skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When I worked at a large company, their reason for storing passwords (to an online ordering system; for some 1.5 million clients) as plain text was the ability to impersonate users when debugging their problems. Then, after a while, even that became too hard for them so they added a special backdoor: on the live system, you could go to a special page (it was not linked from anywhere, but it was conveniently named Login.aspx) and enter the user ID and a shared password that worked for all users. I'm still amazed why this had never been taken advantage of while I was there.
32 Here. I treat them, with some exceptions, as a stack of stuff I've saved to read later. The exceptions are reference stuff I keep coming back to and HN.
Tekna Seal
Tekna Seal, a custom manufacturer of hermetic seals, specializes in glass-to-metal seals and has developed technology to fabricate optically clear windows for hermetically sealed packages. Their glass to metal seals are custom built to customer design specifications, using proprietary "Oxide-Free" hermetic sealing process.
Part of the problem is that the military awards contracts that are sometimes decades long. What was "good enough" security in 1990 is not looking so hot 20 years on. The US military machine may not perform as well as it has in the past in the new era of betas, hotfixes and patches.

I will not be at all surprised when insurgent "rc-plane" drones start showing up with cell phones, arduinos, grenades and duct-tape.
83, across three windows in two browsers (chrome + firefox). I should probably cut them down a bit...
If it's properly secured and leaves an audit trail (sounds like yours wasn't) an "impersonate user" feature is pretty much a must have for debugging problems on any site has content or behavior that varies per-user.

I worked at a company that had properly encrypted passwords, but the customer support people would just ask the user for their username/password and login through the front door. Once I found out about that, I implemented a simple yet secured impersonate system and it has served us very well.
Oh, I must have missed that bit. Thanks.
Density lowers per capita infrastructure cost, but it also decreases tax revenues per capita. High density cities have to support the infrastructure used by commuters but can only capture a little of their tax value. During the day DC's population nearly doubles so they have to provide infrastructure for 1,000,000 people with a tax base of 600,000.
Increasingly, health insurance plans cover routine care under the banner of "wellness" (there's a reason why there are specialized procedure codes to identify them). Unfortunately, they often take the form of "sure, we'll cover that prostate screening, but if it turns out you actually have cancer, um, tough luck."
I exited the installer after it seemed like it wanted to overwrite my ~/.gitconfig :[
Thanks, that's very helpful. I might be in touch.
Muni is a piece of shit. The buses come at irregular intervals and are regularly clumped together in order to maximize the time between service. nextmuni is unreliable more than about 5 minutes in advance. A trip which takes 18 minutes in a car requires me to leave 50 minutes beforehand in order to reliably arrive at work on time. The drivers let any drugged out piece of shit on board, so you aren't particularly safe (I've been involved in two fights on muni, neither of which I started, both of which I was involved in simply for being on the bus). The public transport is so poorly laid out that you not only have to plan your entire life around the schedule, but there are relatively close pieces of the city -- eg 20 minute walks -- that require 60+ minutes to reach via public transport. Tthe lazy morons that run muni can't even get displays on market -- down which run many bus lines -- announcing the next buses.

This city -- and I never thought anything could do this -- is going to drive me to buy a car. Or to move back to NYC.

Edit: I missed this in my first read. Muni available around the clock? hah.

Ps -- the healthy SF program? Stops at the borders. Hope you never leave sf or require medical care outside the city. Particularly including emergency care.
You could also sell more Eye-Fis if they supported CompactFlash in addition to SD. I thought I could use an SD to CF converter, but they are apparently pretty dodgy.

I'm shocked that there isn't a way to wirelessly send pictures to a tablet PC for instant studio proofing with a DSLR that saves to CompactFlash, but there doesn't seem to be.
Innovation in Battery Manufacturing: A123Systems, Amprius Score Funds from Feds
I did for a while. I am not sure I am knowledgeable enough to do a good job anymore, however.

If you are ever in Chicago, we can have beer and I will teach you how to build an amp :)
If you drive your car through the KFC window due to tragic combination of chicken grease, fingers, and steering wheel, your chicken dinner may very well cost $75,000. It makes sense to insure against that risk. But you don't have to insure against the $10 chicken dinners to insure against that.
More reason than ever to work hard, and do your best to inspire, mentor, and help anybody out there that shows signs of life as an entrepreneur - private industry CAN negotiate vs. insurance where individuals cannot.
I think he meant zealously
While I couldn't stand a sticker on the outside of a camera, I always print labels with my email + phone number and stick them on the memory cards and removable batteries.
I must say, congrats on outing yourself as an utter asshole. I do hope that you never require help from another person.
In all fairness, the team at Adept Airmotive completed the majority of the design and development of their new engine platform with only private equity funding. They received an injection of cash from a state innovation fund a couple years ago to ease their way into production, but this has definitely not been a 'grandiose engineering project with government money'.

