skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> since you seem knowledgeable about this

I should probably state to be clear that I am not a cryptographer. I just have an interest in the subject.

It also depends a lot what you mean by random. I generally take "random value" to mean "a value which can not be predicted". Of course in cryptography we often use a CSPRNG which can be perfectly predicted, it is deterministic, not random at all! However in that case what we actually care about is "a value which can not be predicted without knowing the secret state". For many use cases this is sufficiently close to true random. (Or the predictability can actually be useful, for example using a CSPRNG as a stream cypher.)

The reason why I said that my large hardcoded list was not random is that it is predictable. It is easily predictable if you know the hardcoded list of course. But even if you declare that list as "secret state" it is still predictable once it starts repeating and spews out the exact sequence of bits over and over again.

> My understanding is that's entirely fine from a statistical point of view.

Sure, but statistics are different than cryptography. If you just want your simulation to work well it is probably fine (unless the repeating causes funny artifacts in the simulation). I would argue that for most non-cryptographic use cases you don't even need anything close to "true random", you just need a distribution that matches your desired distribution with little bias and ideally doesn't repeat in a way that aligns poorly with how you use the numbers.

> Isn't this in some sense analogous to measurement error?

I'm not sure I completely follow here but I think the answer is "no". The difference is that randomness is a property of the generation process, not the output. https://xkcd.com/221/ is a great way to highlight this. In this case 4 was a very good quality random number. No once could have predicted it with greater that 1/6 probability. However once you check it into source code it isn't "random" any more. This is because the die produces "random numbers" but there is nothing special about the number itself. There is no test that will tell you that "4" is random or non-random, the question doesn't really make sense.

What the tests do is they take a list of values and try to detect "problems" (situations in the output that would be unlikely if the source was truly random). For example if you have a weighed die that rolls 6 80% of the time a good test will tell you that your random source is likely biased based on a sample of output values. Of course the more data you feed to the test the more likely that it is that failures are true failures. If you roll a die 10 times and don't get a 6 it isn't proof that the die is unfair or predictable in some way. If you roll that same die 1000 times without a six it is looking much more suspicious, but still impossible to prove just by looking at the outputs.
Without malpractice insurance, would doctors be incentivized to not take on risky patients? Risky could be defined as litigious (I know this patient has sued another doctor before) or medically difficult to treat (this patient needs this surgery but they are at high risk of poor outcome due to their current state of health).

Having sued a doctor once, you might never be able to get medical treatment again.
Ooh, neat. I was wondering why anybody would make a binary-specific VCS. And why "elf" was in the name. This answers both questions. Thanks!
Nevertheless, if you block all the ~850nm IR light from reaching the lens, then there cannot be any retro reflection at this wavelength, meaning the ToF cannot see anything.
> Shuttles were almost SSTOs in the sense that the fuel tank could be placed in orbit (and reused as pressurized habitation space, with some extra work).

That is super cool! I gotta dig into that.. pity they never did that. It would be neat to have an ISS module that was a re-purposed shuttle external fuel tank.
Can second that. Have worked 10 years with ILIAS (in all roles, from coding extensions up to editing content). It is a very solid platform with a rapidly moving team and an ever increasing set of features.
> If you’re curious to find who’s the owner of the AirTag that you have in hand, you can use your iPhone to view this information. Don’t have an iPhone? You can still use your NFC-enabled smartphone to see contact details.

https://osxdaily.com/2021/07/08/found-lost-airtag-find-owner...

I think people are mixing identifying the owner from the tracking beacon communications and identifying it from the physical device / serial number.
I guess it depends on where you live, but it's usual to visit family and friends who live somewhat far away to celebrate the holidays with them. If you know where the family car is in the holidays, then you know where the family is in the holidays, and if that's more than 300km away you can properly rob their house.
>In theory once you make that list you know what's next right?

In practice, I may have three or more to-do items that I could choose between working on now, with roughly similar priority levels. That can cause analysis paralysis, though this can be mitigated by arbitrarily choosing one to work on.

>What happens to your todo list over time?

I don't worry about the length of the to-do list. The important part is that it captures everything I need to do at some point, along with ideas of potential tasks. It roughly stays the same, though sometimes it can balloon, and some days it decreases. I don't aim for it to reach zero, as I will never run out of work to do.

>Do you feel like you know what you're supposed to do right now?

Yes, though I don't use a to-do list for figuring out what to work on right now. Instead, I use a daily schedule designed from the to-do list. The purpose of a to-do list is just to capture tasks, versus scheduling them.

>Do you feel able to execute the items?

Yes, though when I don't, I break them down into tiny steps to work on them progressively ('Little Steps' method from Feeling Good, a book by psychiatrist Dr. David Burns).

>Do you end up doing those tasks you listed?

