skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is an interesting idea but I don't know that it's Steve's style. I could see him doing a deal with Bing while also buying a startup or building a team to do search in-house.

The problem with buying Yahoo is all the other crap you would get along with search and ads. If Apple were to buy Yahoo and then gut all the other services they offer they would be the bad guy, but I also don't think they would want it all on their balance sheet.

Maybe they could do a deal for a stake in Yahoo in return for a search deal but it would probably require that Yahoo not get into bed with Microsoft like they are planning. I don't think the Yahoo management has the gumption to make a play like that.
Here's an interview with the founder, which includes a screenshot of a message view.

http://www.emailserviceguide.com/2009/10/interview-with-jere...
it's a fair and legitimate point that it's easier for already famous people to get their company acquired than it is for a nobody <-- you are pointing out the obvious. And your point?

It's naive to think that only products remarkable by your standards should see success in the market place.

It's another thing to be jealous of the success of others, because the world is not a zero sum game.

I'm done with this pissing match, I think I already said too much - say whatever you want, but your subtle attack on Friendfeed is malicious and I do not agree.
There's nothing especially secret or noteworthy in my inbox, so I don't really mind if the admin of the server it's stored on can read it. Go ahead, knock yourself out. What I do mind is Google coming up with new features, connect email with social networking, and in the process expose incidental information to my peers; eg. Maro knows X, X said Y on Twitter, how does that reflect on Maro?
What happens when they start making mirror coated missiles?
The article seems to assume that the company is worth it. According to TechCrunch they have more than 90000 users and process 3000 queries per day. Their FAQ says that they have 20 employees.

I can see that there is some value in knowing where and when people are asking a question related to a product. And I guess this kind of service could help Google to expand in the third world where most people only use mobiles to access the internet

But $50 million still is a lot of money for 20 employees, 90000 users, and about a Gigabyte of data.
I used to think this way, until I stepped back and abstracted it a bit.

Look at it from further away, and it's behavior based on fear that's become harmful. It's identical to people afraid of flying, driving, swimming, going out in public, etc. But those are seen as disorders, and how does society handle them? By pointing out they're harmful, and offering help.

How does society handle computer fear? By saying it's ok? But it's not, it's harmful. These are the people who are hit for phishing scams and identity theft. Millions upon millions of dollars of damage. That's worse than many other fears that people aggressively seek treatment for.

So, why don't people get help for their fears? That's more person-to-person, but at a super-broad view they're not fixing it because they're ignoring it; "they have better things to do". Sometimes that's true, for things they don't believe to be harmful (sometimes incorrectly, sometimes not), but most of the time it's because they're afraid of it. That's an extremely poor excuse for not fixing things that you know to be a problem, and in every other situation everybody acknowledges this. Difficulty != excuse.

To summarize: if a fear is harmful, get it fixed or you are implicitly accepting the consequences of your fear. Fear of flying means you don't fly. That means you'll never get a job that requires flying, and you'll put more miles on your car.
It seems to be that an event is either random or determined, and neither option gives us what we want out of free will. I don't think there is any middle ground, and since it doesn't seem like our decisions are random, then they must be determined. Which also fits nicely with other things like psychology. Psychology shows that our actions can be predicted, which wouldn't be possible if they were random.
Library books are free.

That's not even close to true. The actual case is just that the costs of library books are (almost) completely externalized.
I use google reader and I have noticed only new shared items on Buzz posts. I.e., it did not automatically 'publish' old stuff I have shared.

Seems OK with me. In fact, I kind of like it.

Only complaints I have are:
1. Missing tagging functionality (or I haven't found one)
2. No centralized 'privacy control panel'
The strange thing is that I can't for the life of me find a way to take the list of placements generated by this tool and hook it up to a campaign in AdWords. That's sort of the point, right?

