skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fair point, and my mistake. I added "Show HN" earlier since daeken is the creator of the project, but I forgot to check that there was a way to try it out. We'll take that bit out again.
Just a random thought: Isn't it quite an interesting coincidence that they found a way into the iPhone just as people were reporting problems with iOS 9.3?
That's why you should ignore the media reports on any legal case and read the actual court filings, or at least follow coverage written for lawyers instead of the general public, which has little interest in learning anything about how public institutions actually function.
I did an extensive set of interviews with Asana and did not enjoy the experience. After an initial screen, I was required to complete a fairly extensive take home data science problem that involved querying an AWS-hosted database, fitting a predictive model on that test data, then writing a report summarizing which factors in my model were most important and what else I might do.

Considering that (a) some of the data in the database was erroneous, but when I alerted them about it they took a long time to respond and I had to just hack a work around, and (b) it was a huge time sink in an otherwise busy week for me, I was very proud of my solution.

It was a simple random forest model, with no exploration of optimizing the parameters, and some simple entropy metrics for feature importance. I wrote nicely encapsulated SQLAlchemy for the database side, then modular sklearn and pandas code for the model fits and plots, including calibration curves in addition to accuracy. I put it all together into an 8 page TeX write up with plots.

I got virtually no feedback, then after a long time I was asked to have a technical phone interview reviewing my submission that was with two data scientists simultaneously.

They barely asked me anything about my code design. They asked a few questions about my choice of accuracy measures and entropy scores, but it was extremely hard to understand what they wanted to hear (why do companies still think that a multi-party phone call is a good use of time??).

It was a major instance of "guess the teacher's password" which was a huge turnoff for me.

Then they asked very vague, high-level questions about designing a news-feed-like interface, and how might you determine which articles are newsworthy on an individual basis. Again, super vague. I threw out all kinds of ideas about seasonality, correlation to major events, properties of your network, ... But nothing seemed interesting to them at all. They clearly wanted someone to recite some well-known stuff Facebook already used, but none of that was part of the job ad or even related at all. It was bizarre.

After that, another mysterious block of time went by with no feedback, then I got rejected with no explanation.

Later I learned that Asana has pivoted to focus on providing Agile junk for enterprise project management, so I was relieved to have dodged that bullet, but it was still a vague and time-wasting interview process, with so much magic "guess the teacher's password" nonsense.
Why Scrum Should Basically Just Die in a Fire (2014)
> Instead of thinking about awesome scenarios where VR will fall short of the status quo, we should think of fun scenarios where VP will be a big step up from the status quo.

Does anyone have links to actual examples? The Rift dev kit has been available for a while now. Developers should have gotten past the 'VR makes too many people sick' phase and started looking at new ideas. What are these new ideas?
I think the upvoter should remain karma neutral. That keeps a steady flow of karma currency entering the system, which is necessary when the primary mechanism for filtering and ranking interesting content is upvoting.

If you penalise users for doing that, they'll do less of it, which will make the ranking/filtering less effective.
>Maybe, but they didn't actually accomplish any of their real goals—making it easy to force Apple to break their security

Unless one of their real goals was to get the conversation going about creating new laws that would make uncrackable products illegal, without actually testing the limits of existing laws. Because that is what they achieved.

> This particular phone is immaterial, and Apple can always talk big later about how they patched any of the security holes that the government used, to recover face.

That is a nuanced understanding of this issue that most consumers simply do not and will not have. Most will hear nothing other than "the feds can now crack iPhones" and will assume that government will be able to beat any future improvements too.
That is a fair point. I will reiterate that I agreed with the original poster and was positing what the counterargument presented from the courts/3 letter agencies would be.

We'll never see that counterargument regarding the cost of engineering FBiOS, since the case was withdrawn.

[Edit: we'll never see it because I believe that the FBI will not likely go after Apple again, specifically because they put up a much more forceful fight against it than the FBI ever thought they would. Admittedly I'm speculating, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable]
Alex from Growth Report here, thanks for posting @nikolay.

