skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Things like "enormous" are not subjective in physics. We know that we need a certain density of energy to probe a particle. There are no miracles: it has to come from somewhere and it is not like there are sources of such energy that can pop up from nowhere. We simply do not have a place to harvest such energy on the global scale, and we know we won't have anytime soon. There are simply no sources for that.

> Even minor things can have major impact when combined with further research

We are talking about things happening at energies which are way beyond normal interactions. Let's imagine we pick a simple artificial signal from the sky, from a place that is 5000 light years away.

People will get crazy about aliens and loose their shit on how we are not alone. And so what - from a practical perspective there is exactly zero interest in this. We cannot use that information at all because whatever is there is unreachable.

There are however plenty of place in physics which are worth the effort (I mentioned solid state physics as one of the most promising ones). Not to mention biology where we are only right at the beginning and there are plenty of outcomes.

If we had infinite resources then fine. We do not have them. And putting 20B€ in some fancy research with zero practical interest (such as this one, or middle-ages French literature, or Platon philosophy, ...) is a tremendous waste of opportunities.

I understand that we need to fund research with no practical interest - this is part of what makes us human. Just not 20B€ when people are starving, dying, etc.
Yes that's correct.

Counterintelligence goes through cycles. Sometimes it produces the best, sometimes it's a point where the worst are parked in.

For background, Vladimir Putin is a little unusual in that he studied at an academy that was famous for counterintelligence. At the time CI was not as high status in the KGB so his emergence later was unexpected.
I just tried and I went to realty.com. I’m Danish but I set the keyboard to English and it still sent me to realty.com.
Sony does make DPAF capable sensors for phones, but for some reason (probably IP!) they don't use them on their FF cameras.
Ahh thanks -- I didn't think of the censorship angle, that's a showstopper for sure
Vascular+Access+Device+Market+Size+Worth+$7.72B+By+2027esearch
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/kellyanne-conway-tr...
Can Zoom be trusted with users’ secrets?
Ask HN: What are some unusual phrases related to software?
I have only ever used the phrase writing code but while reading the MATLAB documentation I came across the phrase authoring classes [1]. I found this very charming. Has anyone else ever come across this? Even MATLAB documentation doesn't use this phrase consistently.

Another one I observed while working with south east asian people is "codes" instead of "code". And honestly in India we don't even use "piece of code", this seems to be something American. But since a lot of the online tutorials are written using that phrase it does not seem that strange.

Are there any other unusual (and dare I say cute) phrases related to software engineering you know about?

[1]https://nl.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/author-class-based-unit-tests-in-matlab.html
> Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility.

And that's exactly where we're stuck, which is all I'm saying. I think all three affect moral responsibility.

> 1+2=3, etc

> Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence.

There's another assumed aspect though that you have not separated, which is that the judging intelligence has empathy if it agrees. You're claiming only using pure logic, but you're using aspects of that subjective human perspective to imply that the reduction of pain/whatever stimuli. Without the human perspective, the example fails to be a "moral" fact. It's just a configuration that raises x, lowers some y maybe, and the beings prefer more x and less y. But without value being projected on x and y, it is not inherently "good". We require the human perspective to create human morality. What if the intelligence viewing this entire scenario loves to see pain/y? Would it not rationally conclude the anesthesia is bad? Only if it assumes or judges based on the values of a human does it get the same conclusion. Yes, within that, it's objective.

I find that distinction is key in how we approach the derivation later. A lack of such distinction can, for one example, enable using the idea of objectivity here to assign value to the entities (more ideal = more value), which then can shift practical effects possibly. And maybe you disagree with this specific example on deriving value from objective nature, but that is one of the many doors the lack of distinction opens. I'm sure if we went far enough down the road, there is likely an argument that you do agree with that comes from the lack of distinction.

You say I'm missing the forest, but I think you are minimizing the importance of the trees through all of this and disagreeing that the trees can be important, even if you zoom out and the forest is the same. You're saying that the rule in play here is "addition", but I'm saying I think you're missing some rules/definition/workings of the "operator" in this metaphor that lead to different results later down the line, even if it works in this case.

> The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it.

I typed up a longer distinction here, but again this seems to come down to distinguishing between two definitions and if that distinction means something. See importance of trees. In this case, blame being the tree.
I hope not. I am ok with it as long as we don't plaster the whole public space with video cameras. That would be more than unfortunate. I doubt most places would gain anything from it.

I am not keen of my state knowing my whereabouts either and think camera deployment would create more problems than it solves. Countries where it has been deployed don't have impressive advantages to show for and all the privacy disadvantages. So why should we even consider it? What problem should it solve?