I eventually do them. Sometimes I delete them if tasks are no longer relevant, especially with housekeeping tasks or ideas related to hobbies.

>Do you feel you have structure?

I actively try to maximize the structure in my days, via scheduling and writing steps out on sticky notes.

>Or otherwise what do you feel is blocking you from being productive as you were expecting to be?

The biggest reason is lack of sleep, or sleeping too late, which makes it difficult to concentrate. Easy internet access can also be distracting, especially when tasks are unfamiliar or unexpectedly difficult, though I'm working to minimize this.

Great questions to consider. If you want to get to-do lists working for you, I would recommend keeping them as a repository of tasks; adding deadlines to tasks in whichever task management system you use (I use Things 3, though this could also work on Apple's Reminders and Microsoft's ToDo); checking this task list with deadlines at the start of each day, then converting it to a schedule; and generally scheduling time for every to-do. I find that spare time where I'm energized to work on tasks is hard to come by, so scheduling is important.

I would also recommend breaking down difficult to-dos into as many simple steps as possible. In addition, try to sleep well and exercise regularly, which makes concentration much easier and improves your life experience.
This has been scientificaly debunked. Masks in 10 RCT showed no signifigant reduction in infection. Furthermore, asymptomatic spread was debunked in a 10 million person study that found 0 confirmed asymptomatic spreading. Guardian employees will soon be shunned from society for this propaganda. You will never sit among us you Nazi sympathizers. We're spitting in your food already you just dont realize it.
I don't really believe that this is a real time world statistics, there are a lot of variables at play and thus, one can't measure an accurate figure of a specific category.
The article never tries to make a direct case for causality. Every time it gets close, it completely ignores any underlying motivation (say authoritarianism). Including such a reference, the article's thesis would be something like since smaller-scale systems of control have been undermined by individualism, authoritarian desires have come to rely on surveillance. Which does not supply that less individualism would cause less surveillance (eg China), despite that being what the article wants to imply.

Modulo that, we're left with a pretty bland idea that as mobility has increased, the desire to know more about newly-met people has increased. Back in the day, a newcomer to town wouldn't be trusted until they had established a reputation. Now you can fly across the country and open a bank account on the same day. I don't particularly enjoy having global identification and surveillance databases like that. But it's hard to ascribe this to individualism per se as opposed to the ease of travel regardless of the strength of communities you're traveling between. We don't attribute the adoption of time zones as a consequence of individual communities failing to keep their "local time", but rather the need for consistency across a wider area caused by train travel.

Flipping the script can be useful to discover blindspots in conventional wisdom, but nothing in this article made me question individualism as being a strong counter to surveillance.
Even for HN this is a pretty shockingly out of touch "I don't know anything about $X but I can figure it out 'from first principles!!1'" type of comment.
Is there a serial number printed on the device? Presumably Apple has a database that ties the serial number to an iCloud account and if the police had physical access to the device they could subpoena that data.
All iPhones track airtags via the OS
Stablecoins: Systemically Important, Soon to Be Regulated
I’ll state the obvious and this will end badly for everyone involved, except the real estate agents.

Well me too hopefully, because I got to sell a house at inflated values earlier in the year. To a couple in their 70s with an LLC they had “never used before.”
It's built-in to iOS 14.5 and later:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227

> If you see this message on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS or iPadOS 14.5 or later, an AirTag that has been separated from the person who registered it is traveling with you, and the owner might be able to see its location. It's possible that the AirTag might be attached to an item you're borrowing.
Does it support Android and iOS? Can the test be shared between the platforms?

It's strange that the "Price" page has no price at all. Only "free" or "call us".
Airtag technology should be illegal. The woman was being tracked BY HER OWN IPHONE. Remember it is the iphone providing the geolocation and the internet connection.

The airtag technology uses peoples iphones without authorization as part of the airtag mesh.
I actually don’t think this is particularly salient to my point. Whatever mechanism Apple has chosen, and whatever degree of luck Apple is relying on, that mechanism did not work in time to protect this person’s home location from being disclosed.
Who determines the limits? What if the determiner of the limits disagree with you? It's all fun and sexy to make limits until you are systematically excluded.
I had a gut negative reaction to this comment (the government comment is irrelevant).

But to play devil's advocate, can't someone buy any cheap old iPhone (or any smartphone), activate it with a cheap prepaid plan, and use the phone itself as a tracking device instead of an airtag?

I guess the only thing special about the airtag is it's (slightly) cheaper than a cheap smartphone, longer battery life, and explicitly marketed for the purpose of tracking things. Even if a cheap prepaid smartphone can accomplish the same thing while going completed undetected.
I have better dexterity in my right hand, so I find it easier when the button is on the right side. My left hand only needs to hold the hole steady, while the right hand need more flexibility
1) The amount of information that big tech companies have about individuals is enormous compared to the most nosy neighbor. Search engine usage, email contents, phone location, IM metadata tell quite a story.

