skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The purpose of avoiding browser monoculture was to avoid a world where a single company deploying a single closed-source browser owned the gateway to the World wide Web. The goal was never to make it easy for an arbitrary number of browsers to operate independently of each othe

Making it easier to build browsers is how we avoid a monoculture. If we were OK with there being 2 browser engines (Firefox and Chrome) we wouldn't need to make all of these standards. Mozilla and Google are perfectly capable of collaborating on their own in private, and it would be faster for them to do so -- its just everyone else that would be left out.

Open standards are why we can have interesting browser experiments like Beaker. It's important that there be multiple software projects pushing the web forward. Of course browsers are hard to build, just like Operating Systems are hard to build. It doesn't follow that there should only be two of them.

> Change the UA and be done with it.

To be honest, you're right on this point. This is a kind of pointless debate -- because what will actually happen here is all of the insecure browsers you're worried about are just going to take Vivaldi's route and by-default mock a different user agent for Google login screens. End users don't know or care what user agent is being sent to the remote server.

Let's be honest -- the Kmail devs are not going to throw their hands up in the air and say, "well I guess we just abandon the project now." They're going to push a change that invisibly mocks the user agent for all of their users.

Because, again, you can't trust an insecure browser. If you can't trust a browser-maker to implement the standard correctly, you also can't trust them to voluntarily go along with a scheme that will make a nontrivial portion of the web unusable for the majority of their current user-base.
Sorry if I'm being dense, but assuming you mean this definition of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocephalus

What is the analogy between that and the academic administrative layer?
One of the pilots in this incident was on Rogan saying how they used to fly silently without lights above remote campsites, then once they saw a campfire blast the lights and go straight up. They'd laugh as the UFO reports flowed in.

Similarly, the stealth fighter was in operation for 20 years before the public knew about it.

It's not unrealistic to consider top secret tech as a possible explanation.

One counter point is usually: If we had tech this amazing, we'd be putting it to use commercially. However this tech might be autonomous and might need to be considering the G forces supposedly at play.
I think in this demo they simply paint a path for the car to follow. The cones etc are there just to help us see whether it's following the path well. If there was a cone in the middle of the path, it would've run right over it.
Imagine trying to explain some fancy load balancing AWS deployment to somebody who has never used a computer beyond a flip phone. It would be completely foreign.

That’s me (and also nearly everybody here) with regards to aviation and war making aviation machines. So while these articles and stories are definitely interesting, they might as well be fairy tales. The way our minds are reconstructing these things, and the way the mind of somebody involved in the relevant fields here (whatever they even are!) are likely very different.

That all said: if somebody has a link to any more well informed discussions about this, I sure would love a link!
Ask HN: Best practices for hiring software contractors?
I'm interested in any guide to this - what I need in the contract, how to protect myself, how to find good contractors, etc.
B-Ber: a framework for publications as websites, EPUBs, etc.
Combination of IR contrast, sensor slaving and manual tracking, configured by the pilot as needed. The DCS flight simulator series has a pretty decent targeting pod simulation.
> One can certainly disagree with such a policy — it is nuts to guarantee jobs for life in an industry where the jobs 10 years from now are completely different from the jobs to do now — but it is another thing to use a disagreement with this policy in order to justify rolling out harassment techniques as a way to downsize. It's like faulting the employees for taking a good deal decades ago — the government didn't have to offer the deal back then.

I like the way you phrase it.
Hypothesis: Any aliens advanced enough to build an objecting moving as impossibly as the pilot says would also be advanced enough to not be detected doing so.
"What should service providers do?": https://tomssl.com/2016/10/21/a-sensible-password-strategy/

This is a pretty straightforward set of expectations which should solve most issues.
nit: ordnance
I have doubts about a couple of the assumptions implicit in this statement.

- The "Keto" diet particularly works. Last time I checked, the research suggested it worked about as well as any other elimination diet, or vanilla CR.

- The reason it works. Given that it works about as well as any other elimination diet, it's probably important for practitioners to adhere strictly, rather than continuing to consume the foods that made them fat; but successfully avoiding carbohydrate intake enough to trigger some particular level of ketosis is probably not a part of how it "works".
The Go compiler codegen backend IIRC does this via ISA descriptions.
UnDraw: Open-source illustrations for every project you can imagine and create
I would love to see a site provide a little pop-out window with all of the mined data displayed for the site users to see. I could see where the 3rd parties mining that data would not want all of the users to see that. I've never used GA or similar, but I seriously doubt that the 3rd parties provide the site owners/developers a method for being able to do this. They want to drive eyeballs back to their site to view the metrics.
Take a look at the Bragg curve. This explains it: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
To add onto this:
Is this behavior reasonable for an alien species? I think so. It could be a probe to evaluate the behavior and technology of society on Earth. They could detect military response times, if they get greeted with missiles, hugs, or observations, etc. Keeping tabs on neighbors may be a good way to slowly initiate peaceful contact with another planet.

