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like 4

khaki54

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

So I took a great unix/linux systems programming class, http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~lib215/ where you learn about all of the system software that you take for granted. Among other things, we had to write our own shell. There is an awful lot to consider, and most of it you are just trying to get to work properly. With regard to security, you feel like you are protected for the most part because the shell resides in userland and it's basically understood that you shouldn't trust foreign shell scripts.Is the worry here that the code gets executed by the kernel or superuser, enabling privilege escalation? Otherwise it wouldn't be a big deal that extra code is executed by a function declaration.

2014-09-24 14:46:14 UTC

meanduser

Applying to YC – GetStream.io

tschellenbach

I'm not particularly in the market for this product, but two quick bits of feedback:1. What is a "FanOut"? I see it on your pricing table, but I'm not sure what it is exactly. I could guess, but I probably shouldn't have to if it's critical to your pricing.2. (Minor) In a couple of spots on the pricing table you have the "$" after the number.Screenshot with comment: http://screencast.com/t/rRqJCbjbEDIT: I should mention that you have FanOut defined in the FAQs, but I think maybe a tooltip or something on the pricing table would help (especially on the homepage).

2014-09-24 14:46:29 UTC

sogen

Hosting for Node.js apps done right

kertof

another option: http://nitrous.io/ they offer free development boxes

2014-09-24 14:47:53 UTC

jayvanguard

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

>... this was a particularly uncomfortable and inappropriate conversation to cover through emails and text messages.I think this is a key lesson. If you're getting into a business relationship you need to be able to dispassionately discuss arrangements and contracts. It is far better to do that via email than verbally.

2014-09-24 14:48:21 UTC

gude

ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission: Spacecraft successfully enters Martian Orbit

skbohra123

That's one giant interplanetary leap for India

2014-09-24 14:48:55 UTC

billconan

iPhone 6 Plus bending in pockets

robot_scream

I think they should put a thicker battery in the iphone. why do cell phone need to be so thin? they are hard to hold.

2014-09-24 14:49:01 UTC

sauere

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

No update out for Ubuntu Server 14.04 yet./edit: the Red Hat blog has a good overview https://securityblog.redhat.com/2014/09/24/bash-specially-cr...

2014-09-24 14:50:05 UTC

garimagupta95

Trello for homework

stevejalim

Well if your child is convinced enough to use trello, it would be an achievement in itself.

2014-09-24 14:50:39 UTC

piotry

Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

declan

Funny that I just wrote about how I was considering killing a startup I started: https://medium.com/@piotr/i-failed-82b9469977ac?source=lates...Probably the best way to know how to build a successful one is knowing how to build one that won't fail!

2014-09-24 14:53:50 UTC

kdforf

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

The key to success is to not give a shit about others and only care for yourself. Walking away as the bad guy but gaining profit from it is much better than being the good guy.

2014-09-24 14:56:05 UTC

GrinningFool

How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

Thevet

I recently had a horrible experience getting a home mortgage, and when invited to leave feedback I did so - politely, but sparing no feelings.In response, I received a form-letter generic apology with a stamped signature. The numeric code at the very bottom of the letter (and the fact that it didn't address any specific issue I'd raised) gave it away, though I had to squint to determine that the signature wasn't legit.I don't know which bothers me more: the fact that they didn't actually care enough to write a genuine response, or that the get enough disgruntled customers that they have a standard apology letter ready to go.

2014-09-24 14:56:32 UTC

BigTuna

Researcher shows that black holes do not exist

staatsgeheim

Alternative theories are fine but this doesn't explain any of the observations that have led us to believe black holes exist in the first place. If black holes don't exist, what exactly is Saggitarius A* then? The stars at the center of our galaxy are orbiting something invisible and truly massive (about 4 million solar masses.)

2014-09-24 14:56:59 UTC

JonnieCache

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

The bad guy? At that point you could have given her an hour to turn up with a briefcase full of cash or it's rm -rf time, and you still would have been the good guy IMO.Note: this is not legal advice.

2014-09-24 14:58:50 UTC

bambax

How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

Thevet

What about stamps though? Real letters from real people have stamps that are glued on in an odd position; junk mail (or any automated mail) has the postage directly printed on the envelope.It's certainly possible to automate the sticking of stamps, but won't all those operations needed to "look real" increase the cost of junk mail in unsustainable proportions? Which is the point of course, from the receiver/victim point of view...

2014-09-24 14:59:21 UTC

yatoomy

Is the Information Technology Revolution Over? (2013) [pdf]

prostoalex

I dont believe it is over...more so we must adapt to the last stage. Information technology has largely become interchangeable with the term "technology", since it has become so wide spread. However, this has created an opportunity and a predicament. With all this data generated...now what? We have a connected world, medical grade devices and senors on our body and a super computer in our pocket...yet people continue to make photo and messaging apps. Partly because some want, and others perhaps don't know what to do. When analyzing these kinds of questions, I try to remember we are building for people. People use the technology. People have wants and needs. Having a frame work for these helps alot. I use Maslow's hierarchy of human needs as a general use case. That perhaps we are at a point of actualization. Where we have fulfilled all the required parts of pyramid before it. I hope this is the case, because this is when true innovation will begin. Areas like education, healthcare and finance would be prime in this case. Just a thought :)

2014-09-24 14:59:26 UTC

agwa

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

It is a very good thing that Debian and Ubuntu use /bin/dash for /bin/sh by default, since /bin/sh is implicitly invoked all over the place (e.g. by system(3)). Distros which use /bin/bash for /bin/sh are gonna have a bad time.Edit: not implying that Debian and Ubuntu aren't affected too, just that the impact there will be lessened.

