my_first_acct

Also used at the so-called Mother of All Demos [1] in 1968.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

Yes to all that. I'll add: loved ones often have the idea that they will take care of the afflicted one until the very end.

What they don't realize is that caring for an Alzheimer's sufferer, in the later stages, can take years off the loved one's life. It is a hard, depressing, 24-hour job to take care of all the physical needs of someone who is no longer mentally there. Even worse if the caregiver is old or has health issues.

So do your family a favor, if finances allow, and urge them, while you still are able, to plan put you in an appropriate living arrangement (in an institution, or with full-time paid caregivers) when the time comes.

And I'm sorry about your diagnosis. Best wishes.

The email service luxsci.com scrubs a lot of information from your headers, if you wish [1].

Another well-known email provider allows you to scrub the IP address, but it isn't clear whether they mean to publicize it. So Google the name of your favorite email provider along with "hide ip address", and see what you can find.

[1] https://luxsci.com/extranet/info/email-smtp-anon.html

Note that Twilio numbers (in the US, anyway) cannot receive SMS messages from short codes [1]. This means that you may not be able to receive SMS 2FA messages from your bank.

[1] https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223181668-Can-T...

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute provides free, worldwide weather forecast information via an API [1].

Perhaps some public-minded German-speaking developer could create a free no-ad app using this data, to provide WetterOnline with some competition.

[1] api.met.no

A facetious/serious question: If "Sold by Amazon" had too high a rate of reported counterfeits, could it be kicked off the Amazon platform?

But seriously, my point is that "Sold by Amazon" should have a counterfeit rate of near zero. I'm willing to help QC third-party sellers. But "Sold by Amazon" should do its own QC. Just as "Sold by Walmart" does (for now).

Good to know. Thanks.

...so they know to punish the right seller when a complaint comes in.

Since (according to others in this thread) the Amazon "Reason for return" menu does not provide the option "Item is counterfeit", it does not sound like Amazon is very interested in receiving these sorts of complaints. So I have to wonder how interested Amazon is in punishing the sellers of counterfeit items. If you close your ears to bad news, you won't hear any.

You are correct that customers could themselves choose better sellers...

That's right. For items where genuineness really matters, I choose the seller "Sold by Walmart" at walmart.com. There are no reliable sellers at amazon.com, not even "Sold by Amazon". Which is a shame.

P.S. Reply to msbarnett, since I can't reply directly: Amazon does not literally put all identical items into a single physical bin, so it is at least feasible for them to keep track of which item came from which seller, if they choose to. I recommend that you (and other readers) take a tour of an Amazon fulfillment center: https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment-center-tours/ It's pretty interesting.

There is an elsewhere.

The OP suggests bn.com (Barnes and Noble) for books. I haven't tried them myself. Yet.

For household goods I like walmart.com (the sold-by-Walmart items, not the ones from 3rd-party sellers). Free 2-day shipping (in the US) for orders over $35. A supply chain that (I hope and assume) does not allow 3rd party sellers to introduce counterfeits, unlike the so-called "sold by Amazon" items that are promiscuously commingled with items supplied by 3rd-party sellers.

So for anything where a counterfeit product could pose a health risk, I check walmart.com first.

(I feel a bit strange touting Walmart as the underdog, since it certainly comes with its own set of baggage, but it does seem to be one of the few companies big enough to keep Amazon from gaining a complete monopoly).

A handy website [1] notes at least a couple of B-52 nuclear incidents. In 1961, a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons broke up in mid-air over North Carolina; the bombs did not detonate [2]. In 1966, a B-52 crashed due to a mid-air collision with a refueling tanker over Spain. In this case, the non-nuclear explosives in two of the nuclear weapons detonated, scattering radioactive material [3].

So I would not say "zero nuke detonations". And your .00001% failure rate (I didn't check your math) is not meaningful unless compared to the failure rate of other aircraft. The B-52 is impressive, but not flawless.

