skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can account for those factors by parsing only certain bits of the User Agent string, and allowing for the addition of fonts to the list (most typically don't uninstall fonts). With the plugins, you can ignore the version number and just go by the names. There are bits like browser name, OS name, screen resolution and the presence of all previously detected fonts and plugin names that you can be pretty sure won't change for most users. As long as you can uniquely match by certain factors, it'll be enough to link you to your previous session.

For a purpose like ad tracking, the period of time you need to track people is likely pretty short, as in from when they click on a banner or text link until they complete a purchase, so you can compare lots of data points to identify them. If you need to track for longer periods, like to retarget an ad to people who have completed purchases for x, then you would need to compare fewer, more stable points and hope you find a unique match.
Those graphs are misleading. The first one visually indicates that Chrome currently has something like 100x the share of Firefox -- while the numbers indicate it's more like 3x.

You should at least have the base of the graphs at 0%. Probably even better to have to top line of the graphs at 100%. That'd give a truer visual representation of the data.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I will certainly implement this.
> I agree with your conclusion and your arguments, but I'm very very hesitant to make any arguments or caveats that may weaken the case of caution for those kind of on the fence on the topic.

Excellent point. I did not mean my post as a bunch excuses, but I do see that even if I don't, others might, and that this might be reason enough to avoid nuance.

What I forgot to mention though, is that everything I said pretty much exclusively applies to casual sex. Pointing out the complications in that scenario might prompt others to realize the risks involved (not even considering legal issues), and communicate more clearly.

I think too many people, especially college-age, forget that sex didn't just magically become 'casual'. We're in a strange period in time where many sexual 'rules' are upended, and the resulting confusion should not be treated too 'casually'. Many conversations I've had with both men and women indicate that there are a lot of misconceptions, and that there can be a lot of pain involved.
CATTACK The Rise of Doge. Much cat. Wow.
Doge is back.
5 Fatal Warnings The World Ignored
As an electronic musician, it's totally a toy. No velocity sensitive anything, nothing but a mediocre imitation of a drumpad for input, and no inter compatibility with other devices.

It is M$'s answer to the tenori-on.
Many black people feel uncomfortable in environments dominated by white people because of the cultural and social domination by white people, both historically and in the current day. I don't understand why this is so difficult for you to understand.
Sure it is, a few thousand entries pointing to 10-100GB pirated HD video blobs. What's the problem?

/s
Apple will need to be anything but complacent after Google forked Webkit to become Blink, now used by Chrome and Opera.
I respectfully disagree with you on this.

Viewed from another lens the comment can be considered guilty of the the same charge that the article is being accused of doing.
Although I don't consider economics to be a science by any means, what I'm seeing generally on HN is that programmers have a very good understanding of the possibilities and applications of bitcoin (the protocol) but don't understand much about economics. Not even the basics and I'm not talking about Friedman, Marx, Aristotle, Smith, Keynes, etc.

I'm talking about basic micro/macro-economics.
This is an extremely well written blog post. It should set the standard. Bravo!
My guess would be that among tech users, Firefox has gained over the past year, given concerns about privacy and Google's relentless slurping of browsing behavior from anywhere they can get it. That's the reason I switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago; I now only use Chrome for Google apps.
At least it's not the case that each inserted storage device (i.e. "disk" or "card", as opposed to "drive") necessarily includes arbitrary execution (Microsoft's "AutoRun/AutoPlay" and the like -- now more constrained if not disabled -- aside).
Sorry, but your opinion is just plain wrong: It is not okay for a security agency to have this unchecked access to the worlds industrial resources. This sort of capability, unchecked, is more than enough justification for a declaration of war on the USA by, pretty much, any other major power out there. (It won't happen, but its definitely worthy of the act.)

The reason is: this activity completely undermines the sovereignty of every single nation. It invalidates and makes irrelevant any peaceful trade agreements made between different state actors. It completely violates human rights.

LOOK at the situation, don't just think about it. If you were Germany, would you be happy knowing that every Macbook in your country was reporting back to the NSA? Every Dell? Every HP?
Will this combine aspects of Yoot Tower as well?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoot%27s_Tower
When writing an S-expression of Lisp code, you're just one quote symbol off writing the list literal that evaluates to the code's parse tree. Modulo whitespace, the parse-tree prints as code.

That's what we mean when we say you write directly in parse-trees. You're writing the string representation of those parse-trees.
Awesome post. All this discussion makes me realize that we haven't hit the sweet spot yet and need to keep considering more message passing use cases. I am wary though of providing too many options and very much want to have one channel type that is most useful and least error prone that we can recommend by default.