2014-09-24 15:02:53 UTC

ck2

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

Has the redhat patch been pushed through centos yet?

2014-09-24 15:02:56 UTC

jcadam

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

The MBA student sounds like she's a complete and total sociopath who is very skilled at manipulating, using, and discarding people. I've worked for someone like this before, and it probably took years off my life. I'm older and wiser now, hopefully :)If she wants to be successful, she should get herself hired at a large corporation. Perfect environment for someone like her.

2014-09-24 15:03:53 UTC

yatoomy

IBM Watson API

miket

Ive been looking into Watson's new application to analytics etc. How would that compare to say Mathimatica or the Wolfram Language/Data Science Platform?

2014-09-24 15:04:16 UTC

Flenser

Chromeos-apk – Run Android APKs on Chrome OS, OS X, Linux and Windows

ProfDreamer

could you use this to run ChromiumTestShell.apk on windows for testing android chrome rendering?[1] http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium-browser-con...

2014-09-24 15:05:07 UTC

korzun

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

FreeBSD appears to be affected.

2014-09-24 15:06:02 UTC

orta

Ask HN: Want to work on open-source, don't know where to start. Advice?

dblock

I'm a pretty prominent Cocoa OSS guy:I've always figured that you "just start", but that's a bit like the draw an owl image. So I'll say how I got started. I started by dealing with issues on a large project (CocoaPods). I read all documentation then started dealing with issues that were user errors rather than code. It gave me exposure to the devs in a large project, gave a sense of where common problems lay. Instead of directly working on the product I started to expand the tooling around the project, building websites / logos. Eventually it just gets to a point where writing a PR to anyone on any project is no-effort at all.If you really want a one step start: go fix typos in other people's READMEs.

2014-09-24 15:07:41 UTC

segmondy

Shen – A Sufficiently Advanced Lisp [video]

michaelsbradley

I like what Shen has to offer, but it runs on top of other languages hence there's a huge performance hit. There's nothing revolutionary about it, it's just a lisp with pattern matching, lazy evaluation, prolog system, type checking etc.Having looked at it, it doesn't give much of an edge over say Prolog, I'm yet to see anything that it offer's that Prolog doesn't.

2014-09-24 15:07:53 UTC

fittom

Istanbul: A JavaScript code coverage tool written in JS

sebslomski

Great tool, perfectly fits to the node.js ecosystem, lightweight and fast.However in case you use co-mocha[1] to test your generators, istanbul won't work properly, the generators in the reports are shown as uncovered. Therefore I made a mocha fork[2] and directly applied the changes from co-mocha to the source (instead of monkey patching); it solved the problem.[1] https://github.com/blakeembrey/co-mocha [2] https://github.com/tfitos/mocha

2014-09-24 15:08:04 UTC

yatoomy

Why Is Box Taking So Long to Pull the IPO Trigger?

bdehaaff

I think it comes down to the burn rate and the shaken confidence of investors. Cuban was quoted during TWIST that he didnt want to burn through hundreds of millions of dollars just to make a few dozen. It might be a bit of a case of between business models as well. Boris Wertz did a fantastic outline of the "Two Ways to Build a 100 Million Dollar Business"

2014-09-24 15:10:06 UTC

jimrandomh

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

If you are responsible for the security of any system, this is your immediate, drop-everything priority. The technical details of the exploit mean that new ways of exploiting it will be discovered soon. Precedent suggests that automated systematic attacks against every server on the Internet will be coming, on a time scale of hours.

2014-09-24 15:11:09 UTC

pzxc

Walmart Prepares to Offer Low-Cost Checking Accounts

spking

I'm in the US, and I did a lot of research on banks and checking accounts about a year ago when I was trying to find the best setup (for me).I hardly ever go into a bank branch, so I was willing to sacrifice having that possibility if it meant lower fees and less service.I found four good possibilities, and I would recommend any of these to others if you can get them (drawbacks/caveats in parenthesis):1. Charles Schwab (lowest limit on mobile check deposits, was $2000/day max when I checked) 2. USAA (available to family members of military only when I checked) 3. ING Direct (later bought by Capital One and renamed to Capital One 360 - this is what I now use) 4. Simple (formerly banksimple, now just simple.com)I was on the waiting list for Simple, but before they gave me the invite I ended up getting set up with ING Direct, and even though they are now Capital One 360, nothing about the program has changed and it meets all my needs - it's great! The best parts, besides the no monthly fees etc which was a prerequisite for me, is they give you a small credit line attached to your primary account ($500 to start though you can ask for an increase if you want), and if you do happen to overdraft they just charge you interest based on the overdraft amount, which ends up being a few pennies at the end of the month - no overdraft fees at all. If you don't have the credit line or you go over, the transactions are just declined.I still have a Charles Schwab account, because in addition to no monthly fees, they refund ALL atm fees from anywhere, even the ones that the atm owners charge. You can literally use a $10-fee atm at like disneyland or on a cruise ship, and they will refund the fee. I keep a small amount of cash in here for when I want to get cash from an ATM and don't want to look for one that is feeless for my regular bank (Capital One 360 which uses AllPoint atms so they are plentiful, but hey my laziness knows no bounds)I was never able to try USAA despite hearing great things because no one I know was in the military.I was planning to switch to Simple once I was able, but ended up staying with Capital One 360 since it's great. Oh yeah, another awesome feature you don't get anywhere else, that started with ING direct but capital one has kept it, is you can open an unlimited amount of savings accounts. It's really one savings account in the background, but they treat the amounts separately as if they are separate accounts, so from the front end it seems that they are. This is awesome for setting up savings goal, automatic savings deductions for various purposes (like quarterly tax estimates if you are self-employed), etc.The stupid employer I'm at wouldn't let me sign up for direct deposit until I had been working here for 6 months (I know, what kind of policy is that, right??) -- and even though it's the highest mobile check deposit limit I could find, Capital One 360 still has a $3000-per-check limit on mobile deposit. My employer not only wouldn't let me get direct deposit right away, but pays monthly, so since my paycheck was bigger than the limit I was forced to go back to a "regular" bank for a few months.So I got a Bank of America account. They charged me $12 a month for the privilege of using their services without having direct deposit set up (if I could set it up I wouldn't need them!). Closed that account as soon as I was able to get direct deposit, which I set up for my CO-360 account. Branch manager of BoA was disappointed (ha).I did move to a new apartment in the middle of that, and needed a cashier's check or money order for the deposit. Years past had always just gotten a cashier's check from my bank, they usually let you do like one a month for free if you had an account -- nope they don't do that anymore. $10 fee. (Screw that, went to Walmart and got a money order for 49 cents). Also asked about notarization -- don't need it right now but since I was asking about cashier's checks anyway thought I'd ask if I could still get something notarized if I had an account -- nope sorry, they do have a notary but they are only allowed to notarize official Bank of America documents. Wtf??Anyway, my BofA account is closed as of a few weeks ago, and I couldn't be happier to not be their customer anymore. Fully set up with direct deposit to Capital One 360 now, and that's where I intend to stay for the next decade. (Unless they start screwing up their deal in which case I'm sure simple would still love to have me -- only thing I don't like about them is I prefer having a mastercard debit card rather than visa)Hope any of this info is useful to somebody.

