skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For a fairly large chunk of the HN crowd Newman, Sutherland, Sproull, Dijkstra, Knuth and Kay are household names.

The fact that computer science is one of the few domains where new entrants simply accept the status quo and do not spend a minute on understanding how we got here is a problem. For one it creates a disconnect between the older (and often wiser) generation in the field and the new comers. For another that disconnect then results in endless re-invention of the same wheels. Because by the time the new cadre has acquired the wisdom the cycle will repeat.

Try imagining a modern day genetics student who does not know who Crick & Watson are. That's your typical CS specialist.
This looks great. For browsers, would have been even better if the result was an SVG or pure CSS gradient. Canvas can still have performance hit on mobiles.

The JS implementation of Gradify [1] did something similar but by using CSS linear-gradient which is even better in terms of performance. I wonder if the same could be implemented here.

[1] https://github.com/fraser-hemp/gradify
Clickbait title that implies that tracking links are commonly added to phone numbers, while there's probably just that one bug he noticed.
Is there another example of a company doing this? The title seems to imply that this is a widespread problem.
That sounds like a pretty desperate argument. What proportion of their revenue are they making from selling this data?
I like the idea. Bookmarked for when I get back to my home machine.
> So, if you're writing link tracking software, please make sure only to add parameter to URls where it makes sense.

Also take a moment to consider if you to track what links people are clicking on at all.
Ask HN: How to Do a Startup in 2020?
So I stumbled onto an idea for a 'app' that I think is pretty big. I've run it by a few people that are exceedingly cynical and the response was somewhat shocking (they both loved it). Having many years in this industry I understand that a good, new and original idea is pretty rare so I've naturally gotten pretty excited to develop this thing. However laying in bed last night with this all buzzing around I realized I don't know how to go about it in 2020. I did a number of startups in the early 2000's (non 'made it') and back then your options were basically to bootstrap it yourself or try an incubator.

My question is this - in 2020 what's the best, most viable way to develop and bring to market a good/serious idea that you want to make a serious run at? It used to be you'd build a prototype or even the full website/app, etc and along with a pitch-deck you'd try to raise money or give an incubator a shot.

A bit more about the idea... it's big enough where I think it would need the backing of something like ycombinator, techcrunch or techstars to really reach it's potential. Reason being, it would compete in an existing space where there are already huge, well funded players (I know this is typically the way things are). To put it into better perspective, it would be something on the level of a linked-in, indeed or maybe tinder, bumble are better examples. To be clear I'm not saying it's either of those niches, just saying it would be similar to those and I'd be dealing with breaking into that kind of established space.

Just wondering what the best approach is for 'going for it' in 2020 for your dream-shot, retire and buy an island idea.

Thanks!
Show HN: Ciid – Chronological Image Identifier, Written in Rust
Yes, that could indeed happen. But Waymo will likely be able to comply with such regulation whereas Tesla and Uber never will. The parties hurt hardest are those that would have played nice but that get nipped in the bud by the regulations before they are large enough to comply. So Waymo would benefit.
Agreed, +1 for browser makers to make progressive JPEG loading not look like a dog just barfed the original image
How perverted. They claim that the entity has a right to free speech? And worse, that somehow that entitles them to do as they please? Is Alan Dershowitz behind this?
Agree it’s a minor point, can’t expect OP to fit every contractual detail in a short article.
Hey there, author here.

I have an image library of around ~15,000 RAW photo images, which I wanted to organize. After having tried several approaches over the years (organizing them in folders by topic, by year, or some mix of the two...) I gave up and went to build a solution that scales better.

ciid is a CLI utility, which you can use to rename image files, so that you can fearlessly merge folders without having to worry about duplicate file names.

The derived identifiers are structured in such a way that if you sort them alphabetically, the images will also be sorted chronologically. Additionally, the identifier can later be used to verify the integrity of the image.

