger siblings, but they sort of gain "an expectation of having your question answered" inherited from their bigger siblings—whether it's true or not.
That's only for the "smucks", though. If you have a proper banking relationship, you'll get great rates.
This is another great chance to root your phone and take complete control of what you should rightly own.
This would be an awesome tool for streaming :)

You should also consider posting this on the chess subreddit: http://reddit.com/r/chess
> Really cheap? I have a friend who is a single mother with a 7-year-old Lego addict, who also loves all things Jurassic World.

Well, like all of us who didn't grow up rich, she has to adapt and get the cheap lego sets, rather than whatever the kid wants.

> Now I see them as just like any other business

That is more on you than Lego.
Also testing a powder / pill shaving doesn't necessarily mean that a speck sized grain of fent didn't make it into the bag somewhere. But hey at least there's mushies still. Stay safe kids.
There are lots of sites out there that host APKs of apps (older versions, etc.)... I'd wager they have more than a few users.
> I have a hard time believing they're government controlled

I'm sure they [1] No longer have any ties ;). Hey, why would Bush lie about this?!?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Joe Rogan's Interview with Commander David Fravor (Tic-Tac UAP)
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair.
There are high end toasters in the west. I feel like no one did any research at all.

https://www.toaster.org/glass-toasters/
It's a new way of life, a very significant shift in lifestyle.

> don't feel the loneliness aspect

Working from home was the norm until the industrial revolution. Our cities and way of life will need time to adapt.
I've never been a full-time developer, but I find that a lot of the passion around remote/distributed work often misses something for people starting out.

Communication systems were a lot different when I started in the tech world. But it's really really hard for me to imagine starting out in a world where I was sitting in my apartment all day. Remote doesn't mean working alone of course. But I would certainly have found the relative isolation difficult even given today's messaging and videocon apps.
Any negative development for the most backwards, disgusting nation on earth is a positive development for humanity and civilization
So do we get mad at the people who believed the lies and got swindled, or the people who told the lies and got rich?
Here are some things to read and watch if you haven't seen any of this before:

Anderson Cooper on CNN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ZJQ4I7_3M

Michio Kaku:
https://facebook.com/michiokaku/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWEhY5NzaBQ

New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/science/tom-delonge-ufo-r...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/insider/secret-pentagon-u...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-prog...

Vice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqdOXfuzDIw

The Hill: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/460334-top-homeland-secur...

Politico:
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/06/navy-withholding-u...
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/23/us-navy-guidelines...

The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/09/18/...
Not all law enforcements are working for the good of their people, probably.
Mesa Gallium 3D is not an API intended for use by applications. It is a mechanism that allows to share functionality among drivers. Yes, it is possible to create state trackers on top of it, but that will be part of Mesa. It has no public API.

Even among Mesa drivers, usage of Gallium 3D is not mandatory. If the driver team thinks it will make their job easier, they can use it. If they think it won't, they won't. Intel 965 driver (the current driver for Intel GPUs) doesn't use Gallium, for example. The new one ("Iris"), currently in the works, will. For a long time, the only driver that used Gallium 3D was only the AMD one.
It's not easier to generate hydrogen with thermally driven processes than with electricity. People have certainly proposed thermally driven methods that could use solar heat or the output of high temperature nuclear reactors. But none of them have reached pilot plant scale, and IMO they are going to be hard to make reliable/affordable because they combine high temperatures with chemically aggressive environments.
I can only hope the combination of Sir Ive's departure and the massive warranty liabilities will move them back towards their glory days. Design has had far too much control the last ~5 years leading to some of their worst products.

Design + Function = Great Products.
Some of us are just trying to remove ourselves from Google's teat because we don't want to be sucking from Apple's teat instead, but it's getting increasingly harder to do so.
Even when the parts are reliable and not oddball, they still cost more.

You can pay $25k for a used car that cost $50k when it was new, but you will still have the maintenance and repair bills befitting a $50k car. The original owners could afford that cost of ownership, and the manufacturer took that into account when it designed the car.