2014-09-24 15:11:20 UTC

IanDrake

How to Squeeze a Huge Ship Down a Tiny River

sveme

>It is a beast of a ship, 1,141 feet long with room for more than 4,000 passengers"I want to be crammed on a ship with 4,000 other people" said no one ever.I wonder how these cruise ships make money between the cost of fuel, food, and expensive mishaps.

2014-09-24 15:11:22 UTC

bambax

How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

Thevet

Shouldn't marketers try the exact opposite approach?In this paper about "Nigerian" mail fraud http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/167719/whyfromnigeria.pdfresearchers argue that it's very efficient for attackers to appear fraudulent, because this helps select the most gullible victims (true positives) while weeding out "false positives": people who respond at first, but are not scammed in the end.From the abstract:> "Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor."Shouldn't marketers do the same? Isn't it more efficient to eliminate non-targets as early as possible, instead of dragging into the process people who will ultimately relent. If so, it would seem preferable to send junk mail that is very explicitly junky.

2014-09-24 15:11:42 UTC

ck2

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

http://www.csoonline.com/article/2687265/application-securit...Another attack surface is OpenSSH through the use of AcceptEnv variables. As well through TERM and SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND. An environmental variable with an arbitrary name can carry a nefarious function which can enable network exploitation.

2014-09-24 15:12:05 UTC

dnns

Hosting for Node.js apps done right

kertof

does anyone know if bower, grunt, etc. are working?

2014-09-24 15:12:20 UTC

GFK_of_xmaspast

BoA denied my mortgage because I own equity in a venture-backed startup

kristiandupont

Doing business with Bank of America is it's own punishment.

2014-09-24 15:12:52 UTC

jain_chirag04

Hosting for Node.js apps done right

kertof

Irony is that their website is powered by PHP rather than node.

2014-09-24 15:13:09 UTC

carlob

NGA releases high-resolution elevation data to public

liotier

Now it would be great to integrate this data into OSM to get navigation for bikes that takes slopes into account: this is the shortest route, this is the fastest considering slope, this is the sportiest…

2014-09-24 15:14:17 UTC

dllthomas

Ask HN: Want to work on open-source, don't know where to start. Advice?

dblock

You might want to check out OpenHatch: https://openhatch.org"OpenHatch is a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities, tools, and education."

2014-09-24 15:15:55 UTC

aseplow

Cash: An absurdly lightweight jQuery alternative

vsidamon

Might have to give this one a spin. Hopefully it's faster than zepto.

2014-09-24 15:17:37 UTC

m4r71n

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

Some more information was just posted to oss-sec:http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q3/650

2014-09-24 15:18:26 UTC

pjc50

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

The "it would be illegal to pay you" is easily circumvented: start a company of your own (slightly more expensive than a domain name, but not much), have her pay the company, do not pay yourself from the company until you have completed your course.

2014-09-24 15:18:46 UTC

ilconsigliere

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

Am I wrong in thinking that seems a bit worse than Heartbleed?

2014-09-24 15:19:45 UTC

innguest

Show HN: Beyondpad – New kind of note taking and data management solution

dzjosjusuns

Seems like the kind of note-taking app I was looking for - something that does not constrain me to the one-dimensionality of text, and isn't just a poor work-around that fact as outlines are. I particularly like that one can visualize the nodes in a canvas and then switch to the columns view. This is really good.Now the dealbreaker question: can I export my data without losing relationship metadata?

2014-09-24 15:20:07 UTC

no_gravity

Gnod News now searches Hacker News, Reddit and Twitter

no_gravity

Im getting closer to a "complete" social search. Any wishes for other communities to be included?

