skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was inspired by a post from Raúl Gutiérrez Sanz [1] that described some of the undocumented 8086 opcodes, and was tantalizingly titled "Part I". Unfortunately it seems that Parts II and III were never posted.

I had also seen a comment (which I cannot find at the moment) describing the behaviour of LEA r16, m16 when it's given an r16 source operand (so the mod-rm byte has mod=11): the value loaded into the destination register is the value of the internal "IND" register, i.e. whatever memory address the CPU had most recently calculated.

So I tried all of the undefined mod-rm encodings (especially the instructions where the 3 'reg' bits encode a sub-opcode) and mostly just found a bunch of aliases for existing instructions. But the FE and FF opcodes -- which encode JMP and CALL -- would randomly crash my test code in strange and beautiful ways.

Single-stepping the execution of the opcode would crash the DOS 2.1 version of DEBUG.COM, so I ended up writing my own minimal INT1 handler to capture the value of CS:IP immediately after the malformed JMP or CALL, dump it to the screen, and then restore a sane CS:IP before exiting single-step mode.

My hypothesis (from a close reading of the 8086 patent) is that the group decode ROM marks which opcodes have a mod-rm byte and the microcode has a sort of subroutine call (triggered by mod != 11) that calculates the EA and leaves the result in the hidden temporary registers before falling through to the instruction-specific microcode. Skip that subroutine (using mod=11) and interesting things happen.

[1] http://www.os2museum.com/wp/undocumented-8086-opcodes-part-i...
If you think restaurants are wasteful, you should see the food waste from many special events. I have seen enough food to feed hundreds of people tossed away at the end of events, in a facility that can only host a couple of hundred people. That is before considering kitchen waste or uneaten food that made it to the plate.

Food waste in home vs. restaurants is more difficult to compare. Many people will eat food that restaurants would not consider serving, simply because they have no other choice. On the flip side, there are very wasteful household that buy far more than they will consume.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24239704
I agree. There really is nothing more frustrating than spending months working on an app, to get it either rejected on some really minor issue or have to go back and forth with Apple for weeks explaining how things work from a customer and business perspective, constantly on tenterhooks as to whether they will give it the OK nod.

Then you go through the same thing each time you push an update, even for a minor bugfix like amending some foreign language strings, get a different reviewer who hasn't read the case notes (I'm guessing these must exist) and decides to do a deep-dive, or maybe a quick rubberstamp in a matter of hours. It seems like a total lottery from my experience. Maybe they just suddenly added a new clause that requires something being done differently and you aren't up on the latest app store guidelines... It really is so frustrating from a developers mental health perspective.
Yeah, but not healthy for US.
It's hard to conceive of an intelligence as much above ours as we are above bacteria cell. But if such a thing did exist why would it want to communicate with us?
Tutanota seems like the safest and most secure option I’ve been able to find.
How does developing for iOS impacts your personal choice of phone hardware? I develop windows and MacOS software, but I am running Fedora.
> Cell phones were widespread in Europe before they become so in the US.

Are you using a small number of Western European nations as a proxy for all of Europe?

The US invented the mobile phone and deployed it very early on. 2/3 of Europe was too poor to afford mobile phones until the past 10-15 years. Eastern Europe only started getting widespread mobile phones with the rise of cheaper, high-function smartphones in the past five to seven years. The same is true in Russia.

The US matched most of Western Europe on 2G deployment, primarily lagging Germany, France and the UK. The US was far ahead of Europe on 4G deployment [1][2][3][4], and it's leading Europe on 5G deployment as well [5].

Western Europe's stumbles after 2G are why European tech companies have failed miserably to compete in mobile and the US de facto conquered that market in the West. It's why Apple today is a $2 trillion company (equal to 10 SAPs) and the old Nokia got killed off. Western Europe entirely squandered their brief 2G lead over the US.

[1] 2014 "Europe Struggles to Catch Up With U.S. on 4G Investment" - https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-struggles-to-catch-up-wi...

