skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Whenever privacy as a topic comes up in discussions on the forums I follow, a lot of people chime in with a fairly dismissive "no harm, no foul" kind of attitude. They don't mind the Eric Schmidts and Jonathan Schwartzes and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world proclaiming the death of privacy, because apparently no-one in the Facebook generation cares.

It's odd how when something like this becomes public, when everyday, non-geek people actually appreciate the implications of what is going on, there never seems to be a shortage of people who care, and whatever Schmidt says there obviously are examples of real harm being done.

I have been saying for a while that I think privacy and data protection will have to get worse before they get better. Right now, our societies are drifting into a situation where governments and megacorps can build databases for whatever purpose they want, because as long as that is all they are doing, the average guy in the street doesn't know or care.

But as we are seeing increasingly frequently now, those databases are subject to both deliberate abuse and accidental compromise. There can be consequences for very large numbers of people and/or very serious consequences for some of those people.

We need serious laws, with company-destroying penalties attached, to protect the privacy of individuals and regulate the collection of any kind of potentially sensitive, personally identifiable data in any database, and we need them before the frog is dead.
While it's true most Sartorialist "models" aren't overweight (and that's simply a result of the author's filtering), they aren't especially good looking either. They're just random people who happen to have very good fashion sense. That's the whole point of the blog after all.
Why?

Worked well for me, as the "1 technical guy."

Edit: I'm not "questioning" your wisdom. Rather, I'm asking for clarification.
None of the parties is disinterested.

If I purchase £50 GBP giftcard, then my friend wants to swap that in for 80% of the value, they get £40 to spend elsewhere. Now if CardPool sell the card back to the company for £45 they're both splitting the remaining £10. CardPool don't need the customer buyers in order to buy cards. They could presumably also deal with the companies to buy cards direct at a discount (as if they were an affiliate).

CardPool then have a few options. If they lower the swap value of company A then I'm more likely to use my money there. This can actually be bad for company A as whilst they can negotiate a potentially larger amount of the difference of a buy-back they also risk the customer keeping the card and actually using it. Which is a transactional loss for them but a potential win if they can gain repeat custom.

It's really quite interesting to consider the back room deals that might go on over this.
I don't remember who I'm quoting, but I think it is instructive: "There is a word for a technical employee who works for equity rather than salary. It is: 'co-founder.'" (And if not co-founder, a close runner-up is probably "fool.")
Try the direct links:

http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein1a.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein1b.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein2a.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein2b.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein3.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein4.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein5.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein6a.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein6b.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein7a.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein7b.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein8.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein9a.pdf
http://foia.fbi.gov/einstein/einstein9b.pdf
They had 90.000 users in October 2009: http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/11/google-acquires-aardvark-fo...
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IPhone app attacks climate change deniers
Actually, I think there is an interesting question here. Please bear with me, because I am not a lawyer and my knowledge of intellectual property law is limited, but here is what I think applies.

(1) There are various sorts of intellectual property, with different standards and rules. For instance, there is patent law: if Apple had a patent on the API of the iPhone then they could tell anyone not to use it except on Apple's terms. They don't have a patent. There are two other sorts of law which might apply: copyright law and trade secret law.

(2) Copyright law would allow Apple to go after anyone caught making copies of the API docs. But it would NOT allow Apple to prosecute anyone for mailing a printout to all their friends, nor could they prosecute anyone for knowing the API or for writing code that calls it. On the other hand, Apple clearly has a copyright on the API docs.

(3) Trade secret law is another possible area that might apply. The archetypal example of trade secret law is the "secret formula" for Coke. To be a trade secret, Apple's business must depend, to some extent, on keeping it a secret (I think we can safely assume this applies). Also, Apple must make an effort to keep it secret -- that's what the NDAs are all about. The point that the article raises is that perhaps Apple's willingness to share the "secret" to anyone with $100 bucks to burn weakens this to the point where they can no longer claim the full advantages of Trade Secret protection.

I believe that one of the things Trade Secret protection provides is the ability to constrain 3rd parties. Contract law allows Apple to sue the guy who leaks the API doc -- but perhaps he's a bum with $100 to his name: there's only so much they can do. Trade secret law (I believe) is what would allow Apple to tell OTHER people who got a copy from this bum to relinquish their copy and stop using the information. If Apple's low price and wide number of customers for the iPhone API have weakened this sort of protection, that is interesting.
Given the context the article lays I'd say not. Different people are able to learn, naturally, at different speeds. The article describes some techniques to increase the speed of learning, but in actuality all of them merely increase the ability to memorize quickly, which is hardly learning.
Brian Grant fighting against Parkinson disease
Brian Grant is best known for his dogged rebounding style and proletarian defense in NBA world. During his career he played with the Sacramento Kings
if one is designer, one is developer and one is product/marketing that's a good match I think.
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What the other guys said.