2) In the any tight knit community or town privacy is equal and non hierarchical. I know about you and you know about me and everything is good or at least tolerable.

This is not comparable in any way to the completely asymmetrical big tech/government surveillance (and consequently manipulation) that is happening.

Information is power and asymmetry of power is domination.
Ask HN: Which one is faster Polygon Network, Solana or Avalanche?
Dopesick – Wheel of Time – King Richard – Tick, Tick Boom
As much as I’d like them not to lose, they are going to have a hard time here, since they basically disassembled the whole game and posted it on GitHub.
> It seems like once the graphics capabilities became common, OS interface developers used them even when they shouldn't have.

When you release a new OS version it has to look fresh or nobody will want it.
Which would also disincentivize ridiculous lawsuits that you'd almost certainly lose.
TonicPow
This is a really cool project and I want to see it succeed. I realize the FAQ states "There is no plan". That aside, are there any longer-term goals for the project or things they want to support in the future?
> What they call day-time Tuesday in Botswana is part of two date units, for some people hour 17 is always in the morning, and these local facts would get normalized as habit over time.

Isn't that in some ways just reintroducing time zones through the back doors?
Apple suggests that they can assist law enforcement if you have the serial number:

> To disable the AirTag and stop sharing your location, tap Instructions to Disable AirTag and follow the onscreen steps. If you feel your safety is at risk, contact your local law enforcement who can work with Apple. You might need to provide the AirTag or its serial number.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227
In this age of rampant puffery, it's so... soothing to see somebody be positive and frank about the limits of their creation. Thanks for this and all your comments here!
>Sexton said tracking someone and their location without their permission is criminal and with the holidays approaching more crimes like this....

Ironic, since IIRC Apple phones were the very first to follow people's locations without their permission.
so that's not a good idea, but being able to post your own patch code as well as patch instructions should be protected, IMO.
yeah, duh, the jedi aren't good. rewatch the prequels and you'll see they're basically impeding capitalistic progress.
It (should be) purely ⎕IO←0. https://tio.run/##jZK7SgNBFIb7fYrTbQKbyyYINum1srBNM27G7OLemJ...

Potentially cal -y on macOS produces a different shape? What's ⍴↑cal?

Try doing cal←⎕SE.UCMD'Calendar 2021' and replace ↑2↓cal with 1↓cal - potentially that'll work?
There's tons of trackers that can use any nearby iPhone (one of the most popular phones in the world) to keep tabs on you? No need to GPS?
The article's headline seemed interesting enough to maybe take a look. Your concise review saved me trying to parse through it. The quotes you posted clearly show it's the kind of overly-intellectualized prose that's too often just window-dressing trying to inflate a handful of unremarkable ideas.
The airtag technology uses peoples iphones without authorization as part of the airtag mesh.

If there are no iphones nearby, the airtag doesn't work.
The English countryside is an exception. Townies are more likely to use it in the American sense though these days.
> we store assets (like big PSDs that change often) outside of version control and it is suboptimal.

Perforce is still used by game developers and other creatives, because it handles large binaries, quite well.

In fact, I'm not sure if they still do it, but one of the game engines (I think, maybe, Unreal) used to have a free tier that also included a free Perforce install.
Visual Studio Code for the Browser
My biggest “aha” moment recently was learning that you can enable a button in the GitHub actions UI to manually trigger builds.

I’ve always been perplexed why this wasn’t there. Turns out you just need to add a magic string to your YAML file:

on:
workflow_dispatch:

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/managing-workflow-runs/ma...
I'm guessing this does not yield that high compression for release builds, where code can be optimized across translation units? Likewise when a commit changes a header that is included in many cpps?
No, but the AirTag will beep incessantly and loudly if it detects that it is moving without the owner nearby, as somebody who borrowed my backpack informed me.
Interesting, seems like that fear would push people in those tax brackets to not leave their gates communities and just shop online, instead of exposing themselves to that sort of threat.
He is thoughtful and states his case well, but these two assertions make no sense alongside one another:

But it would be useful to a lot of people -- hundreds of millions of people who you may never know.

Microsoft Windows is the biggest laggard; they drop any packet whose destination OR SOURCE address is in 240/4.

We can assume he's not talking about mobile users: they can and usually do get IPv6 addresses. We can assume he's not talking about all the endless servers and so on talking to one another, those aren't "people." He's talking about hundreds of millions of PC users.

Hundreds of millions of PC users, except Windows users. How is that going to work?

It'd be fun and ironic to pick on Microsoft for adhering too closely to established open standards, but unless I'm missing something here, they've got a veto over implementation of these ideas.
Yes, as long as it works for your very specific personal preference!
Why do frozen turkeys explode when deep-fried?
I experimented with something similar with a Linux distribution's package binary cache.

