skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If CRI really are that much smarter, then in a world without CRI the bad guys would probably never have thought of differential power attacks, in which case it wouldn't matter that they aren't there.

I don't think "maybe CRI would have published even without compensation" is at all the same as "maybe I'd do my job part-time for free". In a world in which CRI couldn't patent anti-DPA measures, I'm betting they'd still be able to get paid plenty well for doing crypto. A fair number of super-smart crypto people are, after all, and they don't all have CRI's patent portfolio. So the analogy is more "maybe I'd publish interesting and useful crypto stuff for free even though it isn't what I'm getting paid for". Which, in fact, you do.

(If you're inclined to object that what you publish for free is not innovative on the scale of the discovery of DPA attacks, let me remind you that you just claimed that CRI are much much smarter than you are.)

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not positively claiming that the world would be better with a patent system in which CRI couldn't have got the patents they have. I don't know whether it would. I just don't think your argument supports your claims very well on this point.
We have been briefed by Google on these allegations

The pertinent question is "when?". Google reported the attacks began in mid-December. NYT reported at least some against the 34 other companies occurred last week. Drummond said the Chinese government had been briefed before yesterday's statement. I have trouble believing The State Department hasn't been involved until now.
Right or wrong, the general public hates large banks. If you can find a niche where you can compete with them on customer service and margins, while avoiding major legal barriers, I would say the timing feels right.

Also, a lot of the innovation in that field is limited to the US. I don't know of anything comparable to Mint.com in Europe, for example.
Quickbooks Pro. If i started now, I would probably use Gnucash. I would certainly not put my financial books in the cloud.
I was just thinking ballpark, order of magnitude kind of stuff.
We shall see but I hope so.

As soon as they'll start selling Nexus in Europe I'm seriously considering buying one even if I have a perfectly good cell phone already.

Also, as an European I am -- and our operators are -- used to "unsubsidized" unlocked phones so that won't be a problem either.
Chinese attacks in Cyberspace.

Wow, straight out of a William Gibson novel.
Reading between the lines, it sounds to me like they suspect the Chinese govt. is tacitly (or perhaps not so tacitly) endorsing the hacking.

My guess is there's a lot more to this story Google's not willing to put in an official statement.
If you're looking for a dead-simple internet typewriter, check out http://internettypewriter.com/
Sounds like a good idea to me, for the same reasons articulated in the article.
Something like Scene7, but with a more focused set of features?

http://www.scene7.com/
All original, just for you :) I'd appreciate it if you didn't hijack this conversation into another 30-comment unrelated thread, though.
Silly idea. One can learn the basic syntax of a language after a days worth of toying with it. Python has such a simple syntax, but you don't really know the language until you know all the awesome modules out there.

I'd rather become more fluent with one or two new languages over the course of a year
This whole situation definitely feels like the start of something much larger than just Google pulling out of China.
This is not directly related to your question, but as someone who stepped from the corporate world to the non-profit world (medical research center affiliated with university hospital), I can say the pay is lower but the freedom is greater.

I'm more in charge of projects, trusted to make technical decisions and set direction, and seem to get more respect as a practitioner here. Since I was a tech lead on a project in the big corp world, I can contrast the two similar experiences. I'm just more autonomous here.

Downsides include a lack of user trust (previous software devs here tended to be a little tougher for people to deal with and were more prone to saying 'no' to requests). University researcher mindset is historically aimed at having software dev done directly by a research team member rather than trusting a centralized IT team.

Good communication is more critical here. Learning how to express ideas in multiple ways is much more important - I have to be able to both talk over an idea and present a visual display as well. It is also assumed that you will understand a researcher's problem domain rather quickly, which is stressful, but fun. You have to plan for a huge range of IT skills, from the person who can kind of use a browser to the self-taught SQL expert who I probably should just add to my team directly.
I'd say emergent, especially intelligent life would make the stats pages. Given the age of the universe and how long it has taken for Earth to evolve an intelligent lifeform I'd say it's even possible we are one of the first, if not THE first, intelligent lifeform (where intelligence is measured by awareness of the universe/capability of affecting it etc.).

In terms of the actual article, while black holes might account for most of the bits of information in the universe (I don't really understand the logic behind this) I would assume that most of that is just "noise" and would be filtered out leaving the bits of information put out by humanity as a statistically interesting anomaly.
wondering what conclusions andreyf was trying to draw

I was wondering who would pick up first on the unyielding Google-love and the blatantly imagined Chinese-espionage speculation, HN or reddit. reddit won :( http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aouv5/new_appro...
The meaning of Google VS China
> Google can, and this, combined with their size, konwledge and brand, makes them a strong player in international politics.