2014-09-24 15:20:50 UTC

thoughtpalette

Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

rustyrazorblade

#19 and #20 seems the most common issues I've had to deal with in development.19. Give estimates without consulting the people that are actually doing the work. When they disagree with the deadline, shrug your shoulders and explain that it can’t be changed and people are expecting it to be completed on schedule. Repeat every time.20. Break the above cycle when everyone is about to quit. Get estimates down to the hour for every single feature. Assume no slippage. Add features but do not adjust schedule.

2014-09-24 15:21:07 UTC

dragonwriter

BoA denied my mortgage because I own equity in a venture-backed startup

kristiandupont

A basic flaw in the complaint is that that there are, in fact, a number of situations in which an equity holder in C-corp might be on the hook for liabilities incurred by the corporation. Its somewhat worrying that someone who has been involved in multiple startups is unaware of this (and that they are unaware of it increases the likelihood that they might engage in conduct which would realize this risk.)BofA may be overweighing the associated risk when denying the mortgage, but it is certainly non-zero.

2014-09-24 15:21:17 UTC

zobzu

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

I have a feeling this is blown out of proportion. Who's running bash setuid exactly? Right. Who's running shell CGIs today? Right.So.. who has an example of common scripts that are executed remotely in most servers while accepting remote environment? Til then, the panic seems unjustified...

2014-09-24 15:21:51 UTC

culturestate

AngularJS shopping cart demo with Stripe payments integration

urishaked

I'd be interested in an expansion of the server-side token storage step. Are there particular security-related concerns to look out for when transmitting the token, since the app is entirely client-side?

2014-09-24 15:23:34 UTC

leoc

How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

Thevet

Similar machines have been in use for a long time to sign letters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen : US presidents (and LDS presidents) have long been fond of them. Presumably extending their use to whole handwritten letters is newer.Then there's something even older: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laJX0txJc6M

2014-09-24 15:23:41 UTC

xyzzy_plugh

An Update on Railsgoat: Vagrant/Docker

teryseck

minor nit: The statement "Linux containers are lightweight virtual machines" is not entirely accurate.Linux containers are visualization of the operating system, not of actual hardware. The container generally still sees your hardware.

2014-09-24 15:26:34 UTC

orta

Ask HN: Which tech companies have offices in New York City?

chromedude

Artsy, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, Kickstarter, Meetup.comFull list: http://wearemadeinny.com/made-in-ny-list/

2014-09-24 15:28:09 UTC

K0nserv

Ask HN: Want to work on open-source, don't know where to start. Advice?

dblock

I am actually writing a blog post about my own experience starting out with open source contributions. Here's (https://gist.github.com/k0nserv/2d24d54c9d9a2c648833) the current draft. I am focusing on why some people have the mentality of Orta, e.g "Just start" while I had a lot of doubts.Feedback is very welcome.

2014-09-24 15:32:09 UTC

ck2

The Surprising Path to a Faster NYTimes.com

danso

They were keeping a million static pages on disk without any templating?Whoa.

2014-09-24 15:32:50 UTC

idlewords

How to Squeeze a Huge Ship Down a Tiny River

sveme

Reminds me of the A380, every one of which has to be squeezed through the tiny French town of Levignac on its way to assembly. http://www.cnet.com/pictures/tiny-french-village-meet-giant-...

2014-09-24 15:33:09 UTC

ck2

Walmart Prepares to Offer Low-Cost Checking Accounts

spking

Go to a credit union. Free.

2014-09-24 15:33:51 UTC

omnibrain

Kali NetHunter turns Android device into hacker Swiss Army knife

rouma7

You can find the tool itself (and some documentation) on http://nethunter.com/

2014-09-24 15:36:18 UTC

dirtyaura

I Had to Develop an iPhone App to Understand Swing Trading

riveralabs

A tangential question: It seems that a lot of smart people believe in technical analysis, but to me it sounds like telling the future from tea leaves. Does it really work or are successes just part of the standard randomness of stock investing?

2014-09-24 15:36:34 UTC

ChuckMcM

How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

Thevet

It was an interesting advertisement for Mailift. I find it interesting to see the lengths that junk mail goes to in order to get read. At least at my house opened or not the conversion rate is zero. But clearly that isn't the case elsewhere.Other than the company is getting better at mimicing humans though I didn't get a whole lot out of it.

2014-09-24 15:37:31 UTC

_wmd

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

As an example of who might be impacted, since openssh preserves the original command line passed to the ssh server when authenticating a public key that has a fixed command associated in authorized_keys, GitHub and BitBucket security teams are probably both having a really exciting day.

2014-09-24 15:38:33 UTC

stevejpurves

AngularJS shopping cart demo with Stripe payments integration

urishaked

a nice end to end tutorial. wondering does stripe give you a sandbox test area to work against during dev and for testing, that something I'd like to have clear at the outset.

2014-09-24 15:39:17 UTC

JoeAltmaier

I hope someone loves me

jiggity

Wow that is laced with insecurity. I am a nerdy Engineer with a strong individualist streak. Afraid my calculus of need is more personal and selfish than all that - I need food, digital toys and entertainment (really the three are mixed). Never had any of that angst about 'who loves me?'

2014-09-24 15:39:46 UTC

girinambari

Show HN: Village – Hacker News for people who care about their cities

steve-benjamins

AOL had a service called Patch, this is more than just about the place, it pools all news local to the community. Is that what you are trying to achieve with Village?I liked design and domain name. Good luck!

