skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems like whoever answered this e-mail isn't a native English speaker, and so probably doesn't use the word "webmaster" the same way as you would.
Why not 4M on safe 1% fund and 1M on riskier investment like stocks from Bluechips?
Damn text. So hard to get sarcasm sometimes. It was, right?
would have liked to have known about this.
No, he means Weka: http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/
Well on the face of it it is a reasonable concern. But if the system has a keylogger there is very little you can do to protect your user. It is a very poor attempt at security through obscurity.

If the users system is compromised there is nothing you can do. Sacrificing general security for that case is silly.

The best defence to a keylogger attack is to have a secondary number vaidation alongside the password that requires you to enter a random subset of that number each time (eg 1st, 2nd, 8th).
Can't find the Anything book, can you please give a link?
Wikia is hiring in SF and Poland. Both technical and product roles.

http://www.wikia.com/Hiring
You're welcome. If you want more specific info mail me.
Wow, that's pretty bad, but it's got nothing on one 'security' measure I ran into on an online college application site.

To enumerate, the password had to:

- have exactly 8 characters

- contain characters from 3 of the following 4 groups

-- lowercase letters

-- uppercase letters

-- numbers

-- ? . , _ - + = $ ! –

There were also some things that the password could not do:

- be a dictionary word

- contain any series of characters in your username

All of this was enforced.
Ah, I actually sent them a mail telling them what I did and a few minor implementation details (and apologized for, ahem, liking their implementation too much).

Alas. No money to be made here :)
His newer book "Investors Manifesto" is even better and incorporates the recent recession. As always, it's brilliantly structured and easy to read.

http://www.amazon.com/Investors-Manifesto-Prosperity-Armaged...
Buy GOOG.
basecamp or tadalist
Absolutely. If/when Android has tethering "out of the box" I doubt I'll continue to run alternative kernels.
There are about half a dozen different kinds of institutional stupidity that could lead to a response like this. I'm not sure which kind of stupid worries me most. Do they let their customer service team just make shit up? Do they train them this way? Do they really think we're that stupid? Are they really that stupid? Gah.
"They sound like they are suggesting reducing the possible keyspace is a _good_ thing."

I disagree. If a password is lost on the user side, it's probably going to be due to a keylogger, phishing, or a trojan.

Requiring short passwords doesn't make the user any more vulnerable to phishing, and it may make it harder for keyloggers or trojans to identify the password. And since the bank locks your account after three wrong guesses, there is no vulnerability from brute force attacks, especially with an RSA token.

The number of people who lose their bank password from shoulder surfing or people noticing keyboard wear is probably virtually zero, so optimizing your system to prevent against these scenarios makes no sense.
I don't think the idea is so much to grow that one site's revenue from $50 to $500 by making it a full fledge property that attracts attention.

The idea is to build 400 small $50 properties that stay low-key and bring in a small but sustained amount of rev each month.

From your effort, it seems like you tried to make one large property which I can see as being harder to pull off for this particular strategy.
> More likely, they will simply raise taxes to cover the debt load.

Historically unlikely. Democracies favor inflation, at the expense of mostly foreign creditors, over higher taxes, at the expense of the average voter.
There are a number of prominent financial sites with similar policies, check out this cringe-inducing rundown: http://weakpasswords.org/list/
If only Excel had some kind of Flight Simulator...
Who's keeping them honest? 90% of people applying for jobs as security advisors or programmers or web developers or directors-of-logging-people-on are not going to understand about security. (I'm sure that most people would say that number is being very gracious about the quality of people applying for IT jobs, but I'm going with Sturgeon's Law to be safe.) Half of the remainder are the sort of people who won't do a good job without being cajoled into it, so unless their manager understands about security, we're out of luck.