If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer.
There's a pretty awesome project that does this with SVGs.

https://pkg.go.dev/mod/github.com/fogleman/primitive
https://primitive.lol/

I've used it in a project to generate vector thumbnails that are under 1KB that I can just base64 encode and send along with the general text of a page - so the page renders with the text and low-fi images, and then I can load the hi-fi ones as necessary.

The lo-fi images are art in themselves, sometimes I preferred them to the actual images :-P
Fair enough. For many of us in professional tech jobs today, it's easy to forget just how normed working from home now and then has become. In my first longtime job in the computer industry, I would travel some but the expectation was absolutely that I'd be in the office if I weren't even if the weather was crappy, etc. For one thing, if I weren't in the office, I was pretty cut off from routine communications like phone calls, network access, and so forth.

I'm not sure I'd consider one day a week working "remote" but it does point to an expectation of a lot of flexibility for many professional jobs even if they're not technically remote-first.
It’s not complicated. They sell the actual transactions to other companies who make money on each stock spread.
I'm friends with a top course creator on Udemy and the info density issue is caused by the buying habits of users.

- Most buy based on sales (at a crazy discount), ASP is ~$10 off his ostensibly several hundred dollar course

- Most 95%+ never even _open_ the course

- Of the remainder it's about .25% that "finish" the course in any meaningful way

- Most people buying the courses are aspirational about it ("Yeah I should know about that") and aren't making a detailed analysis of the materials

- Most people buy on _length_ - that they'll look at two courses on the same topic and take the one that is longer and/or has more modules or chapters

- Udemy has a new program for enterprises that pays based on minutes/month of content consumed.

Should be noted this is a highly technical course aimed at developers/devops (situation might be different for guitar lessons).
Presumably it's at least enough to keep the legal team gainfully employed.
What the hell is with that image in the intro, with the smiling waiter?
I liked the bash one liner so much I got it as a tattoo. I get asked about it all the time.
Is Simplicity Always the Goal?
It's cool, I have no use for it but it's cool.
Elixir Wizards S3E13 Alex Garibay and Mike Binns from DockYard on Hiring
> Business is not about doing things right, it's about being profitable

I find this line particularly insightful. It was the biggest lesson I learned in my transition from academia to industry. No one cared that my work was correct and on time, they cared that the vendor we used caused us to miss the deadline and because I was in charge of the overall system, it was still my fault. A tough lesson, but a good one.
My experience is the Slack website works better than the app in all circumstances.
A symbian phone from the 90’s could do all of this. Blackberry phones could do this.

I miss the days where different manufacturers actually created their own phone Firmware/OS.
> In practice,if paseto is better I think an internet draft is in order.

https://paseto.io/rfc/
With the dollar getting so strong and since we are now post brexit, I expect capital flight.

The people running the show have zero understanding of how banking works. And no, I’m not being arrogant - negative rates destroy capital, which is not what you want in a bank.

If you look at the largest European banks, they are all very weak (due to many factors, not just this one). However, negative rates is making them weaker.

Further, the aging demographics of Europe are going to continue to drive lower and lower growth.

In sum, I believe that all of this will cause smart money to leave Europe. At least in part as a hedge if nothing else.
Yup. I wanted a T-series, but they had removed features I wanted (second battery, both RAM sticks replaceable), so I went with an E-series instead. I'm not going to pay a premium for a non-premium product.
UnRaid: https://unraid.net/
Free Build Your Calendar Template in Excel
People could already cause crashes by making fake signs or repainting lines. I think this XKCD summarizes the issue nicely: https://m.xkcd.com/1958/
Yep. All good old dystopic sci-fi of yesteryear was at least evil but cool. This is just sad.
Ask HN: Someone is using my email account to sign up for random websites
I have recently started receiving a lot of "please confirm your subscription by clicking the link below" emails for things I have not signed up for. 20-30 per hour, which is too much for it to be someone just trying to annoy me. Has anyone gone through this bug before? Is it a scam attempt? Any way to fix it?
Given the existing password hygiene, I think it's more likely that any new PIN or password would be treated in the same manner as the existing ones, and would just be an additional hassle.
"Spelled" is more common now even in British English. E.g. compare a Google search of 'site:bbc.co.uk "spelt"' with 'site:bbc.co.uk "spelled"'. Most recent usage of "spelt" is referring to the grain, or a direct quote of somebody who prefers the old-fashioned spelling.
They mention it's a custom version of base83: https://github.com/woltapp/blurhash/blob/master/Algorithm.md...