Also: Facebook is for kids playing Farmville and posting drunk pictures. I don't care what happens on there since all they have on me at this point is pretty much my name. I use Google daily for a variety of tasks and my life would be severely diminished if I had to stop using Google, so I would rather not. However, their behavior makes me question some of their services, policies and views on who can look at what. I wouldn't say I'm outraged, but I am at least surprised at the lack of tact from Eric.
I agree with everything that you say except that if we let things get worse I believe it will be to late to make them better.
Unfortunately that solution doesn't work so well in practice. The United States is one of the few countries in the world to tax income earned by US citizens in other countries. (The only other ones of which I am aware are North Korea and, while it was in existence, the Soviet Union.)

Furthermore, any US citizen who decides to renounce his or her citizenship is assumed to have expatriated for tax reasons if the tax liability is over $127,000 or the individual's net worth is at least $2 million. (Though those, of course, are not the only reasons that an individual will be assumed to have expatriated for tax purposes.) An individual who has expatriated for tax reasons must pay US taxes on all US-derived income for 10 years and if the individual returns to the US for 30 days in those ten years, all income earned abroad is taxable by the US government. If such an individual has the misfortune of dying during any year in which he or she spent at least 30 days in the US, the entire estate is taxable by the US government.

I'm not sure Stack's tax liability was $127,000, but given his problems with the IRS, I wouldn't be surprised if the IRS would have declared him expatriated for tax reasons had he tried to leave the country. Escaping the long arm of the IRS can be easier said than done.
US school spies on students with webcams
Firm uses typing cadence to finger unauthorized users
Ask HN: Should one avoid using niche technologies for a startup?
I am doing a startup with a small tech. team. We would like to use cutting-edge technologies like Clojure, Erlang, node.js, etc. which are not really mainstream but help in rapid application development and iteration.
The problem here is that in case of a potential acquisition by another company, the deal might get canceled because the technology we used is non-mainstream, and the acquiring company might face a lot of problems in maintaining the code-base.
So the question here is how do you deal with such issues? Should one compromise speed of development now in favour of an easy acquisition path tomorrow? How do you convince the `elders' in your startup about this?
I forgive mistakes. I don't forgive denial. As a user, I'd like to hear "I'm sorry" rather than "our users' concerns were unjustified and they don't know what they're talking about"
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This is where vesting schedules are everyone's friend.

I generally think that you should get a grant for the same number of shares that the three founders do, but if everyone's on a vesting schedule, they'll still own more than you for the next four years from today. After that, you'll all be on the same economics.

Here's the idea: let's say the three of them founded the company 9 months ago and they all have 100 shares each. You should get 100 shares as well, but let's put everyone on a vesting schedule that says you get 2.08% of your shares vested for every month served. So the three founders should get credit for nine months of service and 18.75% of their shares should immediately vest (as of the day you join) while you're at 0% vested. At month 48 after the company was founded, the three founders are fully vested while you're 81.25% vested. At month 48 after you joined the company, you're 100% vested and are on the same economics as the three founders.
Looking at Cameo Shores oceanfront homes-properties
I don't think they were scanned recently. I could be wrong.
Why in-stream video advertising is so bad, and how to fix it
>> "The only reason that I can see why this would be implemented in this way is either developer indulgence or developer ignorance."

That's quite ridiculous. Any framework is there to solve most problems reasonably well, and to make things easier for developers who may not have the skillset to delve into inner workings etc. A custom solution will always be better, and if you're working at scale like facebook is, it could be orders of magnitude better.

>> "You're assuming that jQuery isn't fast."

'fast' probably isn't the best word to use, since it's all relative. I would say it is certainly non-optimal.
I get a MySQL error, but from the URL, I guess that's the product (manufacturer page): http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/micro-digital-storage-oscil...
It is pretty big. If someone has time to digest all this, I'd love to read some summary.
Read the equity equation if you haven't already done so: http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html
> When in doubt, copy everything from Tom Ford's A Single Man movie.

Great; now I can look forward to male hackers wearing bright white angora sweaters everywhere.
> If you have used an analogue scope with it’s vast array of dials, knobs and switches trust me this device is simplicity itself to use in comparison.

I think I'd prefer to be able to adjust what I need quickly rather than have to select through a menu. I'm a bit surprised that the opposite is being mentioned as a feature. Is it just me?