So then, if they hire one of the majority, what happens to them? Not very much. At worst, some people on Hacker News complain about it for a day or two when it becomes clear that they aren't doing their job, and they get a little bad press. At next-to-worst, someone breaks their system and commits a lot of fraud, but they can write a press release with a lot of handwaving and pretend that it's fine until it happens again. It's not as if the mainstream press is in a better position to judge the actual facts of the matter.
When I first started school we were required to have 7-8 characters as well and the reasoning was in the faq: certain systems had not been upgraded to handle more than 8 characters which was interesting, I'm assuming it was certain computer terminals that hand't been upgraded as the restriction is now at 20 or 30 characters.

But they had a similar way to increase security as your online application:

Must contain 3 groups:

- uppercase

- lowercase

- numbers inserted in between normal characters

Special characters were optional but welcome.
The interest rate is high because of perceived risk. Just be aware that states have defaulted:
http://www.publicbonds.org/public_fin/default.htm

The largest default in the history of the municipal bond market was the Washington Public Power Supply System's (WPPSS) default on $2.25 billion in bonds. WPPSS launched a risky program to build five nuclear power plants in the 1970s to supply electricity to the Pacific Northwest. Only one of the five planned nuclear plants was ever completed. The WPPSS fiasco gave a lot more credibility to concerns that tax-exempt bonds were not a completely safe bet.
You have some excellent points, and I think I learned some interesting things from your post.

I must disagree with one sentences though: I expect non-English immigrants to my country to at least know some basics, and 99% of them seem to.

I think this depends on where in the US you are, but where I live there are many people that seem to know absolutely no English at all, even after living here for many years. They seem to insulate themselves through friends and family that can speak English.

This slightly annoys me actually when I have to deal with it. I know some people are just learning English and I know some are tourists who will never master it, and I will bend over backwards to understand and help someone that is making an effort (when I visited Mexico I know my Spanish was atrocious every time I tried, so I sympathize with them). But when they have been here for a long time and made no effort to learn the language, I find it..irksome.
That may be a part of it, but I think it's a lot more complex than that. There are a lot of trans women involved in computing, and while lots of them report losing their aggression, I've never heard of any of them losing their interest in startups/technology.

http://grok-code.com/37/famous-programmers-from-adleman-to-z...
So you think these are easy problems? What would be an example of a secondary math curriculum that is better?
I find this refreshing about Andrew:

"I didn't want to do a confrontational interview where I'd either come down hard on him or slam TechCrunch. That's not me. I want to help build people up, not tear them down."
That's great until someone gets access to their user database and is able to crack every password in very little time. Increasing the key space (both through longer passwords and more allowed characters) makes these sorts of attacks far more difficult.

And if you think it's unlikely that AmEx will ever lose control of their user database, you clearly have not been paying attention the last few years.
People are inadvertently "stealing" each other's ideas all the time. For example, Seth Godin's idea from yesterday about live presentation construction software for the iPad. I tweeted the same idea during the iPad keynote but there's no way he "stole" it from me. Ideas simultaneously spring up everywhere because we're all having similar/related experiences and our minds aren't that different.
1) What about buying property and renting it out? It requires maintenance and oversight, but it will most likely generate much more than 4-5%.

2) You can lend money on sites like prosper.com. If you spread your money of hundreds/thousands loans, it's pretty safe. I've seen some numbers somewhere, people were sharing their success/default rates, it's not that bad.
Well, to be pedantic, the best defence to a keylogger attack is a two-factor system. (RSA Fob, Smart Cards, and the like)
This faux disgruntled move from Apple to Android trend is kind of sad. They're showing it off and blogging it like it makes them a 'maverick' when in fact it's just a "Grass Greener" situation.

There are advantages and disadvantages to either platform, but don't pretend Android is a panacea of freedom. My friend has a t-mo MyTouch and it STILL doesn't have Android 2.0 available. The carrier/manufacturer refuse to put in the effort to deploy it for his handset.

He's completely fucked and if he wants the new OS he has to buy a new phone.