I'm running a closed beta right now without about 15 teams. Hoping to add more this week and go live to the Slack app directory by the end of the week. Happy to answer questions here on HN or by email (alex@growthreport.co).
The hearing was before a federal magistrate judge and was largely administrative. Binding precedent wouldn't have been set until the case hit a higher court on appeal (which would have been inevitable regardless of who won as both sides had significant incentives for appeal). The DOJ could have dropped the case at any point before then to avoid an undesirable precedent. Until that point, a negative ruling wouldn't have been an insurmountable problem even if other, similar cases were brought. At worst, it could be pointed to as a point of persuasive authority ("here's what another judge did, your honor - doesn't that sound grand?"), but that's not binding. A lot of coverage and discussion confused an eventual precedent with the magistrate hearing.

The most likely reason for dropping the case would have had nothing to do about precedent and everything to do with the fact that they couldn't proceed without lying to the court. The entire basis for the case was that the government had no other choice but to compel Apple to build "GovOS." The moment they became aware of the existence of an alternative method, they had a duty to update their brief and inform the court. And at that point, with the entire basis for their case effectively gone, they were pretty much out of options.

From the FBI's perspective, that was rather unfortunate. They probably figured this was the perfect case to pursue to try and gain the sort of precedent they wanted (an instance of Islamic terrorism on American soil? It checks all of the boxes for manipulating the public into supporting the FBI). Most likely, they never expected Apple to fight back for fear of the PR consequences of impeding a terror investigation. Minor miscalculation, that.
Have you tried this? :) https://codefights.com/bots/botasana
The Guide to FRP on iOS
Most people believe the chances of the phone containing anything of value are very slim.
I'd be curious what Yahoo Finance is worth - I don't know any other finance site as dominate - but again probably not a good match for FB
Ah missed that bit.
Hey Piotr, there's not a single issue I can just point out. The whole experience feels lagish and slow. It is most likely there's so much JavaScript on the client. I even have animations disabled. For example:

* /reviews page takes around 5 seconds to load

* Sometimes the above page gives API rate limit exceptions

* The list of PRs on the above page are not wrapped in an anchor tag. I can't right click the links (to open in a new tab for example), I have to hold onto cmd and press a small icon instead

I love all the features you offer, but the UX is not very pleasant at all. We can set up a web session to show you more of my experience.
Migrating to 1.3: http://guide.meteor.com/1.3-migration.html
I don't disagree with your point, but my point is that we need to imagine what it must be for the guys carrying the heaviest of the loads!
I had something similar happen to me on 9.2.1 - switch to readability mode in one app stopped all links working from Facebook. Took me forever to debug it.
Thank you for the tip.

Curiously, the original message sparked a lot of commentary and it seems like lots of people here are feeling the pain of "unjust" moderation sometimes.

Sometimes I also play the "fuck it, let them mod me down, I'll just say it" game - I expect to be buried and that's fine -(although people tend to heavily up vote maverick comments).

But sometimes modding takes me by complete surprise - "Wtf, why did I they mod me down?"..

For some reason, I tend to internalize negative feedback from random strangers a lot more than I internalize the positive feedback.. And I feel like I'm not the only one doing this, which is a bit of a relief :).

But my original comment wasn't necessarily a complaint about the status quo here on HN - some hiccups aside, it's still the most civilized and wise forum online..

What worries me is that we still haven't figured the public forum thing out and some versions of it are plain dangerous (eg. forums on certain news websites tend to degenerate into racism, hatred, bigotry, etc).

The up/down vote paradigm seems to have reached it's peak, we need a new way to collectively filter thoughts.
The rift and VR in general have strong parallels with steering wheels for computers from a market standpoint.

The racing games actually drive console and pc sales, at the very least GT does. At the same time, it is a normal game with the controller, and a fantastic experience with a good wheel.

