{"text":"How fucked up are the US cellphone carriers? - \n\nA whole lot. That is the answer to that question. I can't believe what Verizon just did today. They just decided to fucking rip off customers by providing crap on a Google developer device with Nexus branding. To top it, the feature that Google is trying to push with their Offers\/Wallet would not be included in the device. It is disappointing to see Google complying with that demand. Also the device being exclusive to Verizon in US, makes it impossible for anyone to get the phone in any other networks. (You can get the GSM device unlocked from expansys.com and I am going to do just that)

Smart phones are like Razor blades or drugs. You buy a razor which is cheap, but the blades are the one that makes the company profitable. With iPhone and other smart phones, what the carriers have done is put every single customer on drugs and sucking them every month with the data bill with a 2 year commitment. It's also classic to see that the initial wave of smartphone data plan were unlimited, similar to someone who is offered the drugs on cheap and unlimited in the beginning. Once you hooked on, it's where they catch you with crazy data cap restrictions. \nWith US being one of the most expensive mobile network, where an average person pays roughly 4% of their average income on a cellphone bill ($26,364 is the average median income as of OCT 2011). That is pretty high. I can't believe, even after paying $299 for a premium handset and another 70-100$\/month for the next 2 years, I can't get a phone with the features that comes pre-installed in it? How fucked up is the system where there are essentially 2 big carriers screwing up the customers?

There is one carrier, who wants to sell itself so badly, that they can do everything in it's power to be bought by another carrier Then there is another carrier who is really trying to stay afloat and made it pretty clear, that if the other small network is sold to a big network, they could be folded too. They are positioning themselves to increase their value if they do decide to fold. \nThen there are the two other giants - who are really there just to screw the customers. At least one network provides a better and reliable network and have taken a big lead when it comes to LTE. The 3G sucks for that carrier. Even with LTE which are on same frequency band of 700 MHZ for both the networks has ensured that their customers swap their phones with each other networks! Isn't that screwing customers? The SMS charges are a whole separate debate on any networks.

It's so ironic, that today there was a survey done which listed Verizon with the best service provided for mobile networks. That might be true, but isn't everything screwed up when it really comes down to customers getting what they really want when they buy that phone\/plan? You guys have it real bad.\n\nIn the UK we get free phones and our bills are so much lower.\n\nYou can get a free iPhone 4s with unlimited talk text and net for \u00a360 a month.\n\nThe only US carrier who made any sense to me on my visit to start-up school was T-Mobile. It was the only place I could buy a phone of any quality and put a prepay sim in.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":11,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2019-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"In Rural New York, Windmills Bring Whiff of Corruption - http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/18\/nyregion\/18windmills.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin\n\n Where there is money and people with power corruption is _very_ likely.\n\nWhat fascinates me, about America specifically, is how ingrained the representative democracy concept is. Direct democracy is this wild and crazy thing that absolutely and directly = Hitler.\n\nThere could be an interesting argument why Swiss style direct democracy would not work for a huge country like the US. But what about local government? What about little towns?\n\nIt's fascinating that Americans from a very young age learn that the head of local government is the mayor. What would happen if a little town in nowhere decided to mimic Switzerland in governance and eliminates the middle men? Doom?\n\n As an American, I think the biggest reason that the majority of Americans embrace (worship) representative democracy is because it frees them from feelings of responsibility in the outcome of the government, and means that much less effort they must contribute back to society. Why learn about all the issues and directly vote for what I want, when I could more easily just elect someone else to do all that hard stuff for me so I can spend more time on the sofa watching the drama of Hollywood retards unfold on high definition TV?\n\nAs an added benefit, when my elected representatives then vote the \"wrong\" way, I certainly can't blame myself, because A) I'm only one of thousands, or millions, of votes, B) I voted for the other guy, or C) I didn't vote at all \/ that's why I don't ever vote. It's the exact same reason that companies pay barrels of money for IT support contracts; it's less work, and when something goes wrong, the blame always shifts to someone else.\n\nSolution: Nuke it from orbit; it's the only way to be sure...<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":26,"dup_dump_count":21,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-40":1,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-40":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-04":2,"2020-45":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-05":2,"2017-30":2,"2017-17":1,"2023-50":1,"2024-22":1,"2017-13":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Will the Cars of the Future Be 3D-Printed? - https:\/\/youtu.be\/uKcZxwTAVEM \" When 3D printing first appeared, it may have seemed like a fad--something to keep garage hobbyists busy. But over the past few years, it's become a mainstream manufacturing process. Now, an independent automaker called Local Motors is applying the technology to cars, using 3D printing to make the chassis of its autonomous, electric vehicles at a small factory in Knoxville, Tennessee.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":24507766},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Proposed Amendment 3 to the .COM Registry Agreement - https:\/\/www.icann.org\/public-comments\/com-amendment-3-2020-01-03-en The comment period is closing in 3 days. The page links to a 4MB text archive of comments so far[1]. I think this one quoted below explains the issues with this proposed amendment:\n\n[quote]\n\n \n \n Dear Madam, or Sir,\n I am concerned about this amendment to the Registry Agreement because it\n will affect, not just me, buy any individual who would like their own\n domain name. I am 100% sure that no corporation will object to the 28%\n cost increase every six years as they earn money off their domain name and\n paying almost any amount would be acceptible to them. However, there are a\n great deal of small businesses that would see this as a burden as well as\n individual users out there that have purchased their own domain name and\n are using it for personal use, not commercial use. Several of us have\n multiple domain names, if for no other reason than to protect our own names\n from being used to run a website. I personally have about 6 that I use to\n protect myself and my family while also allowing my children to be able to\n have a domain name that is exclusively theirs.\n \n 20 year Cost analysis:\n $ 7.85 \/ year 2018\n $10.29 \/ year 2023 (31% increase over 2018)\n $13.49 \/ year 2029 (72% increase over 2018)\n $17.68 \/ year 2035 (125% increase over 2018)\n $23.17 \/ year 2041 (195% increase over 2018)\n \n I am aware that the 7% is a maximum per year for each of the four years\n and, theoretically, there could be no increase or a sub 7% increase some\n years, however, I have little faith on this being the norm and, most\n certainly, CANNOT plan on it being any less than the full 7% in any fiscal\n plans made.\n \n I understand it would be extremely difficult for you to create a\n regulation that would charge businesses more and individuals less, however,\n that may be what is required at this time. This would leave a loophole for\n businesses to have an individual register their domain name, however, no\n corporation of any size will be willing to leave their domain names in\n private hands. This would also allow fledgling businesses (aka startups)\n to keep their costs low at first. Remember, many businesses have been\n started in individual's garages.\n \n You may also assume that all \".com\" domain names are used for, or are\n supposed to be used for commercial purposes, however, this is not the case\n today. If this had been defined and enforced from the beginning of the\n internet, this would be a non-issue, however, to start enforcing it today\n would cause many many individuals to lose their domains. Yes, there are\n other top level domains they can move to, however, that doesn't alleviate\n the fact that they would be losing an asset they had invested much time,\n money, and resources acquiring.\n \n Please keep the annual fee very low or consider a more flexible charging\n system for the .COM top level domain that will keep it accessible to\n individuals and small businesses.\n \n Thank you,\n \n Andrew Farnsworth\n \n\n[\/quote]\n\n\\---\n\n[1] [https:\/\/mm.icann.org\/pipermail\/comments-com- amendment-3-03ja...](https:\/\/mm.icann.org\/pipermail\/comments-com- amendment-3-03jan20\/2020q1.txt)\n\n For mobile users:\n\n> Dear Madam, or Sir, I am concerned about this amendment to the Registry > Agreement because it will affect, not just me, buy any individual who would > like their own domain name. I am 100% sure that no corporation will object > to the 28% cost increase every six years as they earn money off their domain > name and paying almost any amount would be acceptible to them. However, > there are a great deal of small businesses that would see this as a burden > as well as individual users out there that have purchased their own domain > name and are using it for personal use, not commercial use. Several of us > have multiple domain names, if for no other reason than to protect our own > names from being used to run a website. I personally have about 6 that I use > to protect myself and my family while also allowing my children to be able > to have a domain name that is exclusively theirs.\n\n20 year Cost analysis: $ 7.85 \/ year 2018 $10.29 \/ year 2023 (31% increase over 2018) $13.49 \/ year 2029 (72% increase over 2018) $17.68 \/ year 2035 (125% increase over 2018) $23.17 \/ year 2041 (195% increase over 2018)\n\nI am aware that the 7% is a maximum per year for each of the four years and, theoretically, there could be no increase or a sub 7% increase some years, however, I have little faith on this being the norm and, most certainly, CANNOT plan on it being any less than the full 7% in any fiscal plans made.\n\nI understand it would be extremely difficult for you to create a regulation that would charge businesses more and individuals less, however, that may be what is required at this time. This would leave a loophole for businesses to have an individual register their domain name, however, no corporation of any size will be willing to leave their domain names in private hands. This would also allow fledgling businesses (aka startups) to keep their costs low at first. Remember, many businesses have been started in individual's garages.\n\nYou may also assume that all \".com\" domain names are used for, or are supposed to be used for commercial purposes, however, this is not the case today. If this had been defined and enforced from the beginning of the internet, this would be a non-issue, however, to start enforcing it today would cause many many individuals to lose their domains. Yes, there are other top level domains they can move to, however, that doesn't alleviate the fact that they would be losing an asset they had invested much time, money, and resources acquiring.\n\nPlease keep the annual fee very low or consider a more flexible charging system for the .COM top level domain that will keep it accessible to individuals and small businesses.\n\n \n \n Thank you,\n \n Andrew Farnsworth<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":5,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2023-40":2,"2022-49":1,"2022-40":3,"2022-33":2,"2020-24":3}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"The Four Stages of Burnout - http:\/\/www.stressdoc.com\/four_stages_burnbout.htm I've seen quite a good number of people who worked hard in middle and high school because of their parents burnout in their first or second semester of college. It's kinda sad when it happens to smart people who were just pushed too hard for too long.\n\nIt's usually just the first stage that gets them.\n\n Do you think relaxing during senior year has an effect on burnout during the first semester of college?\n\n It can also work the other way though, relaxing during senior year could put you in the wrong frame of mind entering college and result it you not putting the effort in there either.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> Also known as graduate school.\n\n<\/comment> ok, recognizing burndown doesn't seem to be a problem. But what about overcoming it?\n\nI have come through this process several times in my life. Still I do not know how I have been able to recover....and here I am again...\n\n<\/comment> Slightly offtopic comment.. because I can't see the link, its been blocked by my company! They don't want us to know what stage of burnout we are at!! :)\n\n on slashdot this is called karma whoring:\n\nThe Four Stages of Burnout\n\nYears ago, a magicaI moment whirled me in a mystical web. I was consumed by the path of \"academic flashdancing.\" I succumbed to the \"burnout tango.\" Now let me not just walk the talk, but deromance the dance: \"Burnout is the gradual process by which a person, in response to prolonged stress and physical, mental and emotional strain, detaches from work and other meaningful relationships. The result is lowered productivity, cynicism, confusion...a feeling of being drained, having nothing more to give.\" Whether at work or school (or even in a marriage), to prevent it you must get it. To provide a framework both for understanding and, hopefully, inoculating against future burnout, let's begin with \"The Stress Doc's Vital Lesson of the Four 'R's\":\n\nIf no matter what you say or what you do, Results, Rewards, Recognition and Relief are not forthcoming, and you can't mean \"no\" or won't let go...trouble awaits. The groundwork is being laid for apathy, callousness and despair.\n\nHave I captured your attention? Let's examine some of the progressive signs of being caught up in this erosive spiral. Here are \"The Four Stages of Burnout\":\n\n1\\. Physical, Mental and Emotional Exhaustion. Maybe you are still holding it together at work (or school). Still, can you relate to this sequence? As soon as you get home, you head for the fridge, get out the Haagen-Dazs or Ben and Jerry's, turn on the tube, collapse on the sofa and you're comatose for the rest of the evening? Doing more with less, having plenty of responsibility but not enough authority, or juggling an unmanageable schedule is taking a toll. (For those grappling with all three stressors...automatically proceed to stage two, if not three.)\n\nNormally, you pride yourself on doing a thorough job, a high quality performance. Now you are looking for shortcuts, if not cutting corners. And this gnaws at your self-esteem. There may even be pangs of guilt. A case of the \"brain strain\" is developing, accompanied by an energy shortage and feelings of exhaustion. If stress levels continue unabated, you may be ripe for the second stage.\n\n2\\. Shame and Doubt. Perhaps this scenario is familiar. A supervisor (or professor) asks you to take on a new assignment. You want to...but this voice inside silently screams, \"Who are you kidding!\" So what's happening? You're not feeling confident about the future; and you're feeling pretty lousy in the present. Not surprisingly, you may even start discounting your past accomplishments. Beware...This is not a logical process; it's a psychological one. Now you wonder if colleagues, friends or family members will detect that something is wrong. While projecting a competent image has been the norm, now this voice inside is relentlessly shouting, \"Impostor!\" \"Impostor.\"\n\nAnd then you catch yourself emitting heavy, labored sighs. (When do people often engage in deep, labored breathing or sighing? Other than when calling those 1-900 numbers. When experiencing a deep sense of loss and change perceived as uncontrollable.) Is chronically grappling with a profound sense of vulnerability or uncertainty anyone's favorite state? Certainly not mine. No surprise then that some folks will \"progress\" to the third phase: \"Cynicism and Callousness.\"\n\nAre you starting to feel I've been looking in your window? Or, as a reader recently emailed: \"Have you been a fly on the wall in my house?\" Let's not be premature. We still have two more stages to go. And next, we'll check out your \"tude.\"\n\n3\\. Cynicism and Callousness. In response to that prolonged feeling of insecurity or vulnerability, some folks feel there's only one thing left to do: put on the heavy armor. They develop an ATTITUDE: \"Look out for # 1.\" \"Cover your derriere.\" \"No one's getting to me.\" And, in the short run, the strategy often works. You become sufficiently abrasive or obnoxious, people start avoiding you. But this hard exterior can eventually become a burdensome, self-defeating strategy.\n\nHere's an example. Years ago, I was leading a workshop at a construction industry conference. There was a guy, I'll call him Joe, who was head of a large plumber's union. Now Joe was basically a down to earth, nice guy...who found himself becoming increasingly bitter, with that hard attitude. And it was scaring him! Now granted, Joe was in a position that pulled him in all directions - compelling demands, favors, complaints, bribes! Still, what do you think was Joe's biggest stress trap? That's right, this \"good Joe\" was such a \"nice guy.\" What can't nice guys and nice gals do? They can't say \"no!.\" Nor are they confident establishing their boundaries. They have difficulty with authority - being one or interacting with one. These nice folks tend to avoid conflict; they don't want to hurt others' feelings. They are not comfortable with anger, or don't know how to express their frustration or displeasure in a focused manner. Their personal mantras are being \"fair\" and \"accommodation\" (while feeling deep rejection when other's aren't fair or accommodating).\n\nThese accommodators, despite having a full workload plate, when asked to take on new work will just smush their peas and bread into the mashed potatoes and allow others to pile on more stuff. Hey, being a team player doesn't mean you have to sacrifice your integrity or health. There's an option: \"Sure I'll help you with this new demand and deadline. But for me to give the assignment the attention it deserves, we'll have to renegotiate my priority list and timelines.\" (I'm not saying there aren't extra-ordinary and emergency situations. But there is a difference between urgent and important. When everything is urgent, nothing is important!) Setting realistic limits is not a negative reflection on your work ethic or your ability to to go the extra mile. Without boundaries, that mile often morphs into a marathon. Remember, someone once said: \"Burnout is less a sign of failure and more that you gave yourself away.\"\n\nJoe was really worried. He thought he was going through a split personality process - going from Dr. Jekyl into Hiding. I had to reassure him that there wasn't any genetic transformation occurring. Without realizing it, he had been sucked up by the progressive burnout whirlpool.\n\nAnd there's another reason for paying attention to this process. Burnout doesn't just facilitate a hardening of the psyche. When your stress starts to smolder into frustration and anger; then turns to suspicion and mistrust as you enclose yourself in embattled armor or a crusty shell...This is not just how you harden an attitude, but it's a formula for hardening the arteries, as well. Cardiovascular complications, high blood pressure, even premature heart attacks can ensue. Which is why, usually, I'd rather people hit the fourth stage of burnout, than linger in the third. Of course, \"Failure, Helplessness and Crisis\" sounds terrible. But consider this: \"hitting bottom means there's no more downward spiral.\" And, if you can reach out, there's no where to go but up. Hold on. One more lap to go.\n\n4\\. Failure, Helplessness and Crisis. Being caught in a familiar \"Catch-22\" often signals the final phase: \"Damned if you do, damned if you don't.\" \"Damned if you stay, damned if you leave.\" Your coping structure seems to be coming unglued. Next stop...the psychiatric ward! Probably not, however, the crisis smoke signals are billowing big time. Why is that? Burnout is like trying to race a marathon - full speed, nonstop. Can anyone race 26 miles full speed, nonstop? Of course not. Even Olympic marathon runners must pace themselves. If not, the body parts will break down. And with burnout, over time, the mental apparatus also wears out.\n\nIn fact, one reason the fourth stage is so disorienting is that a person's psychological defenses have worn down. Cracks start appearing in the defensive armor. Painful memories and old hurts normally contained by your emotional defenses are leaking through the cracks. A slight or an emotional bump can set off an overly sensitive and personal reaction. Now a mate's occasional, somewhat annoying behavior really irritates as it reminds you of a mannerism of your father. Or, jealousy towards a colleague reeks of sibling rivalry.\n\nDouble-Edged\n\nHey, before throwing up your hands, remember...burnout is not for wimps. A lot of other folks would have jumped ship much earlier. Many of you reach the farther stages of burnout because of your tenacity and dedication. You have a strong sense of responsibility and don't like being deterred from reaching your goals. All noble qualities...unless compelled by rigid perfectionism and \"there's only one right way\" thinking. Then, pursuing your goals takes a back seat to proving others wrong and overcoming humiliation. You are chasing (maybe, also, being chased by) ego-driven egoals. Especially in times of overload, uncertainty and major change, \"driven and rigid responsibility\" can quickly transform a performance benefit into a personal and professional liability.\n\nAlso, these folks are usually not just responsible, they often are quite responsive to others. People lean on them for support. Are you a pillar of strength for those around you? If so, will those dependent upon you be quick to notice when you are feeling shaky? That you may need a shoulder? Often not, as their sense of security is contingent on your always being strong and available. Are you buying into this \"superperson\" role or hiding behind a heroic mask? Maybe you always had to help mom with (sometimes raise) the other kids. Or you're the emotional sponge in the office, frequently absorbing your colleagues' complaints. Can you hear that screeching, scratching sound? That's the stress knot twisting and turning tighter and tighter about your neck.\n\nOn the Edge\n\nNo wonder people start jumping out of jobs or school, out of relationships, sometimes just jumping. And for those not into jumping, you may be into swinging by the fourth stage. Mood swinging, that is, between short highs and\/or prolonged depressive lows. Okay, the existential question: Is it Miller Time or Prozac Time? From my perspective, it's way too late for the former (though, clearly, many people disagree with me) and a decision on the latter requires expert opinion. But that's exactly the key for transforming a danger into an opportunity. Fourth stage burnout is the crisis point, it's crunch time. Are you ready to step up to the plate and reach out for the help and resources you need? A person recovers and expands his or her strengths and possibilities through a crisis when:\n\n1) getting proper and sufficient support; someone trained in crisis intervention and loss,\n\n2) confronting denial, false hopes, cynicism or helplessness,\n\n3) grieving past and present losses while turning guilt, hurt, anxiety and aggression into focused energy and\n\n4) acquiring and applying skills and technology for turning new problem- solving options into productive attitudes and actions.\n\nMy poetic anthem to burnout and beyond:\n\nFor the phoenix to rise from the ashes One must know the pain To transform the fire to burning desire.\n\nFour Stages of Burnout. Four Steps For Recovery and Rejuvenation. Any readers care to share how you turned a burnout situation into a transformational experience? Can you say, \"Creative Burnout\"?\n\nAnd will you Practice Safe Stress?\n\nMark Gorkin, \"The Stress Doc,\" Licensed Clinical Social Worker, is a nationally recognized speaker, workshop leader and author on stress, reorganizational change, anger, team building, creativity and humor. He is also the internet's and the nation's leading \"Psychohumorist.\" The Stress Doc is a columnist for the popular cyber-newsletter, Humor From The Edge -- HUMOR FROM THE EDGE HOME PAGE . Mark is also the \"Online Psychohumorist\" for the major AOL mental health resource network, Online Psych -- ONLINE PSYCH: THE STRESS DOC and Financial Services Journal Online -- . And he is an offline writer for two mental health\/substance abuse publications -- Treatment Today and Paradigm Magazine. His motto: Have Stress? Will Travel: A Smart Mouth for Hire! Reach \"The Doc\" at (202) 232-8662, email: Stress email@example.com. The Stress Doc's website was selected as a USA Today Online \"Hot Site\" and designated a four-star, top- rated site by Mental Health Net.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":8,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":2,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":1,"2024-10":1,"unknown":4}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Tech\/Engineering Blogs Article Search Powered by Algolia - https:\/\/englog.io\/ The Idea ... As a developer, I always tend to do a bit of research before embarking on a new feature or project. Often, I find myself visiting Tech Blogs or Engineering hubs of the famous Tech companies, just to see how they tackle certain topics.\n\nI searched ... This made me wonder if there's a way to have a targeted search for a specific topic limited to known Tech blogs. I started googling it (emoji here) and the next best thing I could find was a curated list in a GitHub repo form A curated list of engineering blogs [ an awesome list, by the way, make sure to star \u2b50!!]\n\nI Geeked out ... Personally, this didn't do it for me since there is no way to perform the type of search I wanted to have available.\n\nSimply put, I wanted to type in a subject and hit Search and see how the top in the field tackle these subjects\n\nAnd, in a nutshell, that's what EngLog is!\n\nIf you have ideas or suggestions, please reach out to me via twitter @mshbeab<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":32,"dup_dump_count":21,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-33":1,"2021-49":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":2,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":4,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":2,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":2,"2020-10":1,"2020-05":2,"2019-47":4,"2019-43":1,"2023-14":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"The Panama palindrome - http:\/\/nielsenhayden.com\/hoey.html Oddly he doesn't actually give his 540 word palindrome, but here it is:\n\nA man, a plan, a caret, a ban, a myriad, a sum, a lac, a liar, a hoop, a pint, a catalpa, a gas, an oil, a bird, a yell, a vat, a caw, a pax, a wag, a tax, a nay, a ram, a cap, a yam, a gay, a tsar, a wall, a car, a luger, a ward, a bin, a woman, a vassal, a wolf, a tuna, a nit, a pall, a fret, a watt, a bay, a daub, a tan, a cab, a datum, a gall, a hat, a fag, a zap, a say, a jaw, a lay, a wet, a gallop, a tug, a trot, a trap, a tram, a torr, a caper, a top, a tonk, a toll, a ball, a fair, a sax, a minim, a tenor, a bass, a passer, a capital, a rut, an amen, a ted, a cabal, a tang, a sun, an ass, a maw, a sag, a jam, a dam, a sub, a salt, an axon, a sail, an ad, a wadi, a radian, a room, a rood, a rip, a tad, a pariah, a revel, a reel, a reed, a pool, a plug, a pin, a peek, a parabola, a dog, a pat, a cud, a nu, a fan, a pal, a rum, a nod, an eta, a lag, an eel, a batik, a mug, a mot, a nap, a maxim, a mood, a leek, a grub, a gob, a gel, a drab, a citadel, a total, a cedar, a tap, a gag, a rat, a manor, a bar, a gal, a cola, a pap, a yaw, a tab, a raj, a gab, a nag, a pagan, a bag, a jar, a bat, a way, a papa, a local, a gar, a baron, a mat, a rag, a gap, a tar, a decal, a tot, a led, a tic, a bard, a leg, a bog, a burg, a keel, a doom, a mix, a map, an atom, a gum, a kit, a baleen, a gala, a ten, a don, a mural, a pan, a faun, a ducat, a pagoda, a lob, a rap, a keep, a nip, a gulp, a loop, a deer, a leer, a lever, a hair, a pad, a tapir, a door, a moor, an aid, a raid, a wad, an alias, an ox, an atlas, a bus, a madam, a jag, a saw, a mass, an anus, a gnat, a lab, a cadet, an em, a natural, a tip, a caress, a pass, a baronet, a minimax, a sari, a fall, a ballot, a knot, a pot, a rep, a carrot, a mart, a part, a tort, a gut, a poll, a gateway, a law, a jay, a sap, a zag, a fat, a hall, a gamut, a dab, a can, a tabu, a day, a batt, a waterfall, a patina, a nut, a flow, a lass, a van, a mow, a nib, a draw, a regular, a call, a war, a stay, a gam, a yap, a cam, a ray, an ax, a tag, a wax, a paw, a cat, a valley, a drib, a lion, a saga, a plat, a catnip, a pooh, a rail, a calamus, a dairyman, a bater, a canal-- Panama.\n\nThere it is, Dan Hoey's panama palindrome.\n\n A triumph of form over content.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> Here's Peter Norvig's version of the palindrome:\n\n\n\n[He gets up to 17,826 words, and has some interesting commentary along the way]<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":86,"dup_dump_count":46,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":2,"2018-13":2,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":3,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":3,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":2,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":3,"2016-50":3,"2016-44":3,"2016-40":2,"2016-36":2,"2016-30":2,"2016-26":2,"2016-22":2,"2016-18":2,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":2,"2015-14":2,"2014-52":2,"2014-49":4,"2014-42":6,"2014-41":4,"2014-35":3,"2014-23":3,"2014-15":2,"2022-05":1,"2013-48":1,"2014-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Common Ground: A children's book about the tragedy of the commons - http:\/\/www.mollybang.com\/Pages\/common.html It would do a lot of good if more people were aware of the tragedy of the commons.\n\nHere's the key excerpt of the full controversial essay taken from [http:\/\/www.garretthardinsociety.org\/articles\/art_tragedy_of_...](http:\/\/www.garretthardinsociety.org\/articles\/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html)\n\n...\n\nThe tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.\n\nAs a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, \"What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?\" This utility has one negative and one positive component.\n\n1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.\n\n2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.\n\nAdding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit--in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.\n\n...\n\n<\/comment> Related: Nobel winner Elinor Nordstrom. [https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elinor_Ostrom](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elinor_Ostrom)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":13,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2020-29":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2023-40":1}},"id":11309586},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Capitalists in the 21st Century - barry-cotter https:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w25442 barry-cotter > Have the idle rich replaced the working rich at the top of the U.S. income > distribution? Using tax data linking 11 million firms to their owners, this > paper finds that entrepreneurs who actively manage their firms are key for > top income inequality. Most top income is non-wage income, a primary source > of which is private business profit. These profits accrue to working-age > owners of closely-held, mid-market firms in skill-intensive industries. > Private business profit falls by three-quarters after owner retirement or > premature death. Classifying three-quarters of private business profit as > human capital income, we find that most top earners are working rich: they > derive most of their income from human capital, not physical or financial > capital. The human capital income of private business owners exceeds top > wage income and top public equity income. Growth in private business profit > is explained by both rising productivity and a rising share of value added > accruing to owners.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":19},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"HASHWallet, the most secure hardware wallet - https:\/\/gethashwallet.com The theft of crypto actives is an everyday event. We are less and less surprised by the constant news about attacks and hacking into exchanges and cryptocurrency wallets worth millions of dollars. In this scenario, users need to equip themselves with better security tools to safeguard their assets.\n\nHASHWallet is a cryptocurrency smart card that offers a higher level of security than other hardware wallets on the market, based on a series of technical features and advantages that make it unique.\n\nAs a non-programmable device, it is designed to create a totally secure space to sign transactions and to safeguard the user's keys.\n\nThe card stores the private key without anyone knowing it, not even the user. This key cannot be accessed from the outside in any way. Therefore, the card is invulnerable and can not suffer external attacks.\n\nThe Public\/Private keys are generated on the card itself, in a random procedure that is impossible to replicate and without the intervention of external seeds.\n\nThe card includes a large screen of electronic ink, which allows the verification and validation of the transactions in detail. In this way, HASHWallet complies with the \"What You See IS What You Sign\" (WYSIWYS) philosophy; users only sign what they see, and avoid the malicious attack known as \"Man in The Middle\" since no external devices are involved in the transactions.\n\nThe fingerprint reader built-in to the card is another of its security tools, as it allows the signature of transactions from a biometric signal.\n\nHASHWallet supports the major cryptocurrencies on the market, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin or Tether, and also any ERC-20 token.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":9,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-04":2,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":2,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Technovation: Insurtech with Travelers CTO\/COO - https:\/\/www.metisstrategy.com\/interview\/mojgan-lefebvre\/ In this episode, Mojgan discusses the company's commitment to making innovation part of its DNA and the strategic pillars the company has put in place, which are focused on evolving the way the company works to drive integrated teams to push the blurring of lines between business and technology. First, the company leverages design thinking methodologies and always starts with the customer and works backward, and it has small multifunctional teams of technologists and business experts. Second, the company has developed a strategic architecture, driving modernization and simplification where appropriate. Lastly, but most importantly is talent, which the company considers its advantage multiplier. Mojgan cites that Travelers drives new skill sets and engineering talent in a variety of ways. We also discuss Mojgan's view on the future of women in technology, and the revolution she sees happening in that regard, how Mojgan looks at the company's 160-year old history as a position of extreme strength, how Mojgan's diverse career path has colored her experience at Travelers, and a variety of other topics.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":9,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-27":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":3,"2020-29":2,"2023-50":1}},"id":23540681},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Languages as Libraries (2011) [pdf] - http:\/\/www.ccs.neu.edu\/racket\/pubs\/pldi11-thacff.pdf IO language is a language that is similarly easy to extend. You might call it a language prototyping language in the sense that it's easy to test out language features (or whole new languages) in IO.\n\n It's called Io and yes - it's one of the most extensible languages I encountered. Its main mechanism for extension resembles PicoLisp and fexprs - any method can decide whether it wants its arguments evaluated or not. Coupled with homoiconicity it allows for arbitrary code transformations on runtime - and that's even before taking multiple, prototype-based inheritance and arbitrary stack traversing[3] into account.\n\nI wrote a PyParsing port in Io[1], for my text-based game I'm writing in Io. It was a very interesting and unique experience - normally, when porting things, you just go over the code and translate all of it line-by-line from one language to the other. With Io, however, it was trivial to extend Io with (most[2]) features that Python code required and in effect the code and the language met in the middle. After adding certain things to the language most of the \"porting\" was done with a set of basic regexes.\n\nNow, the problem is Io is dead, is not being developed, and that's tragic. The implementation is pretty straightforward, however the documentation is severely lacking and the years without development left it far behind most other languages.\n\nI think it's a real shame and I was thinking about investing some time into Io development myself, but my game project halted earlier this year diminishing my motivation, not to mention I'm not sure if I would be up to the task.\n\nStill, I'd be more than happy to help if someone would like to contribute to the Io development. I would like to see Io resurrection and I think the language still has a lot to offer even to the modern programmers.\n\n[1] [https:\/\/github.com\/piotrklibert\/ioparsing](https:\/\/github.com\/piotrklibert\/ioparsing) \\- see src\/syntax.io, list literals, dict (map) literals and string interpolation is implemented there.\n\n[2] There's one problem I wasn't able to solve (yet), which is that the left arg of the assignment operators are always evaluated - so no destructuring assignment unfortunately. This is hardcoded in the VM, I even found where, but ultimately didn't find the time to fix this.\n\n[3] Think JavaScript arguments.callee but with first class namespaces.\n\n impressive little language\n\niolanguage.org\/guide\/guide.html#Introduction\n\n I forgot to mention, Io also supports Lua-like coroutines. It's an incredibly powerful language, mixing Smalltalk, Self and some Lisp in a non-image-based, easy to use package, accessible to \"normal programmers\". I would really, really like to see it developed again... and used, even if just a bit. I guess I'm repeating myself here, so I'll stop.\n\n were you involved in its development or just a loving user ?\n\n The latter... To be honest, I thought about contributing - Steve Dekorte, the author, stopped developing the language, but is relatively responsive on GitHub and merges PRs - but I had to stop that side-project just before doing any real work on VM side. I wanted to add destructuring to the language and wanted it to work with operators so that, given suitable definitions of [], ... and <\\- this:\n\n \n \n [a,b,...,z] <- aLongList\n \n\nwould work - you could write destructuring support in pure Io if not for that requirement.\n\nI don't have the time for it right now (edit: and anyway, there's a limit to how much a single person can do), though, so the only thing I can do is to advocate the language and encourage its use. Which I'm trying to do right now :-) I also have a blog post on Io waiting to be published, I'll post it once I resolve the issues with my blog's domain.<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"KIVUHUB - Kivuhub is the only virtual techn accelerator and hub in the DR. Congo which provide an environment empowering tech entrepreneur, linking to potential funding and support the growth of your startup and companies, we also work with girl who are in tech and help them to develop their skills. We work with different network of investors and other Hubs in the region to tackle the complex challenges our world is facing. By joining forces with selected coworking hubs across emerging markets. Kivuhub is a hub for Tech Entrepreneurial Community, virtual spaces for startups and entrepreneurs, eager to make an impact in the world with technology in DR. Congo A Tell HN or Show HN would better help people filter spam from real showcases.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13},"id":17645210},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"A job board for companies and people focused on slow growth - https:\/\/www.producthunt.com\/posts\/slogro A lot of companies today are very focused on \"rapid growth\", being \"fast growing\", staying in a \"hockey stick trajectory\" and talk about it as if that's the only way to grow or reason to hire. If you're not growing, you're dwindling.\n\nI've had enough of that.\n\nSlow is great. Slow is thoughtful. Slow is mindful. Slow is calm. Recently a book came out about companies who challenge this concept. Companies who say that growth doesn't just mean \"more\": \"Company of One\" by Paul Jarvis.\n\nThe idea isn't necessarily new, but it's definitely challenging the status quo. I'd love to change that, but these companies, by definition, don't hire often.\n\nUnfortunately, it still is really hard to find such companies, and even harder to filter them out from the endless job posts of the \"fast growing startups\".\n\nThis job board tries to change that, by giving people a place to find such companies, and companies a place to put their rare openings and finding like- minded people.\n\n<\/comment> this looks great bruno!\n\n Thank you so much, Paul!<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Free time tracking software - http:\/\/www.primaerp.com Free time tracking software with all features for 1 - 3 users - no trial period. primaERP / TIME TRACKING is a cloud based application which allows you to track and evaluate your time. \nApplication automatically generates reports of the tracked time, that can be used for billing your clients. Reports allow you to evaluate the efficiency of each of your tasks or projects and provide you all the information needed for making the right decisions in order to increase productivity. You can collaborate with your team on the projects, delegate tasks and get the instant answer to the question \"What the hell is my team doing\". App is connected to external applications such as Basecamp, MS Exchange calendar and Google Calendar. It has an open API, that allows you to easily connect your favourite project management tool or any other software of your choice. It is a very useful app for both personal and business use, especially intended for entrepreneurs, managers, self-employed, business and productivity consultants, freelancers and others, who want to know, where do they invest their time. Is there anything planned like a small toolbar or a desktop app where i can select a project\/task and say \"start\" and \"stop\"? That is what i am missing at most time tracking apps. until now we have not found the perfect solution for tracking time in a marketing agency.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":13,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2017-43":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"How Facebook Punked and Then Gut Punched the News Biz \u2013 Talking Points Memo - https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/edblog\/how-facebook-punked-and-then-gut-punched-the-news-biz _What does this all mean?\n\nThe first should be obvious: you can't build businesses around a company as unreliable and poorly run as Facebook. Only a year ago, when I would talk to big money players in the digital media world, there was a consistent refrain: social video on Facebook, that's the whole game. That struck me as crazy at the time, given everything we were seeing in the industry. And it was crazy. There's no news publisher entitlement to Facebook traffic. And Facebook is a highly unreliable company. We've seen this pattern repeat itself a number of times over the course of company's history: its scale allows it to create whole industries around it depending on its latest plan or product or gambit. But again and again, with little warning it abandons and destroys those businesses._<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":10,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2019-18":2,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-51":2,"2018-47":2,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":1}},"id":17428886},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Cevelop \u2013 the professional c++ IDE - https:\/\/www.cevelop.com\/ \"About \u2013 the origins of Cevelop At the Institute for Software we have been developing plug-ins for Eclipse CDT for almost a decade. Some of this work has been contributed back to Eclipse (e.g. the majority of refactorings and the underlying infrastructure for writing refactorings), others like Linticator are available commercially, but the majority is open source (e.g. Metriculator) or free to use (e.g. CUTE).\n\nOver time, as more and more plug-ins were created, it became tedious to discover and install them one by one. So we decided to bundle them all into one single download, including the latest release of Eclipse CDT.\"\n\n<\/comment> What's this provide that clion and visual studio don't?\n\n cevelop is free while clion is not.\n\ncevelop is on all platforms and visual studio is more of MS platform.\n\nvisual studio code is really better at js\/web devel.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":10,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2023-14":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2020-34":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-51":2,"2018-43":1,"2023-40":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Nginx v1.11.6 Released - https:\/\/nginx.org\/en\/CHANGES#1.11.6 \n *) Change: format of the $ssl_client_s_dn and $ssl_client_i_dn variables\n has been changed to follow RFC 2253 (RFC 4514); values in the old\n format are available in the $ssl_client_s_dn_legacy and\n $ssl_client_i_dn_legacy variables.\n \n *) Change: when storing temporary files in a cache directory they will\n be stored in the same subdirectories as corresponding cache files\n instead of a separate subdirectory for temporary files.\n \n *) Feature: EXTERNAL authentication mechanism support in mail proxy.\n Thanks to Robert Norris.\n \n *) Feature: WebP support in the ngx_http_image_filter_module.\n \n *) Feature: variables support in the \"proxy_method\" directive.\n Thanks to Dmitry Lazurkin.\n \n *) Feature: the \"http2_max_requests\" directive in the\n ngx_http_v2_module.\n \n *) Feature: the \"proxy_cache_max_range_offset\",\n \"fastcgi_cache_max_range_offset\", \"scgi_cache_max_range_offset\", and\n \"uwsgi_cache_max_range_offset\" directives.\n \n *) Bugfix: graceful shutdown of old worker processes might require\n infinite time when using HTTP\/2.\n \n *) Bugfix: in the ngx_http_mp4_module.\n \n *) Bugfix: \"ignore long locked inactive cache entry\" alerts might appear\n in logs when proxying WebSocket connections with caching enabled.\n \n *) Bugfix: nginx did not write anything to log and returned a response\n with code 502 instead of 504 when a timeout occurred during an SSL\n handshake to a backend.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Important Notice About Your Twitch Account - http:\/\/blog.twitch.tv\/2015\/03\/important-notice-about-your-twitch-account\/\n\n What's troubling is that apparently there was evil code running on twitch servers, capturing plaintext passwords as they were checked against the \"cryptographically protected form\". [1]\n\n[1] [http:\/\/gyazo.com\/b31792d4fc4460c006c49d858cc113e3](http:\/\/gyazo.com\/b31792d4fc4460c006c49d858cc113e3)\n\n<\/comment> Here is the email sent to users:\n\nWe are writing to let you know that there may have been unauthorized access to some of your Twitch user account information, including possibly your Twitch username and associated email address, your password (which was cryptographically protected), the last IP address you logged in from, and any of the following if you provided it to us: first and last name, phone number, address, and date of birth.\n\nFor your protection, we have expired your password and stream keys. In addition, if you had connected your account to Twitter or YouTube, we have terminated this connection.\n\nYou will be prompted to create a new password the next time you attempt to log into your Twitch account. If applicable, you will also need to re-connect your account to Twitter and YouTube, and re-authenticate through Facebook, once you change your password. We also recommend that you change your password at any other website where you use the same or a similar password.\n\nWe apologize for this inconvenience.\n\nThe Twitch Team\n\n<\/comment> here's a screenshot of the email sent to an 'affected party'\n\n[http:\/\/gyazo.com\/b31792d4fc4460c006c49d858cc113e3](http:\/\/gyazo.com\/b31792d4fc4460c006c49d858cc113e3)\n\nFor partners, their personal details being leaked is much worse. Think more swattings, pranks etc.\n\n<\/comment> TL;DR log on to twitch and reset your password\n\nthey haven't expired sessions which has worried me a little.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":74,"dup_dump_count":53,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-33":2,"2021-49":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-31":2,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":2,"2020-50":2,"2020-40":3,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":2,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":2,"2020-10":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":3,"2019-47":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-30":2,"2019-22":1,"2019-18":2,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":2,"2019-04":1,"2018-51":2,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":2,"2018-39":2,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":2,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":2,"2017-51":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-17":2,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-26":1,"2016-22":1,"2015-14":1,"2024-10":1,"2015-18":1,"2024-22":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"When Are Nonconvex Optimization Problems Not Scary? (2015) - https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1510.06096 Abstract of a talk with the same title by one of the authors (Ju Sun; coming up at Duke University on February 5th, 2018):\n\nMany problems arising from scientific and engineering applications can be naturally formulated as optimization problems, most of which are nonconvex. For nonconvex problems, obtaining a local minimizer is computationally hard in theory, never mind the global minimizer. In practice, however, simple numerical methods often work surprisingly well in finding high-quality solutions for specific problems at hand.\n\nIn this talk, I will describe our recent effort in bridging the mysterious theory-practice gap for nonconvex optimization. I will highlight a family of nonconvex problems that can be solved to global optimality using simple numerical methods, independent of initialization. This family has the characteristic global structure that (1) all local minimizers are global, and (2) all saddle points have directional negative curvatures. Problems lying in this family cover various applications across machine learning, signal processing, scientific imaging, and more. I will focus on two examples we worked out: learning sparsifying bases for massive data and recovery of complex signals from phaseless measurements. In both examples, the benign global structure allows us to derive geometric insights and computational results that are inaccessible from previous methods. In contrast, alternative approaches to solving nonconvex problems often entail either expensive convex relaxation (e.g., solving large-scale semidefinite programs) or delicate problem-specific initializations.\n\nCompleting and enriching this framework is an active research endeavor that is being undertaken by several research communities. At the end of the talk, I will discuss open problems to be tackled to move forward.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":20,"dup_dump_count":18,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2020-34":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-10":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2023-40":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":16298867},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Adam Savage's Ground Rules for Success [video] - http:\/\/bizopy.com\/adam-savages-ground-rules-for-success\/\n\n Here are the 10 rules from his slides, though he goes into a lot more detail in the video (he starts going into the rules at around 14:00):\n\n1\\. Get good at something Really good. Get good ts as many things as you can. Being good at one thing makes it easier to get good at other things.\n\n2\\. Getting good at stuff takes practice. Lots and lots of practice.\n\n3\\. Get OBSESSED Everyone at the top of their field is obsessed with what they're doing.\n\n4\\. Doing something well and thoroughly is it's OWN reward.\n\n5\\. Show and Tell If you do something well and you're happy with it, for FSM's sake, tell EVERYONE\n\n6\\. IF YOU WANT SOMETHING, ASK. If something piques your interest, tell someone, if you want to learn something, ask someone, like your BOSS. As an employer I can tell you, people who want to learn new skills are people I want to keep employed.