skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sure, but considering GitHub doesn't have advertising[1], and they're not sending it to a third party (like Google, who does), it's very hard to imagine any use for first party "tracking" that might harm you.

Presumably the most they're using this for is recommending potentially interesting repos to you.

[1] Potential concern would be if "Microsoft" was considered "their own", since Bing does have an ad network. But my guess is between still having separate accounts and being treated as separate companies, that is not the case here... yet.
I agree. When we had wildfire smoke descend on our area, the stores sold out within hours. If you live in an area which routinely experiences wildfire smoke, it's worth stocking a few filters, both 20x20x4 for box fans and whatever size your furnace uses. It made a huge difference to have fresh filters to swap out every few days.
Database and Theory
Are you making a joke, or did you perhaps miss the description of the expiriment that involves burning a piece of incense when he starts the test? I agree though that in a more formal test, a "null" version without the incense would be a good comparison.
> a tutorial how to bootstrap a bibliography and an index card system for your research or other professional purposes

Is this related to/inspired from Zettelkasten?
Can anyone familiar with the topic explain what distinguishes essential from non-essential cookies?

GitHub gives the example of "those used by third-party analytics, tracking, and advertising services", but curious if the law defines some sort of bright line here.
Completely crazy year. 2020 was exceptionally good for the industry after a 5-6 years long sump.

Some people say it was the best one they saw in their entire careers since dotcom bubble.
In the first Cold War, both sides needed a Big Enemy to propagandize the home front. The reality of the Big Enemy wasn't really relevant, they just had to be real enough to make the stories plausible.

This Cold War isn't going to be about People vs their Governments. This is actual focused groups with goals and ideas making sure that their opponents can't recognize the battle is underway, much less respond coherently.

The goals and timing are puzzling me too; I feel there's some looming pressure point I haven't perceived yet.
Your user session. It can even be a cookie still, because that session cookie will be required for it to work.
Nat's right: this IS a no brainer. SourceHut hasn't had any non-essential cookies since day one. If you're reading this, Nat - how about removing third-party resources entirely from your pages next?
If this new list of demands includes an “or else we’ll work in a last date” this thing is going to explode so much worse.
That's a pretty blatant mischaracterization.

He paid his friends (&friends of friends) to host the package, to compensate them for having to bring it in every night, charge it, and replace it. Unbeknownst to him, a friend-of-a-friend faked some of the thefts - I think potentially for additional compensation, but I'm not sure if that was the right motive.

I thought he handled it honestly and professionally - people noticed something off in the video, shared their data, he investigated, concluded what happened, edited the video to remove those thefts, and added an apology upfront.

https://twitter.com/markrober/status/1075767629703372800?lan...
DLinks – create a decentralized profile without code
Great move! Now that some big sites like Github curb their use of invasive third-party analytics I hope more will follow suit. For Github it's probably easy to do this as they can extract a lot of insights from the actions their users perform on the site that are visible in their backend, so they probably don't need event-based analytics so much.
You can still do analytics client side without the use of cookies. You just lack the view of a user and a session sice the cookie holds the primary key used to tie events into a session. You are basically just dispatching page views and events. Your reports will not look great but it's possible and probably will be a nice complement to a server side analytics solution.
Password Cracking with Deep Learning
Maybe, but I don't know enough details or background about this situation to debate over its nuances. I'm just criticising the views I see expressed here, that are bizarre even from a capitalistic perspective, that a corporation may do anything legal and will be judged by the market, while employees doing the same -- whether it's smart or not -- is crossing some line.
Beeple's Non Fungible (Blockchain) Token Art Sold
AI-Enabled Cheetos Offer Promise of the Perfect Puff
I sure hope not. I increased my caffeine consumption intentionally 5x in the past decade because alzheimer's runs in both sides of the family.
It's similar. The difference is that there are way more dimensions in asynchronous processors.

Anyway, when I was studying the subject, the one problem people wrote about was testing. I think the GP's problem and the one I pointed can only get some attention after tests get reasonably solved, and they both may be easier than they look like.
Per customer.
Apple should sue Facebook for Slander.

All apple is doing is giving users a choice and Facebook is twisting it to make Apple look bad as it effects there business, they are trying to paint Apple as the big corporate evil overlord by playing the small business card.

Apple should grow some balls and double down.
Some cool examples are here:
http://sanbasestudio.com/gallery.htm
True. Also even if you do track your visitors you can use privacy friendly (and ideally selfhostable) Analytics like Plausible https://plausible.io/ so you won't need the banners either.