[2] 2013 "Europe lagging in 4G deployment" - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/1028858...

[3] 2011 "Europe slow to adopt 4G mobile" - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-telecoms/europe-slow-to-a...

[4] 2013 "Europe Is Losing the 4G Race" - https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324412604578515...

[5] "The real reason Europe is falling behind on 5G" ... "Over the last decade there has been considerable public support to promote 5G in Europe. But in actual rollouts, Europe is fast falling behind lead markets in North America, North East Asia and Australia."

https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/12/borje-ekholm-5g-eur...

[5a] https://www.ericsson.com/en/blog/2019/9/can-europe-compete-i...
> LEA with a register operand ("LEA AX, AX")

Yep, reading about this (from a post that I can't find at the moment) was one of the things that inspired me to try illegal/undefined mod-rm byte encodings.
> we might see Star Alliance type industry groups within the taxi industry

... so we get legroom reduced every year, mandatory fuel surcharges, ticket printing fees, etc? No, thank you
FYI: you're off by about $2300B

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=H8crilA
So tell me again when an “antitrust” ruling has ever been applied to a company with less than 50%?
It's actually an authorized power, not a responsibility (arguably, the responsibility being a view of the founders can be viewed as an implicit in the power, but only the power is express in the text.)

And they know, they just don't care.
Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon – Based-On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Cinnamon 4.6
Unfortunately I don't have an xbox (kids at home so worried of addiction) and play very occasionally. I wouldn't mind for a service that allows to rent a game short-term e.g. 5 hours for a dollar - cheap and long enough to try a game without any extra hardware/commitment.
DiceKeys – How 25 Dice in a Box Solve the Secure Password Conundrum
> There's no indication that the current bar is anywhere close to perfect.

There's no indication current bar isn't too high, tho
>Yes, “national security” is used to justify all manner of protectionism in this country. We sure love our oligopolies.

That and outright monopolies created by the government itself.
...and also first arrive so soon (comparatively speaking) after the publication of The Mote in God’s Eye — an excellent novel by Larry Niven whose plot starts with the arrival of a light-sail powered tube.
So if you want to bet either way you can. That’s the beauty of it all. Put your money where your thoughts are, and if they pan out then awesome.

But, pricing is not what “people” are willing to say since the biggest funds really dictate the valuation of equities. They tend to try to have a long outlook, so they are betting that covid is short-term, the recovery will be quick, and Trump will be re-elected. Most people don’t believe these things, but most money is betting on those things.
All the meltdowns in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s are what explains the automatic flinch that western cultures have had since the late 60s? Huh.
In Canada, it's the opposite. Due to high prices, the speeds are very fast.

But this can also mean that a single poor decision can leave you data less (or rationing) for the rest of the month. Most plans just lock you up until you pay more, rather than continue throttled.

Then you have software obviously written by people with zero consideration for data costs. NPR One app thinks it's a great idea to pre-stream hundreds of MB of content. Thanks NPR. Zoom doesn't have any low-bandwidth modes. While iOS lets you enforce a 'low-data mode' when tethering to metered connections, OS X doesn't. Thanks OS X for downloading that update while I was on a train. I was doing my best to ration what I had left by using Lynx for fuck's sake.
This was described in the Breath book.
Right you are. The -i option is not standard (https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/s...)
I don’t know where to start with this. Antitrust is specifically about big corporations, that’s the whole point. We treat them differently. You’re saying if the market was opened up, prices would drop due to competition, so that means it shouldn’t be opened up? You think Apple’s in a situation where it has an unfair burden despite being one of the largest companies in the world?
> So tell me again when an “antitrust” ruling has ever been applied to a company with less than 50%?

50% of what is the issue, though. Some arbitrary descriptive market the target company preferred to be used for the antitrust analysis, or the actual market in which substitution, and thus actual competition, occurs as found by the court hearing the case?