\n\n7\\. Have GOALS Make up goals. Set goals. Regularly assess where you are and where you want to be in terms of them. This is a kind of prayer that works, and works well. Allow for the fact that things will NEVER turn out like you think they will, and you must be prepared to end up miles from where you intended.\n\n8\\. BE NICE TO EVERYONE. Life is way to short to be an asshole. If you are an asshole, apologize.\n\n9\\. Fail You will fail. It's one of our jobs in life. Keep failing. When you fail, admit it. When you don't, don't get cocky, 'Cause you're just about to fail again.\n\n10\\. WORK YOUR ASS OFF Work like your life depends on it.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":74,"dup_dump_count":50,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":2,"2023-14":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-33":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-21":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-47":2,"2019-39":2,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":2,"2019-04":2,"2018-51":2,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":2,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":2,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":3,"2018-13":2,"2018-09":2,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":2,"2017-43":4,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":2,"2017-30":2,"2017-26":3,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":2,"2017-09":2,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Some Great SaaS Visualizations - https:\/\/medium.com\/@kevinacohn\/four-great-saas-visualizations-b45a6f0768b4 Interesting article!\n\n> Would you believe that growth in January was two times as strong as in > August?\n\nI'm not sure I agree with the author's analysis here. \"Quick Ratio\" is an interesting metric, but a lot of companies would take the ~75k net MRR growth with more churn than ~25k with little churn in the short term. Despite that, it's an interesting measure to add to the toolkit.\n\nI've always visualized MRR changes with the same stacked bar chart (New \/ Expansion \/ Churn \/ Contraction) with a line overlaid to visualize Net New MRR. That gives you an absolute sense of growth which is usually what you want from this kind of overview report.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Exo IDE: Top 5 New Features of the Month - http:\/\/blog.exoplatform.com\/2012\/11\/20\/exo-ide-top-5-new-features-of-the-month\/\n\n Exo IDE, an environment for coding, building, and debugging apps in the cloud, just revealed new features and partnerships, all designed to make developers and their teams more productive.\n\nHere are the top 5 announcements:\n\n\\- Smart project creation and deployment for Java, Spring, Ruby, Python and PHP apps.\n\n\\- JRebel integration that saves minutes on every deploy.\n\n\\- Added AppFog deployment to the existing supported PaaS list, in addition to AWS, CloudBees, Google App Engine, Heroku and OpenShift.\n\n\\- Fixed-width font for better reading and coding.\n\n\\- Team development through JAR publishing<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":6,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-18":2,"2015-11":2,"2015-06":2,"2014-10":2,"2013-48":2,"2013-20":4,"unknown":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Online Course learning and teaching marketplace - Coachunt is the India's leading online course learning and teaching marketplace. Coachunt members are constantly growing. Students can learn anything and find best instructor. Students can discuss with friends, while instructors have a way to share their knowledge with the world. Coachunt offer best and easy to use platform to create proprietary courses. Coachunt is India's first transparent platform where student and instructor can connect with each other. Founded in 2016. https://www.coachunt.com [https:\/\/www.coachunt.com](https:\/\/www.coachunt.com)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":11}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Representations in Cognitive Science - https:\/\/ora.ox.ac.uk\/objects\/uuid:bd813fd7-8871-4e0d-9d7a-1cede72a7520 This is Nick Shea's new open-access book. Nick is one of the most prominent philosophers of cognitive science. The abstract:\n\n\" Our thoughts are meaningful. We think about things in the outside world; how can that be so? This is one of the deepest questions in contemporary philosophy. Ever since the 'cognitive revolution', states with meaning-mental representations-have been the key explanatory construct of the cognitive sciences. But there is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. Powerful new methods in cognitive neuroscience can now reveal information processing in the brain in unprecedented detail. They show how the brain performs complex calculations on neural representations. Drawing on this cutting-edge research, Nicholas Shea uses a series of case studies from the cognitive sciences to develop a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation. His approach is distinctive in focusing firmly on the 'subpersonal' representations that pervade so much of cognitive science. The diversity and depth of the case studies, illustrated by numerous figures, make this book unlike any previous treatment. It is important reading for philosophers of psychology and philosophers of mind, and of considerable interest to researchers throughout the cognitive sciences.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16,"dup_dump_count":8,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-04":4,"2020-50":3,"2020-45":2,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":1,"2019-51":2,"2019-47":1,"2022-49":1}},"id":18183305},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Is It Time to Treat Violence Like a Contagious Disease? - http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2013\/01\/violence-is-contagious\/\n\n \"The Contagion of Violence - Workshop Summary [1]\n\nIn the past 25 years, there has been a shift in the field of violence prevention, from the assumption that violence is inevitable to the recognition that violence is preventable. In exploring the occurrence of violence, researchers have recognized the tendency for violent acts to cluster, to spread from place to place, and to mutate from one type to another \u2013 similar to the infectious disease model, in which an agent or vector initiates a specific biological pathway leading to symptoms of disease and infectivity.\n\nOn April 30 \u2013 May 1, 2012, the IOM Forum on Global Violence Prevention held a workshop to explore the contagious nature of violence. The workshop focused on the epidemiology of the contagion, possible processes and mechanisms by which violence is transmitted, how contextual factors mitigate or exacerbate the issue, and ways in which the contagion of violence might be interrupted. This document summarizes the workshop.\"\n\nFree pdf download available from [2].\n\n[1] \n\n[2] <\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":45,"dup_dump_count":26,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2019-35":2,"2019-26":3,"2019-18":2,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":2,"2019-04":1,"2018-51":2,"2018-43":2,"2018-39":2,"2018-34":2,"2018-26":3,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":3,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":3,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":3,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-22":1,"2021-21":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Can you sign a quantum state? - https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1811.11858 > _Abstract. Cryptography with quantum states exhibits a number of surprising > and counterintuitive features. In a 2002 work, Barnum et al. argued > informally that these strange features should imply that digital signatures > for quantum states are impossible [6]._\n\n> _In this work, we perform the first rigorous study of the problem of signing > quantum states. We first show that the intuition of [6] was correct, by > proving an impossibility result which rules out even very weak forms of > signing quantum states. Essentially, we show that any non-trivial > combination of correctness and security requirements results in negligible > security._\n\n> _This rules out all quantum signature schemes except those which simply > measure the state and then sign the outcome using a classical scheme. In > other words, only classical signature schemes exist._\n\n> _We then show a positive result: it is possible to sign quantum states, > provided that they are also encrypted with the public key of the intended > recipient. Following classical nomenclature, we call this notion quantum > signcryption. Classically, signcryption is only interesting if it provides > superior efficiency to simultaneous encryption and signing. Our results > imply that, quantumly, it is far more interesting: by the laws of quantum > mechanics, it is the only signing method available._\n\n> _We develop security definitions for quantum signcryption, ranging from a > simple one-time two-user setting, to a chosen-ciphertext-secure many-time > multi-user setting. We also give secure constructions based on post-quantum > public-key primitives. Along the way, we show that a natural hybrid method > of combining classical and quantum schemes can be used to \"upgrade\" a secure > classical scheme to the fully-quantum setting, in a wide range of > cryptographic settings including signcryption, authenticated encryption, and > chosen-ciphertext security._\n\n\"Quantum signcryption\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":19,"dup_dump_count":5,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-26":1,"2024-22":3,"2024-18":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":11}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Are Delayed Issues Harder to Resolve? [pdf] - https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1609.04886 \"Abstract Many practitioners and academics believe in a delayed issue effect (DIE); i.e. the longer an issue lingers in the system, the more effort it requires to resolve. This belief is often used to justify major investments in new development processes that promise to retire more issues sooner.\n\nThis paper tests for the delayed issue effect in 171 software projects conducted around the world in the period from 2006\u20132014. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study yet published on this effect. We found no evidence for the delayed issue effect; i.e. the effort to resolve issues in a later phase was not consistently or substantially greater than when issues were resolved soon after their introduction. This paper documents the above study and explores reasons for this mismatch between this common rule of thumb and empirical data.\n\nIn summary, DIE is not some constant across all projects. Rather, DIE might be an historical relic that occurs intermittently only in certain kinds of projects. This is a significant result since it predicts that new development processes that promise to faster retire more issues will not have a guaranteed return on investment (depending on the context where applied), and that a long-held truth in software engineering should not be considered a global truism.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":13,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":1,"2023-06":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"MakCorps \u2013 Hotel Price Comparison API - https:\/\/www.makcorps.com\/ This API lets you compare hotel room prices from more than 200 websites like agoda.com, booking.com , hotels.com,amoma.com,etc. Response will consist of top 3 vendors along with the best vendor. Address , reviews, ratings , features, etc are the part of JSON response. This API is simple to implement so you can keep smiling. Our database is regularly updated to reflect new changes in Hotel prices and availability. Our API quickly responds to your queries so your app doesn't lags. Using our API, you can just focus on your user experience. We take care of the backend.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"} {"text":"Reply By Senator Schumer To My Opposition of the Protect IP act - \n\nDear [Redacted]:

     Thank you for your contacting me in opposition to S.968, the PROTECT IP Act. Like you, I believe that consumers should have access to a vibrant and innovative online community to discuss their ideas and opinions.  At the same time, we must not let the internet become a haven for intellectual property thieves.\n \n     The threat to intellectual property owners over the internet is clear. Every year, the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that copyright theft costs our nation about $58 billion in lost output, 373,375 in lost jobs, and $16 billion in lost employee earnings. These numbers present an unacceptable burden to US businesses. In addition, companies may be less likely to innovate because their products may be stolen by intellectual property pirates, creating a drag on the US economy.\n \n     The PROTECT IP Act addresses the problem of intellectual property theft online, but it also contains important due process protections to ensure that legal activity over the internet is not disrupted.  As you may know, the PROTECT IP Act would allow the Department of Justice to file a claim against a website that 1) has no significant purpose other than engaging in or facilitating copyright infringement, circumventing technology controlling access to copyrighted works, or selling or promoting counterfeit goods or services; or (2) is designed, operated, or marketed and used to engage in such activities. A judge would have to find that a website is intentionally violating intellectual property rights of an American entity before he could issue an order against that site. I believe PROTECT IP Act would provide law enforcement and intellectual property holders additional tools to protect American intellectual property from websites while still ensuring the constitutionally protected rights of free speech and due process. The PROTECT IP Act currently is awaiting action on the floor of the Senate, and I will continue to monitor this bill as it moves through the Senate.  \n \n     Thank you for contacting me on this important issue.  Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can ever be of assistance to you on this, or any other matter.<\/code><\/pre>  wat<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":15,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-26":1,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Silent Power of the NSA (1983) -  http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1983\/03\/27\/magazine\/the-silent-power-of-the-nsa.html?pagewanted=all\n\n The last paragraph tells the tale of why this article has emerged again.\n\n\"No laws define the limits of the N.S.A.'s power. No Congressional committee subjects the agency's budget to a systematic, informed and skeptical review. With unknown billions of Federal dollars, the agency purchases the most sophisticated communications and computer equipment in the world. But truly to comprehend the growing reach of this formidable organization, it is necessary to recall once again how the computers that power the N.S.A. are also gradually changing lives of Americans - the way they bank, obtain benefits from the Government and communicate with family and friends. Every day, in almost every area of culture and commerce, systems and procedures are being adopted by private companies and organizations as well as by the nation's security leaders that make it easier for the N.S.A. to dominate American society should it ever decide such action is necessary.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":71,"dup_dump_count":54,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-06":1,"2022-33":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-21":1,"2020-29":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-30":2,"2018-26":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-47":2,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":2,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":2,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":2,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":2,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-26":1,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2015-14":1,"2014-52":1,"2014-49":2,"2014-42":4,"2014-41":2,"2014-35":2,"2014-23":2,"2023-40":1,"2024-18":2,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":2,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Facebook Says Government Demands for User Data Are at a Record High -  Facebook's latest transparency report is out. The social media giant said the number of government demands for user data increased by 16% to 128,617 demands during the first-half of this year compared to the second-half of last year. From a report: That's the highest number of government demands its received in any reporting period since it published its first transparency report in 2013. The U.S. government led the way with the most number of requests -- 50,741 demands for user data resulting in some account or user data given to authorities in 88% of cases. Facebook said two-thirds of all of the U.S. government's requests came with a gag order, preventing the company from telling the user about the request for their data. But Facebook said it was able to release details of 11 so-called national security letters (NSLs) for the first time after their gag provisions were lifted during the period. National security letters can compel companies to turn over non-content data at the request of the FBI. These letters are not approved by a judge, and often come with a gag order preventing their disclosure. But since the Freedom Act passed in 2015, companies have been allowed to request the lifting of those gag orders.  :( ok?????????<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":35,"dup_dump_count":25,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-50":2,"2023-40":1,"2023-23":1,"2023-14":2,"2023-06":2,"2022-49":1,"2022-40":2,"2022-33":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-39":2,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-10":2,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":2,"2019-51":1,"2024-26":1,"2024-22":2,"2024-18":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"How I accidentally discovered the pill to enlightenment but I wouldn't recommend -  http:\/\/bearlamp.com.au\/how-i-accidentally-discovered-the-pill-to-enlightenment-but-i-wouldnt-recommend-it\/  Eastern enlightenment is not what you think. I mean, maybe it is. But it's probably not. There's a reason it's so elusive, and there's a reason that it hasn't joined western science and the western world the way that curiosity and discovery have as a driving force.\n\nThis is the story of my mistake accidentally discovering enlightenment.\n\nFebruary 2017 I was noticing some weird symptoms. I felt cold. Which was strange because I have never been cold. Nicknames include \"fire\" and \"hot hands\", my history includes a lot of bad jokes about how I am definitely on fire. I am known for visiting the snow in shorts and a t-shirt. I hit 70kg, The least fat I have ever had in my life. And that was the only explanation I had. I asked a doctor about it, I did some reading \u2013 circulation problems. I don't have circulation problems at the age of 25. I am more fit than I have ever been in my life. I look into hesperidin (orange peel) and eat myself a few whole oranges including peel. No change. I look into other blood pressure supplements, other capillary modifying supplements\u2026 Other ideas to investigate. I decided I couldn't be missing something because there was nothing to be missing. I would have read it somewhere already. So I settled for the obvious answer. Being skinnier was making me colder.\n\nFlashback to February 2016 This is where it all begins. I move out of my parents house into an apartment with a girl I have been seeing for under 6 months. I weigh around 80kg (that's 12.5 stones or 176 pounds or 2822 ounces for our imperial friends). Life happens and by March I am on my own. I decide to start running. Make myself a more desirable human.\n\nI taught myself a lot about routines and habits and actually getting myself to run. Running is hard. Actually, running is easy. Leaving the house is hard. But I work that out too.\n\n\\<\/comment><\/comment>--\n\nVisit blog to read the rest...\n\n[http:\/\/bearlamp.com.au\/how-i-accidentally-discovered-the- pil...](http:\/\/bearlamp.com.au\/how-i-accidentally-discovered-the-pill-to- enlightenment-but-i-wouldnt-recommend-it\/)\n\n Please post a working link.\n\n Apologies. I think all the HN-ites crashed my teeny wordpress install. It's back up now.<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":32,"dup_dump_count":20,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-43":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-34":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-47":2,"2019-39":2,"2019-35":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-26":2,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":4,"2018-13":2,"2018-05":4,"2022-27":1,"2024-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Glimpse Inside a Metaverse: The Virtual World of Second Life -  http:\/\/video.google.ca\/videoplay?docid=-5182759758975402950  ABSTRACT\n\nLinden Lab is the producer of Second Life, an online world with a growing population of subscribers (or \"residents\"); currently, the community has well over 140,000 residents from 91 countries. By providing residents with robust building and scripting tools, Linden Lab enables them to create a vast array of in-world objects, installations and programs. Since its early stages, Linden Lab has allowed its residents to retain full IP rights over their own creations, thereby insuring that their contributions to the community remain truly their own.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":26,"dup_dump_count":23,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-49":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-17":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-43":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-22":2,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2022-21":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Neglected Risks, Financial Innovation, and Financial Fragility (2011) [pdf] -  https:\/\/www.hbs.edu\/behavioral-finance-and-financial-stability\/Documents\/86973485.pdf  >Abstract\n\n>We present a standard model of financial innovation, in which intermediaries engineer securities with cash flows that investors seek, but modify two assumptions. First, investors (and possibly intermediaries) neglect certain unlikely risks. Second, investors demand securities with safe cash flows. Financial intermediaries cater to these preferences and beliefs by engineering securities perceived to be safe but exposed to neglected risks. Because the risks are neglected, security issuance is excessive. As investors eventually recognize these risks, they fly back to safety of traditional securities and markets become fragile, even without leverage, precisely because the volume of new claims is excessive.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":36,"dup_dump_count":3,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":3,"2015-18":1,"2013-20":2,"2017-13":1,"unknown":29}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix. -  http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/05\/26\/business\/media\/26link.html?ref=technology\n\n \"Randall Munroe, the 23-year-old creator of xkcd, a hugely popular online comic strip (at least among computer programmers) where the sandwich line appeared.\"\n\nI enjoy xkcd as much as the next guy, but sudo make me a sandwich has been around as long as sudo itself.\n\n Yeah, but it's still cool to see Randall and xkcd get some (glowing) mainstream attention.\n\n \"Mainstream attention\" kills most of the things I'm most fond of. Of course, I knew this day would come and I'm happy for Randall but there's still this small sense of a let-down now that the secret is out.\n\n The only thing mainstream attention kills in most things is the ability for early adapters to consider themselves elite in knowing about said thing.\n\nI see it in music all the time with core fans hating the band as soon as they get popular even if they haven't changed at all just because they are no longer unique for liking them.\n\nI never thought I'd see it with a web comic.\n\n I was actually worried that if a new demographic of readers (or the perception thereof) found xkcd that Randall may tone down some of the geek humor in favor of something more _universal_. I hope not.\n\n _mainstream attention kills in most things is the ability for early adapters to consider themselves elite_.\n\nWow this sentiment has been cropping up quite a lot lately. Kind of like a snobbish backlash to snobbish-looking elitism thing. Meta-snobbery?!\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> It's funny how the author spent quite a bit of e-ink _describing_ (as opposed to commenting on) things that could be inlined or linked to.\n\n<\/comment> (don't mod me up -- this is the full article if you hate NYT login nagging)\n\n _This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix_ __By NOAM COHEN __\n\nFOR a certain subset of Internet users, \"Sudo make me a sandwich\" may as well be \"Take my wife ... please.\"\n\nPerhaps some explanation is in order. Before giving up the goods, however, we should heed the warning of Randall Munroe, the 23-year-old creator of xkcd, a hugely popular online comic strip (at least among computer programmers) where the sandwich line appeared. Mr. Munroe believes that analyzing a joke is like dissecting a frog \u2014 it can be done, but the frog dies.\n\nStill, he plays along, explaining that \"sudo\" is a command in the Unix operating system that temporarily grants godlike powers: \"The humor comes from people who have encountered typing a command and having the computer say 'No,' and they say, 'Oh, yeah, sudo says,' and the computer does it. Kind of like 'Simon says.' \"\n\nHence the set-up: one stick figure says to another, \"Make me a sandwich,\" only to be told, \"No.\" Thinking quickly, stick figure No. 1 says, \"Sudo make me a sandwich,\" and the once-recalcitrant stick figure No. 2 must comply.\n\nMr. Munroe, a physics major and a programmer by trade, is good for jokes like this three times a week, informed by computing and the Internet. By speaking the language of geeks \u2014 many a strip hinges on crucial differences between the C and Python programming languages \u2014 while dealing with relationships and the meaning of a computer-centric life, xkcd has become required reading for techies across the world.\n\nThe site, which began publishing regularly in January 2006, has 500,000 unique visitors a day, he said, and 80 million page views a month. (Why \"xkcd\"? \"It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation,\" his Web site, xkcd.com, answers.)\n\nMr. Munroe has become something of a cult hero. He counts himself as among the fewer than two dozen creators of comic strips on the Web who make a living at it.\n\nAt Google headquarters, a required stop on the geek-cult-hero speaking tour, he recently addressed hundreds of engineers, some of whom dutifully waited for him to sign their laptops. He said he had only wanted a tour of the place but had instead been invited to speak. The real thrill, he said, was that a hero of his, Donald Knuth, a professor emeritus of computer science at Stanford and a programming pioneer, was in the front row.\n\n\"It's comparable to Bill Gates's being in the front row,\" he said. \"I got to have lunch with him. He's in his 70s, but people he is in touch with must have told him about it.\"\n\nWhile the comics play on the peculiarities of code, they are as much about escaping the clear, orderly world of commands to engage a chaotic sphere known as real life, or perhaps merely adulthood.\n\nSo one comic has a graph showing \"my overall health\" entering a steep decline \"the day I realized I could cook bacon whenever I wanted.\" Or, in one of Mr. Munroe's favorites, a stick-figure couple revel in an apartment filled to the brim with playpen balls, \"because we are grownups now, and it's our turn to decide what that means.\"\n\nAnd, in a rare lapse from his plain-and-simple drawing style, a pair of stick figures walk in an increasingly beautiful landscape after first declaring: \"I feel like I'm wasting my life on the Internet. Let's walk around the world.\" At the foot of a gorgeous mountain, however, one turns to the other and says, \"And yet, all I can think is that this will make for a great LiveJournal entry.\"\n\nMr. Munroe is clearly still getting used to his celebrity and to running a business. He and his roommate, Derek Radtke, work on the Web site out of their Somerville, Mass., apartment, and they recently hired an employee to handle e-mail.\n\n\"People are generally surprised that we make a living from it,\" Mr. Munroe said. Without being specific, he said that the sales of xkcd merchandise support the two of them \"reasonably well.\" He said they sell thousands of T-shirts a month, either of panels from his strip or in their style, as well as posters.\n\n\"We've been getting a lot more efficient,\" he said. \"We were losing money on every T-shirt sold overseas for a while.\" (But you can make it up in volume, I helpfully suggested. He moved on.)\n\nA fan of newspaper comic strips since childhood, Mr. Munroe can simultaneously call himself an heir to \"Peanuts\" while recognizing that his quirky and technical humor would never have made it in newspapers.\n\nOn the Internet, he said, \"You can draw something that appeals to 1 percent of the audience \u2014 1 percent of United States, that is three million people, that is more readers than small cartoons can have.\"\n\nIn that way, and many others, the Web has been a salvation. \"People doing comics on the Internet are free of all the baggage that goes with being with a syndicate,\" he said, \"the editorial control, the space limits, the no control over what can be done with your cartoon.\"\n\nThe Internet has also created a bond between Mr. Munroe and his readers that is exceptional. They re-enact in real life the odd ideas he puts forward in his strip. A case in point was the strip called \"Dream Girl.\" It recounted a dream in which a girl (stick figure with flowing hair) recites a bunch of numbers into the narrator's ear.\n\n\"The xkcd person is the kind of person who would take that and run with it,\" he said. The numbers were coordinates and a date months in the future.\n\nThe strip's narrator says he went there and no one came. \"It turns out that wanting something doesn't make it real,\" the strip concludes.\n\nBut on that day in real life, hundreds of fans met in a park in Cambridge.\n\nAnd then they all ordered sandwiches.\n\n \n\nHowever, NYT regularly blocks usernames that appear on bugmenot, so pretty much every time I go to nyt.com I have to go to bugmetnot.\n\nIt would be much easier just to register for NYT, but I continue to use bugmenot out of principle.\n\n Just in case you don't know, bugmenot is very easy to use. Even easier than creating a login, in fact.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":70,"dup_dump_count":35,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-24":2,"2020-10":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-26":3,"2019-22":4,"2019-18":2,"2019-13":3,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":3,"2018-51":1,"2018-47":4,"2018-43":2,"2018-39":2,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":3,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":2,"2018-13":3,"2018-09":2,"2018-05":2,"2017-51":2,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":2,"2017-34":4,"2017-30":2,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":4,"2017-04":2,"2016-50":2,"2022-33":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Show HN: Simple HTML to WordPress Conversion Tool -  http:\/\/htmltowordpress.io  [http:\/\/htmltowordpress.io](http:\/\/htmltowordpress.io) is a simple drag & drop web app to convert any website into a wordpress theme in seconds.\n\nTwo main use cases it's been developed for: 1)Convert current website into wordpress without the hassle it entails (paying for the service or the time sucking DIY option). Usually to get access to plugins, DIY maintenance and all that good stuff.\n\n2)Workflow tool for developers & designers. It's been an internal dev tool at a wordpress agency to save time in delivering projects. It's just quicker and simpler to develop a static website than integrate WP into the workflow from the beginning.\n\nP.S. Also a ton easier and cheaper to hire people with good front-end dev\/design skills than also requiring sufficient WP expertise.\n\nSo if you have a website that you'd like to convert into a wordpress theme - Now it's stupid simple to do it. Looking forward to some brutal feedback (don't worry about offending us, we're grown up nerds heheh). Here's the url again: [http:\/\/htmltowordpress.io](http:\/\/htmltowordpress.io)\n\n<\/comment> The preview functionality is pretty mind blowing!<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13},"id":10614809},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Robby's night. Lesson on perseverence - \n\nRobby's Night
At the prodding of my friends, I am writing this story. My name is Mildred Hondorf. I am a former elementary school music teacher from Des Moines , Iowa . I've always supplemented my income by teaching piano lessons-something I've done for over 30 years. Over the years I found that children have many levels of musical ability. I've never had the pleasure of having a prodigy though I have taught some talented students.
However I've also had my share of what I call \"musically challenged\" pupils. One such student was Robby. Robby was 11 years old when his mother (a single Mom) dropped him off for his first piano lesson. I prefer that students (especially boys!) begin at an earlier age, which I explained to Robby.
But Robby said that it had always been his mother's dream to hear him play the piano. So I took him as a student. Well, Robby began with his piano lessons and from the beginning I thought it was a hopeless endeavor. As much as Robby tried, he lacked the sense of tone and basic rhythm needed to excel. But he dutifully reviewed his scales and some elementary pieces that I require all my students to learn.
Over the months he tried and tried while I listened and cringed and tried to encourage him. At the end of each weekly lesson he'd always say, \"My mom's going to hear me play someday.\" But it seemed hopeless. He just did not have any inborn ability. I only knew his mother from a distance as she dropped Robby off or waited in her aged car to pick him up. She always waved and smiled but never stopped in.
Then one day Robby stopped coming to our lessons.
I thought about calling him but assumed because of his lack of ability, that he had decided to pursue something else. I also was glad that he stopped coming. He was a bad advertisement for my teaching!
Several weeks later I mailed to the student's homes a flyer on the upcoming recital. To my surprise Robby (who received a flyer) asked me if he could be in the recital. I told him that the recital was for current pupils and because he had dropped out he really did not qualify. He said that his mother had been sick and unable to take him to piano lessons but he was still practicing \"Miss Hondorf I've just got to play!\" he insisted.
 I don't know what led me to allow him to play in the recital. Maybe it was his persistence or maybe it was something inside of me saying that it would be all right. The night for the recital came. The high school gymnasium was packed with parents, friends and relatives. I put Robby up last in the program before I was to come up and thank all the students and play a finishing piece. I thought that any damage he would do would come at the end of the program and I could always salvage his poor performance through my \"curtain closer.\"
Well, the recital went off without a hitch. The students had been practicing and it showed. Then Robby came up on stage. His clothes were wrinkled and his hair looked like he'd run an eggbeater through it. \"Why didn't he dress up like the other students?\" I thought. \"Why didn't his mother at least make him comb his hair for this special night?\"
Robby pulled out the piano bench and he began. I was surprised when he announced that he had chosen Mozart's Concerto #21 in C Major. I was not prepared for what I heard next. His fingers were light on the keys, they even danced nimbly on the ivories. He went from pianissimo to fortissimo. >From allegro to virtuoso. His suspended chords that Mozart demands were magnificent! Never had I heard Mozart played so well by people his age. After six and a half minutes he ended in a grand crescendo and everyone was on their feet in wild applause. Overcome and in tears I ran up on stage and put my arms around Robby in joy. \"I've never heard you play like that Robby! How'd you do it? \" Through the microphone Robby explained: \"Well Miss Hondorf . . .. Remember I told you my Mom was sick? Well, actually she had cancer and passed away this morning And well . . She was born deaf so tonight was the first time she ever heard me play. I wanted to make it special.\"
There wasn't a dry eye in the house that evening. As the people from Social Services led Robby from the stage to be placed into foster care, noticed that even their eyes were red and puffy and I thought to myself how much richer my life had been for taking Robby as my pupil.
No, I've never had a prodigy but that night I became a prodigy. . . Of Robby's. He was the teacher and I was the pupil for it is he that taught me the meaning of perseverance and love and believing in yourself and maybe even taking a chance in someone and you don't know why. \n Permalinks:\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/comment> Wow! Thats a great story. Thank you for sharing.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":57,"dup_dump_count":20,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":2,"2017-34":2,"2017-26":1,"2018-26":1,"2024-30":5,"2024-26":5,"2024-22":4,"2024-10":5,"2017-13":8,"2015-18":3,"2015-11":3,"2015-06":3,"2014-10":3,"2013-48":3,"2013-20":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Zuck to Obama: NSA Spying Is Bad for Business -  http:\/\/www.inc.com\/associated-press\/facebook-google-netflix-meet-with-obama.html\n\n Here's the actual post from Zuck:\n\nMark Zuckerberg March 13\n\nAs the world becomes more complex and governments everywhere struggle, trust in the internet is more important today than ever.\n\nThe internet is our shared space. It helps us connect. It spreads opportunity. It enables us to learn. It gives us a voice. It makes us stronger and safer together.\n\nTo keep the internet strong, we need to keep it secure. That's why at Facebook we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure. We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people's services.\n\nThe internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world.\n\nThis is why I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government.\n\nThe US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst.\n\nI've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.\n\nSo it's up to us -- all of us -- to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I'm committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.\n\n[https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/zuck](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/zuck)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":34,"dup_dump_count":4,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":6,"2015-18":7,"2015-11":7,"2015-06":7,"unknown":6}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"A 2019 Guide to Human Pose Estimation with Deep Learning -  https:\/\/blog.nanonets.com\/human-pose-estimation-2d-guide\/  Human Pose estimation is an important problem that has enjoyed the attention of the Computer Vision community for the past few decades and is a crucial step towards understanding people in images and videos. This post covers the basics of Human Pose Estimation (2D) and reviews the literature on this topic.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-26":1,"unknown":11}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"CivicGraph \u2013 A versioning data store for time-variant graph data -  https:\/\/github.com\/CivicGraph\/CivicGraph  CivicGraph is a versioned-graph data store - it retains all changes that its data (vertices and edges) have gone through to reach their current state. It supports point-in-time graph traversals, letting the user query any past state of the graph just as easily as the present.\n\nIt is a Foxx Microservice for ArangoDB that features VCS-like semantics in many parts of its interface, and is backed by a transactional event tracker. It is currently being developed and tested on ArangoDB v3.5, with support for v3.6 in the pipeline.\n\nCivicGraph is a potential fit for scenarios where data is best represented as a network of vertices and edges (i.e., a graph) having the following characteristics:\n\n    \n    \n      1. Both vertices and edges can hold properties in the form of attribute\/value pairs (equivalent to JSON objects).\n      2. Documents (vertices\/edges) mutate within their lifespan (both in their individual attributes\/values and in their relations with each other).\n      3. Past states of documents are as important as their present, necessitating retention and queryability of their change history.\n    \n\nIts API is split into 3 top-level categories:\n\n### Document __Create __\\- Create single \/multiple documents (vertices\/edges). __Replace __\\- Replace entire single \/multiple documents with new content. __Delete __\\- Delete single \/multiple documents. __Update __\\- Add \/Update specific fields in single\/multiple documents. __(Planned) Explicit Commits __\\- Commit a document 's changes separately, after it has been written to DB via other means (AQL \/ Core REST API \/ Client). __(Planned) CQRS \/ES Operation Mode __\\- Async implicit commits.\n\n### Event __Log __\\- Fetch a log of events (commits) for a given path pattern (path determines scope of documents to pick). The log can be optionally grouped \/sorted\/sliced within a specified time interval. __Diff __\\- Fetch a list of forward or reverse commands (diffs) between commits for specified documents. __(Planned) Branch \/Tag __\\- Create parallel versions of history, branching off from a specific event point of the main timeline. Also, tag specific points in branch+time for convenient future reference. __(Planned) Materialization __\\- Point-in-time checkouts.\n\n### History __Show __\\- Fetch a set of documents, optionally grouped \/sorted\/sliced, that match a given path pattern, at a given point in time. __Filter __\\- In addition to a path pattern like in 'Show', apply an expression-based, simple\/compound post-filter on the retrieved documents. __Traverse __\\- A point-in-time traversal (walk) of a past version of the graph, with the option to apply additional post-filters to the result.\n\nI hope some of you may find this a useful service to address several types of data modelling challenges pertaining to retention and querying of historical graph data.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":39,"dup_dump_count":27,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-40":1,"2023-23":2,"2023-14":1,"2022-49":2,"2022-40":2,"2022-33":1,"2022-27":2,"2022-21":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-49":2,"2021-43":2,"2021-39":2,"2021-25":2,"2021-21":3,"2021-17":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":1,"2023-50":1,"2024-22":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Obama-Biden Plan - Ehtics Agenda [2007] -  http:\/\/change.gov\/agenda\/ethics_agenda\/\n\n Especially this part:\n\n _Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process. \"_<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":41,"dup_dump_count":7,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":9,"2015-18":7,"2015-11":4,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":8,"2013-48":6,"2013-20":3,"unknown":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Google Drive - Privacy? -  http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/dqGgk.png\n\n Post a link next time, not a conveniently truncated image:\n\n\n\n _Your Content in our Services\n\nSome of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.\n\nWhen you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.\n\nYou can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you._\n\nApps have different TOS: <\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16,"dup_dump_count":5,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-11":1,"2014-10":2,"2013-48":2,"2013-20":3,"2015-18":1,"unknown":6}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Nginx v1.11.8 Released -  https:\/\/nginx.org\/en\/CHANGES#1.11.8  \n        *) Feature: the \"absolute_redirect\" directive.\n    \n        *) Feature: the \"escape\" parameter of the \"log_format\" directive.\n    \n        *) Feature: client SSL certificates verification in the stream module.\n    \n        *) Feature: the \"ssl_session_ticket_key\" directive supports AES256\n           encryption of TLS session tickets when used with 80-byte keys.\n    \n        *) Feature: vim-commentary support in vim scripts.\n           Thanks to Armin Grodon.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: recursion when evaluating variables was not limited.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: in the ngx_stream_ssl_preread_module.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: if a server in an upstream in the stream module failed, it\n           was considered alive only when a test connection sent to it after\n           fail_timeout was closed; now a successfully established connection is\n           enough.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: nginx\/Windows could not be built with 64-bit Visual Studio.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: nginx\/Windows could not be built with OpenSSL 1.1.0.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-22":1,"unknown":10}},"id":13268279},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"AAAS site EurekAlert user data compromised, taken offline -  http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/offline.html  No-one is safe these days it seems. The present message, for posterity, minus the specific contact info:\n\n\\<\/comment><\/comment>-----\n\nSeptember 13, 2016 \u2013 10:10 p.m. EDT\n\nDear EurekAlert! Registrants:\n\nThe EurekAlert! website has been taken offline as AAAS works diligently to address a serious security breach.\n\nWe are taking this step out of an abundance of caution. The integrity of content on our website is of the utmost concern to us. On September 11, we were notified of a potential breach to our system. An investigation revealed that our website had experienced an aggressive attack on September 9 that compromised usernames and passwords. As we were working to implement a secure password-reset protocol for all registrants, the unknown hacker publicly released an embargoed EurekAlert! news release. We then decided to bring the site down immediately, to protect other embargoed content.\n\nPlease be assured that financial information from subscribing institutions is not stored on the EurekAlert! website and therefore remained secure. Registrants' usernames and passwords were compromised, however.\n\nWe deeply regret the inconvenience that this security breach and the related site outage may cause reporters and public information officers. We will bring the site back online as soon as we can ensure that vulnerabilities have been eliminated. Please email the EurekAlert! team, or contact me directly with any questions or concerns.\n\nGinger Pinholster Chief Communications Officer and Director, Office of Public Programs American Association for the Advancement of Science\n\n\\<\/comment><\/comment>-----<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12},"id":12496189},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories -  https:\/\/www.skeptic.com\/reading_room\/michael-shermer-on-why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories\/  \"In the mid 1980's I was asked by an american legal institution known as the Christic Legal Institute to compile a comic book that would detail the murky history of the C.I.A., from the end of the second world war, to the present day. Covering such things as the heroin smuggling during the Vietnam war, the cocaine smuggling during the war in Central America, the Kennedy assasination and other highlights.\n\nWhat I learned during the frankly horrifying research that I had to slog through in order to accomplish this, was that yes, there is a conspiracy, in fact there are a great number of conspiracies that are all tripping each other up. And all of those conspiracies are run by paranoid fantasists, and ham fisted clowns. If you are on a list targeted by the C.I.A., you really have nothing to worry about. If however you have a name similar to someone on a list targeted by the C.I.A., then you are dead.\n\nThe main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening.\n\nNobody is in control.\n\nThe world is rudderless...\"\n\n\\-- Alan Moore\n\n<\/comment> Well, that's just what they would want you to think, isn't it?<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":23877123},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Who could kill Microsoft and Google? -  http:\/\/www.ricmerrifield.com\/2010\/12\/could-rovio-or-ccp-kill-microsoft-or-google\/ When you think about who might topple a software giant like a Microsoft or a Google, you might be inclined to think of Goliath's like, well Google and Microsoft.  The same is true of any industry, you probably think of a company of similar size or larger as being the type of company that would win a battle, or a war.
Actual battles and wars end up being an interesting analogy.  If you think if big battles like World War I and World War II, that's exactly what happened \u2013 giants fighting giants from big, knowable centralized points of command.  But there are some other wars that have been fought where the little guy won (or hasn't lost in the case of one ongoing war) and there's a common element in all of them.  No centralized physical location to \"take out\" to win.  When everything is dispersed and there isn't any one thing to take out, it's hard to really know how big or how small opposing force is, and they can be substantially more agile.  In this situation, an organization of any size can pose a major threat to an enormous organization.  The war on terror is an ongoing war that fits this profile \u2013 it's virtually impossible to know how big or small the opposition is, or where they are at any given time, so it's very hard to be ready for an attack from them.  Viet Nam was a tough one for the US to really stand a chance in because it was in unfamiliar territory and there was no central location to take out to declare victory.  One could even make the same argument (at a high level) for why the British lost the American revolution.
So if you don't know who Rovio or CCP are, I have already made significant progress on the path of making my point.
Rovio is a tiny software company out of Finland that makes a game called Angry Birds.  Angry Birds is one of those products\/games that sounds so strange and so not-fun, it is a little amazing to me that it ever even became a game, but as someone who has lost many hours of my life to that game, I have to say, it's a lot of fun and incredibly addictive. As an aside, the TV show Spongebob Square Pants falls into the same category \u2013 I would have loved to have been in the room when that show got pitched to see what caused the network to green light that nutty idea.  It is a global phenomenon, and the only thing that puzzles me is that the company hasn't made more money from it, though I expect that will change soon.  But it's a tiny little company of fewer than 20 people based in Helsinki and they made they #1 most downloaded iPhone application last year.  Number one in the world.  Not Microsoft, not Google, not Oracle or any other software giant you can name.  Little tiny Rovio.
On to CCP.
Still in cold Northern European countries, let's move over to Iceland, a tiny country of about 300,000 people.  How likely are they to have a company that creates some of the most popular software in the world?  Well, that's CCP.  Now they are bigger than Rovio, but their software is a LOT more sophisticated than Angry Birds, but in their own category (I am sure they will come up with a better category name, but for now it's MMORPG), they are huge and growing.  Their Eve Online game boasts over 300,000 monthly subscribers (I realize an improbable coincidence with the population of Iceland) and they say their next game, which won't cannibalize Eve customers, is going to blow people's minds.  I visited the CCP offices in November and I haven't been so impressed by a company, their culture, their energy, and their products in a very long time.  And I meet with a lot of companies.
The point is that especially now that the use of the internet is starting to mature, a company of any size can become a global phenomenon, though that's not huge news.  The bigger news that I haven't heard a lot of people talking about, is that when people think about who the Goliath's like Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Amazon, VM Ware, etc. compete against, the number of \"David's\" out there are becoming a pretty big foe in their own right, and the kind of warfare the Goliath's are going to have to wage is very different from traditional World War I kinds of battles.  Lots of little (comparably) tiny rivals that are very agile.  Sure it will make sense to buy some of them up, but that won't change the fact that the kinds of battles and wars the Goliath's are in are different and they need to think that through.
So the answer to the question of whether Rovio or CCP will kill Microsoft or Google?  It's the wrong question.  It's the aggregation of all of the little CCPs and Rovios of the world that represent the new face of competition for the giants.  Not centralized, not entirely knowable, dispersed all over the world, and very agile.
While this is true in the big software companies, because software is every where \u2013 I think this type of changing battlefield will touch most industries.