I do think they have a fairly good chance of succeeding with this, if only because their ambitions are fairly modest (they're seeking to build a better GA piston engine, not re-invent the industry) and because they're filling a fairly obvious gap. Their calculus, which seems sound, is that the low initial purchase cost and significant fuel savings will result in a TCO that's lower than what their competitors can offer even with more frequent service intervals until the engine becomes established.

The Rooivalk is a poor comparison, being as it was a hugely ambitious project initiated during a period when the country was under an arms embargo and unable to acquire such aircraft from outside. It was hamstrung in the end by the combination of an evaporating need (the country's involvement in Angola had ceased in 1989) and the concurrent slashing of the defence budget which elongated the development process, increased the unit cost and resulted in marketing opportunities being lost. But it's important to understand that it was originally designed to fulfill a local need, not for export, and that not only was the project an engineering success which established companies like Aerosud and ATE (both doing quite well) but its development made sense under the circumstances at the time. Similarly, SA had ambitious projects for an indigenous tandem trainer, the ACE, and an indigenous 4th-generation jet fighter under Project Carver, both of which fizzled out once the embargo ended and funding was decreased.

I won't quibble about the Joule though, which is admittedly a bit of an odd investment. South Africa was one of the research leaders in Lithium-ion battery technology prior to '92, but has done very little research in the field since then. Nevertheless, perhaps investing in high-tech industries with lots of automation does make sense for the country, as its cost of labour comparatively high and not competitive with other developing countries while it has a fairly active and effective scientific and engineering institutional infrastructure. And again, because Optimal Energy only exists thanks to government funding, they're a poor comparison to Adept Airmotive.

In terms of your last point, the Ravin 500 mentioned in the article is pretty close to what you're talking about, as it's a fairly simple composite aircraft improving on the basic design of the Piper Comanche but without re-inventing any technological wheels. Although it's being used as a test platform by Adept Airmotive, all Ravins sold to date have been equipped with more conventional Lycoming engines.

See: http://www.saravin.com/
From what I've seen, the Pre is a great phone and webOS is a very nice operating system. So, it pains me a bit to agree somewhat with the author. People want apps these days, and Palm is never going to be able to get developers with a niche device, even if it is damn nice.
Defining an artform is supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite? That's the only definition of populist (as adj.) I can find; do you mean that?
His point was that fishing rights aren't privatized: any company, or individual, could step in and compete. Your point is that a single company should not be allowed to abuse its fishing rights. You two are talking about different things and are missing each others' point.
You know, I wrote at least fifteen web CMS-sites, as a teenager, before I ever learned the definitions of the words "hash function" and "salt." I saw them used, but I had no idea what they were for, so I just did what I understood how to do: stored passwords in plaintext. Of course, to do this professionally is inexcusable—but how many "professionals" do you think are on the same knowledge level I stood at when writing those websites?
This is actually a deeper problem - we (the US/UK/Western world) assumes the middle east doesn't have the same level of technical competency as us.

Iran is a pretty well educated country, and while Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't have the same level of education in the tech/science areas, there are many sympathizers who are well educated -- including educated in UK, US, etc.

There's actually a lot of comparisons to be drawn here with startup culture vs big business. Once again the smaller, less resourced are able to bring down the big players by being more nimble and not feeling the need to build everything "in house".

To the "in house" point - the US probably spent high $100ks of mine and other tax payers money building viewing software for these drones vs the insurgents who use $25 Russian shareware. Now, I'm not saying that the government should be running SkyCatcher to view streams - but I bet they didn't include opensource options into their video viewer solution that would have saved $$$ in upfront and ongoing maintenance costs.
Oldest mistake in the book: since the adversaries dress differently, speak a different language, and are a different race, assume they must be idiots.

