skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Article author here. I take your point, but you know there's more to social science than studies of feelings about gender acceptance, right? Here's a randomized controlled trial about how to distribute bednets for malaria: http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/bednet.... Getting this right potentially saves thousands of lives. It's a rigorous experiment, so in terms of causality you could argue it's considerably tighter and less theory-dependent than e.g. earth sciences.

There are really two issues here which get conflated. First, social life is complex, people aren't like atoms, and all our explanations are gross simplifications. Second, yes, there's a lot of bullshit social science out there. But there's also some real social science, and it can address important issues.
Where's the racism?
I once worked with a company who on occasion sent people to very secure sites. (yes I've told this story before)

You arrived at the facility in a rental car with your keys, clothing, ID (credit cards were ok and could be left in the car), and anything you needed to do the job (laptop, hardware, whatever).

You were told to expect to leave with your clothes, keys, ID, and rental car (obviously the previously mentioned credit cards).

You parked at the gate, were blindfolded, and escorted to the place you did your job, and then the same process out.

NOTHING left the facility beyond those things, even the front gate. (Car was searched and anything in the car might be confiscated).

I honestly think that's a level of security (well maybe without blindfold) that many places will eventually have to adopt.
Hey thanks. We will not log searches or collect personal data.

There are public sources of search data that we can use with transfer learning against large scale language models like GPT-3, and that are updated regularly. Transfer learning works well without needing massive data sets with this sort of data (phrases mapped to intents).

Having said that, the app tracks the intents and topic profiles of searches (not the search itself, just for example FoodPlaceSearchIntent) and whether the execution was likely a good result or not based on signals (like whether the search was likely repeated or rephrased - again without recording the actual search), and the models learn from that. We're adding signals including anonymized upvote/downvote as well.

Approaches like differential privacy are something we want to pursue more in future. We are still very early days!
Same rules for game consoles as well?
> Governments exist because they are a tool for concentrating power and out-compete other social groupings in terms of economic strength and capacity for violence.

Governments exist because single people aren't powerful enough to protect themselves and because people are social, so they group together.

This is more Hegel, but they totally do exist from the consent of the governed because the people do have the power to dissolve them. If the will of the people does not align with the government, over time the government will dissolve. The question is how bad it has to get before that happens.

>Governments don't exist from the consent of the governed, but rather from the lack of force sufficiently strong to dissolve them. Just because I don't have this force doesn't mean I have consented to being governed.

So essentially if a force existed that could dissolve governments, then no governments would exist? Again, I think that force does exist, embodied in the governed as a whole. By the way, you completely do consent to be governed. You can choose to drop out - the problem being that if you do that you leave yourself at the mercy of powerful actors. It's not an optimal state.
The Beauty of Static Types
Reminds me of Mr. Robot
> If I book a Redis-DB of a given size, I don't have to care about its software version, proxies, what OS it's running on, how big the VM is, what the specs are, and so forth. That's what I'm getting at.

And what I'm getting at is that you do. While there might exist managed services that don't require this, many managed services nonetheless do. E.g., AWS RDS regularly has updated versions, and it is somewhat up to the customer to schedule them & apply them, and downtime happens during that. RDS is relatively pain-free, and is higher on my list of "would use again" for that reason. But take something like Azure AKS: it's a "managed" service, but upgrades are very much not pain free. I have to manually schedule them, and manually apply them, and deal with fallout (which is often, IME).

> It simply means it's not you, the customer, who has to troubleshoot and fix them.

Again, I disagree. When S3 had its outage, I had to debug why certain requests weren't happening, I had to capture sufficient request IDs to prove to AWS that S3 was in an outage for us, and only then did we get the proper support, and eventually, attention from engineering. My company had to pay an engineer to do that. Sure, I'm not literally debugging S3 actual, but that doesn't mean an engineer isn't needed on the consuming side. Same story with an example with ACR where we were receiving 500s: it took not only capturing 5xx requests & their time of occurrence, it took multiple back and forths to convince Azure that the 5xxs were on their side. (Both of these incidents also demonstrated a real fundamental lack of alerting on the side of the companies managing these services. Our monitors on their services very clearly indicated outage. S3's excuse was that it was "just" our bucket. But the point is that they have no insight into the actual service the end user is perceiving even after the customer raises the support ticket.)

Just recently I was SSHed onto an AKS VM to try to help Azure understand why packets weren't making it from their Virtual network into AKS. Data, from one Azure service to another! (And we didn't figure it out, either; we ended up changing what we were doing anyways, and so the investigation became moot.) And this demonstrates another issue I've hit, a bunch, is that interactions between managed services are also impossible to debug: you end up with two separate services both claiming it isn't them that is out of spec, but nonetheless the end result doesn't work, and nobody on either side has the competence to actually debug the problem.