I do disagree slightly with the final conclusion that context switch on send defeats the advantage of unbounded channels since work stealing will ensure the sender runs again very soon.
Yeah this is very unfortunate for me, personally. I have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 (2013 model) and I'd love to try this out, but the Nexus 4 is my day-to-day phone and it would be terribly inconvenient to monkey with it so much just to try out an early Ubuntu release. The Nexus 7 is more of a toy and I'd be willing to try it out, but they still don't support the newer model of it.
I plan to go to grad school in history of technology, and spent senior year studying the history of technology at MIT, which has one of the best such programs around. Of my library, designed in preparation for quals one day, these are the best books fitting your description. These are all _broad_ histories of technology, more on the order of the Industrial Revolution than on modern technology. Amazon has good summaries of all of these.

The Unbound Prometheus --- a history of eastern europe technology and its social impacts.

From The American System to Mass Production --- Hounshell, a history of the development of the assembly line, and in particular the forerunners to Ford's mythologized mass production line (which, in many elements, surpassed it, and demonstrate that it was not particularly unique except in marketing)

America By Design --- Noble is a very circumspect, controversial historian of technology.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism --- classic on the controversial idea that protestantism was responsible for capitalism and the resulting technology

Does Technology Drive History -- collection of essays by the founders of the field of science, technology, and society.

Civilizing the Machine --- technology's interaction with American values and how those developed concurrently.

Major Problems in the History of American Technology --- a collection of original documents and essays interpreting them in a historical basis, ed. by a founder of the field.

The Tentacles of Progress --- how technology lends itself to imperialism, and furthers exploitation, even when other nations fund the development of infrastructure in developing nations.

The Machine in the Garden --- possibly the single most important book on this list, the one that turned my life upside down and which I think about most regularly. It posits that America's idyll of a tech-free natural scene is actually a balance of technology and nature, and is a artificial nature propped up by machine, and demonstrates this history of this tension in American life from Shakespeare to Jefferson to Thoreau to the modern day. It completely turned my conception of the perfect life upsidedown.

Digital Apollo --- a history of the computing history of the Apollo program, especially the tensions in the software development sides between good management and perfect programs.

Science and Corporate Strategy, DuPont R&D 1902-1982 --- if you're interested in the development of big chem, or in the history of companies having R&D departments, this is the book for you. The DuPonts were very well-educated, many being MIT alums, and the chemical company they built was innovative in many different ways --- this book is a interesting discussion of the society and the technological pressures that drove and still drive innovation.
LMAO! You created another throwaway account to post this? How insecure are you?!?
It sounds like Harvey Mudd's program improves female enrollment but it's just seems like a good idea in general

The quick program for Harvey Mudd seems to be
1) Make the problems more practical in application (ie controlling a robot, modelling a disease)
2) Giving students choices in what problems they are interested in
3) Segmenting students according to skill set, thus putting people who have been programming in another course that will match their pace better and allowing students who are more new to have their own pace.
I don't use laptops. Always have self assembled my rigs. I think there are subtle differences between "NSA has the ability to rig someone's laptop when he is a legitimate target with proven national interest" and "NSA is intercepting and rigging laptops en masse" or "NSA laptop intercepting program is yielding a lot of false positives".

The problem is that NSA is abusing its powers, taken its mission too far etc ...

But yeah - I am totally ok with NSA intercepting specific shipment after having credible HUMINT about some highly probable treat to national security. I am not ok with NSA subverting the whole infrastructure of the world just so they can snoop on their loved ones.
If you are worried about else conditions, wouldn't this be the way around it?

{if (condition)
singleFunctionCall();}
The Value of A Liberal Arts Education: Why You Should Not Drop Out
Sun has 'flipped upside down' as new magnetic cycle begins
When all you know about a country is based on what you have been told by those who will profit from your point of view being skewed, there is no hope.

Fact: Women are killed in the USA, too. Fact: the USA has its share of militant religious fanatics, too. Are we going to bomb the USA because of this fact?
"There was a third claim, that the public is misinformed/misled, but I take issue with that one. I think most people understand that somebody, somewhere is pushing the button."

True - though the mislead part I feel largely relates to claims of surgical strikes and claims of minimal 'collateral' deaths and injuries.

" the terrible things we are doing does not in any way make those things less necessary"
What is being done is indeed terrible - though I have yet to see the necessary bit backed up by any coherent numbers.
One of that impresses me, and kind of amuses me, is how PG will talk these issues out, even though the danger of being misquoted or misinterpreted is much higher than the chances of being appreciated, especially for someone in his position. The phrase "God knows what you would do to get 13 year old girls interested in computers?", as a standalone statement, is ripe for ripping apart. But I think in its context, it only expresses his frustration at the problem, which is much, much better than the apathy expressed by others. It's a problem with much more societal and institutional inertia behind it than just VC men looking down on female entrepreneurs, or even tech companies being discriminatory. He's absolutely right to say that the focus should be on early education, and if anyone knows the best way (on a timetable that would satisfy current observers) to implement that, then they should speak up.