Not that I think I can object for $89. Although I think I'd prefer a PC card for my laptop and some software instead.
Deploying a Django Site using FastCGI
I guess you hadn't noticed that git has a very nice gui.
Errrrmmm. If you're an American with a degree, it's pretty trivial. It's certainly trivial when compared to what people have to go through to get into the US.

I know a lot of people who have relocated to NL (me), UK, DE, or FR.

1. Americans can travel freely to most countries in Europe, for business or vacation, no visa required. Once there, you can go on job interviews, and firms with many internationals will have no problem arranging a work visa for you. Alternatively, you can arrange the work visa yourself, which is also pretty easy.

2. Many countries (Holland, for example) have agreements that American entrepreneurs can start their own businesses. You just have to show that you will not be a drain on society (i.e. you buy health insurance and have some money in the bank), and that you will be making a 'substantial investment' in your company (usually less than $10k)

3. I studied here, a one-year M.Sc. (which cost less than $15k and was of a surprisingly high quality), and they gave me a green card for a "job-seeking-year", during which I can work anywhere... but have switch my visa to a normal work permit before it expires. It took me 5 days from getting the permit to switching it to a regular permit.

4. Or you can just find a foreign partner, you don't even need to marry them in some countries. Sometimes that's enough, other times they need to show that they earn enough to take care of you both (in case you can't find work), but the threshold is so low it's a joke ($30-35k yearly salary).

Bad news is: Americans living abroad still have to pay US-income tax, if you make a lot of money. You'll have to stay in your new home for a while and get citizenship (5+ years), renounce your US citizenship, and even then they can come after you for a while...

I know so many US expats over here, and only a few have had visa-related issues (all resolved well). Most of those were because someone didn't do their homework, or didn't take it seriously. All of them pale in comparison to the visa-issue that I've heard from expats living in the US.
The "rumors" reference is to the ThinkSecret lawsuit, not to this SDK.

And I'll think you'll find the SDK can not be purchased. There is a way to obtain a license that grants you some rights to use it.
That's right. The URL (points to a review of the product) still seems to work for me, but the product is a pocket sized, 1 channel 1MHz scope with a PC interface.

I'm crossing my fingers for a logic analyser version.
Watch Mad Men and copy Don Draper?
The facts on low interest credit cards
This has to be good news, anything that advances commonly used tools improves software development in general. Whether you like subversion or not.
Also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114804
If I had to guess, Eric Schmidt thinks he can't apologize. At this point, they've set a big precedent: they're willing to automatically network you based on information that you've given them. If they apologized, they'd have to neuter future roll-outs and remove this automatic user base, removing a major competitive advantage. How many other businesses have products that are popular enough to piggyback a social network? Not many. Google can, and they want to keep it that way.
This site would not exist and none of us would be here had pg not been successful with Viaweb, which utilized Lisp. I think that PG and company were probably bright enough that things would have worked out with other technologies too, but Lisp made them happy and more productive, I guess.
They need an app for that I'm afraid...
I've seen a guy pull it off. But it was in a more casual setting (still well dressed).
> Dress Suits

As soon as they make suits incorporating Polartec and Goretex I'll think about wearing suits. Until then I prefer my comfort over pretty much anything. I make exception only for funerals and weddings.
To add to the list, for those who don't know about it, there's spaced repetition software. There are some situations where rote memorization is indeed useful, e.g. learning vocabulary (well _using_ the vocabulary is better, but memorizing is a good first step). I personally use Mnemosyne, but there are lots of such programs (the most well-known being Supermemo), many web apps too.

Here's a database of reviews of flashcard-type software: http://learn.how.to/
Show HN again: My new spec list app, Speckle - now with a homepage.
As with doctors: Always get a second opinion.

You can also post pictures of yourself in different outfits on hot-or-not, for a rough guide.
Sorry for the re-post - last time I forgot to add a homepage and the response was justifiably poor!
But Subversion's UI is horrific and its common operations throw away data in many cases. If Git is the Linux of version control systems, Subversion is the Windows of version control, and I don't mean that as a compliment. At least it's possible to get Linux working.
The text fits the design of her site. I actually had no problem reading it as she has it spaced very well.
1MHz maximum sample rate.
I agree, but not everyone can sell a company to Yahoo! They probably didn't care about re-writing the app in PHP. They did it for del.icio.us too. What about selling to companies which that not so technically competent but would still like to buy your product? It's so much easier to hire Java/PHP/Ruby/Python people compared to Clojure,Erlang,Haskell people.
No company should have to play to the lowest common denominator.