My opinion, if you are still scared of terrorists a psychiatrist might be more useful than a camera.
Forgive my ignorance, but do you have any good references to multi-threaded cellular automata implementations? This is something I've been dabbling with myself.
Technically, you can get literally any lens except Canon RF and Nikon Z to autofocus on Sony E mount using the LM-EA7 universal autofocus adapter. Though support for long focal lengths is not very good.
Well if it's for the military or police many will refuse apparently. But they don't have as big a problem with tech companies having the power.
> > A local software would address local needs better than the generic "one size fits all" solutions would.

At what cost in terms of development effort? "Not Invented Here" is a well recognized anti-pattern for good reason. Don't forget the ongoing investment required for maintenance and (in many cases) ever changing interoperability requirements.

> why do we tend to only use and develop Personal Computers rather than Community Computers

Dynamicland is an amazing project but I think it's a pretty loose use of the term computer. It seems to me to be a physical space which incorporates interesting human-computer interaction paradigms. Someone still owns and operates the collection of computers and devices powering the entire thing behind the scenes so it's more like a mainframe or other public access system (ex sdf.org) in my view.

So I'd split your question into two - why do people seem to prefer personal computers to public access systems, and why isn't there more investment in developing novel human-computer interaction paradigms?

To the first question: All things being equal would you really prefer to do your personal coding, writing, reading, online shopping, or other private activities on a system someone else controlled? Note that many people already do much of their day to day work on such devices (ie centrally administrated systems).

To the second question: That shit is incredibly expensive in both time and materials and a return on investment seems unlikely in most cases. Just look at how difficult it has proven to develop usable VR headsets that fall into a reasonable price range! (And then you have to rework or reinvent all the existing software to add support for them.) It does happen though - VR headsets, the Wiimote, and the Xbox Kinect are all examples. There are certainly hobbyists who custom fabricate their own keyboards or implement interesting interactions using computer vision, but the hurdle between that sort of thing and mass adoption of novel hardware that integrates with a variety of software is absolutely huge.
The context doesn't help.
> and a letter signed by at least 1,666 Google employees demanding the company stop selling technology to police departments.

I had to read this link to see what it was talking about. Maybe some ridiculous AI crime prediction algorithm?

> Google employees also expressed frustration with Google's praise of police departments like Clarkston PD that used G Suite software

Err, what the hell? Is someone supposed to be ashamed of selling email and docs/spreadsheet software to police departments? Of all the things Google does, selling G Suite is probably one of the most "moral". It's a simple exchange of money for basic useful services, with few/no strings attached.

What am I missing?
That's great, content like this is why I browse hackernews.

As someone who is still relatively new to tech, how did you make this?

You even somehow turned my black terminal screen to dark blue, even after I stopped the curl process!
Previosuly discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23643777
That works :-)

One addition: The second part can be run for an arbitrary amount of time, gradually improving the quality of the returned move.

The 60% figure comes from the training games, which are played very quickly, and so don't have a lot of time for refining, thus increasing the prediction accuracy.

In real games, tcec-chess.com/ this "self accuracy" would probably be a bit lower.
> Comcast sniffs / records / tracks their user's DNS traffic

what if the are your dns server?
Renaissance is 15th and 16th century, painting is said to be 17th.

And all those fruits: are they really ripe at the same time? Peaches, pears and grapes? Grapes are normally picked at the end of summer, and pears are early.
Did Scientists Just Discover the Smallest Black Hole Known to Man?
Canon's lineup is seriously overestimated.
Automation and efficiency isn’t inherently bad things though. If all the time and shit work you free up goes toward something useful and not just shareholders pockets then you’ve likely improved the world.

It’s up for your society to decide how it wants to distribute the rewards of its labour.

I’m not a Marxist by the way, I’m simply Scandinavian.
We already trust human police to make matches using their eyes to apprehend suspects. This is fundamentally necessary to enforce laws and ensure a safe society. Since a human match is required with or without facial recognition, a false positive from an algorithm doesn’t make the problem any worse.
I would be pretty angry about a false suspicion. It is a constant additional life risk without any practical advantages. Sure, maybe I get to be victim of some crime and then be glad a video exists. Be that as it may, it isn't worth it to me.
What is preventing you from improving the article?
Nice design and great idea but I got lost and did not succeed to build up a successful strategy
https://mike.place/2020/global-gitignore/
I work in home automation (Home Assistant) and we can improve our customer lives with privacy and local control without hurting society. And I bet a lot of other industries too.
I'm sad to read this. I "made a bet" on Olympus in 2008, when I bought my first and only DSLR: the E-520. I bought a couple of additional lenses too, thinking that I would always be able to buy an upgraded body as technology improved and continue to use the lenses. Little did I know that the E-520 was the last DSLR they released :/...
I personally don't have any problems with the TeamCity UI. I've used it in anger over extended periods of time. It's appropriately complex given what it does, and presents things efficiently.
To me the future of SDC tech is clear:

General public expects driverless cars, car companies want level 3 automation, Google says there is only level 2 and 4 which is probably right, and the technology is going to stay level 2 for at least better part of next decade if not couple decades.