No buttons on either Adwords or AdPlanner referring to the other. No "Link Accounts" button. This would be gold, if only we could use it to do real work.
PackLate.com Scores Seed Funding For Last-Minute Vacation Rental Service
"Chip and PIN is broken"
Yeah looks less like an engineer and more like a generic technophile, which I guess is still a step in the right direction?
Another submission on this:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1120774

Already many, many comments over there. Probably worth reading the comments there before repeating the same comments. I wish it were possible to merge submissions.
I would recommend this too except zenbe personal is shutting down soon... http://blog.zenbe.com/personal-shutdown/
Hardly a new problem. This happens in english all the time.

A friend and I were using the word "twat" as a passed tense for tweet until someone pointed out this word already has a meaning. And yes, I was completely unaware of the meaning.

You can also discuss processes as parents killing children, reaping dead children, zombied children, etc.
Is there a "Must-Have" file backup utility for Windows?

I've really grown to like TimeMachine on the Mac, although I don't really need the eye candy; I just want something that dependably backs up my data to my NAS, stays in the background and does it's work without killing my pc's performance.
A Windows desktop box is kept around mainly for gaming. (all on the road, kitchen, and sofa activity has moved to a MacBook Pro that has Ubuntu in a VM, but no flavor of Windows for now - don't want to pirate it, and won't pay for it).
I would litterbox Windows in a VM on the desktop box, but for gaming the video driver situation is better booting directly into it. VirtualBox is used for speedy access to Ubuntu (where all email access and routine net browsing is done for safety). VLC is the default media viewer.
Handbrake and FFMPEG seem to run better within Ubuntu, but the Windows versions are installed too. Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus is there mostly for updates to Virtual Box and as a backup in case of problems with it.

MS Windows Security Essentials seems to work decently, so AVG has finally been retired. It's surprising it took MS so long to provide these tools considering that Windows is pretty much unusable online without something. Better late than never, even if the only net access is for games, updates, and the VM.
Seconded:

* Synergy

* Beyond Compare

* Dependency Walker

* Sysinternals tools (of course, use http://live.sysinternals.com for easy download goodness)

Why isn't 7-Zip on that list? ( http://7-zip.org )
FastCompany slams me for "how to get press" posting (in a lighthearted way)
I think he knows that the iPad is what a tablet "should be" but can't say it.
How about:

1) It is opt-out rather than opt-in.

2) It automatically decides to auto-follow people for you.

3) Many people are complaining about privacy settings not 'sticking' (i.e. disabling things only for the to end up as re-enabled later)

Personally, if I use Gmail as my email client, why am I all of the sudden forced to be a member of Buzz?

The worst part? Google is touting that 'millions of people have signed into Buzz' as some sort of 'See? People like the service!' response to the criticisms. But THE SERVICE IS OPT-OUT! So when I sign into Gmail and it prompts me with "Learn more about Buzz/No thanks, go to inbox," neither of those options disables Buzz. So Google has forced millions of people to log into Buzz, then used the fact that millions of people have logged into Buzz as validation for forcing them to log into Buzz.

{edit} I don't usually post 'people are excusing X company' crap, but in this case I really feel that people are excusing Google from this behavior. It's the same crap that people rail against Microsoft for: leveraging your current userbase to gain a foothold in another market. What is the difference between forcing all Gmail users to become GoogleBuzz members/users and forcing all Windows users to become Internet Explorer users?

It just seems like there are a lot of people saying, "Hey! I find this interesting, so I'll ignore anything negative associated with it!"
This submission:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1118659

links to the web site version which is here:

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2010/02/11/chip-and-pin-i...
And so is "git push --force".

Wait, what? I thought you were supposed to avoid "push --force" when pushing to a public repo?
For screen capture stuff I tend to use http://jingproject.com
As The Deals Roll In, So Does Some Revenue For Foursquare
$30 for as many machines as you own, work or personal, for your own individual use.