With this charset:
0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ
RSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqr
stuvwxyz#$%*+,-.:;=@[]^_{|}~.

I imagine you could tweak that to replace problematic chars with safe substitutes.
Get a Google Voice account and use that number for SMS. Works great over wifi.
> knowing that I can't accidentally bungle up the history. I'm always nervous about that when I use git

I just read a great insight yesterday:

> Understanding there’s no harm to be done eases things a lot. It encourages experimenting, which is one of the most effective ways to learn new things and to get familiar with them. Imagine this: you start rebase, mess things up, hit Ctrl+Z several times and try again. Good news is, we can implement Undo/Redo given just ordinary Git implementation. Git already stores all the possible states our repo was in. All Undo/Redo will have to do is to shuffle some branch pointers here and there.

https://tonsky.me/blog/reinventing-git-interface/
Perhaps a number of journalists who were targeted by the 'learn to code' meme a few months ago actually made a go of it and are beginning to graduate around now.
> Don't see how an academic background would help you avoid this it's a skill you're far more likely to learn through practical experience. I don't see bootcampers as being particularly vulnerable to these gaps in knowledge.

Agreed. I was told, and later had to tell others something to the effect of "okay, so what did the error message say? did you search that?"
> How is 2020-02-27 not nice?
It's an uncommon way to denote date. If you're used to the usual date notations (day before month) you can easily get confused with dates like 2020-03-04. Sure, the first number is the year, but what do the other two numbers mean? Maybe the order is clear if you're used to the American way of denoting dates (month before day) but only a small minority of people worldwide use that.

Habits are not easy to change and changing them gets harder as you get older. Microsoft changing the icon of the start menu got me many questions from people anywhere between 20 and 80 back when I did tech support. These people were smart enough to use a computer yet a tiny change confused them. When Windows changed their start menu to something new, people didn't want to change the way they did things and tools like Classic Start was born. If clicking an icon on a computer is too hard a habit to change, how do you think telling the world to change their date notation will go down?

And why should we all go do stuff differently because someone has come up with a way that makes lexicographical sorting of dates possible?

Furthermore, "next Thursday" is already part of internationalisation code (Thursday needs to be translated and the concept of what the literal translation of "next Thursday" means changes between languages and cultures). Why not also put the full date into the correct locale as well while you're at it?

Just because I think metric measurements are superior to imperial measurements doesn't mean I don't need to translate those units of measurement to American when I publish an app that uses them. Anyone capable of counting to ten can understand the metric system but that doesn't mean I can get away with providing metric-only information and input fields for everything.

There's a difference between what academics and engineers use and what the general public uses. If you don't make a general product for the general public then you don't make a very good product.
The US needs GDPR-equivalent laws ASAP.
Hacked Iota to Roll Back Transactions
It's a process breakdown, either manual or automated. Marketing teams tend to use a tagging worksheet like this[1] when creating new emails. They're just told to put all links through that process, and the topic of tel links don't really come up. I've handed off dozens of link generators like that to marketing and account management folks, and never thoguht to add any checking for tel links in the logic or to surface that edge case in the instructions.

So if they're going through the motions they were told to, but don't fully understand why (and don't QA properly) this is what you end up with.

Could also be a system using the same logic of surfacing every <a> tag link for tagging before deployment (based on the utm names, there's at least some type of semantic logic to the naming that indicates a person was involved at some level and knew it was a phone number they were tagging).