Hey everyone,I started Village because I couldn't find a place online with reasonable, civil discussion about my city, Toronto.On Reddit, r/toronto could be a bit harsh and was pretty heavy with downvoting. Local blogs had comments sections that were mean and insulting.Village is an experiment. It's a place that- while honest about the challenges my city faces- tries to celebrate and share what's awesome about Toronto too. It's a place for reasonable and civil discussion. It's a place to discover awesome and interesting things in Toronto.I custom wrote the software for Village but I feel like the software for creating a social news website is pretty trivial at this point. If you want, it only takes 5 minutes to set one up using Telescope. The hard part is cultivating a community.But in the same way that you can’t design a users experience (because it implies a sense of control over what a user will experience), you also can’t design a community. Instead, you can only hope to cultivate a community.That's what I'm hoping to do with Village :)PS - If you're interested, you can read more about my thoughts on how to cultivate community here: http://www.itsonvillage.com/design-tips

2014-09-24 15:39:54 UTC

minimaxir

Why Don't We Do AMAs on HN?

Pro_bity

Usually, AMAs on Reddit are done as a form of self-promotion for whatever company/movie/service the author has a vested interest. There's enough of that on HN already.Granted, there are exceptions, such as AMAs where the user has a unique life experience, but those are relatively rare.

There is a great discussion happening about the Watson API with one of the heads of the API program at IBM. It would be great to see HN take the lead on this. I think it would be of huge value to the community.

2014-09-24 15:41:23 UTC

chaitanyav

Wastebook 2013

wehadfun

Thanks for this link, looks like lot of money is wasted for trivial causes.

2014-09-24 15:43:36 UTC

DanielBMarkham

The Surprising Path to a Faster NYTimes.com

danso

Static pages are a barrier to scaling if you have a bunch of other stuff tied in with them Stuff like HTML macros, CSS, and so forth.My physical NYT copy from 1980 is fine. It was "published" this way, and it stays this way.What we're really saying is that if you want to go the static route, you can't go half-way: everything that _is_ the page gets deployed in one file. I doubt very many people who think they have static pages actually do.

2014-09-24 15:45:15 UTC

kozkozkoz

Ask HN: What do you want to be notified about?

krammer

I want to monitor my Alexa rank

Hi.I'm developing some sort of "any kind of alerts" app. You can think of it like it is ifttt but just with the IFT part: something happens then get notified.I'd love to know what kind of alerts would you be more interested. Can you help me? I will try to add your notification ideas to the app.Thx in advance!ps. I have already included classic alerts: weather, sports, tv shows, mentions, concerts, website-down… but for sure there is a lot of geeky stuff I'm missing.

2014-09-24 15:45:25 UTC

iuguy

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

My OSX Mavericks install appears to be affected: foom:~ steve$ env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" vulnerable this is a test

2014-09-24 15:46:00 UTC

techdog

Ask HN: Which tech companies have offices in New York City?

chromedude

Google has a very large NYC office.

2014-09-24 15:48:04 UTC

dontpanic

Show HN: Beyondpad – New kind of note taking and data management solution

dzjosjusuns

Do you plan an open source version for self-hosting?

2014-09-24 15:49:04 UTC

kastnerkyle

How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

Thevet

I think neural networks (RNNs to be specific) have the potential to do this - coupled with these handwriting bots it would be pretty hard to tell which is which. See the research of Alex Graves http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~graves/handwriting.htmlThis type of research is also pretty amazing for speech synthesis.

2014-09-24 15:49:05 UTC

nchudleigh

Show HN: Beyondpad – New kind of note taking and data management solution

dzjosjusuns

Seems really good, takes some things from google keep and adds the complexity that keep lacks.Nice!

2014-09-24 15:49:36 UTC

nanoscopic

The Surprising Path to a Faster NYTimes.com

danso

The slides say there are 1 million pages, and "republishing" them would take 90 days. Maths -> 7.8 seconds on average to "republish" a page. Modern templates systems can convert a page constructed out of structured data in less than 1/4 of a second. ( and that is a high estimate ) That is ~30 times faster, meaning all pages could be "republished" in 3 days instead of 90 had a more efficient system been used from the start.Focusing on shifting all "rendering" into front end JS seems like it will lead to more difficulty in the long run instead of using a more efficient structured page creation mechanism.I am curious how the static pages were created. Others here are speculating that templating was not done. If not; what does "republishing" mean exactly?

2014-09-24 15:49:41 UTC

orian

Ask HN: Do Not Reply to This Email Why Not?

nwenzel

idea: antispam protection may treat it as spammy address/url

I think this question worth asking on HN because... it has been bugging me for awhile (so probably others too), there are people on HN who like to ask "why not" pretty regularly, and the answers may be helpful to founders/sales/customer support folks.Why do companies send emails from "do not reply" email addresses?At my company, we send onboarding emails, confirmation emails, notification emails, and more from our help email address and we tell people to reply to the email if they have a question.What are valid reasons for sending an email from an email address that won't/can't receive replies? What am I missing?

2014-09-24 15:49:48 UTC

flebron

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I just tested it in ZSH (5.0.5, Linux) and the same vulnerable behavior seems to show up.

2014-09-24 15:50:44 UTC

kazinator

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

Passing executable code in environment variables is an incredibly bad idea.The parsing bug is a red herring; there are probably ways to exploit the feature even when it doesn't have the bug.The parsing bug means that the mere act of defining the function in the child bash will execute the attacker's code stored in the environment variable.But if this problem is closed, the issue remains that the attacker controls the environment variable; the malicious code can be put inside the function body. Even though it will not then be executed at definition time, perhaps some child or grand-child bash can be nevertheless goaded into calling the malicious function.Basically this is a misfeature that must be rooted out, pardon the pun.

