skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The last time I looked into FPGA programming (probably back when I was in college), the cheap eval hardware cost at least a few hundred dollars a board, if not a few thousand. For something that would just be a toy to play around with, it was too much to justify spending money on.

On top of that, the tooling is all proprietary, clunky, with obnoxious licensing. If you notice, that eval board you pointed to comes with "ISE® WebPACK® software with device locked SDK and ChipScope™ Pro licenses". I'm just not interested at all in any "device-locked SDKs".

And finally, there's a bootstrapping problem. FPGAs aren't really a mass-market platform, because no one has them (unless they're developing custom hardware).

If there are now $90 eval boards, that solves part of the problem. Another big step would be building a reasonable toolchain around it that does not consist of big clunky proprietary tools with onerous licensing.

And finally, someone will need to start shipping FPGAs with a standardized interface on commodity hardware. If I can depend on their being an FPGA in a phone, in a workstation, or in COTS server hardware, there are lot more possible applications. As it is, you already have to be building your own hardware before an FPGA is something you would want to target at all. The vast majority of programmers write code to run on COTS hardware (servers, desktops, mobile), not custom hardware.
> Instead, modern cryptographic software developers work from a grab-bag of '80s-'90s-era primitives. A new cryptosystem implemented in 2013 is, sorry to say, more likely to use ECB mode AES than it is to use an authenticated encryption construction.

I think Fravia said something similar. He was talking about copy-protection dongles. He respected the cryptography provided by some of the hardware manufacturers, but was dismissive of the way software vendors implemented that crypto in a broken way.

> But more importantly, I think most people who "learn crypto" aren't Colin. To them, "learning crypto" means understanding what the acronyms mean well enough to get a Java application working that produces ciphertext that looks random and decrypts to plaintext that they can read. Those people, the people designing systems based on what they read in _Applied Cryptography_, badly need to understand crypto attacks before they put code based on their own crypto decisions into production.

Oh god yes.

These people need to understand that when someone says "This is broken for a whole slew of reasons. No, I'm not going to code a proof of concept crack." it probably means that the crypto is very broken, and should not be pushed out to production, and certainly should not be promoted as safe and unbreakable and suitable for use by political dissidents in oppressive regimes.

It doesn't mean "We know we can break it faster than we can brute force it, even if there's no practical attack yet".
Asking for a down payment is a test of seriousness and someone's ability to pay the actual, real, full price. It is also an utterly normal business practice. Asking for partial payment because you are broke tells people you are broke. This gives people information about both your business acumen and negotiating position, not information that will redound to your advantage.
There is a forum that I was active on daily since 2004, that was shut-off in 2008, though is still online in read-only-mode...

I like to go back and read some of my posts on there and I sit and go "wow - I can't believe I wrote that" -- but in a good way.

Other times I see stuff I wrote on there and feel it was from a completely different person!
I was thinking about this same thing today.

I think the reason the government "won out" over all the other abuses is that they are able to collect data willy-nilly from all the other corporations. So whatever problems you might have with FB privacy, it's nothing with the abuses involved with taking the problems of 50 providers and adding them all together. Then storing the data forever.
Given he's from the Green Party, my money would be on the GP's theory.
I would go for it. Just @ a whole bunch of people. Ask what shit / lies this women said about you.
I mean this in no trolling or sarcastic sense, but - I've never heard of an international arrest warrant for rape before Assange... maybe there hasn't been anything significantly publicized?
the Safe Harbor asks compliance with the Data Protection Directive which is supposed to become obsolete in the following few years. Not to mention that it's apparently opt-in, which is basically useless.
Never saw "passing code blocks around" as a source of confusion, and in many languages (Ruby, for a salient example) "passing code blocks around" is the same mechanism as is used in the languages main foreach construct.
Anyone here targeting HTML5 mobile apps? I have been digging through some WebView stuff lately and I find the results surprising.

The rendering pipeline is complex and layout code consumes a lot of CPU. The end result is that HTML5 mobile apps are slow and consume more CPU. I have also tested with the chromium beta channel. Things have improved vastly but it's no where close to native code. If you take some advanced 3d games, they consume like 20% CPU on latest Nexus. Just do some simple 2d animations in Chrome using canvas and you are already at 30% (so this doesn't even count physics and all that).
The problem is a lack of overlap between software engineers and hardware engineers, particularly in the open source arena.

I'm a digital designer, and do software as a hobby. I've thought about writing up a guide to get into fpga hacking. Tools are always a hindrance. Simulation has some free tooling, but as far as I know there is nothing for synthesis.

EDIT: There is this https://code.google.com/p/vtr-verilog-to-routing/. It targets hypothetical architectures.