Because defining the relevant market is not infrequently a contentious point in antitrust.
Facebook Braces Itself for Trump to Cast Election Results Doubts
Ok so when was 49% considered a “monopoly”. Can you name one incident in case law where that was the case?
Non-Apology Apology
People defecating directly into their fresh potable water supply will find no sympathy here when the taps run dry.
The given reason was "they don't need them anymore because mail volume is down". It was a cost cutting measure.

However, if you look at the data, mail volume isn't down enough to justify removing the machines, and more importantly there is an expected massive spike in mail volume in the next few months as record numbers of people vote by mail. Also most of these removals have been in cities that traditionally vote Democrat.

So really the answer is, "to slow down the mail so that there is doubt cast upon the validity of the election results and also to try and stop absentee ballots that are most likely voting for Democrats from arriving on time".
because unlike government, if they fail, they will be replaced quickly
The given reason was "they don't need them anymore because mail volume is down". It was a cost cutting measure.
Would you be keen to come on my podcast (https://www.raddadshow.com) to talk about this? IMO buying 10 years of freedom with 12 months of work is a pretty good deal! Many people that have money end up with less. It would be fun to explore your life, and maybe inspire future generations to reconfigure priorities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Programmin...

Particularly excellent because you can work out what the math symbols say from the code examples. I certainly found it very helpful that way, as well as all the other ways its worth its price.
> Basically every child you ask will tell you it wants to go back to school

No, absolutely not.
Another shout out for WSL2. Feels good to have real Linux not Apple's kind of close but not quite, plus wide range of hardware to choose from and compatibility with commercial GUI apps.
Franakly with Proton it was almost certainly a play by the design bureau to get their project funded - and everybody else did that back then.
So I am sure you have case law showing where anti trust charges were filed against a company with 50% market share.
Graph Representation Learning Book
Solving the Stable Matching Problem in Python
> because unlike government, if they fail, they will be replaced quickly

Governments that actually fail tend to be replaced quite swiftly. Businesses can fail without being replaced (not filling an actual need is a common reason businesses fail.)
No business treats all users equally. Businesses make deals with other businesses all the time. Look up “no duty to deal”.
Ask HN: How does Tinder track me across app installs?
I used Tinder many months ago in another country and had deleted the app.

When I reinstalled it in an entirely different country, I was shocked to see it open straight into my previous user account.

I was on a different phone and wifi network, had cleared my Safari cache, and I don't use Facebook or anything that could be leaking a shared login.

How did Tinder know it was me? Where does it store data that persists after deleting the app? What do they use to identify the device?
Thanks! We're very proud of our work. Glad to hear that you're having a good experience :)
When I tried to change my gmail address of Firefox account, I realized it is not possible, because email address is the ID of the account.
Dear Mozilla folks, please let me change my email address of Firefox account.
Not sure why you were downvoted because this is exactly what is going on. One might say that the problems were societal and already there - technology has just provided the bandwidth for explosive spread of these things. To be fair, it has also provided an amazing increase in outreach. A person in a village with barely any infrastructure can have a video call with their friends/family - that is empowering.
That's an answer to a question he didn't ask.
One of the odd characteristics of dark matter, aside from being dark, is that it forms halos around galaxies, but within those halos the dark matter is distributed evenly; it doesn't collapse into clumpy matter. Stars and planets, on the other hand, clump and cluster. If there were sufficient numbers of rogue planets to account for dark matter, there would have to be thousands or millions of rogue planets for every star that we can see. At that density they couldn't stay hidden -- over cosmic timescales they would be attracting each other, forming clumps that would partially occlude stars, and turning into stellar nurseries with detectable frequency.
b) isn't it fair then that Apple charges a premium for access to a better market segment?
Sure they understand. Did you hear all of the insightful questions that the representatives asked Zuckerberg? Especially when they asked Zuckerburg about Twitter’s policies.
You were the second employee at what will probably become the largest company in the world. Please, please talk about whatever you want to talk about.
The studio/movie regulation was overturned....
Sure, but that just means it's an irrelevant factor when comparing low vs. high telecom costs.

