AUmrysh

My opinion is that they are serving me data, I can view/consume that data however I would like. It's not my responsibility to view the ads they put on their page, and if I want to increase the font size or disable javascript, that's my business.

It may send it to multiple addresses. I know in outlook and in .NET libraries, the semicolon is the delimiter for multiple email addresses.

Autonomous weapons are coming, and in some degree already exist. There are CV systems on machineguns in korea protecting the border. There's the TrackingPoint rifle scope that allows one to delay a shot until the rifle is line up perfectly, similar to how tank cannons account for the wobble down their length to ensure a straight shot).

It would be ridiculously easy right now for a person to attach a firearm to a quadrotor with a CV system, program it to identify human shaped objects, and fire at them. It's not a miracle that such a thing hasn't happened, there are very few people in this world with both the desire and skills to do these things.

I'm reminded of a short story I read a few years back [1]. It got me thinking about the possibility of a single depressed individual hitting the big red button and destroying all humanity. I think it's a real possibility, and when you think it through with the assumption that these super-weapons will be readily available much in the same way that AK-47s are ubiquitous now, you can start to wrap your head around ways to perhaps prevent this.

First, mental health is a huge issue. We're seeing the results of neglecting mental health in America now with these spree/ego shootings, where disturbed individuals either radicalize or "snap" and go kill people in malls, churches, theaters, schools, and other public places. Semi-automatic firearms and explosives are enabling these things to happen, but weapons are a Pandora's box which can never be closed once opened. The way that nuclear weapons restrictions are handled now is probably best. Restrict the ingredients to make the weapons, and you can prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

Another thing that we as a global society can do to prevent these weapons from becoming widespread is to sabotage them. Include vulnerabilities and kill switches that would allow us to neutralize their effectiveness. China did this with the ASICs used in some military machines built by the US [2]. This is a valid option, but requires a motivation on the part of those creating the devices. One could argue that a nation-state could create devices like this lacking intentional back-doors.

Engineers can also work on counter-measures and disseminate them widely, and that seems like it will be the most likely outcome. Humans are clever, AI is very specialized, and that will make the big difference. Once a general AI better than humans is created, our desire to not be murdered by it won't really matter anyway.

I think our best hope is to build these AI weapons, but do it so shittily that they fail more than they work. I also like the American technique of building it better than everyone else and sabotaging the work of any potential rival so that they can develop them but not realize they don't work correctly until it's too late.

1: http://www.fullmoon.nu/articles/art.php?id=tal 2: http://www.scribd.com/doc/95282643/Backdoors-Embedded-in-DoD...

I'll open it on my work computer, they surely already have access to anything important anyway.

This sounds like a lot of FUD. $80 million isn't that much compared to the NIH budget. This is about one third of one percent of all NIH funding we're talking about.

I don't think we should change the funding system from grants to prizes. The existence of my job relies almost entirely on NIH funded grants, and I am not worried about this in the least. When they start talking about replacing the other $23.9+ billion in NIH grants with prizes, then we should worry.

What's really sad is that reddit and Alexis were, arguably, the most successful Y-Combinator startup, and now they've fallen by the wayside as cronyism and personal agendas take over. Alexis let this happen, though. Not that I blame him, I'd have taken the money too.

The Naughty Dog team made a lisp (GOAL) for some of their games.

It looks like that's the Debian icon on Twitter.

I always wondered how simple fluid physics worked. I actually brute forced my way through my own ECA implementation back in college, and never made the connection. Upon loading the page and seeing the fluid example, I had one of those zen koan enlightenment moments. Thank you for posting this.

I'm pretty certain virtualenv just changes some environment variables.

I found a writeup [1] on how to write your own virtualenv. It doesn't look like there's much overhead there.

I suppose one could justify not using virtualenv if they're on a system with limited resources or network access. I've known people who spent hours building a compiling python 2.7 from source on embedded systems because they rolled their own distro, and in that situation it would make sense to not want to mess with virtualenv if you just spent hours getting pip working.

1: https://www.recurse.com/blog/14-there-is-no-magic-virtualenv...

You can force virtualenv to include a specific python version

virtualenv -p python2.7 env_name or virtualenv --python=/some/path/to/python env_name

You've made the best argument for using pip like this, however. Instead of having to install a virtualenvironment and install dependencies and all of that, you could just ship your program with the pip -t libraries, though you'd have to include the path somehow on the install so python knew where to find those files.

This is a nice, simple solution to segregating python package environments. I personally prefer virtualenv, as I can navigate around the filesystem and open ipython from anywhere within the venv. I guess I don't see the usefulness of it so much because I have no problem using virtualenv.