-Ric at rethinkbook dot com  This article is kind of silly. The point he's making is that software ISV's are going to kill big platform players. That makes no sense. Why doesn't he say that Rovio will Apple? Oh that's because their entire business model is built on an Apple framework. Eve runs on Windows PCs using DirectX libraries.\n\nRovio competes against other game companies for your mobile gamin' dollars. CCP competes against Blizzard for your MMO dollars. And none of the above work on competing with the frameworks they build on top of.\n\n<\/comment> But I thought Microsoft was already dead ;-) \n\n Thanks for bringing that to my attention.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":77,"dup_dump_count":64,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-06":2,"2022-49":2,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-17":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-10":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":2,"2017-26":2,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2015-14":1,"2014-52":1,"2014-49":2,"2014-42":2,"2014-41":2,"2014-35":1,"2014-23":2,"2014-15":2,"2023-23":1,"2024-10":2,"2017-13":1,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":2,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":1}},"id":2027102},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"InfoWorks.io -  https:\/\/www.infoworks.io  Infoworks eliminates big data complexity by automating data engineering through the company's Autonomous Data Engine, which has been adopted by some of the largest enterprises in the world. Using a code-free environment, Infoworks allows organizations to quickly create and manage data use cases from source to consumption. Customers deploy projects to production within days, dramatically increasing analytics agility and time to value.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-26":1,"unknown":9}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Show HN: The Bus Stop Bus -  https:\/\/www.stavros.io\/posts\/bus-stop-bus\/  So, I've been using my [http:\/\/blog.jgc.org\/2012\/03\/ambient-bus-arrival- monitor-from...](http:\/\/blog.jgc.org\/2012\/03\/ambient-bus-arrival-monitor-from- hacked.html) for well over 4 years and it's proved to be really useful. Today, I would likely follow Stavros' lead and use the ESP8266 since it's a nice module and OLED displays are cool.\n\nWhat I learnt from the project was that the _most important_ part was the model bus. This made it acceptable for my SO to have the thing in the house and she's the one that uses it a lot more than me.\n\nI've built other \"IoT\" things around the house (lots of Amazon Dash buttons that don't do what they were intended for and other stuff) and the packaging matters a lot. It makes the things seem less like technology and more like part of the environment.\n\nSince I wrote that blog post TfL have created a proper API and it has loads of goodies in it: [https:\/\/api.tfl.gov.uk\/](https:\/\/api.tfl.gov.uk\/)\n\n Perhaps unsurprisingly, I had the same reaction from my SO. She _loves_ this bus, to my dismay, because my reaction is \"it took me countless hours to build a sensor and automation network for the house so it can all be centrally controlled, and you like a two-hour bus build?\"\n\nIt seems that people like things by how useful they are for them, not by how cool they were to build, which is frustrating but not surprising.\n\nThe packaging is why I got a 3D printer and am learning CAD. I want to create little stylish boxes for my sensors, so they look more like devices and less like bombs.\n\n Well, the buses do one thing well. Massive sensor\/automation networks tend to be a pain to use for any 'normal' person but fun for nerds.\n\n That's true, although the motion-activated lights work well enough. I think it's just the utility for her, because she can just glance at the bus and know when she needs to leave, when it's not that big a hassle to flick the switch when you walk into a room.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> Wow, an excellent post! I'm really motivated now to finish my own project, which is a little bit more bulky (a lot more bulky: An old 7\" netbook which has been gutted and I made a wooden frame and box to hold it and put it on the wall). I'm still thinking of what to do with it, but I'd like it to be sort of a hub of info, with time, weather, news, HN, bus, etc., which me and other people in the house can use. I'd also like to implement a webcam feature which would turn off the display unless there is someone near the device moving.\n\n That's a great idea! You should add a distance sensor so it only activates when someone comes within a meter or so of it.\n\nIf you have temperature\/motion\/light\/etc sensors around the house, you could use those, or maybe show the HomeAssistant dashboard on it.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> I've done something similar myself. I published everything to github awhile back: [https:\/\/github.com\/chrisgillis\/nextbusclock](https:\/\/github.com\/chrisgillis\/nextbusclock)\n\n<\/comment> The takeaway for me is that it costs roughly $15-20 of hardware parts to have a stand-alone status indicator. That's pretty cheap, but not \"no brainer\" cheap.\n\nI start asking myself what are the status indicators we really need? That people would pay $50 for?\n\n This particular build cost, hmm, $6, plus $3 for the bus (I'm assuming you have the three wires already).\n\n Ah, yes. I double counted the chip and the board for some reason.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> Great build!\n\nGuess this is a pretty common need! My take based on a priority sign: [https:\/\/github.com\/Seed-Up\/BusSign](https:\/\/github.com\/Seed-Up\/BusSign)\n\n<\/comment> Is there any alternative to wired USB power for these kinds of projects? Are there any teeny wifi boards that can be powered for long periods by a AAA, 9V, or button cell?\n\n(IoT newb)\n\n \"Long periods\" \"wifi\" and AAA, pick two. Wifi is too power-hungry for batteries, unfortunately. You'd probably get a day or two of continuous operation on a biggish battery, I'm guessing.\n\n You could probably use Zigbee for something like this, although I don't know whether there are any v.small zigbee capable arduino interfaces. Running the display is going to take some power too, unless you can find a small e-ink option.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> As a freerangekids.com parent, my kids will love this! Gonna do it asap. If anything it should get them thinking about going out.\n\n<\/comment> The original NextBus output device prototype was a pyramid which lit up at the top when a bus was arriving.\n\n<\/comment> > despite literally having discovered electricity.\n\nBraggart. Fat lot of good it did you, until the Italians came up with batteries.\n\n;-)\n\n Can you make small pieces of paper stick to a battery? No. Can you make them stick to a balloon if you rub it on your sweater? Yes. Greece - Italy 1-0.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":1,"unknown":9}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Teenagers and Poor Business Sense -  http:\/\/joshpearce.posterous.com\/children-have-bad-business-sense\n\n Can I ask a question? I hope that this doesn't come across as just another self obsessed post on the internet, but why am I different from the norm?\n\nI am 18 and in some ways I do match the targets the author puts forward, but no one in this environment taught this to me. Instead, I had to go out and find people I could learn from, My parents take me to be a failure, because I want to get the job done in as perfect a manner as possible and I constantly think about making things or doing something better. It takes me longer to do stuff and I fall down more than anyone else I know of, but I like it.\n\nMy life would have been definitely easier if I could tow the line, but I can't do it. I just know that my integrity is precious to me and there is nothing in the world I would sell it out for. I admit it's not a smart thing to do, but at least when I am dying I won't have any regrets.\n\nThe interesting question is why am I so different? I am not special or anything at all. So, what taught me such stuff?\n\n That's a tough question to answer without knowing you, your family, and your history very well. I spend a lot of time thinking about questions exactly like this, because I make the assumption that if I know what motivated me to take pride in my work, I can apply those same motivations to others.\n\nThis is where I think the author is dead wrong. How the hell is a teenager supposed to \"engage the economy at an early age.\" Seriously? The economy is a collection of principles at work, but at very large scale, and by consequence, in accessible to anyone without strong foundational understanding of the concepts. How is a teenager supposed to relate to that? I think the author \"gets it\", but reaches the wrong conclusion.\n\nEarly in the piece, he points out that the industrial revolution transitioned our nation from one of rugged independence to monotonous conformity. Ok, so by his assumption we've been beaten in to submission. We are one of many. A worker bee with no self-importance beyond accomplishing the specific tasks we are assigned. Before you can take pride in your work, you have to take pride in yourself. You have to learn the basics of achievement and self-reward. In other words, you have to know what it feels like to be internally happy about your accomplishments.\n\nFor me, this came in two forms: fair work and pay at a relatively early age, and playing an instrument in the school band program.\n\nAlthough I have since abandoned religion, I would not trade my childhood experience at a church for anything in the world. Beginning at the age of around 10 years old, my sister and I began helping my mother clean our church. It was completely optional, but our alternative was sitting around bored out of our minds waiting on my mother to finish her work. So we both decided to participate pretty much by default. Our work was always simple. We'd follow my mom around doing simple tasks like replacing trash can liners and cleaning glass. She worked with all the dangerous chemicals and kept a close eye on us to make sure we were safe and doing a good job. This was a big church, and we were distracted children, so the task would take us somewhere in the area of 3-4 hours. My mom gave us each $20, which was pretty good pay for the early to mid-eighties. The $20 was important to us, but we learned something more powerful. Something by example. My mom took pride in her work, and we followed her very closely. If something wasn't right, my mom didn't yell at us, she would show a little disappointment, and because of our close relationship, we wanted our mom to be happy. We'd fix it just to see her smile. Powerful lessons: A) You learn to be happy by making those close to you happy. If you aren't close to anyone, your chances of finding happiness are less. B) Reward comes in many forms, not all of which are monetary.\n\nI started in band in the 7th grade, but it took until some time in the 9th grade for me to really appreciate it deeply and begin to recognize the value it would have in the general scope of my life. In the early years, I learned how good it felt to master my instrument. Later, as I moved in to marching band, I learned how awesome it felt to work together in a group of 200+ people to simultaneously play incredible music AND create beautiful forms on the field. The applause at the end was the icing on the cake, but the goosebumps usually came during the performance when you realize you just nailed a difficult passage of music, or your lines were dressed so perfectly they look like corn rows. This gratification is _internal_ , not external, and it's the single greatest motivator in my life. Powerful lessons: Mastery is a great source of empowerment and confidence. Abandoning arts in our schools is a _terrible_ mistake. Learning self-motivation is one of the single greatest lessons you should take away from primary school.\n\nAll of this starts with a close relationship with your children. The amount of influence you have in your child's life is well established by an early age (5-7 by my experience). If you haven't established a strong influence by that point, you're facing an uphill climb. Rather than asking your teenager to engage in the economy, or some other abstract externalized mechanism, begin at the beginning. The economy is the result, not the genesis. Teach your children the internal gratification of accomplishment. Don't think that everything requires a reward. Mastery shouldn't be limited to video games. The ability to do something \u2014 anything! \u2014 and be proud of it is a key factor that will deliver success in business and in life.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> When I was roughly 12, I was shoveling snow for my mom and she told me what it meant to have a strong work ethic. She said it was part of being Catholic. At the time, that was important to me, so the having a strong work ethic became part of what I wanted to be. It really stuck. It wasn't entrepreneurial; just about taking pride in doing things well.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":9,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-18":2,"2017-13":1,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":1,"2024-22":1,"unknown":2}},"id":1561777},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Page Cache Attacks -  https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1901.01161  Abstract:\n\nWe present a new hardware-agnostic side-channel attack that targets one of the most fundamental software caches in modern computer systems: the operating system page cache. The page cache is a pure software cache that contains all disk-backed pages, including program binaries, shared libraries, and other files, and our attacks thus work across cores and CPUs. Our side-channel permits unprivileged monitoring of some memory accesses of other processes, with a spatial resolution of 4KB and a temporal resolution of 2 microseconds on Linux (restricted to 6.7 measurements per second) and 466 nanoseconds on Windows (restricted to 223 measurements per second); this is roughly the same order of magnitude as the current state-of-the-art cache attacks. We systematically analyze our side channel by demonstrating different local attacks, including a sandbox bypassing high-speed covert channel, timed user- interface redressing attacks, and an attack recovering automatically generated temporary passwords. We further show that we can trade off the side channel's hardware agnostic property for remote exploitability. We demonstrate this via a low profile remote covert channel that uses this page-cache side-channel to exfiltrate information from a malicious sender process through innocuous server requests. Finally, we propose mitigations for some of our attacks, which have been acknowledged by operating system vendors and slated for future security patches.\n\n<\/comment> Kernel patch:\n\n[https:\/\/git.kernel.org\/pub\/scm\/linux\/kernel\/git\/torvalds\/lin...](https:\/\/git.kernel.org\/pub\/scm\/linux\/kernel\/git\/torvalds\/linux.git\/commit\/?id=574823bfab82d9d8fa47f422778043fbb4b4f50e)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":18,"dup_dump_count":14,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":2,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":2,"2021-31":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-40":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2024-18":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ask HN: Do you believe hubris to be a problem in present-day science and tech? -   According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris\n\nLaziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.\n\nImpatience: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to.\n\nHubris: The quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about.\n\n(from memories of comp.lang.perl.misc in the late '90s, and a reminder via Google and [http:\/\/threevirtues.com\/](http:\/\/threevirtues.com\/) )\n\n I agree with his train of thought 100%. But I see the three virtues could also be reworded to: 'Economy', 'Vision', 'Courage'.\n\nThanks for the share, I like his way of thinking a lot. :)<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":53,"dup_dump_count":39,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-21":2,"2021-49":2,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":3,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":2,"2020-45":2,"2020-34":2,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":2,"2020-05":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":2,"2019-18":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":2,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2023-40":1,"2024-30":2,"2024-26":1,"2024-22":1,"2024-18":2,"2024-10":1}},"id":13964648},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"In praise of John Ruskin -  https:\/\/www.spiked-online.com\/2019\/09\/06\/in-praise-of-john-ruskin\/  This quote resonates:\n\n'We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.'<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Smart Bookmarks -  http:\/\/raindrop.io\n\n Raindrop makes bookmarks more vivid and functional. Save important pages, articles, video or photo in one click! Organize collection contents and share with friends.\n\nRaindrop saves not just bookmarks but associated content depending on page type. If it's an article, it will be cut and saved with the bookmark. The same applies to video, photo and presentations. So you can organize thematic collections with different content.\n\nCollections can be made public and used in your application or a website using API.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Why I Quit Facebook Today -  http:\/\/goto80.com\/blog\/why-i-quit-facebook-today\n\n horrible font:\n\nWhile there are still many reasons to use Facebook, the list shrinks every day. The question is not IF you are going to quit Facebook, but WHEN. So why not today? Here are some practical reasons why I'm quitting.\n\n* It's not for free. It never was. We used to pay with personal information that they used for \"improved\" advertising. But now we also need to pay with actual money to reach our contacts. If you don't pay, you won't even reach half of your followers. Some people have claimed as few as 15%.\n\n* If someone subscribes to you, there's a big risk that they won't see your posts. Either because of some mysterious Facebook selection, or because you don't pay, or because people can't bother to sift through the spam, or because people just don't care anymore.\n\n* You can't trust the statistics. What does it mean that there are 1 billion accounts on Facebook? Who knows what it means to have \"1999 followers\" or that \"1543 people saw this\" or \"37 people talk about this\". Or if you are an advertiser \u2013 how can you know that actual people (and not bots) have clicked your ad? Well, you can't. You just have to take Facebook's word for it. And why would you do a thing like that?\n\n* You can't rely on Facebook. They introduce features that can have huge consequences to people and organizations \u2013 without even a warning. And if there is a reason to shut down your content, because of algorithms or complaints or legal battles \u2013 they will do it. And you can't complain to customer service, because you are probably not a customer.\n\n* Facebook will disappear fast after its peak. Unlike other companies that try to control both platform and distribution (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc), Facebook relies too much on its users. The main reason for people to use it, is \"my friends use it\". When they start to leave it, Facebook will disappear as fast as it arrived. Time to prepare!\n\n(Instead of Facebook I will be here. Tonight there will be a live streamed gig to celebrate, starting at 19.00 CET)\n\n Great post. Font seems completely aesthetically appropriate.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":14,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-40":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-49":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-40":1,"2018-13":1,"2017-39":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"I wanted to download playboy pics from Facebook page & ended up developing this. -  http:\/\/www.getfbstuff.com\n\n I am no other than a normal human being. Who would sit hours before his notebook; browsing through different sites; trying digging out things around.\n\nCall it to my lousy inquisitive mind which would always come up with this queer notion,\"facebook, why you are so serious about OUR data? How about turning this trade of data-charity over into give-and-take line of work. It's social networking, right?\" Its not wall-street where we trade only with concerned party, not with all.\n\nAnd do you wanna know what drived that queer notion of data privacy? Playboy. Sounds familiar to you? To me too. Seems we are rowing the same raft buddy.\n\nLooking at the same faces of Megan fox and Jessica Alba after every boot up of my PC, one late night before going to bed, I thought of changing the wallpaper. And you know how transient and insatiable the human mind is. especially, when you are looking out for something grungy and grubby, being tired of same old story. Thus, the desire to lit my desktop with holy images of renascenced beauty from Playboy got intensified and Columbus- the me, began his great voyage of exploring fresh apples from eve's garden. Finally, that great journey ended up at playboy. A place virtually better than your girlfriend face and figure: New faces and beauty more redefined.\n\nSo the time has come to trying download a few models' images. Right click. Yup, so far so good. \"Set as desktop background\" yeah! it suits to my pc but...\n\nand that 'but' demanded more. May be, I was tending more towards perfection. You would be surprised to know that I ended up downloading 300 images in search of something new, something better and something different. Yeah, I know that's a great deal of passion, patience and stamina but, I did.\n\nNow, I would like you guys to read the second paragraph once again.\n\nAnd that's when and where the idea of developing an application which not only provides the feature of downloading the picture album from public pages whole at a time but also, which can satisfy the need of ephemeral mind of wanting always \"something new\", sneaked into my mind.\n\nSo, here with great pleasure, I present to you \"getfbstuff\" where hundreds of images are just a click away. And to add more to your surprise, You can not only download images but also, enjoy downloading videos. I am sure your hard- disc has some space reserved for a few epic videos. Why not fill them. And buddy! If you are a lazy bum like me, its a perfect application for you then. Else \"happy leaky-bucket download\".<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":21,"dup_dump_count":20,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-18":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2023-06":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"XP-Pen Artist15.6 IPS Drawing Monitor Pen Display Graphics Digital Tablet -  https:\/\/www.amazon.com.au\/XP-Pen-Artist15-6-Graphics-Battery-free-15-6\/dp\/B077XX26ZS  Functions allow users to sketch, paint, design and edit directly from the tablet screen. Your work function will flow naturally and intuitively. Enjoy the high quality glass design which gives you high precision and prevents dust build up The latest Passive Pen design! Our PN03S stylus technology provides 8192 levels of instant pen pressure sensitivity\u2015Providing you with groundbreaking control and fluidity to expand your creative output. No charging required! 15.6\" 1920x1080 IPS 16:9 Display with 178\u00b0 degree of visual angle delivers life-like colors, greater contrast, sharper, and vivid images..The Artist 15.6 driver can support 4k displays. Now you can enjoy every sharp detail Features USB Type-C input design, easy to plug in and out. Features come with a 11mm thin design, 3 in 1 cable, and a new brightness adjustment button. 6 fully customizable express keys create a highly ergonomic and convenient work platform. The one-click toggle allows you to switch between Pen and Eraser instantly We've adopted the newest F900 High Tech IC, to make lines flow smoother and perform better. Compatible with Windows 10\/8\/7\/Vista, Mac OS version 10.8 or later, and major graphics software such as Photoshop, Painter, Illustrator, Clip Studio, and more<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":19},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Vim 8.0 released -  https:\/\/raw.githubusercontent.com\/vim\/vim\/master\/runtime\/doc\/version8.txt  \"This the first major Vim release in ten years. There are interesting new features, many small improvements and lots of bug fixes.\n\nAmong the new features are:\n\n\\- Asynchronous I\/O support, channels, JSON\n\n\\- Jobs\n\n\\- Timers\n\n\\- Partials, Lambdas and Closures\n\n\\- Packages\n\n\\- New style testing\n\n\\- Viminfo merged by timestamp\n\n\\- GTK+ 3 support\n\n\\- MS-Windows DirectX support\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":28,"dup_dump_count":26,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2023-50":1,"2024-22":1}},"id":12479559},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Teaching Entrepreneurship Gets an Incomplete -  http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702304279904579515953479728072\n\n Article if you hit paywall:\n\nTeaching Entrepreneurship Gets an Incomplete\n\n _Colleges are churning out entrepreneurial-minded students, but there 's no evidence of benefits yet._\n\nBy: Carl Scramm\n\nMany colleges and universities across the country offer courses and programs in \"entrepreneurship.\" Are they worthwhile? Entrepreneurship is apparently an occupational category now, yet when it comes to judging the value of what they teach, its practitioners are flying blind. They and their students could learn a lot from how the medical field evolved.\n\nA century ago, nobody had ever evaluated physicians based on patient outcomes. Then Dr. Ernest Codman proposed in 1914 that Harvard University, where he taught, host an annual conference on morbidity and mortality so that medical innovations could be evaluated by their effectiveness. The suggestion was unwelcome. But Dr. Codman kept meticulous records on his surgical patients and reported his results publicly, calling his method the \"end results theory.\" Harvard dismissed him from the faculty.\n\nIn 1974, Dr. David Eddy of Duke medical school discovered that only a handful of studies supported the widely taught approach to breast-cancer surgery. He then began looking into the empirical basis for many standard treatment methods, and found that much of the course material for medical school lacked reliable evidence, such as results of a controlled clinical study. A decade later, thanks to Dr. Eddy's pioneering research, nearly every therapeutic act\u2014from prescribing drugs to recommending surgery\u2014was subject to scrutiny. Using empirical evidence to predict outcomes is now the standard in modern medicine.\n\nWhere's the Dr. Eddy of entrepreneurship? Thousands of institutions\u2014universities, community colleges, even high schools\u2014offer courses that purport to prepare students for careers as entrepreneurs. Yet there is no employer demand for people trained in the \"art\" of entrepreneurship, nor does the training offer any recognized value in other jobs. Indeed, one can receive a Ph.D. in entrepreneurship even though there is no academic consensus on what works for starting a new business. Not surprisingly, as the number of entrepreneurship teachers grows, the number of new businesses continues to decline.\n\nAt least part of the problem stems from the content of courses, which were invented by business-school professors. The first entrepreneurship course was offered at Babson College in 1967. There are now at least 1,957 full-time professors of entrepreneurship, according to 2014 membership data from the Academy of Management. The teaching approach, cobbled together from strategic- planning and venture-finance insights, is more prescriptive than objective, telling entrepreneurs what they should do instead of teaching business basics. For instance, there is now a narrative about how a new business should begin. Success, it is taught, hinges on writing a business plan. But most of history's exemplary businesses didn't have a plan when they began.\n\nMost guides to entrepreneurship presume new businesses will need venture capital. Yet venture financing is important to a very small percentage of startups. Everyone knows, the textbooks say, that college-aged students are the progenitors of all great startups. (That may explain why it's an undergraduate course.) In reality, the nation's fastest-growing businesses are started by 40-year-olds. Nearly 75% of new entrepreneurs are over 35, according to a 2012 report on entrepreneurial activity by the Kauffman Foundation (an organization I used to run). And while Silicon Valley gurus believe a startup must begin in California, the same Kauffman Foundation report showed that in 2012 there were more startups per capita in Montana, Vermont and Nevada than all other states.\n\nCase studies are commonly accepted as the best way to teach entrepreneurship. Case studies were the preferred teaching method in medicine before Dr. Eddy figured out that you need statistical evidence to test the validity of what's being taught. Teachers of entrepreneurship can cherry pick cases to find examples that conform to their beliefs about how businesses should start. Yet just like in the days before evidence-based medicine, there are no significant data to confirm that graduates of entrepreneurship programs go on to start successful businesses.\n\nIt is time for an evidence-based revolution. Entrepreneurs are the only doctors who can nurse the economy back to health, creating jobs and wealth. That makes what future business builders are taught all the more important\u2014and right now it isn't clear that the student entrepreneur or society is getting a good return on investment.\n\n _Mr. Schramm is University Professor at Syracuse University._<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":33},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Errors in open-source projects -  http:\/\/software.intel.com\/en-us\/articles\/90-errors-in-open-source-projects\/\n\n There are actually 91 errors described in the article, but number 90 looks nicer in the title. The article is intended for C\/C++ programmers, but developers working with other languages may also find it interesting.\n\nThe materials collected in this article will be useful for authors of articles, books and blogs. Examples of errors can be used to demonstrate advantages of different programming styles \u2013 for instance, why you should not try to make your code shorter by writing long expressions.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":62,"dup_dump_count":7,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":8,"2015-18":9,"2015-11":8,"2015-06":9,"2014-10":8,"2013-48":8,"2013-20":8,"unknown":3}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Whonix: A High Security Method of Surfing the Internet -  https:\/\/www.whonix.org\/  Whonix is a desktop operating system designed for advanced security and privacy. Whonix mitigates the threat of common attack vectors while maintaining usability. Online anonymity is realized via fail-safe, automatic, and desktop-wide use of the Tor network. A heavily reconfigured Debian base is run inside multiple virtual machines, providing a substantial layer of protection from malware and IP address leaks. Commonly used applications are pre-installed and safely pre-configured for immediate use. The user is not jeopardized by installing additional applications or personalizing the desktop. Whonix is under active development and is the only operating system designed to be run inside a VM and paired with Tor.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":9,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":2,"2018-34":2,"2018-26":3,"2019-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Idiot's Advantage -  http:\/\/www.slicingpie.com\/the-idiots-advantage\/ I used to own a small company in Kansas that, among other things, sold North Face jackets to ski teams and groups of mountain climbers. I liked the product and enjoyed selling it. It was cool. One day I called them up to place an order only to be informed that my account was no longer active. I was being terminated as a reseller. There was a local retailer in town that had been with them longer so they cut me off.
Five minutes later I got a call from a customer wanting to place a fairly sizable order. \"No problem,\" I told them having no idea how to fulfill the order.
My search for an alternative supplier was fruitless. Patagonia? No. Columbia? No.
I didn't have a retail storefront, I didn't have an established catalog and the Web didn't yet exist. I was a young, inexperienced college student and I was turned down by pretty much every supplier I called. So, when my client called to add a few more pieces to the order I again said, \"sure, no problem.\" Back in Kansas, when I was passing out promises to deliver outerwear to my customers I had no idea what it took to design a new clothing product, let alone how to manufacturer it. So, armed with a total lack of understanding, I opened the Want Ads to see if I could find a used sewing machine (not that I knew how to actually use one).
Soon I found a truckload of equipment from a retired tailor, I found a woman who could sew, I found several bolts of fleece material and I was given plenty of zippers, grommets and those little spring-loaded bungee-chord gripper things (I still don't know what they were called). I was now in the outdoor clothing manufacturing business. It took less than a week and I had no problem filling my orders. This is the kind of thing you can accomplish when you have no idea what you're doing. It was easy, but if I had known how difficult it should have been, I never would have tried it.  I used to own a small company in Kansas that, among other things, sold North Face jackets to ski teams and groups of mountain climbers. I liked the product and enjoyed selling it. It was cool. One day I called them up to place an order only to be informed that my account was no longer active. I was being terminated as a reseller. There was a local retailer in town that had been with them longer so they cut me off.\n\nFive minutes later I got a call from a customer wanting to place a fairly sizable order. \"No problem,\" I told them having no idea how to fulfill the order.\n\nMy search for an alternative supplier was fruitless. Patagonia? No. Columbia? No.\n\nI didn't have a retail storefront, I didn't have an established catalog and the Web didn't yet exist. I was a young, inexperienced college student and I was turned down by pretty much every supplier I called. So, when my client called to add a few more pieces to the order I again said, \"sure, no problem.\" Intellectual Atrocities\n\nI've heard a definition of an entrepreneur as someone who moves forward regardless of knowledge or resources. It provides a nice contrast to the corporation that can't move forward regardless of their deep pockets and vast amounts of knowledge and research.\n\nI've held several senior-level marketing positions in my life that put me in charge of product development. I found myself doing market research studies, hiring engineers, patent attorneys, artists and taking trips to China. Of course, I am a team player, so I had to get the input from the other managers, the bosses, the CEOs, CFOs and C-who-knows before I could move forward on a decision. We planned product cycles over a year in advance and organized a full-spectrum of marketing activities to help launch them. It was mind- numbing. I would find myself calculating the dollars per hour that it cost the company for my colleges and me to sit in meetings discussing the product ad nauseam making steps forward that were so small that to attempt to measure them would be futile. Painful.\n\nSomehow we would manage to push a product out the door. Sometimes it would fall on its face and we would be back to the drawing board. Other times it would take flight and surprise us all. Never, however, did it actually perform as expected. The Bliss of Ignorance\n\nBack in Kansas, when I was passing out promises to deliver outerwear to my customers I had no idea what it took to design a new clothing product, let alone how to manufacturer it. So, armed with a total lack of understanding, I opened the Want Ads to see if I could find a used sewing machine (not that I knew how to actually use one).\n\nSoon I found a truckload of equipment from a retired tailor, I found a woman who could sew, I found several bolts of fleece material and I was given plenty of zippers, grommets and those little spring-loaded bungee-chord gripper things (I still don't know what they were called). I was now in the outdoor clothing manufacturing business. It took less than a week and I had no problem filling my orders. This is the kind of thing you can accomplish when you have no idea what you're doing. It was easy, but if I had known how difficult it should have been, I never would have tried it.\n\nProbably the most common question I hear investors ask entrepreneurs is, \"if this idea\/product\/service is so great, why won't the big guys enter the market?\" After all, they conclude, big companies have plenty of market experience, plenty of cash and an army of executives with no shortage of brainpower.\n\nThis is exactly the problem. Years of experience has taught us how hard it will be. We are too smart to try. When it comes to action, the idiots have the advantage.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":10,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-26":1,"2024-18":1,"2017-13":1,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Keeping spam off the Chrome Web Store -  https:\/\/blog.chromium.org\/2020\/04\/keeping-spam-off-chrome-web-store.html  Here's the text from the post:\n\n\\<\/comment>-----\n\nSince the introduction of the Chrome Web Store in 2011, it has become the largest catalog of browser extensions with over 200,000 available to all of our users. This has helped millions of users to customize their browsing experience on Chrome in ways we could have never imagined, from niche utilities to companies building businesses around the platform's capabilities.\n\nIn response, our abuse systems and review teams have been hard at work ensuring that the Chrome Web Store is free from abuse, as many of our developers have noticed an increase in review times lately. However, the increase in adoption of the extension platform has also attracted spammers and fraudsters introducing low-quality and misleading extensions in an attempt to deceive and trick our users into installing them to make a quick profit. We want to ensure that the path of a user discovering an extension from the Chrome Web Store is clear and informative and not muddled with copycats, misleading functionalities or fake reviews and ratings. Therefore, in order to keep the quality of our inventory high and help users find what they want, we're introducing some updates to our spam policy:\n\n\\- Developers or their affiliates should not publish multiple extensions that provide duplicate experiences or functionality on the Chrome Web Store. Extensions should not have misleading, improperly formatted, non-descriptive, irrelevant, excessive, or inappropriate metadata, including but not limited to the extension's description, developer name, title, icon, screenshots, and promotional images. Developers must provide a clear and well-written description. Unattributed or anonymous user testimonials in the app's description are also not allowed.\n\n\\- Developers must not attempt to manipulate the placement of any extensions in the Chrome Web Store. This includes, but is not limited to, inflating product ratings, reviews, or install counts by illegitimate means, such as fraudulent or incentivized downloads, reviews and ratings.\n\n\\- Extensions with a single purpose of installing or launching another app, theme, webpage, or extension are not allowed.\n\n\\- Extensions that abuse, or are associated with the abuse of, notifications by sending spam, ads, promotions, phishing attempts, or unwanted messages that harm the user's browsing experience are not allowed. Extensions that send messages on behalf of the user without giving the user the ability to confirm the content and intended recipients are also not allowed.\n\nThe new policy can be found in our updated Developer Program Policies. Developers must comply with this policy by August 27th 2020. After that date, extensions that violate the updated policy may be taken down and disabled. You can learn more about these changes and how they may apply to you in our Spam policy FAQ.\n\n\\<\/comment>-----\n\nAs an extension author, I have been struggling a lot with the Chrome Web Store lately. The review times are measured in days and the rejection notices are designed to frustrate you. I have one extension that I have been unable to update for the past 2 months, they keep rejecting it for violating their \"Spam and Placement in the Store\" policies. The same extension is published on the Mozilla Add-On and Opera Add-On sites without a hitch.\n\nWith the Chrome Web Store in this dismal state and Manifest v3 on the horizon, I'm afraid I will have to stop distributing my extensions on the Chrome Web Store.\n\n I was struggling a while ago, too. A couple of Google searches later and I found the issue. I updated twice in the last few weeks -- they were published within 5 minutes.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16,"dup_dump_count":14,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-24":1,"2023-50":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"HSA Foundation -  http:\/\/hsafoundation.com\/  Thus the great Wheel of Reincarnation turns.\n\nwheel of reincarnation\n\n[coined in a paper by T.H. Myer and I.E. Sutherland On the Design of Display Processors, Comm. ACM, Vol. 11, no. 6, June 1968)] Term used to refer to a well-known effect whereby function in a computing system family is migrated out to special-purpose peripheral hardware for speed, then the peripheral evolves toward more computing power as it does its job, then somebody notices that it is inefficient to support two asymmetrical processors in the architecture and folds the function back into the main CPU, at which point the cycle begins again.\n\nSeveral iterations of this cycle have been observed in graphics-processor design, and at least one or two in communications and floating-point processors. Also known as the Wheel of Life, the Wheel of Samsara, and other variations of the basic Hindu\/Buddhist theological idea.\n\n[http:\/\/www.retrologic.com\/jargon\/W\/wheel-of- reincarnation.ht...](http:\/\/www.retrologic.com\/jargon\/W\/wheel-of- reincarnation.html)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":39,"dup_dump_count":10,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-22":1,"2024-18":1,"2017-13":4,"2015-18":5,"2015-11":5,"2015-06":5,"2014-10":5,"2013-48":6,"2013-20":3,"2024-30":1,"unknown":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Popup? Frontend Apps \u2013 A New Frontier -  http:\/\/codylindley.com\/popupfrontendapplications Popup frontend applications are typically completely driven by third party backend services (e.g. mailgun, firebase, userapp, stripe).
Is \"Popup Frontend Applications\" the correct term, well, I'm not sure. What do you think?  The concept of a \"thick client\", \"fat client\", or \"rich client\" application is not new wave thinking. Adobe flash applications poked at this problem for years. It's adoption as a web application architecture might still be seeping into the enterprise mainstream but building an application in the frontend that talks to an interface\/API is not exactly ground breaking. Hybrid web 2.0 applications have been doing this to some degree for years. Sprinkling AJAX or JSONP strategies into web pages and calling it a thick\/fat\/rich client is almost old hat. From here however, where are we headed?\n\nWhere are we headed from web 2.0 and how do we categories and refer to the evolution of thick client applications that can be popped up with ease by using static files and third party services from the frontend?\n\nPopup frontend applications are typically completely driven by third party backend services (e.g. mailgun, firebase, userapp, stripe). Pragmatically speaking, a backend is not exactly absent, but instead the backend has become a plug and play service component to the architecture which provides an interface (be it a REST api or some special JS sugar kit) to commonly needed application functionality. In other words, applications typically require parts that do things like email communication, data storage, user management, and payments. As of late, all of this can be provided as a third party service and handled in the client using some form of a public interface\/api. Because the frontend is doing the interfacing the application logic itself (i.e. html, css, and js) can be served statically.\n\nNow, given the static nature of the files sent to the client and the third party approach to backend services this new frontier is currently being labeled as \"static\", \"no-backend\", \"un-hosted\" or \"backend-less\" application development. I find these terms confusing and and to some degree outright misleading.\n\nThis new frontier is not about static files alone. The files themselve are very much dynamic in nature\/function and are not unlike the notion of a dynamic web page of the past, but I suppose strictly speaking they are served statically. However, while literally served statically, their nature is still very much dynamic. Thus, the term \"static apps\" does not seem appropriate to me.\n\nAs for this idea of no, un, or less backend. Well, none of that is exactly true. It's not no, un, or less backend, it's simply a backend that is not custom built or maintained by the same developer(s) who construct the static application logic. This does not mean the backend is gone, it simply means that the backend is relegated to a foreign land (i.e. third party) and has become a service switch that frontend engineers can turn on and off and scale as needed.\n\nBut let's not consider this new frontier a complete off the shelf backend black box either. That would be a mistake as well. To setup a service still requires some backend chops and in the future knowing how to configure the switches is still a requirement to get started. I believe this new frontier can best be described as a land of frontend applications that one can simply popup by standing on the shoulders of robust services providing simple and commonplace interfaces.\n\nIs \"Popup Frontend Applications\" the correct term, well, I'm not sure. What do you think?<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-10":1,"unknown":11}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Spot Robot Testing at Construction Sites \u2013 Boston Dynamics [video] -  https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wND9goxDVrY  From the comments: \"We have begun field testing the Spot robot for commercial usage around the world. After an initial mapping run, Spot autonomously navigated two dynamic construction sites in Tokyo and used a specialized payload for surveying work progress. An additional camera in its hand lets Spot do even more detailed inspection work on site. The Spot robot will be available in the second half of 2019 for a variety of applications.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":13,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-25":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":1,"2023-40":1}},"id":18205787},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Nginx v1.11.12 Released -  http:\/\/nginx.org\/en\/CHANGES#1.11.12  Changes with nginx 1.11.12 (24 Mar 2017)\n\n    \n    \n        *) Bugfix: nginx might hog CPU; the bug had appeared in 1.11.11.\n    \n    \n\nChanges with nginx 1.11.11 (21 Mar 2017)\n\n    \n    \n        *) Feature: the \"worker_shutdown_timeout\" directive.\n    \n        *) Feature: vim syntax highlighting scripts improvements.\n           Thanks to Wei-Ko Kao.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: a segmentation fault might occur in a worker process if the\n           $limit_rate variable was set to an empty string.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: the \"proxy_cache_background_update\",\n           \"fastcgi_cache_background_update\", \"scgi_cache_background_update\",\n           and \"uwsgi_cache_background_update\" directives might work incorrectly\n           if the \"if\" directive was used.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: a segmentation fault might occur in a worker process if\n           number of large_client_header_buffers in a virtual server was\n           different from the one in the default server.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: in the mail proxy server.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16,"dup_dump_count":12,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-27":1,"2021-25":2,"2019-22":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-34":2,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2022-40":1,"2024-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Century of the Self -  https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Century_of_the_Self  ... _The Century of the Self is a 2002 British television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It focuses on the work of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud, and PR consultant Edward Bernays. In episode one, Curtis says, \"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy.\"_ ...<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":32},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Foxconn plans Chinese union vote -  http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/48091254-6c3e-11e2-b774-00144feab49a.html  Firewalled! Sorry. Here's the text.\n\nFoxconn, the contract manufacturer whose biggest customer is Apple, is preparing genuinely representative labour union elections in its factories in China for the first time, a powerful sign of the changes in the workshop of the world demanded by an increasingly restive workforce.\n\nThis would be the first such exercise at a large company in China, where labour unions have traditionally been controlled by management and local government. Foxconn is the country's largest private sector employer with 1.2m mainland workers.\n\nThe Taiwanese company, the world's largest contract maker of electronics, said that the new election process would see a larger representation of junior employees and no management involvement.\n\n\"The position of chairman and 20 committee members of the Foxconn Federation of Labour Unions Committee will be determined through elections once every five years through an anonymous ballot voting process,\" Foxconn said in response to questions from the Financial Times.\n\nThe move is part of Foxconn's attempts to tweak its manufacturing machine, which makes a large proportion of the world's gadgets such as iPhones, tablets and computers, in response to frequent worker protests, riots, strikes and soaring labour costs. Beijing is also encouraging collective bargaining as a way to help contain the growing unrest.\n\nSince a wave of worker suicides at the company's Chinese plants in 2009 and 2010, its treatment of its huge workforce has attracted intense scrutiny. Foxconn has become a focus for criticism of practices widespread in Chinese factories including illegal overtime, low pay and the use of underage workers.\n\nApple reacted by bringing in the Fair Labor Association, a US-based labour group, for an audit of some of the manufacturer's largest plants. One of the issues pinpointed by the FLA was the union's failure truly to represent workers.\n\nAfter the Lunar New Year holiday this month, Foxconn, with the help of the FLA, will begin training its Chinese workers in how to vote for their representatives. They will be choosing up to 18,000 union committees whose terms expire this year and in 2014, according to three people familiar with the situation. Since the unions have so far had no real role in addressing worker grievances and have been dominated by management, most young workers know nothing about what a real labour union is supposed to do.\n\nFoxconn said more than 70 per cent of the 188 employee-elected representatives at its Shenzhen campus were frontline workers. However, sources familiar with the matter said workers have historically had little say in the committees that run the union.\n\n\"The process through which Foxconn's current labour union representatives were chosen was not democratic because there was no open and transparent nomination of candidates, and it is not representative because more than half of the committee members are from management,\" said one person working on the election plans. The chairman of Foxconn's labour union in China, Chen Peng, is the former head of the office of Terry Gou, the company's founder and chief executive. People familiar with the company described Ms Peng, who uses the English name Peggy, as a key confidante of Mr Gou and a trusted member of the management team in China.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":36,"dup_dump_count":19,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-49":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-40":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-47":1,"2015-27":1,"2023-23":1,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":3,"2015-18":14,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Destructive Nature of Power without Status -  http:\/\/www-rcf.usc.edu\/~nathanaf\/power_without_status.pdf\n\n Abstract:\n\n> The current research explores how roles that possess power but lack status > influence behavior toward others. Past research has primarily examined the > isolated effects of having either power or status, but we propose that power > and status interact to affect interpersonal behavior. Based on the notions > that a) low-status is threatening and aversive and b) power frees people to > act on their internal states and feelings, we hypothesized that power > without status fosters demeaning behaviors toward others. To test this idea, > we orthogonally manipulated both power and status and gave participants the > chance to select activities for their partners to perform. As predicted, > individuals in high-power\/low-status roles chose more demeaning activities > for their partners (e.g., bark like a dog, say \"I am filthy\") than did those > in any other combination of power and status roles. We discuss how these > results clarify, challenge, and advance the existing power and status > literatures.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":15,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-22":1,"unknown":13}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Google Chief Warns of IT Threat -  http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/206bb2e2-847f-11e3-b72e-00144feab7de.html\n\n Text:\n\nA broad range of jobs that once seemed beyond the reach of automation are in danger of being wiped out by technological advances, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, warned on Thursday.\n\nSpeaking in a briefing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said that an acceleration in technological innovation made this one of the biggest problems the world faces in the next 20 to 30 years.\n\n\"The race is between computers and people and the people need to win,\" he said. \"I am clearly on that side. In this fight, it is very important that we find the things that humans are really good at.\"\n\nMr Schmidt's comments follow warnings from some economists that the spread of information technology is starting to have a deeper impact than previous periods of technological change and may have a permanent impact on employment levels.\n\nGoogle itself, which has 46,000 employees, has placed big bets on automation over some existing forms of human labour, with a series of acquisitions of robot start-ups late last year. Its high-profile work on driverless cars has also led to a race in the automobile industry to create vehicles that can operate without humans, adding to concerns that some classes of manual labour once thought to be beyond the reach of machines might eventually be automated.\n\nRecent advances in artificial intelligence and mobile communications have also fuelled fears that whole classes of clerical and research jobs may also be replaced by machines. While such upheaval has been made up for in the past by new types of work created by advancing technology, some economists have warned that the current pace of change is too fast for employment levels to adapt.\n\nMr Schmidt said governments had to encourage rapidly growing \"gazelle\" companies to counter such trends and create new jobs. He cited shale gas fracking in the US, a technology developed mainly by smaller companies that had created an employment boom.\n\n\"There is quite a bit of research that middle class jobs that are relatively highly skilled are being automated out,\" he said. The auto industry was an example of robots being able to produce higher quality products, he added.\n\nNew technologies were creating \"lots of part-time work and growth in caring and creative industries . . . [but] the problem is that the middle class jobs are being replaced by service jobs,\" the Google chairman said.\n\nHe said that governments needed to invest in education systems to improve skill levels and human cognition. \"It is pretty clear that work is changing and the classic nine to five job is going to have to be redefined,\" he said. \"Without significant encouragement, this will get worse and worse.\"\n\nMr Schmidt expressed doubts about Microsoft's decision to allow foreign customers to have data stored on servers outside the US to provide protection against surveillance by the National Security Agency. This would not stop the agency requesting such data under US law, he said.\n\n\"My understanding is that data in another country is still subject to [US intelligence] laws. It is not obvious to me how you get around that rule. You would have to transfer the assets to a foreign corporation,\" he said.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Packt's $5 eBonanza returns -  https:\/\/www.packtpub.com\/packt5dollar\/?&utm_source=DSS&utm_medium=Refferal&utm_campaign=5D2014\n\n Following the success of last year's festive offer, Packt Publishing will be celebrating the Holiday season with an even bigger $5 offer. From Thursday 18th December, every eBook and video will be available on the publisher's website for just $5. Customers are invited to purchase as many as they like before the offer ends on Tuesday January 6th, making it the perfect opportunity to try something new or to take your skills to the next level as 2015 begins. With all $5 products available in a range of formats and DRM- free, customers will find great value content delivered exactly how they want it across Packt's website this Xmas and New Year.\n\nFind out more at www.packtpub.com\/packt5dollar\n\n#packt5dollar\n\n<\/comment> Unfortunately, many of these e-books aren't even worth $5.\n\n Each to their own, I've found a lot of books that are worth a lot more.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":59,"dup_dump_count":39,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2023-23":2,"2023-14":1,"2023-06":2,"2022-49":2,"2022-40":2,"2022-27":1,"2022-21":3,"2022-05":1,"2021-43":2,"2021-31":3,"2021-21":1,"2021-17":2,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":2,"2020-45":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":2,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":2,"2018-43":2,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":2,"2018-17":2,"2018-13":1,"2018-05":2,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":2,"2017-22":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Nfstream: A flexible network data analysis framework -  https:\/\/github.com\/aouinizied\/nfstream  nfstream is a Python package providing fast, flexible, and expressive data structures designed to make working with online or offline network data both easy and intuitive. It aims to be the fundamental high-level building block for doing practical, real world network data analysis in Python. Additionally, it has the broader goal of becoming a common network data processing framework for researchers providing data reproducibility across experiments. Feedbacks and contributions are welcome!<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":83,"dup_dump_count":26,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-50":10,"2023-40":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-33":2,"2022-27":7,"2022-21":5,"2022-05":1,"2021-49":3,"2021-43":4,"2021-39":1,"2021-21":3,"2021-17":3,"2021-04":4,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":3,"2020-40":6,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":2,"2020-24":5,"2024-30":2,"2024-26":3,"2024-22":4,"2024-18":3,"2024-10":3}},"id":21891298},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Show HN: Marketplacestack.com \u2013 Tools for online marketplaces -  http:\/\/marketplacestack.com  MarketplaceStack is a collection of tools for online marketplaces.\n\nWe found that many marketplaces are facing the same problems. Instead of building everything from scratch, there are a lot of solutions available to put to use. So you can focus on what's core to your business.\n\nMade to shamelessly plug TalkJS without you noticing :)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":32,"dup_dump_count":30,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-14":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-33":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-49":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-13":1,"2023-40":1,"2024-18":1,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Faster Horses - \n\nI recently wrote a blog post sharing my analysis of products whose trajectory / go-to-market strategy I've studied. Would appreciate comments/feedback. Special thx to AbbasMehdi for encouraging me to share on HN!  You can see the post at www.humbledagain.com  Pasting it here as well:\n\n\"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.\" - Henry Ford\n\nLately I find myself thinking about products I admire and the foresight they represent. I come back again and again to elegant execution that creates simplistic and obvious value creation that delights users. Thats really all it is and its the crux of great products. I have a running list in my evernote now of products I study and what I perceive the atomic unit of their value creation to be. One criticism of this approach could be that I fail to see the larger opportunity, what teams can do with the data blah blah blah\u2026but I'm not terribly concerned w\/ that for the purposes of this exercise. I stepped outside of my wheelhouse 2 years ago and threw myself into a position where I had to own products. It was sink or swim. Making conscious observations on what users did before a product existed helps me identify points of friction, or workarounds that users currently resort to to achieve their aims. Workarounds signal friction and inefficiency. Friction and inefficiency are itches that users will delight you for scratching. Watch what people do and not what they say. Below are a few examples:\n\nMessageMe \u2014 What users did before: people want to share rich media but current messaging apps do a poor job (either due to performance or lack of features) in letting users seamlessly share rich media like videos, pictures, drawings, voice memos. Users will copy URLs of videos or pictures and paste them into their messaging app. The solution: A super zippy messaging app that lets you share rich media inside the app with one click of a button.\n\nClearslide \u2014 What users did before: Salespeople had to manually enter subjective notes in CRM systems after every interaction with a customer. This was 1) time consuming and 2) the onus was on the salesperson to communicate the relevant parts of the conversation that could impact the probability of the deal being closed. What does this mean? Clues about what part of the proposal they were most interested in. Questions the prospect asked. Who else they roped in into the conversation or shared the proposal with. The solution: Cloud based repository for sales presentations with analytics that track time spent on slides, who the presentation was shared with, when it was opened and such. All this allows for subjective notes to be replaced with data that helps prioritize leads, time follow-ups and guide conversations.\n\nWhen you study products with this lense\u2026you start to naturally isolate product value into silos of faster \/ cheaper \/ more efficient.\n\nDon't ask users what they want. Watch what users do and think deeply about their motivations and goals and build a solution that helps them arrive to their desired outcome faster. I'm not saying its easy\u2026but its the best insurance you have at getting traction. Let me save you the growing pains and learn from my mistakes!\n\n\"If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses.\" \\- Henry Ford.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":2,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2013-48":1,"2014-10":1,"unknown":9}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"A letter from Coinbase -  just got this:  Coinbase We at Coinbase couldn't be more excited by the explosion of interest in digital currencies. The last few weeks has seen an unprecedented increase in the price of digital currencies. More people are engaging with our platform than ever and that bodes well for the future of the digital currency. At the same time, it does create extreme volatility and stress on our systems. We take this very seriously and wanted to share some important thoughts.\n\nWe're continuing to invest heavily to scale our platform\n\nOver the course of this year we have invested significant resources to increase trading capacity on our platform and maintain availability of our service. We have increased the size of our support team by 640% and launched phone support in September. We have also invested heavily in our infrastructure and have increased the number of transactions we are processing during peak hours by over 40x.\n\nThere may be downtime which can impact your ability to trade\n\nDespite the sizable and ongoing increases in our technical infrastructure and engineering staff, we wanted to remind customers that access to Coinbase services may become degraded or unavailable during times of significant volatility or volume. This could result in the inability to buy or sell for periods of time. Despite ongoing increases in our support capacity, our customer support response times may be delayed, especially for requests that do not involve immediate risks to customer account security. You can read more in our Coinbase User Agreement.\n\nBe an educated investor\n\nWe also wanted to remind customers of some of the risks associated with trading digital currency. Digital currencies are volatile and the prices can go up and down. Due to the rapidly changing price of digital currencies, some customers may not have sell limits that are sufficient relative to the value of total digital currency they are storing on Coinbase. Sell limits are one of the many measures Coinbase takes to protect client accounts and assets.\n\nAs a proactive measure, we encourage customers to check the following items on their accounts:\n\nEnsure your email address is properly receiving all communications and notifications from Coinbase. To learn more about ensuring email delivery, please refer to this support article.\n\nEnsure your two-factor authentication is updated and functional. If you have recently switched mobile devices, your two-factor authentication needs to be properly migrated to the new device. In addition, please migrate from SMS two factor to Google Authenticator to enhance the security on your account, if you have not already done so. To learn more about two-factor authentication, please refer to this FAQ.\n\nFamiliarize yourself with your buy and sell limits. They can be found here.\n\nComplete any pending identity verifications. During times of significant volatility, ID verification may become degraded or unavailable. To learn more about identity verification on Coinbase, please refer to this FAQ.\n\nExpect payments to take the maximum number of days indicated when making a deposit or withdrawal. Stay up to date\n\nWe will continue to update customers for our website, our status page, in our apps, via email, on our blog and on Twitter.\n\nWe will keep you informed\n\nWe are committed to safety, security and transparency. We are working tirelessly to provide the best service and support but we can't promise perfection during the periods of extraordinary demand. We will continue to do our best to keep our customers informed.\n\nThank you,\n\nThe Coinbase Team<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":54,"dup_dump_count":25,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-06":1,"2022-21":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":2,"2020-05":2,"2019-51":3,"2019-47":2,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":2,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":3,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":3,"2018-39":4,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":5,"2018-26":3,"2018-22":2,"2018-17":3,"2018-13":2,"2018-09":3,"2018-05":3,"2023-50":1,"2024-18":1}},"id":15883484},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Senator Diane Feinstein response to request to stop support of SOPA - \n\nI received your letter expressing opposition to the \"Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act,\" commonly known as the \"PROTECT IP Act.\"  I appreciate knowing your views on this matter.
