skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> he literally qualified the idea of corporations engaging in anti-competitive behaviour with "if", as if this is some unproven supposition.

I don't think that's the right interpretation of that phrase. PG has been complaining about rent-seeking corruption for over a decade:

"[Buildings are ugly because of] the notoriously corrupt relationship between the government and construction companies." - http://www.paulgraham.com/usa.html, 2004

"[Corruption includes] construction firms that fund politicians' campaigns in return for government contracts, or rich parents who get their children into good colleges by sending them to expensive schools designed for that purpose." - http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html, 2005

"There are a lot of people who get rich through rent-seeking of various forms, and a lot who get rich by playing games that though not crooked are zero-sum...[There are] corrupt practices in finance, healthcare, and so on. Once again, that is exactly my point. The problem is not economic inequality, but those specific abuses." - http://paulgraham.com/ineqold.html, 2016

I think ghufran_syed's interpretation, using 'if' in the logical sense, is correct. (I think it was a poor way of expressing it.)

> It's clear he thinks startups are the larger effect.

I think he had plenty of opportunities to say that startups were the larger effect, and he didn't say that. This sentence would have looked different if he'd meant that: "But while there are a lot of people who get rich through rent-seeking of various forms, and a lot who get rich by playing games that though not crooked are zero-sum, there are also a significant number who get rich by creating wealth."

If startups were the larger effect, the natural way to end that sentence would have been "most get rich by creating wealth." His version was longer and wordier.

For what it's worth, I didn't get the impression that he thought startups were the larger effect, which is why the WaPo article sent me searching for something I might have missed.
Well those ideals are pretty subjective, I'd say that the ideal language would be flexible, performant, safe and productive. As those goals conflict with one another, the ideal language would find the perfect balance. I don't know if C has found that balance, but it has had a pretty good run.

Defining sets (enums) and memory access constraints (consts). I wouldn't describe that as high level from a conceptual or practical perspective. Namespaces are simple conceptually but not in practice. The same can be said about the beautiful logical consistency of S-expressions.
So if these businesses did earn money from DRM, you think they'd go "some extra profit by adding user tracking? Oh, no, thanks, we're good" and leave it on the table? Why?
The fun in that is gone, it has trickled into your wallet.
Yet, you have to have money to start with. A problem that I have.
I have been thinking of building an online marketplace called "unplaningobsolescence.com" that would only sell products with 10yr+ warranties but I haven't had the time.

P.S. yes I know that would be a terrible url for a online store but I like it.
A startup is a company with a new type of product or business model. That experimental aspect is the salient difference from a vanilla small business.

Having a brand new thing to offer the world often entails rapid growth (and the VC funding model demands it), but the idea that growth is synonymous with startups is peculiar to this here community.
Wasn't the purported reason why OpenSSL rotted that the developers were fully booked doing paid consulting and had no time to spend on maintenance? http://openssl.com/what.html
VRBO is actually starting to copy Airbnb's pricing model because they're losing. It has worse legal issues in many areas because it is outright short term rentals instead of hosted rentals. Additionally, the response rate and speed is much worse than Airbnb which is all that matters to most baby boomer users. My dad gets frustrated as soon as instant booking isn't available like a hotel room
Christopher Alexander on architecture and God
Sorting algorithm visualization
I'm personally very happy for GOG's success, but as I mentioned in response to 'Zikes, we do have to keep that in perspective here. Sadly, that "significant pushback" doesn't seem to stop certain big name game developers from pushing out new products that people will still pre-order by the zillion even though the launch of the previous title in the franchise fell over for days because the servers died or some such.
Sure, maybe. That doesn't really answer my question though.
So you mean what happens already in sensible systems?
I don't think he is drawing the connection you see there. I read it like you the first time.

I think he meant that he is surprised it is newsworthy and is also surprised at how rare they are. He was assuming these were more common, but not being reported on.
Wow. I'm a little surprised to read such a dim view of the lot of a software developer in the economist. I'm glad to see it in a mainstream publication, though.

I don't think that software development is necessarily a bad career, but I do think it has been vastly oversold relative to other paths available to well educated, hardworking people who can choose their own career path in the US. And I think that this overselling is a big part of a PR campaign to convince congress and the public that there is a shortage of software developers.

IN short, while this article presents an unusually pessimistic image of software development as a career, and I may not fully agree with it, I do welcome this rebalancing.
In the hedge fund industry we have a saying, pigs dream of flying and get slaughtered
Ask HN: Why are people offended by everything now?
There is currently a tendency where people are offended by things that wasn't a problem one or two years ago. For example I read about a software project that had replaced all occurrences of master/slave with leader/follower, my first thought was that it must be a joke, but it wasn't. It seems that is not only in the tech industry but everywhere, as it has even been a theme in latest season of the American sitcom "South Park".