There could possibly be a kickstarter idea here to pick an architecture they have targeted and get some designers to implement this. You could even host one of these theoretical architectures on top of another FPGA. It'd be slower than the host, but feasible.
I'm waiting for Chuck Moore to release 2kb of Forth that he claims replaces the only parts you need...
Because one day you will stumble or your grip will be weak and you'll spend all your time wondering if it was just the beginning signs of developing ALS or if you were just tired or clumsy. I would think that would be the point, at least for me.

- EDIT: for clarity.
WTF is the intel XDK and why don't they bother to explain it on the landing page.
As for requiring Java? No thanks, when I figure out what it does, I'll find something else to do it without involving Whoracle.
Fair point. I actually use Issues a lot, I find it great for small projects where I don't have the time or energy to set up bugzilla or trac etc. I like the way you can browse branches and commits, see your repos, start a new project with a README and so on. I can imagine using the wiki more than I have.

I just get this queasy feeling that this might be one of those over-thought reworkings, where they do everything they thought they would do years ago before the site took off. Sometimes that works, but usually it's a disaster. Incremental changes, with lots of feedback from real users, seems to be the better way for a site with a solid core of happy users to evolve.
No, I don't think that is the reason.

Many parents would rather that their children not visit the home of a friend that had guns in it. Would as many parents be apprehensive about sending their children to a home with a pool? I suspect not.

There may be legitimate reasons that they are treated differently in a way that does not immediately make sense when you examine the risks they pose, but I don't think that choice or lack of it is that reason. I think that you are looking for something more subtle.
Or in my case, I spend a lot of time in denial about how much I intend not do... do exactly what you're describing, but finding out after the fact (re-playing conversations with others, or listening to complaints from my family) that I, unbeknownst to my conscious mind, do exactly that.
Some documentation or even a basic explanation of what this is would be helpful.
While I find your comment informative, points 3 and 4 do not really explain why vendor-neutral tools cannot exist. Point 2 (my best understanding) should not be a breaking issue if documentation and specifications are available (which is covered by point 1). It seems to me that point 5 is part of the thing they have done to prevent alternative tools to come to market. Lastly, point 1 is exactly what begs for disruption.
It seems pretty obvious that he'd write the code himself in that case because it's actually a good use of his time. Are we pretending like the only options are "Never use code that's not invented here" and "Be totally reliant on other people to write your code for you"?
What can possibly be so confusing about parsing and walking a tree? Scanner (lexer) and parser are the very first stages of compilation. Parser produces syntax tree and some other stuff, like symbol table, there is no alternative terminology. Walking a tree cannot have multiple meanings either. Most of the work is done after parsing. And timing a compiler is sufficient to understand exactly that, since you claimed, that detection of unused dependencies required package to be compiled, which is of course total bullshit. For most unused packages even parsing is not required, you can look at symbols during parsing and set "used" flag for every package, that was used and only parse it if it has this flag set.

And parsing is not what they want to avoid. Parsing is cheap. They want to avoid full-blown compilation of unused packages.
I disagree with that. Paid support is arguably the most popular monetization model for open source software. Redhat is a prime example of that.
all the optimizations (synthesis, place-and-route) are NP-hard problems

I suspect this one in particular could be chipped away at pretty successfully if the tooling were less closed. When you get some open benchmarks and let both researchers and systems-builders hack away at it, you can get very good practical solutions to NP-hard problems, as the current crop of SAT-solvers, SMT engines, and TSP-routing tools attest.
Yes, both statements are completely useless. The buck doesn't stop anywhere, it just goes in loops forever. Quite kafka-esque.
Since there is zero description of what this actually is on that page, I had to go to the google store to find info on the plugin.

> Develop HTML5-based apps with the Intel® XDK (cross platform development kit)

> The XDK is the world’s first HTML5 powered mobile application development tool. With it, you can create, debug and build customized, robust HTML5 apps in hours, and the XDK runs on either Mac or PC Platforms. Intel's cloud-based build system turns your HTML5-based apps into 100% native API-compliant mobile apps for iOS or Android, or you can deploy them as webapps or Chrome apps. All from a single code base!

> Creating great HTML5 apps requires great HTML5 tools and that’s exactly what the XDK is. If you can build it for the web using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, you can use the Intel® XDK to build it as an HTML5 web app or as a native app for the iPhone, iPad and all Android devices. There’s no need to learn Objective C, or install complicated SDKs. Instead, using industry-standard HTML5 and CSS3, you can include animation, effects, styling and video for enhanced interactivity. Intel's javascript libraries give you all the sexy transitions and scrollers with simple javascript calls.

> The XDK has been designed to make it very easy for a developer to check look and feel on diverse hardware platforms. The XDK’s debugging tools allow testing with on-screen emulation, local on-device, and remotely anywhere in the world without requiring ad-hoc builds or security certificates.

