skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
True, but they are failing very, very, slowly.

The big difference between NASA and SpaceX lies in how fast they each move, and what they are failing at.

Failing at launching the first private rocket on a tight budget, at landing a rocket for the first time, or at iterating on rocket designs at pace rarely, if ever, seen before is expected. As a matter of fact, it’s success that isn’t expected.

Failing at making yet another (very expensive) rocket built by supposedly experienced manufacturers overseen by a huge public organisation over more than a decade with huge funding? Well, it’s a bit disturbing to say the least.
I think I agree with most of your points. I actually wrote an article about Tether in 2018 on a major investment site.

I believe Tether is organized crime and would love to see a deep investigation into the lifestyle and finances of everyone involved.

Thing is, right now, we know that more bitcoin are being purchased with REAL dollars than are being minted. So, the market has support. Yesterday, Grayscale bought 5132 bitcoin. They hold those in cold storage, so, they really bought them. I'm sure paypal, cashapp, square, also bought some.

But NO ONE in the industry has any motivation to question Tether.

The question becomes, how much bitcoin has been purchased by people that might sell it if Tether implodes. I am not sure it is a significant enough amount. Perhaps.

The current chart for bitcoin is extremely bullish. I would guess it moves up from here.
Life is a search algorithm for energy utilization. Arguably the only evolutionary benefit of intelligence is the ability to bridge troughs between local optima farther than genetics alone can. It has limits as much as genetics does. We like to think of intelligence as some boundless forever bootstrapping superpower but all growth curves end up being sigmoid. The hard question is are we close to topping out or are we just waiting on the next punctuation in the equilibrium. I think future punctuations will be found in "what comes after intelligence" in the search for increasingly efficient energy utilization?
One of the root causes for centralization is that we lost the ability to make our devices talk directly to each other.

Before the Internet, people could contact each other directly by just making phone calls, and the phone network was neutral, so any phone or any network could call any other (even internationally) provided they pay the fee. Same with SMS and MMS.

With the early Internet, every computer had an IP address and could send packets to any other one.

With the late Internet, because of NAT and unwillingness of ISPs to make progress on this issue, we've now lost that ability and now always require some kind of central coordination server for devices to be able to talk (through it).

There is no reason why Signal (or any other messenger) requires a central server if it wasn't for this. Provided you have the person in your contacts (by having their IP address + a crypto fingerprint for authenticity) they should be able to talk directly.

Until we solve this issue, decentralized alternatives (such as Matrix, Mastodon, and others) are just bad workarounds that will never catch on because people aren't willing (and shouldn't have to) host a server (or use a sometimes unreliable benevolent one or a paid one) when they've already got a smartphone and are paying their phone/Internet bill.
Phil Spector Has Died
One possible way is looking at the list of editors of the Journal, and seeing if the researchers in question have back-mentioned that Journal on their CV (or personal homepage). The fact that researchers/peers in a field are willing to openly connect their prestige to those of a journal's, is usually an indicator that there is at least something to the journal.

Most if not all scammy journals will fail this test.. but it is also quite labor intensive.
Why would they? These journals make money from authors paying for a publication. Any review costs cut into their margins.

Also, I don’t think this journal has even the potential to greatly impact society. It isn’t intended to be read.
Related: LibriVox offers free public domain audiobooks. Obviously, for the audiobook to be public domain the book has to be public domain.

https://librivox.org
The solution is simple. Make the decentralized systems social, with reputation.
Vesting Schedules in Tech Are Changing
No, you cannot do better than Signal at the moment. You do not have people picking your service of choice en masse. A chat app is only useful if people you want to talk to are on it.
Can you name anything that should have been fixed in Signal Server since April?
In my workflow, one reason I prefer VSCode over Sublime is for dealing with large (10mb+) files. Sublime takes upwards of a minute to open such files but VSCode is nearly instant.

For smaller files, Sublime is great.
I drank the USB-C kool-aid that Apple proposed but it just completely failed in practice. I now carry multiple different (and incompatible) USB-C cables which is in no way better than the magsafe + usb charger I had before.

Three years ago I had one USB-C charging brick with a lightning and USB-A cable and my macbook magsafe brick.

Now I carry a USB-C charging brick with a lightning cable for ipad and iphone, my USB-C charging brick for my macbook pro with a USB-C PD? cable, a USB-C -> USB-C cable for my external SSD (which I cannot use to charge my macbook and the charging cable of my macbook does not work with it). Additionally I have a USB-C to USB-A adapter with a USB mini cable for my headphones and mifi dongle and a separate adapter for HDMI and SD.

I ended up with more cables and I would be in that situation for at least two years more until the last mini USB devices are discarded. But even in that case I end up with multiple USB-C cables just because they are incompatible to each other.
I mean, if you don't know it's a library, you may think this is the 'other' choice.
I started using it nearly exclusively around October. I do need to break out into Google for a few things unfortunately.
Polymorphism doesn't require casting or union types or whatever it is you're describing.
It’s an old and lazy/annoying complaint.