If you want the downtime to end, it becomes you, the customer that has to debug & troubleshoot these things. And that is a cost that must be accounted for when weighing managed services vs. unmanaged ones.
"What makes Amazon different in this regard? Is Amazon doing it differently?"

Nothing, and they aren't. Except they're maybe the biggest.

The intellectual foundation of this new movement isn't specifically anti big tech. It's anti all kinds of anticompetitive business practices, many of which have had huge negative effects outside of tech. Grocery stores are one of them, but one can point to any area of the economy and find businesses engaging in what is currently standard practice that the new movement is seeking to outlaw, or in many cases just restore the teeth to laws that have been ignored for years, or just so narrowly interpreted that they're meaningless.
I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life without their parents. It's a slow motion tragedy.
I wondered if it was a reference to Oliver Cromwell who was known for his utilitarian manner.

Scones sounds tastier.
That’s an interesting observation. I’ve always heard the argument that we need “more density” but I like this option as well.
The relationship is explained in detail in the Wildland paper -https://golem.foundation/resources/documents/wildland-w2h.pd...

There's also a talk on this very subject available at https://vimeo.com/473452625
If you want to learn more about some of the platforms out there:

https://www.getblix.com/retail-foot-traffic

https://www.aislelabs.com/products/flow/

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting...
On a side note, thank you for referring to vector.dev. After skimming through their documentation that will be a useful tool as well.
While these are appreciated, why not create 2 Google accounts and dump the MP3s in there?
Indeed. I meant its a simple idea. It would be simple to write a lwa for it. But of course, it would be politically fraught. Similarly tho, it wouldn't be politically simple to switch back to gold-backing.

But yes, hopefully bitcoin can save us from this mess one day.
Restrictions on medical devices are very reasonable though. They aren't something people can freely hack on. Errors can cause decisions to be made based on incorrect information, expose people to radioactivity...

Even the GPLv3 makes an exception for this class of device.
> The etymology of the Slavs' autonym itself is much more disputed, but possibly derives from the Slavic word for "word", so meaning "people who can talk", among several totally different suggestions.

Well in pretty much every Slavic language analog of "słowo" is "word" and "słowianin" is Slav. And in most of these languages the word for Germans (the most common non-Slavic foreigners) is analog of "Niemiec" which is the same word root as "mute person" (niemy).

I don't see how it can be disputed.
Glad we agree : )
> It's hard to find a profit motive here.

Promoting the use of iCloud - when your space runs out, you will consider paying for it.
The Abode of Madness
Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results
> what on Earth are we paying for?

The same is the same for any relational DBMS: lock-in.
This looks pretty awesome!

Something that might be cool is also identifying the schemas and the ranges. You would probably be able to automatically generate some of these blocks. You could use something like this:

https://github.com/capitalone/DataProfiler

With enough data, you could probably further automate this process with AI. Good luck! Feel free to reach out for ideas or anything.
Tell us more about the Colonial pipeline ransomware Bitcoin recovered
Actually excited at the prospect of Steam for the iPad. The new iPad is powerful enough to be a game console controlled by wireless keyboards, etc.
Spinning off AWS, which is pretty independent, might be enough.
By passing a right to repair on medical devices you also open up the aftermarket for repairs. Would you like to be handed a medical device by your insurance company that has been repaired by an untrained person that considers himself to be a handyman? Or be put in a scanner that was repaired by a service engineer from a broker that is cutting corners to win in the competing market.

Without clear quality and regulatory control there must be an objective method to discern between personal repairs and non-personal ones.

Disclaimer: didn't read the actual right to repair being passed in detail. Not sure if it does discern already.
So the Director of Operations of ENS Domains says Ethereum has solved an extremely solved problem and one of the cornerstones of that solution is... wait for it... ENS Domains. Gotcha.

I also take issue with:

>Ethereum is giving average ppl computer generated public/private key pairs...

'Average' people aren't into crypto. And the average computer user doesn't know how to use asymmetric keypairs.

Anyone want to try to explain asymmetric keypairs to mother-in-law who's in her 70s and needs help applying Windows patches? I sure don't. And I spend my days in SAML and OAuth world.
Somewhat OT, but I love how this "kitchen sink" idiom has become so warped over the last several years.

As far as I know (native AmE), the original expression was "everything but the kitchen sink", which evokes the idea of taking everything in the kitchen and using it all in a recipe, only stopping short of dismantling the kitchen itself.