2014-09-24 15:50:46 UTC

schrodingersCat

Evolution: A Complexity View

namlede

This paper makes a 0th order assumption that there is an inherent advantage to sexual vs asexual reproduction. There are certainly advantages to both, but the author is correct that the answer may come out of addressing complexity. Algorithmically, there are many approaches to modelling sexual selection (rather than natural selection). Sexual selection occurs much faster than natural selection and may be one of the reasons why we have such apparent gender differences within species. Describing the effect of complexity in terms of "fitness" is one of the largest challenges faced by computer scientists and biologists this century. If you are interested in exploring some different algorithmic models, "Computational Molecular Evolution" is an excellent book (http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Molecular-Evolution-Oxfo...).

2014-09-24 15:51:56 UTC

creichert

Ask HN: Want to work on open-source, don't know where to start. Advice?

dblock

Do you use any open source software on a daily basis?I enjoy contributing to the tools I personally use. Start with small contributions that are not too high commitment. Engage authors on their issue trackers and ask questions. Read the source code for the tools you use and depend on. Always ask yourself how you could make it better.

2014-09-24 15:52:09 UTC

gamblor956

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

From a purely legal perspective, such an agreement probably would not have been enforceable.The coder would be giving up the right to his code, and taking on the burden of non-disclosure, in exchange for...nothing. Basic contract law (in the U.S.) requires that both parties receive adequate consideration (essentially, payment) for the bargain they are making. Unpaid student internships are generally not considered to be valid consideration because it is illegal to have interns perform the primary business activities without some sort of compensation (monetary, or in the form of academic units).It's surprising that it didn't come up in the previous HN discussion but it appears that none of HN's usual legal commentators dropped in.

2014-09-24 15:52:53 UTC

josefresco

This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

guiseppecalzone

The only fly in this sales-technique ointment are the customers whom you convince, then in-turn expect the world from you because they chose "value" over "price". When customers pay a premium, their expectations are much higher, and unhappiness can set in if you don't manage these well.This might not be something sales can control, but be careful in the claims you make during the sales process as some customers are listening and will be holding you to your promises.

2014-09-24 15:53:21 UTC

chazu

Facebook and OkCupid’s psychological studies were illegal under Maryland law

denzil_correa

I could be misinformed, but it sounds like what OKCupid did was an extreme form of A/B testing - at least, that is how they defended the 'experiment' during an interview on NPR's TL,DR. If this is the case, this could set an interesting - and unfortunate - precedent.

2014-09-24 15:56:46 UTC

robomartin

This email may be worth millions of dollars in sales

guiseppecalzone

This thread is really interesting. You can see a bunch of engineering types doing their best to slice and dice this from a million logical angles. I would have done the same 20 years ago when I launched my product and went out there to sell it.The difference? I was honest enough to recognize I was going to approach sales as an engineer. I got help in the form of experienced non-engineer sales people tutoring me by going on sales calls with me and doing review sessions after every sales call.The first two quarters sucked. It took me about three months to truly stop thinking as an engineer and another three to optimize my style, delivery and approach. We closed the third quarter with over $600K in sales, most of which I was responsible for.I would eventually hire sales and marketing people so I could devote more time to engineering. I felt it was important to understand the sales process by becoming a sales and marketing person myself (for about two years on and off) before staffing thise positions. I have always been glad I took that approach. We engineers are great about building products but absolutely suck at selling.The letter that is the subject of this thread isn't fantastic. That said, it achieved several things all the engineers on HN are ignoring:- Made a sale! Do not underestimate the importance and power of cash in the bank!- It deprived a competitor of revenue. Every dollar you take away from your competition is a dollar that goes towards potentially taking them out of the race, particularly with low price sellers.- It was compelling enough to take someone who was on the fence and flip him to the point of having him write a blog post about the experience- It probably created a long term believer and evangelist for their brand, product and price model- It confirmed that this tactic works. They can use it with new potential customers, evolve and fine tune it. They might also consider integrating aspects of this message in other marketing efforts.- It revealed that the competitor's low price position is tenuous at best- It started a relationship with a new customer in a very positive tone. If nurtured this could lead to more sales from word of mouth- Because of some of the above their cost of customer aquisition is likely to reduce over timeI could probably add to this. The point is that most of the criticism here is misplaced. This letter isn't genius. It doesn't have to be. It only has to be effective. That, it is.I don't expect everyone to get this. In typical engineer/HN fashion this will be sliced, diced and down-voted from a million of irrelevant angles. That's OK. I get it. The interesting thing is, regardless of what is said here, that letter still made a sale and accomplished all I have highlighted and more.

2014-09-24 15:57:27 UTC

throwaway12834

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

As someone who knows both parties involved, here's a little context from the other side.While the MBA student was not in the class, she was drafting and writing all of the classwork (with the exception of the project) for this class that she was not enrolled in. Our school uses a bidding system that played a factor in her ability to enroll. Strings had to be pulled to manage to get the developer into the class (a bureaucratic headache because of cross-registration).From her perspective, she had an implicit agreement that helping the developer get into the course and then completing the vast majority of the coursework was her end of the bargain. This should've been made more explicit between them, but the point is that the work done was not one-sided.

2014-09-24 15:57:32 UTC

stevep2007

Apple Pay got mobile payments right, but its reach is limited

stevep2007

Radio Free Mobile’s Richard Windsor recently posted a concise and insightful piece about Apple Pay. According to Windsor, Apple has aligned the financial payments industry, a feat that has eluded other mobile payments companies, but due to Apple’s proprietary myopia will forego a greater opportunity.