Just don't include facebook like buttons or any of these widgets
The silicon cover + towel is a game changer / pro move!
Yes, non-blockchain transactions are much more efficient. But then what's the point of using blockchain if transactions happen off-chain?
> An investment is an asset or item acquired with the goal of generating income or appreciation. Appreciation refers to an increase in the value of an asset over time. When an individual purchases a good as an investment, the intent is not to consume the good but rather to use it in the future to create wealth.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/investment.asp

Buying Beanie Babies or tulip bulb futures or cryptocurrencies because you expect the value to increase over time is absolutely an "investment". They might be good or bad ideas to invest in, but they're without a doubt an investment.
That will lead to what happened to farm subsidies. They were targeted to small farms so the large farms broke themselves into a series of small farms to maximize the subsidy.
Worse, some believe Free Software is worthless if third party companies can not extract money from it in some ways, without any compensation or even just keeping it Free in practice for the users.

And I'm OK that some Free Software actually let do that, but the thought that those who don't are somehow bad or a threat to the general concept of "freedom" is... weird. (Like there is a single perfectly defined concensus on the concept of freedom anyway)
I have fond memories of loading code off tape into our Computer Club's ZX Spectrum. Worthy precursor to modem sounds!
Well thats part of my confusion. The initial response by them starts with

> We understand that this is poorly and confusingly worded for this kind of scenario. We’ve given this feedback to the team that is responsible for how this dialog is designed. We’ll be working with them to improve it to hopefully make it more clear and understandable as to what exactly is being requested so that you can be more confident in the decision you’re being asked to make.

Then they proceed to insist its fine as is.

The fix seems simple. Just rework the layout so its in line with what was suggested in the thread (https://github.community/t/why-does-this-forum-need-permissi...). No one even acknowledges this persons suggestion, even though it seems to be precisely what Github is trying to communicate.
Altcoin used in Brazil’s Election for the first time
It's not clear that a boycott is a meaningful response in the context of these kinds of disputes. If Facebook gets an improper censorship demand from the Tunisian government and responds by cutting off Tunisia's Facebook access, aren't they just doing what the government wanted?
Right, what I meant is that only using essential cookies should be the default web development practice. Instead the default these days seems to be websites that are positively larded with third-party scripts, analytics tools, and other crap.
I just block cookie banners with a combination of custom JS/CSS and uBlock Origin. I hate those abominations.

Ironically, these sites need to use additional cookies to remember that you clicked away the banner, and part of the problem is I also blanket block all cookies on sites that I don't need to log into, so they don't get to "remember" anything.
Logging into Github lands me 10 cookies (5 of which have a 365 day expiry), and a row in local storage - are these all 'essential'?
Hard to say for definite. The problem as I see it, is that if I have to pay for ads I have no alternatives : either Google for SEO or Facebook for Social, although one could argue Twitter, Reddit, or somesuch might be a bit more competitive.

With Google there is no option. They set the rules, they own the game and I can’t spend these dollars anywhere else if wanted to. This creates an imbalance, both for Google itself and for customers (ad payers)
Launching the 2020 Nim Community Survey
Thanks for posting that. I can't help thinking that FB has just invented some weird variant of the Streisand effect. The jaundiced yet vague wording states that many small businesses have, apparently, voiced concern over "Apple's forced software update" - but FB is so coy about providing any detail that this surely prompts the reader to seek more info.
Funny, I know all of them except the first one on the list! Thanks OP for enlightening me.
I can guarantee that you could throw a rock in your city’s business district and hit a lawyer that is in the process of doing incredible mental acrobatics to wrangle Google Analytics to be an “essential part of the offering”.
More like you want to buy something that would cost 100, and RH got paid 5 to send your order to a trading company, and that trading company executed at 101.
An introduction to property-based testing with QuickCheck
Love the idea behind EthicalAds and hope for great success for you guys as an alternative to the tracking industry that is online advertising.

Couple of thoughts and questions:

1. When submitting to HN the front page probably isn't the best thing. The blog post at https://www.ethicalads.io/blog/2020/12/ethicalads-newsletter... seems more interesting to me because you detail the number of ads, publishers, and revenue. It's much more likely to generate interest and discussion.

2. Classic two-sided market problem in that you need to attract advertisers and publishers to the network and there's no incentive to take the risk of joining. Any thoughts on how to make the network more attractive to publishers and advertisers?

3. Really like the focus on a niche audience (developers), at least as a starting point. There's probably an answer to #2 above.