> PhoneGap Friendly

> The XDK is fully compatible with the PhoneGap HTML5 cross platform development project, providing many features that are missing from the open source project.

> These Apps Do It All

> Unlike traditional web apps that are trapped inside a browser, You can easily use device capabilities in mobile apps you create with the XDK. our JavaScript hardware abstraction allows easy access to specialized device capabilities such as GPS, accelerometer, camera, touch interaction & gestures, vibration and more. Thousands of developers are building games, utilities, and fun apps with without having to even own a Mac or learn Objective C.

> How many Apps have you made Today?

> Everyone has some app ideas - get started on yours now. It's totally free to download and use the Intel® XDK.
Is this really the best way to get in contact with someone? How many people (like myself) are going to see this, open it, and waste their time?
>You're arguing the same points I'd already addressed in my previous post. You clearly haven't bothered to read my points nor look at the examples as they demonstrate exactly why "go +stuff" doesn't always work.

If the "previous post" is the one I replied to, I not only read it thoroughly (and nowhere it addresses those points, you're welcome to correct me with citations), but also replied to it quoting you.

If the "previous posts" is something else up or down the thread, not addressed to me, then no, I haven't read it. Should I check and re-check everything in a thread?

Screenshots of what you got are not proof. I (and others) already said we got different results. So, it might not "always work", but it does work for some (contrary to what Tim says), and it's not due to a "filter bubble".

Heck, he WOULD be wrong EVEN if it was due to a "filter bubble", because then the lack of results would only be temporary, until Google learns his habits with regards to Go.

>But I'm defending the author; and feel obliged to defend him because I'm sick and tired of reading lazy negative posts against authors who've taken the time to contribute back to the community.

So you do it because you have an agenda, specifics be damned. I don't care if someone "took time to contribute back to the community" -- if there are points that need to be criticise they SHOULD be criticised. Not doing it would be a disservice to the community. Also, what he did as "contribution to the community" is just posted on his blog: not very different from what we do here, discussing in public.

>This place used to be a safe haven from the trolls and egos of other communities

Nowhere did I attacked the author. I responded to his claim and provided my contrary experience with similar searches. When confronted with the "filter bubble" explanation, I redid the experiment outside the "personalised search" effect.

You chose to come as a "defender of the author", attacking me, and talking about "trolls" and "egos". Maybe the problem lies with you?
Now someone should open source a verilog tcp/ip and http stack, and maybe benchmark it against something like varnish.
Jaron Lanier on why you should be paid to use the internet
Both ! and ? have their history in Erlang, it was a conscious design decision to use those sigils.

I've not looked at typed channels at all, but yeah, thats annoying.

Scalaz and Shapeless are designed to do crazy type level stuff, taking their inspiration from type/group/set theory.

And yes, I agree Scala is the successor to Perl (but I have no problem with that :p )
Nobody's saying real-time listening to conversations is happening, except for the government representatives who are saying it isn't.
What's interesting is that it seems like the less you care what people think about you, the more people like you. You become more genuinely you. This makes you unique and interesting.

Besides, people can see through someone trying too hard.
Nah, I tried all that and more years ago, it only made things worse. My interest actually contributed to keeping this thing alive. The longer I don't show any interest in the story, the more it atrophies. I'm just telling this as a cautionary tale, not soliciting any solutions - this chapter needs to die.
First, where do you get that Snowden is trying to "prevent" anything?

Isn't that what whistleblowers do?

Secondly, we aren't law enforcement and can't torture with impunity the people whose posts we find.

We are the government. If enough people want to judge someone by what they said on a forum, it'll work up the chain to someone with power.

Thirdly, public internet posts aren't subject to privacy, and to the degree one may think they are of the sort that phone calls and private emails ought to be, what is the standard being described as hypocritical here?

The hypocritical part is looking back on a trove of data and applying a narrative to it. Nobody wants to be held responsible for what they said as a teenager, but how fast are we to gobble it up when it's someone else.
"Colin should account for the fact that there's a significant set of practical attacks that his approach to cryptography doesn't address: side channels. All the proofs in the world don't help you if the branch target buffer on the CPU you share with 10 other anonymous EC2 users is effectively recording traces of your key information."

Well, it is not practical, but you can prove that an algorithm has no side channels e.g. you can use the construction of Pippenger and Fischer to create an oblivious version of any algorithm. To put it another way, if you could not prove that there were no side channels in an algorithm, you could never prove the security of something like FHE. Even if we assumed a perfect world where implementations were never wrong, practical concerns would still be a drag on the value of security proofs. We do not use AES because we can prove it is secure; we use it because it is fast and "secure enough."