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xDl9GdpuWB9kzXzWxKj3...
How can this be legal? Surely they have a duty of care to their customers.
Sure: is there a specific place where you feel I've done that? I think everyone involved would happily concede that Signal, like almost everything, stood on the shoulders of giants. It seems fine to both acknowledge that and also say that making it more accessible (literally go install this thing from the app store) and developing it further (the Signal protocol builds on OTR and SCIMP, sure, but Axolotl, 3XDH and the formalization of Noise are meaningful developments that also warrant recognition).
Brexit, the most pointless, masochistic ambition in our history, is done
So the company that did this - Gig Car - can remotely shut off a vehicle in their fleet? How is this legal?

It’s sounds so dangerous! What if they lost internet on a bridge? People could really get hurt.
Are they also domesticated though?
You can decode using a very small canvas to minimise performance issues, and the scale the resulting image up.
Internally at least I like to know how the web apps I write are being used.

Like if the first thing everyone does is open their "messages" ... maybe give them an option to just do that automatically.

Send that info to a third party ... no I'm not down with that.
> “Maine's decision to impose unique burdens on ISPs' speech—while ignoring the online and offline businesses that have and use the very same information and for the same and similar purposes as ISPs—represents discrimination between similarly situated speakers that is impermissible under the First Amendment,” the lawsuit claimed.

I agree. The law should apply to everyone, not just ISPs.
This already happens occasionally with regular drivers:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transp...
"Pranksters blamed for speeding offences after drivers caught out by 40mph signs in 30mph zone"

Ironically, current Teslas are largely immune to this as they use a database of speed limits.
MP3 is good enough for most casual uses, and not being patent encumbered makes it easier to use. I honestly don't know why I should bother using anything else for personal audio consumption.
WebAssembly Needs a Better Definition
I’m getting AppleScript flashbacks…
if you want to track whether people are clicking on links, utm parameters are the wrong tool. since they're url parameters, they they really only work for internal links. if you want to track all links, you need to resort to onclick handlers + xhr/fetch or beacons.
Why is this the most likely answer? Or even an answer you think there is a non-zero percent likelihood of? I don't see any evidence of that. I would think it's relevant and important if I knew of any such evidence, but I don't know of any, and also would probably bet there isn't any.
> All too many of our software systems are, architecturally, little more than shantytowns. Investment in tools and infrastructure is too often inadequate. Tools are usually primitive, and infrastructure such as libraries and frameworks, is undercapitalized. Individual portions of the system grow unchecked, and the lack of infrastructure and architecture allows problems in one part of the system to erode and pollute adjacent portions. Deadlines loom like monsoons, and architectural elegance seems unattainable.

I would argue they are more akin to failed housing projects: competent architects went to great lengths to justify their existence as a cost-effective solution to an existing problem, but this approach didn't work and they offer no better conditions to their residents than shantytowns.
Top Chrome Extensions for Front-End Developers
might want to think about a different name. https://www.kaseya.com
On Directing Your Site Traffic to Amazon (Due to Higher Trust)
: was disallowed on classic MacOS. On modern macOS, it is allowed in the POSIX layer just fine. However, Finder and other parts of the UI will translate a : in the file name to a / on display, and vice versa.

This is because classic MacOS used : as a directory separator instead of /, and this behaviour is preserved in the UI, but obviously not in the underlying layers.
Kubernetes Performance Trouble Spots: Airbnb’s Take
Did you reply to the wrong comment or something?
It'd be neat if there was an easy way to combine progressive JPEG loading with aggressive CSS blur filters, maybe. I think onload fires when the progressive JPEG is done, so perhaps you could have the onload JS disable the blur?
The Brand Behind the Best Luxury Cars You’ve Never Heard Of
Based on the cars and how it is described, it sounds like the same system as Evo[0] in Vancouver. It is run by our automobile association, BCAA. Their platform vendor is called Vulog[1].

