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The HN title needs to be corrected. The correct name is ʻOumuamua, including the first punctuation character (an ʻokina, representing a glottal stop).

These data are about low-altitude wind and surface ocean currents. Models based on those things are part of the toolkit being used as a matter of course in such searches, but unless MH370 spent months floating at the surface of the ocean, these models can't find it per se, though they can offer indirect hints.

Models of surface wind and currents were used to both predict, and trace back the possible origins of flotsam and debris from the crash that washed ashore[0][1] around the rim of the Indian Ocean in the following months and years.

As a side note, the Friendly Floatees event occurred in the Pacific, with drift around the Pacific, Arctic, and far north Atlantic oceans. MH370 was lost over the Indian Ocean.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/world/australia/malaysia-...

[1] Part of my sources include personal knowledge, as I lived in Canberra and knew employees at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau during the early months of the search.

> On the one hand it looks like relying on behaviour that is correct now but may not be so in the future.

> Use a decent IDE that looks out for it if you need reminding about this class of bug.

And when your next environment/plugin/employer's setup changes or doesn't offer this warning? Or the day that getting your critical system back up ASAP leaves you no choice but to SSH in from your phone and edit your source in Nano?

Learning and practicing defensive programming as a professional programmer is like defensive driving for a taxi driver, or survival skills for a long-distance hiker. It's a part of what someone who considers themselves a serious professional should maintain.

Relying on a 'decent IDE' to manage your code quality for you is an excellent way to blunt your skills. I'm not saying we should all throw IDEs away or turn off their warnings, but to rely on them is an awful substitute for maintaining good practice. Granted, crossing every t and dotting every i is much, much harder in C than most other languages, but every compiler warning you have to hunt down and fix is another little slice of your day shaved off and gone.

Published 2013.

Quoted above[0], "Inclination of 11.669 degrees" (from the preprint) would indicate it has greater inclination than the 8 planets, but less than some other small distant bodies[1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120244 [1] Ref. this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_inclination#Observatio...

The keybase.io website offers a "Please send us feedback & bug reports" link[0]. As a keybase user, I intend to do so.

[0] https://github.com/keybase/client/issues

Phonebooks are in alphabetical order. They are sorted into residential and business (white and yellow), then further sorted into business categories (or in some cases residential areas), and then ordered.

I think software development would work best if it focused on software, not jokes.

> I've not tried it, but they also suggest you can compile your own binaries from that source to get around the untrusted binary problem.

You could... Except that, if I'm not mistaken, "All Rights Reserved" doesn't allow you to compile and use the code in any way, including diffing.

IINAL, is that an incorrect reading?

New York Public Library, with a library card: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/08/22/how-to-search-nytimes

Los Angeles Public Library, with a library card: https://www.lapl.org/new-york-times-digital (and you can apply for an e-card online for free: http://www.lapl.org/about-lapl/contact-us/e-card/e-card-regi...)

Kansas City Public Library, with a library card: https://www.kclibrary.org/blog/kc-unbound/how-read-back-issu...

Etc.

Summary: get a public library card, support the oh-so-terribly bourgeois public library system ;)

> In any case; where can I view 1995 copies of NYT for free? :)

Every public library in the United States, if I'm not mistaken, and a large number of major libraries worldwide.

If the page that links to the login page hasn't proven it's secure, I shouldn't trust the links, and therefore shouldn't trust the destination. Hence why static landing pages need HTTPS just as much as login pages.

You're succumbing to the allure of what-aboutism here. Yes, granted, Mozilla aren't perfect and have made some significant missteps (not all of which they've suitably amended), and deserve criticism for them. But just because they're vulnerable to criticism doesn't invalidate what they're saying here, and doesn't make another entity who regularly handles more sensitive data in less private ways less vulnerable to criticism.

Should this message be coming from another source? Yes, but 'as well as', not 'instead of'. Is it good for user advocacy that a highly recognised source is promoting this message, even if the source is flawed? Yes, it is.

Typo in HN title: it's 'protactinium', not 'proactinium'

Or it can be argued that tipping offers those who control the means to change the law (the elected lawmakers) the excuse they need not to.

Editorial independence refers to an outlet's freedom to cover topics of their choice with the coverage they judge best. So, is your concern the quality of the reporting, which is an problem of poor editorial practice, or the focus of the coverage, which is a problem of poor editorial independence? Or is it simply that you don't agree with a lot of the coverage?

There's another, non-MUD text-based game inspired by Discworld (specifically, inspired by Small Gods) called Godville. Running since 2010 on the web and with apps available on major devices, it's essentially entirely player-built and full of Pratchettesque humour.