If Apple forced people to buy a new phone to upgrade their OS (with all the benefits thereof) they'd file a class action lawsuit.

But as soon as it's Google/Carrier-Not-AT&T/manufacturer with them waving the "FREEDOM" flag next to a sign that says, "Don't be evil", they get a free pass.

Give me a break. This whole post was poorly written, sophomoric and not thought out at all. He's making a buying decision based on pure conjecture based upon the "FREEDOM" advertising Google has been doing.

Personally, as someone who is planning to begin deploying mobile apps soon, I'll be deploying to Apple.

You can keep your rose-colored glasses.

Utter foolishness.
One aneccote disproves his thesis?
I think I hurt my palm when it hit my face.
"Peer review "is not falling apart", but it's taken a severe body blow. No longer will anyone be taken seriously who stakes a claim on the basis that it was peer reviewed."

No, you're exaggerating.

There's a difference between peer-reviewed scientific publication, and what the IPCC does, which is to aggregate and summarize the findings of peer-reviewed scientific publications. And though the panels assembling the IPCC report let through some questionable material, these errors of inclusion neither invalidate the hundreds of other lines of evidence in the reports, nor do they invalidate the system of peer review.

(Also, not incidentally: claiming that the glaciers are melting more slowly than argued in the IPCC report doesn't mean that they're not melting.)
Yes, that's true, but because Android uses a completely new/private windowing system, none of your Debian-based applications can access either the framebuffer or the windowing system, so you'd be completely limited to running CLI packages. The best this would really offer is the ability to run an SSH daemon on the phone that you could access from a remote system, although be careful to avoid the iPhone SSH / root password vulnerabilities...
True. Though as it turns out she was actually helping him organize the conference which was due to be on the next day. (The Interview must be from Friday)
If you're not popular, only a few people will notice your product is good. Being popular helps your good work being noticed more publicly.

The only reason Hunch.com got so much popularity on launch is because it was a project by Flickr founder Caterina Fake. If you or I had made an exact site, it wouldn't have got even 1/10th the coverage. Being popular helps if you can repeat your past successes.
I actually don't agree with the in-crowd - normal philosophy. As long as someone works hard and gives good focus then the chances of someone being highly successful is pretty good. As I always say, 99% effort, 1% luck.
It's quite laughable really, if I'm logging into my bank I type HSBC.co.uk first, anything following that is my International Banking number, following that is my password (which is the best defence you state) and date of birth. If I was required to enter all 8 numbers my password would be the easiest thing to catch.

The only better defence I can think is to have a user enter 3 genuine numbers from their password and 3 randomly generated numbers given to you, but it the 6 numbers are requested randomly. Requesting only random genuine numbers gives you encryption by hiding the sequence of the numbers, if you are also hiding the genuine numbers it's two levels of deceit.
If a business completely relies on getting a post on TechCrunch for distribution then that's a serious problem. There are plenty of other blogs and news sites, not to mention other ways of getting a message out.
Let me preface by saying I don't subscribe to EMH. With the people I work with, everything is fundamental analysis. I don't have much by way of suggestions for learning technical analysis.

I recommend basically reading books by:

Peter Lynch, Phil Fischer, and then chapters 8 and 20 of the Intelligent Investor. The book, Applied Value Investing, is also a pretty good place to start that actually does a lot of things well, combining both theory with practical case studies.
-Reading the Buffett Partnership letters (not the Berkshire letters) is very helpful for someone managing small sums of capital, say below $10M

In addition, you need to read and learn about financial accounting and valuation. John Tracy's How to Read a Financial Report is a good starter... for valuation Aswath Damodaran has a pretty good book that can be combined with McKinsey's book on the subject. Beyond that, some more advanced accounting books, especially forensic stuff is great to know. Financial Shenanigans and Creative Cash Flow Reporting are where I'd start with that.