The \"PROTECT IP Act\" (S. 968) gives both copyright and trademark owners and the U.S. Department of Justice the authority to take action against websites that are \"dedicated to infringing activities.\"  These are websites that have \"no significant use other than engaging in, enabling, or facilitating\" copyright infringement, the sale of goods with a counterfeit trademark, or the evasion of technological measures designed to protect against copying.
The bill does not violate First Amendment rights to free speech because copyright piracy is not speech.
America's copyright industry is an important economic engine, and I believe copyright owners should be able to prevent their works from being illegally duplicated and stolen.  The protection of intellectual property is particularly vital to California's thriving film, music, and high-technology industries.
I understand you have concerns about the \"PROTECT IP Act.\"  While I voted in favor of this bill when it was before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have also been working with California high-technology businesses to improve the bill and to address the concerns of high-tech businesses, public interest groups and others.  I recognize the bill needs further changes to prevent it from imposing undue burdens on legitimate businesses and activities, and I will be working to make the improvements, either by working with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) or through amendments on the Senate floor.
On May 26, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the \"PROTECT IP Act\" for consideration by the full Senate.  Please know I will keep your concerns and thoughts in mind should the Senate proceed to a vote on this legislation.  As you may be aware, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) has introduced similar legislation, the \"Stop Online Piracy Act\" (H.R. 3261), in the House of Representatives.
Once again, thank you for sharing your views.  I hope you will continue to keep me informed on issues of importance to you.  If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841.  Feinstein ... I know that name. Ah, that's right, she's the anti-gun-nut. Authoritarians don't change their spots.\n\nI believe that ESR posted on this a while back, the idea being that people seem quite happy to champion big-Govt. intrusion into almost all spheres of life, but get all uppity when that sphere is the Internet.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":18,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2013-20":2,"unknown":15}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Keyboards are overrated. Cursive is back and it's making us smarter -  https:\/\/qz.com\/1037057\/keyboards-are-overrated-cursive-is-back-and-its-making-us-smarter\/  Handwriting matters \u2014 does cursive? Research shows that legible cursive writing averages no faster than printed handwriting of equal or greater legibility. (Sources for all research are available on request.) Further research shows that the fastest, clearest handwriters avoid cursive. They join only the most easily joined letter-combinations, leaving others unjoined, using print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive shapes disagree. (Many people who think that they \"print\" actually write in this practical way without realizing that they do so. The handwriting of many teachers comes close: even though, often, those teachers have never noticed that they are not at all writing in the same 100% print or 100% cursive that they demand that their students should write.) Teaching material for such practical handwriting abounds \u2014 especially in much of the UK and Europe, where such practical handwriting is taught at least as often as the accident-prone cursive that too many North American educators venerate. (Again, sources are available on request.) For what it's worth, there are some parts of various countries (parts of the UK, for instance, despite their mostly sensible handwriting ) where governmental mandates for 100% joined cursive handwriting have been increasingly enforced, without regard for handwriting practicality and handwriting research, In those parts of the world, there are rapidly growing concerns on the increasingly observed harmful educational\/literacy effects (including bad effects on handwriting quality) seen when 100% joined cursive requirements are complied with: [http:\/\/morrellshandwriting.co.uk\/blog\/](http:\/\/morrellshandwriting.co.uk\/blog\/) Reading cursive, of course, remains important \u2014and this is much easier and quicker to master than writing cursive. Reading cursive can be mastered in just 30 to 60 minutes, even by kids who print. Given the importance of reading cursive, why not teach it explicitly and quickly, once children can read print, instead of leaving this vital skill to depend upon learning to write in cursive? Educated adults increasingly quit cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by cursive textbook publisher Zaner-Bloser.. Only 37% wrote in cursive; another 8% printed. Most \u2014 55% \u2014 wrote with some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When even most handwriting teachers do not follow cursive, why glorify it? Cursive's cheerleaders allege that cursive has benefits justifying absolutely anything said or done to promote it. Cheerleaders for cursive repeatedly allege research support \u2014 repeatedly citing studies that were misquoted or otherwise misrepresented by the claimant or by some other, earlier misrepresenter whom the claimant innocently trusts. What about cursive and signatures? Brace yourself: in state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney!) Questioned document examiners (specialists in the identification of signatures, verification of documents, etc.) find that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest. Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if following cursive's rules at all, are fairly complicated: easing forgery. All handwriting, not just cursive, is individual. That is how any first-grade teacher immediately discerns (from print-writing on unsigned work) which child produced it. Mandating cursive to save handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to save clothing. Kate Gladstone DIRECTOR, the World Handwriting Contest CEO, Handwriting Repair\/Handwriting That Works [http:\/\/www.HandwritingThatWorks.com](http:\/\/www.HandwritingThatWorks.com) firstname.lastname@example.com<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":20},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"JGRASP, a learning IDE to provide automatic generation of software visualization [pdf] -  http:\/\/www.jgrasp.org\/tutorials200\/jGRASP_00_Overview.pdf  About jGRASP\n\njGRASP is a lightweight development environment, created specifically to provide automatic generation of software visualizations to improve the comprehensibility of software. jGRASP is implemented in Java, and runs on all platforms with a Java Virtual Machine (Java version 1.5 or higher). jGRASP produces Control Structure Diagrams (CSDs) for Java, C, C++, Objective-C, Python, Ada, and VHDL; Complexity Profile Graphs (CPGs) for Java and Ada; UML class diagrams for Java; and has dynamic object viewers and a viewer canvas that work in conjunction with an integrated debugger and workbench for Java. The viewers include a data structure identifier mechanism which recognizes objects that represent traditional data structures such as stacks, queues, linked lists, binary trees, and hash tables, and then displays them in an intuitive textbook-like presentation view.\n\njGRASP is developed by the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering at Auburn University.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":14,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-21":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-24":1,"2023-40":1,"2024-26":2,"2024-18":1,"2024-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Blandly. A Full-Service Integrated Digital Blanding Agency -  http:\/\/www.bland.ly\/  Brilliant!\n\n\"SOMETHING MAGIC HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT A MARKETING GURU IN THE SAME ROOM WITH A PSYCHOLOGIST, A NOVICE CALLIGRAPHER, AND SEVERAL FAILED MUSICIANS.\n\nAt Blandly we believe that you need a rich set of perspectives to build the perfect bland. That's why we've incubated a company culture that grows unique bland outcomes. We are an eclectic team of avid outdoorswomen, comic book collectors, whiskey nerds, fixed-gear bicycle aficionados, Rosicrucianists, and bacon lovers.\n\nWe are best friends. We play table tennis together every day after work. We borrow each other's clothes. No one is ever sad.\n\nCREATIVITY: IT DOESN'T JUST HAPPEN.\u2122\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":15,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2019-30":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"China Sci-Fi Movie: The Wandering Earth -  https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt7605074\/  The sun was dying out, people all around the world built giant planet thrusters to move Earth out of its orbit and to sail Earth to a new star system. Yet the 2500 years journey came with unexpected dangers, and in order to save humanity, a group of young people in this age of a wandering Earth came out boldly and fought hard for everyone's survival.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":29},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Greenberg on Depression & Addiction -  http:\/\/www.econtalk.org\/archives\/2010\/09\/greenberg_on_de.html\n\n _Gary Greenberg, psychologist and author of The Noble Lie and Manufacturing Depression, ...argues that there are strong monetary incentives to define various problems as illnesses that psychiatrists \"cure\" with drugs. Greenberg argues that this distorts science and has strong impacts, good and bad, on how we view ourselves and the challenges of life. The conversation looks at the scientific basis for addiction and the role brain chemistry in depression. The conversation closes with a discussion of Greenberg's correspondence with the Unabomber._<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":7,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":2,"2024-26":1,"unknown":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Manchester Museum time-lapse shows Egyptian statue move -  http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-23029507\n\n Time-lapse footage shows an Egyptian statue moving in its glass display cabinet, according to a Manchester Museum.\n\nThe museum says it installed a stop-motion camera after reports the carving had started changing position, despite apparently not being moved by human hands for 80 years.\n\nThe 10 inch stone statue dates back to 1800 BC.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":2,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2013-48":1,"2014-10":1,"unknown":10}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ask HN: Is my unorthodox approach to server security a bad idea? - \n\nI've heard people say again and again that you shouldn't implement your own security algorithm, and I'd like to ask HN if I'm breaking this rule.
I'm creating a traditional client-server application with a twist: I want to encrypt all data on the client so that even an attacker who gains complete control over my server will be unable to access the users' data.  That is, I want end-to-end encryption for my client-server application.
The client encrypts the user's data with a cryptographic key derived from the user's password, so it's important that the server not be able to figure out the password because that would allow the server to decrypt the user's data.\n The client therefore uses Secure Remote Password protocol to avoid sending the password to the server.  So far so good.
Now here's where my design gets a little unorthodox.  The problem is that users in general are very bad at creating passwords - usually picking a password from the top 10,000 passwords list - which would make it pretty easy for an attacker who has access to the server to decrypt the user's data.  Therefore I plan to generate a random set of characters and append them to the User ID field, so the user would need to log in with something like these credentials:
  User ID: John-CPE4E38J\n  Password: snoopy <\/code><\/pre> But before processing these credentials the login code moves the random characters to the password so the underlying SRP authentication library sees this:
  User ID: John\n  Password: snoopy-CPE4E38J <\/code><\/pre> In addition, the client offers to remember the User ID (ie. John-CPE4E38J) so that most of the time the user only has to remember their password.
What do you think of this approach?  Am I breaking the do-not-implement-your-own-security-algorithm rule?  Or is this a good way to strengthen the security of my application?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Remote_Password_protocol  Do you store the user ids?\n\n Yes, the client will store the User ID (eg. John-CPE4E38J) on local hard disk. The server will store the modified User ID (ie. John) in the database.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":3,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-22":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":8}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Keccak is the winner of NIST's SHA-3 competition - \n\nThe National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is pleased to announce the selection of Keccak as the winner of the SHA-3 Cryptographic Hash Algorithm Competition and the new SHA-3 hash algorithm.  Full announcement email:\n\nThe National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is pleased to announce the selection of Keccak as the winner of the SHA-3 Cryptographic Hash Algorithm Competition and the new SHA-3 hash algorithm. Keccak was designed by a team of cryptographers from Belgium and Italy, they are:\n\n* Guido Bertoni (Italy) of STMicroelectronics,\n\n* Joan Daemen (Belgium) of STMicroelectronics,\n\n* Micha\u00ebl Peeters (Belgium) of NXP Semiconductors, and\n\n* Gilles Van Assche (Belgium) of STMicroelectronics.\n\nNIST formally announced the SHA-3 competition in 2007 with an open call for the submission of candidate hash algorithms, and received 64 submissions from cryptographers around the world. In an ongoing review process, including two open conferences, the cryptographic community provided an enormous amount of expert feedback, andNIST winnowed the original 64 candidates down to the five finalist candidates \u2013 BLAKE, Gr\u00f8stl, JH, Keccak and Skein. These finalists were further reviewed in a third public conference in March 2012.\n\nNIST chose Keccak over the four other excellent finalists for its elegant design, large security margin, good general performance, excellent efficiency in hardware implementations, and for its flexibility. Keccak uses a new \"sponge construction\" chaining mode, based on a fixed permutation, that can readily be adjusted to trade generic security strength for throughput, and can generate larger or smaller hash outputs as required. The Keccak designers have also defined a modified chaining mode for Keccak that provides authenticated encryption. Additionally, Keccak complements the existing SHA-2 family of hash algorithms well. NIST remains confident in the security of SHA-2 which is now widely implemented, and the SHA-2 hash algorithms will continue to be used for the foreseeable future, as indicated in the NIST hash policy statement. One benefit that Keccak offers as the SHA-3 winner is its difference in design and implementation properties from that of SHA-2. It seems very unlikely that a single new cryptanalytic attack or approach could threaten both algorithms. Similarly, the very different implementation properties of the two algorithms will allow future application and protocol designers greater flexibility infinding one of the two hash algorithms that fits well with their requirements. NIST thanks the many people in companies, universities, laboratories and organizations around the world that participated in and contributed to the SHA-3 competition, especially the submitters of all the candidate algorithms, and the many others who contributed expert cryptanalysis, and performance studies. NIST could not have done the competition without them.\n\nA detailed report of the final round of the competition will be published in the near future. Information about the SHA-3 competition is available at: \n\n<\/comment> Check out: <\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":29,"dup_dump_count":24,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-27":1,"2021-25":1,"2020-16":1,"2019-26":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-13":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-22":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":2,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2015-14":1,"2014-42":1,"2014-23":2,"2022-40":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":2,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ask HN: Is there a need for simple security risk assessment tool? -  I have been working on a small startup simple security risk assessment application, mainly to scratch my own itch and am looking to get some feedback from the Hacker news community
What I think the problem is with current security risk assessment tools for the following audiences:
- The security professional: Requires re-inventing the wheel in every company to define the security risk assessment process. Spreadsheets are the primary tool of choice but they are hard to manage, have no version control and are hard to collaborate on. Enterprise applications such as Archer when they exist are difficult to use and tailored for operational or enterprise risk rather than security risk. It is difficult to get business or IT users to perform risk assessments because they are hard to work through and require a lot of text input and domain expertise. This increases the time that security professionals need to spend on risk assessments and increases the number of security resources focused on this activity which is usually mandatory for regulation or by policy.
- The pen tester: Usually reports have technical vulnerability ratings without actually rating the risk to the business, partially because pen test organizations do not have a simple tool to put their finding more in a risk context. This passes the buck to the internal security team and reduces the chance of getting more business
- The cloud vendor: Usually involves completing a giant spreadsheet on controls for each and every client. This takes time and man power, it is treated as a compliance exercise, does not convince the customer their risks are mitigated and therefore loses the business
- The small business: do not understand how to do a risk assessment that is required to comply with regulation such as PCI-DSS. Therefore either end up hiring expensive contactors or consultants
The application is still in beta: http:\/\/www.simplesecurityra.com You can either use one of your own accounts: Google, Twitter, Open-ID etc or this demo Google account: firstname.lastname@example.com password: buyersimplesecra
I am trying to differentiate the application on:
- simplicity e.g. compared to something like Archer which when I have used in the past has been too big and complicated for security risk assessments. It has taken a whole team to setup and manage and 6 months of training to use. My application should provide the benefits being able to quickly perform a risk assessment using industry standard methodologies without being difficult to setup.
- ease of use - it has minimum text input required and a slider based system so non security people should be able to use it. This enables security risk assessments to be pushed out to the business and IT with less time from security experts being required. It should also make it easier for small businesses to comply with regulation that requires risk assessments without hiring expensive consultants. It should guide a user through the process without consultants to classify and input majority of the information and \"intelligence\". The control and vulnerability libraries are also built in so they can be easily selected.
- ease of sharing, collaboration and reporting over a using a spreadsheet - spreadsheets are the most common way I have seen security risk assessments performed. However they need to be setup initially, are hard to manage, have version control and sharing issues. Companies I have worked at have not been willing to invest in a web application with a database that eliminates the need for spreadsheets. This app means they do not have to, it is accessible over the internet and on a mobile browser but still provides the flexibility of being able to customise and add attackers, vulnerabilities, change the scoring easily
I am mainly targeting the financial services industry as they have regulations like from the FFIEC in the US which requires risk assessments to be performed. Also small business who need to comply with risk assessment requirements in PCI-DSS, small penetration testing companies that need a simple way to risk assess their technical findings and cloud vendors that need an efficient way to present a risk assessment to their prospective clients.
My questions for the Hacker news community are:
- Do the problems I have described really exist?
- Does my application succeed in solving them or what could be improved?
- Would those 4 target audiences I describe above pay on a monthly basis for an application like this? Why or why not?
- Are there any technical problems with how I have implemented the risk assessment process within the application that could be improved?
This is to shape whether I put more time and money into developing this application or move onto something else. Thanks in advance.  Clickable link: <\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":28,"dup_dump_count":23,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":2,"2016-30":1,"2016-26":1,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2014-52":1,"2014-49":2,"2014-42":2,"2014-23":1,"2014-15":1,"2020-16":1,"2015-11":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2015-18":1}},"id":2328058},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Engine Yard add-on for cloud-based image management -  http:\/\/cloudinary.com\/blog\/engine_yard_add_on_for_cloud_based_image_management\n\n This blog post describes a new Engine Yard add-on for a cloud-based solution that streamlines all your online image management needs with Cloudinary. You can easily upload images to the cloud, perform smart image resizing & transformations and seamlessly deliver images through a fast CDN. The add-on provides a smooth integration with the powerful Ruby on Rails, PHP and Node.js cloud-based platforms of Engine Yard.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Battle of Gettysburg, or How the American Civil War Was Lost in an Hour -  https:\/\/unitedcats.wordpress.com\/2009\/07\/13\/the-battle-of-gettysburg-or-how-the-american-civil-war-was-lost-in-an-hour\/  I'm sorry, but that war was lost the moment it was waged, and that wasn't a mystery even then.\n\n _\" You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it\u2026 Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth \u2014 right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.\"(Gen. Sherman)_\n\nWhich is precisely what happened.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":5,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-18":2,"2014-10":2,"2013-48":2,"2013-20":2,"2017-13":1,"unknown":7}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Phony Free Market -  https:\/\/m.facebook.com\/?_rdr#!\/RBReich\/photos\/a.404595876219681.103599.142474049098533\/1075758279103434\/?type=3  For those who don't care to visit Facebook:\n\nRobert Reich Here's an excerpt from my new book \"SAVING CAPITALISM: For the Many, Not the Few,\" out 9\/29.\n\n\"The Phony Free Market\"\n\nIt usually occurs in a small theater or a lecture hall. Someone introduces me and then introduces a person who is there to debate me. My debate opponent and I then spend five or ten minutes sparring over the chosen topic\u2014education, poverty, income inequality, taxes, executive pay, middle-class wages, climate change, drug trafficking, whatever. It doesn't matter. Because, with astounding regularity, the debate soon turns to whether the \"free market\" is better at doing something than government.\n\nI do not invite this. In fact, as I've already said and will soon explain, I view it as a meaningless debate. Worse, it's a distraction from what we should be debating. Intentional or not, it deflects the public's attention from what's really at issue.\n\nFew ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a \"free market\" existing somewhere in the universe, into which government \"intrudes.\" In this view, whatever inequality or insecurity the market generates is assumed to be the natural and inevitable consequence of impersonal \"market forces.\" What you're paid is simply a measure of what you're worth in the market. If you aren't paid enough to live on, so be it. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of people are unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they have to work two or three jobs and have no idea what they'll be earning next month or even next week, that's unfortunate but it's the outcome of \"market forces.\"\n\nAccording to this view, whatever we might do to reduce inequality or economic insecurity\u2014to make the economy work for most of us\u2014runs the risk of distorting the market and causing it to be less efficient, or of producing unintended consequences that may end up harming us. Although market imperfections such as pollution or unsafe workplaces, or the need for public goods such as basic research or even aid to the poor, may require the government to intervene on occasion, these instances are exceptions to the general rule that the market knows best.\n\nThe prevailing view is so dominant that it is now almost taken for granted. It is taught in almost every course on introductory economics. It has found its way into everyday public discourse. One hears it expressed by politicians on both sides of the aisle.\n\nThe question typically left to debate is how much intervention is warranted. Conservatives want a smaller government and less intervention; liberals want a larger and more activist government. This has become the interminable debate, the bone of contention that splits left from right in America and in much of the rest of the capitalist world. One's response to it typically depends on which you trust most (or the least): the government or the \"free market.\"\n\nBut the prevailing view, as well as the debate it has spawned, is utterly false. There can be no \"free market\" without government. The \"free market\" does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. Competition in the wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules. As the seventeenth-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it in his book \"Leviathan:\"\n\n[in nature] there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.\n\nA market\u2014any market\u2014requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. Government doesn't \"intrude\" on the \"free market.\" It creates the market.\n\nThe rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society's evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them. Yet the interminable debate over whether the \"free market\" is better than \"government\" makes it impossible for us to examine who exercises this power, how they benefit from doing so, and whether such rules need to be altered so that more people benefit from them.\n\nThe size of government is not unimportant, but the rules for how the free market functions have far greater impact on an economy and a society. Surely it is useful to debate how much government should tax and spend, regulate and subsidize. Yet these issues are at the margin of the economy, while the rules are the economy. It is impossible to have a market system without such rules and without the choices that lie behind them. As the economic historian Karl Polanyi recognized, those who argue for \"less government\" are really arguing for a different government\u2014often one that favors them or their patrons.\n\n\"Deregulation\" of the financial sector in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, could more appropriately be described as \"reregulation.\" It did not mean less government. It meant a different set of rules, initially allowing Wall Street to speculate on a wide assortment of risky but lucrative bets and permitting banks to push mortgages onto people who couldn't afford them. When the bubble burst in 2008, the government issued rules to protect the assets of the largest banks, subsidize them so they would not go under, and induce them to acquire weaker banks. At the same time, the government enforced other rules that caused millions of people to lose their homes. These were followed by additional rules intended to prevent the banks from engaging in new rounds of risky behavior (although in the view of many experts, these new rules are inadequate).\n\nThe critical things to watch out for aren't the rare big events, such as the 2008 bailout of the Street itself, but the ongoing multitude of small rule changes that continuously alter the economic game. Even a big event's most important effects are on how the game is played differently thereafter. The bailout of Wall Street created an implicit guarantee that the government would subsidize the biggest banks if they ever got into trouble. This gave the biggest banks a financial advantage over smaller banks and fueled their subsequent growth and dominance over the entire financial sector, which enhanced their subsequent political power to get rules they wanted and avoid those they did not.\n\nThe \"free market\" is a myth that prevents us from examining these rule changes and asking whom they serve. The myth is therefore highly useful to those who do not wish such an examination to be undertaken. It is no accident that those with disproportionate influence over these rules, who are the largest beneficiaries of how the rules have been designed and adapted, are also among the most vehement supporters of the \"free market\" and the most ardent advocates of the relative superiority of the market over government. But the debate itself also serves their goal of distracting the public from the underlying realities of how the rules are generated and changed, their own power over this process, and the extent to which they gain from the results. In other words, not only do these \"free market\" advocates want the public to agree with them about the superiority of the market but also about the central importance of this interminable debate.\n\nThey are helped by the fact that the underlying rules are well hidden in an economy where so much of what is owned and traded is becoming intangible and complex. Rules governing intellectual property, for example, are harder to see than the rules of an older economy in which property took the tangible forms of land, factories, and machinery. Likewise, monopolies and market power were clearer in the days of giant railroads and oil trusts than they are now, when a Google, Apple, Facebook, or Comcast can gain dominance over a network, platform, or communications system. At the same time, contracts were simpler to parse when buyers and sellers were on more or less equal footing and could easily know or discover what the other party was promising. That was before the advent of complex mortgages, consumer agreements, franchise systems, and employment contracts, all of whose terms are now largely dictated by one party. Similarly, financial obligations were clearer when banking was simpler and the savings of some were loaned to others who wanted to buy homes or start businesses. In today's world of elaborate financial instruments, by contrast, it is sometimes difficult to tell who owes what to whom, or when, or why.\n\nBefore we can understand the consequences of all of this for modern capitalism, it is first necessary to address basic questions about how government has organized and reorganized the market, what interests have had the most influence on this process, and who has gained and who has lost as a result.\n\n __*\n\nShould you wish to pre-order: Amazon: [http:\/\/bit.ly\/1F2A9PX;](http:\/\/bit.ly\/1F2A9PX;) Barnes & Noble: [http:\/\/bit.ly\/1ihgd0M;](http:\/\/bit.ly\/1ihgd0M;) IndieBound: [http:\/\/bit.ly\/1UW92No](http:\/\/bit.ly\/1UW92No)\n\n(Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC.)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":21,"dup_dump_count":15,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-49":2,"2020-40":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-47":2,"2017-39":2,"2017-30":2,"2017-22":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History [pdf] -  http:\/\/econweb.umd.edu\/~wallis\/MyPapers\/RHH_2006_w12795.pdf  Abstract:\n\nNeither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development process. This paper develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that were able to control violence, provide order, and allow greater production through specialization and exchange. Limited access orders provide order by using the political system to limit economic entry to create rents, and then using the rents to stabilize the political system and limit violence. We call this type of political economy arrangement a natural state. It appears to be the natural way that human societies are organized, even in most of the contemporary world. In contrast, a handful of developed societies have developed open access social orders. In these societies, open access and entry into economic and political organizations sustains economic and political competition. Social order is sustained by competition rather than rent- creation. The key to understanding modern social development is understanding the transition from limited to open access social orders, which only a handful of countries have managed since WWII.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":49,"dup_dump_count":40,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2020-29":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-22":1,"2015-14":1,"2014-52":1,"2014-49":1,"2014-42":3,"2014-41":1,"2014-35":1,"2014-23":2,"2014-15":2,"2022-40":1,"2024-18":1,"2017-13":2,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":2,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":2,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Why is Japan so\u2026 different? -  http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2014\/03\/17\/why_is_japan_so_different\n\n Foreign Policy FEATURE Why Is Japan So \u2026 Different? A brief history of leaving China, becoming the other, and turning Japanese.\n\nBY DAVID PILLING MARCH 17, 2014\n\nOn March 16, 1885, an editorial entitled \"Leaving Asia\" was published in the Japanese newspaper Jiji Shimpo. Now widely believed to have been written by Yukichi Fukuzawa, the intellectual giant of the 19th-century modernization movement that culminated in the Meiji Restoration, it argued that Japan could simply not afford to be held back by \"feudalistic\" China and Korea, and should therefore \"leave the ranks of Asian nations and cast our lot with the civilized nations of the West.\"\n\nJapan's break with China, a country it subsequently invaded and humiliated, is a story of sharp relevance today. Tensions between the two nations are extremely high. Chinese and Japanese ships and planes circle disputed islands in the East China Sea, with the ever-present danger of an accident or willful escalation. Leaders in both countries have started to compare the present with 1914 and 1939, when the world stood on the brink of war.\n\nThe principal cause of animosity is Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s, an unsuccessful attempt to colonize the Middle Kingdom in which millions were slaughtered. It can also be clearly traced to 1895, when Japan fought China in a brief war and annexed Chinese territory, including Taiwan, and claimed the Senkaku islands (which the Chinese call the Diaoyu), the focus of today's territorial dispute. More subtly, however, the resentment between the two countries goes back further still, to Japan's intellectual break with China, when it threw itself into a headlong effort to modernize and Europeanize.\n\nChina was once considered the fount of all knowledge for Japan, an isolated archipelago of islands sitting like an apostrophic afterthought off the eastern edge of the vast Eurasian landmass. Kyoto, founded in the 8th century and Japan's imperial capital for a thousand years, was a replica of the Tang Dynasty capital Chang'an. Serious Japanese poets wrote in Chinese. Only women used the phonetic kana script -- a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court composed the 11th-century Tale of Genji, considered the world's first novel. For men, to be learned meant to be learned in Chinese.\n\nBut in subsequent centuries, the prestige of Chinese civilization began to slowly erode; it fell sharply in 1644 when the Ming Dynasty crumpled and the Han Chinese came under foreign control. This coincided with the early days of Japan's Tokugawa period (1600-1868), when the ruling shoguns sought to protect the state, and themselves, from foreign influence, including Chinese. Intent on preserving its monopoly and wary of competing ideologies, the shogunate banned the Japanese, on pain of death, from leaving the country and returning. Traders from China were mostly restricted to a Chinese quarter in the city of Nagasaki.\n\nFor Japan to break with China was a traumatic decision. Most of what it valued culturally had come from the Chinese landmass: wet rice cultivation, the written script, concepts of Confucian hierarchy and filial piety, and techniques in the use of both bronze and iron. The historian George Sansom wrote that Buddhism, which also arrived in Japan from China (even though it originated in India) was \"a great magic bird, flying on strong pinions across the ocean, [bringing] to Japan all the elements of a new life -- a new morality, learning of all kinds, literature, the arts and crafts, and subtle metaphysics which had no counterpart in the native tradition.\"\n\n During the Tokugawa era, scholars of kokugaku, or \"country learning,\" endeavored to revive nativist traditions and loosen the hold of Chinese influence. Helping these ideas take hold was the Opium War of 1839-1842, where a mere handful of British gunboats brought low the great civilization of the Middle Kingdom. China was in danger of being \"cut up like a melon,\" as a 19th century expression had it. If Japan were to avoid a similar fate, it would have to embrace Western civilization and leave its Asian origins behind. Kokugaku scholars looked back to a pre-feudal classical Japan, a supposed golden age of literature and philosophy. They stressed the supposed purity of Japanese poetry, which, distinct from the classical Chinese forms, was meant to evoke nature and praise pure emotion.\n\nEven today, such ideas resonate. Shintaro Ishihara, the former governor of Tokyo whose 2012 plan to buy and develop the contested Senkaku\/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea triggered the current Sino-Japanese standoff, once told me proudly that Japanese poetry was unique. The novelist Andre Malraux, he said, had personally told him that the Japanese were \"the only people who can grasp eternity in a single moment.\" Ishihara, blinking in his owlish way, went on, \"The haiku is the shortest poetic style in the world. This was not created by the Chinese but by the Japanese.\"\n\nMuch of what we today consider quintessentially Japanese originated from this period of breaking with China. Ian Buruma, a brilliant scholar of China and Japan told me, \"As knowledge of the world grew, the Japanese began to realize that China was not the center of world, and to recognize the weakness of China. So they thought, 'We better start repositioning ourselves.'\" Similarly, much of Japan's supposed exceptionalism was a modern construct, said Buruma. \"The reason the Japanese nativists describe their own culture as completely different from China was a form of defensiveness.\" From the 1880s, after the overthrow of the shogun and the establishment of a modern state in the name of the emperor, history books were rewritten to begin not with the Stone Age, but with Japan's own creation myth, tracing a supposedly unbroken imperial line from the sun goddess Amatarasu to the present day. Japanese Shintoism, an animist set of folkloric beliefs mixed with ancestor worship, was elevated to a state religion with the divine emperor at its center. Much of Japan's supposed uniqueness, in other words, was propaganda; a political exercise in nation building and establishing Japan's credentials as a standalone culture distinct from China.\n\nTokyo used that propaganda to create support for Japan's imperial ambitions, based on the supposed superiority of the Japanese, who were closer to the divine emperor than foreigners. Japan's \"civilizing\" mission was elevated to an idea that was worth dying -- and killing -- for. Things were very different, of course, after the war. Years later, in 1971, Henry Kissinger told then-Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai that Japan's \"tribal outlook\" made it capable of rapid change. \"Japan believes that their society is so different that they can adjust to anything and preserve their national essence,\" he said. \"Therefore the Japanese are capable of sudden explosive changes. They went from feudalism to emperor worship in two to three years. They went from emperor worship to democracy in three months.\"\n\nSome foreign observers have been as enthusiastic about promoting Japan's alleged uniqueness as the Japanese themselves. Of course, all nations are unique, but in Japan this truism became a fetish. The Japanese developed a form, which dates back to the Tokugawa era but which flourished in the post- World War II period, of quasi-philosophical writing called Nihonjinron, or \"essays on the essence of Japaneseness.\" Written by both Japanese and foreigners, these tracts sought to explain what made the Japanese unique and how they differed from foreigners, who were, all too often, lumped into one homogeneous category. Such lines of inquiry often settled on a description of the Japanese as cooperative, sedentary rice farmers who use instinct and heart rather than cold, Western logic. Unlike Western hunter-gatherers, the Japanese were seen as having a unique sensitivity to nature, an ability to communicate without language through a sort of social telepathy, and a rarefied artistic awareness.\n\nIn 1946, U.S. anthropologist Ruth Benedict made it respectable to see the Japanese as a race apart with the publication of her classic study of Japanese culture, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She described a highly codified society operating with conventions all-but-incomprehensible to outsiders. Her work paved the way for shelf after shelf of Nihonjinron texts by Japanese authors. These multiplied with Japan's post-war economic success, which the Japanese and foreigners alike began to attribute to the country's supposedly unique organizational and social structures. Gavan McCormack, an Australian academic, describes Benedict's book as \"one of the greatest propaganda coups of the century.\" In stoking Japan's own sense of its own uniqueness, he argues, the book helped sever Japan's psychological ties with its Asian neighbors. \"What they believed to be ancient tradition,\" he writes, \"was quintessentially modern ideology.\" Japan's perception of itself as isolated and different persists to this day, often to its disadvantage.\n\nJapan's perception of itself as isolated and different persists to this day, often to its disadvantage. It has, for example, hampered the country's electronics industry: Japanese manufacturers often produce goods perfectly adapted to Japanese customers but of little global reach. It yearns for what it sees as its rightful place in the hierarchy of nations -- it has for years waged a campaign to obtain a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. But whether defending whaling, or the rights of its leaders to worship at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which houses the \"souls\" of more than 2 million dead Japanese soldiers, including 14 class-A war criminals from World War II, Japan often has a hard time explaining itself to the rest of the world.\n\nSome in Japan, however, especially on the right, seem bent on preserving the mystique of a country that is somehow unintelligible to outsiders. Masahiko Fujiwara, a right-wing author (and mathematician), suggested only half- jokingly in a popular 2005 book that the Japanese should stop trying to learn English altogether as this would help preserve a barrier between their own exceptional culture and the rest of the world. He told me that when non- English-speaking Japanese went abroad, they preserved the mystique of a profound culture beyond the grasp of foreigners to understand. As soon as they spoke in English, he said, the illusion was broken and foreigners realized the Japanese had nothing to say.\n\nDonald Keene, perhaps the greatest post-war U.S. scholar of Japanese literature, told me a similar story from the other direction. His lectures in Tokyo, mostly in Japanese, are invariably standing-room only as Japanese students flock to learn from his encyclopedic knowledge of Japanese language and literature. Yet as soon as he draws on the board a simple kanji --the multi-stroke characters derived from Chinese -- there are often gasps of amazement from members of the audience astonished that a foreigner has penetrated Japanese hieroglyphics. In Bending Adversity, my book on Japan, Toshiaki Miura, a shy and thoughtful commentator on the left-of-center newspaper Asahi Shimbun, summed up Japan's sense of geographical, even psychological, isolation, coupled with its long-frustrated attempt to find a place in the hierarchy of nations. \"Our psyche is very insular, but we always see ourselves reflected in the mirror outside,\" said Miura of the twin impulses to be isolated and yet to be internationally respected. \"One of the tragedies of Japan's position in international society is that we have no neighbors of the same size or the same level of industry. If Japan were placed in Europe,\" he said, airing that 19th-century impulse to leave Asia, \"it would have Germany, Italy and England to get along with, and we could learn how to coexist with countries of the same strength.\"\n\nBut Japan is not in Europe. It lies next door to China, the fount of much of its civilization, and a country that Japan invaded when China was weak. It must now watch in alarm as China, which has neither forgotten nor forgiven, grows stronger.<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":51,"dup_dump_count":39,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2020-10":1,"2019-39":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-30":2,"2018-17":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":2,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":2,"2016-40":2,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":2,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2015-14":1,"2014-49":2,"2014-42":2,"2014-41":2,"2014-35":2,"2014-23":2,"2023-23":1,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"INDX.guru: Fastest stock market monitor on the planet. Free for the first 5,000 -  http:\/\/indx.guru\n\n Calling all early adopters!\n\nINDX.guru takes over six million points of stock market and media monitoring data and presents it to you on one, beautiful dashboard, blisteringly fast. Traditionally, making decisions about companies of interest to you on the stock market requires the inefficiency of multiple sources of data, costing you valuable time. With INDX.guru, you have one, beautiful dashboard, with up- to-the-minute news, blogs, videos, Tweets and other financial indicators, all set up as notifications so you know when something changes as soon as everyone else does. INDX.guru's special 'Heat' and 'Sentiment' features measure the overall 'noise' of the chatter surrounding a company, as well as how positive that chatter is.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":19,"dup_dump_count":16,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-05":1,"2021-31":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-16":2,"2020-10":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-09":1,"2022-40":1,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Half of Mumbai's slum residents have had coronavirus \u2013 study -  https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2020\/jul\/29\/half-of-mumbais-slum-residents-have-had-coronavirus-study  India is the third-worst hit country in the world, but there are concerns a lack of testing could mean the true figure is far higher\n\nOver half the people living in the slums of Mumbai have had the coronavirus, according to a city-commissioned study that raises fresh doubts about India's official case numbers.\n\nIndia is already the third-worst hit country after the US and Brazil, with nearly 1.5 million cases, though experts have previously said the lack of testing could mean the true tally is much higher.\n\nBlood tests on 6,936 randomly selected people conducted by Mumbai's city authorities found that 57% of slum-dwellers and 16% of non-slum residents had virus antibodies, the study released on Tuesday said.\n\nMumbai, where about 40% of the population lives in slums, has reported just over 110,000 infections and more than 6,000 deaths so far.\n\nThe city of 20 million people is home to India's largest slum, Dharavi, where an estimated million people live. But deaths in the sprawling slum have not exploded, with local officials saying their aggressive efforts to stem the spread of the virus has been effective.\n\nThe survey results suggested asymptomatic infections were \"likely to be a high proportion of all infections\" and also indicated the virus death rate was likely to be \"very low\", the study said.\n\nThe Mumbai survey came a week after an antibody study commissioned by the government suggested that almost a quarter of people in the capital New Delhi, home to 20 million people, have had the virus.\n\n<\/comment> They should be nearing herd immunity then<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":21},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Nginx v1.13.1 Released -  http:\/\/nginx.org\/en\/CHANGES#1.13.1  \n        *) Feature: now a hostname can be used as the \"set_real_ip_from\"\n           directive parameter.\n    \n        *) Feature: vim syntax highlighting scripts improvements.\n    \n        *) Feature: the \"worker_cpu_affinity\" directive now works on DragonFly\n           BSD.\n           Thanks to Sepherosa Ziehau.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: SSL renegotiation on backend connections did not work when\n           using OpenSSL before 1.1.0.\n    \n        *) Workaround: nginx could not be built with Oracle Developer Studio\n           12.5.\n    \n        *) Workaround: now cache manager ignores long locked cache entries when\n           cleaning cache based on the \"max_size\" parameter.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: client SSL connections were immediately closed if deferred\n           accept and the \"proxy_protocol\" parameter of the \"listen\" directive\n           were used.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: in the \"proxy_cache_background_update\" directive.\n    \n        *) Workaround: now the \"tcp_nodelay\" directive sets the TCP_NODELAY\n           option before an SSL handshake.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":20,"dup_dump_count":16,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-49":2,"2022-40":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2019-22":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-34":2,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2023-06":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-18":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"8-Character Windows NTLM Passwords Can Be Cracked in Under 2.5 Hours -  https:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2019\/02\/14\/password_length\/  HashCat, an open-source password recovery tool, can now crack an eight- character Windows NTLM password hash in less than 2.5 hours. \"Current password cracking benchmarks show that the minimum eight character password, no matter how complex, can be cracked in less than 2.5 hours\" using a hardware rig that utilizes eight Nvidia GTX 2080Ti GPUs, explained a hacker who goes by the pseudonym Tinker on Twitter in a DM conversation with The Register. \"The eight character password is dead.\" From the report:\n\nIt's dead at least in the context of hacking attacks on organizations that rely on Windows and Active Directory. NTLM is an old Microsoft authentication protocol that has since been replaced with Kerberos. According to Tinker, it's still used for storing Windows passwords locally or in the NTDS.dit file in Active Directory Domain Controllers. It's dead at least in the context of hacking attacks on organizations that rely on Windows and Active Directory. NTLM is an old Microsoft authentication protocol that has since been replaced with Kerberos. Tinker estimates that buying the GPU power described would require about $10,000; others have claimed the necessary computer power to crack an eight-character NTLM password hash can be rented in Amazon's cloud for just $25.\n\nNIST's latest guidelines say passwords should be at least eight characters long. Some online service providers don't even demand that much. When security researcher Troy Hunt examined the minimum password lengths at various websites last year, he found that while Google, Microsoft and Yahoo set the bar at eight, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter only required six. Tinker said the eight character password was used as a benchmark because it's what many organizations recommend as the minimum password length and many corporate IT policies reflect that guidance. So how long is long enough to sleep soundly until the next technical advance changes everything? Tinker recommends a random five-word passphrase, something along the lines of the four-word example popularized by online comic XKCD, \"correcthorsebatterystaple.\" That or whatever maximum length random password via a password management app, with two-factor authentication enabled in either case.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":21,"dup_dump_count":15,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-47":3,"2019-39":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-30":2,"2019-22":2,"2019-13":2,"2021-43":1}},"id":19174939},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ask HN: Is QA\/Tester profession dead? -  I explore QA/Tester SEiT open positions from time to time and I noticed that there are less and less of them, especially in potentially interesting places.