Well, if you boast that you have hundreds of millions or even a billion users... You might want to spend a lot of time thinking about the lowest common denominator.
This search: http://searchyc.com/school+web?sort=by_date

Finds this item: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1134022

It's a different report, but that item has many, many, many comments.
That really depends of people, I've spent almost one third of my life living in foreign countries and I don't really feel that it's a drag...
And on the contrary to the article, I do feel that I belonged in the different cities I've lived... I do however tend to want to move after 3-4 years in one place, get the rush again from discovering a new place...
http://xkcd.com/150/
> - Do not have your suit dry cleaned more than once every two years unless something catastrophic happens. Just hang it on a quality hanger after you take it off and let it air out.

My mother-in-law swears on hanging your woolen suit in the bathroom while you take a shower. The steam helps with the airing out.
True in Austin also. Jeans + t-shirts + sneakers are pretty much standard. Causualness is further necessitated by the heat in the summers.
Maybe they'll be using a 56.6kbps modem?
I guess shoes are easy to judge for women.

> And it angers me our society makes it fashionable for women to hurt themselves with really painfully uncomfortable shoes.

Me too. I am just glad, that `nice' shoes for man are comfortable, too. At least after you have walked in them for a few days (or weeks) and the leather has become soft.
I will not buy this game... solely based on this review.
And the expensive stuff for men is usually quite comfortable. (Though you have to put down a lot of money on a suit to get as comfortable as you get with even very cheap T-shirts.)
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If we fix the problems now, wouldn't it get better in 75 years or so, when all the currently surveilled people are dead?

(Admittedly, that's still a terrible situation.)
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Click on the "Follow the Money" link at the end of the first paragraph for a fascinating video.

Also check out http://www.wheresgeorge.com.

There's more info on the group's homepage, especially The Origin of Wheresgeorge Research - http://rocs.northwestern.edu/research/wgstory.html.
This reminds me of Morse operators, who are recognisable by their "fist", or transmission style. I guess it's like recognising anything if you do it enough.
The problem the post (and the post this one references) is making is that google is an ambiguous solution. A search for "Facebook login" likely brings up the login page for Facebook as the first hit, but it's not guaranteed. If, for some reason, the rankings change, and something else happens to end up at the top of the rankings, that's where it goes to.

The users (and you) are behaving as if the semantics of that behavior patterns mean "take me to the Facebook page". Firefox & Google on the other hand uses the semantics of this to mean "go to the first ranked result of the search".

It's like going to a vending machine to get a candy bar (Snickers). The one you want happens to be at "a1". So you insert your money and hit the buttons for "a1". For a year you get the the Snickers bar you wanted. The semantics of "a1" mean "Snickers" to you, and the rest of the office, by this point -- but to the machine "a1" always means "a1".

Now, Joe, the vending machine guy decides to restock the machine one day and just so happen to put the Snickers at "b4" and the Pork Rinds at "a1". So the next day you come in to get your mid-afternoon Snickers and you dutifully hit "a1" just as you've trained yourself to do. Because remember, to you "a1" means "Snickers". The machine sees "a1" and thinks to itself "retrieve whatever item is at a1" not "retrieve the Snickers for samdk". You start to eat your Snickers, thinking to yourself "wow Mars Corporation really changed the packaging." You take your first bite and spit it out "WTF!!!! These Snickers are horrible!!!".

What I'm proposing is that if Joe the Vending machine guy sees that everyone equates "a1" with "Snickers" then instead of mapping keycodes to positions in the machine, he maps them to particular products. "A1" will always be "Snickers". So even if he moves it to "b4" inside the machine, the mapping of "a1" to "Snickers" still holds and the machine give you what you mean, not what it means.
Kublax Finance. I will not die dammit Announces poss deal with SimplyFinance.
I can't tell you how many startups I've run across who are deperately looking for programmers who know [insert cutting edge/obscure technology here].

Because they can't find anyone they like, they are stuck making bad/deperate hires or with the prospect of rebuilding the codebase. The list of technologies that are tough to hire for vary by market. In my midwest market, Rails still falls in that group and I know a ton of companies that can't find the talent they need. Do your best to stick with the technology stack that has the largest candidate pool in your market.
Well, just wait until Apple decides it's not feasible to support the original iPhone with iPhone OS 6.0 (or whatever).

Different phones have different hardware capabilities, obviously. Newer Android versions may not even run on older hardware. Even if they do, some manufacturers may not see commercial value in porting, building, testing, and supporting a newer version of Android on their older devices. It's a shame, but that's just how it is.
You might want to have the notifications appear above the bar at the top of the page, gmail style. That way you won't rejigger the content when the notification disappears.

Also, I see you're using sass :)