To be really good you also need to read quite a bit about psychology/mental models. Look for speeches/lectures by Charlie Munger. Books like Stock Market Wizards/anything that contains a ton of interviews with investors are also great. Reminisces of a Stock Operator is pretty good for giving you an account of the ups and downs that come with investing -- the guy the book is based off of blew his brains out. Studying financial history is also a must, especially with learning about prior bubbles.

Finally, you just have to commit to reading a whole lot, every day, and becoming a learning machine.
I don't understand a lot about keyloggers. How would less characters in a password make it harder to find within a keystroke log?
I think genetics is the main factor. I've known a few people who never floss, brush once a day in the morning, eat pretty much whatever they want, go to dentists once every five years, and never have cavities. On the other hand, I'm very careful to floss before sleep and brush twice a day, but I still end up with a cavity or two every year.
Agreed, if you really want to prevent keyloggers simply stop online banking. That's never going to happen, so decreasing the security of your entire system is stupid.
his blog:

http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/
It is in the california state constitution that bonds be paid first, then payroll, then everything else.
This is the best advice in this thread, and what I would do.

Particularly the advice to park it in a Money Market fund until you are confident you know what you want to do.
It sure does, he provided a counterexample to an absolute statement (".. is simply not possible").
Steve Jobs compared to Goebbels and bad grammar. Flagged.
actually what became of Steve Yegge?
When I signed up for facebook it suggested friends that I had no connection to outside of e-mail, and afterwards has suggested friends that again I have no connection to outside of e-mail, so my experience is in direct conflict with yours.

They do (or at least did) allow FB Connect using sites to check whether an existing e-mail address was associated with a facebook account via submitting a hashed copy (if memory serves, it's a plain md5 hash). Their developer site is down at the moment so I can't verify the exact mechanisms they (claimed) to be using to store e-mail addreses, and which e-mails they store, and what you can access through the Connect API.
In short, forget interesting projects, spam and SEO are the way to go :P
No, on the contrary, I tried exactly that, but it seems that some stuff develops traction and the majority simply bombs.

So very few sites land on that '$1/day' target.

Maybe it's my lousy aim!
"Getting back to Apple A4, Steve Jobs incorrectly addressed Apple A4 as a CPU. We're not sure was this to keep the mainstream press enthused, but A4 is not a CPU."

Actually, the wrote about SoC in the press release:

"iPad is powered by A4, Apple’s next-generation system-on-a-chip. Designed by Apple, the new A4 chip provides exceptional processor and graphics performance along with long battery life of up to 10 hours."

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/27ipad.html
1000:1 is a meaningful standard.

There is a point where it becomes unbelievable to say someone is 1000 times better than the top 100,000 people out of however many billion are on the planet right now. A look at any competitive sport or Olympics will show that top athletes are winning by a razor's edge in the milliseconds.

Would you believe it if someone claimed to be a million times better at a certain skill than the top people in the world? The magnitude of difference definitely matters, and let's not delude ourselves into inflating these ratios higher than they actually are.
Would you mind pointing out how your domains are hosted and registered? Thanks
Agreed. Not to mention the article's lack of substance beyond existing news reports.
Lessons Learned From Youthful Transgressions
I'm currently in the middle of dental school, and unfortunately this technology can't completely replace 500,000 rpm air turbine drills (a technology that is, to correct the article, NOT from the 1880s).

Here's the problem: bacteria (specifically, the acid they produce from metabolism of sugars) demineralize the hydroxylapatite of enamel (the stuff covering your teeth). Enamel is not biologically viable and therefore does not have the ability to _regenerate_. But it can, under certain circumstances, _remineralize_. SO, eliminating harmful bacteria using plasma technology WOULD give portions of enamel the opportunity to remineralize.

Unfortunately, if a caries lesion ("cavity") penetrates to the point that it reaches underlying, vital tooth structure (dentin, pulp), then surgical removal of the infected tooth tissue is the only way to effectively treat the growing lesion. Bacterial control by plasma at this point would be insufficient to keep the structure of the tooth crown sound. Thus, you need a drill to cut away tooth structure.

