skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I do consulting work on web apps. I would estimate the majority of my time is not spent implementing the rather clear requirements, but fighting abstractions put in place by other engineers. And the larger the organization or more modules/frameworks/design patterns used the worse this tends to be.

Recent example: A new view of some data had to be added. So all that needs to be done is query the DB and return HTML with the correct styles. But the ORM used didn’t support ordering results with nulls last. So I had to add code to the ORM. The view doesn’t return HTML. Elements like <ul> are wrapped in a class. I had to modify the class constructor and render function to be able to return the HTML I needed, and modifying other code that used the class. In the end, what would have taken me 20 minutes took 2 hours. Was the ORM solving a real engineering or user problem? Nope. Were the view classes solving a problem? Ostensibly they were to make caching and testing easier, but none of that was actually happening. Most of my time wasn’t spent writing the code necessary to perform the task: an SQL query and constructing a string of HTML.
The bank died from a bank run. How much capital outflow per day, per week, per month should a bank's management plan to handle, do you think?
As the years pass, I keep thinking back and realize that Richard Stallman was right all along:

> For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I
also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I
send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me.
It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.
This article completely misses the point. Proper typesetting is about achieving a consistent appearance starting from ligatures and kerning, then word spacing and hyphenation, up to entire paragraphs and pages. Each character has to be typeset considering what character came before, how many words are in the same line and other lines in the same paragraph. The choice of font is also questionable, but not the main issue except for capitalized sections.

This example from the article says it all: https://iangmcdowell.com/blog/book_breaks.png

I understand that LaTeX is convoluted and other software is expensive, but when offering an alternative, there should at least be a comparison based on the quality of typesetting.
They do, e.g. "gvqbkpwz" is tokenised into individual characters. Actually it was a bit tricky to construct that, since I needed to find letter combinations that are very low probability in tokeniser's training text (e.g. "gv").

So notice it doesn't contain any vowels, since almost all consonant-vowel pairs are sufficiently frequent in the training text as to be tokenised at least as a pair. E.g. "guq" is tokenised as "gu" + "q", since "gu" is common enough.

(Compare "gun" which is just tokenised as a single token "gun", as it's common enough in the training set as a word on its own, so it doesn't need to tokenise it as "gu"+"n".)

The only exceptions I found with consonant-vowel pairs being tokenised as pairs were ones like "qe", tokenised as "q" + "e". Or "qo" as "q"+"o". Which I guess makes sense, given these will be low-frequency pairings in the training text -- compare "qu" just tokenised as "qu".

(Though I didn't test all consonant-vowel pairs, so there may be more).
It not only can and will, it does. The local pet store cycles through different formulations to keep the effectiveness up. The vet gets access to formulations earlier in the cycle so they always have access to what's currently the most effective.
... on a new computer, each time ordered from a different brand and reseller, paid with a unique type of cryptocurrency and delivered each time to a new dead drop in a different country.
There is a WebAssembly proposal called "Threads".

https://github.com/webassembly/threads

"This proposal adds a new shared linear memory type and some new operations for atomic memory access. The responsibility of creating and joining threads is deferred to the embedder."

As for the current status, it is listed on the proposals page: https://github.com/WebAssembly/proposals

The "Threads" proposal is in "Phase 3 - Implementation Phase" which means it's starting to be implemented, but it hasn't reached "Phase 4 - Standardize the Feature" where 2+ browsers implement it. The final stage would be "Phase 5 - The Feature is Standardized. See https://github.com/WebAssembly/meetings/blob/main/process/ph...
I suspect Microsoft will start Lobbying for protecting the "AI economy" pretty soon if they have not already started.

I mean they didn't care about where all that training data came from but that doesn't mean anybody else should (in their minds).