Do you have QA in your team? Of no, may I ask why?  I think QA is still a very important role in a serious company, we still have a lot of QAs in the company I work in. We developers do write tests but that is usually not enough and QA always founds meaningful bugs. IMO a good QA team is still really valuable.\n\n I agree with this. Additionally, a lot of QAs at my company are transitioning to a test automation role where they are writing\/coding their tests in addition to their normal work.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> Management may not see it that way, but a cunning, experienced tester is invaluable.\n\nThe nature of testing may have changed.\n\nFor one, the approach to testing is different with more smaller iterations and more powerful automation.\n\nFor another, better automation has split testing into more of an automated test developer\/pipeline plumber part and an exploratory (manually testing the juicy stuff, the boring routine is handled by automation) part.\n\n<\/comment> Not dead at all. At my current company, 15% of the total tech team is comprised of QA\/SDETs. Though, Manual QA is now being replaced with automation. For every new feature we work on, we have to make sure that we have automation ready before we go live into production. We work on Selenium, Appium, Karate for automation. We use ADF for testing our apps on real devices. Our CI\/CD pipeline takes care of running the tests and when the tests fail, deployment doesn't happen.\n\nLike every other job, you've to keep yourself updated with the latest.\n\n<\/comment> For many, the QA\/tester was someone not worthy of being a developer because of not having sufficient programming skills. Nowadays the testing frameworks (web front-end!) got so complex and testing stacks so hysterical that QA\/tester job is basically full time development job. Thus, developers do the QA\/tester job nowadays (which doubles their work).\n\n I didnt know this perception existed. I believe QA would be crucial in avoiding disastrous customer interactions (customers get ticked by the slightest bugs ) and in mission critical software. Didnt a QA guy find out about the bugs in Ubers self driving car dep and Uber still ignored it and then killed a pedestrian ?\n\n Don't think it was a QA. [https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/12\/10\/report-a-manager- at-ubers-...](https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/12\/10\/report-a-manager-at-ubers- self-driving-unit-warned-executives-about-safety-issues-just-days-before- fatal-crash\/)\n\nAlso, when it comes to things like Self Driving, the line between a QA\/dev is really not there. Both of them are just writing software since testing such a thing can't be a manual process.\n\n Yeah. True that. But I guess that just means the job has additional requirements. You can teach a QA guy to write code but its kind of hard for devs to think like a QA.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> The QA\/Tester profession isn't dead, but the traditional manual testing role is dying out. Most of the companies I know that use manual QA processes have outsourced the manual QA to teams in Asia (primarily India) and those are only used for legacy products where writing tests are difficult\/impossible. My current company (~50 people) doesn't have QA, and we would only consider hiring someone in QA if they were able to write high-quality test code (contractors we've used in the past have written test code but not high- quality). Using GUIs to create automated tests are a no-go. Those people I know with QA backgrounds all have significant difficulty finding new positions, even if they are good (6 months unemployed would not be unusual)\n\n<\/comment> QA (both embedded and external) is extremely far from dead in the game dev industry at least.\n\n I am very interested in how game dev does e2e testing. Arent there millions of strategies that players can follow and the games must therefore respond consistently in all these scenarios ? How is this type of combinatorial explosion avoided ? Any references ?\n\n I haven't done QA in a very long time so unfortunately do not have much detailed insight anymore.\n\nIn general, in a AAA studio when I think of \"QA\" I think of so much more than just game testing for end users.\n\nWe have things like:\n\n* Daily smokes for content creators. Embedded QA doing manual (and sometimes partially automated) smokes of core game features as well as our proprietary editor and other tools multiple times a day before new binaries get rolled out to content creators, with the sole purpose of making sure that artists are able to actually work with the build(s).\n\n* _A lot_ of automated runtime testing and automated unit tests (some teams are better with this than others) which QA helps monitor. This can help test various combinations of weapons etc very quickly. Tests for everything from locomotion to weapon-switching, damage output validation, etc.\n\n* Cert testing - before we send a build to MS or Sony our own QA has to go through various certification requirements and approve it. This will include testing not just game features but loading times, build metadata, various security measures, etc.\n\n* Engine integration testing...when game teams integrate new engine drops or features (or when features are even integrated between engine streams and the main release line) things like editor, environment framework, other tools and relevant features, etc are tested on an example data set by QA.\n\n* Full playthrough testing. I don't know for sure which QA department\/team handles full playthrough testing and various iterations thereof but I suspect it's our remote QA-specific studio vs in-house QA (although I'm sure they do some of that too).\n\n* And more that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head right now.\n\nAnd then of course we have the regular team playtests where the entire team plays certain maps in development and files bugs\/provides feedback\/etc - having a few dozen to a few hundred devs actually playing the thing helps catch various issues with different scenario\/equipment combinations, map problems, etc.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> We're having trouble finding QA's to hire at my current company so that may have something to do with there being less positions.\n\nTo be fair, we're not really in a tech hot zone so that might be why we struggle.\n\n<\/comment> QA is still much a thing in our company, although not necessarily working in the traditional \"assurance\" role but rather in a \"assistance\" role.\n\n<\/comment> Lately, I have been searching for open engineering test positions in Microsoft, and I have found none of QA, Tester, SDIT, SEIT etc.\n\nThe same goes for duckduckgo\n\n<\/comment> QA jobs are getting outsourced to cheaper markets outside the U.S.\n\n<\/comment> We have, and other companies around here have as well (Thailand).\n\n<\/comment> Not in East Europe it is not.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Team Fortress 2 Modders Make Nearly $50,000 Apiece -  http:\/\/www.crunchgear.com\/2010\/10\/22\/team-fortress-2-modders-make-nearly-50000-apiece\/  I submitted this, and not the original source ([http:\/\/www.gamesindustry.biz\/articles\/2010-10-22-valves- user...](http:\/\/www.gamesindustry.biz\/articles\/2010-10-22-valves-user-created- content-store-earns-modders-USD50k)) because it requires (free) log in to read.\n\nHere's the full text of the original source:\n\nValve's user-created content store earns modders $50k Royalties from the new in-game user-created content store in Valve's multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 have approached $50,000 for some players.\n\nFive modders, who won a competition to have their creations featured, earned five-figure sums from the in-game Mann Co. Store - which opened just a fortnight ago.\n\nCreators keep 25 per cent of all item sales, with the rest going to Valve. The highest-revealed royalty payment to date is $47,000, meaning Valve would have taken approximately $140,000 from the sales of just one modder's content.\n\n\"It was completely mind-blowing, the size of the return that we're getting on these things,\" modder Spencer Kern, one of the top two earners so far, told Gamasutra.\n\nValve flew Kern and another player, Steven Skidmore, to its office to present them with their money first-hand, as payments had exceed Paypal's permissible limits.\n\nSaid Valve boss Gabe Newell, \"It benefits us because it grows the community, right? These [content creators] benefit, but we benefit too.\n\n\"Once people realise this is about their community, and that the right people are getting the benefits... after a while, they'll say, 'This is really how these kinds of communities need to work.'\"\n\nValve will also sell its own content on the store, but plans to significantly extend the range of amateur contributions. Prices for items currently range from less than a dollar to $17.50.\n\n\"What you really want to do is create per-person pricing, or per-person monetisation or per-person ways of creating value,\" said Newell. \"In a sense, asking 'could you support a game entirely with just this as a monetisation model?' - you could.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":47,"dup_dump_count":39,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2020-45":1,"2018-13":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-26":1,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-22":1,"2014-52":1,"2014-49":2,"2014-42":4,"2014-41":1,"2014-35":1,"2014-23":1,"2014-15":2,"2022-49":1,"2017-13":1,"2015-18":1,"2015-06":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":2,"2024-18":1}},"id":1819894},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Stone: Leonardo da Vinci's Resume -  http:\/\/www.cenedella.com\/stone\/archives\/2010\/01\/leonardo_da_vincis_resume.html  If it worked for Leonardo da Vinci, maybe it could work for me. The next time I'm looking for a job, I'll try this:\n\n\"Most Illustrious Proprietor, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled developers of applications of business, and that the invention and operation of the said programs are nothing different from those in common use: I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Company, showing your Management my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below.\n\n1\\. I have a sort of extremely light and strong functions and modules, adapted to be most easily ftp'd, and with them you may pursue, and at any time combine them with others, secure and indestructible by standard mean time to failure of hardware and denial of service, easy and convenient to compile and catalog. Also methods of unzipping and storing the data of the customers.\n\n2\\. I know how, when a website is besieged, to shard data onto the cloud, and make endless variety of mirrors, and fault tolerant disks and RAIDs, and other machines pertaining to such concerns.\n\n3\\. If, by reason of the volume of the data, or the structure of the btrees and its indexes, it is impossible, when conducting a search, to avail oneself of sub-second response time, I have methods for benchmarking every process or other function, even if it were interpreted, etc.\n\n4\\. Again, I have kinds of functions; most convenient and easy to ftp; and with these I can spawn lots of data almost resembling a torrent; and with the download of these cause great terror to the competitor, to his great detriment and confusion.\n\n5\\. And if the processing should be on the desktop I have apps of many machines most efficient for data entry and reporting; and utilities which will satisfy the needs of the most demanding customers and users and consumers.\n\n6\\. I have means by secret and tortuous scripts and modules, made without leaving tracks, to generate source code, even if it were needed to run on a client or a server.\n\n7\\. I will make secure firewalls, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the hackers with their utilities, there is no body of crackers so great but they would break them. And behind these, software could run quite unhurt and without any hindrance.\n\n8\\. In case of need I will make big properties, methods, and collections and useful forms, out of the common type.\n\n9\\. Where the operation of compiling might fail, I would contrive scripts, functions, routines, and other parameter driven processes of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of data entry, reporting, and storage.\n\n10\\. In times of low revenue I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in maintenance and the refactoring of code public and private; and in guiding data from one warehouse to another.\n\n11\\. I can carry out code in Javascript, PHP, or C, and also I can do in network administration whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.\n\nAgain, the intranet app may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of all your customers of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Google.\n\nAnd if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your data center, or in whatever place may please your Businessperson - to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.\"\n\n Next time the Duke of Pittsburgh needs to create a CRM solution, you will have a resume at the ready!<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":35,"dup_dump_count":33,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-17":1,"2023-23":1,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Microsoft pays licence fees for 74 smartphone patents -  http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2010\/10\/08\/microsoft_patents_acacia\/  Normally, this story wouldn't even be news -- patent deals are cut all the time -- but there's an obvious strategy being developed here. Microsoft has identified patents as the most effective attack against anyone seeking to profit from FOSS. Rather than attack FOSS directly, you dump as much money as you can in to littering the intellectual property space for a given product with patent mines. Step on a patent mine and all of the sudden you're paying Microsoft (or someone else) for sitting on their ass and building a patent portfolio rather than innovating with any real products.\n\nUnder the old rules of engagement, patents were the equivalent of nuclear warheads. No one really wanted to use them, but they were good for making sure that your buddies across the street didn't fire off a salvo of patent suits in your direction. The problem for FOSS is that software patents are ideologically reprehensible to most of the people involved, therefore patents are not sought, and the intellectual property battlefield falls in to the hands of the patent trolls and big corporations.\n\nAs things stand today, we're looking at a future where patents become a large market in and of themselves. Big corporations will push for international cooperation for patent enforcement, and up-and-coming companies who benefit from FOSS are going to face significant new risks. The biggest losers will be consumers. Virtually all of the new internet giants stand on the shoulders of FOSS. It's only matter of time before the patent trolls find ways to attack everyone using their \"IP\".<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24,"dup_dump_count":22,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-49":1,"2022-33":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2023-40":1,"2024-18":1,"2024-22":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"What does Docker add to just plain LXC? -  http:\/\/stackoverflow.com\/questions\/17989306\/what-does-docker-add-to-just-plain-lxc?rq=1\n\n Here's what I answered on stack overflow:\n\nDocker is not a replacement for lxc. \"lxc\" refers to capabilities of the linux kernel (specifically namespaces and control groups) which allow sandboxing processes from one another, and controlling their resource allocations.\n\nOn top of this low-level foundation of kernel features, Docker offers a high- level tool with several powerful functionalities:\n\n _Portable deployment across machines_. Docker defines a format for bundling an application and all its dependencies into a single object which can be transferred to any docker-enabled machine, and executed there with the guarantee that the execution environment exposed to the application will be the same. Lxc implements process sandboxing, which is an important pre- requisite for portable deployment, but that alone is not enough for portable deployment. If you sent me a copy of your application installed in a custom lxc configuration, it would almost certainly not run on my machine the way it does on yours, because it is tied to your machine's specific configuration: networking, storage, logging, distro, etc. Docker defines an abstraction for these machine-specific settings, so that the exact same docker container can run - unchanged - on many different machines, with many different configurations.\n\n _Application-centric_. Docker is optimized for the deployment of applications, as opposed to machines. This is reflected in its API, user interface, design philosophy and documentation. By contrast, the lxc helper scripts focus on containers as lightweight machines - basically servers that boot faster and need less ram. We think there's more to containers than just that.\n\n _Automatic build_. Docker includes a tool for developers to automatically assemble a container from their source code, with full control over application dependencies, build tools, packaging etc. They are free to use make, maven, chef, puppet, salt, debian packages, rpms, source tarballs, or any combination of the above, regardless of the configuration of the machines.\n\n _Versioning_. Docker includes git-like capabilities for tracking successive versions of a container, inspecting the diff between versions, committing new versions, rolling back etc. The history also includes how a container was assembled and by whom, so you get full traceability from the production server all the way back to the upstream developer. Docker also implements incremental uploads and downloads, similar to \"git pull\", so new versions of a container can be transferred by only sending diffs.\n\n _Component re-use_. Any container can be used as an \"base image\" to create more specialized components. This can be done manually or as part of an automated build. For example you can prepare the ideal python environment, and use it as a base for 10 different applications. Your ideal postgresql setup can be re-used for all your future projects. And so on.\n\n _Sharing_. Docker has access to a public registry ([http:\/\/index.docker.io](http:\/\/index.docker.io)) where thousands of people have uploaded useful containers: anything from redis, couchdb, postgres to irc bouncers to rails app servers to hadoop to base images for various distros. The registry also includes an official \"standard library\" of useful containers maintained by the docker team. The registry itself is open-source, so anyone can deploy their own registry to store and transfer private containers, for internal server deployments for example.\n\n _Tool ecosystem_. Docker defines an API for automating and customizing the creation and deployment of containers. There are a huge number of tools integrating with docker to extend its capabilities. PaaS-like deployment (Dokku, Deis, Flynn), multi-node orchestration (maestro, salt, mesos, openstack nova), management dashboards (docker-ui, openstack horizon, shipyard), configuration management (chef, puppet), continuous integration (jenkins, strider, travis), etc. Docker is rapidly establishing itself as the standard for container-based tooling.\n\nI hope this helps!<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":39,"dup_dump_count":20,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-35":2,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":2,"2018-17":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":3,"2018-05":5,"2017-51":1,"2017-47":4,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":4,"2017-34":2,"2017-30":3,"2017-26":1,"2022-33":1,"2024-22":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Complete Guide to Know about Cell Therapy from the Point of Standardization -  https:\/\/www.creative-bioarray.com\/oncology.htm  What is cell therapy? Cell therapy refers to the transplantation or input of normal or bioengineered human cells into a patient's body and newly-imported cells can replace damaged cells or involve a stronger immune killing function, so as to achieve the purpose of treating diseases. Cell therapy has shown higher application value in the treatment of cancer, hematological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease etc. In general, cell therapy includes tumor cell immunotherapy and stem cell therapy. There are two cell sources for cell therapy, one from the patient itself and the other from the allogeneic tissue.\n\nThe Defects of Cell Therapy The cell is the most basic unit that contributes to a living organism, however, it does not mean that everyone shares the same cells. On the contrary, there is a huge difference in each individual which can be compared to human-to-human differences, that is, two identical people never exist. The huge difference between cells and cell preparations is the biggest drawback of cell therapy. In this post, we will discuss several issues that need attention in the current stage of cell therapy.\n\nDifficulties in the Standardization of Cell Therapy Cancer cell immunotherapy cannot be standardized from the stage of raw material acquisition. The cell treatment materiasl for each paitient are their own blood leukocytes. The condition and physical condition of each patient are different, and the collected white blood cell growth quantity and kill activity are not uniform and cannot be standardized. As it is impossible to standardize raw materials, preparation processes, and product specifications, it cannot be standardized, industrialized, and scaled up. Each tumor cell immunotherapy laboratory meets the GMP level with the hardware environment, and it can be more like a cell preparation workshop. Researchers ranged in number from a few to a dozen and could not really meet the standards of division of labor of industrialized pharmaceutical companies. Taking stem cell therapy that using umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells as an example, which raw material is an umbilical cord, and one umbilical cord-produced cell can be utilized by many paitients. The standardization path is more advanced than the immunotherapy of tumor cells, and the raw materials can be standardized to some extent.\n\n<\/comment> Natural cytokine supernatants with more standardized and standardized properties Cytokines are a class of small molecule proteins with broad biological activity synthesized and secreted by immune cells (such as monocytes, macrophages, T cells, B cells, NK cells, etc.) and certain non- immune cells (endothelial cells, epidermal cells, fibroblasts, etc.) Immune responses are regulated by binding to the respective receptors to regulate cell growth, differentiation and effects. Cytokines (CK) are low-molecular- weight soluble proteins that are produced by various types of cells induced by immunogens, mitogens, or other stimulants. They have the ability to regulate innate immunity [1] and adaptive immunity [2], hematopoiesis, cell growth, and damage tissue repair and other functions.\n\nCytokines can be divided into interleukins, interferons, tumor necrosis factor superfamily, colony stimulating factors, chemokines, growth factors etc. Cytokines form a very complex cytokine regulatory network in the body and participate in many important physiological functions of the human body. Where stem cells and immune cells cannot reach the body, cytokines can easily reach target tissue sites because of their small size.\n\nIn recent years, recombinant gene cytokines have made remarkable achievements in clinical applications as a novel biological response modifier. A large part of the effects of stem cell therapy and immune cell therapy arises from the action of cytokines secreted in the body. The stem cells and immune cells in the body are introduced back into the body to secrete a variety of natural structural cytokines. Although the amount of these cytokines is relatively small, they are synergistic and act directly on the cytokine network in the body because of their high natural structure activity, lack of antigenicity but diversity. Because of the standardization, standardization, industrialization, and scale of natural compound cytokines, it is more cost- effective than cell therapy, allowing more patients in need to enjoy cell-like therapeutic effects.\n\nAlthough natural complex cytokines can largely replace cell therapy, but there are still conditions that require the presence of cells to exert a therapeutic effect. We hope that cell therapy can break the current situation, become high efficiency and low cost with large scale, more standardization, and then be applied to more disease treatments.\n\n<\/comment> Difficulties in The Scale of Cell Therapy Industry At present, the production mode of the cell therapy industry maily depends on technicians. In the 10,000-grade clean laboratory, the cells are operated in a class 100 clean bench, cultured in a carbon dioxide incubator, centrifuged in a centrifuge, observed through an inverted microscope, and the drug reagents are stored in a medicine refrigerator. All of these devices are operated by independent biological laboratories of the individual and being linked together through the operations of scientists. This type of production model is small in scale and similar to workshop-type production. Although there are some large scales, the essence is a collection of many small workshops. Due to the small scale, the instruments used are laboratory instruments and many of the reagents used are scientific reagents, which will lead to the issue of low efficiency but high cost. Autologous or Allogeneic cells There are two kinds of cell sources for cell therapy, one from the patients and the other from the allogeneic tissue. Autologous cell therapy can not be standardized from the raw material acquisition stage, and its cells are only applied to the patient itself, the essence is essentially medical technology. The prevalence of autologous cell therapy as a medical technology is mainly due to the scale of the predicament. Allogeneic cell therapy, the cells derived from allogeneic. Taking tumor cell immunotherapy as an example, the cell source may be from cord blood, and the larger-scale cell source may be a filter plate for leukocyte filtration at the blood bank. Taking umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells as an example, the cell source is the umbilical cord, and one umbilical cord-producing cell can be used by more than one person. If scale can be cultivated, although the quality standards cannot be quantified well, the scaled products themselves have a certain degree of standardized properties.\n\nThe cell industry, as an industry, is not the path to the advancement of cell- based therapeutics. If the advanced technology cannot be mass-produced on a large scale, it can only stay in the laboratory and become the object of research for scientists, never have achance to become a drug into the majority of patients. For allogeneic cell therapy that using allogeneic cells as raw materials, the standardized properties of the scaled products can be realized if large-scale cultures are prepared, then scale and standardization can promote each other. The current progress in standardization of cells is not easy, but the progress in scale should be relatively easy to achieve.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":34,"dup_dump_count":17,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-39":2,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-10":2,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":2,"2020-24":1,"2020-10":1,"2019-51":3,"2019-47":11,"2019-43":2,"2023-06":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"John McAfee in surprise rant over Google and privacy -  http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-28721480\n\n Notorious computer security pioneer John McAfee has used a surprise appearance at a hacking conference to warn of threats against \"freedom\" thanks to privacy issues with technology.\n\nSpeaking at Def Con in Las Vegas, Mr McAfee called on hackers to \"make a stand\" against companies that seek highly personal information.\n\nHe blamed laziness for the spread of apps and websites that gleam information from users.\n\n\"We'd rather be safe, secure and comfortable than actually live,\" he said.\n\nIn 2012 Mr McAfee was accused of murdering his neighbour while living in Belize. He fled the country soon after and denies the charges.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Fun Sales Fakts \u2013 The Witness -  http:\/\/the-witness.net\/news\/2016\/02\/fun-sales-fakts\/  I am glad is going well! I will buy it the moment a finish Dark Souls 2...\n\n<\/comment> As the site is down here is this article text:\n\nThe Witness has now been on sale for a week, so it seems like a good time to post a financial summary. Often, independent developers find these kinds of numbers useful in making their own plans, and the general public can find them interesting too. There is a wrinkle, which is that I can't be too precise about the sales results on specific platforms, because often when we sign a deal with a particular store, we agree not to reveal their sales numbers. I am actually not sure at this time which stores we are allowed to be specific about and which we aren't, and I would have to dig up and sort through a number of contracts to be sure about it; but that is not a good use of time right now, since I am spending most of my day supporting the users who have technical problems (shipping games on PCs these days is really not fun). The situation can be thorny in subtle ways, too, because if I post information about all stores but one, then I am implicitly revealing the sales figures for that last store, which is not allowed. Finally, I want to make clear that we did not make this game in order to make money. We were trying to build a beautiful \/ interesting \/ intricate thing, first and foremost. The money just helps us stay in business in order to build new things. It is very easy on the Internet to read a financial posting like this cynically, so I urge folks out there not to do that. Okay, so here's what I can say: Across all platforms, The Witness has totalled over $5 million USD gross revenue in the first week, and it has sold substantially more than 100,000 units. This is a good chunk more revenue in one week than Braid made in its entire first year, from August 2008-September 2009. (Braid initially launched on XBLA in August 2008, and it came to Steam in April 2009). Braid was considered a hit independent game at the time. We can also compare sales by units instead of revenue; this is a little more of an apples-to-oranges comparison because The Witness has a higher price than Braid did (Braid launched at $14.99 [$16.50 when inflation- adjusted to 2015 dollars], and The Witness launched at $39.99). By number of units, the first week of each individual platform handily beats Braid's first week of sales. (Witness on PC by itself beat Braid's first week by a decent margin, and Witness on PSN by itself beat Braid's first week by a decent margin, counting only by number of units). This is great because as price goes up, naturally the number of units sold goes down. So the fact that we beat Braid by units, more than doubly, is a really nice success. The Witness launched on two platforms, PSN and Windows PC. Neither of these platforms dominates our sales; PC is very strong for us, and PSN is very strong for us. There are some publicly-available guesstimates for specific platforms on sites such as SteamSpy, but the numbers that SteamSpy is reporting for The Witness are a bit too low (though this is kind of to be expected, I guess, from the way that site works). So, the game is doing great. That doesn't mean we have broken even on our development cost yet! Because our development budget was so high, $5 million in revenue is not enough to recover it yet (because we split that revenue with the storefronts, we have to subtract VAT in Europe, etc). However, it is looking like, as time goes on, we should break even and make a comfortable safety margin on top of that, which will allow us to make more nice games in the future \u2014 unless some kind of world economic disaster happens. As I mentioned, right now we are dealing mostly with PC graphics driver problems, and we are also working on adding some features to the game about configurable controls and rendering options, for PC and PS4. After this, in the near future, we will start investigating the bringing the game to other platforms. Under serious consideration are: iOS, Android, Xbox One, OS X. We will provide more-concrete information about these as it becomes available!<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":2,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":10}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Foundations of Data Science [pdf] -  https:\/\/www.cs.cornell.edu\/jeh\/book.pdf  This book provides an introduction to the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of data science, including machine learning, high-dimensional geometry, and analysis of large networks. Topics include the counterintuitive nature of data in high dimensions, important linear algebraic techniques such as singular value decomposition, the theory of random walks and Markov chains, the fundamentals of and important algorithms for machine learning, algorithms and analysis for clustering, probabilistic models for large networks, representation learning including topic modelling and non-negative matrix factorization, wavelets and compressed sensing. Important probabilistic techniques are developed including the law of large numbers, tail inequalities, analysis of random projections, generalization guarantees in machine learning, and moment methods for analysis of phase transitions in large random graphs. Additionally, important structural and complexity measures are discussed such as matrix norms and VC-dimension. This book is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate courses in the design and analysis of algorithms for data.\n\nVideo lectures at [https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en- us\/research\/publication\/foundat...](https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en- us\/research\/publication\/foundations-of-data-science-2\/)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":27,"dup_dump_count":4,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-26":1,"2024-18":2,"2024-10":3,"2024-30":1,"unknown":19}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Warren Buffett Gifts $3.2B in Berkshire Hathaway Stock to Charities -  https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/warren-buffett-gifts-3-2-billion-in-berkshire-hathaway-stock-to-charities-1499723277  Full text:\n\nBerkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett has donated about $3.17 billion of shares in the company to five foundations, the company said Monday, the latest contribution in a more than decade-long pledge to donate a portion of his wealth to charities and philanthropic endeavors.\n\nThe Omaha, Neb., billionaire investor donated 18,628,189 Class B shares in Berkshire Hathaway to five foundations: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, Sherwood Foundation, Howard G. Buffett Foundation and NoVo Foundation.\n\nIn order to make the contributions, Mr. Buffett converted his A shares in Berkshire Hathaway to Class B shares. Last year, Mr. Buffett made donations totaling $2.86 billion to charities.\n\nMr. Buffett, 86, is Berkshire's largest shareholder and as of March held 32.7% of the voting power in the conglomerate.\n\nMr. Buffett pledged in 2006 to donate 85% of his Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation. Including the stock gift this year, Mr. Buffett said he has donated $27.54 billion of stock to foundations.\n\nMr. Buffett said Monday he intends to have all of his Berkshire shares given to charities through annual gifts that will be completed 10 years after his estate is settled.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Nginx v1.13.10 Released -  http:\/\/nginx.org\/en\/CHANGES#1.13.0  \n        *) Change: SSL renegotiation is now allowed on backend connections.\n    \n        *) Feature: the \"rcvbuf\" and \"sndbuf\" parameters of the \"listen\"\n           directives of the mail proxy and stream modules.\n    \n        *) Feature: the \"return\" and \"error_page\" directives can now be used to\n           return 308 redirections.\n           Thanks to Simon Leblanc.\n    \n        *) Feature: the \"TLSv1.3\" parameter of the \"ssl_protocols\" directive.\n    \n        *) Feature: when logging signals nginx now logs PID of the process which\n           sent the signal.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: in memory allocation error handling.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: if a server in the stream module listened on a wildcard\n           address, the source address of a response UDP datagram could differ\n           from the original datagram destination address.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":23,"dup_dump_count":16,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-40":1,"2022-27":1,"2021-31":2,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":3,"2019-35":1,"2019-22":2,"2018-51":1,"2018-34":2,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2023-23":1,"2024-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"An Update Regarding The FDA's Letter to 23andMe -  http:\/\/blog.23andme.com\/news\/an-update-regarding-the-fdas-letter-to-23andme\/\n\n Original text, the blog seems down:\n\nDear 23andMe Customers,\n\nI wanted to reach out to you about the FDA letter that was sent to 23andMe last Friday.\n\nIt is absolutely critical that our consumers get high quality genetic data that they can trust. We have worked extensively with our lab partner to make sure that the results we return are accurate. We stand behind the data that we return to customers - but we recognize that the FDA needs to be convinced of the quality of our data as well.\n\n23andMe has been working with the FDA to navigate the correct regulatory path for direct-to-consumer genetic tests. This is new territory, not just for 23andMe, but for the FDA as well. The FDA is an important partner for 23andMe and we will be working hard to move forward with them.\n\nI apologize for the limited response to the questions many of you have raised regarding the letter and its implications for the service. We don't have the answers to all of those questions yet, but as we learn more we will update you.\n\nI am committed to providing each of you with a trusted consumer product rooted in high quality data that adheres to the best scientific standards. All of us at 23andMe believe that genetic information can lead to healthier lives.\n\nThank you for your loyalty to 23andMe. Please refer to our 23andMe blog for updates on this process.\n\nAnne Wojcicki Co-founder and CEO, 23andMe\n\n<\/comment> The FDA has bent over backwards - pretty much everything that 23andMe needs to do in order to sell legally has been laid out, and ignored.\n\nThe Google egotistic approach is well ensconced in 23andme\n\n<\/comment> That's not an \"update\" \\- it's corporate bullshit that says nothing.\n\n23andMe is _finally_ learning that there are actual, legitimate reasons why regulations exist around medical testing.\n\nOff topic: when did the smarmy cliche \"reach out to you\" become the ubiquitous way to say \"contact you\"?<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-10":1,"unknown":22}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Why it's time to forget the pecking order at work -  http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/margaret_heffernan_why_it_s_time_to_forget_the_pecking_order_at_work  Organizations are often run according to \"the superchicken model,\" where the value is placed on star employees who outperform others. And yet, this isn't what drives the most high-achieving teams. Business leader Margaret Heffernan observes that it is social cohesion \u2014 built every coffee break, every time one team member asks another for help \u2014 that leads over time to great results. It's a radical rethink of what drives us to do our best work, and what it means to be a leader. Because as Heffernan points out: \"Companies don't have ideas. Only people do.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":47,"dup_dump_count":6,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-30":9,"2024-26":7,"2024-22":4,"2024-18":6,"2024-10":8,"2017-13":3,"unknown":9}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"In the Heart of Silicon Valley, They Don't Want New Jobs -  http:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/in-the-heart-of-silicon-valley-they-dont-want-new-jobs-1474064487  Paywalled. \"web\" link doesn't work.\n\n The Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, Calif., Sept. 11. Photo: Brian Molyneaux\/The Wall Street Journal By Andy Kessler Sept. 16, 2016 6:21 p.m. ET 197 COMMENTS Palo Alto, Calif. The capital of Silicon Valley is ready to abdicate. A few weeks ago, bizarre as it might seem, Palo Alto Mayor Patrick Burt came out against jobs. \"We're looking to increase the rate of housing growth,\" he told Curbed San Francisco, \"but decrease the rate of job growth.\"\n\nThink about that. Almost every mayor in the U.S. is wracking his brain trying to entice jobs into town. Yet Palo Alto\u20143.8% unemployment, a magnet for the geek class, the place that nurtured Facebook \u2014is telling everyone else to get lost.\n\nI had to meet this guy. Near City Hall, I pulled my (proudly gas guzzling) car into a spot between a white Tesla and a black Tesla. This was the Coral parking zone, giving me two hours before I had to move to the Lime zone. Nearby stood the Epiphany, a new $800-a-night hotel, just down from the ancient House of Foam, fulfilling all your polyurethane and polystyrene needs. Next to the Verizon Wireless store, the old Stanford Theater was showing a Ruth Chatterton double feature. Palo Alto, 65,000 people sitting on 26 square miles of some of the most valuable land anywhere, is certainly a town of contrasts.\n\nThe city doesn't have a mayoral election. Instead, the council members, some of whom identify as slow-growth \"residentialists,\" install one of their own as mayor for a one-year term. Now it's Patrick Burt's turn, and he's making the most of it. \"Big tech companies are choking off the downtown,\" he told the New York Times.\n\nRight before the mayor went rogue, one of the city's planning commissioners, Kate Downing, resigned in an open letter. Her family, she said, couldn't afford to live in Palo Alto any longer. She's got a point.\n\nMichael Dreyfus, a top real-estate agent in the area, says the cheapest home for sale is a three-bedroom, one-bathroom, 959 square footer on about an eighth of an acre that backs up to train tracks. The asking price (are you sitting down?) is $1.35 million. Or he can sell you a place with five beds and four and a half baths on less than half an acre for $17.5 million. OK, that one is in desirable Old Palo Alto, but it isn't even that old\u2014no cobblestone streets or anything.\n\nI wanted to ask Mayor Burt: Is stifling job creation really going to help? Or would that only boost surrounding towns? Palo Alto has already capped the annual growth of office space. It took years to approve a new $5 billion Stanford Hospital extension, which the area desperately needed. Even worse, there is a funny quirk in the zoning laws that limits what's allowed in so- called Pedestrian and Transit Oriented Development areas (downtown). This includes restrictions on research and development, a catchall for limited manufacturing, \"storage or use of hazardous materials,\" and \"computer software and hardware firms.\"\n\nI can tell you outright that the only hazardous materials in an office of software coders are their high-test caffeine concoctions. But the software firms are many. Amazon has its search team in Palo Alto. The big-data firm Palantir has been gobbling up buildings for its engineers. Facebook had several before moving to neighboring Menlo Park. SurveyMonkey has a huge site near the train station.\n\nEven Palo Alto's residential areas are filled with startups, real-life versions of Erlich Bachman's house from HBO's \"Silicon Valley.\" They're easy to spot, having more cars parked during the day than at night. These companies offer high-paying and productive jobs that are great for society.\n\nSomeone asked on Quora, the question-and-answer website\u2014whose offices, not coincidentally, used to be right across the street from City Hall before being moved to neighboring Mountain View\u2014\"Will Palo Alto Mayor Patrick Burt really be able to ban tech companies?\" One outlier's answer included this line: \"The way to moderate housing prices in the face of growing demand is to . . . build more housing.\"\n\nMayor Burt told Curbed San Francisco that he wants \"metered job growth, and metered housing growth.\" To me, \"metered\" implies pay as you go. The city government's job should be to build out infrastructure to meet increased demand.\n\nThe thing is that Palo Alto has plenty of room. The city reaches from the San Francisco Bay all the way up to the top of the hills holding back the Pacific Ocean. The city says that only 0.5% of \"developable land\" is vacant. But that doesn't tell the whole story.\n\nIn 2011 residents passed a measure with 65% of the vote to take 10 acres of city parkland and turn it into a composting facility. If my math is right, that's enough room for 80 \"affordable\" homes. Sounds like Palo Alto has room but chooses not to make it available for anyone else. It's not exactly NIMBY\u2014Not In My Back Yard. But maybe IGMYOOL\u2014I Got Mine, You're Out Of Luck. That's the definition, I suppose, of a residentialist.\n\nEven downtown has room: upward. Most buildings are two stories, maybe three. Only one, filled with lawyers and venture capitalists, hits 15 stories. Though there's also City Hall, which is eight floors. I took the elevator to the seventh to see if I could drop in on Mayor Burt. Turns out mayor is a part- time job. Mr. Burt's full-time gig is running a medical-technology company doing research and development in . . . Palo Alto. Hmmm.\n\nMr. Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager, is the author of \"Eat People\" (Portfolio, 2011).<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":15,"dup_dump_count":13,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2018-47":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Delay in starting Machine Learning course - \n\nJust got this email...
We're sorry to have to tell you that our Machine Learning course will be delayed further. There have naturally been legal and administrative issues to be sorted out in offering Stanford classes freely to the outside world, and it's just been taking time. We have, however, been able to take advantage of the extra time to debug and improve our course content!
We now expect that the course will start either late in February or early in March. We will let you know as soon as we hear a definite date. We apologize for the lack of communication in recent weeks; we kept hoping we would have a concrete launch date to give you, but that date has kept slipping.
Thanks so much for your patience! We are really sorry for repeatedly making you wait, and for any interference this causes in your schedules. We're as excited and anxious as you are to get started, and we both look forward to your joining us soon in Machine Learning!
Andrew Ng and the ML Course Staff  What's the site url for the course signup? thanks\n\n <\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":63,"dup_dump_count":53,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-14":2,"2022-49":2,"2022-27":2,"2022-05":2,"2021-43":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-39":2,"2019-30":2,"2019-22":2,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-47":2,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-09":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2015-14":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":1,"2015-18":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Nginx v1.11.7 Released -  https:\/\/nginx.org\/en\/CHANGES#1.11.7  \n        *) Change: now in case of a client certificate verification error the\n           $ssl_client_verify variable contains a string with the failure\n           reason, for example, \"FAILED:certificate has expired\".\n    \n        *) Feature: the $ssl_ciphers, $ssl_curves, $ssl_client_v_start,\n           $ssl_client_v_end, and $ssl_client_v_remain variables.\n    \n        *) Feature: the \"volatile\" parameter of the \"map\" directive.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: dependencies specified for a module were ignored while\n           building dynamic modules.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: when using HTTP\/2 and the \"limit_req\" or \"auth_request\"\n           directives client request body might be corrupted; the bug had\n           appeared in 1.11.0.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: a segmentation fault might occur in a worker process when\n           using HTTP\/2; the bug had appeared in 1.11.3.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: in the ngx_http_mp4_module.\n           Thanks to Congcong Hu.\n    \n        *) Bugfix: in the ngx_http_perl_module.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-22":1,"unknown":10}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Google Play Developer Program Policy Update - no more push ads, bookmark ads -  http:\/\/play.google.com\/about\/developer-content-policy.html?ref=ab\n\n google email to developers:\n\nMaking Google Play a great community for users is an important part of helping build a successful platform for you as a developer to distribute your apps. From time to time, we update our content policies as part of an ongoing effort to provide a secure and consistent experience for users. We strive to maintain clear guidelines for you as developers, to help us grow this platform and engage with those users.\n\nThis email is to notify you that we've made some changes to our policies; here are some highlights:\n\n\\- Streamlined the ads policy, with guidance on interstitial ad behavior, and a new \"System Interference\" provision, which prohibits ads in system notifications or home screen icons, and requires user consent when an app changes specified settings on a device\n\n\\- A revised hate speech policy that provides more comprehensive coverage, while recognizing Google Play's role as a platform for free expression\n\n-Clarification that the gambling policy extends to all games that offer cash or other prizes; that virtual goods and currency in games are subject to the payment processor policy, that incentives should not be provided to users to rate an app; that artificially inflating an app's install count is prohibited, and that the Google Play Program Policy applies to all developer information or content made available on the Store. Please review the Google Play Developer Program Policy to see all the changes and make sure your app complies with our updated policies.\n\nAny apps or updates published after this notification are immediately subject to the latest version of the Program Policy. If you find any existing apps in your catalog that don't comply, we ask you to fix and republish the application within 30 calendar days of receiving this email. After this period, existing applications discovered to be in violation may be subject to warning or removal from Google Play.\n\nWe recognize that some developers will need to change their app and advertising practices to comply with the revised policy, but we believe these changes will help ensure all users and developers can maintain confidence in the standard of apps available on Google Play. Our aim is to foster a high standard of app behavior, so you will be able to take advantage of Google Play as a successful platform to distribute your apps and continue to grow your business.\n\nRegards, Google Play Team\n\n This is quite significant as some of the bigger ad networks focus almost exclusively on these kind of ad units and have reasonable market shares (Airpush and Leadbolt are good examples): [http:\/\/www.appbrain.com\/stats\/libraries\/ad](http:\/\/www.appbrain.com\/stats\/libraries\/ad)<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":21,"dup_dump_count":19,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2020-29":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-17":1,"2021-10":1,"2017-13":1,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Enduring Mental Health: Prevalence and Prediction -  https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC5304549\/  Abstract:\n\n> We review epidemiological evidence indicating that most people will develop > a diagnosable mental disorder, suggesting that only a minority experience > enduring mental health. This minority has received little empirical study, > leaving the prevalence and predictors of enduring mental health unknown. We > turn to the population-representative Dunedin cohort, followed from birth to > midlife, to compare people never-diagnosed with mental disorder (N = 171; > 17% prevalence) to those diagnosed at 1\u20132 study waves, the cohort mode (N = > 409). Surprisingly, compared to this modal group, never-diagnosed Study > members were not born into unusually well-to-do families, nor did their > enduring mental health follow markedly sound physical health, or unusually > high intelligence. Instead, they tended to have an advantageous > temperament\/personality style, and negligible family history of mental > disorder. As adults, they report superior educational and occupational > attainment, greater life satisfaction, and higher-quality relationships. Our > findings draw attention to \"enduring mental health\" as a revealing > psychological phenotype and suggest it deserves further study.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":15,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":3,"unknown":12}},"id":23864242},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Laundry Day \u2013 iOS app -  https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/laundry-day-care-symbol-reader\/id974530923?mt=8  Care symbol reader.\n\nThis app will help you with your laundry. You can scan your laundry tags and app will tell you how to wash your clothes. It works like magic, but no, it is a technology!\n\nIn case of bad light conditions you can manually choose symbols from the list. Lot of tips regarding washing, bleaching, drying, ironing and professional care are included. There is a really detailed description how to wash your laundry and how to wash some kind of fabrics.\n\nEveryone should have this app! If you are really sure you will not use it, you should buy it to your mom.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":21,"dup_dump_count":11,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-39":2,"2018-51":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":3,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":3,"2018-13":2,"2018-09":2,"2018-05":3}},"id":10767564},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"iWork 13 - A Huge Regression -  http:\/\/www.libertypages.com\/clarktech\/?p=6597\n\n Looks like the site is getting hammered right now. Here is the text in the meantime:\n\n _So after waiting all day all the iWork Mavericks updates showed up in the MAS. With great trepidation I waited for them to download. Would all the problems users had been sending to Apple the past 4 years finally be fixed? The announcement today of a total rewrite might mean that Numbers finally had some speed and could take at least some of the workload we'd had to use Excel for. For many people being able to get rid of Excel would be welcome. Yet a rewrite might also mean a few fixes more oriented towards the iOS versions rather than how many pros and small businesses use iWork. I know I have a huge number of scripts \u2014 often with complicated hacks to get around the limits in Pages and Number's incomplete Applescript Dictionaries.\n\nHere's the bad news. They won't work now. Effectively Applescript support is gone. Numbers doesn't even have a dictionary. And Pages has had nearly everything removed.\n\nI could go on about how almost none of the problems I've been griping about for four years in Numbers have been fixed. But what's the point. Apple has spoken. It wants the OSX iWork to basically be the same as the iOS version and designed purely for casual use. By making it free they kill the market for any competitors other than Office. So if you run a small office, even if you hate MS-Office, there's really no alternative anymore.\n\nThe bigger question is what this means about Applescript. But I think that's clear. Despite a session at WWDC which raised my hopes, clearly Apple's completely abandoned it. There's no scripting for so many of their apps and so little evangelism that it's hardly surprising so few 3rd party apps now support it.\n\nWhat I suspect Apple doesn't realize is how much small business and small shops workflow depends upon Applescript. Casual use is fine. But a lot of people do more. It wouldn't be so bad were there an alternative. This isn't just like Apple not upgrading the MacPro. This is like Apple not upgrading the MacPro for four years, then announcing that the MacMini is the new MacPro. And discontinuing FCPX, Aperture, and it's other pro apps and telling you to use iPhoto and iMovie.\n\nCan you tell I'm depressed?_\n\n<\/comment> Imagine the outrage that would ensue if Microsoft pulled a similar move with Excel and VB<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":5,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-18":2,"2015-11":2,"2015-06":2,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"unknown":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Andrei Alexandrescu: Generic Programming Galore using D (video) -  http:\/\/vimeo.com\/68378925\n\n Abstract:\n\nGeneric programming holds great promise \u2013 ultimate reuse, unprecedented flexibility, and never a need to reimplement an algorithm from scratch due to abstraction penalties.\n\nUnfortunately, the shiny city on the hill is difficult to reach. C++'s generic power has effectively reached a plateau \u2013 anything but the simplest generic constructs quickly turn an exponential complexity\/benefit elbow. C++11 fails to be a strong sequel in the generic programming arena, and many other languages don't seem to \"get\" genericity properly at all. The D programming language is a definite exception from this trend.\n\nD makes short work of the most formidable generic programming tasks achievable with C++, and makes virtually impossible tasks readily doable. It also reduces the relevance of \"Modern C++ Design\" to that of an introductory brochure (much to the dismay of that book's author).\n\nThis talk has a simple structure. It will pose a few generic programming tasks that seem difficult or impossible with current language technology, and then will show solutions in D that solve said problems.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":4,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-11":1,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2017-13":1,"unknown":9}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Plaxo to be acquired by Comcast - \n\nA Letter from the CEO and Founders
Dear Plaxo member, \nWe are excited to announce some of the biggest news in the history of Plaxo. Plaxo has signed a definitive agreement<\/i> to be acquired by Comcast, the nation's leading provider of entertainment, information and communications products and services. We've got at least a few months to go before the acquisition is completed, but we wanted to send you this note to let you know what's coming up and how it affects you and your account. Plaxo will remain an independent brand, organization and entity. We've been busy at work on our networked address book service and our next-generation social network, Pulse (if it's been a while, please come back and check out all the new features). And, through additional projects with Comcast, we'll be able to take these services to a lot more users and places than we could on our own... including the TV, phone and more. If you'd like to read more about some of the great new things we're planning, please read our official announcement. So, what does this mean for current Plaxo members like you? The services you know and enjoy from Plaxo will not only continue to exist, but will also continue to evolve and improve. We will continue to make our basic services free, and we will continue to serve customers in multiple languages across the world. But, we'll now be able to invest even more in our services, and we will enhance them with more users and more content available across a wider array of devices. We will also continue to protect your privacy and give you control of your information. We will continue to protect your data with one of the strongest privacy policies, which will remain in effect even after the transition. And, we'll continue to be a strong advocate for the open social web. We've put together a quick Q&A about your privacy, account and your data. Last, we'd like to extend an enormous thank you. Whether you've been a Plaxo user for a long time or just recently joined Pulse, we'd like to thank you for making Plaxo a vibrant network. We are excited to open a new chapter today and look forward to helping you keep in touch with the people you care about.