There’s a difference between consumer stuff and enterprise stuff with contracts. Grown up services like GSuite, AppEngine, etc have been alive and well for many years and aren’t going anywhere.

It makes sense to do risk assessment and avoidance where there is value. General emotional stuff isn’t productive.

Building your entire business on AWS Lambda, for example, is a risk you need to understand. In the past, I worked on a team that chose to put a critical business process on a IBM POWER/Aix platform... in our case we went through the options, identified risks/opportunities for standardizing a long lived process on a sole source platform, and made a decision. It was a decision that served us for about a decade before we moved on, so it was very successful.
I can kinda agree on GCP with one exception: Dataflow. I have no idea what the future holds for it.

It is a managed Apache Beam service and is very useful for certain scenarios (like "hey, we have a million incoming PubSub messages that we need to transform into a dozen different branching streams of data"). It looks like even BigQuery actually transforms SQL statements into a bunch of Dataflow jobs.

But...

But...

- Minor version updates to Google Dataflow SDK once every couple of months while deprecating most other minor versions? Check.

- No visible contributions to Apache BEAM itself? Check. In 2021 I still don't know if I can use any Java versions beyond Java 8 to develop for and run in Dataflow. And Google is arguably one of the biggest users of Apache BEAm, and definitely a user with the largest pile of money to throw at the problem.

- They've recently sent out a questionnaire about Dataflow to some of their customers that feels like a "hey, we're definitely considering deprecating this, we're gauging the potential impact"
Crayola's crayon isn't actually using the YInMn pigment.
A much simpler and elegant solution compared to mandating changes for Apple's app store policies, is simply requiring them to allow users to install apps from other sources (e.g. directly from webpages, or from other app stores).

You could do this on the basis that the real problem isn't that Apple has some particular policy for their store, but rather the problem is that their store is a monopoly within the iOS ecosystem. And the government has a history of intervening when it comes to monopolies (at least some of the time), so it matches precedent.
> On top of that, those gig companies that paid handsomely to create and market Prop 22 to voters are now passing on the cost for these scant benefits to consumers

If you don't know that the costs of company are ultimately paid by the consumers, maybe you should stop writing on the topic. How was this supposed to work? Workers would be paid $25/hr with rides costing the same and the money would magically manifest itself?
> They are tools to make it easier to write correct code.

I agree with that. Still, being able to implement data structures without relying on unsafe features helps a lot with the correctness.

It’s possible to write code in safe Rust, but it’s hard to implement data structures in it. At least not if one wants performance. That rust’s borrow checker is simply too limiting for them. All basic data structures like linked lists, trees, graphs, LRU caches, use tons of unsafe internally.

That’s not the case with Java or C#. These garbage-collected VMs are memory safe all the way down. It’s usually possible to implement arbitrarily complex data structures entirely in safe managed code with minimal performance penalty.

Even their standard libraries are made that way now. AFAIK that wasn’t always the case, older versions of .NET framework did more in C++ for performance reasons, but they improved performance of JIT over time, and gradually reworked the standard library to almost 100% managed code, probably for portability reasons. Vast majority of third-party libraries in their respective ecosystems don’t use unsafe either, e.g. many asp.net web hostings are configured to forbid any unsafe libraries from being loaded.
How do you prevent bots giving each other reputation?
And that then is extremely easy to abuse as soon as you have enough people with high rank enough deciding to start to misbehave.
Yes, but I can get all the parties I want to talk to on my own server (if the need arises).

About your point the connection itself being MITMed, I don't exactly understand how an active attacker sitting on my connection would undermine the connection? Presumably I have a way to verify the identify of my server. Please do elaborate if I'm missing something. Regardless an interesting thought.
See link to "simple protocol" in first sentence of homepage, and link "Why TMTP?" after goals.
I've long thought that U2F should be incorporated into phones, since everyone has one of those. Even not well off people in third world countries. In order for U2F to proliferate, everyone should have access to it. A $10 FIDO key probably won't be given a consideration if they think a free password is good enough.
Had me at Casa Larry Bird.
Ok, so here's what you do next: make a list of all of the authors published in those journals and track their careers.

Anyone want to bet the results will be entertaining?
I don't mean to insult but I think your view is pretty naïve in its own way. You see the rapport built from going to the bar as an advantage that you shouldn't pass up on. In your example where failing to go to the bar makes you less impactful at work, I see a team that is doing a shitty job at team building, which will probably harm their chances of success. The blame for that can go in any and all directions, it's on everyone.