That's them pulling up the ladder behind OpenAI
"Cares" in this case meant that he pays more attention to the masses. I didn't suggest that he cares about the feelings of the masses nor that he does not have internal biases.
Thank you Donat — your happy note brings a smile to this tired astronomer’s face,

We have two wonderful cats who enjoy shedding cat hair around my desk. The new Mac Studio draws cooling air from the tabletop ,resulting cat fluff clogging the air passages. As you saw, it’s a chance to research how filter media work, and to home brew a solution that keeps everyone happy: computer, Cliff, and cats.
https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/s3-maximum-transfer-spee...
A few years ago, we had just that a start-up I was working for. We were told that X day would be picture day, so come dressed in a shirt. A photographer showed up at our office with a bunch of lights in tow. He didn't stay that long. The pictures looked pretty great.
I think the quest for growth at the societal level can be reduced to the quest for recognition and praise at the individual level. As such, it's not inherently evil.

But GPT itself is a malignant outgrowth of "growth". One that strangles all other cells in the system. Not simply a new form of oppression, but a literal cancer on an already weakened creative civilization. GPT represents the (temporary, current, for a month) apotheosis of the growth-at-all-costs mentality; so it's vaguely surreal to hear it defended as if it were arriving to liberate for the common man.

[edit] I do appreciate the engagement and fine conversation!
Funnily enough, this concept is the central bank digital currency - CBDC business model, with extra steps.
Do you have experience with it yourself? I haven't tried it for several years, but it was not at all usable last time I did.

For a project like this, I think it's a good choice to go with something more declarative over a WYSIWYG tool. Latex would have been a very good choice, but only if you already happen to know it or have an interest in learning.
Being confident and relaxed is important for making a good decision, I think. I recommend the Manager Tools podcast, especially the “hall of fame” (HOF) episodes. Good advice but also friendly supportive chatter from people who’ve done this all before.

And concrete advice that worked for me. Share interview questions in advance. Give people a chance to think deeply, if they want.
But it's not just a matter of "open"/"close". It's more like signal/noise.
Much of the signal is legit: source IP is needed to deliver response, screen resolution, audio/video codec support, transfer protocol, cache headers are all needed to render the page correctly and as quick as possible.

Unfortunately, much of that signal persists across sessions as well as websites and can therefore be aggregated into a hash that works as a "super cookie". The signal is based on the device, the connection, not so much the HTTP/HTML you're looking at.

The best approach to mitigate is therefore: adding noise: add random gibberish to User-Agent, tunnel IP though VPN/NAT, lie about codecs or screen resolution.

While that degrades user experience, it give no guarantees to actually preventing fingerprinting. So, the good news, if that fingerprinting is hard too, and doesn't work as well as is usually claimed!
I had that happen a couple years ago (probably 5 or 6 IIRC). I was working at a bank's consulting company (sort of the bank's own tech outsourcing company, but they also did projects for other external companies).

I was in an insurance project which closed down, so they moved me to another office and told me to await for a new assignment, which didn't arrive until 5 months later (and by then I was so burned out of doing nothing I just changed companies).

At the beginning I'd come to the office, grab a quick coffee and started emailing my manager and trying to get something to do, but eventually, since the response was always to continue waiting, I stopped doing that. I started coming in late, leaving early, "working from home" on Fridays... nobody would check on me, nobody really knew me in the office, so basically I did nothing for the entire 5 months.

I probably stayed that long because the three first months were summer months, so it was pretty useful to do no work and enjoy summer, but as soon as winter came back I started to get burned out.

I believe the issue is that they sorted me out on the first day in that office as one of the new hires, but I had been with the company for over 3 years at that point, so I guess the system messed up. They gave me a non-platformed computer (IIRC it had a stock Windows 7 install, no bank platforming at all), so I quickly set up my private VPN and routed all traffic over there so I could do anything over the Internet without they watching (which I don't think they did anyways). Since this was in IT, using VPNs wasn't something that weird, so it worked.

I'll just say, doing nothing is cool for the first maybe the first two months, after that it becomes the worst thing ever.
> Just don't hire a junior because you are afraid of hiring someone senior as your first hire.

