jmccorm

I came here expecting at least some mention of Forth. What a nice language that allows you to redefine most of the provided keywords!

Great question. The seller FAQ (marketplace account required) clarifies that this applies to the US and EU marketplaces.

TL;DNR: Through April 5th, they're preventing marketplace vendors from shipping new inventory to Amazon's fulfillment centers that aren't household staples, medical supplies, or otherwise high-demand products. Marketplace vendors that do their own warehousing and customer shipments are unaffected. This may affect the available selection, inventory, and shipment options seen at Amazon, but no restrictions were placed on customer purchases.

The following notice was sent to my Amazon Marketplace account:

Hello from Fulfillment by Amazon,

We are closely monitoring the developments of COVID-19 and its impact on our customers, selling partners, and employees.

We are seeing increased online shopping, and as a result some products such as household staples and medical supplies are out of stock. With this in mind, we are temporarily prioritizing household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products coming into our fulfillment centers so that we can more quickly receive, restock, and deliver these products to customers.

For products other than these, we have temporarily disabled shipment creation. We are taking a similar approach with retail vendors.

This will be in effect today through April 5, 2020, and we will let you know once we resume regular operations. Shipments created before today will be received at fulfillment centers.

You can learn more about this on this Help page. Please note that Selling Partner Support does not have further guidance.

We understand this is a change to your business, and we did not take this decision lightly. We are working around the clock to increase capacity and yesterday announced that we are opening 100,000 new full- and part-time positions in our fulfillment centers across the US.

We appreciate your understanding as we prioritize the above products for our customers.

Thank you for your patience, and for participating in FBA.

The Fulfillment by Amazon team

Any thoughts as to the early treatment with a medical BiPAP when full-function respirator therapy is not available?

You change your status. Others would then know (or should know) your status before reaching out to you.

My number one tip for employees is a simple one: above all else, be responsive. If your company has an instant messenger app, your response time should be in seconds, not minutes. If you're going on a small errand or putting together a snack in the kitchen, it is to your benefit as much as everyone else's to update your status. A simple 'be right back' goes a long ways. When managers can't get ahold of people working from home is when they start to ask questions, run VPN reports, and reign things in.

In reading the comments below, this seems to be wildly unpopular. I can understand where they're coming from. Being available may be very appreciated by others, but it really hurts when you're deeply involved in something. I manage this by marking myself as busy when I know I'm about to dive deep into something, but you can't always see it coming, and I can understand the resistance to this approach.

I think I'm willing to take one of my RTL-SDR dongles, hook it up to the Raspberry Pi, and start giving them a regular feed. If only just to identify a few pesky helicopters that fly over the house that aren't showing up on flightradar24 like everything else. I can appreciate this service.

If steroid mimicks testosterone. How is using steroid different than a man having naturally high testosterone level?

If your body perceives that there is too much testosterone, it stops producing its own testosterone. Your testicles will shrink. It may not take a very high dosage for this to start to happen. That won't be happening in a man with naturally high T who isn't supplementing.

By the way, how are your estrogen levels? Be sure that your doctor is keeping an eye on that. A number of things can cause your body to convert testosterone into estrogen, and you don't want high estrogen (for reasons of appearance as well as behavior). Conversely, there was at least one study some years ago which linked an increased risk of heart disease to men with both high testosterone and low estrogen. After supplementing with testosterone for about seven weeks or so, make sure your ratio of testosterone to estrogen is in check.

Another difference might be in how well you mimic the body's natural daily cycle of testosterone. A male's testosterone level is usually highest around 8am, declining throughout the day and at its lowest just before bedtime. (As it turns out, low levels of testosterone will help you fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. Never supplement right before bedtime.) Those with low-T using patches, gels, and creams will generally apply them each morning and that does a great job of replicating the natural cycle. Additionally, their testosterone peak and lows are going to be more stable from day-to-day. That's exactly how it should be for a man with naturally high testosterone.

My understanding is that injections will give you a quick initial peak that will steadily decline (and when you're about ready to take your next injection, your testosterone levels may have fallen even further below what you started with). I don't believe that injections will preserve the natural daily cycle of testosterone (high in the morning, low at bedtime). I'm also wondering if the ratio between testosterone and estrogen remains stable throughout the peak and the decline. (My strong assumption: no.) If you're injecting, you'll want to research that and/or check with an expert. If you're already injecting, find an outside resource to confirm what the risks are and what your level of concern should be.

You didn't sound like you're cycling on/off your testosterone. But if you were, that would be another huge difference between yourself and a naturally high-T male.

I'm sure you're already aware that in both cases, high testosterone can have other unwanted effects like back hair, baldness / receding hairline, increased risk (or growth) of prostate cancer, increased anger, etc. You're likely to see at least one or more side-effect, especially when matching the level of a high-T male. Do not rely entirely on your own observations and opinions when monitoring for behavioral changes. Your best choice will be to rely on someone who you spend time with on a regular basis.