Furthermore, I object to the article's use of "sterilize". It's important to understand that epithelial or mucosal surfaces covering the human body can never be sterilized ("all living organisms eliminated except prions"). The bacterial load can only be reduced, never eliminated.

Then again... this article is a TechCrunch production, so what do we expect?
Ben way on entrepreneurship and his recent projects.
Très grandes boobies.
On http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ you can read:

"Adobe seriously considers all feedback to the SWF file format specification. E-mail any unclear or potentially erroneous information within the specification to Adobe at flashformat@adobe.com."

Has already someone asked for clarification of these details? I ask because the answer would state a lot about Adobe's relation to open specifications.
which is what my bank does. (Lloyds).
Looks like women created a cycle that men are abusing.

As a reforming beta I hope it's true. As a member of civilization I hope it's not. :(
Ah. Thanks for the correction.
In my continuing review of the dental primary literature and frequent consultation with dentists (my professors), I have found that genetics actually play a minor role in the frequency that an individual develops dental caries lesions.

More important factors include:
(1) frequency and dose of fluoride
(2) bacterial ecology of the mouth (possibly related to genetics, but also inextricably linked to the environment to which the individual has been exposed since birth)
(3) FREQUENCY of meals -- look up "Stephan Curve" or the unethical "Vipeholm Study" if you are interested in this...
Fake, right?
TextEdit, yes.

But I Googled "mac utf-8 editor" and found this page at the top:
http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/utilities_editors_macosx.htm...

There are a lot of them, and they didn't even mention "vim" (as long as your terminal supports UTF-8).
Dupe, and already discussed extensively:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081241
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1084212
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094068
Well, for starters, the old traditional one that focused on math and not calculators (beyond graphing; being able to quickly turn an equation into a graph is useful, particularly for the calculus).

I personally found the Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II sequence to be good. Algebra I teaches you symbolic math. Geometry teaches you geometry, analogs to algebra (the algebraic discoveries of the Greeks were done with geometry) and introduces you to formal math including proofs. Algebra II brings it all together with serious analytic geometry and more algebra (and hopefully includes matrices); you need a really strong foundation in both to master the calculus.

After that, briefly do enough trig to be prepared for calculus (see related comment below) and finish up your pre-calculus ending with limits.

At that point I draw an arbitrary line ending secondary math, although of course that's not how it's done, especially in the rest of the world.

Things NOT to do:

Avoiding "drill and practice".

"hands-on labs that require [ Algebra I students ] to collect data, make conjectures, and draw conclusions"

Actually, their "ADVANCED INTEGRATED MATHEMATICS" doesn't sound at all bad, except that the binomial theorem is something you should have learned early in Algebra I. It probably is a much better way to introduce trig, which it deadly dry and apparently pointless in the traditional sequence.

Back to the things that set off warning bells:

An "inductive approach to calculus".

"Working within contexts whenever possible" (the emphasis suggests to me that they aren't just doing the standard physics applications).
Thanks for posting this, hadn't heard about it before and looks like a good fit.
Well yes you would generate the number those ways. The keylogger defence is actually in the random subset of numbers asked for. It completely destroys any attack it could make by never giving it a single complete picture :-)
And one can also deduct that the event took place not too long ago since he said "people think I've been playing around with my Macbook Air for weeks now" (or something along those lines).

Beginning of January sounds good :)
It's debatable whether that's even true, but the argument goes something like 'if a unique, non dictionary string pops up with some regularity on the keyboard input it is probably a password', and longer strings stand out more against the background. A 1 character string would never stand out, but a 100 character string would stand out after only two uses.

So longer strings have their own vulnerabilities, but these may not weigh as much as the reduced keyspace of using a shorter string. You can pretty much assume that anything 6 characters or shorter has been entered in to a dictionary.