I'd go so far as to say don't hire a junior person as your first hire. Someone senior can help you with hiring in general and hiring good junior candidates in particular.
Patience (aka live to fight another day), transparent motives and a feeling for what is appropriate.

Patience: in leadership trainings you learn about the importance of timing. A concerned party is not always receptive to an otherwise valid argument, so seeking (or facilitating) the right circumstances for a conversation is important.

Transparent motives: my motives should be clear to all concerned parties. This not only requires honesty, but transparency (eg. putting my cards on the table and allowing others insight into my situation).

Feeling for what is appropriate: I observe people losing brownie points by obsessing over details (wording, procedure etc). An honest introspection ("would the problem be solved if I won the argument over wording") can go great length to focus on what is important.

Edit: a meta comment, I am saddened by the fact that your question has received (at time of writing) 4 responses but only one upvote.
> The benefit of (1) is that it makes webassembly virtual machines simpler and safer

Why would that be safer at all?
The previous poster is gwern... Regardless, peer review does not mean that the arguments of the paper are correct (and viceversa), as gwern just shown.
Maintenance Release: Godot 4.0.1
AFAIK garbage collected 'objects' are completely separate from regular WASM heap allocations and tracked directly by the WASM VM (I may be wrong though, but details are here: https://github.com/WebAssembly/gc/blob/main/proposals/gc/Ove...)
Maybe I should clarify:

> it basically boils down to removing that directory + the environment module file that EasyBuild generated for it

Another important thing is knowing what depends on that package (so you don't remove something else's dependency). This is something that EB doesn't track after installation time.

> EasyBuild can install "binary packages"

What I meant here is that EB has no binary packaging system of its own. It has no binary package format, no signing, no way to take an installation and bundle it up into a file that can be installed (potentially in a different location) on another system. Spack, Nix, and Guix all have systems for creating and (re)installing binary substitutes for source builds (we call them build caches). EB can install someone else's binary package/distribution (we can too FWIW), but it can't create its own.

> But maybe you're referring to installing software in a shared filesystem (NFS, usually something like /apps).

Yes -- specifically that, with environment modules. Spack installations similarly all go in their own directories, but you can compose them in many different ways with environments and views. e.g., you can:

- Create a symlink tree of many packages together in a common prefix (a view)
- "project" package installations into different directory layouts with symlinks, hardlinks, or relocated copies

See https://spack.readthedocs.io/en/latest/environments.html#vie...

And you don't have to load packages one by one with modules. You can avoid modules entirely with `spack load` or use `spack env activate` to put everything in an env into your `PATH` (and other env vars).
Dollar Tree Is Pulling Eggs
They claim to be ‘GDPR and CCPA Compliant: Your compliance officer will love us, too’. However, GDPR defines ‘personal data’ as ‘any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person’, and this includes ‘an identifier such as an online identifier’. Therefore, browser fingerprinting may also fall under the scope of GDPR.
> Factory-Sealed Original iPhone Sells for $55,000 at Auction

$55,000 for a brick ? Some people are strange.
Colby Street, near college & alcatraz. But call first — several houseguests this week!
Using a company communication system is not a personal conversation. Even if it was, they were told and agreed to keep them and then didn't.
Using the IP address & user agent alone already gives you nearly 100 % accuracy, so the fact that they can re-identify you when these things stay identical isn't surprising at all. I tested that website as well and if you take care to rotate your IP address their re-identification rate becomes abysmal, especially if you're using a privacy-focused browser and extensions like Privacy Badger / uBlock.
Ahh yes, sorry, you are running it on a single instance. That’s capped, but the aggregate throughput across instances can be a lot higher.