Using `bup` (deduplicating backup tool using git packfile format) I deduplicated 4 Chromium builds into the size of 1. It could probably pack thousands into the size of a few.

Large download/storage requirements for updates are one of NixOS's few drawbacks, and I think deduplication could solve that pretty much completely.

Details: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/89380
Wow, I did not think of that. Owning an iPhone is the only way for Apple to alert you that you’re being tracked.

The solution is correct, inform a user that they’re being followed by an AirTag. But if the platform isn’t opened you risk having to install half a dusin app from different tracking devices, to be informed that you’re being followed.
I never found anonymous answers to be nearly as big an issue as the questions. They didn't seem to get as much distribution. Questions are intended to go looking for answers, and thus got spread widely; anonymous answers of poor quality would be downvoted and disappear.

The site was vastly improved by removing anonymous questions. The use case was extremely narrow: a generic question would already be asked ("How do I get away from a violent boyfriend?") and specific ones risked violating anonymity ("How do I get away from a violent boyfriend in zip code XXXXX?")

I suspect that the replacement of anonymous answers is more about streamlining the code -- eliminating a whole separate case that has to be tested and maintained -- than about improving the site.

But even if the use case for anonymous answers was more realistic than for anonymous questions, it was practically never used that way. It was almost always trolling. Among the Top Writers, practically none were sad to see it go.
> but they're aware of the issue and have stated they are working on a solution

I'd rather they work with Google to get those notifications automatically, rather than requiring someone to be aware of AirTags, and download an app, in order to be notified. Perhaps they can work with carriers to get the app pre-loaded?
This is released under MIT license, though. That's open source.
Feels like a correlation / causation error - global mobility is really only just getting back to normal and these methods of 'attack' are on their way from zero 6 months ago.
https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/9694/technical-de...
Half-shafts exist on (almost) every vehicle. They’re also called CV-Axles, essentially they allow independent suspension travel with wheels, traditional axles are stiff and carry wheel movement to the opposite side.

I have a ‘99 Isuzu Rodeo that I spent a weekend replacing a half-shaft two years ago.
The practical difference being battery life of an iPhone versus an AirTag.
So I need to download an app so I know I'm not being tracked by apple tech? That's not a solution, that's part of the problem!
How is it "easy" to show negligence?
Interesting question. Mainly as mentioned above we needed Google Play Services for AR. Nothing else stands out at a high level.

However there is a clear bottleneck with the Google AR team for features that the community really wants. While it's understandable, perhaps the open source libraries aren't the priority or there's short staffing, there are issues like this one - https://github.com/google-ar/arcore-android-sdk/issues/153 - that have been open since Jan 2018. This one asks that we can use the smartphone flashlight simultaneously with ARCore, but there's no visibility on how close we are at the moment. This feature would have likely improved our work's performance greatly, but even in general, many other AR developers are asking for it.

Re: overcoming it, there's not much we can do in this case. We just didn't implement the feature.
Well the reason I linked to the second article is because it talks about how more and more it looks like the GPL is solid and enforceable. So expense aside, as time rolls on and more cases come up it's pretty clear that defendants assume they'll lose if they are caught violating the license terms and try to fight it.
Or maybe you're just overestimating how much the average person needs to deal with cross-timezone events vs. things happening in the local timezone and things would be worse after all.
The battery life makes it a whole different issue. AirTags have a battery life of 1 year versus a burner phone with a battery life of 2 days.
> > Large impersonal institutions are much easier to hold accountable than local communities.

> I think this is exactly backwards.

No it is not. States and corporations are bound by law and to a great extent by public opinion while smaller communities are much freer to tyrannize their members.

Being part of the same "community" didn't stop school segregation in the south, the federal government did.
Seconding your view points. If a patient dies from a hypertension related cause (say stroke), and the patient has not followed the strict low salt diet the doctor recommended, does the doctor pay for that? At what point does the doctor stop seeing patients who do not follow their recommendations to the exact letter?
Easier to check their instagram ...

Checked in at the Business Class Lounge - On way to Cancun (Back in a Week!!)
We really need Bret Devereaux of ACOUP [0] fame to weigh in on this--I would trust his judgment and arguments much more than the ones put forth in the article.

0: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/29/collections-fortification-part...
It seems that the nozzles feeding onto the aerospike are sufficiently small to operate safely at sea level air pressure. That kind of nozzle can operate safely at lower air pressure as well, but is inefficient. The aerospike gives you back your efficiency at lower atmospheric pressures, so you end up with something that's both safe and efficient at all altitudes, relative to a traditional bell nozzle.

At least that's my understanding - I just like to learn about rockets.
> Does each manufacturer of those also owe you an Android app?

Yeah, probably.