Another question to ask ourselves is “how much evidence is enough to convince ourselves that aliens exist?” Namely: is this FLIR video enough?
JSPython
If those presenting as "communist" or "islamist" were shunned like nazis because they are all, effectively, fascists, that would not be an improvement? How not?
There are so many ways to handle software/service lifecycles but Cerberus' apparent approach here is questionable from both a legal & business perspective.

Not only is this possibly fraudulent/deceptive behavior* but given that their particular service is predicated upon trust we think they should care more about how untrustworthy this makes them appear.

Generally, why would we knowingly engage a seemingly untrustworthy company for a trust-based service?

---
* Although it is a "revocable license" the terms seem to only address revocation due to "good faith belief" that a user has violated the T&Cs. How to reconcile non-violation revocations of those who purchased a "lifetime" license?
What's the issue with this patent? It is a parallel construction of what was observed without the prior observation being specific enough for prior art.

And if there was to be coercion or convincing, the US Navy Secretary would be good enough you'd think?
Fighting the Good Fight Against Online Child Sexual Abuse
For a roth IRA there are two other benefits (not familiar with Roth 401k, so won't speak to that).

* Hedge against different tax rates in the future. Even if now you think you'll be paying a lower rate when retired, there's no guarantees.

* You can withdraw your contributions, though not your earnings, without penalty before retirement. If you add 5k/year for a number of years, that starts to add up should you need to tap it for an emergency or other investment opportunity (real estate or bootstrapping).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_ext...

We do have to be careful playing with the chemistry of the atmosphere of the only habitable planet we have.
Multiple planes saw it from different angles at the same time.
How often do you run into trouble with 64 length?

For one password manager, my default length was 16 and at the time I ran into a sites few sites that restricted it to 12 or 14.

Is this less common these days?
My portfolio, sadly out of date, is here: http://www.aaronbrethorstphotography.com

My Flickr page is here: https://flickr.com/photos/aaronbrethorst

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aaronbrethorst/
Categorical logic reframes the lambda calculus as being "simply" the internal language of cartesian-closed categories. Doing the same for other categories leads to other languages that are not so lambda-like. Sometimes categories are best characterized by graphical languages, as seen in string diagrams and generalizations thereof. Studying these things involves a rather thriving subfield at the intersection of PLT, category theory and foundational mathematics/logic.
The cases I know of (including mine) were mostly in tech companies.
I would actually love to see this in Wikipedia...
Latching relays don't need to rely on field strength to hold contacts in place. Then it's just a mechanical design problem.
It’d be blacktarhero.in.
Dissenting/disbelief responses do not appear to be from people who've worked with RDBMS at the high scale. I'm content with being able to keep the system simple, sleep at night, not getting pings for database and feeling good about the choice. Big enough reward for me and any others who have dealt with this.
> * Applications like Pixelmator are likely depending on the growing userbase of the Apple ecosystem for their own growth.*

What about Affinity?

> expect them to move to subscriptions as well.

> everyone who wants to make a living writing software needs a recurring revenue stream.

Why is preying on your current users and pulling a bait-and-switch on them the only option?

If the continued development of a pay-once/optional-yearly-upgrade product really is unsustainable for you, branch out into more products. Or review your expenses. You don't have to live in San Francisco or replace all your computers with the latest Mac Pro.

It's like, "Oh no our single product cannot sustain our extravagances/desired lifestyle, so let's flay our existing flock some more instead of attracting new customers or creating new/better products."

That only delays your demise, because the users will definitely review their expenses.
That's a perfectly valid response from them. You also don't send food back after you've finished your plate.
Not everyone wants to live in a big city. Should those type of people not be allowed to exist? They built up a city and did it so well that so many people want to live there. There has to be a way to ration the limited supply else their town becomes a big city. The best way (in many ways) is to ration housing to whoever is willing to spend the most.
The field has 100% connected the dots. And there are a lot of studies on it, but trying to cure cancer through the Warburg effect isn't quite the holy Grail they hoped.
The simplest solution to all of this is to browse with javascript disabled and only temporarily whitelist certain first party domains when required.