[1] http://www.atomicarchive.com/Almanac/Brokenarrows_static.sht...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash

Which gives me an excuse to post a link of Tom Lehrer singing about Wernher von Braun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro with the famous lines,

"'Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun."

In this discussion, I've explicitly (and quite off topic) expressed support for the Union side in the US Civil War, and I've implicitly supported Ukraine's side in the Crimean dispute. I don't think that gives you enough data points to deduce whether I choose sides on the basis of ethnicity, or because of a liking for the letter U, or (most probable?) a curmudgeonly dislike of change.

Are you asking me? I would find it hard to be consistent: Kosovo, Abkhazia, Palestine, Chechnya, Crimea, so many choices to make, so many fine differences, so much tangled history.

I do (retrospectively) support the US decision in 1861 to prevent the Confederate states from seceding, despite the expressed will of the white, property-owning part of the local population, so there's that.

The US has in fact sanctioned Russian officials associated with the annexation of Crimea. [1]

You might also spare some sympathy for those residents of Crimea who did not wish to join the Russian Federation, for example, many Crimean Tatars. Not only have they suffered the loss of access to github, they also have to contend with a campaign of political repression. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_sanctioned_duri...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Crimea#Crimean_Tat...

I think your numbers are probably correct. I don't happen to know another number: how many people in Chechnya would rather be independent than part of Russia. But it doesn't matter; the Russian government is very selective about how it applies the "right to self-determination".

The Russian government is likewise selective in its interpretation of the Budapest agreement (1994) [1], in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in return for Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons.

Edit: I incorrectly wrote "Bucharest agreement"; fixed it (thanks jotm)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...

Welcome to HN.

A quick Google search on "Chinese grad student restrictions" yielded an article [1] from December 2018 with the headline "US Considers New Restrictions on Chinese Students". The source is the US government's own news outlet, Voice of America.

[1] https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/trump-administration-c...

In the "past" that the minister is referring to, Taiwan was a military dictatorship; other than a few brave souls sitting in jail, there was no political opposition, and there was no free press. There was no (legal) alternative to government propaganda. Even publications from overseas were censored (by ink and scissors) as they entered Taiwan.

The article suggests that today's government, under the careful supervision of the opposition parties and the independent press (both of which now exist), has resources that allow it to detect propaganda, and preemptively respond to it, in a way that individuals cannot.

According to the official website [1] (which is linked to from TFA), the images were processed using PixInsight, a program popular among amateur astronomers. This page: [2] explains how PixInsight performs image alignment; it turns out to be a pretty complex (and interesting) process. The same page also explains the process of merging images.

[1] http://www.cielaustral.com/galerie/photo95.htm?fbclid=IwAR3G...

[2] http://pixinsight.com/doc/tools/StarAlignment/StarAlignment....

Indeed from "The Nine Billion Names of God", but this classic of SF was by Arthur C. Clarke, not Isaac Asimov.

However, Isaac Asimov did write "Nightfall", another classic, which describes what happens when, as the result of an eclipse, the stars come out, rather than go out...

A pitfall not mentioned in the article: a private-industry member of the standard-setting body may fail to disclose that they are applying for a patent on an essential component of the standard.

For instance, in the 1990s, the oil company Unocal managed to insert a patented technology into the mandatory Reformulated Gasoline standards in California [1]. Eventually Unocal was hit by a class-action lawsuit and an FTC action, but that took years, and in the meantime all refiners in California had to pay royalties to Unocal in order to comply with the state mandate.

[1] http://www.greenpatentblog.com/2008/09/01/chevron-to-pay-cal...

From the article:

The new bill, SB 208, was introduced by Senator Ben Hueso (D.-San Diego) earlier this week. It effectively sets a deadline of July 1, 2020 as the date by which phone companies must "take the steps necessary to stop these illegal scams."

...

The FCC had previously suggested phone companies utilize a system called the Secure Telephony Identity Revisited and Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (STIR/SHAKEN), which helps law enforcement identify numbers attached to robocall efforts. However, no deadline has yet been legally set for these companies to take any official action.