Nothing new here. Big business has been taking a leadership role in international politics for decades. See: WTO.
Like I said, I'm too close to WriteRoom project myself. I read it as better then crusty old WriteRoom, but see I'm mistaken. I agree Ommwriter is good. I think I better stop reading forums and get back to work, thanks for your note.
I wrote up a detailed spec for an enhanced version of news.arc, I literally saved the HN item, home and user pages and made changes, which I elaborated upon in the rest of the document.

I'd be interested to share it in some sort of collaboration.
Rands did a piece on this recently: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/12/24/a_creative_...
If it were a Savings and Loan in 1982.
It's not that Google is running away from Chinese hackers. Google has some of the brightest engineers in the world. The attack appeared to target some Chinese human rights activists. These people were using Google accounts, likely because Google, similarly, doesn't endorse the practices of the communist Chinese govt., and the attack highlighted the two sides more clearly. Google is simply choosing to be more clear about its stand, even if it costs them revenue.
Why my Dad went through 24 TVs in 2 years
No. GMail's login page is always HTTPS so no one in the coffee shop can grab your password.

However, all the mail is in the clear. So if some crappy website sends your password via email, then someone can can grab it.
Talk to him, recognizing that you may be getting a very jaded opinion. Also, I think it's a perfectly relevant question for you to ask for a ballpark dollar amount of your budget and what they expect you to accomplish. I've intentionally stayed away from positions where it looked like I was going to be a "team" of one doing work that really needs 5 or 6 people to be done right. I think this is a similar situation.
how would you log in to turn it off?
You probably want Windows Live Mesh if that's why you're looking for.

It's like Dropbox, but a bit more complicated/flexible, has more free storage, can sync any folder on your system, does p2p syncing, works through firewalls without configuration, etc.
An American for profit corporation is by law required to make money for it's investors. It has no obligation to be a human rights watch group.

The Chinese people are responsible for their government. Not Google.
a new low for HN from what I've seen to date

Agreed. Except you're the one who keeps insisting on dragging out for me to explain myself over something boundlessdreamz and I settled in two comments 10 hours ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049476
Absolutely. At the very least this guy will help you read between the lines and act as a good gut-check to your interview experience.

I would reiterate what Tom_B said about greater responsibility but I think it should be noted the kind of non-profit he worked at. Depending on organization, its mission, and people non-profits can be no better than the corporate machine.

Talking to the former director would lend some valuable insight into the culture and what its "really" like on the day-to-day.
Ugh. The State Department uses sIFR.
They can also just disable access to Gmail... Port 80 or no.
>The fact that this is being uncovered by Google and not the government is very interesting.

If I understand correctly, google find out because they were companies using the google enterprise framework. Google was their IT dept. It doesn't surprise me they uncovered it first.
Here’s more information about the "tool tracking" RFID reader from the company that makes them: http://www.thingmagic.com/applications-overview/toollink-by-...

(I work with ThingMagic’s other readers, but haven’t gotten the chance to try that one yet)
I'd honestly ask yourself whether you're willing to walk away from an offer if what the guy says is bad. If you are than talk with the guy. If not than I wouldn't.

Because he's going to be bitter. So you're going to learn a lot of bad stuff about the place you're starting at. That's a disadvantage in itself (because you might develop his prejudices and run his old enemies the wrong way).

So if you aren't prepared to walk away than you're just torturing yourself with the information and making yourself less effective at a time when you need to be at your best (a.k.a. the beginning of your new job)
Interesting. I would have expected the government to respond with something completely bland along the lines of “Google is a private company that makes its own decisions about international operations... Our law-enforcement authorities, including FBI Counterintelligence, are always vigilant against computer crime, but we cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.”

ISTM that nationalist elements within China would love to paint Western businesses that they disapprove of as arms of the CIA, and that if the US is too vocal in support of Google, then they give fodder to those nationalists (and risk damaging US commercial interests in China). I assume that the State Department considered this factor and decided that nevertheless, they had to speak up for an open international Internet.
Half plant half animal, slug with photosynthesis ability
Yes, you should absolutely contact the predecessor. It is good corporate diligence and failing to do so would be a bad decision on your part.

Have a script put together of what you are going to ask;
- Start with an overview.
- Allow them to back away if they feel uncomfortable about a question.
- Get a feel for what really went on.
- I agree with Jacquesm - take it with a grain of salt.

15 minutes on the phone with the individual will put you six months ahead if you take the position, or provide insight as to why you should pass.
I think it takes an actual "simple" project. Mine[1] was supposed to be trivial. Someone who comes now an see the 350 lines of code may think it was easy.

It wasn't. It's not even complete, and it took me several weeks of free time (much of which was spent simplifying my code).

[1]: http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/projects/ussm
To me, not getting a forthright answer (even after 'further prying') is a big red flag on its own.