The relative path is an interesting trick, I'll have to keep that in mind in the future.

A big one I've seen is more related to the TLS cheat sheet [1] they link to on that page.

Many sites will send session tokens over http because they don't set the "secure" cookie flag. It's a simple thing to do, and prevents a malicious ARP poison or DNS attack from potentially hijacking an account.

You'd be surprised how many sites are vulnerable to such attacks. Reddit, parts of Ebay, several university websites, and many other sites still are vulnerable to session hijacking.

I think people writing web libraries need to start building "sane defaults" concerning security. All cookies should be secure by default, and only those who know what they are doing should turn them off. It's not that much extra overhead, and the potential benefits outweigh the increased processing and bandwidth.

1: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Transport_Layer_Protection_C...

It still reduces the potential brute force search space. Instead of forcing a clever brute forcer to search all of the horribly insecure passwords with no special characters and repeating characters, you're telling them up front that they can cut certain strings out of their search space.

I can see both sides of the argument, but often the password complexity rules result in users writing down their passwords on sticky notes. You could make the argument that if an attacker is at the desk, you're already compromised, but still it's probably better to just enforce a policy of reasonable password complexity no matter what it is. They have javascript password complexity indicators on many sites now, I think that should become standard.

Nature has the highest impact factor of any research journal. They can basically ask for whatever they want at this point, because someone out there will be willing to pay it to get their paper in nature.

I don't see how it's any different from time-shifting with VHS. In this case, you're just using a longer-term "temporary" format (epub, mobi, pdf) which allows you to peruse the website later.

That's the biggest reason I'm not enthusiastic to use new google products. In this case, it looks nice and all, but Trello is more likely to still be there in 2 years.

I'd rather know ahead of time so I could start finding a new employer.

It's clear to me that Xamarin is trying to get everyone to pay right now. The free license won't even allow you to build the Xamarin.Forms demo, and Forms is one of the most significant new features they added. Cross platform apps with a common UI and codebase, no more separate views for each platform, and data binding! I think they're scaring off small developers by requiring the several hundred dollar investment to use Xamarin, even if it is a great product.

Where I work, we chose Xamarin over PhoneGap/Cordova.

This looks similar to RoboCraft http://robocraftgame.com/

I'd like to see a topological (braid) quantum computer [1]. While I don't imagine it's any better than any other sort of quantum computer, I do think the fact that it could work is quite amazing in itself.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_quantum_computer

>We're trying to learn how they work

Is the operation of the D-Wave an unknown? I don't know much about it.

I think your only choice for doing this securely is to hide the keys behind your own server.

This is very impressive for being so inexpensive. I assume you program it over the USB plug on the end, is this correct?

It's funny, because in most other first world countries, it is the responsibility of the government to provide higher education to its citizens. Perhaps you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth or "pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps", but not all of us are so lucky to have thousands of dollars to put toward education.

Thank you for clarification. I've not really used Go, so I don't know how it differs from C for objects. I'm a little familiar with using structs in C for OOP, I apologize if my comment came across as to lessen the article, because I found it pretty interesting, and I love to see things like this where a new programmer might have their eyes opened to something those of us who've been around a while might already know from somewhere else.

You can do this same thing in C to get Objects.

Also I believe there may be a typo in your last paragraph

>while staying clear of the brittle mess than is inheritance

It should be "that" instead of "than", I think.

For those interested, also look into the CCR[1]. It's an XML file representing treatment history used for interchange between healthcare providers.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_Care_Record

There's a big push right now to implement such systems. Hospitals now have a monetary incentive, due to the ACA, to not have patients return for anything more than a follow up for something like 30 days after an emergency room visit [1]. I'm not sure what Apple has to offer in regards to this kind of data storage, but it's going to have to be HIPAA compliant if they want any sort of acceptance.

Also, a lot of what is being done is automated monitoring. An algorithm can be developed to measure, for example, blood pressure, and if the patient deviates from acceptable ranges, the algorithm can trigger a contact to the patient, their healthcare provider, and family to begin an intervention to correct the bad blood pressure.

Adherance (doing it when you're supposed to) and validity (the measurements reported for Bob Smith are actually from Bob Smith) are big concerns, and there are also a lot of things done to ensure that the patient is doing their part correctly.

[1]: http://www.acep.org/Legislation-and-Advocacy/Practice-Manage...

Yeah, I've been there and felt the same way. Your best bet is to either find a different job, or one thing that can help a lot is just take a vacation. I was working on a project for months and months, and every few months some new requirements would appear. It's easy to feel unappreciated at a point like that. What really helped me was taking time off and working from home. A week or two of relaxing can really help you jump back into your dreaded project with a fresh perspective and not feel burned out.