I know a few people who buy older Mercedes and BMW models and they say the cost of ownership is low, but that's only because they do their own work and don't need to pay a mechanic.
Majority of coding tests are extremely unrealistic anyways and you never use any of it in real world. Let's say some fizzbuzz or fibonacci or whatever else. I've only had 2 realistic interviews where they ask you to code some microservice or create some app and present it to them. They also make the excuse "I want to see how you think" but let's be honest in real world you would Google and try out bunch of things until something works for lets say some CRUD app you are building and you barely ever use any "logic" to build something, so don't stress about it.
I learned this lesson recently. I had to go into a bank to get a prime + 0.5 line of credit secured against my home's equity. Nowhere on the internet would an online formula give me anything close.
Yes they do. They are east's brits. Or the brits are the west's japanese. idk how it works. I get the impression the brits are willing to cheat a smidge to get the quality result, I don't know if that cultural value is the same in japan.
Except for the part where discusses at length his criticisms with the paper itself, which apparently you don't wish to comment on.
Your conception of learning is quite distinct from the Asian one which is very clearly "pain is gain." The only lectures I emerged from where I felt "wonderful" were ones I completely understood -- that is, lectures in the humanities and arts in which I didn't have to flex a neuron.
Maybe all of you read every word Matt Levine writes as I do, but in case you don't, here is his explanation:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-02/the-tr...
I believe the article is translating that badly from the bug report. An app installed through the Play store is also an "untrusted app code execution" - Play deploys some scanning tools on submitted apps during the review, but do you trust them to catch it always? There's also things like Amazon devices with Amazon app store, ...

Similarly, Chrome is only mentioned because it's notable that it can be effective from inside its isolation if combined with a browser exploit. That likely applies to all browsers, but the article recommends to switch browsers.
That still doesn't counter my point.
Because A/C lines are more efficient than either oil or batteries.
The Illegal Wildlife Market Is Booming. Encrypted Messaging Makes It Worse
That's not true. Long pools cannot have an indefinite timeout, especially for a mobile use case. Plus, it's not just the TCP connections. If you look at push notifications on Android phones in China, because GMS isn't available, every other app is having a background thread checking for push notifications. It adds up.
Ant Colony Has Memory
Anybody have a Charles Schwab account in the UK? I've been looking for a low fee brokerage who offer a business account in the UK. So far only IB seems to tick the box.
Yes, that's what I am reading now.

A few false experts friends had a very different discourse a few decades ago, but they were probably misled and ignorant.

At this point I think it might need a renaming.
Quantum device or apparatus maybe?

Quantum Computer is a bit misleading...
Perhaps, Lord of The Flies is somewhere on that shelf, as well. Gosh I should go back and read all those again!
I don't think "the size of the pie" refers to how much is in the pie, but how it's divided.
As an employee, giving a startup a discount on your compensation is pretty similar to a VC giving the startup cash.
My level of expertise on quantum computing is low.

The announce of the imminent advent of the Quantum Computer seems to be recurring every few months these last few years because it's a moving target.

HN recently featured an article about a supposed quantum-only algorithm being applied to normal computing. Algorithms are a vastly larger space to explore than general computing paradigms.

Computer hardware is still advancing forward in performance even though single-threaded performance is stalling in relation.

We're moving away from general computing, this is always happening, but the current environments are pushing us back towards transputers. There's a place for special purpose quantum hardware, but right now the money is in making the most general quantum cpus possible(D-wave being an exception because annealing has many uses where it excels.)
Don't believe the hype.
That's why you see that $20k 7-series with 90,000 miles on it but it's only 4 years old on so many car lots. That thing looks like a deal but it's one failure away from $15k in dealership repairs
That's why I love UK and Australian/NZ power plugs. It's impossible to plug them in "the other way around". They only go in one way.
It’s interesting to watch the disconnect between the outwardly liberal/left side of Silicon Valley and its complicity in these things.