Whether through mishearing or laziness, the "everything but the" part has been dropped. I only noticed it in the last few years, but maybe it's been happening for a lot longer than that. So it's now totally the opposite: the only thing in the expression is the kitchen sink, i guess suggesting that there's a bunch of junk in the sink?

But this title is even better. We have abandoned all pretense of caring about the meaning of the expression. In 2021, Chuck Schumer is going to call Mark Zuckerberg in to testify, and he is going to physically hurl a big metal sink at him.

I know that language evolves and stuff, but it's pretty funny to see such a silly corruption of an already-kind-of-silly idiom in a "serious" title.
Or can't you just load it but with a proxy - they get to know it got opened but from a fake IP.
Recent related threads:

Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27470577 - June 2021 (111 comments)

EA got hacked and games source code leaked including new game Battlefield 2042 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468766 - June 2021 (139 comments)

EA hacked and source code stolen - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462952 - June 2021 (35 comments)
This is going to be a random comment, but the thing that struck me most was how close this person's Github username is to my own! github.com/chrxr vs github.com/chrxh. Feels bizarre. And seeing their actual name it appears there username has the same relationship to their real name as my own username.
Personally I love literature and art, my bedroom is lined with poetry books in several languages, and for that very reason, I dislike much of the modern humanities, with their pious, dreary approach to these beautiful and important things.
This won’t help small players it would help the big ones like Facebook that would move to their own store in order to avoid Apple’s policies…

I doubt that the EU would allow Apple to impose the same restrictions on the alternatives which means that privacy protections that aren’t enshrined within the OS will be the first ones to go.
The closest example I've seen used before is the notion that you get to the shelves and go to grab a case of Coca-Cola, but as you reach to grab it a voice beams at you from your side saying "Wouldn't you prefer <our brand> instead? Its $1 cheaper!"

Now, which kind of works as an analog to these companies prioritizing their products on the search algorithm, but I don't really think applies to the practice of gathering such data.
Maybe because some people seek alternative to official CCP policies.
Even if the amyloid hypothesis is true (and most neuroscientists I know think it's not), this is a terrible decision.

1.) We don't know when to give the drug. Maybe giving it even earlier would help, but these trials don't tell us that. Answer: Run a new trial.

2.) We don't know how much drug to give. The drug was approved on the (bad, weak) evidence that in one high dose arm of one of 2 trials, there might have been an effect. Is that the right dose? Who knows! In the other trial, the high dose may have actually been worse. You can't titrate dosage in Alzheimers like you do in cancer where you can just watch how the tumor is shrinking. Answer: Run a new trial.

Giving this drug is not without downsides. You will have side-effects, including serious ones such as potentially brain swelling. Some people may be seriously injured or killed as a result of taking this drug. You have to make sure that the benefits outweigh that downside, and the trials show us a very dubious, weak effect.

The FDA should have said, "Good work, maybe there's an effect with this dosage, go run a new trial with the revised protocol." That's the right call.

Instead, they added, "Oh and you can sell the drug in the meantime and you don't have to tell us for 9 years."

How are you going to recruit patients for the trial? "We could give you the drug, but might give you a placebo." How many patients sign up for that instead of saying, "OR I could go out and buy the drug (which you claim totally works, and the FDA agrees!) independently."?

What if the trial fails in 9 years after you have tons of anecdotal reports (remember placebo shows an effect in past trials)? Now you have to take if off the market, imagine the loss of credibility that will entail for the FDA.

How about other drugs that reduced amyloid but showed no cognitive effect? (Eli Lilly's Solazenumab among many, many others) Should they get approved now too?

This is a mess for everyone and benefits Biogen. Everyone else loses, even the well-meaning patient advocates who created the political pressure for this decision.

Additional sources:

https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01900665

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/12/06/th...
Super cool! This reminds me of a fascinating fact I learned the other day, about the history of the Coptic language in Egypt (the final stage of the Egyptian language before Arabic was introduced):

The Phoenician alphabet was heavily based on Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph script. The Greek alphabet was in turn originally based on the Phoenician alphabet. Finally, the Coptic alphabet was based on Greek, bringing it full circle back to Egypt!
I'm at NASA and a while ago I wanted to experiment with using Pi's to monitor experimental setups, instead of using full-on PCs as we do now, which would save a ton of money. Trying to get permission to put one on the network, even for just a quick test, was so difficult I gave up. And that was a few years ago, now we have so much mandatory compliance monitoring software, I don't know if it would even be possible anymore. Some of those packages may not be available for the Pi, even if it were running a supported OS like Ubuntu instead of Raspios. I understand why incidents like this one have made NASA management extra sensitive to IT security matters, but it sure feels like a creativity straight-jacket at times. There is not much fun in being an SA at NASA these days, I'm sorry to say.
Well if studies show that his home work environment is less distracting than his office, i guess he can't argue with that.
> In flash, seeks are essentially free. That means that it does no longer matter if blocks are adjacent.