Can a telephony expert comment on whether the California law is technically and/or economically feasible?

Depends on the reader base. If the goal of the readers is to obtain proof that their favorite politicians are great, and that their opponents are evil and stupid, then that's what the paper will provide: entertainment plus reinforcement.

But I like to think that there are still readers out there who want to know what is really happening, so that they can make educated guesses as to what will happen next. Presumably these readers want these insights in order to make money, which suggests that papers oriented to investors and business executives are the most likely to provide information that is actually predictive, rather than reinforcive.

The problem is that papers of this sort are also the most likely to charge hefty subscription fees, and put up strong paywalls.

For all these reasons, I have got rid of my NYT & WaPo subscription to FT now and I can't be happier.

I think you have a typo. Are you saying that you switched to FT (Financial Times), or that you got rid of the FT as well?

Anyway, if you are a US-based reader, one way to avoid some of the bias and noise is to subscribe to a non-US paper. You don't have reporters and columnists trying to sway voters, because that's not who the audience is. Plus you might discover that interesting events do take place outside of the US. (And uninteresting events. Brexit seems like it should be interesting, but all the daily political ins and outs are, in my non-UK view, a bit tedious...)

Whether or not you agree with Apple's rules, the fact that Facebook is willing to violate their Enterprise Certificate agreement with Apple is a red flag.

If Facebook is willing to break an agreement with one of the largest corporations on the planet, what reason is there to think that they will keep any promises they make to individual users?

From the abstract:

The ease of new firm formation and the enormous amount of capital available has resulted in to a situation within which new firms can afford to run massive losses for long periods in an effort to dislodge incumbents or attempt to triumph over other lavishly funded startups. The result has been remarkable turmoil in many formerly stable industrial sectors, as the new entrants fueled by capital investments undercut incumbents on price.

You are right, of course. I have corrected the parent comment.

The article mentions Yubikeys, but it doesn't mention that Yubikeys implement U2F.

The article reports that Google internally switched from TOTP, but doesn't report what Google switched to: U2F.

The article describes, in some detail, how TOTP and SMS two-factor authentication can be phished, but doesn't describe a two-factor authentication method that is quite a bit harder to phish: U2F.

There is a pattern here, and it is puzzling, to say the least.

EDIT: Changed "phish-proof" to a more realistic adjective.

This is what I have gotten out of the various reviews of this book that have shown up on HN lately:

We, all of us, even the most rational and hard-headed, have buttons that can be pushed. Google and Facebook have gotten, and will continue to get, better and better at pushing our buttons, so that we will do things that may not be in our best interest. Advertisers have always tried to push our buttons, but never had access to the data, and the ML algorithms, that Google and Facebook deploy today. The datasets continue to grow, and the algorithms continue to improve. And no one is stopping it, and no one really knows how far it will go.

Sure, you can find extremists on both sides: the "nationalize Facebook" people, and the "nothing on the internet should ever be regulated" folks. Not having read the book under review ("Surveillance Capitalism"), I can't say whether the author is all the way over in the "nationalize" camp.

But currently, we need more regulation, not less, on internet companies whose business model is based on selling your attention to persuaders at a time when you are most vulnerable to persuasion. So although I don't favor nationalization, and I don't begrudge Zuckerberg his vast wealth, I want to see things move in the direction of more regulation, not less.

There is a slippery slope no matter where you stand, but yet, you have to stand somewhere.

The real problem is that people are selling this bullshit that the only alternatives are someone spying on you through your metaphorical bedroom window or you blindfold every company that interacts with you.

There's a middle ground, called "regulation".

For many decades now there have been rules regulating advertisements ("commercial speech"), sources of addictive behavior (gambling, alcohol, cigarettes), and monopolies. It seems reasonable to propose that these rules should apply to Facebook and other "new media", to the extent that they are ad-supported, may promote addictive behavior, and may be monopolies.

Applying these regulations to the internet does not mean shutting down ad-supported websites, any more than they prevented ad-supported newspapers and TV stations from thriving back in the day.