Take one example, Garry Tan was an early member of Palantir but went on to be a partner and Twitter thoughtleader.

Some like Thiel have been called out but not entirely shunned for their work. Maybe doing so would go too far or maybe staying in the circles of power is too attractive
Maybe, I think it depends on your expectations.
Minerva Attack (libgcrypt, wolfSSL/Crypt, MatrixSSL, Crypto++)–Humble Beginnings
If people aren’t able to change and retrain, I’m not sure what will help them. I’m sure some people are locked in. I’m from a part of the country where people are pretty transient and it’s common to meet screeners who started at 50 or even people at 60 who started doing medical transcription or telework bank support and stuff. I meet tons of people who rebooted and I’ve been meeting them for 50 years or so. And it’s not like I seek them out.

This might also be an example where we have to teach and support and encourage resiliency early in life. I’m sure there are some people who lock their life around their job, but that’s not healthy. Especially if it’s literally a shitty and unhealthy job like coal mining.
As an undergrad in maths, I spent lots and lots of afternoons browsing my university library and picking many interesting books about everything. Yes, there's the internet, but reading maths on paper is really a different experience, and moreover you don't know what you don't know, so it is not easy to replicate the experience online. And no, they were not required for my courses, but you're not there just to pass the courses, you're there to learn
And TDAmeritrade.
There's a good middle ground solution to use an independent brand (or multi-brand) specialist mechanic. Several BMW or MB independents in most major cities/suburbs thereof and they're often quite a bit cheaper than the dealers.

I had excellent service from the one MB I owned (granted I did turn all the wrenches on it, so the costs were extremely low). One nice thing about the luxury German cars is that they are generally designed for a long service life. Things that need to come apart for servicing are generally threaded fittings (rather than push/snap fit plastic crap).
I've always learned more from books and the Internet as well as just trying to figure things out for myself than from colleagues, despite having worked with some very smart people. I have learned some valuable things from coworkers but if I had to pick just one there's really no contest. I can also think of many occasions where taking what a coworker told me at face value without doing some independent research myself would have led me to learn bad practices or outright falsehoods.

This might depend on the individual but without seeing some empirical evidence I'm not convinced that this advice is that useful.
> toaster strudels

I am sure you can get the same effect in your country by just pouring a cup of sugar on each slice of toast.
> How many consumers across the world would actually be at risk…

We don't know, because we don't know who bought it and how widespread they deployed it.
> However, if you install an application from an untrusted source, attackers can take advantage of that.

I'm slightly confused: Do they mean any app or a compromised app?
Australia Just Had a Bad Flu Season. That May Be a Warning for the U.S.
Used luxury car is a quick way to lose money.

The spare parts are rare and expensive in most times

and lack of supply make you get stuck many times until the car get fixed
http://archive.is/VS0mb
I usually pay my property taxes via check, which are due twice a year. Sometimes I just eat the online processing fee ($4).

The last one-off check I wrote was to a plumber who charged 3% fee for credit card.
Although I don't think it applies in this example, it might be worth pointing out a trade-off: the more constraints you encode into parameter or return types in a API, the more specialized it is and the more likely that a change will be backward incompatible.
Not in my personal (anecdotal) experience. I bought a $65k MSRP Audi S4 for $31.5+tax, 4 years after it hit the market.

Haven't had anything go wrong in the 2 years I've owned it, just regular maintenance that I go to an independent mechanic for.

I find if you follow a few basic principles of used luxury car buying you can avoid a ton of headaches...

- Stalk forums for the model that you want and understand all the serious problems certain model years can have. Avoid those model years, always buy the latest model year of that series (Most issues get solved by the manufacturer).

- Do a PPI (Pre-purchase inspection), it's only ~$100.

- Ask for previous maintenance records / repairs (Avoid cars with accidents or questionable titles).

- Do preventative maintenance and never miss a scheduled service.

- Fix problems immediately as they arise, don't let them get worse.

So far I've owned a fantastic sports sedan that I've wanted to own for a long time, for 50% off.