At this point, I would wait until you received the offer, and then say something like "Look, unless there's a legal reason why you can't give me a full explanation of what happened, I'm going to need to know the whole story here. We're going to all be working very closely together and I need to understand how the company makes key decisions like budgeting before I make a decision to join you." If you still don't get a clear explanation, I'd think very carefully about taking the job - there's landmines under the surface you know nothing about.
You're right, and it seems to be an escalating trend. There are plenty of examples, but none as big as this. Maybe there will be more if the trend continues.
Also see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1048800 for the discussions about this when the news was broken on Google's blog.
API Design Guidelines
Analysts say attack on Google is part of widespread spying effort
From the text it seems that he already has the means to reach him.
This quote is awesome:

"Right before Christmas, it was, 'Holy s*, this malware is accessing the internal intercept [systems],'"
How would the Govt. know a company's servers have been hacked into unless the company discloses it?
The login form always uses HTTPS.
just speculation, Adobe might be on the list: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=17387
Because 'don't be evil' is one thing (a good thing).

But here they seem to be going for 'do the right thing', which is a whole different plan.

This will cost them, at least short term. That's part of what 'the right thing' means.

Originally they said they believed that collaborating would do more good than not doing.

Now they are saying that they no longer believe that, and will no longer collaborate.

I am sceptical, but I still applaud it.

We can be cynical too. Let us show them that those sort of actions are appreciated.

For instance, their share price is falling. Let those who are keen on real altruism buy shares to drive it back up.

Perhaps we can create a climate where good corporate behaviour is actually profitable, and where corporations and governments fear to be caught in the act of evil.
Government Hatches Secret Program to Lay Eggs
What's A Non-Programmer To Do? (addendum)
Flowers for Google in China
Almost everyone who responded to your comment thought you implied it was wrong :) I thought so because you used the word "accusation"
Or unless the Govt discloses that they know.

COINTEL anyone?
Curious that Maciej should cite John Ruskin, who could be utterly dogmatic. Henry James, Italian Hours, writes

I had really been enjoying the good old city
of Florence, but I now learned from Mr. Ruskin that this was a scandalous waste of charity. I should have gone about with an imprecation on my lips, I should have worn a face three yards long. I had taken great pleasure in certain frescoes by Ghirlandaio in the choir of that very church; but it appeared from one of the little books that these frescoes were as naught. I had much admired Santa Croce and had thought the Duomo a very noble affair; but I had now the most positive assurance I knew nothing about them. After a while, if it was only ill-humour that was needed for doing honour to the city of the Medici, I felt
that I had risen to a proper level; only now it was Mr. Ruskin himself I had lost patience with, not the stupid Brunelleschi, not the vulgar Ghirlandaio. Indeed I lost patience altogether, and asked myself by what right this informal votary of form pretended to run riot through a poor charmed flaneur's
quiet contemplations, his attachment to the noblest of pleasures, his enjoyment of the loveliest of cities. The little books seemed invidious and insane, and it was only when I remembered that I had been under no obligation to buy them that I checked myself in repenting of having done so.
I get nothing on that link. Perhaps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil ?
Somewhere out there someone posted a CSS set for Google Docs (the word processing portion) that achieves a similar effect. Just saw it mentioned; never tried it.

In Google Docs, under menu Edit or some such, there is the option to enter custom CSS.
I think that should give a large number of Gmail users food for thought.
Las Vegas Pest Control | Progressive Pest Control
Progressive Pest Control services the Las Vegas area. We have over 10 years of experience in pest control and can get any job done
This looks pretty similar to Nick Small's CPActiveRecord: http://github.com/nciagra/Cappuccino-Extensions/tree/master/...

Was there any code borrowed?
Two-qubit quantum system used to model the hydrogen molecule
Always try to get in touch with the other person. You are already listening to a biased voice (the emplyoer), listening to the other one is the least you can do for your career.
This news has really made my day. Let us hope this sets a precedent for other media and internet companies doing business in China who should no longer be complicit in the Communist party's suppression of the Chinese people. The Tibetans, the ethnic Bai, the Uighur, the victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the survivors of the Tiananmen square massacre, and masses of oppressed people in China should rejoice (and pray that this is the beginning of real change).

At the very least, more of the world is now aware of the importance of free speech and the lengths to which communist party of China will go to control it.
My Grey Expressions: रात और दिन | Day and Night
Proof of life on Mars 'to come this year'
What Happens To Mac Pirates
When Your Customer is Your Competitor: The Return of Roll Your Own
I read it like that initially as well, then I figured it might be the reverse.
Understanding Infrastructure 2.0- CNET blog by Cisco's James Urquhart
My two cents: companies check references on their prospective employees. The ethical ones ask you for a list and claim to contact only them; the unethical ones will contact anybody they please.