Does anyone know what started all this?
Heads up to anyone considering using this: the author wrote their own crypto code[1]. I would recommend against using this until that is fixed... I've already spotted a few vulnerabilities.

[1] https://github.com/FedericoCeratto/owefs/blob/master/pycrypt...
speciality ecommerce has always been a moody market and a company like Etsy getting traded at this value is still just sentimental value. The company has had negative margins for a while, along with negative returns on all it's assets.

Operating cash flow is a mere 2% of the current market cap. This defines shambles unless it can really turn it's fortune around in '16-17.
Odor biomarker for Alzheimer's disease
I'd almost typed that same sentence in my original comment, but then I reconsidered. It turns out it's not reactionary laws I'm worried about, but the people being hurt. Even worse than over regulation is a marketplace of car manufacturers where the experience is convenient enough that some (relatively) high level of danger is accepted by the consumers.
Laziness is useful here. Lazy developers are among the most inventive, since invention generally involves wanting to automate something that you formerly had to do manually.
asymmetric key encryption is quite cpu intensive comparing to , say AES256.

why not use the asymmetric keypair to guard an AES key, and use AES to do the encryption instead, something like what https is doing.
> cobalt oxide used in the batteries could dissolve and leach out into the soil and ground water

... were it not for the fact that cobalt oxide is insoluble in water.
Government built robots, at that
It has all the usual suspects supplements that seem to do nothing at all.
Unix Sockets for Jetty 9.4?
In the long run, I agree with you, where new projects are concerned. At the same time, we have these mountains of C/C++ around that aren't going to go anywhere anytime too soon.

Remember the Y2K problem and how those programmers in the 60s and 70s thought that by the year 2000, surely their code would have been either fixed or rewritten.

At most, C and C++ are "dying" in the same way COBOL is - for new projects, other languages might prevail, but there are still mountains of legacy code written in it that nobody dares touch...
1 to 1000 – Scaling a Rails App on Heroku
> Plenty of people already receive checks from the government every month that they live on, in exchange for no real work responsibilities. There should already be a not-so-huge wave of accomplishment coming from all these people. [...] but there isn't

But that's no surprise -- the reason they're receiving the money in the first place is because they are unable to work in some capacity. It's need-based (old age, disability, etc.). The basic income system would give it to everyone, widening the demographic considerably.

>Just about everything that we consider a real advance comes from people working the system that exists using their own ingenuity, not from people allowed to escape the system by providing them an inalienable source of income.

It's not at all clear that lack of guaranteed income plays a roll in the 'ingenuity' of the working population. In fact, if we look at the extreme examples, founders of highly successful businesses often had significant family income that allowed them to accomplish what they have.
Because of competition. And not just of identical units, but also of alternative living arrangements and other more indirect substitutes. If I'm being charged $500/mo to live in my apartment, then moving in with my parents or some friends saves me $500/mo. If all the landlords raise rents $1000/mo, then sharing a space saves me $1500/mo, some of which can go to making that shared space more comfortable.
People want trustworthy marketplace, not the open marketplace where anything goes. This should be the core learning of last decade that has made Windows apps undesirable but App Store apps highly successful. The wetting price that companies pay is totally worth it and is recovered quite well from fees as well as increased sell. No one wants Amazon to be place where all deceivers can put out their listing as they see fit.

Current major issues are:

1. Sellers can name themselves as they like. For example, you can be a seller with a name of very recognized brand deceiving people that you are official source.

2. Sellers either omit information or publish incorrect one. For example, you can sell toys laden with lead and it would be just fine.

3. Amazon has been amazingly unsuccessful leveraging their own data. For example, they can ask simple question "Are you happy with X that you bought last week?" with just Yes/No and use that information to flag products for reviews. Getting rid of incorrect and incomplete listings can not be optional.

4. Listings are not properly conflated which makes people very confused and forces them to spend lots of time to find the "best" one. For example, there are probably dozen listings for exact same product like Syma 107G helies.
Which Design Jobs Pay the Most
Someone checked a bag with $11,000 cash in it that he saved up by waiting tables over 5 years? So many questions...
Charge people for support?

It works for ISC. Why wouldn't it work for OpenSSL?

Heck, it works for me (FreeRADIUS). Why wouldn't it work for OpenSSL?
Wait, are you telling me that every git repository isn't a full copy of the codebase that you could recover from?

Really? I find that hard to believe, but it makes me glad I use Mercurial if that's the case.
It's not surprising that compensation and perks of non-profits converge with those of for-profits in the same industry. They are hiring from the same talent pool.

Also, at the margins, I tend to think that perks allow organizations to hire more cheaply than wage increases.
If those officers are relatively certain the money is connected to drug activity, give them 30-90 days to build a case, or return the seized assets.. The wholesale forfeiture used is absolutely unconstitutional.
"Application Error"

Okay, maybe your web hosting shouldn't have been a 1 dollar thing too?