Like egdod said at the bottom of this comment thread, downvoted into oblivion: "Javascript is a cancer and should be disabled whenever possible."
How Morocco is already living in the future
No ‘Magic Bullets’ in the Fight Against Online Abuse, but ‘Spiders’ Help
Analytic vs. Continental Philosophy
I'd just like to note, this article is being downweighted very heavily. At the time of writing, it's 3 hours old with 77 points, yet it's in 97th place - 4th page, among day old articles with tens of points. On the other hand, "ChezWEB: Hygienic Literate Programming for Chez Scheme" is in 11th place, with 19 points and 6 hours old.

I think political articles are downweighted in favor of more tech/hacker news, but "How Smartphones Betray Democracy" is in 23rd place, with 136 points and 12 hours old. Similar topic and age/points ratio to this one.
Agreed on voting. The Dem + GOP cartel has a stranglehold on the process, the market if you will. Their collusion (e.g., gerrymandering) has resulted in a system that perpetrates their lens and their power.

Put another way, just because you get to vote doesn't mean it was a true democratic process.
Ah, I find that point fascinating, that this attitude trickles down into the incentive structures, and maybe just job evaluation in general. How to measure someone's impact on an org in a way that is not a number: hours inputted, dollars saved or gained, lines of code, leads gained/lost, followers gained/lost...do you know of any examples where you think they've done it in a way that takes the bigger picture into consideration?
Intelligence in one area doesn't mean intelligence in another, it may also be that they don't care about being spotted.
I love that I have to accept ALL tracking & cookies to even read that webpage
If anyone would be interested in the next major version, please add your email to this list to be notified: https://forms.gle/FJmsXCDy18RrbFtt9
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Downvotes for asking a valid and objective question. I'm not antivax, but if I were, I imagine I'd be furious that the scientific community has decided this issue is "closed" to further debate. The unwillingness to question fundamental assumptions and replicate results is totally unscientific. Bunch of hypocrites, really. And that's from someone who vaccinates his kids.
Not with any falsifiable basis. It all amounts to religion with the serial numbers filed off. If you want religion, go for honest religion. Dressing it up in science clothes benefits nobody.
> This feels like a Unix poweruser telling grandma why she doesn’t need Dropbox.

If you meant to imply that the "Unix poweruser" is likely to make a weak argument through misapplication their own narrow expertise to a domain outside of that expertise, I agree. If you mean that Unix powerusers as a group so regularly missapply their narrow expertise that I can't even take on faith that they're picturing a human being when they utter the word "grandma", I agree.

But then I don't understand the analogy to what you call a "fairly strong" case against the desirability of democracy. If you're unfamiliar with U.S. democracy from local to federal level, you should instead be assuming the OP wrote potentially true but incomplete (and, therefore, misleading) set of statements about a domain outside of whatever their narrow expertise happens to be.

For example, there are a lot of local and municipal governments in the U.S. where elections are non-partisan. That is, elected officials don't belong to or get funding from political parties. Further, the "advocacy" groups in these areas are ones that typically organize citizens on the local or regional level to serve the community's needs.

If you run the numbers on those voting districts you'll quickly realize that individual citizens there have a considerable amount of power to affect the conditions of the town or county where they live. A lot of those decisions aren't subject to outside manipulation and are mostly bound by a citizen's time, energy, and ability to persuade others of their position.

What I just wrote is completely compatible with what Merrill wrote. But the important point is that you didn't intuit it from reading their post.
Prepare a long vertical trail of diffractive cloud media ahead of time, using some stealthy drones. Then draw on your “canvas” using a broad-spectrum beam, possibly from another stealthed drone (or combination of such.) The diffractive properties mean that the part of the “canvas” being hit becomes a point source, emitting in all directions (except directly above/below, where the rest of the “canvas” is—but unless you’re in a helicopter keeping still, you won’t really be able to notice that.)

This is the kind of stuff we’ve been doing to fool guided air-to-air countermissiles into not hitting their targets for a long time now. Penaids. Just fancy ones.
Not sure what exactly is the "message in a bottle" -test and why would we need one?

I think it is a limitation of "bottle-mail" that you can not easily reply to the message. Of course sometimes all you have is a bottle and a piece of paper and the sea around you :-)
Lying? No. Memory issues? Could be. Giving answers that you think are expected? Yup. Highly possible.