Your contacting the ex-employee is you checking up on the employer's references. To keep it completely above board, you should ask the org. for a list of references to check up the job. And if they don't list the previous guy, ideally, you shouldn't contact him. But be prepared for no offer irrespective of what they answer. :)

W/o more info, I can pretty much assume that the previous director was the one who had unrealistic expectations (i.e., wanted to spend too much). :)
This is pure speculation, but if the US government is willing to engage China on the back of what Google reported, China must have done something which threatens to weaken the US economy more than worsening their relationship with the Chinese government would.

It is no secret that the US and Chinese economies have a highly symbiotic relationship and are heavily dependent on each other - Americans buy the most Chinese production out of anyone else, while China is the main creditor of the US (just to name two examples).

If the US is willing to make the tradeoff I mentioned before, it should illustrate the gravity of what the Chinese government has done. That seems like a pretty scary scenario to me.

My guess is that the US government will not do anything big to seriously engage China on civil rights. I'm not even sure if I should hope they do or not. Again, this is only speculation, but fascinating.
YES. I agree wholeheartedly with you. This is something that I've wanted to do for years -- but unfortunately has been way too far out of the reach of my resources. For now.

Most of the comments here seem to miss the point: banks act as liaisons between people and money, and most banks -- even local ones -- aren't doing a good enough job at that, so there is a notable opportunity here.

For example, lending practices: there are many individuals with poor credit or financial liquidity issues that would still be reliable loan customers if the relationship was handled carefully.

And, other people here are missing the point about fees: these are not small sums of money which primarily target the poor. They are a poor tax. At what point did that become socially acceptable?

Then there's the problem of interest-bearing accounts. Financially savvy individuals don't bother investing in banks, because the yields are too low -- which in turn affects the bank's ability to lend.

So, yes. I'd love to see this.
Ironic given the attacks were via a 3rd party, proprietary, monopoly-market share, monoculture, bloated, insecure, not-very-good program for reading ISO standard files (Adobe Reader). Though Google said many of the attacks were via standard keyloggers.

Similar to the recent, "don't internet bank via Windows" warnings, it appears that anyone involved with human rights should shift follow the same advice for all their online correspondence. But that tech/security element seems to be lost because of the geopolitical drama.
Rumor: Sprint Working with Walmart on WiMax Build Out
This is a valid legal point, but not a valid moral one.

In a normal society, we recognize that being "legal" and being "moral" are different things, and that you cannot and generally shouldn't try to legislate for morality.

We expect individual citizens to behave both legally and morally. This means we sometimes expect citizens to do something that isn't strictly required by law (e.g. assisting someone who has been in a car accident rather than just driving by).

In law though, corporations are also "citizens" - but they have an additional obligation to act solely in the best interests of their shareholders (the shareholders can sue the directors for not doing this).

So we're left with a society in which all corporations not only are, but are legally required to be sociopaths.

There's a docufilm called "The Corporation" that makes this point fairly well.
Neural Nets with Psychedelics Generate Hallucinatory Psychic Movie in Concert
Did you find out if the CrowdFlower workers are more/less expensive compared to mturk (excluding CrowdFlower charges of course)? What I mean is there might be people wanting to work only under CrowdFlower's umbrella and asking more for their (proven) quality work.
I will hesitantly say yes.

However, Germany decided to encroach upon the sovereignty of other nations. This is where the line is crossed. And the USSR did change from the inside.

If you spend your whole life waiting for someone to save you instead of saving yourself, you will lead a life of desperate misery.
Or how about, "If I get this position, what sort of budget can I expect to be working with and what will I be expected to produce with that budget?"
Can anyone who knows history comment on whether or not it is truly a coincidence that the ratio of 1 mile to 1 kilometer approximates the Golden Ratio?

As an aside, Wikipedia doesn't have much on the historical development of the definition of a mile, but it has this amazing tidbit on the meter that I found fascinating:

Historically, the metre ... was designed to represent one ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole along Paris Meridian.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre
What are the current theories of memory and how we may exploit it to enhance our learning?
Found http://www.wired.com/search?query=memory+program while searching for that article about the guy that made that memory program. http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...
That's almost what banks actually do. In the Federal Reserve system a bank can literally write new money into existence with a flick of a pen.

What you're spending on food, rent, and iPhones day-to-day is a substance called bank credit that sprung into existence when someone, somewhere, applied for a loan. When they spend that bank credit it goes into circulation and eventually winds up in your paycheck.

The issuing bank doesn't need to find real money to service that credit until they either have to correct an imbalance with another bank (call for a Brinks truck), or increase their deposit with the Federal Reserve to cover their mandatory 9:1 credit ratio.

It's all paper money and bits now.
Adobe Investigates Corporate Network Security Issue
The greatest hacker in the world