It's a ZPG — Zero Player Game. You aren't the player. You're a marginally potent God, with a single devoted follower, your hero. Your hero actually plays the game, you just follow along and encourage (or discourage) your hero. It's a mechanic that's surprisingly fun as a super casual, check in a couple times a day kind of interactive fiction.

https://godvillegame.com

You can directly telnet in, yeah, but it's not a great way to play. There are plenty of MUD clients (for Discworld in particular you want one compatible with MCCP compression) that are designed for playing in a terminal.

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

I played on Discworld MUD for many years, quite some time ago. It's probably been 15 years since I last logged in. Very tempting to stick my head back in there!

Is your contention that "hackers" aren't concerned with current social issues, or that they aren't concerned with the intersection of technology and society, or that they aren't concerned with public safety, or that they aren't interested in new features in widely used software and technological services?

You cannot dismiss rigorous statistical analysis by arguing it can never encompass the full dimensions of the data. Of course it can't. The map is not the territory; it is a useful way to find our way around it. Ignoring the map is perilous, if not arrogant, even though it is merely a flawed representation of the real truth.

You might argue that a specific study or meta-analysis contains a bias or misinterpretation, but only if you've actually examined their methodology, data, and reasoning. You cannot argue that all studies of complex topics are invalid simply because their topics are complex.

The HN title needs correcting to add the ‘ to ‘Oumuamua, it is a part of the proper name.

The manufacturers may be based in China, but the importers, distributors, and sellers here discussed are not necessarily so. And I suspect you could happily replace NSA in the parent comment with any private or government intelligence agency of your choice. I wouldn't expect an unscrupulous distributor to suddenly grow scruples about precisely where the cash comes from.

Well... Sort of. The 'weakly interacting' means it interacts via gravity and another force no stronger than the Weak force. As per Wikipedia [0]: "There exists no clear definition of a WIMP, but broadly a WIMP is a new elementary particle which interacts via gravity and any other force (or forces), potentially not part of the standard model itself, which is as weak as or weaker than the weak nuclear force, but also non-vanishing in its strength."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weakly_interacting_massive_par...

Firstly, I think your comment reveals an assumption that victory by any means is a universal value, which it certainly is not.

Secondly, I think your comment reveals a classical misunderstanding of the tactics required to maintain a position of superior strength. As the article makes clear, using a gun would elicit scorn, thereby risking the antipathy of one's allies, a grievous situation indeed. You really think that a lone gunman against 20-50 skilled hand-to-hand combatants mortally dedicated to his demise would remain 'undefeated'?

I think at best the gunman succeeds in the first encounter, with the advantage of surprise, and the shock of his willingness to dishonour himself, his gang, and his adversaries. Thereafter, having made himself honourless, he no longer need be treated with honour.

"Hello mister sentient being! I am the informational treasurer for the dying civilization of Nigerium, with access to great technological and cultural wealth that is about to be lost forever. I wish your help in establishing a vast database for our future descendents to recover our advancements, and would like to send you the entirety of our knowledge in a format that will be accessible to you and our great-great-grandspawn. All I need is an example of the informational structures used by your civilization, with a complete and robust list of all known vulnerabilities that may have an impact on the safety and integrity of our heritage."

The simplest of tricks have been proven to work again and again.

Seeing this appearing alongside "How poverty changes your mindset"[0] on the front page helps to explain why the issues covered in both articles are so problematic.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461773

The paper described in this article is not yet presented — it will likely be published in the proceedings of the cyber. But I found two relevant recent publications from the same lead author through Google Scholar:

Energy-efficient protocols and hardware architectures for transport layer security — https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/111861

eeDTLS: Energy-Efficient Datagram Transport Layer Security for the Internet of Things — http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8255053/

There are probably others. I look forward to seeing this paper when it's published though.

Well, climate scientists have been predicting it for years, but the evidence is finally in: the mercury is definitely rising.

One will make different VPN/proxy choices depending on one's priorities and threat models — here, for example, the tension between anonymity, which is most likely to lead you to choose a commercial VPN with a large number of users at each endpoint, and privacy, which is most likely to lead you to choose a private VPN solution where you have full control over the endpont's settings, logging, etc. These aren't the only factors, and neither option perfectly solves either, but carefully thinking through what you actually expect a VPN to be protecting you from is important.

So, I probably shouldn't have been surprised, considering it's HN, but the number of people who reached out to me on this was surprising and touching. I think I've responded to everyone directly, my apologies if I missed you.

I'm glad to report that, since last I'd spoken to them about the problem, they've figured out what to do and consider the matter solved. The material is recovered, recatalogued, and in good order.

Thanks again everyone for the concern, interest, and offers! I know where to come if something like this comes up again!