News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

PricelessValue

> Fascinating. It's a shame that it's so hard to get people to pay for quality journalism.

Maybe because it isn't quality journalism. Ultimately, something is worth what people are willing to pay for.

> The world will be a dark place if the only news sources left are blogs by self-proclaimed journalists.

It's just as dark a place with "quality journalism".

> I guess all the folks in Xinjiang just don’t love freedom as much as you do.

Of course they do. Good god you completely missed my point.

> We're not talking about US, Britain, Europe or any other country.

But you said "people of those nations"? Now you are backtracking?

> It's also not a prerequisite to be Chinese or Uyghur to discuss this topic. If someone learns and becomes educated on a topic they can discuss it.

I didn't say it was a prerequisite. My point is that the assertion that "we don't want dystopian surveillance" is absurd considering the amount of surveillance we already have. Okay? Considering the guy wrote for a western news outlet, I'm assuming by "we", he meant the western world.

> He's also not saying that Uyghurs want this. He's saying nobody wants this.

Right. And my point is that we already have it.

>1. Who "started it"

Not just who started. The quality and sophistication.

> 2. How long they've been doing it 3. Percentage of people affected by it (not number!)

Yes. What else would it be? What other metric would you use?

> Did you read the article?

Yes.

> Not sure about you but I don't have to put my government issued ID on my kitchen knives.

Neither do I. But that's because I love freedom.

What's the difference between ids on or for knives and ids on or for guns? It sounds ridiculous to us because our murders are by guns. But in china people kill each other with knives.

https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-atta...

Do you know what some people in the US want? Fingerprinted "smart" guns. More government surveillance/registry/etc of gun owners. What's the difference?

If people in china are killing each other with knives, doesn't "smart" knives or knife registry make sense just like a gun registry?

> This post is clearly suggesting that the PEOPLE of those nations don't want that dystopian future.

What people want a dystopian future? That's a pointless statement. Also, Nithin Cota is not chinese nor ughyur. How can he speak for those people.

> What China is doing in Xinjiang is not something many, if any, citizens around the world want.

You can say that about the same things that happened in the US, britain, europe and around the world.

> How do you even measure that?

How about on a per capita basis?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/tony-porter-su...

Or how about

1. In terms of quality and sophistication tech. US and Britain pioneered most of the surveillance tech.

2. Experience and age? We have decades head start on the chinese when it comes to tech surveillance.

3. We are more "connected" and a more urban society with surveillable data? Nearly 50% of china still lives in rural areas.

> China's Xinjiang surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

What silly clickbait. I swear the media ( or propaganda ) sure loves to scaremonger with "china".

The brits want it. Europe wants it. Russia wants it. And the liberal and conservatives in the US want it.

The leading surveillance systems in the world aren't in china. It's in britain. It's in the US.

Edit: Holy cow, the brigade is strong here.

Re:Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors on Thursday February 22, 2018 @05:27PM (#16442099)
HN is an echo chamber too. It's no different than reddit. Just much smaller.
Re:Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors on Thursday February 22, 2018 @05:26PM (#16442090)
> In simple terms they couldn't keep up with comment moderation and were not able or willing to invest in enough moderators.

Has nothing to do with that. It's because their comment section gets no activity to merit investment. Instead they are investing in "managing" social media via twitter, facebook, reddit, etc.

> So I have to give credit to HN to having one of the most civil comment sections on the internet.

It also has the worst and most biased comment section. It's why traffic is down and hardly anyone uses HN.

> So, keep it up, dang and sctb!

Only on "hacker" news would someone support censorship.

The spirit of hacker news died years ago.

How on earth can this be flagged on "hacker" news?
> It very clearly sets it to display = block the line after

That's the point he is making.

> if you ran a normal browser.

What's a normal browser?

Re:China will soon have air power rivalling the West’s on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @08:35PM (#16434509)
> for the first time since WWII the US may have the second biggest economy and be falling further behind.

Since 1890 or so. The US was the largest economy in the world for more than 50 years before ww2 started.

As long as the functionality is there, there will be initial outrage and then people will accept it. Having gone through a few redesigns of a major website, the first few weeks can be a nightmare though. People love to complain. But in the people's defense, we've had a few screw ups too.
Re:Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012) on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @07:55PM (#16434329)
Because you aren't a kid anymore? You are older and have a wife, children, nephews, nieces and responsibilities? Not only that you have friends from childhood, high school, college, work, etc and there are only 24 hours in a day?

It's called growing up. Are we supposed to stay naive children forever without responsibilities forever?

Re:Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012) on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @07:48PM (#16434287)
It's not a myth. It's a fact. Younger people are more naive and idealistic. Older people are more skeptical and conservative.
Re:Why is it hard to make friends over 30? (2012) on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @07:45PM (#16434278)
Is it possible to have a discussion about anything without someone bringing politics to it?

> He's my dad and I love him, but needless to say, when I see my partners going down the same path, it freaks me out.

Your dad is your partner?

> It seems impossible to have normal, non-political conversations with him anymore, he just doesn't have any knowledge or interest that doesn't come from TV.