In terms of current harmful perceptions that can be stamped out in the short-term...I think the belief that females aren't genetically cut out to be programmers is one. The "world's first computer programmer" was a woman and COBOL, of course, was invented by Grace Hopper. These women were pioneers in early computing at a time when women were still struggling to be recognized as equal citizens. To argue that women can't make it as hackers is like arguing, post-Jackie Robinson, that blacks can't develop professional baseball skills. The lack of women computer scientists and programmers today more likely point to institutional/cultural problems rather than genetic ones.
I don't think the majority of those who track you (e.g. retargeting advertisers) would need to track you for more than a month, that is, unless you are setting up your system or tweaking your IDE, it is very unlikely that you will change your set of fonts within that time.

Also, they aren't particularly picky about keeping you, the trackee, forever uniquely-identifiable.

Consider this: when was the last time you (the non-average) or your grandmother (the average) installed a font?
And these were? It read much more as a practice in "no one is unbiased so this is misleading."

It also tries to equate drones use against individual targets (a couple individuals generally) with large scale bombing, which is highly disputable, given that it is used more in an assassination sense. The "manipulation" in the comment is pretty blatant.
I'm not sure how your conclusion follows from your premise. You are still trackable until you install a new font, update a plugin, install a plugin, etc. This may not happen for some time.

Even when you do make a change, you could still easily be tracked in many cases. If I see a new signature that I have never seen before that differs from an existing signature only by the version of a plugin, I can probably safely assume it's the same person, especially if I see that the plugin was updated between the last time I saw the existing signature and now.

I have a feeling that web developers are extra vulnerable to this type of tracking because we tend to install several useful developer extensions, and many of us have our own unique combination of extensions.
I don't know how to quote on HN but here's what they say in the article.

"Some of the equipment available is quite inexpensive. A rigged monitor cable that allows "TAO personnel to see what is displayed on the targeted monitor," for example, is available for just $30. But an "active GSM base station" -- a tool that makes it possible to mimic a mobile phone tower and thus monitor cell phones -- costs a full $40,000. Computer bugging devices disguised as normal USB plugs, capable of sending and receiving data via radio undetected, are available in packs of 50 for over $1 million."
You can download the talk from here:

http://wtf1.muling.lu/30c3/Saal_1/Day_3/5294-30C3_-_5294_-_e...

(This is a streamdump, so don't expect seeking to work, and it might cause issues for your player)
Hate to be that guy, but what is the purpose of digging this up? To say "ha ha, the Internet is amazing?"
They probably did up until the point when both sides were armed with them. But the difference with Napalms, B52s and drone strikes is the enemy they were used against were never likely to be able to obtain similar weapons and thus threaten their opponents to a similar extent.

I'm not particularly sure about the concept of "cowardice" here, I just had to point out this logical flaw.
My questions are genuine. That doesn't mean I can't point out ridiculous answers.
Need to put the year in the title. Looks like it was written in 1997/1998. Doesn't seem to explicitly say unless I'm missing something but the year is implied in the text.
My daughter doesn't code, but she and another friend of hers do a lot of work to find, get and set up game emulators and related wares.

Motivated to do light "sys admin" work, but not coding, I guess.
While I can't speak for mismanagement and incompetence, for years the broader Argentine economy and specific Argentine government price-controls on electricity has simply removed the incentive or ability on the electricity companies to invest in production and the grid.

This piece is from a year ago, but it goes back much further: http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21569705-half-hearted...
New Law All but Bars Russian GPS (GLONASS) Sites in U.S.
U.S. Commercial Computing Device Sales Set to End 2013 with Double-Digit Growth
I'm guessing it's to try and discredit Krugman. I don't think he's liked around here from what I've read in various comment threads.
The things that make it difficult to do this are only obstacles to adversaries that don't have access to Intel's secret keys. If you have those, by design you can both bypass secure boot and reflash the BIOS with whatever code you like, and the very same restrictions that stop normal users from doing those things also make it impossible for them to detect that it's happened. The NSA has an entire well-funded division dedicated to helping enable eavesdropping by retrieving information like those keys.

Those security features are genuinely only useful for stopping people from installing Linux and open BIOSes. They can only protect computers from their users, not from the NSA.
Did you get any users during your launches? If so, I'd consider them a success. The idea that you get flooded with users after a single launch event is a myth. I see the process like this:

1) Some kind of press release (TC, Show HN, blog post, etc)

2) Get at least one user

3) Iterate features and establish that the users actually need the product (would they be upset if you quit?)