4. Are there plans to increase the contextual awareness of the ads? E.g. if the publisher is focus on front end tools (e.g. react) might be able to tailor the ads on that site to more front-end relevant advertisements.
Building a Robust E-Commerce Service Mesh
Nobody is the victim here. People got a free service to buy stocks and Robinhood sold that deal flow to bigger investors.
Are you trying to solve the problem personally, or for others via a startup?
You're absolutely right, our reputation right now is not great, because of the purposes for which we've deployed our power. You could imagine a world where we actually deploy it selflessly, but I don't know if that can really happen at an international level. It certainly hasn't yet.
There is no bright line, mostly as far as I can tell it’s session cookies and those you need to set to fulfill your contracts with the user.
Remember that they have LinkedIn as well, and quite possibly could put together a fascinating view of software job profiles, candidates, and repo language/activity to gain value entirely within their own organization. Something like LinkedIn recruitment recommendations improved with GitHub contribution activity might be a fascinating recruitment product: ads are not the only way to gain value.
I hate the standard wording on Cookie banners. Most of them should read:

"The site uses cookies. Actually it doesn't - you are not logged on and we don't need to maintain state. But our advertising partners, their partners, and their partner's partners all love to set tracking cookies. Click here to consent to three dozen cookies from around the globe."
Yeah, it seems it's a recurring theme nowadays with companies - you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

And this time the company is named Robinhood? You really can't make that stuff up.
This is a result of the bullwhip effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect

Rolling supply chain disruptions were predicted to happen early this year when China shut down much of its economy due to the coronavirus.
Cookies aren't necessary because you'll have to login to get much of the functionality out of Github anyway.
I think that will be up for the the national labor board or whoever judges the legality of this. In any case now people, including her co-worker are free in condemning Google for that. Let's hope either Google can address the grievances and prove/convince people they are in the right, or if they can't that it will have consequences beyond a Twitter shit storm.
Alternative for WebSpeech API
Also, it only applies in the EU. You don't need to display any banners outside the EU.

Not that I am pro-privacy invasion, I'm not, but I'm definitely anti-annoying-popups.
It's wonderful to hear from an actual published comic artist! This is what I love about HN. Thanks very much for the feedback. I especially like the idea of being able to switch units to inches instead of pixels- I'll probably add that soon. Placeholder images are definitely a good use case for this too.
Microsoft has already pivoted before. First was change from DOS based Windows to NT Kernel based Windows. Then again to Longhorn kernel based Windows.
Note that the parent don't compare ALL of the employees to virus, only the one propagating 'woke culture'

If you follow the metaphore, the employees are cells of the host, and those cells can be infected by the woke culture virus and start acting against the host while propagating the virus to other cells within the host.

You can very certainly disagree with the 'woke culture is a virus' part, but except from that the metaphor stands imho
Covid-19 is a great marketer
Authentication and authorization cookies seem pretty essential for any website that has accounts. If you block those cookies the website stops working -- they're essential.

If you block ad networks and analytics the site functions just fine -- they're not essential.

Beyond that there's probably some sort of "need to know" test to prevent convoluted fake dependencies.
I was also planning to publish new blog with minimal template.
Here is one https://lumen.netlify.app/ with gatsby
This has 100 performance on lighthouse tests and also pwa implemented.
I feel like characterizing it as Rober paying to arrange the theft is disingenuous. He stated that two of the five people he arranged to set out bait packages (and were compensated for setting out bait packages) had acquaintances "steal" them.

He came out and revealed this, as well as cutting the questionable footage from his video. That seems to me like an honest mistake and not intentionally misleading.
«» are not general-purpose quotation marks; they are used pretty much only in dictionaries and poems.

We also use »« as second-level quotes.

See: https://sjp.pwn.pl/zasady/98-Cudzyslow;629866.html
> why place a newspaper ad if you just want to reach politicians

I'm guessing it's similar to the reason pharmaceutical companies use TV ads to reach doctors.
What I do: get distracted and lose focus via slack, email, YouTube. Then I forget what I was doing originally.

What I feel would be more useful: meditate, find something related to the task in working on (documentation, thinking about next steps, etc), figure out how to speed up the build so I can keep focus
That explains why I always wondered English books and their translations use "said" and its variations way more than books written in the other languages I speak. Thanks for the explanation
What matters is the purposes that the cookies are used for, not how many there are or which service set it.

A session cookie that is also used for tracking would qualify as both a functional and a tracking cookie, and thus generally be illegal (since you can't consent to the tracking if it's under the threat of being unable to use the service).
I would like to add https://pirsch.io/ :)
> (you are Paul, we know you have a heart condition and low income and are going through a divorce - have an ad for this dating site while you search for running shoes)

IMO this is fundamentally what's wrong with the entire concept of personalized advertising. Fundamentally the system is advertised as being designed to show you relevant advertising. The reality is the system is designed to allow advertisers super-precise targets to send their advertising to.

You don't get advertising relevant to you. You get advertising from the people most interested in targeting you. This is often not what you want to see and is often not in your best interest.
I think that it should be remembered that there are maybe a few things at play.