The WSJ reporter fell into the same trap: Iraqis and Afghans couldn't have figured out how to tap a video feed on their own; they must have had Iranian help.
http://movies.apple.com/movies/paramount/ironman2/ironman2-z...

is an actual mov file.
Facebook Data Team: How Diverse is Facebook? | Facebook
Byethost (a personal shared-hosting provider) did this to me. I'm posting this under a different account because, unless I can find a better free shared-LAMP host, I'm still with them :(
Well by that reasoning the reporter should think the Iranian's are idiots as well so what you're saying makes no sense.
it's commendable that palm was willing to think so far outside their established boundaries when creating the pre. they completely scrapped their existing offerings and started over again.

but i'm guessing that, at this late date, they don't have the resources to pull it off. if they were sitting on a stockpile of billions the way apple is, they might be able to give the industry a real run for its money.
Wow, It's amazing they couldn't fix this over the last decade. Even a simple obfuscation, anything is better than raw data that is so easily viewable and worse verifiable. I would assume there is plenty of people with experience encrypting and decrypting radio / satellite signals for the military in the US. Maybe the problem lies in it not being a software problem, but rather some horrid design that relegates it to hardware.

Either way now that this is public knowledge it needs to be fixed appropriately.
I've personally worked with the three founders during a stint as a consultant for MySpace. They've all incredibly smart technologists and strategists with proven experience on creating community - MySpace is after all probably the first mega community that formed on the Internet (OK, you might not be a fan of MySpace and the type of community it created - but you can't argue they were successful in their hay-day)

The details are sketchy on how this is really going to be implemented - and as a start up founder myself working on a stealth product I understand that there is little reason to give before launch all the implementation details us techies want to know.

I agree this might be difficult to bite into the core vBulletin/PHPBB communities but I also feel a lot of people are migrating away from them as the conversations spread out over blogs comments, google/yahoo groups, etc.

I don't actively use any vBulletin/PHPBB communities anymore - do you?

The API aspect of this has the ability to get traction within the more distributed conversations going on, and they'll be able to provide sophisticated search on top of that -- which is what excites me the most.

We'll see but I'm keeping an eye on this.
Well, what else one can expect from Raytheon?
So you're unalone?
Yes, rogupta - to Martin's point here... if EyeFi is in your portfolio then I would urge you to push for CF version... I only use pro camera gear which doesn't take SD.

I've talked to the EyeFi guys about this but it seems to fall onto deaf ears.

I also agree that there should be an open platform option for these -- you could sell a ton of these if people could use them for their own uses that go beyond the original concept of uploading to the internet.
Yup. PCI DSS solves everything. I believe if you order now you'll get 20% off and a free pet rock!
That's too bad, since there's some great stuff in Volume 4. In fact, it's my favorite volume in the series (so far.)
If there is prosecution for bad designers, the people who used off-the-shelf unencrypted solutions for a military device in the 21st century should be put in prison. They just cost taxpayers much more money if not actual lives on the ground.

This is the equal of having an open directory on a website and saying it doesn't matter because no-one will know what the domain or ip is. Security-by-obscurity is asinine, someone can always figure out what you've done.

This also strikes me as a great way to insist on more budget money when you've been told you won't get any more money - throw some fear, uncertainty and doubt at it.
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$28/hour before overtime for a heavy equipment operator in battery factory (read: blink and kill someone) seems perfectly reasonable to me.

He started at $10.76/hour in 1983. His hourly pay increased all of 6 inflation adjusted dollars ($10.76 in 1983 = $22.13 in 2007) over the past quarter century.
Why should there be a mention of PLT Scheme?
The company, that invented computer tomography (and revolutionized medicine).
> For something like a camera the average person wouldn't notice a text file, but may notice photos.

More specifically, when they plug in the camera, it would likely offer to import the photos; it would do nothing with the text file.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1000084
It'd be interesting to see if they used a framework to build it. That thing is screaming to be built with SproutCore.
That might be a business opportunity - create a magazine that publishes rewrites of Wikipedia articles in need of references (for a moderate fee). It could actually even be a magazine with interesting, if diverse, content!
Or rainbow tables
As @noonespecial alludes to, some of the comments on the WSJ site and (less so) here are made incognizant of the complexities of the systems and timelines of procurement, testing and deployment.

@tsally the DEF CON suggestion is a good point. Because of ITAR, it is unlikely that the actual "toy" will be provided, but a comparable subsystem wouldn't be out of the question. E.g. The DoD regularly operates rapid reaction challenges with a simulated problem from theater - see http://www.kirtland.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123120737 Something similar could be done with DEF CON.

I think it is important to maintain perspective when stories like this come out. Contrary to some of the comments, defense contractors and researchers/engineers at gov't R&D labs do put the priorities of the warfighter first. Consider that many of the engineers/contractors/researchers/etc working on technology development are combat veterans themselves.