If every potential detractor involved just says to themselves "this is what everyone else likes, so I'll fix my attitude and head to the bar", you can end up with several of them contorting to fit in, and then you're just cargo culting a good culture instead of really having one.
What about certificates? The fake GitHub almost certainly does not have a valid certificate. Isn’t that our one defense against these things?
>After she was fired, Jones started her own online COVID-19 dashboard. But she said Saturday that she may no longer be allowed access to computers, the internet or other electronic devices as a condition of her release from jail pending trial.

In the modern day, with so much that is online or involving computers, this should be considered unjust punishment, the likes of which should be reserved only for child molesters.

Not speaking to the rest of the story. However, this by itself troubles me.
Generally no https://cointelegraph.com/news/someone-transferred-a-billion...
> Hell, we /started/ decentralized and over email and newsgroups and personal websites and blogs and it's all Facebook Facebook Facebook now that the Eternal September came around.

We didn't do the decentralization then because of good politics and security: look how bad the other security properties were. Rather we did it because the field was new and the actors not consolidated.

Creating decentralization after in a mature, consoliditated space is a completely different enterprise. In particular, a lot more attention needs to paid to inefficiency and defense against the central hegemons.

It's a hard battle, but if won, will be a much more durable victory.
I'm not positive, but I think the signal protocol and signal messenger came before Moxie worked with Whatsapp to provide e2e encryption.

Not refuting your point at all, just providing additional context.
> Apple gives iOS developers a way to mark their apps as compatible or not with mac os, and they're implementing an actual check or block on that.

Absolutely, it doesn’t make sense to allow it only if the user does some sort of complicated workaround. That’s also not exactly in Apple’s style - if you are allowed to do it it should be easy. If your not allowed to do it, you shouldn’t be allowed to full stop.
The footnote[1] project helps to provide spam and abuse by limiting each user to 10 MB.

[1] https://github.com/kyokan/footnote/
>If an active attack is carried out, I'm reasonably sure people would not notice.

If the attack happened after you have started communicating wouldn't you get a notification that the key of those you're communicating with has changed? An attack would only be invisible if it happened from the first communication. But unless it's very targeted someone somewhere would compare the keys and notice.
Rule #1 of business:

You can generate revenue to infinity, but you can only cut costs to zero.

This alone means that a bias toward frugality will probably cause you to spend time on the wrong things. It's the equivalent of a freelance developer who charges $100/hr spending 5 hours on Amazon trying to save a couple bucks on an iPhone cable. Cool, you saved $3. But you spent $500 to save it!

Of course, if you haven't found product-market fit, frugality can help give you more time to find it. But once you have a proven business, frugality is a death sentence. While you're trying to save $20/month on your email marketing tool and $50 on cheaper coffee for the office, your competitors will be spending their time and money to acquire your customers.

Generally, you get what you pay for. So if your gut is to always pick the cheap option, you're going to be using bad tools and hiring bad people, and creating bad products.
“If you like my post I will like yours.” We can’t have many nice things, it’s human nature.
I’m not sure that’s the case.

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-is-error-1001/182...
I would love to read a parody scientific journal, we may even stumble on some hidden truths.
IMO the last model of a generation is usually the best wrt Apple laptops. They usually have more efficient processors that run cooler, at the least.
Builds on Android have been (mostly) reproducible since 2016: https://signal.org/blog/reproducible-android/

Looks like the situation is more complicated and still unresolved for iOS: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/641
If you check my comments you will find similar reactions. But recently I have revisioned my view on Big Tech.
Big Tech has money and budgets of a small countries. They obviously are part of political spectrum and will be the gateway and control outlet for 4th Industrial Revolution.
I highly recommend everyone to read this:"A Framework for Developing a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy" - WEF link - (https://tinyurl.com/y6lwfdcy).
They are using current political stage to test and establish (normalise) the idea of censoring in the name of security, privacy and common good.
Maybe add an abstract? I read part of this, then started skimming, and eventually read the conclusion, but I’m still not sure what point(s) are being made.

Also, questions should end with a question mark, even if they’re rhetorical.
Root Escalation Vulnerability in WSL1
>>The great thing about Emacs is that everything is a buffer[...]

> It frustrates me endlessly that this one simple, almost self-evident piece of Emacs wisdom failed to gain traction almost everywhere else. Even the venerable Vim drops the ball hard here, with the various "widgets" it uses in its interface which have slightly different semantics and behaviours.

Perhaps I don't understand emacs well enough, but I know that every file loaded in vim can be accessed via its buffer number. How it's displayed depends on the window and tab layout. Quickfix, help, and terminal buffers behave differently, but the vast majority of buffers are just associated with open files.
Wouldn't it just take 1 person doing the verification on a new message to catch this though?
With the right skills, you can do it with an abacus
Unfortunately, it is. Nationalism has surged in popularity across the globe, and I think they would disagree with this take. I do not think nationalism would be as popular as it is if the GP's comment was uncontroversial.
US claims Wuhan researchers had coronavirus symptoms before first reported cases
Terrible. The solution to "misinformation" is good information not hiding the bad information.