Sincerely,
Ben Golub, Chief Executive Officer Cameron Ring, Founder and Chief Architect Todd Masonis, Founder and Vice President of Products  Yeah for Plaxo! Lot's of acquisitions going on.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24,"dup_dump_count":22,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-31":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-29":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2022-21":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"FBI Investigating High-Speed Trading -  http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/news\/articles\/SB10001424052702304886904579473874181722310?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304886904579473874181722310.html\n\n FBI Investigating High-Speed Trading\n\nExamination Centers on Possible Trading on Nonpublic Information\n\nBy\n\nScott Patterson and Michael Rothfeld\n\nUpdated March 31, 2014 9:59 p.m. ET\n\nThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing whether high-speed trading firms are engaging in insider trading by taking advantage of fast-moving market information unavailable to other investors.\n\nThe investigation, launched about a year ago, involves a range of trading activities and is still in its early stages, according to a senior FBI official and an agency spokesman. Among the activities being probed is whether high-speed firms are trading ahead of other investors based on information that other market participants can't see.\n\nAmong the types of trading under scrutiny is the practice of placing a group of trades and then canceling them to create the false appearance of market activity. Such activity could be considered potential market manipulation by encouraging others to trade based on false orders.\n\nAnother form of activity under scrutiny involves using high-speed trading to place orders to conceal that the transactions are based on an illegal tip.\n\n\"There are many people in government who are very focused on this and who are concerned about it and who think it breaks the law,\" an FBI spokesman said. \"There is a big concern that high-frequency traders are getting material nonpublic information ahead of others and trading on it.\"\n\nUltimately, federal prosecutors would have to decide whether the facts of a specific case warrant bringing charges, the FBI official said.\n\nThe probe, which has picked up steam in recent months, comes amid heightened scrutiny of computerized trading. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating whether high-speed trading firms have gained advantages that aren't available to regular investors, such as access to superfast data feeds.\n\nThe Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into ties between high-speed traders and major exchanges, examining whether the firms are getting preferential treatment that puts other investors at a disadvantage, said people familiar with the probes.\n\nSince the beginning of the investigation, the FBI, working with the SEC, has developed fact patterns of potentially illegal trading and run them by prosecutors to determine if they could be used in a criminal case.\n\nFor the FBI, the investigation marks a new and unusual phase of its focus on insider trading. Because high-speed trades are executed by computer programs, it is often more difficult to detect nefarious activity and to prove that it was executed intentionally.\n\nFBI officials said they are looking for patterns in the market that can reveal whether any trading activities in question violate the law. They would then have to be able to prove that those trades were made with fraudulent intent.\n\nThe FBI said it has dedicated a large number of agents to the investigation. FBI officials are looking into whether some brokers trade on information about client orders before executing them, and whether brokers use information about after-hours trading to beat the market when it opens the next morning.\n\nAmong those being probed are proprietary-trading outfits, which trade strictly for their own account, as well as fast-moving broker operations that buy and sell orders on behalf of clients, such as mutual funds and pension plans.\n\nThe push comes after a long-running focus on more traditional insider trading by federal prosecutors and the FBI in New York.\n\nSpeed in the Spotlight\n\nScrutiny has been growing on fraction-of-a-second differences in access to information. Recent highlights:\n\nThe U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan has charged 90 people with insider trading using confidential information about earnings reports, mergers and other market-moving news since October 2009. So far, 79 of those people have pleaded guilty or been convicted at trial and none have been acquitted.\n\nThe Justice Department said it is working with other regulators on the probe, including the SEC, CFTC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, which oversees broker-dealers. The investigation, which the FBI calls the High-Speed Trading Initiative, is also focusing on whether the waves of orders that flood the market from high-frequency firms are being used to manipulate prices to their benefit.\n\nInvestigators are also seeking leads from traders or others who may have participated in illegal activity. \"People will benefit to varying degrees by calling us at an early stage,\" he said.\n\nMarket regulators have been investigating whether high-frequency traders have unfair advantages over other investors for several years. SEC enforcement officials continue to probe whether high-speed firms were using so-called order types\u2014directions traders use to tell an exchange how to handle their orders\u2014to jump ahead of less savvy investors. In a page-one article in September 2012, The Wall Street Journal reported that a former high-frequency trader, Haim Bodek, blew the whistle to the SEC on how certain order types could hurt other investors.\n\nCFTC investigators are probing whether high-frequency firms are routinely distorting futures markets by acting as buyer and seller in the same transactions, illegal trading activity known as wash trades. Such trades are banned by U.S. law because they can feed false information into the market and manipulate prices.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":45,"dup_dump_count":44,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-26":1,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2023-50":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Curiosity Killed the Cat and the Asymptotically Optimal Agent -  https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2006.03357  > Reinforcement learners are agents that learn to pick actions that lead to > high reward. Ideally, the value of a reinforcement learner's policy > approaches optimality--where the optimal informed policy is the one which > maximizes reward. Unfortunately, we show that if an agent is guaranteed to > be \"asymptotically optimal\" in any (stochastically computable) environment, > then subject to an assumption about the true environment, this agent will be > either destroyed or incapacitated with probability 1; both of these are > forms of traps as understood in the Markov Decision Process literature. > Environments with traps pose a well-known problem for agents, but we are > unaware of other work which shows that traps are not only a risk, but a > certainty, for agents of a certain caliber. Much work in reinforcement > learning uses an ergodicity assumption to avoid this problem. Often, doing > theoretical research under simplifying assumptions prepares us to provide > practical solutions even in the absence of those assumptions, but the > ergodicity assumption in reinforcement learning may have led us entirely > astray in preparing safe and effective exploration strategies for agents in > dangerous environments. Rather than assuming away the problem, we present an > agent with the modest guarantee of approaching the performance of a mentor, > doing safe exploration instead of reckless exploration.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":2,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2024-18":3,"2024-10":1,"unknown":5}},"id":23577832},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"OECD:  Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2016 -  http:\/\/www.oecd.org\/std\/business-stats\/entrepreneurship-at-a-glance-22266941.htm  \"This publication presents an original collection of indicators for measuring the state of entrepreneurship and its determinants, produced by the OECD- Eurostat Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme. The 2016 edition introduces data from a new online small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) survey prepared by Facebook in co-operation with the OECD and the World Bank. It also features a special chapter on SME productivity, and indicators to monitor gender gaps in entrepreneurship.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":31,"dup_dump_count":15,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-25":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":2,"2018-43":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":1,"2023-06":1,"2024-26":5,"2024-22":4,"2024-18":4,"2024-10":4,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Developing extension packages for VS2005-2012 using C# with real-life samples - \n\nCreating extension packages (plug-ins) for Microsoft Visual Studio IDE appears as quite an easy task at the first sight. There exist an excellent MSDN documentation, as well as various articles, examples and a lot of other additional sources on this topic. But, at the same time, it could also appear as a difficult task when an unexpected behavior is encountered along the way. Although it can be said that such issues are quite common to any programming task, the subject of IDE plug-in development is still not thoroughly covered at this moment.
We develop PVS-Studio static code analyzer. Although the tool itself is intended for C++ developers, quite a large fragment of it is written in C#. When we just had been starting the development of our plug-in, Visual Studio 2005 had been considered as modern state-of-the-art IDE. Although, at this moment of Visual Studio 2012 release, some could say that Visual Studio 2005 is not relevant anymore, we still provide support for this version in our tool. During our time supporting various Visual Studio versions and exploring capabilities of the environment, we've accumulated a large practical experience on how to correctly (and even more so incorrectly!) develop IDE plug-ins. As holding all of this knowledge inside us was becoming unbearable, we've decided to publish it here. Some of our solutions that seem quite obvious right now were discovered in the course of several years. And the same issues could still haunt other plug-in developers.
By publishing this collection of small articles we wish to contribute to this area of software development. We hope that developers interested in this topic will discover something new for themselves or at least will use the articles as a collection of how-to's and recipes for Visual Studio extension development.  Part N1. Creating, debugging and deploying extension packages for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005\/2008\/2010\/2012. \n\nI invite you to my twitter. You will not miss new articles on this topic. <\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":47,"dup_dump_count":36,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-14":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-25":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-30":1,"2016-26":2,"2016-22":1,"2016-18":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":2,"2015-22":2,"2014-52":1,"2014-49":1,"2014-42":3,"2014-41":2,"2014-35":2,"2014-23":2,"2014-15":1,"2023-40":1,"2017-13":1,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":2,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":1,"2024-18":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Black Protest Has Lost Its Power -  https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/black-protest-has-lost-its-power-1515800438  By Shelby Steele\n\nThe recent protests by black players in the National Football League were rather sad for their fruitlessness. They may point to the end of an era for black America, and for the country generally\u2014an era in which protest has been the primary means of black advancement in American life.\n\nThere was a forced and unconvincing solemnity on the faces of these players as they refused to stand for the national anthem. They seemed more dutiful than passionate, as if they were mimicking the courage of earlier black athletes who had protested: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, fists in the air at the 1968 Olympics; Muhammad Ali, fearlessly raging against the Vietnam War; Jackie Robinson, defiantly running the bases in the face of racist taunts. The NFL protesters seemed to hope for a little ennoblement by association.\n\nAnd protest has long been an ennobling tradition in black American life. From the Montgomery bus boycott to the march on Selma, from lunch-counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides to the 1963 March on Washington, only protest could open the way to freedom and the acknowledgment of full humanity. So it was a high calling in black life. It required great sacrifice and entailed great risk. Martin Luther King Jr. , the archetypal black protester, made his sacrifices, ennobled all of America, and was then shot dead.\n\nFor the NFL players there was no real sacrifice, no risk and no achievement. Still, in black America there remains a great reverence for protest. Through protest\u2014especially in the 1950s and '60s\u2014we, as a people, touched greatness. Protest, not immigration, was our way into the American Dream. Freedom in this country had always been relative to race, and it was black protest that made freedom an absolute.\n\nIt is not surprising, then, that these black football players would don the mantle of protest. The surprise was that it didn't work. They had misread the historic moment. They were not speaking truth to power. Rather, they were figures of pathos, mindlessly loyal to a black identity that had run its course.\n\nWhat they missed is a simple truth that is both obvious and unutterable: The oppression of black people is over with. This is politically incorrect news, but it is true nonetheless. We blacks are, today, a free people. It is as if freedom sneaked up and caught us by surprise.\n\nOf course this does not mean there is no racism left in American life. Racism is endemic to the human condition, just as stupidity is. We will always have to be on guard against it. But now it is recognized as a scourge, as the crowning immorality of our age and our history.\n\nProtest always tries to make a point. But what happens when that point already has been made\u2014when, in this case, racism has become anathema and freedom has expanded?\n\nWhat happened was that black America was confronted with a new problem: the shock of freedom. This is what replaced racism as our primary difficulty. Blacks had survived every form of human debasement with ingenuity, self- reliance, a deep and ironic humor, a capacity for self-reinvention and a heroic fortitude. But we had no experience of wide-open freedom.\n\nWatch out that you get what you ask for, the saying goes. Freedom came to blacks with an overlay of cruelty because it meant we had to look at ourselves without the excuse of oppression. Four centuries of dehumanization had left us underdeveloped in many ways, and within the world's most highly developed society. When freedom expanded, we became more accountable for that underdevelopment. So freedom put blacks at risk of being judged inferior, the very libel that had always been used against us.\n\nTo hear, for example, that more than 4,000 people were shot in Chicago in 2016 embarrasses us because this level of largely black-on-black crime cannot be blamed simply on white racism.\n\nWe can say that past oppression left us unprepared for freedom. This is certainly true. But it is no consolation. Freedom is just freedom. It is a condition, not an agent of change. It does not develop or uplift those who win it. Freedom holds us accountable no matter the disadvantages we inherit from the past. The tragedy in Chicago\u2014rightly or wrongly\u2014reflects on black America.\n\nThat's why, in the face of freedom's unsparing judgmentalism, we reflexively claim that freedom is a lie. We conjure elaborate narratives that give white racism new life in the present: \"systemic\" and \"structural\" racism, racist \"microaggressions,\" \"white privilege,\" and so on. All these narratives insist that blacks are still victims of racism, and that freedom's accountability is an injustice.\n\nWe end up giving victimization the charisma of black authenticity. Suffering, poverty and underdevelopment are the things that make you \"truly black.\" Success and achievement throw your authenticity into question.\n\nThe NFL protests were not really about injustice. Instead such protests are usually genuflections to today's victim-focused black identity. Protest is the action arm of this identity. It is not seeking a new and better world; it merely wants documentation that the old racist world still exists. It wants an excuse.\n\nFor any formerly oppressed group, there will be an expectation that the past will somehow be an excuse for difficulties in the present. This is the expectation behind the NFL protests and the many protests of groups like Black Lives Matter. The near-hysteria around the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others is also a hunger for the excuse of racial victimization, a determination to keep it alive. To a degree, black America's self-esteem is invested in the illusion that we live under a cloud of continuing injustice.\n\nWhen you don't know how to go forward, you never just sit there; you go backward into what you know, into what is familiar and comfortable and, most of all, exonerating. You rebuild in your own mind the oppression that is fading from the world. And you feel this abstract, fabricated oppression as if it were your personal truth, the truth around which your character is formed. Watching the antics of Black Lives Matter is like watching people literally aspiring to black victimization, longing for it as for a consummation.\n\nBut the NFL protests may be a harbinger of change. They elicited considerable resentment. There have been counterprotests. TV viewership has gone down. Ticket sales have dropped. What is remarkable about this response is that it may foretell a new fearlessness in white America\u2014a new willingness in whites (and blacks outside the victim-focused identity) to say to blacks what they really think and feel, to judge blacks fairly by standards that are universal.\n\nWe blacks have lived in a bubble since the 1960s because whites have been deferential for fear of being seen as racist. The NFL protests reveal the fundamental obsolescence\u2014for both blacks and whites\u2014of a victim-focused approach to racial inequality. It causes whites to retreat into deference and blacks to become nothing more than victims. It makes engaging as human beings and as citizens impermissible, a betrayal of the sacred group identity. Black victimization is not much with us any more as a reality, but it remains all too powerful as a hegemony.\n\nMr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is author of \"Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country\" (Basic Books, 2015).\n\nAppeared in the January 13, 2018, print edition.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":62,"dup_dump_count":32,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-06":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-21":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":2,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-24":2,"2020-16":2,"2020-05":1,"2019-47":3,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":2,"2019-18":4,"2019-13":6,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":3,"2018-51":1,"2018-43":3,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":2,"2018-30":3,"2018-26":1,"2018-17":5,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":4,"2023-40":1,"2024-18":1,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Scientists discover smartphone which can detect parasite in the blood -  A smartphone has been used to automatically detect wriggling parasites in blood samples, BBC reports. The CellScope system films a drop of blood and an app then automatically analyses any movement in the sample to detect the parasites. According to results obtained from trials in Cameroon, which were published in Science Translational Medicine, the device was successful in making detections and experts lauded it saying it marked a fundamental advance in tropical diseases. Previous efforts to eradicate 2 parasitic diseases, river blindness and elephantiasis, have been suspended because the treatment can become fatal in some people. One treatment, the drug ivermectin, is risky in people with high levels of Loa loaworm, so people need to be screened first. But testing is time-consuming and requires laboratory equipment. However this new process solves this problem as shown by a team at the University of California, Berkeley, and the US National Institutes of Health, which used a modified smartphone to automate the process. A pindrop of blood was collected and loaded into a handheld box. The phone on top then kicked in. One of the researchers, Prof Daniel Fletcher explained that "with one touch of the screen, the device moves the sample, captures video and automatically analyses the images". The new process means very little training is required, while current screening procedures require someone to be skilled in analysing blood samples by eye. It also means that diseases such as as TB, malaria can be much more conveniently be detected, even as there are now plans to test it on 40,000 people. Source: http://www.fusiongists.com/2015/10/scientists-discover-smartphone-which.html  [https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=10596381](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=10596381)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24,"dup_dump_count":16,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":3,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":2,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":3,"2018-05":2,"2017-47":1,"2017-39":2,"2017-34":1,"2019-35":1}},"id":10598020},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ban Leafblowers -  http:\/\/www.drweil.com\/drw\/u\/id\/ART02059 When it comes to really bad ideas, the leafblower ranks right up there with adding lead to gasoline and using CFCs in aerosols. Leafblowers are diabolical machines. Even if the claims their promoters make for them were true, the damage leafblowers do outweighs such meager benefits by many, many orders of magnitude.
Thanks to decades of relentless lobbying by their manufacturers, the two-cylinder engines that drive leafblowers have never been regulated by any Federal or State agency. The engines, as a result, are crude, cheap, and inefficient, as well as harmful to the environment and everything living in it. Because they are designed to be air-cooled, the engines release 100% of their tailgate emissions directly into the environment, and since they also burn fuel very inefficiently, a leafblower running for one hour emits as many hydrocarbons and other pollutants into the atmosphere as a car driven at 55 mph for 110 miles.
The noise leafblowers make is hideous. Although they operate on only two cylinders, these machines run at at speeds roughly three times faster than a car's. In the process lots of energy is released in the form of high frequency sound waves with decibel levels that far exceed acceptable limits. The incessant, high-pitched whine of a single leafblower in the distance is enough to set peoples' teeth on edge; a couple of blowers going nearby can push almost anyone to the brink of homicide. The idea that leafblowers save time - which is the one and only argument for using them - is outrageous, since it implies that the time stolen from the rest of us is worthless.
Using these hideously noisy, highly polluting machines on sidewalks and driveways is bad enough. Turning them on lawns and gardens, beneath shrubs, between hedges, and around the trunks of trees - as everyone is obviously doing these days - is irrational. Unless, that is, the people who are doing it are landscape professionals, in which case it is negligent, almost to the point of criminal.
If that seems extreme, consider that wind blows from the nozzles of these machines at speeds in the range of 180 mph. Winds of that force do not occur naturally on Earth, except inside hurricanes and tornadoes. Worse, still, because the wind is carrying away large quantities of heat from the hyperactive engine, it is also very hot and exceedingly dry.
Subjecting everything at ground level to blasts of hot, dry, hurricane-force winds would be ill-advised at any time, since it cannot fail to injure plants and open pathways for pests and disease, while at the same time aiding and abetting the pathogens by distributing them over the widest possible area. In the summer, though, when the air is hot and the ground is dry and the plants are dehydrated and badly stressed to begin with, subjecting them to tornadic blasts of hot, dry air is, nonsensical, to put it kindly.
Leafblowers literally scour the earth: stripping off topsoil, desiccating roots, and killing vital soil-dwelling organisms, while, at the same time, propelling into the air clouds of dirt, dust and dangerous contaminants: volatile compounds, mold and fungal spores, weed seeds, insect eggs, pollen, molecules of the myriads of toxic chemicals people spray and sprinkle on their gardens, trees, and lawns, not to mention bird and rodent feces, and more.
It goes without saying (but must be said anyway), that leafblowers pose the greatest threat to the health and hearing of the untold numbers of landscape workers who use them on a daily basis, in most cases without adequate protective equipment, for intervals that far exceed OSHA guidelines. Unfortunately, the workers themselves tend to exaggerate the benefits and deny the risks of blowing leaves with machines, which they strongly favor over rakes, for reasons that probably have more to do with symbolism than practicality.
Ironically, leafblowers were not invented to blow leaves; they were originally designed as crop dusters. In other words, they didn't come about in response to a genuine need for a mechanized solution to the leaf-removal problem. Because there wasn't any problem. Now we do have a problem, but it isn't leaves, it's these infernal machines.
Gasoline-driven leafblowers have been banned in scores of California counties, including Los Angeles and hundreds of municipalitiesacross the U.S. and Canada, and none of the horrors that were predicted by landscapers - untidy lawns, escalating costs, declining property values - has ever come to pass.
The phenomenal proliferation of leafblowers has far more to do with marketing than efficiency; indeed, when all the real costs are factored in their alleged benefits don't even begin to justify their penalties and risks. Cheap to produce, priced to sell, and aggressively marketed, the real function of leafblowers is to rake in money for the huge corporations that manufacture them.
By Winifred Rosen, Guest Commentator DrWeil.com News
Winifred Rosen is co-author with Dr. Weil of \"Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know about Mind-Altering Drugs.\"  I can't imagine how you'd define \"leafblower\".\n\n<\/comment> 2-stroke. Not 2-cylinder. Hope that helps.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":50,"dup_dump_count":46,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":2,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":2,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2016-36":1,"2016-07":1,"2015-48":1,"2015-40":1,"2015-35":1,"2015-32":1,"2015-27":1,"2015-22":1,"2023-50":1,"2017-13":1,"2015-18":1,"2024-18":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Larry Smith TEDxUW - Why you will fail to have a great career -  http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iKHTawgyKWQ Throughout his three-decade career here at the University of Waterloo, Larry Smith has inspired legions of students to take up the mantle of economics with his passionate and homespun tales of economic wizardry. A renowned story-teller, teacher and youth leadership champion, Larry has also coached and mentored countless numbers of students on start-up business management and career development strategies.
Having taught introductory microeconomics, macroeconomics and entrepreneurship classes, he recently celebrated assigning his 29,000th grade earlier this year.
Recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award, Larry has also coached several of his former students to help them position and develop their businesses, the most famous of which is Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the revolutionary BlackBerry wireless mobile smartphone. Larry also sits on the advisory panels of start-ups to provide his guidance on financing and negotiation with investors and venture capitalists.
http:\/\/www.tedxuw.com\/speakers\/larry-smith\/
---
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)  One of the greats of UW. Love the delivery...<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24,"dup_dump_count":3,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":20}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Warren Buffett's encouraging words for America -  https:\/\/medium.com\/@mikeyanderson\/warren-buffetts-encouraging-words-for-america-404815e323b8  One word sums up our country's achievements: miraculous. From a standing start 240 years ago \u2013 a span of time less than triple my days on earth \u2013 Americans have combined human ingenuity, a market system, a tide of talented and ambitious immigrants, and the rule of law to deliver abundance beyond any dreams of our forefathers. You need not be an economist to understand how well our system has worked. Just look around you. See the 75 million owner-occupied homes, the bountiful farmland, the 260 million vehicles, the hyper-productive factories, the great medical centers, the talent-filled universities, you name it \u2013 they all represent a net gain for Americans from the barren lands, primitive structures and meager output of 1776. Starting from scratch, America has amassed wealth totaling $90 trillion. It's true, of course, that American owners of homes, autos and other assets have often borrowed heavily to finance their purchases. If an owner defaults, however, his or her asset does not disappear or lose its usefulness. Rather, ownership customarily passes to an American lending institution that then disposes of it to an American buyer. Our nation's wealth remains intact. As Gertrude Stein put it, \"Money is always there, but the pockets change.\" Above all, it's our market system \u2013 an economic traffic cop ably directing capital, brains and labor \u2013 that has created America's abundance. This system has also been the primary factor in allocating rewards. Governmental redirection, through federal, state and local taxation, has in addition determined the distribution of a significant portion of the bounty. America has, for example, decided that those citizens in their productive years should help both the old and the young. Such forms of aid \u2013 sometimes enshrined as \"entitlements\" \u2013 are generally thought of as applying to the aged. But don't forget that four million American babies are born each year with an entitlement to a public education. That societal commitment, largely financed at the local level, costs about $150,000 per baby. The annual cost totals more than $600 billion, which is about 31\u20442% of GDP. However our wealth may be divided, the mind-boggling amounts you see around you belong almost exclusively to Americans. Foreigners, of course, own or have claims on a modest portion of our wealth. Those holdings, however, are of little importance to our national balance sheet: Our citizens own assets abroad that are roughly comparable in value. Early Americans, we should emphasize, were neither smarter nor more hard working than those people who toiled century after century before them. But those venturesome pioneers crafted a system that unleashed human potential, and their successors built upon it. This economic creation will deliver increasing wealth to our progeny far into the future. Yes, the build-up of wealth will be interrupted for short periods from time to time. It will not, however, be stopped. I'll repeat what I've both said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history. ____________America's economic achievements have led to staggering profits for stockholders. During the 20th century the Dow-Jones Industrials advanced from 66 to 11,497, a 17,320% capital gain that was materially boosted by steadily increasing dividends. The trend continues: By yearend 2016, the index had advanced a further 72%, to 19,763. American business \u2013 and consequently a basket of stocks \u2013 is virtually certain to be worth far more in the years ahead. Innovation, productivity gains, entrepreneurial spirit and an abundance of capital will see to that. Ever-present naysayers may prosper by marketing their gloomy forecasts. But heaven help them if they act on the nonsense they peddle. Many companies, of course, will fall behind, and some will fail. Winnowing of that sort is a product of market dynamism. Moreover, the years ahead will occasionally deliver major market declines \u2013 even panics \u2013 that will affect virtually all stocks. No one can tell you when these traumas will occur \u2013 not me, not Charlie, not economists, not the media. Meg McConnell of the New York Fed aptly described the reality of panics: \"We spend a lot of time looking for systemic risk; in truth, however, it tends to find us.\" During such scary periods, you should never forget two things: First, widespread fear is your friend as an investor, because it serves up bargain purchases. Second, personal fear is your enemy. It will also be unwarranted. Investors who avoid high and unnecessary costs and simply sit for an extended period with a collection of large, conservatively-financed American businesses will almost certainly do well. As for Berkshire, our size precludes a brilliant result: Prospective returns fall as assets increase. Nonetheless, Berkshire's collection of good businesses, along with the company's impregnable financial strength and owner-oriented culture, should deliver decent results. We won't be satisfied with less.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":46,"dup_dump_count":16,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-26":2,"2018-22":3,"2018-17":3,"2018-13":3,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":2,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":3,"2017-39":2,"2017-34":4,"2017-30":3,"2017-26":5,"2017-22":4,"2017-17":4,"2018-30":1,"2017-13":3}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Splitting the unsplittable -  http:\/\/esciencenews.com\/articles\/2012\/06\/05\/splitting.unsplittable\n\n Summary: Researchers from the University of Bonn have just shown how a single atom can be split into its two halves, pulled apart and put back together again. While the word \"atom\" literally means \"indivisible,\" the laws of quantum mechanics allow dividing atoms -- similarly to light rays -- and reuniting them. The researchers want to build quantum mechanics bridges by letting the atom touch adjacent atoms while it is being pulled apart so that it works like a bridge span between two pillars. The results have just been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":55,"dup_dump_count":29,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-17":4,"2021-10":2,"2021-04":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":3,"2020-29":1,"2020-05":3,"2019-51":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-35":2,"2019-30":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-13":2,"2019-09":2,"2019-04":4,"2018-51":1,"2018-47":2,"2018-43":3,"2018-34":3,"2018-30":2,"2018-22":2,"2018-17":2,"2018-09":2,"2018-05":2,"2023-50":1,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"HIDDEN FIGURES -  https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RK8xHq6dfAo  HIDDEN FIGURES is the incredible untold story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Mon\u00e1e)\u2014brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation's confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":52,"dup_dump_count":4,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-22":2,"2024-10":2,"2017-13":40,"2024-30":1,"unknown":6}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Apple is systematically erasing our stories -  https:\/\/www.flicktype.com\/ResolutionKit\/  I admire Apple, and I believe the world is a better place because of them. As a developer, I've made my career on their platform and I'm grateful for it. But I have some criticism. I'm _not_ here to talk about my story, the 30% Apple developer cut, the App Review process, or to challenge any of their guidelines. I want to talk about _transparency_ , and _accountability_.\n\nFor far too long, developers have been discouraged from being able to share their rejection stories with the world. \"If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps\", used to be the official guidance. The risk too great for most, the fear of retribution overwhelming. And so the stories have largely remained in the shadows, with only a few exceptions. But there's another, critical reason why such stories rarely see the light of day, one that hasn't received enough attention:\n\n _Apple is systematically erasing our stories._\n\nUnless we're talking about your most recent submission, all communication you have _ever_ sent or received through the \"Resolution Center\" is inaccessible to you. Rejection notices, appeal results, anything you might want to reference to better understand previous about your product - it's all gone. Unless you have meticulously and manually kept copies of all correspondence, what happened in the past will forever stay in the past. But why should it?\n\nIt's not hard to see why Apple is doing this. It _is_ hard, however, to see a reason that benefits anyone but Apple. In doing so, they gain more peace of mind, less worry about consistency and correctness in applying the public guidelines. The appeal mechanism helps them improve, but only to the extent that Apple deems necessary. If we ever wanted to know how well Apple is enforcing the guidelines, we have to take their word for it. But who guards the guardians, when App Review's accountability to the world has been intentionally reduced to the bare minimum?\n\nTransparency is not always the solution. We can't expect Apple to be open about their future product plans, for example. But when they communicate with developers, they should do so like everyone is watching - every time. And to get there, the _possibility_ that everyone might find out needs to always be on the table.\n\nSo Apple, please help us see App Review as a reliable ally. Let us access our past communications with you - including phone call records if we choose to. Show us that you want to be accountable for what you communicate to developers. There may be some legal challenges, but transparency is a prerequisite to accountability. It's only then that we can begin to have a fair and honest discussion with you about the actual process and guidelines. Because until then, we're in the shadows.\n\nSign the petition: [https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/apple-let-us-browse-all-our-past- re...](https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/apple-let-us-browse-all-our-past-resolution- center-communications)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":23641646},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Harrison Bergeron (& Activity) -  https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Harrison_Bergeron  HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.\n\nTHE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.\n\nSome things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year- old son, Harrison, away.\n\nIt was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":8,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-09":2,"2017-34":2,"2017-26":2,"2019-30":1}},"id":18453374},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2020 -  https:\/\/fc20.ifca.ai\/  > Financial Cryptography and Data Security is a major international forum for > research, advanced development, education, exploration, and debate regarding > information assurance, with a specific focus on commercial contexts. The > conference covers all aspects of securing transactions and systems. Original > works focusing on both fundamental and applied real-world deployments on all > aspects surrounding commerce security are solicited. Submissions need not be > exclusively concerned with cryptography. Systems security and > interdisciplinary works are particularly encouraged.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":2,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-18":1,"2024-22":1,"unknown":8}},"id":21663107},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Supreme Court Justice John Roberts' Speech to His Son's Graduating Class -  http:\/\/time.com\/4845150\/chief-justice-john-roberts-commencement-speech-transcript\/  From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don't take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you'll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they're going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":3,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-26":2,"2024-22":2,"2024-10":2,"unknown":10}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"33C3  Dreaming Machines -  https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=u7aB2khRKWY  The yearly cross-neuro-science stroll of yoscha.\n\nArtificial Intelligence provides a conceptual framework to understand mind and universe in new ways, clearing the obstacles that hindered the progress of philosophy and psychology. Let us see how AI can help us to understand how our minds create the experience of a universe.\n\nUnlike the machine learning systems of the past, minds are not just classifiers or policy optimizers. Minds are not accumulators of knowledge about the world. Minds are generative systems: they actively produce the world that we subjectively experience. Ordinary day-time experiences are in fact dreams constrained by sensory data. This simple insight of contemporary cognitive science turns realist notions of embodiment on their head. The idea of the brain as a dreaming machine opens a way to understand the nature of our experiences.\n\nThis is the proposed fourth installment of a series of presentations about using AI perspectives to understand minds and their relationship to the universe. \"How to build a mind\" (30c3) suggested specifications for an architecture of cognition; \"From computation to consciousness\" (31c3) explored the mind's computational foundations; \"Computational metapsychology\" (32c3) discussed the individual and social construction of meaning. \"Machine dreams\" sketches how the computational machinery of our brains leads to our experience a subjective world. We will look at the conductor theory of consciousness, some of the mental structures contributing to our models of self and world, and the unreasonable effectiveness of neural processes in modeling physics.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":2,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":1,"2024-22":1,"unknown":8}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"ARM1 Gate-level Simulation -  https:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2015\/11\/28\/arm1_visualized\/  The actual simulation is at [http:\/\/visual6502.org\/sim\/varm\/armgl.html](http:\/\/visual6502.org\/sim\/varm\/armgl.html)\n\n A (extremely terse, partial) description can be found at [http:\/\/www.righto.com\/2016\/02\/reverse-engineering- arm1-proce...](http:\/\/www.righto.com\/2016\/02\/reverse-engineering- arm1-processors.html)\n\n I wrote several articles about the ARM1 when this simulator was released in 2015. A better article to start with is: [http:\/\/www.righto.com\/2015\/12\/reverse-engineering- arm1-ances...](http:\/\/www.righto.com\/2015\/12\/reverse-engineering- arm1-ancestor-of.html)\n\nDave Mugridge also wrote some articles about the ARM1, focusing more on the ALU and registers: [https:\/\/daveshacks.blogspot.com\/2015\/12\/inside-alu-of- armv1-...](https:\/\/daveshacks.blogspot.com\/2015\/12\/inside-alu-of-armv1-first- arm.html)\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> Within my lifetime, we went from CPUs that were simple enough we can now simulate them at the logic-gate level in ____ing Javascript to CPUs complex and powerful enough to emulate yesterday's mainstream CPUs at the ____ing logic-gate level in ____ing Javascript. I would not even be _that_ surprised if the result outperformed the the original hardware.\n\n<\/comment> Nice! One thing though:\n\nFor [http:\/\/visual6502.org\/sim\/varm\/armgl.html](http:\/\/visual6502.org\/sim\/varm\/armgl.html), would be much nicer that dragging would pan rather than \"3D rotate\" the view. The panning with wasd is too slow and not compatible with some keyboard layouts.\n\nAnd of course zooming around mouse cursor rather than around center of screen would also help to zoom towards the part you want.\n\nThe 3D rotation is gimmicky but not actually useful to see the gates, and the current UI just doesn't let me zoom to gates I want without spending too much effort fighting the slow panning and the zooming target.\n\nThanks!\n\n<\/comment> I had a question, the article states the following:\n\n>\"One very nice thing about the 32-bit instruction set is its pervasive conditional execution, which helps one avoid branching over code. For example, this sequence of instructions resets the register r0 to 0 if its value is equal to or less than zero, or forces its value to 1 if its value is greater than zero:\n\nCMP r0, #0 ; if (r0 <= 0) MOVLE r0, #0 ; r0 = 0; MOVGT r0, #1 ; else r0 = 1\n\nWithout the conditional moves (MOVLE and MOVGT) after the compare (CMP), you'd have to branch after the compare, which is wasteful.\"\n\nHow are those those two conditional moves after the CMP operation more efficient than branching? Aren't they kind of branches themselves? What would the alternative \"branching\" sequence look like then?\n\n It'd look something like\n\n    \n    \n        cmp  r0,#0\n        bgt  .1f\n        mov  r0,#0\n        b    .2f\n      1:\n        mov  r0,#1\n      2:\n    \n\nThe big deal is the conditional branch (the bgt). If the processor gets it wrong it's a pipeline flush. And best case you still have extra instructions for the branches. The conditional mov example is a fixed cost of a single \"wasted\" cycle, which matches the best case of the branching example (branch correctly predicted to mov r0,#1 and fall through). The worst case for the branching version is probably somewhere ~15 cycles depending on the uArch, but is still 1 cycle for the conditional move.\n\nAll of that being said, the branching version tends to be nicer for OoO cores since there aren't data dependencies on the flag registers any more, hence why you see RISC ISAs designed for OoO cores removing conditional execution for most instructions (AArch64 and RISC-V standout here).\n\n In the ARM2 era (probably the same for ARM1?) a basic ALU instruction such as MOV took 1 cycle, and a branch took 4 (if taken) or 1 (if not). (There were extra DRAM page cycles every 4 words too)\n\nSo for a simple if\/else, it was usually both less code and faster to use a straight line of conditional instructions. In more complicated cases, if the programmer was feeling clever, it was possible to update the status flags to get three-way (or more!) conditionals in straight-line branchless code. Fun!\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> The article states:\n\n>\"The ARM2 had pretty much the same instruction set as the ARM1, although featured new multiplication and (later) atomic swap instructions.\"\n\nDoes this mean that the ARM1 didn't support any atomic operations or were they using something else besides \"compare and swap\"?\n\n The ARM1 did not have any atomic operation. You only need those if you have more than one processor. It also lacked the multiply and multiply-accumulate instructions, as stated above. These took multiple cycles, which is not very RISC-like. That is also true of the load multiple and store multiple instructions of the ARM2 (I don't remember if the ARM1 had them). The ARM2 also added the coprocessor interface.\n\n Oops - in the analysis of the PLA2 in the ARM1 there are both the load\/store multiple instructions and the coprocessor stuff. In fact, together they take up about half of the logic. So I was remembering it wrong, then. [http:\/\/daveshacks.blogspot.com\/2016\/01\/inside- armv1-instruct...](http:\/\/daveshacks.blogspot.com\/2016\/01\/inside- armv1-instruction-decoding-and.html)\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> Does anyone else find it slightly entertaining that this is an article from a news outlet titled \"The Register\"?\n\n I never thought about it, but now that you mention it, it _is_ a great name for an IT news site. ;-)<\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Why Generation Y Is Unhappy? -  http:\/\/brightside.me\/article\/why-generation-y-is-unhappy-11105\/  I thought the last bit of the article had some useful advice:\n\n1\\. Stay wildly ambitious. The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success. The specific direction may be unclear, but it'll work itself out\u2014just dive in somewhere.\n\n2\\. Stop thinking that you're special. The fact is, right now, you're not special. You're another completely inexperienced young person who doesn't have all that much to offer yet. You can become special by working really hard for a long time.\n\n3\\. Ignore everyone else. Other people's grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today's image crafting world, other people's grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you'll never have any reason to envy others.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":15,"dup_dump_count":12,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":2,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-17":1,"2018-26":1,"2013-48":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Google advances AI with 'one model to learn them all' -  https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2017\/06\/19\/google-advances-ai-with-one-model-to-learn-them-all\/  One Model To Learn Them All\n\nDeep learning yields great results across many fields, from speech recognition, image classification, to translation. But for each problem, getting a deep model to work well involves research into the architecture and a long period of tuning. We present a single model that yields good results on a number of problems spanning multiple domains. In particular, this single model is trained concurrently on ImageNet, multiple translation tasks, image captioning (COCO dataset), a speech recognition corpus, and an English parsing task. Our model architecture incorporates building blocks from multiple domains. It contains convolutional layers, an attention mechanism, and sparsely-gated layers. Each of these computational blocks is crucial for a subset of the tasks we train on. Interestingly, even if a block is not crucial for a task, we observe that adding it never hurts performance and in most cases improves it on all tasks. We also show that tasks with less data benefit largely from joint training with other tasks, while performance on large tasks degrades only slightly if at all.\n\n[https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1706.05137](https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1706.05137)\n\nEDIT:\n\nAnd code:\n\n[https:\/\/github.com\/tensorflow\/tensor2tensor](https:\/\/github.com\/tensorflow\/tensor2tensor)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":3,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2024-22":1,"2024-10":3,"2024-26":1,"unknown":5}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Why Sony did not invent the iPod (excerpt in comments) -  http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/7558a99e-f5ed-11e1-a6c2-00144feabdc0.html\n\n Excerpt:\n\n\"...Established companies in an industry are naturally resistant to disruptive innovation, which threatens their existing capabilities and cannibalises their existing products. A collection of all the businesses which might be transformed by disruptive innovation might at first sight appear to be a means of assembling the capabilities needed to manage change. In practice, it is a means of gathering together everyone who has an incentive to resist change.\n\n\"The executives of music companies, film studios and book publishers did not rush to embrace the opportunities offered by new channels of distribution. They saw these technological developments as threats to well established business models in which they had large personal and corporate investments. And they were right to think this. So convergence was accomplished by groups such as Apple and Amazon, which had no similar vested interests to oppose change, These companies succeeded precisely because they were outsiders.\n\n\"Economic growth is held back by industries where established interests are so powerful that disruptive innovation can be staved off for ever. Financial services is probably one. And education another. I think often of the contrast between the power of information technology to transform the process of learning, and the little progress that has been made towards actually doing so.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":27,"dup_dump_count":23,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2023-06":2,"2022-40":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-21":2,"2021-49":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-24":1,"2020-10":2,"2020-05":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-13":1,"2023-23":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"How \"GPS data as a Service\" will change the way location data is handled -  As IOT and location based apps proliferate, the challenge of managing and utilising GPS data in a meaningful way assumes a lot of importance. The advent of API accessed mapping software such as Open Street, Google, MapQuest, etc., has revolutionized the way we use maps. A similar change is on its way as it relates to location based data.
Currently, app developers whether they be individuals or corporations manage GPS data generated by their solutions themselves. GPS data adds up very quickly. Indexing, storage, retrieval and real-time analytics and decisioning consume a lot of resources and require considerable expertise to manage the impact on system performance. Performance optimizations and scaling are huge challenges. The costs can really add up. This offers an opportunity for a specialized \"GPS data as a Service\" provider who can handle the large volumes of GPS data, index, store and allow for optimal retrieval, provide real-time analytics that can be used within apps (after all it's the analytics that matters not the data itself) and who offers value adds such as scheduling, queuing, auto-dispatch etc., based on the data analyzed.
Logistrics Services (www.logistricsservices.com) is the first of this kind of service and offers API's, libraries and tools to integrate location data and obtain insights and analytics in real-time that can help drive decisions within your apps.