What’s working is Level 4 betas in Level 2 mode with driver monitoring for safety, what I would call a “driving simplification”.

“Simplification” applied to delivery vans offloads what used to require driver competence to machines thus improve consistency, and that will work for Amazon.
Honestly PS feels like yet another cryptic language with irregular/nih naming of functions and arguments (like AHK which is great, but invented its own megacryptic irrational language instead of taking something generic, and now you have to google every damn thing). If I programmed for PS, then okay, but seriously, Invoke-Rest-?Method, -Uri/Url, .content — how much semantics do you learn until you give up? I’d better

http.get(url="...").body

in my console rather than this Invoke-WhatEver thing, because at least it seems programming language-y and names are consistent with all other web software.

Ed: strictly speaking, URI is not even a thing that you pass to a web request. I bet that IRM couldn’t fetch urn:isbn:0451450523.
In my experience, Trend Micro's antivirus is bullshit not only on Windows but also on Linux. I'm happy if MS Defender for Linux is available and corp adopted it.
I am ever surprised how much self loathing the tech workers can take on themselves.

If you fix 1 bug related to privacy are you complicit? What about a bug not related to privacy but in a company that is later found out to be a bad actor (Wirecard).

How about we make the managers accountable? I worked for many large organisations and in each of them when work is presented to the developer, all decisions have been made.

There is at least as many decision makers as devs: managers, functional analysts, POs, feature engineers, chapter leads, enterprise architects, customer journey experts etc. They spend countless hours explicitly conspiring to develop these features. They get internal agreements something will be built. It is impossible to unknowingly push an evil feature through all the approvals a bigco requires.

Sure, If you find yourself directly developing immoral code you probably should leave the company but please, there are 10 decision makers who should be held accountable. But don't blame the developers. The management is already doing the blaming [1].

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/volkswagen-pulls...
Every single sentence of it is wrong or misleading. First sentence, "There are no laws, rules, or taxes which apply everywhere else in the UK which don't apply in the City." Yeah, there are laws which apply to the Corporation of the City of London which don't apply elsewhere. That's the point.

Second sentence, that the Queen is a "purely ceremonial figure", again, utter crap. The house of Windsor (née Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) is one of the richest, most powerful and influential entities on the planet.

Etc etc...I can't be bothered with a Gish Gallop. It's all crap. Look it up for yourself.
> but I can't reproduce either behavior myself

Me neither.

manOS Catalina, Version 10.15.5. Safari Version 13.1.1 (15609.2.9.1.2)

EDIT: Still can't get used to Safari's URL completion behaviour. It is completely unnatural and hard to feel as useful, unlike chrome's which is very handy and behaves like I expect.
As engineers in tech have way more power than we realize. Its not a coincidence that the biggest most successful tech companies also have some of the best engineers working there. It's the engineers who made those companies successful not the other way around.

Wherever you work you have a responsibility to make sure your skills are being used for something you support. If you can't convince the leadership at your company to do the right thing then you need to leave and stop helping them. Go work for their competitors who are doing the right thing. There's tons of companies who pay just as well and aren't bad for society or the planet.
DF is wondrous not just because of what it is (I think it's one of the greatest living examples of the artistic potential of computers as a medium), but also because of how it came about. In a society which does about nil to allow for this kind of deep creative work to flourish (I mean, was Toady basically living on ramen for most of the 2000s?), the Adams brothers set out and did it anyway. And we're getting to see it happen in real time!
They both want a planet. Musk wants to take over Mars. Bezos wants to take over Earth.
Bash just use bash ! Nothing new to learn for developers or to debug. Ok i'm ready for my down-votes...
Firefox 1.0 had a search box, see the screenshot at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history#...
This is silly. Most stacks will have counterparts on both architectures. Just run CI with the same configurations as prod. Problems due to differences will be rare for most stacks -- modern languages are well defined and run against extensive spec tests on all major platforms -- and will smooth out over time.
> Many of the most fiery defenses of individual liberty were written by people who simultaneously enslaved others.

Many of the most fiery defenses of abolition were written by people who simultaneously enslaved others, e.g. Jefferson.

Something something banality of evil. You can know something is wrong, but if you're a farmer and the competing farmers are using slave labor, your primary options are to do the same thing or be uncompetitive in the market and starve to death.