2014-09-24 15:58:00 UTC

michaelsbradley

Shen – A Sufficiently Advanced Lisp [video]

michaelsbradley

I wish Dr. Tarver would make his Book of Shen[1] available via Google Play[2] (or similar). I rarely purchase paper books these days (especially technical books), but am very happy to pay for well-written books and read them on my iPad.[1] http://www.fast-print.net/bookshop/1506/the-book-of-shen-sec...[2] https://play.google.com/books/publish/

2014-09-24 15:58:06 UTC

eevilspock

Ask HN: Which tech companies have offices in New York City?

chromedude

Foursquare was originally hacked together at the Think Coffee near NYU. They are still based in NYC.OKCupid founded and based there as well.

2014-09-24 15:58:07 UTC

badpeoplesuck

Read me please...Google Profile can help me locate a thief that stole my laptop?

fyurgirl

your boyfriend must be pissed ! good luck im sure police are of no help.no one saw a thing im sure someone saw something and knows you should ask and bribe people you may just find out and be surprised

I had all my personal property stolen and in that property was my laptop in addition to my entire life history. I had tax transcripts and many other identifiers in my car. Anyway, I digress, the individual that stole it is unaware that he logged in on my boyfriends google profile and when searching the dashboard history came upon some data that neither one of us inputted. After some hours of investigating we found several addressing that were a result of the "MY LOCATION" TO XYZ etc. and was wondering are these fairly accurate. I believe them to be as I tested ones that I had inputted and they were exact. Secondly, I came across a facebook page that belongs to this individual. How can I dig deeper into inspect element and discover their identity?

2014-09-24 15:58:33 UTC

tjradcliffe

Evolution: A Complexity View

namlede

While it's true "the role of sex is not completely understood" in evolution, most current research points to co-evolving parasites as a major force that makes sex a good evolutionary move. It increases inter-generational variation while at the same time preserving viability (because both parent organisms are viable) which merely adding randomness would not do. Parasites are typically incredibly specialized because the hosts always evolve pretty good first-line defenses, so the additional genetic variability that sex produces from generation to generation becomes a considerable added benefit to the host, because the parasite population is always playing catch-up. Like many things in evolution, the war is never won, but sex tips the strategic balance in favour of the host.That said, this kind of formal, mathematical approach to evolution is becoming increasingly powerful, and it's worth speculating if there might not be a provable theorem connecting random DNA variation and the laws of probability at the molecular level with the fact of macroscopic evolutionary change, speciation, etc... something like Boltzmann's H-theorem in thermodynamics, which attempts to show how micro-physics (kinetic theory) can be used to prove the macroscopic 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.This would make evolution not a theory but a theorem, which I call "Darwin's Theorem". I've played around with the math a bit (I'm a physicist, not a mathematician) without getting anywhere, and wrote a what-if novel about the possibility (it plays with even more speculative ideas as well), in part with the thought of popularizing the idea, because I think it's worth people thinking about: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe-ebook/dp/...

2014-09-24 16:03:47 UTC

ecze

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

With this bug, bash access to CiscoCallmanager is possible... Tested and working....

2014-09-24 16:04:01 UTC

conradk

Hosting for Node.js apps done right

kertof

This sounds like a joke to me.1- "Hosting for Node.js apps done right": Like everything else is done wrong? That's just weird.2- What does "designed for cloud" mean?3- "Free support"? How gullible do you think we are? At 6e/mo, anyone that believes they're getting any kind of "Free support" is wrong. Or else this service is going to fail big time.Now some constructive criticism: I see "FTP access". But as a dev, I would have liked to see something like FTPS, SFTP or better yet, SSH.

2014-09-24 16:04:30 UTC

illumen

What “technical” concerns do I have with systemd?

rossj

systemd should really include pulseaudio, and nginx. Oh, it already has a httpd in there.

2014-09-24 16:04:47 UTC

ubasu

How to tell when a robot has written you a letter

Thevet

The best way to tell is to check if the postage says "Pre-sorted Mail" or if they actually spent money on first-class postage to send it. ;-)

2014-09-24 16:05:05 UTC

chaostheory

Gobble Promises to Help Customers Make Delicious Meals in 10 Minutes or Less

yurisagalov

What's interesting is that I think Amazon Fresh does this as well.

2014-09-24 16:07:30 UTC

emcarey

Ask HN: Who's working making the world a better place?

kingnothing

Glassbreakers is making the world a better place by helping women connect with female mentors that can help them with their careers. The confidence gap in the work force is real and we believe Glassbreakers will be a confidence tool for many female professionals. We hope to make the world a better place by empowering women to break the glass ceiling, together.Women are the worlds largest untapped resource. We need more women in leadership roles across industries to start making real social change and to improve the lives of women every where. There is no clear path to do that but women at the top credit their career success to mentors who helped them get there. We hope that by automating the process of mentor matching women based on skill sets we can lead of movement of global female empowerment, which will have a ripple affect on improving our society at the macro level.

Lots of us are making incremental improvements across various segments of the b2b and b2c markets. There are plenty of interesting and rewarding challenges in that space, and it's what I currently do as well. However, there must be some of us here who are working to better our world and future, but I don't seem to see much press for them here or anywhere for that matter.To those of you in that camp: what's your company, what are you doing, and what are your growing pains?

2014-09-24 16:08:00 UTC

droob

Gobble Promises to Help Customers Make Delicious Meals in 10 Minutes or Less

yurisagalov

Do you love packaging? Do you hate the two minutes it takes to cut things more than you like your money?

2014-09-24 16:08:42 UTC

socrates1998

Should I sign this agreement?

neilni

I just don't get how "business" types who can't code or design get the idea that deserve 100% of a project when they don't want to pay the developer.It just blows my mind. If you can't pay me, then I deserve at least 50% of the equity.She was doing the "business" end of a project that had no customers and no "deals". So, what exactly did she do here?