We offer a free 14-day trial. Discover the power of \"GPS data as a Service\" today!  [http:\/\/www.logistricsservices.com](http:\/\/www.logistricsservices.com)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":56,"dup_dump_count":28,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-40":4,"2023-23":2,"2023-14":3,"2023-06":2,"2022-49":1,"2022-21":2,"2021-49":2,"2021-31":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-17":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":3,"2020-16":2,"2020-10":2,"2020-05":5,"2019-51":1,"2019-47":2,"2019-43":3,"2019-39":1,"2019-35":2,"2019-30":4,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":2,"2019-09":2,"2023-50":1,"2024-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Air pollution is sending tiny magnetic particles into your brain -  https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2104654-air-pollution-is-sending-tiny-magnetic-particles-into-your-brain\/  'Traffic fumes go to your head. Tiny specks of metal in exhaust gases seem to fly up our noses and travel into our brains, where they may contribute to Alzheimer's disease. Iron nanoparticles were already known to be present in the brain \u2013 but they were thought to come from the iron naturally found in our bodies, derived from food. Now a closer look at their structure suggests the particles mostly come from air pollution sources, like traffic fumes and coal burning. The findings are a smoking gun, says Barbara Maher of Lancaster University in the UK.'<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"COCO \u2013 Common Objects in Context -  http:\/\/cocodataset.org  From \"Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context\" (2014) [https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1405.0312](https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1405.0312)\n\n\"We present a new dataset with the goal of advancing the state-of-the-art in object recognition by placing the question of object recognition in the context of the broader question of scene understanding.\n\nThis is achieved by gathering images of complex everyday scenes containing common objects in their natural context. Objects are labeled using per- instance segmentations to aid in precise object localization.\n\nOur dataset contains photos of 91 objects types that would be easily recognizable by a 4 year old. With a total of 2.5 million labeled instances in 328k images, the creation of our dataset drew upon extensive crowd worker involvement via novel user interfaces for category detection, instance spotting and instance segmentation.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":13,"dup_dump_count":8,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-17":5,"2019-04":1}},"id":16845235},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence: Technical Options -  http:\/\/www.nap.edu\/catalog\/19414\/bulk-collection-of-signals-intelligence-technical-options\n\n _The Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence: Technical Options study is a result of an activity called for in Presidential Policy Directive 28 (PPD-28), issued by President Obama in January 2014, to evaluate U.S. signals intelligence practices. The directive instructed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to produce a report within one year \"assessing the feasibility of creating software that would allow the intelligence community more easily to conduct targeted information acquisition rather than bulk collection.\" ODNI asked the National Research Council (NRC) -- the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering -- to conduct a study, which began in June 2014, to assist in preparing a response to the President. Over the ensuing months, a committee of experts appointed by the Research Council produced the report._<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":54,"dup_dump_count":12,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-49":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-24":2,"2019-43":1,"2015-14":11,"2023-50":1,"2015-18":11,"2015-11":11,"2015-06":10,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Spamcop retiring webmail service -  http:\/\/forum.spamcop.net\/forums\/index.php?showtopic=14271\n\n Subject: Important Announcement about SpamCop Email Service Changes -  Required Date: Sat, 9 Aug 2014 21:46:21 -0400 (EDT) From: SpamCop Email  To: undisclosed-recipients:;\n\nFirst of all, thank you for using SpamCop Email! We want to announce some important changes that will affect how you use your SpamCop Email account.\n\nFor over 12 years, Corporate Email Services has been partnering with SpamCop to provide webmail service with spam filtering via the SpamCop Email System for our users. Back then, spam filtering was rare. We heard story after story about how our service rescued people from unfiltered email. Nowadays, webmail service with spam filtering has become the norm in the general public. As such, the need for the webmail service with SpamCop filtered email has decreased.\n\nDue to these reasons, we have decided to retire the SpamCop Email System and its webmail service; while SpamCop will continue to focus on providing the World's best spam reporting platform and blacklist for the community.\n\nAs of September 30, 2014 (Tuesday) 6pm ET, the current SpamCop Email service will be converted to email forwarding-only with spam filtered by SpamCop for all existing SpamCop Email users. Namely, all email received at a spamcop.net, cesmail.net, or cqmail.net address will be forwarded to your specified email address after spam filtering by SpamCop. You will be able to continue to use your email addresses like before, but you will need to read the email on your designated email account, instead of the SpamCop Email System webmail interface ([https:\/\/webmail.spamcop.net](https:\/\/webmail.spamcop.net)). If you are already forwarding your email elsewhere, it will continue to work just like before. If your email program is set to download your email from the SpamCop system, after you start forwarding your email elsewhere, you will need to update your email program to download from there. SpamCop will no longer provide IMAP or POP service.\n\nPlease be informed that you will continue to be able to submit spam to SpamCop via the \"Report Spam\" feature on spamcop.net, or forward your spam using your dedicated spam submission address shown on your SpamCop reporting account. Indeed, you are highly encouraged to do so as your spam report will not only help improve spam filtering for your email; it also helps SpamCop to fight spam for the World!\n\nIn the meantime, it is important for you to set up a forwarding address on your SpamCop Email account by September 30, 2014 (Tuesday) 6pm ET. Otherwise, any email sent to your spamcop.net, cesmail.net, or cqmail.net address will be dropped and not be delivered. To register a forwarding address, please login via [https:\/\/webmail.spamcop.net;](https:\/\/webmail.spamcop.net;) click \"Options\" > \"SpamCop Tools\".\n\nIf you have any further questions or concerns, please send them to email@example.com<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":62,"dup_dump_count":24,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-31":2,"2021-25":9,"2021-21":2,"2021-17":2,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":2,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":2,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":2,"2019-51":3,"2019-47":6,"2019-43":9,"2019-39":2,"2019-30":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":2,"2019-13":1,"2019-09":2,"2018-51":2,"2018-43":2,"2018-34":2,"2018-26":2,"2018-17":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"YouView Internet TV service launches in UK -  http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/technology-18699924  They have spent $100Million (\u00a370M) on this platform and while it is probably better than Google TV but its not going to have a major market impact (even in the UK) as a whole but it might have some nice features worth borrowing.\n\nThe main thing preventing it having an impact is that is essentially the wrong product. The market for >\u00a3200 digital boxes is just too small and completely dwarfed by the TV market. Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic will each sell many more TVs each year than the total size of the >\u00a3200 PVR market and even if only 30% connect to their Internet platforms they will all still be bigger platforms and more attractive to content than Youview (despite its greater flexibility).\n\nThe other problem is that Youview is two and half years late (originally named Project Canvas and planned for November 2009) and it has missed virtually the entire country completing the Digital Switchover (analogue switch off), 3 Christmas sales peaks, 1 World Cup (soccer) sales peak, 1 Euro Cup (soccer) sales peak and now will be going on sale at the exact time the Olmypics starts without the retailers having time to get ready. Also gadget spend is increasingly moving to tablets rather than TV boxes at the moment.\n\nI also have very serious doubts about UK retailers ability to sell this. Most can't get TV aerial signals OR even Internet connections into the TV areas of their stores. Most PVR type products sit on shelves not connected to TVs and can't be demonstrated.\n\nIt has two chances of any traction: BT and Talk Talk, (significant Telcos) will use it for their TV platforms. Talk Talk hasn't even entered the market yet and BT has been trying for years almost giving away boxes with phone service but has little over half a million subs(may be slightly old figure) compared with 10M using Freeview (OTA), 10M using Sky (pay satellite) and 5M using Virgin (cable). If they make a competent go at the market and heavily subsidise it the total Youview platform could conceivably reach 1M.\n\nThe other chance it has is if a profile can be developed suitable for TVs (without HDD) and a major player in the TV market can be persuaded to include across their range they could really ramp up the numbers.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":9,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":2,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":2,"2020-16":1,"2018-51":1,"2021-17":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Early Facebook Employees Disavow Zuckerberg's Stance on Trump Posts -  https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/06\/03\/technology\/facebook-trump-employees-letter.html  Facebook's leadership must reconsider their policies regarding political speech, beginning by fact-checking politicians and explicitly labeling harmful posts.\n\nAs early employees on teams across the company, we authored the original Community Standards, contributed code to products that gave voice to people and public figures, and helped to create a company culture around connection and freedom of expression.\n\nWe grew up at Facebook, but it is no longer ours.\n\nThe Facebook we joined designed products to empower people and policies to protect them. The goal was to allow as much expression as possible unless it would explicitly do harm. We disagreed often, but we all understood that keeping people safe was the right thing to do. Now, it seems, that commitment has changed.\n\nWe no longer work at Facebook, but we do not disclaim it. We also no longer recognize it. We remain proud of what we built, grateful for the opportunity, and hopeful for the positive force it can become. But none of that means we have to be quiet. In fact, we have a responsibility to speak up.\n\nToday, Facebook's leadership interprets freedom of expression to mean that they should do nothing \u2014 or very nearly nothing \u2014 to interfere in political discourse. They have decided that elected officials should be held to a lower standard than those they govern. One set of rules for you, and another for any politician, from your local mayor to the President of the United States. This exposes two fundamental problems:\n\nFirst, Facebook's behavior doesn't match the stated goal of avoiding any political censorship. Facebook already is acting, as Mark Zuckerberg put it on Friday, as the \"arbiter of truth.\" It monitors speech all the time when it adds warnings to links, downranks content to reduce its spread, and fact checks political speech from non-politicians.\n\nThis is a betrayal of the ideals Facebook claims. The company we joined valued giving individuals a voice as loud as their government's \u2014 protecting the powerless rather than the powerful.\n\nFacebook now turns that goal on its head. It claims that providing warnings about a politician's speech is inappropriate, but removing content from citizens is acceptable, even if both are saying the same thing. That is not a noble stand for freedom. It is incoherent, and worse, it is cowardly. Facebook should be holding politicians to a higher standard than their constituents.\n\nSecond, since Facebook's inception, researchers have learned a lot more about group psychology and the dynamics of mass persuasion. Thanks to work done by the Dangerous Speech Project and many others, we understand the power words have to increase the likelihood of violence. We know the speech of the powerful matters most of all. It establishes norms, creates a permission structure, and implicitly authorizes violence, all of which is made worse by algorithmic amplification. Facebook's leadership has spoken with these experts, with advocates, and with organizers, yet they still seem committed to granting the powerful free rein.\n\nSo what do we make of this? If all speech by politicians is newsworthy and all newsworthy speech is inviolable, then there is no line the most powerful people in the world cannot cross on the largest platform in the world \u2014 or at least none that the platform is willing to enforce.\n\nPresident Trump's post on Friday not only threatens violence by the state against its citizens, it also sends a signal to millions who take cues from the President. Facebook's policy allows that post to stand alone. In an age of live-streamed shootings, Facebook should know the danger of this better than most. Trump's rhetoric, steeped in the history of American racism, targeted people whom Facebook would not allow to repeat his words back to him.\n\nIt is our shared heartbreak that motivates this letter. We are devastated to see something we built and something we believed would make the world a better place lose its way so profoundly. We understand it is hard to answer these questions at scale, but it was also hard to build the platform that created these problems. There is a responsibility to solve them, and solving hard problems is what Facebook is good at.\n\nTo current employees who are speaking up: we see you, we support you, and we want to help. We hope you will continue to ask yourselves the question that hangs on posters in each of Facebook's offices: \"What would you do if you weren't afraid?\"\n\nTo Mark: we know that you think deeply about these issues, but we also know that Facebook must work to regain the public's trust. Facebook isn't neutral, and it never has been. Making the world more open and connected, strengthening communities, giving everyone a voice \u2014 these are not neutral ideas. Fact- checking is not censorship. Labeling a call to violence is not authoritarianism. Please reconsider your position.\n\nProceed and be bold.\n\nSincerely, some of your earliest employees:\n\nMeredith Chin, Adam Conner, Natalie Ponte, Jon Warman, Dave Willner, on behalf of Ezra Callahan, Chris Putnam, Bob Trahan, Natalie Trahan, Ben Blumenrose, Jocelyn Blumenrose, Bobby Goodlatte, Simon Axten, Brandee Barker, Doug Fraser, Krista Kobeski, Warren Hanes, Caitlin O'Farrell Gallagher, Jake Brill, Carolyn Abram, Jamie Patterson, Abdus-Salam DeVaul, Scott Fortin, Bobby Kellogg, Tanja Balde, Alex Vichinsky, Matt Fernandez, Elizabeth Linder, Mike Ferrier, Jamie Patterson, Brian Sutorius, Amy Karasavas, Kathleen Estreich, Claudia Park<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":19,"dup_dump_count":11,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-49":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-21":2,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":7,"2023-40":1}},"id":23407507},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Short Film: Find my Phone \u2013 tracking down a thief -  https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NpN9NzO4Mo8  Video Description:\n\n>> \"After my phone got stolen, I quickly realized just how much of my personal information and data the thief had instantly obtained. So, I let another phone get stolen. This time my phone was pre-programmed with spyware so I could keep tabs on the thief in order to get to know him. However, to what extent is it possible to truly get to know someone by going through the content of their phone?\n\nIn the Netherlands, 300 police reports a week are filed for smartphone-theft. Besides losing your expensive device, a stranger has access to all of your photos, videos, e-mails, messages and contacts.\n\nYet, what kind of person steals a phone? And where do stolen phones eventually end up?\n\nThe short documentary 'Find My Phone' follows a stolen phone's second life by means of using spyware.\n\nAlthough you'll meet the person behind the theft up close and personal, the question remains: how well can you actually get to know someone when you base yourself on the information retrieved from their phone?\"\n\n<\/comment> This is extremely interesting. I hope there will be a follow up soon, unless they already tore the phone in pieces.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":62,"dup_dump_count":44,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-33":1,"2022-21":2,"2021-49":2,"2021-31":3,"2021-21":1,"2021-17":4,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":3,"2020-40":2,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-10":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-22":2,"2019-13":2,"2019-09":1,"2019-04":2,"2018-51":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-43":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":2,"2018-17":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":2,"2017-34":2,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2023-23":1,"2024-18":1,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":13192347},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Miracle Digital Hong Kong \u2013 Website Development -  https:\/\/www.miracles.com.hk\/  At Miracle, Digital Marketing and Transformation Agency in Hong Kong, we help our clients improve digital services to make them simple, clear and fast. We help our client transform, create and improve their product in a digital way such as branding, web & app design, e-commerce solution, Digital Marketing strategy, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality(AR), SEO. We are experts in their fields and enjoy challenging work. We work together to share knowledge and build our capability to improve user experiences. This helps us work smarter and more effectively. We are confident, capable and committed. We nurture curiosity and encourage our people to keep learning. We have flexible work arrangements and a supportive environment. We help our people balance their whole life and be the best version of themselves. [https:\/\/www.miracles.com.hk\/](https:\/\/www.miracles.com.hk\/)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":28,"dup_dump_count":17,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":2,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":3,"2020-29":3,"2020-24":4,"2020-16":3,"2020-10":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2023-40":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Possible universal cancer biomarker discovered (simple 10 minute test) -  https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-018-07214-w  TLDR: 10 Minute Cancer test\n\n[https:\/\/www.natureasia.com\/en\/research\/highlight\/12801](https:\/\/www.natureasia.com\/en\/research\/highlight\/12801)\n\n\"Cancer: Detecting the presence of cancer cells Nature Communications\n\nDecember 5, 2018 A test to detect cancerous cells, which can be performed in ten minutes, is presented in Nature Communications this week. The assay exploits the differences between the DNA in cancerous and healthy cells to allow for a quick, initial diagnosis.\n\nThe attachment of methyl groups to DNA (in a process called methylation) is genetically programmed. In all 'mature' human cells, DNA carries these modifications. The genomic information in cancer cells is significantly different from healthy cells, resulting in a different methylation level and pattern in most types of cancer cells.\n\nMatt Trau and colleagues found that the different methylation landscape in cancer cells affects the physical and chemical properties of DNA. Amongst other features, it binds more strongly to gold nanoparticles and the authors used this behaviour to develop a test to detect cancer. The assay requires a tiny amount of purified genomic DNA from a patient and takes about ten minutes. The outcome of the test can be assessed with the naked eye. They tested their approach on over 100 human samples (genomic DNA from patients with cancer (72) and healthy individuals (31)) representing various cancer types.\n\nAt this stage, the assay can only detect the presence of cancer cells, not their type or the stage of the disease. Moving forward, the approach needs further testing with more samples and - possibly - refinement to allow for a more detailed analysis.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ask HN: What you need to know to become a CTO? -  https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/17eBWH-n4-Ap8_S59gpTKnWPLJDinbdw5Z1mFnkUcZSo\/edit#gid=0  Of course, there is nothing more valuable than real experience, but there is a ton of useful resources over the internet to help to become a CTO. Let's create together an amazing list of resources (blog posts, books, presentations, videos etc.) to help others to become a CTO\/Technical Leader in a startup\/company.\n\nPlease add your resources in comments or directly in google sheet ---> [https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/17eBWH-n4-Ap8_S59gpTK...](https:\/\/docs.google.com\/spreadsheets\/d\/17eBWH-n4-Ap8_S59gpTKnWPLJDinbdw5Z1mFnkUcZSo\/edit#gid=0)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":10,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":2,"2019-09":1}},"id":14058775},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Google says it fixed a lot of the security holes the CIA exploited -  http:\/\/www.recode.net\/2017\/3\/8\/14864186\/google-security-wikileaks-cia  This is your father talking!\n\n<\/comment> Everybody's got something to say about poetry because rhymes peak in meaning shedding light on our unspeakables. For an ample example, take the other day when I sat not knowing how to write a poem and assuming I was fruitlessly booming the thin air, I yelled and spat my frustration: \"How do I start?\" And my dog looks up from her water dish and says, \"I hate to encroach on your 'artistic space' 'cuz I know you're like 'in-the-zone' or whatever, but if you really want my advice, here it is,\" and then my dog says, \"Poet, breathe now \u2013 because it's the last thing you'll ever do for yourself. Poet, breathe now because there's a fire inside you that needs oxygen to burn, and if you don't run out of breath, you're gonna run out of time. Poet, breathe now because once the spot gets packed you gotta save that air for screamin, your -- inhalation takes saviorisms to sky-highs you gotta go with the flowin' of your own voice. Poet, breathe now because once you spit, you won't even need air, you'll be rockin' rhymes respiratory, you'll breathe poetry, baby. You breathe now, and you'll never forget that breath. You got -- pulsasive passages passing the mic and hot hallelujahs when verses you write and your sin is your savior your song is your life and your words are like wonders to wandering fifes pipin' ceremony: poets, you're man, words your wife and your honeymoon orbits around your love like metronomic metros keepin' time to the heartbeat of your heavenly drums \u2013 Poet, breathe now because you might have something to say because peace might depend on your piece because you breathe and that air might help your brain tell your heart to keep pumping one more cycle and that blood might help your lips form one last word that hits the audience hard \u2013 because we are all made from the same elements and we all breathe the same air so celebrate our mutual recipes of existence by persisting to stay alive ducking sageless luckless ages like intellectual hippies! When you take a breath the universe rings out like circular beats \u2013 landing planets are seraphim storms are spit \u2013 stars are soulcandles! and you breathe like chest rebounds even when all hope seems lost our sounds pound mics like hope-stars like \"we're still here\" hollas! we make angels of our nightclubs, bards of our bums, outlooks of our outcasts and infinity of our sums, we are the children of empathy, the pathos of slums, we heal like helios like cyclical drums we enlist life from listless and sometimes even get things done Poet, breathe now because once you start your piece you can die behind that microphone and death may be breathless but poetry's deathless so breath be our savior eternal. Poets, breathe once with me now. That's one poem we all wrote.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":36,"dup_dump_count":20,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-43":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":2,"2018-13":2,"2018-09":2,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":3,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":3,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":3,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":3,"2017-22":3,"2018-51":1,"2017-13":2,"2014-10":1,"2013-48":1,"2013-20":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"FBI says a mysterious hacking group has had access to US govt files for years -  https:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/en_ca\/read\/fbi-flash-alert-hacking-group-has-had-access-to-us-govt-files-for-years  > The feds warned that \"a group of malicious cyber actors,\" whom security > experts believe to be the government-sponsored hacking group known as APT6, > \"have compromised and stolen sensitive information from various government > and commercial networks\" since at least 2011, according to an FBI alert > obtained by Motherboard.\n\n> The alert, which is also available online, shows that foreign government > hackers are still successfully hacking and stealing data from US > government's servers, their activities going unnoticed for years. This comes > months after the US government revealed that a group of hackers, widely > believed to be working for the Chinese government, had for more than a year > infiltrated the computer systems of the Office of Personnel Management, or > OPM. In the process, they stole highly sensitive data about several millions > of government workers and even spies.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":33,"dup_dump_count":29,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-49":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":2,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-13":1,"2019-04":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-22":1,"2023-23":1,"2024-18":1,"2017-13":2,"2024-26":1}},"id":11427484},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Almost Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp (1966) [video] -  http:\/\/www.ubu.com\/film\/duchamp_rebel.html  For those interested, there's a book (which I haven't read yet) by Larry Witham titled Picasso and the Chess Player: Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and the Battle for the Soul of Modern Art.\n\nEditorial blurb:\n\n\"\"\"\n\nIn the fateful year of 1913, events in New York and Paris launched a great public rivalry between the two most consequential artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. The New York Armory Show art exhibition unveiled Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, a \"sensation of sensations\" that prompted Americans to declare Duchamp the leader of cubism, the voice of modern art.\n\nIn Paris, however, the cubist revolution was reaching its peak around Picasso. In retrospect, these events form a crossroads in art history, a moment when two young bohemians adopted entirely opposite views of the artist, giving birth to the two opposing agendas that would shape all of modern art.\n\nToday, the museum-going public views Pablo Picasso as the greatest figure in modern art. Over his long lifetime, Picasso pioneered several new styles as the last great painter in the Western tradition. In the rarefied world of artists, critics, and collectors, however, the most influential artist of the last century was not Picasso, but Marcel Duchamp: chess player, prankster, and a forefather of idea-driven dada, surrealism, and pop art.\n\nPicasso and the Chess Player is the story of how Picasso and Duchamp came to define the epochal debate between modern and conceptual art\u2015a drama that features a who's who of twentieth-century art and culture, including Henri Matisse, Gertrude Stein, Andr\u00e9 Breton, Salvador Dal\u00ed, and Andy Warhol. In telling the story, Larry Witham weaves two great art biographies into one tumultuous century.\n\n\"\"\"\n\n<\/comment> Sublime\n\n<\/comment> ubu is a great resource, thanks.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-18":1,"unknown":12}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Anonymous' Letter to Westboro Church - \n\nWe, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS - the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People - have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism. We have always regarded you and your ilk as an assembly of graceless sociopaths and maniacal chauvinists & religious zealots, however benign, who act out for the sake of attention & in the name of religion.
Being such aggressive proponents for the Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Information as we are, we have hitherto allowed you to continue preaching your benighted gospel of hatred and your theatrical exhibitions of, not only your fascist views, but your utter lack of Christ-like attributes. You have condemned the men and women who serve, fight, and perish in the armed forces of your nation; you have prayed for and celebrated the deaths of young children, who are without fault; you have stood outside the United States National Holocaust Museum, condemning the men, women, and children who, despite their innocence, were annihilated by a tyrannical embodiment of fascism and unsubstantiated repugnance. Rather than allowing the deceased some degree of peace and respect, you instead choose to torment, harass, and assault those who grieve.
Your demonstrations and your unrelenting cascade of disparaging slurs, unfounded judgments, and prejudicial innuendos, which apparently apply to every individual numbered amongst the race of Man - except for yourselves - has frequently crossed the line which separates Freedom of Speech from deliberately utilizing the same tactics and methods of intimidation and mental & emotional abuse that have been previously exploited and employed by tyrants and dictators, fascists and terrorist organizations throughout history.
ANONYMOUS cannot abide this behavior any longer. The time for us to be idle spectators in your inhumane treatment of fellow Man has reached its apex, and we shall now be moved to action. Thus, we give you a warning: Cease & desist your protest campaign in the year 2011, return to your homes in Kansas, & close your public Web sites. Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS: We will target your public Websites, and the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover. It is in your best interest to comply now, while the option to do so is still being offered, because we will not relent until you cease the conduction & promotion of all your bigoted operations & doctrines. The warning has been given. What happens from here shall be determined by you.  Cool, but this won't stop these fanatics.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":57,"dup_dump_count":10,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-22":2,"2024-18":1,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":7,"2015-18":4,"2015-11":4,"2015-06":5,"2014-10":7,"2013-48":9,"2013-20":2,"unknown":14}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Here Are Twitter's Latest Rules for Fighting Hate and Abuse -  https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/here-are-twitters-latest-rules-for-fighting-hate-and-abuse  Techmeme summary: _Erin Griffith \/ Wired: Internal email details Twitter's plans to update rules on abuse, including expanding reporting options, hiding hate symbols behind warnings, more_\n\nThe email in full from the article:\n\n    \n    \n        Dear Trust & Safety Council members,\n    \n        I'd like to follow up on Jack's Friday night Tweetstorm about upcoming policy and enforcement changes. Some of these have already been discussed with you via previous conversations about the Twitter Rules update. Others are the result of internal conversations that we had throughout last week.\n    \n        Here's some more information about the policies Jack mentioned as well as a few other updates that we'll be rolling out in the weeks ahead.\n    \n        Non-consensual nudity\n    \n            Current approach *We treat people who are the original, malicious posters of non-consensual nudity the same as we do people who may unknowingly Tweet the content. In both instances, people are required to delete the Tweet(s) in question and are temporarily locked out of their accounts. They are permanently suspended if they post non-consensual nudity again.\n            Updated approach *We will immediately and permanently suspend any account we identify as the original poster\/source of non-consensual nudity and\/or if a user makes it clear they are intentionally posting said content to harass their target. We will do a full account review whenever we receive a Tweet-level report about non-consensual nudity. If the account appears to be dedicated to posting non-consensual nudity then we will suspend the entire account immediately.\n    \n        *Our definition of \"non-consensual nudity\" is expanding to more broadly include content like upskirt imagery, \"creep shots,\" and hidden camera content. Given that people appearing in this content often do not know the material exists, we will not require a report from a target in order to remove it.\n    \n        *While we recognize there's an entire genre of pornography dedicated to this type of content, it's nearly impossible for us to distinguish when this content may\/may not have been produced and distributed consensually. We would rather error on the side of protecting victims and removing this type of content when we become aware of it.\n    \n        Unwanted sexual advances\n    \n            Current approach *Pornographic content is generally permitted on Twitter, and it's challenging to know whether or not sexually charged conversations and\/or the exchange of sexual media may be wanted. To help infer whether or not a conversation is consensual, we currently rely on and take enforcement action only if\/when we receive a report from a participant in the conversation.\n            Updated approach *We are going to update the Twitter Rules to make it clear that this type of behavior is unacceptable. We will continue taking enforcement action when we receive a report from someone directly involved in the conversation. Once our improvements to bystander reporting go live, we will also leverage past interaction signals (eg things like block, mute, etc) to help determine whether something may be unwanted and action the content accordingly.\n    \n        Hate symbols and imagery (new)*We are still defining the exact scope of what will be covered by this policy. At a high level, hateful imagery, hate symbols, etc will now be considered sensitive media (similar to how we handle and enforce adult content and graphic violence). More details to come.\n    \n        Violent groups (new)*We are still defining the exact scope of what will be covered by this policy. At a high level, we will take enforcement action against organizations that use\/have historically used violence as a means to advance their cause. More details to come here as well (including insight into the factors we will consider to identify such groups).\n    \n        Tweets that glorify violence (new)*We already take enforcement action against direct violent threats (\"I'm going to kill you\"), vague violent threats (\"Someone should kill you\") and wishes\/hopes of serious physical harm, death, or disease (\"I hope someone kills you\"). Moving forward, we will also take action against content that glorifies (\"Praise be to for shooting up. He's a hero!\") and\/or condones (\"Murdering makes sense. That way they won't be a drain on social services\"). More details to come.\n    \n        We realize that a more aggressive policy and enforcement approach will result in the removal of more content from our service. We are comfortable making this decision, assuming that we will only be removing abusive content that violates our Rules. To help ensure this is the case, our product and operational teams will be investing heavily in improving our appeals process and turnaround times for their reviews.\n    \n        In addition to launching new policies, updating enforcement processes and improving our appeals process, we have to do a better job explaining our policies and setting expectations for acceptable behavior on our service. In the coming weeks, we will be:\n    \n            updating the Twitter Rules as we previously discussed (+ adding in these new policies)\n            updating the Twitter media policy to explain what we consider to be adult content, graphic violence, and hate symbols.\n            launching a standalone Help Center page to explain the factors we consider when making enforcement decisions and describe our range of enforcement options launching new policy-specific Help Center pages to describe each policy in greater detail, provide examples of what crosses the line, and set expectations for enforcement consequences\n            Updating outbound language to people who violate our policies (what we say when accounts are locked, suspended, appealed, etc).\n    \n        We have a lot of work ahead of us and will definitely be turning to you all for guidance in the weeks ahead. We will do our best to keep you looped in on our progress.\n    \n        All the best,\n    \n        Head of Safety Policy<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"History of the browser user-agent string -  https:\/\/webaim.org\/blog\/user-agent-string-history\/  And then Google built Chrome, and Chrome used Webkit, and it was like Safari, and wanted pages built for Safari, and so pretended to be Safari. And thus Chrome used WebKit, and pretended to be Safari, and WebKit pretended to be KHTML, and KHTML pretended to be Gecko, and all browsers pretended to be Mozilla, and Chrome called itself Mozilla\/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en- US) AppleWebKit\/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome\/0.2.149.27 Safari\/525.13, and the user agent string was a complete mess, and near useless, and everyone pretended to be everyone else, and confusion abounded.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":18,"dup_dump_count":16,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-21":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":1,"2023-50":1,"2024-30":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"PROPagate \u2013 a new code injection trick -  http:\/\/www.hexacorn.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/26\/propagate-a-new-code-injection-trick\/  PROPagate Code Injection Seen in the Wild Last year, researchers wrote about a new Windows code injection technique called PROPagate. Last week, it was first seen in malware:\n\nThis technique abuses the SetWindowsSubclass function -- a process used to install or update subclass windows running on the system -- and can be used to modify the properties of windows running in the same session. This can be used to inject code and drop files while also hiding the fact it has happened, making it a useful, stealthy attack.\n\nIt's likely that the attackers have observed publically available posts on PROPagate in order to recreate the technique for their own malicious ends.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"CD-ROMs and iPads -  http:\/\/www.oblomovka.com\/wp\/2010\/04\/01\/cd-roms-and-ipads\/  Since the site is down:\n\ncd-roms and ipads\n\nWatching that $14 Elements demo for the iPad reminded me again of the throwaway line that geeks of a certain age make of the iPad \u2014 that it all seems a bit CD-ROM.\n\nFor those of you blessed with senile amnesia or youth, CD-ROMs were the first wave of \"interactive media\" in the mid-eighties, and the great hope for publishing houses struggling to understand what they might be doing in the 21st century. Companies from Dorling-Kindersley to News Corp threw millions into CD-ROM publishing, with very little ultimate return. They'd do some fancy-schmancy David Bowie joint project, or an incredibly complex animated re-working of their existing bestsellers. Each one won more awards than it sold copies, and eventually those \"interactive divisions\" were rolled into the \"online media\" departments, where their designers would get drunk and bitter, until one night they were sacked after uploading 640MB Adobe Director files onto the website front page.\n\nlook before you jump Back then, geeks were unused to other industry sectors barging into our little rustic byte farmyards with their fancy suits and corporate expense accounts, braying triumphantly about digital convergence, and then, seconds later, striding into the business-model threshing machine that thrummed in the corner. We did not know then that there was a queue of people like this, waiting to dance past us into the bloody knives. We watched their cockiness with alarm, not with the disdain that would come later (and definitely not with own brand of hubristic Internet rockstar smugness, the smugness that tempts us all to look a bit less closely at ourselves, and a bit more closely at that thresher).\n\nNo, back then it was all a bit shocking. We assumed these people knew what they were doing. God knows we knew we didn't have a clue. The only way we knew how to fill a CD-ROM was burning a complete archive of Fred Fish Amiga Freeware on it. Seven hundred megabytes just seemed an insanely large amount to want to fill with professional product.\n\nSubsequent to the threshing, people muttered about how it was the Internet that killed the CD-ROM, but I think that, as ever, the real murderer was economics. A \"professional\" CD-ROM was just too expensive to produce, relative to the format it was generally parasitical upon.\n\nThe classic example for me was the brief phase of magazines including a free CD-ROM on the front of their mag. Dave and I would marvel at the incredible lopsided nature of this venture. The CD-ROM could hold close to a gigabyte of data, including programs, movies and graphics; all of which had to be commissioned, collated, edited, integrated together, checked for viruses, cleared for copyright, tested, mastered, and burned. If done welll, a front- mounted CD-ROM was clearly a far more complex and expensive venture than actually putting out a magazine \u2014 and yet they usually paid a single person to do it all, didn't charge for the CD, and probably got little advertising revenue from it.\n\nThe ultimate portrayal of this problem was when, in a desperate attempt to include some unique content, they'd include on the CD-ROM a PDF file of the magazine it was sellotaped to. The PDF would usually take 50MB, if they were lucky. All that unique content that it had taken the rest of the editorial team a month to create \u2014 and there was still 650MB to go.\n\nMost started attempting to bridge that gap with incredibly fancy interactive environments that would quickly consumer their annual budget. The ones that survived would ultimately collapse into padding the CD-ROM out with\u2026 well, the Fred Fish Amiga Archive, generally. Professional product got thrown out of the window in an attempt to feed the ever-hungry maw of interactive content.\n\nThis, to me, is the flipside of the \"digital technology makes everything cheaper\" argument. It makes a lot of work cheaper, but it can also professional media fantastically more expensive than its analogue equivalents.\n\nIn some ways, the equivalent to a newspaper is just a README HTML file, full of plaintext with a few images \u2014 but no-one is going to pay a quid for a README file. So what will you pay a quid for? Maybe some other super-awesome interactive newspaper with 3D pictures and audio interviews and in-depth statistical analysis and a 30 minute vodcast with the most famous writers, and, and, and\u2026 how much editorial budget do you want to throw on this again?\n\nElements is going to do fantastically, because it benefits from that \"fresh platform\" smell that exudes from the iPad. But can you re-gear a newspaper or a publishing house to produce the level of interactive complexity that a $5 app is going to demand, when it is competing with games and films in the same app niche?\n\nHonestly, it might be possible. We're not in the age of CD-ROMs now. Our price-points are all over the shop, and a sealed environment like the iPad permits all kinds of unnatural pricing inversions. We'll pay more for a ringtone than a full MP3. We pay $10 for a README file on our Amazon Kindle, and a dollar for a pocket application that plays farts.\n\nBut if you want to play that game, you're running against the clock. Other applications are going to make yours look ridiculously clumsy in a matter of months (honestly, in a year people will be amazed anyone paid $14 for a bunch of text, a rotating picture of a rock, and a quick Wolfram Alpha search). Plus the seals on that environment get corroded by open competition every day.\n\nOften the solution to this problem really is to run away and hide. Don't listen to those \"interactive media\" gurus: stick with what you know. No-one demands now to know why their magazines don't have DVDs on the cover. When books have CD-ROMs or allied websites these days, they're usually buried at the back, hardly updated, and just contained the original text and some errata. We don't really care. It's okay. We just wanted a book. We love you as you are.\n\nI know that publishing companies will be tempted to go for the all-singing, all-dancing iPad application. But what they're doing that, my suspicion is that what they're aiming for is a product which exudes credibility, status \u2014 an aura of a professional media product. And when you're spending the kind of money that a professional application requires, solely to improves your status in the world, you're not selling a product, you're buying the love of your audience. That may be an investment in credibility, but it's not an incoming revenue stream.\n\nThe goldrush economics of the iPad will hide this for a little while, because everything will be briefly profitable. But to be sustainable, you need to either be producing something that consistently costs you less than it earns, or will produce regular super-hits among a string of drabber products, or just makes you so much money in its first few months that you never need work again. You can't just make some single wonderful shiny demo product. You need to keep producing them; you need some way of economizing that process. And you need to stop others from making their shiny thing cheaper than, yet interchangeable with, yours. Otherwise you're just throwing nice fancy gee- gaws into the thresher's hungry mouth.\n\n Thanks for the transcript. I remember back in the early 90s reading an interview of some Sci-Fi author (William Gibson I think, but I'm not 100% sure) where he derided the Internet for not being up to par with CD-ROM's.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> This is the best argument I've read for why the iPad simply can't succeed as (and wasn't designed to be) a consumption-only device. Indeed, content that exists only as an update of the \"multimedia book\" CD-ROM is going to face the same problems now as it did then.\n\nThe sustainable successes on the iPad will be apps that enable users to organize, create, record, learn, practice, share, and play.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16,"dup_dump_count":7,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-18":2,"2015-11":2,"2015-06":2,"2014-10":2,"2013-48":2,"2013-20":2,"2024-18":1,"unknown":2}},"id":1236252},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government Made News To Americans -  http:\/\/thecable.foreignpolicy.com\/posts\/2013\/07\/12\/us_backs_off_propaganda_ban_spreads_government_made_news_to_americans\n\n > In Somalia, for instance, VOA serves as counterprogramming to outlets > peddling anti-American or jihadist sentiment. \"Somalis have three options > for news,\" the source said, \"word of mouth, Al-Shabaab or VOA Somalia.\"\n\nWow. Just wow.\n\nAs a Somali, living in Somaliland, I'm calling them out. That's a lie.\n\nFirst of all, the BBC Somali broadcast is far more popular than the VOA. The VOA's Somali broadcast comes out an hour ahead of the BBC and people still wait for the BBC to hear the news.\n\nSecondly, there are other sources of news than word of mouth and Al-Shabab, unless you consider local newspapers, internet news sites, radio station and T.V. stations either word of mouth or outlets of Al-Shabab news.\n\nMakes me want to tell people to not listen to the VOA ever again.\n\n<\/comment> I need to make a note not to click on ForeignPolicy links. Their page-blocking sign-in is so massively annoying.\n\n Very annoying. They sometimes have interesting content, though. You can just disable javascript, or remove the layer with Firebug.\n\nAlso, here's the copy for anyone else fighting with it:\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment>====\n\nFor decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?\n\nUntil this month, a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks could only be viewed or listened to at broadcast quality in foreign countries. The programming varies in tone and quality, but its breadth is vast: It's viewed in more than 100 countries in 61 languages. The topics covered include human rights abuses in Iran; self-immolation in Tibet; human trafficking across Asia; and on-the-ground reporting in Egypt and Iraq.\n\nThe restriction of these broadcasts was due to the Smith-Mundt Act, a long standing piece of legislation that has been amended numerous times over the years, perhaps most consequentially by Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. In the 70s, Fulbright was no friend of VOA and Radio Free Europe, and moved to restrict them from domestic distribution, saying they \"should be given the opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics.\" Fulbright's amendment to Smith-Mundt was bolstered in 1985 by Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky who argued that such \"propaganda\" should be kept out of America as to distinguish the U.S. \"from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity.\"\n\nZorinsky and Fulbright sold their amendments on sensible rhetoric: American taxpayers shouldn't be funding propaganda for American audiences. So did Congress just tear down the American public's last defense against domestic propaganda?\n\nBBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil insists BBG is not a propaganda outlet, and its flagship services such as VOA \"present fair and accurate news.\"\n\n\"They don't shy away from stories that don't shed the best light on the United States,\" she told The Cable. She pointed to the charters of VOA and RFE: \"Our journalists provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible, discussion, and open debate.\"\n\nA former U.S. government source with knowledge of the BBG says the organization is no Pravda, but it does advance U.S. interests in more subtle ways. In Somalia, for instance, VOA serves as counterprogramming to outlets peddling anti-American or jihadist sentiment. \"Somalis have three options for news,\" the source said, \"word of mouth, Al-Shabaab or VOA Somalia.\"\n\nThis partially explains the push to allow BBG broadcasts on local radio stations in the United States. The agency wants to reach diaspora communities, such as St. Paul Minnesota's significant Somali expat community. \"Those people can get Al-Shabaab, they can get Russia Today, but they couldn't get access to their taxpayer-funded news sources like VOA Somalia,\" the source said. \"It was silly.\"\n\nLynne added that the reform has a transparency benefit as well. \"Now Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with their tax dollars - greater transparency is a win-win for all involved,\" she said. And so with that we have the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect this month.\n\nBut if anyone needed a reminder of the dangers of domestic propaganda efforts, the past 12 months provided ample reasons. Last year, two USA Today journalists were ensnared in a propaganda campaign after reporting about millions of dollars in back taxes owed by the Pentagon's top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan. Eventually, one of the co-owners of the firm confessed to creating phony websites and Twitter accounts to smear the journalists anonymously. Additionally, just this month, The Washington Post exposed a counter propaganda program by the Pentagon that recommended posting comments on a U.S. website run by a Somali expat with readers opposing Al- Shabaab. \"Today, the military is more focused on manipulating news and commentary on the Internet, especially social media, by posting material and images without necessarily claiming ownership,\" reported The Post.\n\nBut for BBG officials, the references to Pentagon propaganda efforts are nauseating, particularly because the Smith-Mundt Act never had anything to do with regulating the Pentagon, a fact that was misunderstood in media reports in the run-up to the passage of new Smith-Mundt reforms in January.\n\nOne example included a report by the late Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings, who suggested that the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act would open the door to Pentagon propaganda of U.S. audiences. In fact, as amended in 1987, the act only covers portions of the State Department engaged in public diplomacy abroad (i.e. the public diplomacy section of the \"R\" bureau, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors.)\n\nBut the news circulated regardless, much to the displeasure of Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), a sponsor of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. \"To me, it's a fascinating case study in how one blogger was pretty sloppy, not understanding the issue and then it got picked up by Politico's Playbook, and you had one level of sloppiness on top of another,\" Thornberry told The Cable last May. \"And once something sensational gets out there, it just spreads like wildfire.\"\n\nThat of course doesn't leave the BBG off the hook if its content smacks of agitprop. But now that its materials are allowed to be broadcast by local radio stations and TV networks, they won't be a complete mystery to Americans. \"Previously, the legislation had the effect of clouding and hiding this stuff,\" the former U.S. official told The Cable. \"Now we'll have a better sense: Gee some of this stuff is really good. Or gee some of this stuff is really bad. At least we'll know now.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":25,"dup_dump_count":8,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":3,"2015-18":1,"2015-11":1,"2015-06":2,"2014-10":4,"2013-48":3,"2024-22":1,"unknown":8}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"New Apple Privacy Policy -  https:\/\/www.apple.com\/privacy\/government-information-requests\/\n\n \"On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode. Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data. So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Made in NY Fellowships for Media Tech Startups -  http:\/\/nymediacenter.com\/2015\/08\/apply-for-the-made-in-ny-fellowships\/\n\n The Made in NY Media Center by IFP partnered with The Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment to offer TEN one-year Made in NY Fellowships to NYC based individuals, small businesses, and non-profit organizations from varied Media + Tech backgrounds in order to recognize that different experiences, perspectives, and cultures are critical to advancements in innovation and creativity.\n\nMade in NY Fellows will receive a 12 month Incubator Membership at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP, mentorship by industry leaders and knowledgeable IFP staff, access to IFP classes, networking events, facilities and more.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":1,"unknown":9}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"SlashdotMedia\/SourceForge.net issues fair processing notice -  http:\/\/www.slashdotmedia.com\/privacy-statement\/  The body of the email sent to me:\n\n2016-03-14\n\nDear Site User,\n\nFair processing notice - Data Protection Act 1998\n\nWe are writing to let you know that with effect from 27 January 2016, the Slashdot Media business, which provides online services through various web sites including Slashdot.org and SourceForge.net (the \"Slashdot Media Services\") has been purchased by SourceForge Media LLC of 1660 Logan Avenue, San Diego, California, 92113, USA (\"we\" or \"us\").\n\nAs a result your personal data have been transferred to us and will be used in connection with the continued provision of the Slashdot Media Services to you. Your personal data will continue to be processed fairly and lawfully in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 for the same purposes as those it was originally collected by Dice Career Solutions Inc and\/or eFinancialCareers Limited including to:\n\n* continue to provide you with information (by electronic means or otherwise) about other services we offer that are similar to those that you have already received or enquired about; * carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us; * provide you with the information and services you request from us; * tell you about changes to the Slashdot Media Services; and * ensure that the content made available through the Slashdot Media Services is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device.\n\nFurther information on how your personal data may be processed, who it may be disclosed to and how it will be stored can be found in the Slashdot Media Services privacy policy available at: [http:\/\/www.slashdotmedia.com\/privacy- statement\/](http:\/\/www.slashdotmedia.com\/privacy-statement\/)\n\nYou can ask us to remove all your account data, stop processing your personal data and to stop contacting you for marketing purposes at any time. * For SourceForge.net, please contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com * For Slashdot, please contact us at email@example.com * For FreeCode, please contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com * For SlashdotMedia.com, please contact us at email@example.com\n\nPlease let us know if you have any queries. Yours sincerely, Logan Abbott The team at SourceForge Media LLC<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":15,"dup_dump_count":13,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-17":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2018-22":1,"2024-10":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"ShowHN: LoveThisSong, insta-share your songs from iPhone to Facebook -  http:\/\/lab.welaika.com\/post\/36658905097\/a-matter-of-love When it comes to music, it's always a matter of love. Some songs speak so perfectly about what we are and what we feel, that we are bound to them as if we were their authors.