There are request limits but these are per partition. There is also an undocumented hard cap on list requests per second which is much lower than get object.
Should've instantly bumped it to version 9.0.0 instead of 8.0.1
Do you have hard data to back the 80%?
Sorry if it came across as a statement directed at you as a person lxgr, I was using "you" in the generalised sense:

> We can use one, you or we when we are making generalisations and not referring to any one person in particular. When used like this, one, you and we can include the speaker or writer

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/pro...
Louis Rossmann could sue John Deere for GPL violation [video]
A GC doesn't prevent memory leaks though (if you keep holding references to objects that are not actually needed anymore).
But isn't E-ink. I don't think people were just looking for any display when they're discussing e-ink
Facebook was definitely not the poster child for this, they have been running profitably since well before their IPO. Sheryl Sandberg did a great job building that business.

I think Uber might be a better example of the strategy you're referring to.
These are not the good ones
Rust is a tiny language compared to like the top 5 most popular languages, why do you assume that everyone should switch boats for that?
I wonder if https://jshelter.org helps with that. And if it's not too slow.
Ha! I followed the instructions and went to fingerprint.com and it all 'crashed' because I had JavaScript turned off—that's my normal default setting.

I have five different browsers on my smartphone and three on the PC all sans JS and none of them are Chrome. Also, normal operation is to automatically delete all cookies at session's end.

My smartphone and PCs are de-googleized and firewalled and I never see ads in my browsers nor in apps. The apps are mainly from F-Droid and sans ads and the few Playstore ones I use are via Aurora Store and are firewalled from the internet when in use. Honestly, I cannot remember when I last saw an app display an ad, it has to be years back.

In the past I used to go to more extensive measures to stop the spying but I found it was unnecessary as the spy leakage was essentially negligible with much less stringent efforts.

It's pretty easy to render one's online personal data essentially wothlesss if one wants to. On the other hand if you insist on using JS, Gmail, Google search, Facebook etc. then you're fair game and you only have yourself to blame if your personal data is stolen.
It's the only convenient way to watch movies in-flight due to the lack of internet, and I usually see like half the plane using it. Guess you could pre-download from iTunes or less legit methods, but I doubt very many people maintain offline portable movie libraries.
Here in New Zealand, we dump raw sewage into waterways every time it rains more than a millimetre or two. It’s actually disgusting what is tolerated.
Software companies have a ridiculous amount of elasticity. Look at ebay and yahoo.
Don't underestimate how much work a junior causes so it's a valid risk. Most importantly, hire for someone you like on personal level and could go on for a drink.

One of my past managers said i shouldn't have to be "friends" with any of my reports and only look for their output qualities. I disagree with this. Having a good connection with your teammates will make your life as a manager so much easier and if you can decide who will be hired into the team use this.
I was told by OpenAI not to use the edit models - that the edit API is (effectively) deprecated. We were hitting a very low rate limit, so switched to using a completion model for the same thing (it's as good).
OT: anyone know what they're using for diagramming? I like how it looks.
(1) Users should not receive passwords via e-mail. (2) How very enterprisey of you to even be able to send passwords, which one also should not be able to do. (3) Users can change or modify their browser, either to another browser entirely or through installation of addons. The fingerprint is not guaranteed at all to stay the same or similar.
Bitmovin launches self-service video infrastructure APIs for developers
Damn a 14ft display? Are you displaying roadside ads?
Idk, those two terms are as different to me as URL vs URI. Searching it will yield a long explanation about the differences, but IRL people will use them interchangeably.
A GC does prevent leaking any unreachable objects, which is as good as it gets.

Sure, if you store strong references to everything, nothing can be done, but that’s a trivially debuggable problem.
I love how it ends with him having a midnight snack.
I have a three-color, 5.3 inch display. It takes around 25 seconds for a full screen update.

But with some waveform hacking (courtesy of the seller, “GoodDisplay”) and some creative use of the controller chip interface spec which differed slightly from the display interface spec…

I’ve managed to get rapid, partial black and white updates working. So you can create a ‘background’ out of three colours, then so long as you update rectangles that only contain black/white pixels, you can do a sub-second update.

