News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

liftbigweights

> it will be pretty easy to automate attribution.

Yours is a valid concern, but people can also fool attribution software easily. You could even write software that alters your paper into a few different people's writing style. That will render any attribution process useless. Just like you can disassemble code, you can obfuscate it.

Re:Undefined Behavior Is Really Undefined on Sunday December 02, 2018 @11:04AM (#18582843)
Actually undefined behavior is defined. It is defined as undefined.
Re:New Metal-Air Transistor Replaces Semiconductors on Sunday December 02, 2018 @11:00AM (#18582822)
What happened to graphene? A couple of years ago, that's all anyone talked about? I thought graphene was going to get us back on the exponential incline that is moore's law?

I'm guessing the answer is no ( betteridge's law ) and we are going to stay in the multi-core environment for a while. 128, 256, 512, 1024, ... cores. Though I suspect that is going to run into problems very quickly.

Re:A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics on Saturday December 01, 2018 @06:41PM (#18579756)
I guess this is for the nontraditional programmers since computer science is a mathematical field and programming is simply applied mathematics in some sense. I don't see how you could get a CS degree without being competent in mathematics to some degree since CS is a mathematical field.
Why is this news? Everyone does this, including the nytimes. The nytimes marketing department offers their clients on all kinds of identifying/targeting traits for advertising.

From your fashion to your viewing habits to which news you consuming to even the types of pets you have and everything in between is used. Where you work, where you live, what kind of parenting situation you have, etc.

Isn't that the point of political and corporate advertising? Isn't this why the nytimes and cambridge analytica is in business? Is the obvious "news" now because of trump and the "right wing"?

Considering the DNC spent a lot more money than the RNC the past few elections, there are far more organizations who targeted left-wing voters than right-wing voters. But I guess the nytimes doesn't want to write an article about itself and its ad team and their clients.

Re:New Satellites Will Hunt Pirates, and Maybe Terrorists on Saturday December 01, 2018 @06:24PM (#18579663)
> Winston Smith actually could hide for a while.

Actually, he couldn't. He thought he could hide. But we find out in the ministry of truth and room 101 that everything he did "secretly", like writing in his diary or his rendezvous with julia, were known to the authorities.

But I agree, unless we wake up, I think a mix of 1984 and Minority Report style of dystopian future awaits us.

Re:Dark web dealers voluntarily ban deadly fentanyl on Saturday December 01, 2018 @05:45PM (#18579460)
> Fentanyl only exists on the dark web because of the Chinese labs pumping it out. Wake up!

The chinese labs wouldn't be pumping out fentanyl if people weren't demanding it. If it isn't china producing it, it would be produce elsewhere ( even in the US ). Stop with your scapegoating rhetoric.

> They see this as just revenge for the British selling opium in China.

It wasn't just the british. A huge part of the US industrial and political power derived from colonizing china.

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/opinion/the-opium-war-s-s...

And we were a colonial power in china until 1949. Well after ww2 ended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol

Though I disagree with your fearmongering and your erroneous equating of the US with britain, I do agree that we have to come to terms with china one day over our historical transgressions and their future ambitions. It's inevitable at the very least that china will want the US our of east asia and possibly want retribution for a century of brutal colonization/humiliation/rape of china. How these issues get resolved will determine the future of the US, China and the world in the 21st century.

Re:Dark web dealers voluntarily ban deadly fentanyl on Saturday December 01, 2018 @05:34PM (#18579419)
> Who is “we?” People who look like me, a white person, who did mean things two centuries before I was born?

"We" as in the nation or government? And it wasn't 2 centuries ago. We were colonizing china up until 1949.

People truly do not understand how much "we" ( as in the US and imperial europe ) screwed over china. I bet not 1 in a 1000 americans knows that the US were imperial colonizers in china even after ww2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_Patrol

Good god. It's a joke.

> We can't blame pewdiepie nor expect him to act mature even though he has more than 70 million subscribers.

And apparently, he can't get some people to understand sarcasm or get a sense of humor.

> But youtube needs to have some sort of policy on subscriber campaigns to avoid these type of scenarios.

It's not a "campaign". It's a joke.

You would think someone one 'hacker'news would have a sense of humor or understand it at least, even if it isn't their style.

Re:Chip wars: China, America and silicon supremacy on Saturday December 01, 2018 @01:11PM (#18577961)
I see the same comments every time a china topic is posted on HN. I wonder why?

> I don't think it would be far-fetched to assume that some very protected and valuable IP has leeched through our doors and into China's hands.

China has a "technology transfer policy" for foreign companies doing business in china. So if intel has a fab in china, they agreed to the technology transfer.

> In all honestly I really can't fathom how the American government let this deal occur.

Probably because it benefited US companies and the wealthy.

If china is stealing anything, it's here in the US, not from intel who agreed to trade technology for chinese market access.