Though my thinking is when selling censorship equipment to a country, you probably charge a country like .pk more because you know they'll find a way to pay for best-in-class.
Same in the UK: 3's inclusive free global roaming (works in 71 countries! almost anywhere I'd ever go) is absolutely brilliant.

Unfortunately their UK network is awful, slow and broken, so I had to leave them. But I really miss the roaming.
Still need one? Happy to help with the best price you'll find on powertools, handtools, or consumables. Drop an email address if interested.
Would you have any advice to share for someone working on building an online store / e-commerce system for small businesses (not a marketplace, one a store could conceivable pay as a SaaS solution or deploy themselves with no strings attached - not even through licensing)?
I'd suggest that 'unsafe' is quite far away from the opposite meaning of 'safe' in everyday language.
I understand your point for the most part, but the argument isn't that you have to build exactly what Walmart has (hundreds of buildings with mass distribution). Any Joe can setup a grocery/goods store tomorrow. Will they crush Walmart any time soon? Nope. Good luck trying to build what Tesla has. Call me a fanboy, but there is some amazing technology in those cars, and while strapping a battery on a frame with a electric motor looks easy, doing it at scale and as efficiently as they do is definitely not. Many of those 37 or whatever Chinese knock-offs have failed already. I would never buy a knock-off electric car, but I would definitely shop at Joe's convenience store to pick up some bananas, I do it daily actually.
This ought not be downvoted. If this is correct, the UX of those taxi apps handles everything I mentioned in my parallel comment.

I’m in Canada, and taxi UX really hasn’t caught up to Uber. But when I was in Brazil there was a taxi app that was basically equivalent to Uber. Except maybe you paid in cash. It’s possible for the taxi industry to improve parts of their model. The north american taxi system may lack the incentives?
I was barely an hour outside of Ottawa in the Gatineau Hills last week and didn't have usable coverage.
As we used to say in eastern-ish europe: Everyone is equal and some are more equal than others.
We're not allowed to talk about that. First rule of Usenet...
This debate showed up in the original HN discussion too, which also used the term. I think it’s more appropriate to draw the line at “as useful as a brick without taking actions not exposed as part of the normal user interface”. Drawing the line between hardware and software yields false negatives (corrupted read-only firmware is indeed bricked), false positives (discharged battery is not bricked), and messy grey areas (if it’s non-functional but fixable with a trivial chip replacement, is it bricked?), and moreover is frustratingly antagonistic to non-programmers, who have a computer that is as useful as a brick to them until they take it to a professional, yet you tell them not to say so just because you also have the skills necessary for this particular repair.
Oh c'mon, books ---> not books ---> computing services.

Crap, maybe Kodak does have a future.
> irreparable damage to children's psyche, mental wellbeing

That will be the case if they continue school.

> Let's be fair to both sides: you're responsible for suicides, health effects of prolonged isolation, etc.

With that logic you are personally responsible for suicides, health effects of bullying and school slavery, etc.

> and people will blame me for associated mortality and effects of the disease

I do not think that blaming people for expressing their opinion will be worth much to the family who just lost one of its members. It is cheap for you to accept blame and worthless to these that suffer due to following the same belief.
Unfortunately we still need some kind of signal that you're a unique person at signup to avoid infinite fraud (as it is we still get waves of thousands of accounts at a time who have worked out a way to get their hands on a pile of numbers and are finessing an attack on someone else via us).