2014-09-24 16:09:03 UTC

andrewd18

Was jquery.com compromised?

getdavidhiggins

At the moment jquery.com loads with the following content: <body>I'm looking for a new job, I'm so sorry for this experiment with iframe, no one was injured, all files was permanently deleted. Greetz: Umputun, Bobuk, Gray, Ksenks @ radio-t.com My PGP public key is: <key> </body> I think it's safe to say they've been hacked.

2014-09-24 16:10:37 UTC

helen842000

Ask HN: Hackers who cook

Cherian

I have to say that 4 Hour Chef has some great tips and tricks when looking at hacking cooking.Especially things like knife skills, gear and prep.

While going through a ProductHunt post[1] I came across a fellow HNer[2] who was following NYT Cooking[3] and cooking with a plan on a regular basis. I was very curious to understand how he spaces time to cook and work. And the type of stuff he cooks.Which kind of inspired me to start working on project to follow someone and get inspired by their – meal plans, shopping patterns, recipes, hacks, tips etc (Another inspiration [4])I am trying to find hackers who cook at home on a regular basis (even if its only 2-3 times a week).If you cook, some questions:1. Why do you cook? Is it to save cash or is it recreation? Or something else?2. Do you plan ahead? Like a weekly meal plan?3. What kind of things do you cook usually?4. Do you follow any diet? Atkins, Slow Carb etc.5. Do you have any life hacks, tips to be more productive as a cook?Disclosure: I run Cucumbertown (http://www.cucumbertown.com/), the Tumblr for cooks.[1] http://www.producthunt.com/posts/new-york-times-apis[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cdavis565[3] http://cooking.nytimes.com/[4] http://www.reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/comments/2gutuk/26_2021_1592_grocery_list_meal_plan_and_recipes/Edit:Seems like this was taken off the homepage for some reason. The comment rate’s coming down.Thanks a lot for the encouraging comments. A short but exciting Q&A. If you can help me out more, please reach me on cherian@cucumbertown.com

2014-09-24 16:10:58 UTC

gk1

Show HN: Beyondpad – New kind of note taking and data management solution

dzjosjusuns

Looks very interesting. Like a combination of Subtask and Trello. Each of those have limitations that keep me from adopting it for all my note-taking and project management... Perhaps this is the perfect middle-ground.One thing, though: That demo video went waaaaaaay too fast. I couldn't keep up with it at all, and just stopped watching. I understand you're trying to fit all the many features into a single, short video, but that's just too much. Why not go at normal pace and just feature the most "a-ha!" features?

2014-09-24 16:11:06 UTC

mirashii

CVE-2014-6271: Remote code execution through bash

vault_

At a glance, one interesting use of this is a potential local privilege escalation on systems with a sudoers file which restrict commands which can be run to ones that include a bash script, and allow you to keep some environment variables.

2014-09-24 16:11:45 UTC

shawn-butler

NGA releases high-resolution elevation data to public

liotier

The US govt has also been relaxing the export restriction on high-resolution imagery as well.DoCommerce gave digital globe permission to sell 0.31 m for b&w band and 1 m for multispectral bands from WorldView-3 beginning in Feb 2015 I think.EDIT: http://worldview3.digitalglobe.com added link to microsite. Couldn't find quick link to relaxing of export restrictions but I am 99% sure it was announced months ago.

2014-09-24 16:12:17 UTC

leichtgewicht

Show HN: Beyondpad – New kind of note taking and data management solution

dzjosjusuns

Some of the user-interface problems I recognised in my few-minute-test:- Many notes I have are longer: I.e. tend to be made of headlines etc. So i need something like markdown for structuring. Using the mouse seems to cumbersome and to hard to maintain a visual consistency.- The delete button (particularly on the default notes) was too hidden in the menu. I had to search for it.- Adding a link didn't automatically select the link field to immediately copying the link.- Copying a link in a empty text field didn't convert it in a link field (seemed like a good opportunity to shine)- I didn't find a "new note" button after entering a first node (because I had to save it... doh). I think I would prefer an auto-save and/or a "new" button to avoid the confusion.- When clicking "link to tag" I have no method of aborting my uneducated request (esc?) I had to enter the tag to safe it even though I changed my mind.- I often had to click "..." when trying to edit an entry. 6 menu items: I think they could all be shown side-by-side?

2014-09-24 16:14:27 UTC

motyka

Good and Bad reasons to become an entrepreneur

motyka

Really good article, most of the people want to be an entrepreneur for this reason> Be his own boss...but in reality this is what happens:“People have this vision of being the CEO of a company they started and being on top of the pyramid. Some people are motivated by that, but that’s not at all what it’s like. What it’s really like: everyone else is your boss – all of your employees, customers, partners, users, media are your boss. I’ve never had more bosses and needed to account for more people today. The life of most CEOs is reporting to everyone else, at least that’s what it feels like to me and most CEOs I know. If you want to exercise power and authority over people, join the military or go into politics. Don’t be an entrepreneur.”This should be the real reason for being an entrepreneur: “If you’re going to devote the best years of your life to your work, have enough love for yourself and the world around you to work on something that matters to you deeply”

2014-09-24 16:14:32 UTC

charlie_vill

Gobble Promises to Help Customers Make Delicious Meals in 10 Minutes or Less

yurisagalov

Read this and reminded me of Michal's Medium post- https://medium.com/@michalbohanes/seven-lessons-i-learned-fr...

2014-09-24 16:15:48 UTC