"Those people, the people designing systems based on what they read in _Applied Cryptography_, badly need to understand crypto attacks before they put code based on their own crypto decisions into production."

I am not sure understanding the particular attacks we know so far is really important here. More than anything, I think people need to understand that attacks in general occur where abstractions fail. The closer you stick to the abstraction assumed in a security proof, the more secure your system will be (ignoring implementation bugs). If ever there was a place where premature optimization is a bad idea, it is in the implementation of cryptosystems.
Just asking, not questioning: Are you sure they would not have similarly struggled if they were pros in Altera and were moving to Xilinx? An issue with counter-intuitive and buggy tools is exactly that you get used to them, your mind slowly forgets how messy a design the tools have, and now everything else seems counter-intuitive.
Django-pinpayments - Easily use Pin.net.au (Stripe for Australia) in Django
I was thinking narcissim...
> I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.

In my view, neither the banality nor even the truth of the allegations are particularly important. The key reason I chose to file this as a ad hominem/smear is that it invites judgment of Snowden without pertaining to the contents of the leak or even the act of leaking.
If only this wasn't a topic and tendency covered extensively over the past 50 years.
@_yosefk: I am interested in this write-up. Will wait for it. Thanks
Wikipedia

> The German Bundestag had implemented the directive in "Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung und anderer verdeckter Ermittlungsmaßnahmen sowie zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie 2006/24/EG".[17] The law became valid on 1 January 2008. Any communications data had to be retained for six months. On 2 March 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the law unconstitutional as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.[18] As such, the directive is not currently implemented in Germany.
Meta-comment: there needs to be a Wikipedia alternative that has an entry for something like "Vegas Tech".
After switching to Yoleo Reader [1], I don't find myself missing anything from the old Google Reader. Highly recommended. (I have no affiliation with this)

[1] http://yoleoreader.com/
All extra overhead and possibility for error that could be avoided by a not allowing references to also contain not-a-reference.
Please do.

I have some opinions here and I wish I was prepared to make good comments. I've seen some horrible things. I hope you give it as thorough a going-over as you did in this article.
Agreed, I read one of his books on a trip to Chicago a week ago (We Learn Nothing), well worth the read.
Mercifully not. They want to get authorization to post under your name in one single public comments repository (so that when you comment it's all managed by them in their repository). But Github OAuth (they claim) doesn't have that level of fine grained permissions - they can only request permission to post to all repositories in your name.
There's the Mojo at kickstarter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1106670630/mojo-digital-...
I don't understand your first point, but that could just be the flu talking.

The second point though, I think the opposite is true. You need to understand in your gut that parameters to number-theoretic crypto can be proposed specifically to make your math fail; you need to understand that even if flipping a single bit in your ciphertext garbles the output, that attackers can do useful things with that property; you need to understand that being able to coerce a system into producing the same ciphertext block for the same plaintext block admits terrible attacks; you need to understand where systems "want" randomness versus where they absolutely require it.

It's not enough to know that errors "happen". You have to be able to predict them.
Unfortunately the problem with that approach is contained in the sentence "since if [a pointer] is null [the] program will most likely crash which serves the purpose of the assertion". It's that most likely part, you can't count on that, and in the case of a malicious actor if they can figure out a way to control the declaration of the null pointer (and yes, there are ways of doing this) you could be looking at an arbitrary code execution vulnerability.

There's also the fact that a program crashing is quite often not considered an acceptable way to handle an error condition (it is true however that a crash from a null de-reference vs. a crash from a failed assertion is, aside from security implications, functionally identical). In a large code base, if values default to null or even intentionally return null, it can be very difficult to track down and handle every single case, particular if someone changes something way down in the guts of some function that changes a pointer in a data structure to a null, but that pointer never gets accessed until you're in some completely different area of code. Sure you can handle the null in the location it causes a failure at, but what if what you really want to do is figure out where the null came from and prevent it from being null in the first place?

There's also the added advantage that adding extra effort to allow a value to be null is a nice subtle encouragement to not allow null values if possible in the first place.
In IE 10 the 'flip' in the demo worked for me, but the 'flip back' didn't. It looks like it is just the way the even handler on the 'back' of the item is wired up.
I'd really like to see the navigation be part of the name. It makes sense.
I just got a flood of updates in Reader that are dupes of what I had already seen... but this time the links are correct. Not sure what's going on but I'm happy to have my feed back to normal.
It's obvious this is a "hey look at meeee!" essay, but I'm not sure it rises to the level of hypocrisy. Many if not all of the people who read it are reading the other Snowden articles, so what the author is doing is actually trying to steal a little bit of attention from what people are legitimately gobbling up. In this way I don't think of it as hypocritical as much as crass and selfish.