Probably the best $30 I ever spent on software, given how many many times I use it per day.
On the possible Chinese link to Google Buzz
When the head of the company basically says people don't care as much about privacy as they once did. I call that scary. If he'd say we want you to participate fully in our service and we think that means your information is public it would be better.

But, I agree with the article that Facebook is really getting it wrong. Instead of having a default how about present them with a simple dialog. Explain the issues, and ask them what settings the user wants? Share with Everyone, Share with My Friends, etc.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_sa...

Then the accusations that if you or one of your friends fills out a poll your information is shared with the poll author. (As noted on Twit Podcast). So yes I think those are some scary things.
Anyone have experience with atMail? (http://atmail.org/)
Does Barbie Use Linux in New Career as Computer Engineer?
Thanks, didn't see that.
From cryptome.org:

"To: ukcrypto[at]chiark.greenend.org.uk
Subject: New paper, and a Newsnight story tonight - Chip and PIN is Broken
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:12:27 +0000
From: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson[at]cl.cam.ac.uk>

There should be a 9-minute film on Newsnight tonight showing some research by Steven Murdoch, Saar Drimer, Mike Bond and me. We demonstrate a middleperson attack on EMV. This explains how stolen chip and pin cards can be used by criminals without knowledge of the pin.

The flaw is that when you put a card into a terminal, a negotiation takes place about how the cardholder should be authenticated: using a pin, using a signature or not at all. This particular subprotocol is not authenticated, so you can trick the card into thinking it's doing a chip-and-signature transaction while the terminal thinks it's chip-and-pin. The upshot is that you can buy stuff using a stolen card and a pin of 0000 (or anything you want). We did so, on camera, using various journalists' cards. The transactions went through fine and the receipts say "Verified by PIN".

Our technical paper "Chip and PIN is Broken" has been accepted for the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the top conference in computer security. It can be found at

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/projects/banking/n...

while the FAQ is at

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/projects/banking/n...

and the press release at

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/projects/banking/n...
"
> Shouldn't we at least offer an Internet Driving License course, even if it's optional?

"we" for some definition of "we" do offer such courses. (See your local community college's course descriptions.)
Why not just unfollow people who's content you already get elsewhere? What's the obligation to follow?
What if Google just starts buying stuff for you and having it shipped to your house. You can opt-out once it arrives -- if you can figure out the RMA process...
I'm already making medium-term plans to run my own mail server.
Suggest HN: Add CSS hover for up/down vote arrows
I'd like to suggest having a black css hover on the up/down vote arrows. Since they are spaced closely together, it's sometimes hard to know what element has focus and I have accidentally voted the wrong way a few times.
Media Player Classic and especially its Home Cinema variant is excellent video player. It isn't really related to Windows Media Player in any way.
You're welcome. I have a knack for spotting duplicates. Some call it useful, others call it incredibly irritating.
not text; didn't read
None, because that's what he's doing.
Considering Linus speaks Swedish I'd have to agree. To his kind of bilingualism, hearing people 'gitpull' all the time can't help but summon a grin.
I am entirely okay with everything they've done. People need to stop overreacting.

They hand held me through the whole Buzz process and all of the defaults were great. All of my non-technical friends also love it. They made it very easy for us to connect and chose settings that work for most people.

The key thing is though that if you don't like Buzz, don't use it. If you don't like Google Profiles, don't make one.
You can run cucumber + selenium. I'm pretty sure selenium can run in headless mode (haven't turned it on yet, too fun to watch!)
It does, because as I said I can use it in a commercial product. If I find a bug, or decide to add a feature or extend it I can release a patch back. If it was GPL'd I wouldn't have been able to use it and thus the patches and features would not have been released back.
Buildapp for SBCL
(Maybe) he wants to send a clear message to Google: Buzz is crap.
I'm also not angry. I actually think it's quite an interesting situation: let's see how agile Google still is.
Workaround:

- export to .csv
- open in excel
- copy 1st column
- paste into placement tool
Pirate boss to make the web pay
Why not just disable it? It's not difficult.
It doesn't break git, but it may confuse your contributors.
Once it's gone from gmail, nobody will use it and nobody will care. Massive fail for Google, strike two in the social networking department.
I am using orbit in various web projects and a lot of lua as an in-game scripting language. I love lua and I am hoping that the community arround lua is going to grow!
How's this really any different to Google wanting to monitor everyone's physical location (gps), browsing (dns), search, email, video and all the other data streams they they tap into? It's really just an idea that would formalize the death of anonymity years after the fact.
Pet Holdings Sues Other Site For Framing Failbooking With Better Domain Name
I think this is a very neat project. I'm also curious what other alternatives exist for making simple, straightforward presentations in something that is not powerpoint.
That amount of money (5-20000) actually doesn't seem like much for biotech stuff if you need lab access and supplies.
If Google gave employees even just 20% of profits generated from the products they build or prototype, that system would fully work for everyone.
I get 100 Mbit/s through SUNET (Swedish university computer network) like almost all students in Sweden, which these days don't even raise an eyebrow. About €20 every six months. It's also worth mentioning that in Sweden download caps in any form are (almost) unheard of. You get what you pay for.
I'm using Fastmail to host email on my own domain (you can redirect MX records to them or just use their DNS servers).
I read email mostly in Thunderbird via IMAP.

At the end of the day your own domain is what you really want - you can host it on Fastmail or Google, and if any of them screw up you can move on to other hosting provider or to your own server.
Yes, good point. And if the disks are encrypted, you will definitely know about it, because they won't be getting any data without you. (Unless the email police broke AES or the key-strengthening algorithm and haven't told anyone yet. This is unlikely, however.)
I think most people were already doing public sharing in Reader- it was the default there. (Not of the people, but of the items). I am not sure what exactly was happening with private sharing in Reader, but it was an option and was limited to fairly small group. I made my google reader share's public and posted them on my blog. My comments showed up in that feed.

You also would see the names of people that would comment on the items of people you were following in Reader, even if you weren't following them. So, I definitely see your point about names, but there were cases in Reader where this was already happening.

In any case, I turned on Buzz almost right away. I got to the first step and decided I needed to turn around and clean up my contacts list, I then turned it on. That could have easily been designed into the activation process.
WTFJS?
Google co-founder Larry Page: We won't leave china
Raw Vs Smackdown 2010
Here come the most avaited game which will take you nearer to the wrestling entertainment world featuring finest wrestling mathches and improved graphics
I've run this argument through my head several times.
Here's what you should like about Gmail:

1) Google infrastructure is probably more secure than any server you could set up quickly.
2) Google handles all those pesky issue with IP blacklists, Spam, etc that you'll be forced to deal with on a DIY server. Granted, there are solutions for each of these; Its your valuable time, in the end.

On the other hand,
for a DIY mail-server: you truly don't gain much besides having an accessible dump of your mailbox(in the event that all the gmail-specific datacenters get nuked in a single day?)

ISPs can and probably wil sniff your plain text email traffic now/in near future due to external police state pressures.

I live in India, and sadly I envision this place turning into a police state by sheer incompetence on the part of the administration who pass half-baked net-nanny laws.

The only solution to email privacy: Hard-to-reverse Encryption of the text (typically GPG).
Most of the crowd here know this well. But making email encryption transparent and easy-to-use would be a killer product for those customers that value privacy. FireGPG is trying , but Gmail code changes keep breaking stuff sometimes.(http://blog.getfiregpg.org/2009/11/05/gmail-issues-fixed/)

Redundancy/Backup is another issue altogether.
You should probably keep backup IMAP dumps in a geographically distant location if you fear Gmail will just cease to exist one day(without any warning).
I'm thinking that he means, if everyone is doing git pull --rebase then a git push --force won't screwup the people you are sharing with.

My manpages still seem to warn against using both commands, but I'm locally running on a version dated 2/09/2009 (I have a cronjob at work that pulls down the latest version of git and compiles it daily).