The big difference with Evo is it sounds like these don't have the keys in the glovebox. The app is hot garbage, so it comes in handy. Also the RFID cards are standard issue here. I have taken them well out of service for over 24 hours without issue. All this to say, I don't believe it is an inherent limit of the platform. That said, my experience poking around exposed endpoints does not inspire confidence. The back end is some Microsoft abomination. I'd love to know what runs on the in-car embedded device, but it's probably WinCE. Anybody here worked for vulog?

The article seems to imply they are smart cars, but the picture is clearly of a Prius C. I guess they mean smart as in internet-connected rather than the brand from Mercedes.

[0] https://evo.ca
[1] https://www.vulog.com/en/
Finder exchanges : and / in filenames, for compatibility with classic MacOS, which used : as a directory separator and allowed / in filenames. You can create a file named / in Finder, and it will show up as : on the file system.
Tattoo removal tends to use ~1MW pulsed lasers (yes, megawatt). The pulse is extremely short (nanoseconds), but at that power/instant-brightness it's enough to fry sensitive imaging electronics.

Can also do fun things like blast holes through CDs.

I'd learned about the topic the other day here ("plays" with a cheap tattoo removal kit off the web): https://youtu.be/-BeTq99LqUo
Well that's pretty standard procedure with Donald, right? Needless to say Donald Trump does not need another impeachment-trial so denial is expected but based on similar situations (his denial of knowing people he later have to confess to knowing) this seems very likely. This POTUS is all about "I'll scratch your back, if you scratch mine".
There's a big difference though between "I helped scope the work and talk with the prospect / demo / whatever" vs. "I was the sole source of this customer and made the introduction." I don't mind bringing something to a friend if they're likely to be genuinely interested in it, but it seems weird for sales to be like "can you introduce me to your connection on LinkedIn."
The Forbidden Forest (2009)
What's the advantage of this over using a Gaussian?
Waymo is at the point of being able to deal with those pretty well, right? Either way, I'm suggesting that the impatience OP experienced as a result of being a human driver proximal to a Waymo car would be obviated if all cars were driven by Waymo. If you're not driving the car that's behind the tentative Waymo car, do you really care? You're probably focused on the work you're doing in the car or the TV you're watching.
Critical Vulnerability in pppd
ISS World hack leaves thousands of employees offline
The algorithm is tiny, and will easily fit in less than an image's worth of data, especially if you minify it. Also, it is likely you have more than one image on any given website.
US, UK formally blame Russia for mass-defacement of Georgian websites
New Fuel-Efficient Rocket Engine Could Enable Lighter and Cheaper Spacecraft
Maybe just stop adding tracking links altogether.
Should work fine, if you integrate it into your toolchain somehow.
The parent is focusing on carefulness, and not malicious intent. If being careful requires you to be knowledgeable in computer security or cryptography, we're never going to have a secure communication system because people aren't going to spend years learning those things to simply talk to people. Secure defaults matter, and not being able to configure and use GPG correctly is hardly "incompetence."
Adobe releases out-of-band patch for critical code execution vulnerabilities
Udemy is just like all sorts of things in the economy: it’s a stupid-people tax. You can learn the same information from free videos or just a book.
Then perhaps we will get fusion-powered, self-driving cars in one go.
In addition to the aesthetic effect, this is available immediately, while progressive JPEG will still require additional data to be loaded from the server.
Funnily enough, I recognize this image from The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" soundtrack liner notes (the image itself is from the movie). Why it's included in this article is lost on me.
This has been my experience too. Fortunately rubocop makes it easy to distribute alternate settings as gems. I use https://github.com/sider/meowcop as a reasonable base setting. It's more relaxed about style and makes rubocop more of a linter, which is what I want.
Position on 1-Year Certificates
Schwab earned 1.4% of revenues from payment for order flow

Schwab earned 57% of revenues from net interest on cash
From getting hacked to getting VC funding – a startup story
Do modern browsers even support progressive display of JPEGs? I have not seen it happen in years and years.
Seconding this, I run a couple of these in my basement and they are great low cost, low power servers.