Someone or sonehow these humans were questioned. There are a number of reasons why that might not be accurate.
-Given sufficient oxygen levels, anything is fuel - including engineers...
What Happened to All Those Frozen Eggs?
Ask HN: Best Talks of 2019?
2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18740939

2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16045859

2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637239

Ever: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18217762

Bonus: https://link.medium.com/GYN66jgmD2

Thanks.
> Similarly, the stealth fighter was in operation for 20 years before the public knew about it

First flew 1981, first official photo released 1988. And plenty of speculation in betwee..
https://www.ovnis-armee.org/11_plasma_technology.htm

The above discusses exploiting the Bethe Formula to produce a radiant point at some distant from a beam generator. IIUC the energy falloff suddenly increases below a threshold energy level therefore the particle beam will deposit most of its energy in a very short distance. Could the reported 'tic tacs' i.e. bright white elongated balls be the result of this? Would explain the supposedly physics defying nature of their aerial manoeuvres.
Good News Stories You Probably Didn't Hear About in 2019
Big head = Mostly self-serving academic administration, providing little value to students.
I have an anecdote about that:

I had a brief stint working for a hotel booking competitor and, sometimes, a transaction would go through 3-4 hands, each taking commission, before reaching the hotel and I just hated that.

This spring we wound up stranded in Amsterdam for an evening and I needed to book a hotel fast. I checked booking.com and saw what was still available at the moment and I found a hotel - a double room on booking.com was 230EUR. I call the hotel, I tell them I want to book a room for tonight, total number of people etc. The receptionist comes back and tells me a double room is 285EUR. Do I want it? I do not. I went back to booking.com and reserved the room there.

I can also say that I had a problem with a dishonest property description (regarding parking) and complaining to Booking made them produce an underground parking space in 5 minutes - albeit this was before checking in.
Agreed, if Vox had actually done this it would have been underwhelming.
I wonder if some of these automated systems are ran by booking.com, or someone contracted to run them? Too cynical?
There is a class of routes I take, which involve going through a cross street between two east-west roads. Google Maps sometimes directs me to take one that does not end in a traffic light, which would leave me at a stop sign trying to make a left onto a major road across traffic. The last time I was stuck in that position, I basically made a right and then a U-turn.
> I would avoid using Unix timestamps or anything that is too implementation dependent (internal sequence numbers, etc.) if you are going to build it yourself.

I generally agree, but this might depend on the use case. Timestamps (as they are provided by the DB or OS) may not be granular enough if you need to record the exact order of changes in a system with a lot of near-simultaneous writes.

I ended up storing both sequence numbers and timestamps in one SQL Server implementation for this reason.
> I don't think I'm changing my message - it's based on replying to the conversation. I'm not even saying she's not an engineer, just that people need to stop conflating tech certs with engineering. In many of these comments I'm still referring to her as an engineer, so now I'm not a sexist right? Good.

You're definitely still saying and have been saying you believe she's not an engineer.

> However, if you ABUSE that independence to bite the hand of your employer, you have absolutely no expectation of top cover.

Again, your bias shows. If your employer is treating you well, why would talking about unionization be threatening? These conversations are happening precisely because people claim to be seeing abusive parts of the system and are looking for recourse.

Is that biting the hand of your employer? You clearly think so. Would that folks like you were more active in demanding action the collective action by corporate CEOs to illegally fix wages. Sadly, folks seem content to shrug and smile and pretend that's the right of their minders.

> Furthermore, if you go into a legal setting with your argument that engineers always act autonomously, you just sound like a bunch of cowboys to the bureaucrats that get to decide this.

No, but the idea that summary dismissal is normal for a simple message not approved by management on a legally protected subject is hogwash. I think you know this, but you'd prefer it's not so.

Thank you for the conversation. Goodbye.
In JavaScript there's a distinction between 'null' and 'undefined'.

You can pick your own semantics for them but I think 'undefined' more or less means "not known" while null means "known not to exist".
A Banker Helped Save N.Y. (and Why It Will Never Happen Again)
I don't think one can cover just anything in an open society. Even the truly secret military gear like the original H-bomb, F-117, A-12, anti-powerline bombs, and navy stealth helicopter were impossible to hide completely. At least the fact of their existence was out long before the public saw them.

Even in paranoid USSR, people knew of computer guided recon drones, spy sats, Shkvals, Dvinas, R73 and Strelas — all of which were more secret than the bomb, and were equally bordering on "sci-fi" and unbelievable to the layman at the time.

The leak of Shkval's existence was of particular embarrassment to the Union's military and counterintelligence. Supposedly, there were less than 50 people in the whole Union who were privy to info on them in full, but even before it entered service it became an "urban myth" among civilians in military cities and such.
Flickr owner: We need more paying subscribers to keep this going