[edit] Maybe by 'do the right thing' he means that it won't overwrite their local history (i.e. the pull/merge will fail because the histories are different)
"Don't worry boss, the next time I have to make a call about whether or not I'll require millions of users to opt out of sharing some of their most private personal information with the entire world, I'll know just what to do."

Some lessons don't need to be learned from experience, and some screw ups are bad enough that they should result in real consequences.
Javascript + DOM, in -my- ruby?

It's more common than you think.
In the government wants your server you can format your hard drive if you want.

That is illegal and ineffective. Full-disk encryption provides much more safety, both legally and technically. (They could still sneak into your house and install a hardware keylogger that gets your encryption passphrase, and then seize the disks. But this is real life, not a movie.)
It's not FUD. I don't have a Google Profile, but Buzz was automatically activated (even though I clicked the no/cancel/whatever-it-said-because-it-totally-ignored-me-anyway button) when I logged into GMail.

I don't care if it was made public. If I had a profile, and it was made public, that would not have made things better. That would be worse. I should not need to understand the subtle privacy interplay of several different and seemingly unrelated Google products just because I use one of them (Gmail).
Not hiding from anyone, or especially worried—I was just inquiring if Google Apps Premium (or Standard) would address the grandparent's privacy concern: thought maybe there was a clause in the T&Cs I missed or similar.
Or, perhaps he honestly believes that the stylus and keyboard are important.
Any improvement over Gmail/Apps search index is worth a look. Thanks.
I haven't experienced getting added back to a blacklist off a significant webmail host after being taken off one. Once your IP is in the clear, it'd take some abuse to be put back (anecdotal). These 3 steps usually get me unblocked if starting with a bad IP:

1. Set up reverse DNS for your IP address

2. Publish an SPF record

3. Check the Spamhaus lists http://www.spamhaus.org/query/bl?ip=1.2.3.4 and request removal if your IP address is on them.

As an addendum to grandparent: extremely comprehensive guide to postfix + dovecot here: http://workaround.org/ispmail
Agreed, it won't really work outside of Gmail. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. It really needs clear privacy settings, clear demarcation of email contacts and social contacts (with the option for contacts to be in both).
I removed the "auto-added" things, then switched off "buzz"... but I got many "followers" after that (Buzz can be hidden but not disabled!).

It was crazy to see conversations of people I know speaking with others... GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU FUCKING BUZZ!
Uh, what? _Simple_? I'd say this is a over-complification of something as simple as HTTP request.
Sort of makes me wonder - is it possible to build a social graph from public records? Does something like this exist already?
Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food
Surely the value of the data can't be measured by its size, can it? The content must have some reading on its value, no?
The $140 million Picasso canvas that woman tore a couple of weeks back is worth more than a 60 inch square of cloth and paint, right?

To be honest, I have no idea whether the data itself is worth it. But I'm betting Google does, and that very specific answers to very specific questions have substantial value for them, both from an algorithmic input perspective as well as on a pure content basis.

$50M worth? Probably not. But throw in the people, the user community (and remember, that 90K figure was as of October of last year), and the mechanism of getting people to answer other people's questions and I can see the math working.

My concern wouldn't be the price. I'd be more worried that Google will mismanage its acquired asset, as they have with other acquisitions.
You need to find the plans that aggressively discriminate based on health history. If they aren't hard for the average American to qualify for, you won't get the low rates.

Oh and I don't know your health and finances, but if you are healthy (and presumably hardly risk-averse), no health insurance beats a 10k deductible that costs you $2.4k a year.
No, but they probably put you in an equivalent amount of danger.
i also love how they're shamelessly stealing their graphics from fallout 3
Ask HN: Google Reader Alternative?
I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader about a year ago, and prefer the efficiency of Reader, but still feel bogged down with Reader limited organization methods (only one level folders).

What do you use for your feedreader?