You seem to be aware that supplementation for low-T by a primary care physician is going to be substantially different than supplementing for bodybuilding. If you're going to a male health-and-wellness facility which intentionally tries to bring you to a high-T level, the advice which best applies to you is going to be somewhere in the middle of the other two groups. For more answers, you might want to find yourself a good subreddit. You'd be surprised by some of the high-quality answers you're going to be able to get over there. Still, I hope that all of this helps you in some way.

Disclaimer: I and most people here are not medical doctors, but I'm sure you knew that.

Immunity was my exact concern as I read about the children being shielded from TV advertising. Yes, it's more tranquil at home, but I have to wonder if to some degree those children are being robbed of a strong modern-day immunity that they'll need later in life?

Perhaps you case illustrates that it's a broad-spectrum immunity that needs to be developed.

This is all just another example software devs' parochial belief that because software is eating the world, any problem in software is terrible, while ignoring the whole stack of hardware in meatspace that supports the software in the first place.

Actually, I'm interested in exploring more of your own view here. You seemed to take exception that he limited his findings to his apparent area of expertise and interest (software engineering, security/privacy). Is that still the case, or have your views evolved on this issue?

What is it about their data processing that leads you to all of a sudden question their corporate ethics, diligence, compliance and trustworthiness?

Your questions for me are really best answered by the author:

1. Apparently, it defied a reasonable expectation that the purchase of such a minor peripheral of this type would lead to the manufacturer's attempt to obtain a regular stream of what applications he launched on his PC (and at what time, and from what partially masked IP address). He was a smart cookie. His tip-off was that it somehow needed a privacy policy. And he had the smarts to launch his own technical investigation.

2. When he finally saw what they were pulling from his PC, once again, he was shocked, because that seemed to conflict with his own understanding of what Wacom said they were doing. He hadn't just casually scrolled through the privacy notice. It looks like he read it quite carefully.

I suspect this might be what he took issue with:

Information Automatically Collected – Google Analytics When You use the Tablet Driver, certain information as described below may be automatically collected for purposes such as improvement of the Tablet Driver, troubleshooting bugs, providing the functions of the Tablet Driver, managing the services and improving overall performance of the Tablet Driver. Such information includes aggregate usage data, technical session information and information about Your hardware device.

No, I'm not interested in pulling in more sections of text and going back-and-forth in a game of Internet Lawyer. Someone else here might be a more willing partner.

So they are being up front about it, right?

That's the issue. Was Wacom clear and transparent? Or did Wacom manage to generate a body of text which obfuscates what they are actually doing while still maintaining legal compliance? Or did they overreach? As it turns out, the FTC has a special page to submit complaints regarding privacy policies. I imagine that corporate privacy policies are turning into a hot topic for the FTC right now. I guess there's enough interest here, so I'll go ahead and submit this issue to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and see if they want to help Wacom figure out the answer to your question.

Beyond that, you have some interesting questions about trust. Not my area of expertise, but I'll take a crack at it. Your boss might say that you're someone he trusts. He might give you authority over an application which processes millions or billions in yearly revenue. But he wouldn't trust you to take care of his kids for a week. Trust is not binary (yes/no), and it is not universal (trust in area X must equal overall trust or trust in area Y). That's as much as I've got. If you've got followup questions about trust, they might be better directed towards an online resource which focuses on that issue.

Hope this helps.

Negative, sir. Actually, I was responding to the points you had made. I still trust his investigation and I find it to be significant even if he didn't address all the concerns you raised (which are outside of the area of software engineering). He doesn't need to address outside issues (like the physical safety of the device) to validate his findings or concerns.

Still, since you invited, I'll talk more about my own concerns. Do I trust Wacom as a company, as a whole? I think it depends on how they respond to this, right? Do I still trust them to make a tablet that doesn't have the problems you raised with "electric shock hazards, sharp edges"? Yes. At this moment, do I trust Wacom in the area of data collection? No, that seems to me like a questionable decision. I want to know more. I don't think I want an accessory manufacturer to compile a dossier of what programs I use at what time and from what (partially masked) IP address. More so when they're not being up-front about it (certainly from a layperson's perspective). I'm also not very confident right now that the behavioral data will stay within Wacom's walls and go no further.

In fact, I'm forwarding this to my CISO's office for further evaluation. Is that bad in some way?

I see that you've worked to raise some good points here and that you're not simply reducing this to whataboutism, right? I find it acceptable that a person focuses on their area of interest and expertise and reports what they find. I don't expect or want him to get into a 360 degree product review. Let's save "electric shock hazards, sharp edges" for someone else, and if they find nothing, that does not diminish his own findings, yes?