The iPod changed the way we listen to music. Its shuffle mode surprises us with the right song at the right time, and it often seems like magic.
In those moments, you want to share your feelings with friends you care about the most, but sometimes it can be hard.
You are probably hung in a crowded train and you are using your iPhone with just one hand. You want your friends to listen to the whole song you're listening to, and the best way to do this is by sharing the YouTube video on Facebook. This can be hard. You need to type, to scroll and a read a list on a small screen, to tap, and tap, and tap again.
Or you can use Love This Song!.
Screenshot of Love This Song!
Love This Song! is an iPhone app that makes this all simpler and more beautiful. As soon as you open it, you see the videos of the song you're listening to. Each video is shown full screen, so you don't have to squint to read the title or to see the thumbnail. You can play the videos, and when you decide to share one of them, you just have to double tap the Love This Song! huge magenta button (patent pending) and you're done.
If you feel like doing it, you can write a message and publish it with the video, by just tapping once the button.
Try it now: it's simple, it's beautiful, it's free.  It's a cool iPhone app for music lover and for people used to share music on Facebook.\n\nWorth a try.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":32,"dup_dump_count":27,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-40":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-47":2,"2019-35":1,"2019-22":2,"2019-09":1,"2018-47":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-34":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-13":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2014-42":1,"2014-41":1,"2014-35":2,"2014-23":2,"2023-50":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Facebook use of sensitive data for advertising in Europe [pdf] -  https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1802.05030  Abstract: _The upcoming European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) prohibits the processing and exploitation of some categories of personal data (health, political orientation, sexual preferences, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, etc.) due to the obvious privacy risks that may be derived from a malicious use of such type of information. These categories are referred to as sensitive personal data. Facebook has been recently fined \u20ac1.2M in Spain for collecting, storing and processing sensitive personal data for advertising purposes. This paper quantifies the portion of Facebook users in the European Union (EU) who are labeled with interests linked to sensitive personal data. The results of our study reveal that Facebook labels 73% EU users with sensitive interests. This corresponds to 40% of the overall EU population. We also estimate that a malicious third-party could unveil the identity of Facebook users that have been assigned a sensitive interest at a cost as low as \u20ac0.015 per user. Finally, we propose and implement a web browser extension to inform Facebook users of the sensitive interests Facebook has assigned them._<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":3,"unknown":8}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Stand with Kerala \u2013 Flood Relief -  https:\/\/donation.cmdrf.kerala.gov.in\/  Kerala is in the midst of an unprecedented flood havoc. The calamity has caused immeasurable misery and devastation. Many lives were lost. Hundreds of homes were totally destroyed and many more were damaged. For the first time in history, 27 dams in the State had to be opened. Never before had the State witnessed a calamity of this scale. In the fight against the flood, we have braved the odds.\n\nNow it is our duty to help the affected rebuild their lives. The path to recovery can be long & arduous, but you can make a difference by joining the rebuilding efforts. Contribute generously to the Chief Minister's Distress Relief Fund.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Beyond Calculations: A Course in Statistical Thinking -  https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/00031305.2018.1505657  Abstract:\n\nStatisticians are in general agreement that there are flaws in how science is currently practiced; there is less agreement in how to make repairs. Our prescription for a Post-p < 0.05 Era is to develop and teach courses that expand our view of what constitutes the domain of statistics and thereby bridge undergraduate statistics coursework and the graduate student experience of applying statistics in research. Such courses can speed up the process of gaining statistical wisdom by giving students insight into the human propensity to make statistical errors, the meaning of a single test within a research project, ways in which p-values work and don't work as expected, the role of statistics in the lifecycle of science, and best practices for statistical communication. The course we have developed follows the story of how we use data to understand the world, leveraging simulation-based approaches to perform customized analyses and evaluate the behavior of statistical procedures. We provide ideas for expanding beyond the traditional classroom, two example activities, and a course syllabus as well as the set of statistical best practices for creating and consuming scientific information that we develop during the course.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":3,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2024-22":1,"2024-10":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":7}},"id":20952987},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Play old retro abandonware games and abandoned OS\/interfaces online -  https:\/\/classicreload.com\/  I've just found this site which brought to me my youth. Description taken rom the site : \"ClassicReload was setup for preservation of 5,000+ old retro abandonware games and abandoned OS\/interfaces that you can play online right in your web browser for education and research purposes. There is just something magical about the old DOS games that just brings back memories and takes many of us back to our childhood or a time when things were simpler and just as much fun without all the animation that is the standard these days. These games were from a time when there were so many different types of PC's on the market that all had different hardware. You will notice that many of the games will let you change sounds cards, graphics cards etc. There was so much change in the 80's and 90's with DOS games and many seem to be all but forgotten, but we have them here! (If there is a game missing shoot us a message and we'll put it up.) This website was not only setup to try to preserve these games, but also to make them playable for free on modern desktop computers, tablets and phones. Before you get started make sure that you are using the latest Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":74,"dup_dump_count":40,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-50":4,"2023-40":2,"2023-23":2,"2023-14":2,"2023-06":2,"2022-49":3,"2022-40":2,"2022-33":3,"2022-27":2,"2022-21":1,"2022-05":2,"2021-49":2,"2021-43":2,"2021-39":2,"2021-31":3,"2021-25":1,"2021-21":2,"2021-17":3,"2021-10":2,"2021-04":2,"2020-50":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":2,"2020-24":2,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":2,"2020-05":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-30":1,"2024-30":2,"2024-26":2,"2024-22":2,"2024-18":2,"2024-10":2}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"History on Why we have OK buttons in GUIs (web site slow, see article in comments) -  http:\/\/folklore.org\/StoryView.py?&story=Do_It.txt  _Do It_\n\nAuthor: Andy Hertzfeld, June 1982\n\nMany of the academic types who were involved in creating the earliest implementations of the graphical user interface at Xerox PARC and various universities sort of sneered at the first generation of personal computers when they appeared in the mid-seventies, since the early personal computers were much less powerful than the machines that they were used to programming. There wasn't that much you could do with only four kilobytes of memory and no disk drive.\n\nBut Larry Tesler, who was a key member of the Smalltalk team in the Learning Research Group at Xerox PARC, felt differently. He was really excited by the potential of personal computers, buying a Commodore PET as soon as one became available in 1977. He was one of the demonstrators at Apple's famous Xerox PARC visit in December 1979, and he was so impressed by the Apple visitors that he quit PARC and started working at Apple on July 17, 1980, as the manager of the Lisa Applications team.\n\nLarry championed consistency between applications, and made many contributions to what eventually became the Macintosh User Interface. He was also the leading advocate and implementor at Apple of user testing: actually trying out our software out on real users and seeing what happened. Starting in the summer of 1981, Larry organized a series of user tests of the nascent Lisa software, recruiting friends and family to try out the software for the first time, while being observed by the Apple designers who recorded their reactions.\n\nThe user tests were conducted in a specially constructed room featuring a one- way mirror, so observers could watch the tests without being intrusive. The tests were conducted by a moderator who made sure the user felt comfortable and showed her the basics of using a mouse. Then, with no further instruction, users were asked to perform specific tasks, without help from the moderator, like editing some text and saving it. The moderator encouraged each user to mumble under her breath while doing the tasks, revealing her current thinking as much as possible. Each session was audio or videotaped for later analysis.\n\nWhen the software required confirmation from the user, it displayed a small window called a \"dialog box\", that contained a question, and presented two buttons, for positive or negative confirmation. The buttons were labeled \"Do It\" and \"Cancel\". The designers observed that a few users seemed to stumble at the point that the dialog was displayed, clicking \"Cancel\" when they should have clicked \"Do It\", but it wasn't clear what they were having trouble with.\n\nFinally, the team noticed one user that was particularly flummoxed by the dialog box, who even seemed to be getting a bit angry. The moderator interrupted the test and asked him what the problem was. He replied, \"I'm not a dolt, why is the software calling me a dolt?\"\n\nIt turns out he wasn't noticing the space between the 'o' and the 'I' in 'Do It'; in the sans-serif system font we were using, a capital 'I' looked very much like a lower case 'l', so he was reading 'Do It' as 'Dolt' and was therefore kind of offended.\n\nAfter a bit of consideration, we switched the positive confirmation button label to 'OK' (which was initially avoided, because we thought it was too colloquial), and from that point on people seemed to have fewer problems.\n\n A great lesson...the obvious, no matter how obvious, may in fact be the best choice.\n\n You know, when I first started using Windows 95, it felt weird to see the word OK on every single dialog or confirmation screen.<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":32,"dup_dump_count":7,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":2,"2015-18":4,"2015-11":5,"2015-06":5,"2014-10":4,"2013-48":3,"2013-20":4,"unknown":4}},"id":19980},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ship Early, Ship Never - \n\nThis started as a \"Note to Self,\" so please excuse me if the frustration is all too evident and the writing is less than stellar...
Three major subjects I've had at the forefront of my mind lately: 1. Motivation 2. Learning (Curiosity) 3. Doing (Making)
I've been studying motivation and incentives for months now. It seems there are an infinite number of different motivations that people might have for doing things (I realize that sounds trite but bear with me). I've been really drawn to it because I'm desperate to find out <strong>why I do the things I do and why I don't do the things that I want to do but don't do<\/strong>.
I'm in the midst of reading Paul Graham's excellent Hackers and Painters book. In it, he makes the case that hackers and painters are very similar because they are both \"makers.\" Painters _make_ paintings. Hackers _make_ software. Painters don't necessarily need to understand the chemical composition of paint to make beautiful paintings. And hackers don't necessarily need to know 1's and 0's to make beautiful software.
Graham then draws the distinction between disparate computer science fields: 1. some people seem to be studying mathematics 2. some people seem to be studying the computers themselves 3. the hackers are _making_ software.
The difference is incredibly important. It seems the motivation for some is to _make_ beautiful things. And the motivation for the others is to learn out of curiosity. Certain motivations seem obvious to me, but curiosity seems a bit less obvious. I would certainly consider myself as a curious person with a seemingly unquenchable thirst to learn just about everything I can. But this is exactly where the problem comes up.
The thing that scares me so much is that I desperately want to _make_ things. I desperately want to _do_ things. I want to write a book. I want to paint a painting. I want to compose a song. I want to _do_ things like travel. But the strangeness is that I also want to _learn_ things. I want to learn to play guitar. I want to _learn_ about art history. I want to _learn_ more about philosophy and literature.
The key seems to be the balance between learning and doing... between studying and making.
While I'm not sure how much one should learn about a given thing before doing it, I know for certain that I find myself constantly on one side rather than the other. As it stands now (and as far as I can tell I've always been this way), I am a learner and not a doer. I've read great books. I've practiced guitar for years. I've spent countless hours studying programming.
But I've written 0 books. I've composed 0 songs. I've coded 0 beautiful programs. I've painted 0 beautiful paintings. I've started 0 viable businesses.
The scary part of all this is that there are probably countless unfinished works of art in the world. Is this my misanthropic revenge against society and culture to never _produce_ or _finish_ any of the works of art that I start? Perhaps the worst part (aside from this being my natural inclination), is the fact that I fucking know better. I just finished books like \"Getting Things Done\" and \"Making Ideas Happen.\" I've aggregated and synthesized countless words of wisdom on how to _do_ things and how to _make_ things.
Imagine the horror of going through life without being able to do the things you want to do. If this is something you've struggled with (and hopefully overcome), please share. If not... perhaps some delicious pity would make me feel better.  \n\n[http:\/\/www.selfgrowth.com\/articles\/10-Year_Rule_to_Become_an...](http:\/\/www.selfgrowth.com\/articles\/10-Year_Rule_to_Become_an_Expert.html)\n\nSo get started! You've got 10 years to go... ;-)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":66,"dup_dump_count":7,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2015-18":18,"2015-11":11,"2015-06":9,"2014-10":10,"2013-48":13,"2013-20":1,"2024-30":1,"unknown":2}},"id":1917981},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"MobiCart - FREE m-commerce app builder for IOS & Android - \n\nFirst Demonstrated at DEMO Fall 2010, MobiCart Powers the Next Generation of Custom Mobile Storefronts as Seamlessly-Updated Consumer Applications; Saves Tens of Thousands of Dollars in Application Development Costs + Incorporates a Complete Add-on Ecosystem.
November 15, 2010 \u2013 Newcastle upon Tyne, UK & San Francisco, US \u2013 MobiCart today announced that its free, mobile-optimized e-commerce storefront development solution for Apple\u00ae iOS\u00ae and Google\u00ae Android\u00ae devices is now immediately available for download and deployment from www.mobi-cart.com. First shown at the renowned DEMO Fall 2010 show in September as a public Beta, MobiCart has now been released for general use by anyone seeking to develop a native m-commerce storefront solution for their customers.
MobiCart enables retailers to easily develop customized applications for end-user download onto their mobile devices while also providing a comprehensive back-end management platform for inventory control. These work in tandem to allow users to engage in a totally customized, native mobile commerce experience that is optimized for them and their specific shopping needs via their own supported mobile device.
MobiCart works as a standalone storefront, so businesses can develop their own mobile e-commerce site without even having a website. MobiCart can of course also be fully-customized to match the look and feel of an existing website, while easily allowing for the inclusion of inventory data and new pages to the app \u2013 it's your own shop with your own brand. MobiCart simply makes it simple and free to implement.
MobiCart enables businesses to save tens of thousands of dollars that would normally be required to develop their own application and mobile storefront while also enhancing brand and customer loyalty through an app that is unique to each user. All this is accomplished without CSS or developing an encapsulated website on the mobile device \u2013 MobiCart is a native app on its supported operating systems.
With an open API, MobiCart is easily and quickly integrated into existing shopping cart solutions, while also allowing developers to build and distribute extensions to MobiCart and take part in a growing community via its online marketplace. The MobiCart marketplace is a core aspect of the solution. Developers can easily extend the storefront and develop a any manner and number of add-ons, which they will then be able to give away or sell.
Raymond Kiersey, General Manager of Retail Sales at Flybe\u00ae \u2013 Europe's largest regional airline and MobiCart's first customer \u2013 noted during the company's Beta evaluation that: \"We are very excited about this revolutionary new product. Our customers are busy people and MobiCart's technology will allow them to make duty-free purchases on the go. We believe providing an easy mobile purchasing option will greatly increase sales by aiding potential customers who otherwise haven't the time.\"
About MobiCart:
MobiCart www.mobi-cart.com is a startup that is taking m-commerce to a new level of personalization by enabling anyone to quickly deploy a native storefront application on iOS and Android devices. MobiCart is a completely free solution that combines a customized application development platform with an online ecosystem for sharing extensions (both free and paid).
Editors' Note: MobiCart logos, screenshots and other images are available from the company press contact or at www.mobi-cart.com\/press  Press releases? On HN?<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24,"dup_dump_count":21,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-05":1,"2019-47":1,"2019-39":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":2,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2021-31":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":1983093},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Uber Completes Acquisition of Careem -  https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/uber-completes-acquisition-careem-000000975.html  Uber (NYSE: UBER) today confirmed the official close of the previously announced acquisition of Careem for $3.1 billion. Careem Networks FZ-LLC has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uber, preserving its brand. Careem co- founder and CEO Mudassir Sheikha will continue to lead the Careem business, which will report to a board made up of three representatives from Uber and two representatives from Careem. Careem and Uber will operate their respective regional services and independent brands.\n\nWith the closing of the deal, Uber has acquired Careem's mobility, delivery, and payments businesses across the greater Middle East region, with major markets including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The regulatory approval process in Pakistan, Qatar, and Morocco is ongoing and the transaction will not close in these territories until approvals from the legal authorities responsible are obtained.\n\nUber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said: \"I'm looking forward to seeing even more innovation from Careem, as they continue to operate independently under their current leadership. Working in parallel, our two platforms will be able to build upon the unique strengths of each, to the benefit of drivers, riders, and the cities we serve across the greater Middle East.\"\n\nCareem co-founder and CEO Mudassir Sheikha said: \"Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Careem. The journey that we started almost a decade ago to simplify the lives of people in the greater Middle East is far from over. Joining forces with Uber accelerates that journey as we become the region's everyday super app. We are excited to take Careem to new heights alongside Uber, who appreciates the significant regional opportunity, is supportive of our values and culture, and believes in the purpose that drives us.\"\n\nBoth companies believe this completed acquisition will provide an opportunity to expand the variety and reliability of services offered through their applications. Similarly, for drivers and captains, the companies believe an increase in trip growth and improved services could provide better economic opportunities as well as more predictable earnings through greater utilization of drivers' time on the road.\n\nAbout Uber\n\nUber's mission is to create opportunity through movement. We started in 2010 to solve a simple problem: how do you get access to a ride at the touch of a button? More than 15 billion trips later, we're building products to get people closer to where they want to be. By changing how people, food, and things move through cities, Uber is a platform that opens up the world to new possibilities.\n\nAbout Careem\n\nCareem is the internet platform for the greater Middle East region. A pioneer of the region's ride-hailing economy, Careem is expanding services across its platform to include mass transportation, delivery and payments to become the region's everyday super app. Careem's mission is to simplify and improve the lives of people and build an awesome organisation that inspires. Established in July 2012, Careem operates in 120 cities across 15 countries and has created more than one million employment opportunities in the region.\n\nView source version on businesswire.com: [https:\/\/www.businesswire.com\/news\/home\/20200102005557\/en\/](https:\/\/www.businesswire.com\/news\/home\/20200102005557\/en\/)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":17,"dup_dump_count":12,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-40":1,"2022-33":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":2,"2020-05":2,"2023-40":1,"2024-10":2,"2024-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Carl Icahan on Economics -  http:\/\/oyc.yale.edu\/economics\/financial-markets\/content\/sessions\/session-15-guest-lecture-by-carl-icahn Mr. Carl Icahn, a prominent activist investor in corporate America, talks about his career and how he became interested in finance and involved in shareholder activism. He discusses his thoughts about today's economy and American businesses and their inherent threats and opportunities. He believes that the biggest challenge facing corporate America is weak management and that today's CEOs, with exceptions, might not be the most capable of leading global companies. He sees opportunities for current, intelligent college students to succeed in the corporate world if they work hard and can identify valuable business pursuits  The illustrious _corporate raider_ 's name is actually spelled \"Icahn\". Yes, Icahn! (sorry, could not help it)<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":24,"dup_dump_count":22,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-26":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-13":1,"2018-09":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-39":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2016-44":1,"2016-40":1,"2018-30":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Ask HN: How would you design a car in 2013? - \n\nIn the 80's, when steam, electric, and gasoline powered vehicles competed for dominance, gasoline powered cars won arguably because it had the greatest combination of power and convenience.
Also, the form factor of the automobile evolved over time around the gasoline engine.
In 2013 however I am almost 100% certain that the  gasoline engine will not win if the playing field were level again.
My question is: If the automobile was invented in 2013:
1. What would be the most efficient, eco-friendy and convenient way to power this car?
2.  How might the form factor of the automobile evolve around this energy source?
Lets ignore politics and bureaucracy for now, and talk only in terms of technological possibility.  Counterfactuals are complicated, but I didn't realize how complicated until I wrote all this. The basics have already been invented for other reasons (internal combustion engine, battery, electric motor, etc) so any sort of car should work fine aside from the infrastructure (power distribution, roads). Which sort is best depends on e.g. whether there's cheap oil (there might be if we hadn't used so much oil already) and what people are using cars for (people would be used to another mode with different capabilities; I've read that humans regardless of transit mode tend to prefer about an hour commuting per day and the distance of an hour depends on the prevalent mode). Random thoughts follow:\n\nIf the automobile were invented in 2013, we wouldn't have range anxiety, because we'd be used to getting around on horses. (Without range anxiety, electric cars might be the cheapest.) Or we would have range anxiety if there were lots of functioning places that would exchange your horse for one that wasn't tired (and no car recharging\/refueling stations, of course).\n\nOr maybe trains would still be the way everyone gets around. The streetcar would be ubiquitous, and would be the only reason we'd have quality roads (with rails in them). The streetcars might run on electricity or natural gas, judging by modern bus and light rail. Bicycles might be popular, and suburbs would have developed around streetcar lines rather than along interstate highways (I'm US-centric).\n\nCars might not need charging\/fueling stations, if they could piggyback on an extensive electrical streetcar network's power lines. Then they would probably be electrical and have battery for short off-network trips.\n\nThe probable lack of a good road network is going to be a problem. We'll have to design a car that's good off-road. Preferably we will avoid annoying bicyclists by wearing away their dirt roads (if bicycling is in style and horses aren't); but we'll fail, because just having an enclosure for a person (I assume an enclosure is necessary to count it as a \"car\") is pretty heavy, and we can't improve wheels\/tires terribly much.\n\nWhich parts and energy sources would be cheap? David Archer's _Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast_ (2007 edition, p.101) tells me that about 2\/3 of US oil use is in transportation. The world might not have as much oil production capacity if the car hadn't existed (thus higher prices; then again, a newly invented car wouldn't suddenly be used by everyone, so oil production could ramp up over time along with demand); or the world might still have lots of easily extractable oil (lower prices).\n\nWho would buy\/use this car: rich? middle class? People who already travel a lot? People who are content? Individuals? Businesses? Transit companies (along the lines of ZipCar or self-driving cars)? Taxi drivers (there would probably be taxis powered by horse, bicycle, or some sort of engine)? How would people learn to drive this car? Probably most people wouldn't be used to operating a dangerous piece of machinery, and there wouldn't be laws regulating it (or there would be strict industry-focused laws).\n\nThe lack of experienced drivers suggests self-driving cars are a good idea; but the lack of well-marked roads means our AI tech needs to be a bit further ahead and we might have to wait 5 years.\n\nEDIT: crossposted this response to my blog, since why not <\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":12,"dup_dump_count":11,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-40":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-39":1,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":1,"2018-05":1,"2017-47":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-22":1,"2023-06":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science -  http:\/\/www.quackwatch.com\/01QuackeryRelatedTopics\/signs.html\n\n TLDR:\n\n _1\\. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.\n\n2\\. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.\n\n3\\. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.\n\n4\\. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.\n\n5\\. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.\n\n6\\. The discoverer has worked in isolation.\n\n7\\. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation._<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":35,"dup_dump_count":29,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-14":1,"2022-49":1,"2022-27":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-39":1,"2021-25":1,"2021-10":1,"2020-50":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-29":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-10":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-09":1,"2018-51":1,"2018-30":1,"2018-26":1,"2018-09":2,"2017-51":2,"2017-43":2,"2017-34":2,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2023-40":1,"2024-10":1,"2017-13":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":1875381},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"How We Found All of Optimizely's Clients -  http:\/\/nerdydatablog.com\/2016\/12\/04\/how-we-found-all-of-optimizleys-clients\/  Always liked this stealthy prospect finding method. Here's another few (best for B2B):\n\n1\\. If some change happens at one of your competitor's product (got acquired, changed a beloved feature, etc.), go through threads on public forums discussing it. You'll find a lot of current users (ie customers to poach) of that product. A recent example: Atlassian acquiring Trello.\n\n1b. Also, look through the comment sections of news sites that reported this change. You'll also find tons of current users there.\n\n2\\. Go on user submitted product review sites. Lots of them out there for different types of products: Chrome extension review page, Capterra, G2 Crowd, etc. Approach the users who left reviews expressing dissatisfaction with the competitor product. Or users who use a complimentary product.\n\n3\\. If a competitor product hosts customer sites on their servers (Shopify, etc.), you can reverse lookup their IP to find all of them.\n\nThen it's a matter of introducing your product with a semi-personalized cold email, reassuring the prospect you have the competitor product's most vital features and you also do XYZ better than them. Here's a template: [http:\/\/www.artofemails.com\/cold- emails#competitor](http:\/\/www.artofemails.com\/cold-emails#competitor)\n\n martin-adams Also, if you want to find leads on Twitter, find who follows the your competitors support Twitter accounts.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> Interesting. The biggest source of annoying search traffic at Blekko was the people who were trying to find exploitable shopping carts, wordpress blogs, and forums. It was annoying because one could be 100% certain these folks are not clicking on ads ever and so it cost to serve and generated no revenue.\n\nOn the plus side it was a great leading indicator of a vulnerability in various bits of code because we would see searches that tried to match a particular package and version increase and then shortly thereafter a story would break about some data breach and personal data being stolen.\n\nI was always a bit conflicted by it. I developed a number of tools which could identify this traffic and automatically ban it on our search engine which was the right thing to do, but you can probably sell that information to these organizations. So as a startup it was leaving money \"on the table\" as it were. I expect the way extract money out of that stream would be to have a site that accepted bitcoin and would return URLs of pages that matched a particular software package pattern.\n\nIts also a great tool for sales people who are trying to sell wordpress themes for example (or identifying you is using your non-free theme without paying).\n\n Finding unlicensed Wordpress themes is a great usecase! You can identify them as the theme name is in the stylesheet URL by default.\n\n[https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search?regex=true&query=wp- content%2Ft...](https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search?regex=true&query=wp- content%2Fthemes%2F%5Cw%2B%2Fstyle.css)\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> I'm always amazed about how there isn't more competition in this space.\n\nAs my Master's thesis [0], I built a crawler that did similar fingerprinting (although less generic). It wasn't something breathtakingly novel, but all in all a somewhat successful project.\n\nIt detected > 100 CMS, additional features like ad networks, social embeds, CDN, industry detection, company size etc. In the end, you could run a search and get the result as an excel sheet (because apparently that's what people like.)\n\nThe whole thing took about 6 months and ended up with > 100 million domains on a single (mediocre) machine humming away at around 100 domains\/s. The sales\/marketing folks loved it.\n\nSince I was just finishing university, my skills were still pretty raw, so I'd assume that an experienced engineer would be able to do this a lot faster. From what I can tell, there was a lot of demand out there and sites like builtwith sold their somewhat limited reports (at least at the time) for a good amount of money.\n\n[0] [http:\/\/blog.marc-seeger.de\/2010\/12\/09\/my-thesis-building- blo...](http:\/\/blog.marc-seeger.de\/2010\/12\/09\/my-thesis-building-blocks-of-a- scalable-webcrawler\/) Previous discussion: [https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=2022192](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=2022192)\n\n That was 2010. In 2017 this space is flooded. We all know how to write web crawlers now and this data is sold by hundreds of companies.\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> Interesting; I had never considered scraping sites looking for specific embeds as a way of sourcing potential leads.\n\nScraping sites looking for complementary or competitive products' customers sounds like a novel way to do market research.\n\n BuiltWith[1] and Wappalyzer[2] offer this as a service.\n\nFor software with client-side exposure that can be discovered during scraping, BuiltWith has pretty solid coverage (at least when I used it ~1 year ago).\n\nI don't know if those services do it, but you can also find some really useful intelligence from DNS records. From email and calendar provider data to third party services like analytics trackers and landing page service providers (such as Unbounce). If you have an app that integrates or competes with those services, it can be really useful. If you use a DNS lookup service that provides historical record changes, you can even time your outreach to coincide with their annual renewal period when they're most likely to be entertaining the idea of a switch. Or in the case of an integration, wait until _after_ the renewal period to start outreach since you know they're locked in for another year at least.\n\nYou can also use DNS records to link together entity ownership relationships. Say a company has competing product lines and doesn't overtly market them as owned by the same company. If they happen to use Salesforce Communities, the CNAME for the Salesforce community subdomain will be specific to each site but will have the same Salesforce account id in it[3], Now you know that they're operating under the same entity, which itself is useful intelligence, but you also can combine the technology usage you sniffed from both sites together.\n\n[1][https:\/\/builtwith.com\/](https:\/\/builtwith.com\/) [2][https:\/\/wappalyzer.com\/](https:\/\/wappalyzer.com\/) [3][https:\/\/help.salesforce.com\/articleView?id=000205653&type=1](https:\/\/help.salesforce.com\/articleView?id=000205653&type=1)\n\n Are these sorts of scrapers able to grab any data from the post payment side of things in any way? I imagine there are a lot of interesting tags for ad tech, remarketing, etc. firing after checkout.\n\n There's no reason these scrapers couldn't be coded to identify fields, insert plausible but synthetic data that'd validate, and submit forms. At least in the case of lead gen forms where payment details aren't required. It's a bit skeezy, but that's never really deterred the industry before.\n\nBack when I used BuiltWith (1-2 years ago), they didn't appear to do that. But then, it's not really necessary since their use case is just binary identification of users. With the advent of universal tags that fire on every page (and you configure in the backend which page or funnel is considered a \"conversion\"), you can identify a lot of the ad tech in use without any form submission. Plus a lot of conversion and remarketing tags aren't hardcoded on the post-submission page, but wrapped in javascript functions. With minification and bundling, you can get a high success rate just parsing through the javascript files included on any page.\n\nWhere automated form submission would come in really handy would be a competitive intelligence tool that scrapes an entire site (and subdomains), identifies what actions on which page trigger which tags, and stitched together entire marketing funnels. Being able to monitor a competitor's likely marketing funnels (and seeing which ones they keep over time and which change) would be incredibly valuable, and would necessitate knowing precisely which tags fired on every page, including post-submission pages.\n\n Interesting, thanks for sharing--these are great insights.\n\nYou're right that universal tags and the event naming that you could parse from the JS could be very valuable, although it would be hard to normalize.\n\nAnd you're totally right about stitching together marketing funnels for lead gen conversions, but I'm not sure how you would get that from an ecommerce setup short of making a purchase and refunding it (which might be impossible to do in many cases).\n\nPart of me has wondered if there are any partnerships BuiltWith or others have with popular browser addons. I imagine if they snooped this somehow from users, it would be valuable to them (setting aside whether it is ok to get this level of data).\n\nI played around with someone's open source version of BuiltWith (forgetting what it was called) a while back and it was pretty cool to see how it works. I'm not a developer (although learning to code), but I've done similar research manually as part of my job, so this is really interesting to me to see what else can be learned.\n\nFor example, if there's a publicly traded ad tech company and you know a substantial customer of theirs just removed their tag, or many customers did in a certain time frame, you could short their stock (or vice versa if you see huge growth).\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> This is just recycled content from them....\n\n[https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=6363979](https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=6363979)\n\n<\/comment> > Our search engine is different from search engines you've used before. > Traditional search engines are geared towards providing answers, whereas our > goal is to give you the best list of results for a query.\n\nI kinda get what you're going for here, but I think there's probably a better way to describe it, \"best list of results for a query\" sounds a lot like a standard search engine to me.\n\n<\/comment> There is a current service - builtwith.com - that does a nice job of productizing this type of research - eg:\n\n[https:\/\/trends.builtwith.com\/analytics\/Optimizely](https:\/\/trends.builtwith.com\/analytics\/Optimizely)\n\n It looks like Builtwith only has a few predefined technologies. NerdyData can search for any string in HTML or JS files on millions of websites and do regular expression searches as well.\n\nHere is an example search that can extract the IDs from Google Analytics code on websites into a downloadable list [https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search?query=UA-%5Cd%2B-%5Cd%2B®ex=...](https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search?query=UA-%5Cd%2B-%5Cd%2B®ex=true)\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> On a interesting side note Optimizely was a very early customer of ours (BuiltWith) starting in 2010 which helped them find customers for their own tool based on sites using their competitors (which at the time wasn't very many), I don't think it will bother them that other businesses can do the same thing.\n\nGlad to see all these other tools in the market now there was and is clearly a need for it.\n\n<\/comment> Slightly OT - Anyone else find it hard to (other than the single link to the search) navigate to their main site from the blog? Strange to have its own domain without core\/nav links back to the main site.\n\nWhen you do get to their main domain, it has these weird links (sitemap a b c...) to another domain in the footer of an extraordinary number of other domains (SEO?)\n\n<\/comment> I thought they were gonna use those client ids and get more info about them using Optimizely API or some hack.\n\nKind of like using the private keys found in GitHub\n\n<\/comment> I want to know how to do this. There are a number of apps companies use that fit into my demographic. I want to know how to find them. Do you provide this as a service? I couldnt find a link to a homepage or anything.\n\n See [https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search](https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search)\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> Cool but they need better coverage of the internet. Looks like they are only scraping some sites. I couldn't find any sites in my niche. Top alexa sites only? \u00af\\\\_(\u30c4)_\/\u00af\n\n We crawl 200+ million websites :) Click the \"Deep Web\" button under the search box on the homepage.\n\n Thanks for the tip but I tried the \"Deep Web\" option and still can't find any of the sites. They are small sites that get about 100-500 visitors per month. Also, there are a lot more than 200+ million websites on the web.\n\n What is your niche?\n\n<\/comment><\/comment><\/comment><\/comment> Cool stuff. Back in the day, I worked for a website hosting company and was tasked with finding several of our major competitor's customers.\n\nI chose a more rudimentary route than this - which was to convert the huge lists of hostnames to their IP addresses.\n\nEverything in our world then utilized shared hosting, so a relatively small list of IP addresses would map.\n\nWe then would proceed to scrape the sites for emails, phone numbers. Which was easy because our competitors had standard templates for their clients.\n\n<\/comment> I wonder if you could use nmap or something like masscan([https:\/\/github.com\/robertdavidgraham\/masscan](https:\/\/github.com\/robertdavidgraham\/masscan)) to figure the IP addresses of people using a certain software(say mongodb on port 27017). And then reverse looking up those IPs to figure out which companies they belong to and then you contact the said companies to sell something.\n\n<\/comment> This can be achieved just by using the publicly available HTTP Archive data set and Google's Big Query to search it.\n\n<\/comment> How do you do market research for SaaS that don't leave an artifact in the client website? Consider project management - what ways can we find people who use Trello\/Basecamp?\n\n<\/comment> Handy for finding employees too:\n\n[https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search?query=humans.txt](https:\/\/nerdydata.com\/search?query=humans.txt)\n\n<\/comment> Nice work. Can imagine tools like this would be hella useful for identifying potential new employers or users of an open-source library you're developing.\n\n<\/comment> love nerdydata, always wanted to build something similar myself., but would any sane business person enter the space now?\n\n<\/comment> Love Nerdydata.com! I used their service a while back to find optimizely clients for my sales team to go after.\n\nLooks like they added regular expression searches and a few new data sets. sweeeeeet.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":11,"dup_dump_count":1,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2017-13":1,"unknown":9}},"id":13374462},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"The Spirit Molecule by Graham Hancock - sahin-boydas https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=47ElVv3RG2M  sahin-boydas :Transcript:\n\nOur society is absolutely designed to shut down 90% of the potential of the human creature. Why should it be the case that society is afraid of realising human potential and what it comes down to is special interests, that there are those who run things in society and that there are those who are there to kind of serve them and serve their ends and serve their needs.\n\nAnd so, what our society has created is a realm of unquestioning meat robots who will perform their daily tasks without complaining and without causing any trouble, and that may be very useful to certain small interest groups but it's extremely damaging to the rest of humanity,\n\nOnce we realise our potential we don't need elites anymore, who needs elites - who needs to be led. This is another revelation that comes from working with psychedelics is that we do not need leaders, they are not over us telling us what to do, they may imagine that that's what their doing but they have no right to do that.\n\nAnd the moment we begin to wake up and start asking really profound questions about the nature of reality and about the society that we live in, their power is instantly diminished and I think that's why we've seen such vigour and real nasty unpleasantness put into this horrible wicked thing called the war on drugs which is being used as an excuse to enter the inner sanctum of peoples lives.\n\nSee, if i'm not sovereign over my own consciousness, if I can't make free choices about my own consciousness, if I can't make those free choices while doing no harm to others then I am not free, in any useful or meaningful sense.\n\nAnd, the moment that I free myself then I become a danger to those who run things in the world, anybody who has seen led to question the nature of things profoundly as a result of psychedelics is a danger to the status QUO.\n\nWe risk being thrown in prison, we risk having our reputations destroyed -  the powers that be enter our home and find that we're using psychedelics, I mean this is really Orwellian World that we've created,\n\nhow dare some guy in a suit sitting in government tell me to what to do with my consciousnesses - while at the same time, they're allowing the glorification and glamorisation of alcohol which is one of the most dangerous drugs on the planet.\n\nI mean alcohol is a seriously dangerous drug, whether you're talking about cirrhosis of the liver, or whether you're talking about traffic accidents or whether you're talking about violence - alcohol, there's no doubt about it nobody can dispute, is an extremely dangerous drug.\n\nSo a society that says alcohol's okay and you can even advertise it, but psilocybin or DMT are not okay and if you use them you'll be sent to prison, that society is just riddled through and through with unbelievable hypocrisy.\n\nAnd we have to bring that out, we have to show people this is the case because what's going on here is a fundamental abuse of human rights, we must be free to make decisions over our own consciousness always with the proviso that we do no harm to others and any government any state agency that attempts to limit our freedom over our own consciousness - is itself an agency of darkness and control.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":26,"dup_dump_count":20,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":1,"2022-49":2,"2022-40":2,"2022-27":1,"2022-21":1,"2022-05":1,"2021-49":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-31":1,"2021-25":2,"2021-10":1,"2021-04":2,"2020-45":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":2,"2020-10":1,"2019-51":1,"2019-39":1,"2019-30":1,"2019-22":1,"2023-40":1}},"id":19471596},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Italy court rules Uber food delivery riders were exploited -  https:\/\/apnews.com\/62609b97fbc25575cb1fcc2573db48f1  This article is pretty short, so I will quote it below in full.\n\n> ROME (AP) \u2014 A court in Milan has ordered the appointment of a judicial > administrator to oversee Uber Italy for one year after determining the > company's food delivery service exploited workers, according to Italian news > reports.\n\n> The decision on Friday came amid an ongoing investigation into Uber's > activities in Italy.\n\n> Italian news agency ANSA quoted the court saying that Uber's treatment of > delivery workers was similar to the \"caporalato\" system used by organized > crime groups to pay desperate migrants a pittance to do farm or construction > work off the books.\n\n> In a statement carried by ANSA, Uber said it condemned \"every form of > capolarato\" and complies with Italian laws. Uber said it would \"continue > working to be a true, long-term partner in Italy.\"\n\n> Uber has faced opposition before in Italy. The company is only allowed to > offer its higher-end Uber Black service after Italy's taxi lobby protested > the ride-sharing service in 2017.\n\n> The Italian General Confederation of Labor vowed to stand by the food > delivery riders and said the issue of inadequate pay showed \"we are in the > presence of a digital caporalato.\"<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":45,"dup_dump_count":15,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2023-23":1,"2023-06":1,"2022-21":1,"2021-43":1,"2021-21":2,"2021-17":3,"2021-10":3,"2021-04":5,"2020-50":2,"2020-45":4,"2020-40":2,"2020-34":1,"2020-29":15,"2023-40":1,"2024-26":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Diaspora is now on GitHub -  https:\/\/github.com\/diaspora\/diaspora\n\n Dear Community,\n\nWe have been overwhelmed with your support the past week after our annoucnment of Makr.io and the opening up of signups on joindiaspora.com. This week, we are excited to share with you some important Diaspora announcements.\n\nWhen we started Diaspora two years ago, the project kicked off with amazing reception and support from people that believed in our ultimate goal: giving users ownership over their data. It's a powerful idea, one that captured the imaginations of millions of people across the world. This vision has expanded and evolved over the past two years that we have been working on it as the project has grown.\n\nDiaspora* began when we were still at NYU\u2014just four guys trying to scratch our own itch. We had an idea about how social networks could work in a new and exciting way. We intended to be done over the course of a summer, and with an expected budget of $10,000 from our Kickstarter campaign. The reception of this idea was so good that we managed to reach 20 times the expected amount in donations, and the project expanded to cover far more than just a summer. It's been over two years now, and we are proud of what Diaspora has become.\n\nToday, the network has grown into thousands of people using our software in hundreds of installations across the web. There are hundreds of pods that have been created by community members, and it has become one of the biggest Github projects to date. It has been translated to almost fifty languages, with hundreds of developers worldwide contributing back to the project.\n\nDiaspora has grown into something more than just a project four guys started in their office at school. It is bigger than any one of us, the money we raised, or the code we have written. It has developed into something that people all over the world care about and are inspired by. We think the time is right to reflect this reality, and put our code where our hearts lie.\n\nToday, we are giving control of Diaspora to the community.\n\nAs a Free Software social project, we have an obligation to take this project further, for the good of the community that revolves around it. Putting the decisions for the project's future in the hands of the community is one of the highest benefits of any FOSS project, and we'd like to bring this benefit to our users and developers. We still will remain as an important part this community as the founders, but we want to make sure we are including all of the people who care about Diaspora and want to see it succeed well into the future.\n\nIf you look around, you'll see that we've made an effort to open up to the community more to help better serve it. We've opened up our Pivotal Tracker for community developers help join in (You can sign up here), we've launched a tool that deploys one-click installations to the Heroku app hosting service, and we've updated joindiaspora.com to be more community-centric, showcasing other pods a user can join.\n\nThis will not be an immediate shift over. Many details still need to be stepped through. It is going to be a gradual process to open up more and more to community governance over time. The goal is to make this an entirely community-driven and community-run project. Sean Tilley, our Open Source Community Manager will spearhead community efforts to see that this happens. Stay tuned to our blog for a message from Sean concerning next steps, as well as ways to get involved in helping with the transition process.\n\nThis is a new opportunity for Diaspora to grow further than ever before. We can't wait to see what we can do together.\n\nDaniel and Maxwell\n\nPS. We also want to give special thanks to a few people who recently, and over the past few years, have shown us what a special community we have. It is by no means complete: Mr ZYX, sean tilley, David Morley, Jan-Christoph Borchardt, Joe Braun, David Morley, Hans Fase, Florian Staudacher, Movilla, Stephan Schulz, Sarah Mei, Tom Scott, kinky joe, denschub, justin thomas, Steven Hancock, Diasp, Jason Robinson\n\n Honest question: why make a meme generator ?\n\n<\/comment><\/comment> I think I've been following the project on github for over a year. Is this new?\n\n That's correct, this announcement is what's new: \n\n<\/comment><\/comment> I'm quite confident that I've seen it on GitHub before. It may sound harsh but no one will ever use it.\n\n That's correct, this announcement is new: <\/comment><\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":57,"dup_dump_count":30,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2022-49":1,"2020-45":1,"2020-40":1,"2020-34":1,"2020-16":1,"2020-05":2,"2019-51":1,"2019-43":1,"2019-35":1,"2019-26":1,"2019-22":1,"2019-18":1,"2019-09":2,"2019-04":2,"2018-51":2,"2018-43":4,"2018-34":4,"2018-26":3,"2018-22":1,"2018-17":2,"2018-09":2,"2018-05":1,"2017-51":2,"2017-43":2,"2017-34":2,"2017-26":2,"2017-17":2,"2023-50":1,"2017-13":2,"2013-20":6}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Duvamis -  https:\/\/www.duvamis.com\/\n\n The mission of Duvamis is to build an internet communication platform \u2013 Astral Media Duvamis, which is unique in its philosophy and is intended to provide a new media for sharing, creative activities and intellectual satisfaction to free and creative users worldwide, without social, regional, individual or group barriers and restrictions.\n\nAstral Media Duvamis is the first anonymous social network for free communication and exchange of different opinions, interests and ideas.\n\nDuvamis protects the privacy and anonymity of its users, giving them the opportunity to express who they really are.\n\nThe name derives from the ancient Greek word \"dunamis\" (\u0394\u03cd\u03bd\u03b1\u03bc\u03b9\u03c2), which means \"internal strength, power, ability\".<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":16,"dup_dump_count":14,"dup_details":{"curated_sources":2,"2018-17":1,"2018-09":1,"2017-51":1,"2017-43":1,"2017-34":1,"2017-30":1,"2017-26":1,"2017-22":1,"2017-17":1,"2017-09":1,"2017-04":1,"2016-50":1,"2020-29":1,"2017-13":1}},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}
{"text":"Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined? [pdf] -  https:\/\/scholar.harvard.edu\/files\/shoag\/files\/why_has_regional_income_convergence_in_the_us_declined_01.pdf  > The past thirty years have seen a dramatic decline in the rate of income > convergence across states and in population flows to wealthy places. These > changes coincide with (1) an increase in housing prices in productive areas, > (2) a divergence in the skill-specific returns to living in those places, > and (3) a redirection of unskilled migration away from productive places. We > develop a model in which rising housing prices in wealthy areas deter > unskilled migration and slow income convergence. Using a new panel measure > of housing supply regulations, we demonstrate the importance of this channel > in the data. Income convergence continues in less-regulated places, while it > has mostly stopped in places with more regulation.<\/comment>","meta":{"dup_signals":{"dup_doc_count":14},"id":null},"subset":"hackernews"}