> The net effect is that positioning as seen from the OS no longer
matters at all from the OS layer, and that the OS layer has zero control over adjacency and erase at the PHY layer. Rewriting, defragging, or other OS level operations cannot control what happens physically at the flash layer.

I don't agree with this. The "OS visible position" is relevant, because it influences what can realistically be written together (multiple larger IOs targeting consecutive LBAs in close time proximity). And writing data in larger chunks is very important for good performance, particularly in sustained write workloads. And sequential IO (in contrast to small random IOs) does influence how the FTL will lay out the data to some degree.
Thanks for Vagrant. I've used it quite a bit. I think it's underestimated how many large businesses there are that still manage their servers like "pets", rather than "cattle".

In my career, Vagrant has provided a good solution to move towards more automated deployment, where Docker would have been too big a paradigm shift, and/or not really greatly justify its use.
In other words, a modern version of Microsoft LAN Manager:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LM_hash

Save-ya-a-click: basically what jfrunyon describes, along with a whole lot of other insecurity goodness (and to be fair, LANMan was a long time ago).
Thank you for clarifying!

> It’s the job of congress to fix the legislation

Absolutely agreed
> The actual last thing in the world home users want is an authentication system where credential loss is literally irrevocable.

This is generally a concern I have about blockchain technology. What if it succeeds in its goal to play a major role in some sector, and something immensely important becomes attached to it.

Mistakes happen. Both by humans and by computers. Software having bugs, hardware failing, bits randomly changing in RAM, are all obvious and commonplace. Mitigations exist (ECC, signatures...), but never along the whole chain. For example, BTC addresses might have checksums, but if the wrong row in a database deciding the address is selected in the first place, through human, software, or hardware error, that will not matter.

Do we want to attach extremely important things to a system that is by design irreversible?
The app store is so well established at this point, do you think it’ll matter if there are more ways to get apps?

Google doesn’t have a problem with it and they’ve allowed it forever.
I don't give a shit what Apple thinks, and wouldn't bother seeking their opinion. I've replaced probably every part in an old MacBook Air I have and the non-Apple online documentation has been really good.

All that being said, thermal paste is pretty poisonous, I'd never even considered someone would just splodge it on with their finger.
Sideload open source software. Also if apple allowed side loading it gets rid of the the need for workarounds for GPL licensed software.
Sounds like a big risk reselling anything with any potential to go wrong in California, or at least insurance premiums will be very high.
It won’t be Steam, it would be Google and Facebook and the CCP who would have their own stores on day one.
The one time I locked myself out hard at work and had to go "in person" for a password reset, I had to show ID even when the person who was resetting my password knew me by sight. And this was well over a decade ago.

And in all but the smallest companies I've worked for, you needed a card swipe at the door (or an escort) to pass from public to internal areas.

This is just really, really basic physical security stuff.
I think this will entertain you: https://fliptomato.wordpress.com/2007/03/19/medical-research...
I love Vagrant, it was my secret weapon for years! However, I question the decision to release a complete new implementation under the 2.x version. The Go-based variant should be 3.0 from the start.
Ah, my mixed feelings over having gone with "dasyatidae" as a 2LD… there were some subsequent potential repicks but thus far they haven't stuck. (IIRC this was also before "stingray" got so associated in the popular consciousness with the police surveillance equipment.)
> The social contract theory is a just-so story.

I find this (the liberal employment of just-so stories) to be practically a defining trait of enlightenment-era political thinking. Happy coincidence that their application resulted in systems of government strong enough to survive competition, though I do worry that that had more to do with other factors than with the benefits of liberal democracy, which may be more like peacock feathers than something enduringly fit in a changing environment, and that, especially with a changing technological landscape, the March of Democracy may end up being rather less long-lived than we might have hoped. I gather some cold-war thinkers had similar concerns. That turned out to be OK, more or less, I suppose, for generous values of "OK"—Russia didn't exactly shift toward liberalism afterward the fall of the Soviet Union, for one thing.
$2,749.95

Who knew a few physical dials would be so expensive...
The word 'cromulent' embiggens the smallest man.
These aren't anti-competitive, they increase competition. The help the consumer get better prices.
by that logic we would never drive cars, ride airplanes, go to space, etc
on24 is perhaps one of the worst events platforms I've every experienced or worked with. They seem to have changed little about their platform in a long time. More comparable would be gotowebinar or webinarninja.
Google doesn’t enforce nearly as many constraints as Apple does. Do you think the same restrictions that Apple currently enforces on app developers would remain in place?