After reading his analysis, I'm not sure how much I can trust Wacom's behavior when it comes to data collection. My concerns don't then jump to sharp edges and electrical shocks. I think about data retention. How well do they protect that data? I think about what Wacom might do with that detail of personal behavioral information if approached by a data broker with cash in hand and ready to make a purchase.

I wasn't aware of this, but it still seems like a thread worth pulling on. You're assuming, right? The reason I ask is that using any third-party company seems inappropriate. Even more so when Google has plenty of domains of its own to test against. Even more so when it is against a media/advertising company. And again, even more so against a company that changed from Google to Bing to power their search function. It seems to be an inappropriate or poor choice, doesn't it?

There's no smoking gun here, but I don't think that concern might be dismissed out of hand. It might be good to see what Yahoo's take on this. This could even evolve into participation by the US Attorney General. I'd like to know more, either way. Like if Yahoo was independently added to the list at a later date, or if it was there from the start?

Gao Fu, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control. I believe this was based on the activities of those first infected along with matching environmental samples at the market. Hope this helps explain the attribution better.

Is that a universal truth, or is it historical? Situational? This virus is said to spread well before a person even knows they're infected. A mutation could simply extend that period. Or it could increase the degree to which it is contagious without affecting mortality, right? Or are you saying that this simply doesn't happen in the real world? Flu viruses only mutate with regards to lethality, and only in a way that works against its overall impact?

Apart from more people falling sick (as bad as that is), is there a more fundamental concern that if it runs wild in a less developed country, it'll mutate into something more dangerous? As infections climb, the coronavirus (based on less stable RNA) gets more chances to mutate into something even more virulent or deadly?

NETFLIX. The regular "payment" records don't concern me but the "custom" records (as recent as last night) do. Is that viewing data or what is this? I've also got "custom" records from HULU, but the last one was in December.

This isn't necessarily sinister... but it certainly raises some questions on what these streaming video companies are telling Facebook on a regular basis.

It’s easy to say that nothing has changed. I know that I felt that something was changing when Verizon (of all companies) created and publicized a new privacy-focused search engine.

You can argue how successful their privacy-first search engine is or isn’t going to be. But I think this is yet more evidence that the pendulum of privacy is starting to swing back in the opposite direction.

This is the beginning of change.

If you don't have access to directly make a claim, that solution is exactly what he walks you through. But if you're looking for more clarity, the original video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz14Ul-r63w also discusses the use of a third party to make a claim through the Content ID system. Jump to about 3:30 into The Original Ace video.

Just don't stick around the outro on the original vid. It's terrible, more proof-of-concept than anything.

When a system is broken, someone finally comes along and suggests hacking the system. If you don't have ten minutes to spare, here's the short version:

1. If a third party claims makes a copyright claim on your video, they can elect to gain 100% of the ad revenue. Suggestion: claw back 50% (or more) by making copyright claim(s) against your own content.

2. You may have videos that are not eligible for monetization (examples: just starting out on YouTube or reuploading content). Suggestion: make a copyright claim against your own video and it is automatically monetized.

Worth noting, a copyright claim is not the same as a copyright strike. Also, he may have stolen the idea from another YouTuber (which cannot be monetized) but I think he did a better job in the presentation. :)

I read through the OneSearch Privacy Policy a few more times than I'd like to admit. Actually, I was inspired enough to take pencil to paper to illustrate the participants, what sensitive information flowed between them, when, and where. One potential exposure quickly jumped out at me as I ran through the flow of data surrounding an advertisement. Will OneSearch be able to deliver a winning advertiser's content (image, javascript, Wasm, iframe, whatever) without granting the advertiser any additional user information or session information (such as IP address, browser plugins, user agent, search terms, etc)? If so, how is this accomplished?

I believe that Verizon Media is being honest (at least from a literal perspective) in their OneSearch Privacy Policy, but I don't think that they're going out of their way to point out any known residual risks. It seems like the winning bidder (for advertisements placed on search result pages) ends up with a very healthy chunk of identifying information, and also what search terms you are currently using. Am I missing something with this one?

PS (and DDG too): The OneSearch Privacy Policy details some of the privacy implications in selecting an advertisement which matches your search results, but once an advertisement has been selected, it falls silent on any privacy concerns with actually delivering and displaying that advertisement to you. I think that's where they've got some exposure with browser-based access. Worth noting, this same issue might also be in play on DuckDuckGo. (I haven't looked into it.) If someone has publicly examined aspect of DDG in any depth, I'd appreciate a link to the article. If not, this seems like a very worthwhile security issue for someone to follow-up on.

Disclosure: These are my personal thoughts and they do not reflect an indirect commercial relationship that I have with OneSearch. I have no "insider" or unpublished information that is significant to this topic. Like most people, I too was unaware that OneSearch even existed before reading the article.