Mine is a display that sits inside a PC, it shows the time, CPU and GPU temperatures, updated once a minute, and has a black/red fractal pattern that only updates on a full refresh which I scheduled for every 15 minutes.

Something similar may work with yours?
> pocket pagers are a rarity.

Unless you're a retained or volunteer firefighter, he said, looking at the box of a thousand pagers that need programmed up and sent out.
I got your book before I got my first 80386 based computer. I upgrade from ps ax to ps axu, but apart from that, you learned me some UNIX before I got a computer.

What I remember most of the book is the talks with Luis Alvarez, and the influence it had on how you examined the attacker. So while you didn't turn me into a (professional) astronomer, you might have managed to turn me into a scientist.

BTW, even if the computer stuff is completely outdated, the problem solving attitude that speaks out of the book is a reason why I still recommend it to youngsters. I recently bought an English edition to read it in the original language, too.

BTW2, regarding dinosaurs, my old professor could never get the hang of this new-fangled windows stuff. We always saw him struggling with notepad, typing stuff like :wq in it and cursing when it didnt work. One day, we took pity on him and installed cygwin and a windows-compatible vi. Good times ;-)
The problem isn’t with people being inefficient beyond 35 hours.

The problem is with the large number of people who don’t even put in a serious 10h on the job.
These are valid use-cases I agree. However I don't see why <canvas> should be leaky to support those use-cases.

Browsers should ensure all <canvas> operations produce identical results across platforms and hardware, and anything in the spec that prevents this should be removed from the spec.

Now, I recognize some of that functionality is handy for certain apps. In that case do like Android and put it behind an opt-in API, so the user can deny.

Basically I think browsers need a "web app" mode and a "surf mode". Just using visiting my local news outlet shouldn't require all the fingerprinting stuff.
3 sounds incredibly undesirable to me, assuming we’re dealing with a jpeg. Go through 3 or 4 rounds of that and compression starts to get pretty visible.
Unfortunately under US law that's a significant difference.

Companies can take away a dizzying variety of your rights if they simply say so. It's how they won most of the anti-scraping cases.
There's a book called "Automate the boring stuff with python."

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
Which then pushes a lot of web use-cases into mobile apps locked to a few corporate platforms that make tracking much much easier. Yes, even iOS.
As opposed to running the litany of GCd javascript they do now?
According to wikipedia [1] it is a single nucleotide (or rather a single base pair). But you obviously need more base pairs to identify which base pair you are looking at in the DNA. Presumably 50-150 base pairs is the length of DNA fragments required to be able to identify where in the genome it is.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-nucleotide_polymorphism
Since there is no /s at the end I will assume it was not a joke. Most versioning schemes assume logic behind bumping numbers, please check for example „semantic versioning 2.0.0“
I think you can still be fingerprinted without cookies or Javascript (e.g. with HSTS supercookies).
It's obviously not as effective.
Fair enough, I’m surprised no one has asked about GraphQL yet.
Alright, so my analysis was correct, good to know. I stand by my claim that Noah is analyzing the bet in a very unorthodox manner, in order to claim it’s a “sure loser” when it’s actually just a bad bet and not what people would usually think of when they hear “sure loser” and “mathematically no way to make money”.
Why is this being fought with technical measures (which are ineffective and cripple the web as a platform) instead of legal consumer law where you can easily fine and punish companies that do the fingerprinting?

EDIT: Note that you can do BOTH - but one without the other is just a game of whack-a-mole.
Right up until the ad and SEO people get their gritty hands on it.

Either Microsoft is successful charging people for it or it's going to become just as infested as Google is right now.

Maybe even then. Double dipping is not exactly unheard of.
Common sense isn't.

This is an unreasonable fear. If your job can be automated, you should be out of work. If you are delivering actual value, you will always have opportunities.

Someone is still going to be doing the automating. Computers can't think.