You can delete the number once you've signed up, though of course that means that if you forget your password is reduces the channels by which we can validate that you're the same person! (this is also quite common: many HN users would be surprised how often people forget passwords)
The problem of safe FFI bindings in Rust
FYI, the formatting of several of the Python code blocks is messed up, starting with lines like this:

```python linenums=”21” def get_value(self, input_key):

Also, might be worth noting that the "The Pythonic Implementation of Python Hash Tables" section seems to cover either Python 3.6 or 3.7, and that the implementation seems to have changed a bit in 3.8: now `sys.getsizeof({}) == 64` and `sys.getsizeof({"a": 100}) == 232`. Does anyone have the low-down on how it's changed and possibly how it's likely to change again in future versions?
Just wanted to say, as someone who's been a fervent Apple fan since 2007, getting a Pixel was the best tech decision I've made in years :)
The problem with "Build tools around workflows" approach is that everyone has a slightly different workflow, so you end up with tools that must be customized around workflows, which results in extra and unnecessary spendings.

This is great for software developers because it guarantees work, but bad for business because of unnecessary IT costs.
I had a belief (assume best intentions unless there's evidence otherwise). And then, later, I modified that belief given some new compelling evidence.
Thanks very much. Finding a copy from the states seems to be hit or miss. Some searching brought me here though: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/52/mitrok...

Would you call this a legitamite/equivalent source?
Do us all a favor and drink bleach
Name one app that is of any importance on iOS that there isn’t available on Android or that would cause you to have to buy again?

I have exactly one - Overcast. Even with that I can export to OPML (?).
Whenever this topic comes up, it's always all or nothing.

If you're looking to detangle yourself from the Google ecosystem, you can do so one tool at a time over any period of time.

Maybe you'll get all the way off it, maybe just 80% - either way, you will make progress.
Yes it's fantastic. Even the small things make a difference - for example, it's really nice to be able to use the same package manager on my local machine as I use on my Google Cloud servers, on which I'm running Ubuntu, instead of having to use brew. I can use GNU variants of CLI utilities like ps, head etc. rather than the quirky BSD variants found on Mac OS X. iTerm2 was binding me to Mac OS for a while, but Windows Terminal Preview is getting quite good, and IntelliJ itself has a very good built-in terminal that works well with WSL2.
No one said retail was easy! Thin margins are just the natural result of competition. Retailers have thin margins too. Walmart's net profit margin was 4.7% in Q2, and that was a major outlier. The playing field might not be completely level, but at least competition exists on both sides.
How is "incel" not a slur? Do people who are called incels actually like the label or has it been imposed on them as a pejorative? If so, why is acceptable?
Isn't that what a Predator/Reaper is for? Maybe I'm lacking imagination, but a loitering missile seems very difficult to make.
I think the theory is that it wasn't really moving relative to the sun and kinda just fell in.
It is your computer; you have a right to that hardware. But they only licensed you the OS and the hardware only supports that OS (which you acknowledged and agreed to when you bought it) so you can call it what you want, but you can’t force another entity to do what pleases you. The courts will decide that and it will set a pretty significant precedent.
And ebooks are free without a markup through which store exactly?
Conservatives have no principles, they just want power. It’s that simple. They must all be killed before they ruin us.
What digital platform is open and neutral? Everything is either controlled by Google, Facebook or Apple, and optimised for engagement and their ability to earn revenue.

Imagine if a company controlled not just the main street in your town, but also in every town in the world. The analogue would be to tell shopkeepers to build their own city and convince people to live their so they can run their shop.
Is that how the law works?Apple is not a monopoly because you can choose Android. This is an awesome loophole.
Visa is not a monopoly because there is also MasterCard.
At&t is not a monopoly because you can choose Comcast.
They also pollute the shit out of your HTML source with comments and meta tags for yoast's blog.

No honour among thieves, considering the usual SEO/SEM snakeoil.
I'm curious if you look at yourself in the eyes when you're facing a mirror?
How did that work out for a Fortnite?
That sounds the same as Firefox profiles, plus Firefox has containers for more sectioning of data within a profile. Is there something Chrome has here that Firefox doesn’t?
I dunno. < 60 lines of a language I enjoy vs learning how to configure/install/write for a program I don't know. Honestly the former sounds like less of a pain.
And count on hours and hours of waiting at polling places in blue areas of red states due to intentional reduction of polling places.

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/fBALblG
They can be, they can buy an Android.
Yeti: The Undead 1.0 Release