4) repeat 1-3
I hope PG doesn't get too frightened by the press from this and stops being his usual honest plainspoken self. We need more people like him trying to portray an accurate map of the territory, rather than being afraid of how quotes may be spun by cheap journalists.
> a well respected researcher

He's only well respected outside of the security research community. Those inside know him better than that.

> This generally is a sign that someone is acting in bad faith.

Indeed, this is why many people directly affected by his harassment, backstabbing, and general underhanded techniques employed in his pursuit of fame and glory choose to ignore him rather than directly and publicly address his treachery.

Unfortunately, that means his past goes unreported.

I hold lay opinions of my reputation in little regard, so I (unlike many friends of mine) have no issue saying what I know.

It's all hearsay by the time it gets to you, though, as I'm the first hop away with many of these reports. I'm not interested in opening myself up to a libel suit.

For a general impression of his behavior, please go review his own posts on the noisebridge mailing list archives. Don't take my word for it.
Krugman is a hack.
He actually wrote a new post today, saying that "Bitcoin is Evil" was supposed to be a joke. Allegedly, nobody in the Bitcoin community understood it and now he complains about the lack of sense of humor that the Bitcoin community demonstrated.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/the-humor-test/
He wrote a critical article about Bitcoins
A Test for Artificial Creativity - Will Shortz Crosswords?
All you need to know is here[1]. It's called the "The Art of Self Discipline" and Brian Tracey is probably one of the best examples of self-discipline.

Don't listen to this once. Listen to this Once every three days. If you manage to put in your life 1/10 of what is discussed in this audiobook, you'll see radical changes taking place very very quickly.

I listen to this at least 1 every month by now, while running. I have bought the audiobook two years ago. I still listen to this and keeps me up-to-speed when I feel like not doing things I should do.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjEDr7enw-c
Beware of cynics.

Despite this being on hacker news, Krugman's incorrect prediction actually doesn't harm his reputation significantly. Pessimism and pointing out of flaws elevates your status, while optimism can be construed as being naive.
That's true, but there's no need to make new oauth 1 servers: people hate writing clients for it.
The French did intervene in the US Revolutionary War. That's probably why there is a United States today.

Yes, WWII is well documented. The point was we didn't send in our full military until 1941. It's possible tens of millions more people would not have died if we had joined earlier.
Tensegrity Robots at NASA (IRG Blog)
Because he had the gall to make fun of Bitcoin. So now instead of refuting his opinions directly we're going to to do shit like this.
Redesign of Boarding Pass – Keep it Simple
How my App Saved Christmas
"Why most economists' predictions are wrong." - By an economist whose predictions are mostly wrong.
> There is a lot of systemic bias in the system against young women taking this kind of direction with their studies and their career.

I understand there is cultural bias, but systemic? There are more women attending and graduating college than men, they're more economically prosperous in their early twenties as well.[1]

[1]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/young-w...
I'm not saying it makes sense, but the GP is correct that its not a full port. Also, there are android devices that can take both CD/DVD and eternal cameras, so it isn't too far fetched
Obviously, every person is different and I applaud the fact that you've found a method that works for you, but I vehemently disagree that routine is the enemy of imagination and insight.

I worked in the ad game a long time and I never once knew a designer or illustrator that relied on inspiration to get the job done. It's all process.

Our society seems to romanticize the lives of artists and treat them as somehow "blessed". However, I think science is coming more and more to show that creativity is far from an inspired activity. It's mostly the result of a lot of hard work and problem solving. Both of which require a person to show up and work.

Reading a book like Mason Currey's "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work" is very enlightening because it illustrates just how shockingly routine and boring the lives of many famous artists really are/were.
I am looking. The main problem is unchecked. But also the article said they have the ability to do it per shipment.

And if the backdoors mention into the article about the software are zero days exploits they are totally fair game. If they are real backdoors - this is a whole other case. But there hasn't been leaked that kind of info except the RNG.

And in some perverted way if my PC has to report to someone I prefer it to be to NSA than to my own country.
How is this guy still taken seriously?
Doesn't harm his reputation? It shows, clearly, that the man, while being an expert in one field, and while being objectively smart, can be a complete moron in another field and make very very very wrong "predictions".
I don't know exactly what the Japanese schools are teaching, and the Japanese crimes of war are not a frequent topic of conversation between us, but the couple of times this was brought on she always says something in the lines of "I didn't know..." or "In Japan we don't speak about that", and she hasn't bothered to look at the history of the Nanking massacre.

> I really like Japan (I am currently learning Japanese and would love to live there for 1-2 years from 2015) but some aspects of the society or the politics just make me cringe.

I am in the exact situation as you, except that we don't know if we want to move to Japan because of the radioactivity.