The issue is that we face adaptive adversaries.
Technically it's not. Programs use the libdvdcss functionality built into VLC, but there are other alternatives (such as Fairmount) that also use libdvdcss. VLC is just more likely to be installed. Indeed, if you're running 64-bit Handbrake then the lack of a (stable) 64-bit version of VLC makes Fairmount a better option.
They should start a kickstarter project to pay someone to work on it..
This is actually the best and only real way of knowing a site you just signed up to is storing passwords in the clear:

1) Create account with "throw-away" password

2) Invoke "recover password" functionality

3) Check email to see if they send you your password in the mail (doh), or if they ask you to log in to create new one (yay)
Hempseed has good levels of omega 3, 6, and 9 fatty acids, with whole seeds are especially nutritious.
Ask HN: Using REST design for complex function calls?
I like everything I've read about REST but am confused about how to use REST designs for an API with mostly complex, math-y function calls that compute values & return them.

Because the functions require complex - potentially, arbitrarily large - inputs, it's too difficult to pass them in via GETs.

Is there discussion or articles somewhere about using REST for computational APIs rather than for resource-based APIs?
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Unfortunately that's not a way of 'knowing' a site stores passwords in the clear or not. They can send you a new password and still store them in plaintext.
That's a good idea too. However, I think the photos add a little emotion and increase the chance of the person who finds it to return. Just a thought.
Feediscovery : feed discovery made easy
I dunno. I wouldn't call myself a very advanced developer, but all my sites are pretty decently hashed, Salt included... It's amazing that Rock You was just seemingly really lazy (or stupid)
This is like trying to claim that "the Bible is a failure" because people have used it to justify everything from Nazism to plantation slavery to KKK activities.

People will glom on to an ideology (X), pull out the parts they don't like (Z) and add in some of their own 'flavor' (Y). Then they try to claim that X+Y-Z = X. And if you try to tell them differently they will just claim that their brand is the 'true' brand of X ideology. This is true of everything from socioeconomic ideologies to religious ideologies. To say that X is a 'failure' because all X+Y-Z combinations up until now have failed is intellectually dishonest. Claiming that making a distinction between X and X+Y-Z is the 'True Scotsman Fallacy' is misguided at best (and misdirection at worst).

Most of these 'so-called' communist states are nothing more than power-grabs. They use Communism as a buzz-word to gain the support of the people. Sure they also put private industry under state-control, but this has little to do with trying to improve the condition of the 'common man' and more to do with the increasing power of the government (and therefore the despot). If you're a power-hungry dictator, which sounds better: (1) you have direct control of private industry or (2) private industry can do its own thing making money for other people than yourself?

If you want to argue that the term 'Communism' is defined by what the public thinks it means (much the same argument against the people that try to correct the usage of 'begs the question'), then yes, these totalitarian states are Communism, and Communism is a failure. ...But a majority of the (American) public supported invading Iraq because they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks on 9/11, that doesn't mean it's true.

If myself and all of my friends dress up like dinosaurs, act like dinosaurs, and refer to ourselves as dinosaurs, it doesn't make us dinosaurs. Nor does it prove that 'all dinosaurs' were 5-6 feet tall, stood up-right, and spoke English.

Edit: clarification
Python the GIL, unladen swallow, reference counting, and atomic operations.
AK is the Perl of the weapons. I had to use AK-47 for year (serving in the Bulgarian army). It was easy to clean, assemble, disassemble, but every weapon was a bit-off due to the production (or heavy usage, don't know). So to get good results you have to learn where your weapon strays.
How Social Media Use Makes Cheating on Your Partner Easier
Dislike Button in Facebook
This addon add a "Dislike" feature on facebook.
Watch screenshot to see it in action. ;)

To select language : Tools > Add-ons > Facebook Dislike 1.0 > Preferences

"How to" YouTube Video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAM_PdS4vaY

Facebook fan page :
http://www.facebook.com/pages/FBDislike/186845260403

Send Translation in your language here :
http://www.facebook.com/pages/FBDislike/186845260403
Russians: UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate warming
This is true, I riffed of my first comment too quickly. Thanks for pointing out.

It's still a good indicator, and if you do get back that throw-away password then you know to be extra careful/give the site a miss.
Markup language that generates Flash
God this idea is familiar... I remember someone trying to launch something like this a few years back. You looked for interests that you had within the system and you got back conversation threads...
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leading some officials to conclude that militant groups trained and funded by Iran were regularly intercepting feeds.

The officials came to that conclusion, not the WSJ. Also, see @pmorici's answer.
How much does that affect a user? I mean, if you take the time to learn how much it strays, are you at that point just as accurate as someone with a more accurate weapon?

I've never used a gun so I'm curious.