You can argue that they should have chosen starvation over doing the wrong thing even while pushing for the systemic change that would allow them to do the right thing without self-destruction, but that level of unpragmatic selflessness is a lot to expect from real-life imperfect humans.
How did Zoox start?

In 2012, Kentley-Klay stumbled on a blog post about Google’s self-driving car project, then pretty much the only one in the field. He saw the company’s prototypes as unsightly half-measures.. Then, one day, he walked into his Melbourne office (animation, video production) and announced he was off to America to fulfill his driverless dreams.

In a move that some will call devious and others will call ingenious, Kentley-Klay reached out to some of the biggest names in the field and told them he was making a documentary on the rise of self-driving cars. The plan was to mine these people for information and feel out potential partners. His first “interviewee” was Sterling Anderson, then a robotics researcher at MIT and later Tesla Inc.’s self-driving car chief. “I played the oldest trick in the director’s book: the vanity card,” Kentley-Klay says. “I showed up at MIT with a Canon and a bullshit microphone and interviewed Sterling for two hours in a grassy field..."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-17/robot-tax...
Metabones doesn't, but Viltrox does. Autofocus is not always very good, though.
Isn't that essentially start happenning in the EAP phase?
As tech is one of those areas where there are a lot of moral compromises. I’d love to say that there are a ton of websites creating a good product and selling it, but most sadly depend on ad tech to survive.
For the time being you can enjoy the lisp/perl/ruby reverse-engineering/c++ decompiler tool used in df-structures[1] that was made to make dfhack[2] and Dwarf Therapist possible that were made to make managing a 100+ dwarves fortress possible.

[1] https://github.com/DFHack/df-structures
[2] https://github.com/DFHack/dfhack
This looks like it uses tekton pipelines and triggers under the hood.
> Amazon doesn’t invest in greenfield projects that are not customer facing

I don't think this is very true, they are just very good at turning around and selling the internal tech.

The underlying technology for AWS was developed internally and it was not customer facing at first.

Similarly if you look at their internal data platforms, they have invested heavily even though it's not customer facing (yet, because eventually they will start selling services inspired by the internal systems via AWS).

I remember watching a presentation on how they invested large amounts of money into prototyping FC robotics technologies.

If you look at AWS Kinesis or EventBridge, the technologies were developed for internal usage before they were sold. There is also considerable investment into distributed consensus technologies that hasn't been turned directly into products (yet).

You're kind of right in that Amazon doesn't spend much time working on greenfield projects that don't have any forseeable business value (in contrast to say Google), but that is in many way a product of their organizational structure where two-pizza teams are supposed to do 'research' as part of their product work rather than having a pure R&D division.
complicit: “choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act.”

If you feel that the act is questionable, you know that you are involved, and you choose to remain involved, you are complicit.

Trying to morally distance yourself by coming up with justifications is self-hypnosis. Which is fine, but it’s deceiving yourself.
As a homeschooled kid, I learned to argue with evidence against people who believed utter nonsense. I then went to play with them after. Not being stuck in school doesn't mean you don't interact with people.
I can personally handle my A7ii with gloves, but no you can't always leave it on. I mean, you can, but not for much more than two or three hours.
My brother had a Archimedes. At the time they were introduced, they were amazing things. 4 million colours, blazingly fast. At the time I was convinced that this would quickly replace Intel-based PCs. That never happened, of course.

Acorn had a tendency to be ahead of its time. Our first home computer, the Acorn Electron, could be expanded with a 3.5" floppy drive. Later, when we got a PC, we moved from 3.5" to 5.25" floppies. That was my first disappointment in having to make a step backwards in tech.

The Archimes' successor, the RISC PC, could even have an Intel processor as co-processor. Or, instead, a card with 4 or 5 more ARM processors. At the time is was probably the cheapest way for a consumer to get a multi-processor machine.
This comment is right on the money. No pun intended.

It was a serious mistake to dream that this sort of activity (surveillance and ad services) is the basis for the economy of the future. Time to wake up.

My heart sinks everytime I see an office floor of long tables and computer monitors. This is not the future we want. Don't care how much some people are getting paid now, or how easy they think their "jobs" are, the salaries will inevitably drop and the "work" will become increasingly mind-numbing. The purpose of all this: To analyse people's behaviour and serve them advertising (or worse). To pretend that people do not need to possess good judgment anymore because computers can tell us what decisions to make.

It is not an American Dream. It's a nightmare that is just beginning to take shape. Wake up.
.DS_STORE is the only entry in my global. gitignore.
All my Docker stuff is multi-arch these days. Here’s one of my sample pipelines, written precisely to show how easy it is: https://github.com/rcarmo/azure-pipelines-multiarch-docker