Cut-and-paste from the bottom of the OneSearch website: Powered by Bing™

Gamers are not a monolithic bunch. Many boycott efforts seem to be unsuccessful.

Yet I suspect the full-price coupon and checkout method used on their continuous flow of "free games" allows them to rack up an impressive game sales total at no actual customer cost. Were free games used to pump the sales figures?

Since you're here, I was curious about what you knew of the Atari 8-bit (Atari 800) ...tech demo? ...aborted conversion? ...fan creation?

It looks someone painfully down-converted a series of scenes from early in the game. The original sound seems completely thrown out. The system required trickery (usually hand-crafted) to gain more than 4 colors at once in high resolution. It's been a while since I looked at it, but I seem to recall the use of independently colored player-missile graphics (sprites) to bring more fidelity to the main character?

For reference: https://youtu.be/PCa_0nXvfDg?t=6

As someone who played it on the PC back in the day, the visuals were nothing short of amazing. Why? The whole experience was both different and beyond what other titles delivered. What made it so memorable for me? Consistently smooth animation even with large sections of the screen being updated from frame to frame. Its polygon graphics which were solid-fill and not wireframe, which was a big leap. They're right. Ordinarily, the early PC was a real turd when handling full-screen animation.

The sound wasn't ahead of its day, but it was still quite good, even with the PC speaker rendering music, alien language, and effects in a better-than-average rendition. Nobody had high expectations for PC-speaker output.

Only a few years after its release, it was sad to look back and not find that any new action games using similar methods. Did I miss any good knock-offs over the next few years of its PC release, or was it just as much ahead of the curve for years to follow?

Much of the public's understanding of cell phone tracking has centered around the cell provider, the telephone network, and big players like Facebook and Google. They're missing a big piece. The NYT is shedding light on this missing piece.

This article puts the spotlight on yet another group of companies and another tracking mechanism. These companies are small, virtually unknown to the public, and they're providing SDKs which others are building real and useful mobile apps upon. One example given was an otherwise legitimate weather app which pulls your location to provide local weather data. You grant the app access to your location information because it has a reason to have it, and it does something useful with the data.

The article introduces the public to what you probably already knew. Those SDKs can (and do) ingest that same location data for their own purposes. In the article, they find that the SDK provides your fine location data to a location services company (Cuebiq) for a total of twenty times over the course of an eight minute walk. Most users have no idea this is going on behind the scenes. They just see the weather app.

The article isn't attempting to dismiss other forms of tracking. It is trying to better introduce a new form of tracking that most people poorly understand, if at all.

I'd like to recognize the author for their unexpectedly accurate and complete historical recounting of the Atari 8-bit computer line. Well done! At the same time, I'm a little sad to see this go by without any real discussion on Hacker News. As the article mentioned, the machine had a bit of an identity crisis. Sure, it was a game machine, but it was just as much a hacker's personal playground.

The Atari 8-bit home computer line was a bastion of experimentation and homebrew software development. Free software was everywhere. The A8 was one of the highest clocked 6502-based machines of its day, and that extra processing power was often put to good use. The hardware lent itself unusally well to clever code which could exchange CPU cycles for other benefits such as enhanced sound, resolution, or colors. There were the published hardware specs, and then there were various software-driven enhancements that took the hardware even further.

Many a person (the article's author included) developed their talent for hardware, software, and troubleshooting back in those days. Computers have gotten so much better over the years, but we're still trying to recapture the hands-on learning that was a significant byproduct of this and other classic computing platforms.

Also related, for those who don't recognize Chris Crawford (an Atari employee that was mentioned in the article), you might also recognize his name as the founder of GDC, the Game Developers Conference.

Another trick (not seen in this example) is when you already have a specific candidate you want to promote or hire, listing a job with the very specific and unique set of products and skills that few candidates could hope to match so exactly.

He and the rest of the MOS team’s efforts had such an amazingly positive impact on the lives of myself and so many others. NOP (EA) in peace, Chuck.

Many people want to create a better Facebook. Open source software, by itself, won't get you there. A piece of the puzzle is missing.

Forget the article's focus on the PC. I think the real question they're reaching for is this: out of all the ways the Internet could have ended up, we arrived at this broken model for online services. The exploration is interesting, but in the end it seems like a cry for help or a call for action.

We need to make the jump from code based projects to service based projects which are done entirely for the public good and not for financial self-enrichment. In most cases, the basic mechanism which allows you to scale your own service is missing... unless you're willing to bill your customers up-front or help exploit them behind the scenes.

So here are the questions: Can we graduate from code based projects to service based projects? How do we contribute code and operate an online service for the public good, at scale, and without compromising our users in the process? Is it possible to make this an easily repeatable process? Is this a significant cure for much of the quiet exploitation behind many of today's "free" Internet services?