Re:Why is 2 * (i * i) faster than 2 * i * i in Java? on Saturday December 01, 2018 @12:51PM (#18577859)
The difference is that with fp ops, it's part of the design and understood that you should never directly compare the equality of fp numbers since they are estimates. You should check for equality of fp numbers by checking their difference according to your needs.

Whereas for int ops, equality works within the limits of the design.

In short equality means something different in fp by design. For int, it means what we think it means within its limits. When we overflow, then things get screwy.

> I mean, almost every image posed on reddit is a form of piracy

No it's not. It's called fair use. As long as it is changed or altered in some way as a means of commentary/criticism/etc.

Using your logic, everything is piracy, even "original" content.

> If Reddit and other similar sites want to make a point, a banner won't be enough. They need to do the unthinkable: Block all access from the EU.

What they need to do is work together in a unified manner like the media and the politicians have done. Instead, they are bickering and fighting against each other while the journalists and politicians form a unified front against freedom and free speech.

> Legislators are relying on a population who is too distracted to care what they're doing.

Exactly. They rely on a lazy populace and of course relentless anti-tech propaganda from news organizations.

Re:How Postgres is more than a relational database: Extensions on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @06:26PM (#18556672)
> Slightly off-topic, but: has PostgreSQL largely replaced MySQL for new projects? I'm seeing larger numbers of positions advertising for Postgres, even here in the Midwest.

Perhaps, but I suspect people who are migrating from mysql are moving to mariadb, not postresql.

> Postgres seems so chock-full of features now

Now? PostgreSQL has always been more feature-rich ( especially compared to mysql ). What made mysql popular was it's lack of features ( simplicity ) and its tie-in with php/etc web development. Web developers loved mysql because it was simple and easier to manage because it was so feature poor. Give credit where it is due. MySQL really rode the web development momentum. But PostgreSQL has always been the more mature RDBMS.

This is a basic features list ( maybe somewhat biased and somewhat dated ) but the overall trend still holds today.

http://www.postgresqltutorial.com/postgresql-vs-mysql/

Re:Google C++ Style Guide Is No Good on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @06:02PM (#18556519)
> It seems to me that the biggest thing that the author does not know about the provenance of Google's style guide is just how massive Google's projects that this guide applies to really are. A lot of the author's complaints may not make sense on their project with a few engineers, but they are absolutely vital in a code base on which thousands of engineers work on every day.

I agree. People work on their small pet projects for school or wherever and think that's how enterprise development really works. Unless they have worked on a major project, it's very difficult for them to understand.

But even more important than sytle, it's consistency. You shouldn't use a coding style/standard because it works for google. You should create a coding style that works for your team or organization and stick to it consistently. Oftentimes, keeping to the style is more important than the style itself.

Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @03:14PM (#18555196)
> It's one of the many reasons i'm concerned that models like Chinas will actually flourish more than they otherwise would in the coming years.

That's why the soviets won the cold war? From the british empire to the nazis to the soviets to cuba to even north korea today, the state controlled and censored information and they all failed or are going to fail. The US, with all our misinformation, is still going strong.

Also, china has succumbed to misinformation a few times in the past 200 years. The US is more or less "vaccinated" from misinformation because we deal with it everyday. China, with its sterilize propaganda environment, is highly susceptible to misinformation and no matter how hard they try, they will never be able to completely keep misinformation at bay.

Re:Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy on Wednesday November 28, 2018 @03:07PM (#18555144)
Ironic considering SSRN is owned by Elsevier, which is renown for trying to limit/control information for profit.

It even published fake journals to spread "fake news" ( aka ads ) for the pharmaceutical industry.

"The company has fought legislation designed to open up academic research, offered scholars money to file positive reviews, sued libraries for oversharing, and allegedly published fake journals on behalf of the pharmaceuticals industry."

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/when-the...

There are so many better links than a nytimes spam. But all we seem to get is nytimes spam lately.

How about link the a website dedicated to chess?

https://www.chess.com/article/view/world-chess-championship-...

> While there are similarities, one is a financial rating and the other is a social rating.

They are one and the same. The "financial" rating affects where you can live ( try getting an apartment or a mortgage ) and where you work.

Sure it isn't as draconian as the chinese version but it's pervades much of your life.

Trade war has nothing to do with it. It's rising wages in china.

For more than a decade, manufacturers ( even chinese companies ) have been shifting production to vietnam.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/business/worldbusiness/18...

Labor costs a much cheaper in vietnam.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/744071/manufacturing-lab...

The british relationship with the kingdom of saud predates ww2 by decades going back to the ottoman empire. The british were instrumental in supporting saudi and arab nationalism to destroy the ottoman empire. Hence the tense relationship between "britain and turkey" and "saudi arabia and turkey" today.

Actually british have a long history of using nationalism to destroy the ottoman empire. Some of the foremost british romantic poets supported greek nationalism to free greece from the ottoman empire.