1. Christianity of some flavor is the dominant religion in the west by a huge margin. Media can make fun of Christians safely because it is punching up. Punching up is pretty safe. Pick on any other religion and you are punching down. Punching down when it comes to identity is pretty dangerous.

2. A minority of Christians loudly do very un-Christian things in the name of Christ. You won't see people making light of faith based organizations that feed the poor. You WILL see people making fun of evangelical ministers with private jets. I'm not a Christian or a bibilical scholar, but I have a hard time believing that Jesus would approve of a lot of the more right-leaning American christians.
Github doesn't have any ads to begin with as far as I know? So there is no ad revenue lost.
When I made one of these with a cheap box fan and a good 3M filter that covered one face completely, I ran into the airflow problem.

For reasons (cheap fan with the cable and switch going in the center of the rear), I had to have the filter on the outflow side of the fan, and I was getting much more airflow back out the corners of inflow side of the fan than through the filter.

I'm frugally-inclined, but I was desperate to clean up some nasty dust from construction work, so I ended up buying 2 Levoit air purifier appliances. They have better airflow, and are much quieter. They also exhaust upwards, which I guessed might be less likely to disrupt a whole lot of dust-at-rest at once.

A problem now is not so much that the consumable filter cartridges are expensive, which I could live with if they are motivated to be high-quality, but that counterfeits are inevitable. A related problem is that I don't have a great way to measure filter effectiveness, whether I'm buying high-quality genuine, third-party, counterfeit, or genuine facing pressure from counterfeits and seeing less value in remaining high-quality.
Either only few phones had SMS as MFA or SMS swapping wasn't used at all. The later is more logic:

- You have to have a physical/esim card which costs money to buy and is perfectly Geo-trackable.

- You can only SIM-swap by duping any given cellular operator in personal interaction with their Support. Article says US & Europe - different countries, different mobile operators. Each such call is recorded, costs air time money, again Geo locates the caller.

What is more probable - yet another stupid malware was installed on phones, which can easily read Device ID/SMS received. In such case, great that Trusteer busted this operation (I guess, no mentioning of LE involved), but nothing news-worthy in technological sense. So, it is still better to have SMS as MFA versus no MFA at all, and of course it is time to switch to Authenticaiton Apps for MFA/Hardware keys.
> wouldn't be great to have a positive representation of a christian minister who is good and kind and very anti-racist?

Isn't that how MLK Jr is portrayed or am I missing something?
Measurements and comparative impressions of the AirPods Max
if i have 1-2 books unread, i might read them; if i have 100-200 on the shelf unread, i am less apt to read even one. so i have pulled a few books off the shelf and put them on my table and i have started reading them.
Cinnamon has it, many more are configurable. Best enjoyed on Linux Mint IMO.
I read an interesting article that argued modern activists learned how to protest on college campuses which are unique due to the influence the student/activists wield. And that when these activists protest later in life they are not as prepared for the more challenging environment where your antagonist is unsympathetic to your cause.

This seems to be playing out here. I can't really see how Google could acquiesce to their demands without setting themselves up for this tactic to be used against them in the future.
The dictionary helps with the boilerplate stuff that is shared between records but not repeated inside them. So it works like a charm for relatively small fragments of structured data like e.g. HTML pages, XML-docs or SQL statements: lots of "SELECT * FROM" fragments that can be replaced by a single token. I suspect it works even better for this kind of data than for natural language data, which tends to be skewed in a Zipf-like way.
> I don't think this is due to the use of computers per say. Rather I think this is the influence of the 'Anglosphere' online both in term of culture and of tech (for example in Spanish autocompletion could insert the opening marks but it's probably often not even considered by the devs).

Indeed tech is not made in a local-friendly way normally - for example, losing those symbols is a direct consequence of the fact that they are usually buried with other rarely used symbols. But for cases like punctuation, I don't really mind it. It might just be me but I've never cared about " vs » and I'm happy to have an international standard to make things easier. diacritics are more important (n vs ñ, o vs ó) but those are usually far better covered by autocomplete, so no complains there.
> A black woman? How is she black?

She's not “black” nor was that claimed; she’s “Black”. The first is a common adjective that never really applies to humans except very loosely, the second is a racial identity group formed by and defined largely through oppression by European and (in US usage; usage and identity elsewhere has evolved through different local forces and experiences) later European-descended American bigots, that has only loose correlation to complexion, ultimately starting with the division of humanity (by people in the last of these groups) fairly arbitrarily into the three broad racial groups of Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid, which later evolved into White, Black, and the last split into Asian and Native American.
Tobi Lütke
Another solution is to do all the tracking in the backend. I'm not saying it's a good solution.