No one's mind has ever been changed by hiding information.

If you can't say "this information is wrong because of x y z" then you are only furthering the "bad" beliefs you are trying to remove.

That's not to mention the fact that "misinformation" is a vague political buzzword. Why didn't facebook and twitter or any Corporations care when the media lied about Russia hacking the power grid, or "there are fine people on both sides" to further a narrative while ignoring the "And I'm not taking about White supremacists and neonazis who should be condemned totally" he said a few sentences later. Or the dozens of other cases?

Ask yourself why now.
In fairness, I think WhatsApp's value proposition is and was as little more than 'just' oh wait, sms etc. is completely insecure. I don't think the majority really cared about that (especially since end-to-end encryption was a later addition). I think most people primarily started using WhatsApp because a) it was (is) free b) cross-platform c) worked very reliably
Is it so wrong to request info on how well macports works on the m1?
> An attack would only be invisible if it happened from the first communication.

This is the scenario I'm talking about.
More like a computer is a combination of hardware and software.

A different vendor product with cheaper storage can still be a much worse value proposition than my 2012 MacBook Air.

The problem here is that the Parent you are replying to assumes “storage” is the only issue why I haven’t upgraded. That’s an incorrect assumption.

I haven’t upgraded because paying >1000$ should add value over my MacBook Air 2012, yet for me all laptops in the market do not add enough value to justify the cost.

A new MacBook with 1 TB SSD storage sets you over 2000$, but the value just isn’t there.

Everybody’s mom is recommending an M1 these days, yet crappy webcam, support for 1 monitor only, expensive storage, low ram, being 1st gen of apples arm lineage with 1st gen flaws, no MagSafe, ... make it a bad value proposition right now for me compared with my 2012 air which doesn’t have most of these flaws.. sure it is better in many aspects, but it is also much worse in others (eg 1 external monitor support is a deal breaker for me)
Phil Spector: Pop producer jailed for murder dies at 81
> i've always had a problem understanding why big companies need to dominate all the market? If i have a successful local business, it's not hurting me that others do as well.

Well, in this case, Google would leave billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of millions of users on the table. Not only would it hurt their bottomline, it would also hurt their products as they train on user data, which has quite strong network effects.

This is really a different scale than a local business. If you have that with a single owner, she/he might be content with what she has and choose not to expand further. Google, on the other hand, has multiple of layers of management which need to report to thousands of owners, quite a few of which expect constant growth. This is really not one person who can be content with the size; it's multiple people who get their salaries based on growth and report to thousands of investors, which, for the most part, care about increasing their shares value. Leaving so much money on the table just for the sake of it is a hard sell in this structure.

> This is not aimed personally at you

No offence taken :)
That's not true afaik. Signal days that they don't store phone numbers beyond the initial setup/verification. See here:

> Does Signal send my number to my contacts?
Signal does not send your phone number to anyone unless you send them a message or make a call to them. The Signal service does not have any knowledge of your contacts. Data is all owned by your phone. Registration notifications are never transmitted by anyone in any direction at all; these notifications are created by your phone.

> How does Signal know my contact is using Signal?
Signal periodically sends truncated cryptographically hashed phone numbers for contact discovery. Names are never transmitted, and the information is not stored on the servers. The server responds with the contacts that are Signal users and then immediately discards this information. Your phone now knows which of your contacts is a Signal user and notifies you if your contact just started using Signal.

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007061452-Do...

(Btw, I think that first sentence is a bit confusing and should be classified/reworded.)
Will the arbiter of reputations be central or decentralized?
Not if it's targeted towards a particular pair of people.
If you never have to look at the keyboard for anything ever, the touchbar takes away an useful row of keys and forces you to start looking down at the keyboard. I can't overstate how annoying someone who never has to look at the keyboard might find this.

https://robservatory.com/the-fundamental-problem-with-the-to...

"The Touch Bar, despite its name, is actually an Eye Bar: It forces your eyes off the screen, down to the Touch Bar, back up to the screen, repeat ad infinitum. There's nothing physical about interacting with the Touch Bar, aside from using your finger: There are no defined button areas, and there's no haptic feedback when you tap something. So you absolutely must look at the Touch Bar to interact with it.

When the new MacBooks were released, I spent about 30 minutes testing a Touch Bar-equipped version in an Apple Store, and this constant moving of my eyes' focus from keyboard to screen to keyboard to screen to…well, you get the idea…was incredibly disruptive. To use the Touch Bar, I'd have to change my focus to the keyboard, then refocus on the screen, taking time to find my active window and locate the mouse cursor. This did not make for a pleasant user experience."