And here you are doing the same thing. How about not making everything political? Things are toxic as it is. Do you need to bring toxic politics to HN?

Re:We Are the Threat: Reflections on Near-Term Human Extinction on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @06:07PM (#16425139)
> Nuclear power can (technically) easily replace all fossil fuel power.

It can replace fossil fuel power for electricity. Not all fossil fuel power.

> It would take a decade of serious dedication and leaving behind a "safety first" culture, but no major technical advances are needed.

Strangely enough, it's the clean energy lobby, not the fossil fuel lobby that is the biggest hurdle to nuclear energy. It's so strange to hear the solar, wind, etc advocates claiming they want to save the environment railing against nuclear power.

Re:Overview and Introduction to Lisp (1986) [video] on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @05:56PM (#16425049)
It's ridiculous. My university tried to switch the CS program from C/C++ ( OS, networking, etc ) and Scheme ( functional, programming languages, etc ) to java and there was a mass movement against it and we kept the "traditional" languages. I don't know why there is such a movement in academia to dumb down everything.
Re:Are Monads a Waste of Time? on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @05:47PM (#16424986)
So true. Haskell is great to learn about functional programming and programming language theory in general. But to get things done, it's just not as practical.
Re:Facebook’s next project: American inequality on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @05:39PM (#16424932)
Everything related to FB is now PR and propaganda. It's all "facebook is terrible" propaganda or "facebook is great".

The obsession with facebook lately has been unbearable.

Re:The Beauty of the COBOL Programming Language on Tuesday February 20, 2018 @05:35PM (#16424895)
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."

                                -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Re:Learning to program is getting harder on Saturday February 17, 2018 @01:28AM (#16399374)
> The hello world has never been easier to do.

Agreed. The hard parts of programming have been removed ( especially for entry level people ).

> We have communities and cheap, fast computers.

And online tutorials ( youtube, coursera, etc ).

Learning to program today is much easier than just 10 years ago.

Not only that, the setup to start programming today is much simpler. Not only does almost everyone have a computer, there are IDEs/programming suites available that eases you into programming.

Re:Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge on Saturday February 17, 2018 @01:15AM (#16399345)
> Given that Breitbart, Stephen Molynieux, etc, all basically support the least charitable interpretation of the memo (that women are genetically less predisposed to engineering)

So? Are you saying you disagree? Then state your case.

> his active association with them makes the claim that the memo was a good-faith attempt to improve diversity rather hard to swallow.

Why does it make it hard to swallow? What does damore stating a fact that women being more predisposed to more social careers rather than engineering have anything to do with his stance on diversity? Are you saying that men should be forced out of engineering and women should be forced into it?

So should we take over norway, get rid of women's rights and force the norwegian women to go into engineering?

> http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/14/haidt-google-memo-c....

That link is about an NYU professor who says data and analysis backs up damore's claim.

> http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/15/heres-why....

A lot of good points there.

Re:Google removes ‘view image’ button from search results on Saturday February 17, 2018 @12:51AM (#16399280)
> Google is now a firm part of establishment

They have been for a while now. They have a deal with the washingtonpost and nytimes to "feature" those two newspapers on google news and search. Check the waybackmachine and see how frequently washingtonpost and nytimes articles were on google news five years ago to now. It's incredible how prominently those two newspapers, but especially washingtonpost, are promoted on google now.

It also extends to their other properties like youtube. Look how heavily they are promoting kimmel, john oliver and other late night shows now.

But it applies to almost all of tech. The pressure put on tech by the establishment and their propaganda organs was too much.

Even HN is openly supporting the washingtonpost, nytimes and the establishment. I believe the mods called it "the standard". A "hacker" news site supporting establishment mouth pieces. Years ago, washingtonpost and the nytimes were scorned by HN. It's amazing how things change.

Re:Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge on Saturday February 17, 2018 @12:36AM (#16399247)
> If they are completely qualified, they should and would be hired by a system that completely ignores gender and race.

I can't believe you were downvoted for expressing that merit rather than race and gender should be use for hiring decisions.

Re:I've never felt less in control of my own hardware on Saturday February 17, 2018 @12:32AM (#16399239)
That's exactly how I feel about software ever since I got acquainted with windows 10. Do you best to remove all the junk. Then they keep reinstalling their "malware" until they finally remove the option of disabling or removing their malware.

It feels like we are losing more control and access over tech - both software and hardware. Some companies are trying their best to turn tech into a black box which we aren't allowed to peer into.

Re:Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge on Saturday February 17, 2018 @12:21AM (#16399199)
> Then he started retweeting Breitbart articles and selling "Goolag" t-shirts and threw his credibility out the window

What does that have to do with his credibility or his arguments? His arguments stand on its own merits. Externalities has no bearing on argument. If he said 1+1=2 and then retweeted a breitbart article, does that mean 1+1 no longer equal 2?

iPhone, iPad or apple app data. What you listen to on itunes. What you watch. Etc. They have to in order to tailor their services better, manage their infrastructure and of course plan for their future development.

Apple uses their data to make better product to sell to you. They don't sell their data to advertisers because they don't need to.

What is going to happen if iphones, ipads, etc don't sell as well?

Older »