(I'm kidding. I'll bookmark this and come back later when the traffic dies down. Seems like a neat idea!)
Cool stuff. Slides for the talk at https://events.ccc.de/congress/2015/Fahrplan/system/event_at...

Time to get my hack on. :]
If I knew of a decent search function for HN comments, I could show you several. As it is, I can only offer my memory of what I have read in the comments here.

My impression is that Haskell "experts" here say some variant of "of course all this is obvious because category theory" (implying "you have to know category theory or you're an uneducated heathen") at least three times as often as they say "you don't really need to know category theory".
China subsidizes the postal service to keep up their exports.
Assuming those numbers are all true, we still need to lump in all of the other delivery services and other verticals that Uber/Lyft are attacking.

Then on top of this you've computed $100 billion per year which can easily justify a $50, $100, $150 billion valuation since you'll in theory be getting that $100 billion every single year
DRM is obfuscation.
Is that so unreasonable?
I think about this question a lot because and will eventually write something longer-form on it, but here's a short summary that builds on what others have said:

It's not that startups "need to grow quickly" -- when VCs say that, they're coming at it from the wrong perspective, and it's a source of a lot of confusion. It's that a good idea WILL grow quickly if you let it, and what you NEED to do is not get in the way of the natural growth of an explosively successful idea.

The perfect model that (most) VCs are trying to match is Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. A new innovative product that takes the world by storm and relatively quickly monetizes into something worth $billions.

VCs want the next Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp. That's why they're giving you $millions, and they know 9 out of 10 shots aren't going to hit. Because of the way VCs frame their desire for success, it's often confusing to folks on the frontlines and they hear it as "your mission is growth" vs. "your mission is to build something everyone on earth wants and then give it to them quickly."

Rapid growth is almost more a RESULT of a successful startup than it is a pathway. It's a symptom, not a task.

So what investors mean when they say "you need to grow quickly!" is more like: "We want to see you growing quickly, because that's a sign to us that you've hit the nail on the head."

Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp didn't have growth hacking teams. They didn't sit around saying "We need to stop working on the product and figure out how to grow! grow! grow!" They nailed it, they saw that everyone on earth wanted their product, and they enabled it to happen by not getting in their own way.
OnionCat – An Anonymous VPN-Adapter
I agree with everything you said, but want to offer an addendum.

There is still a ton of potential out there for faster and more efficient horses. You won't be a billionaire or on the cover of Time, but you can become insanely rich and seriously contribute to a better world.

The last job I left was at a medical diagnostics company focused in a niche oncology market, it started out trying to invent a crazy new diagnostics tool, failed, and pivoted to a somewhat traditional medical lab. We didn't invent new technology, we didn't have some insane research advantage, we heavily focused on customer service. We bent over backwards for our clients and remade traditional lab reports so they were much easier to read and 10x more visually appealing (our CEO's approach was "we are Neiman Marcus, Lab Corp and Quest are Walmart). The cofounder and CEO made close to 9 figures between IPO and later selling to a large multinational.
IMHO today cryptography and security are far more important and relevant than physical arms.

This sort of thing is why "I have nothing to hide" is not a legitimate justification for mass surveillance. Think of the abuse potential when dragnet surveillance is combined with machine learning and economic incentives for asset seizure. I can think of quite a few... umm... entrepreneurial things that might be done.
Yeah, I would never work there after reading this. This makes it look like a place where passive-aggressively policing behavior is common.

I'm not even one to say racist or do sexist things! This just smells ... bitchy I guess?
More dead police officers, and a lesser incentive for the police to rob the commoners, most likely.

EDIT: To the multitude of downvoters and angry replies: I didn't say I agreed! I'm just saying where these arguments usually logically end up.
I reject the notion that influential music is the only music of value.
Agree. Airbnb's valuation is very close to eBay's. So, that means that it's expected that in the near future AirBnB will generate at least $2-3 billion in net profits per year. Actually, it would have to be more than that, because investors expect even higher valuation on IPO. Peter Thiel stated he thinks AirBnB will be $100+ billion company, which would imply he expects at least $7 billion after tax profits in the near future.

Let's compare eBay to AirBnB.

eBay incorporated in 1996, AirBnB in 2008. After 6 years of existing, eBay's revenue in 2002 was $1.21 billion[profitable]. AirBnB's revenue after 6 years is $400+ million[not profitable].

Now, eBay got that revenue+profits by 2002 when:

> (1) there were only few hundred million people online - 7x less than now. Slow internet connection, ugly websites, no mobile.

> (2) people were somewhat insecure about transacting online and paying was pain in the ass.

> (3) they were only popular in the US, UK, AU and had recently entered Germany.