Interestingly enough, 40 years after nationalism destroyed the ottoman empire, nationalism would destroy the british empire.

Re:US asks allies to drop Huawei on Friday November 23, 2018 @10:44AM (#18517045)
> I'd rather have my data safe with the Chinese government, a country that is on the other side of the globe and has practically zero influence on my life, that sharing it with the US or my own governments, which are there, and can make my life hell for any or no reason at all, and have the means to actually hurt me.

That's an interesting take, but you are assuming china's influence won't keep growing.

Or more worrisome, what if china, EU, Russia and the US decide to share data in the future.

The only way to be "safe and free" is legislation curbing intelligence agencies snooping on people. Unfortunately, these intelligence agencies appear to be operating above or beyond the law.

Because someone writing for the economist would know more about internet history than zuckerburg and the people running facebook.

Why is there so many facebook propaganda crap everywhere now?

Everyday without fail, you can expect a few here. If we had real journalists in this world rather than propagandists, that would be an interesting investigation and article.

Why is the entire media/propaganda apparatus from the nytimes to the economist spanning both sides of the atlantic spamming non-stop propaganda about facebook?

Re:Why Aren't There C Conferences? on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @04:24PM (#18506230)
Maybe they started a dash conference and made a dash for it?
Re:The World Will Be Our Skinner Box on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @04:19PM (#18506198)
How come you wrote "behaviour" in the first sentence and "behavior" in the second sentence?
Re:Texas Is About to Create OPEC’s Worst Nightmare on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @04:16PM (#18506175)
> Texas is in a funny place. They are pumping oil like crazy

Texas had always pumped a lot of oil. Texas was the oil capital of the world for a long time before saudi arabia came around.

> but they are building wind like crazy as well.

That's because one of the wealthiest men in the world has been a big fan of wind energy.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19231397/ns/us_news-environment/t/...

> I could easily see Texas being a majority renewables while at the same time exporting more and more Oil.

No major state or country is going to be renewable majority for a very long time ( if ever ). Least of all texas.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/images/charts/primary-en...

Re:Texas Is About to Create OPEC’s Worst Nightmare on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @04:09PM (#18506128)
What hyperbolic clickbait nonsense.

> If Saudi Arabia and its allies cut production when they gather Dec. 6 in Vienna, higher prices would allow shale to steal market share.

Considering oil prices have gone from near $80 to near $55 in about a month, I'm guessing they've decided to maintain or even increase production. That is unless the saudis and the wall st banksters decide to game the market as they do from time to time. But of course the bloomberg "journalists" wouldn't know anything about it or investigate that because they are allergic to real journalism like more establishment media.

> But because the Saudis need higher crude prices to make money than U.S. producers, OPEC can’t afford to let prices fall.

The saudis make money on their oil. They don't need higher prices for that and certainly their oil is more profitable than shale oil. What they need is higher oil prices to maintain their government budget.

If you want to know what a joke bloomberg is...

The same journalist wrote this today : "Saudi Oil Production Surges to Record in Early November"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/saudi-oil...

If anyone working at bloomberg knew what they were talking about, they wouldn't be working at bloomberg. They'd be raking in the millions working for themselves.

Re:Life Sentence for British Student Draws Criticism for U.A.E on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @03:52PM (#18505991)
> After that there’s a 99.99% confession rate.

That's because prosecutors in Japan and other countries generally go after "sure" cases.

Canada has a 97% conviction. US has a 93% conviction rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate

> Carlos Ghosn, president of Nissan, seems to have just discovered it: He will be interrogated for 12 days. I would never go to such countries.

At least he'll get court case rather than disappearing in a japanese embassy.

Japan has its problem but it's absurd to compare it to the horrors in the middle east.

> Or even better, will they be living in these condos for a few years, or selling them in 3 months?

They could rent it out. If LIC is expecting an influx of highly paid workers, rents are bound to increase significantly over the next few years and if things work out, the condo prices will increase even more. Why not hold onto it for a few years collecting rent and then cash out with a nice long term capital gains tax treatment on possibly significant capital gains?

Re:The Triple Jeopardy of a Chinese Math Prodigy on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @12:13PM (#18504212)
> I would call him a good, hardworking student. (At least that's what we'd call it in Singapore ;)

How many singaporeans are top math students at cambridge? If hard work is all that it took, we'd all be studying math at cambridge.

> Coincidentally me and Xu went to high school at the same time in Singapore)

"Coincidentally Xu and I..."

> Let's take the top 20 universities across the world (harvards,mits, tsinghuas, iits etc.) and take the top 10 graduating students from each class (math, physics, etc.) => are we saying that the world is producing 500-1000 prodigies every year?

I'd say there are far more prodigies than that being produced every year. You do realize that there are 7 billion people on earth right?

You don't have to be newton or einstein to be a prodigy. Most prodigies never live up to their expectations. Maybe you use the word differently in singapore than in the US.

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