Compare that to AirBnB, which after the same number of years operates in environment where:

> (1) there are over 3 billion people online.

> (2) payments online are very common(booking hotels pioneered by other companies) and easy.

> (3) says it operates in 190 countries, 20+ languages.

Even after all these advantages, they only got 1/3 of eBay's revenue in 2002 with the same current valuation.
Well, we can't blame the costumers - what they have is good enough - how do you motivate them to keep buying the new version? It sounds kinda like the conundrum Adobe had :) Maybe there's a market for the GoPro CC edition?
With that in mind, maybe the government should seek to warn us that we're being monitored, even if/when we aren't in reality. Just to keep us on our toes.

To be really effective, it would be seem specific and personal: text messages that say things like "We can see you. We know what you're up to." Stuff like that.
Short list?
I had to look it up because it's so bizarre. The explanation is even more bizarre.

>Charles was carrying his cash because his bank has few physical branches and he and his mother were in the process of moving and he didn’t want to lose his life savings in the move while he was in Cincinnati.

So open up a Chase, or Bank of America, or <insert bank here> account instead of risking someone just stealing your cash in a checked bag that you won't be watching for a few hours, much less airport security?. I've lost bags at the airlines before and had them sent to the wrong cities and such.
>I don't think that software development is necessarily a bad career, but I do think it has been vastly oversold relative to other paths available to well educated, hardworking people who can choose their own career path in the US.

So what other paths are nicer, while requiring less up-front risk?

Law? Totally flooded with first-jobbers and fresh graduates.

Medicine? Salaries being suppressed and debts inflating unless you hit the right specialty.

Academia? Oh boy, basically just triple what I said about medicine.

At some point we just have to accept that the university-educated, white-collar professional class is being subjected to exactly the same wage repression and rentiering (on housing and education costs) as everyone else. We are all working-class now.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the type of level design you're talking about, but the Souls games follow a similar pattern, where areas branch off from a "main path" (such as it is), and different branches connect with each other and loop back on themselves.
PC Principal.
That is exactly what the project does:

"Every time a new file is being written, owefs_encrypt creates a one-time random key. The random key is encrypted using the public key and is embedded in the new file. The contents of the file are encrypted using such random key."
It's great that it works for you one on one, sincerely! I hope though that we will see more occurrences of OSS projects where N customers are sending money to directly finance the sustainability of the OSS product, just because it delivers value for them (not a moral obligation or PR etc - note that I'm not stating that Mozilla is doing this!).

I feel for libraries & components (unlike languages maybe, as we said), at that specific scale, it can work very well.
Ground control is much easier to secure. Instead of having to find a needle (hijacker) in a haystack (the millions of random Americans flying each day) with a 90 second search, you can do proper background checks on the small number of people who are allowed to be there.
Linux 4.1+ with ext4 supports filesystem level encryption, and it encrypts filenames. The implementation seems very complex, I'm not sure how mature this feature is. I think the state is probably "not production ready", but I don't know very much about this.

http://blog.quarkslab.com/a-glimpse-of-ext4-filesystem-level...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ft26lUQyuSpiu6VleP70_npa...
Oh, sorry. I though they have the same policy. I shouldn't wander away from my waters :)
This is great! I hope more Java projects follow suit!
You can use this same kind of logic to suggest that any system is broken.

Some of the cores on a complicated mobile device might have their own memories, and some of them might be isolated from the memories of other cores with silicon. I'm sure there are devices where there are insecure cores with no isolation at all --- just like there's a ton of C code that will read a URL off the wire into a 128 buffer on the stack.

The problem you're suggesting device designers have to solve --- allowing core A access only to a range of the total memory available "on the die" --- isn't a hard one.

From the suggestions you've made in your comments --- and I mean this respectfully --- I think you'd be very surprised by the hardware systems design in a modern mobile device. They are in some ways more sophisticated than the designs used for PCs.

So, the point of this subthread is that mobile devices are much more complicated than the simplistic ("no IOMMU? the baseband can read/write AP memory!") model proposed in the article. It makes an OK overall point (we should care about baseband security!) but uses a very flawed argument to get there.
U.S. Proposes Spending $4B on Self-Driving Cars
On the flip side, every time someone takes an Uber or rents a room on AirBnb, they pay the company.

I think the difference is that Uber and AirBnB's valuation assumes continue, explosive growth over the next decade.

Uber could slow and still grow at a decent rate and the valuation would plummet.
I do too.
It's probably worth noting that you can largely thank Ronald Reagan and his handlers for this legislation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Crime_Control_...
Why, No Exceptions, Everyone at Our Company Talks to Customers
The Prohibition of the state grabbing the possession of innocent people dates back to the Magna Carta and thus to the foundations of the legal systems of our civilization.

This practice simply is breaking the civil pact that holds together our countries.