The best racing game/sim IMO, called iRacing fully supports all wheels, and it has a profitable service.

Some people like you may not know about it, not being 'mainstream', but that is not really needed for the product to be successful and to have a rabid fanbase of active subscribers.

So, if steering wheels are a product with good margins, and also, making games for them is profitable which it is, then the same will apply for VR.

Welcome to the era of the long tail.
A CPAN author, former tech journalist, hugo award winner. His works are so on the intersection of economics and scifi that apparenly even Paul Krugman has reads him.

http://crookedtimber.org/2009/01/27/stross-on-development-ec...
Or buy a nitrogen or argon system[1] for about the same price ($200 v $300), but which instead is compatible with any bottle and lasts indefinitely after opening instead of 30 days.

Or just buy the gas directly for $20[2], which in theory works just as well as long as you leave the bottle upright, or at least inject enough heavy gas to create a layer covering the air/liquid surface area.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Coravin-1000-Wine-System-Black/dp/B00G...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Private-Preserve-Wine-Preservation-Spr...
I don't think you can really encourage someone to go for a MD/PhD in good conscience now. It takes too long now and is of questionable benefit. I've interacted with many smart MD/PhDs who were pushing 40 and were still not attendings / lacked their own lab. Your career prospects are severely constrained at that point.
> I mean, it's bad enough to ask questions you know don't really relate to the sorts of problems you have to solve

What makes you think they are asking questions they know don't really relate to the sorts of problems you have to solve?
No, and I doubt that this capability would be revealed for something at the level of San Bernardino, or anything short of "ISIS is going to do a WMD attack against Manhattan".
Just drivers in one locality? Sounds more like the police network has been compromised than GPS capable malware.
And yet, have you seen the 4k content out there? Breaking Bad was awesome, but is that really better in 4k than, say BSG or Planet Earth?
I bought a 4k TV to use as a monitor several months back and started researching content - Most of it is eyebrow-raising, to say the least.
I remember when 720/1080 were first introduced, there was an expected dearth of content, but at least what was out there was worth high-def (flyovers of tourist destinations, PBS nature documentaries, etc).
For example - Here's some of Netflix's offerings in 4k:

Series:
House of Cards
Marco Polo
Breaking Bad
The Blacklist

Movies and Documentaries
Smurfs 2
Philadelphia
Jerry Macguire
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Oceans (documentary)
Forests (documentary)
Flowers (documentary)

Edit:formatting
I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly but bounds on balanced binary trees are worth knowing (like lookup, it's log n), since that fact is one of just two reasons you'd ordinarily ever use a tree.

However, I will offer you some Interview Candidate Self Defense, which I'll repeat from something I yelled on Twitter a few weeks ago:

If interviewers ask you about bounds for data structures, pick a fight with them over hash table complexity. If they believe it's O(1), argue it's worst case O(n). If they want you to say worst case O(n), argue that it's in the real world always O(1). It doesn't matter which is right, because these kinds of questions aren't about technology, they're about status signaling. Be the alpha nerd!

As a bonus: interviewers are evaluating you for X-factors like "confidence". You know who never got dinged in an interview for lacking "confidence"? The person who yelled at the interviewer about hash table complexity.
Gear VR has special sensors built into it, which interface with the phone, so you aren't using the phone's built-in accelerometer or gyroscope. Samsung has also put special effort into the rendering pipeline when in VR mode, so it has much higher priority than other processing. That's why it only works with the high-end Samsung phones, and not their lower offerings or other manufacturers.

I haven't gotten to try any myself, but I've read that the Gear VR has gotten the latency down below any noticeable level. So the main differences are more minor, like positional tracking and the FoV. And of course, that with an Oculus/Vive you're only limited by the power of your PC, which can be much better than a smartphone.
I'm seeing a lot of comments to the effect that the government will just try again at some point.

Well, welcome to life in a democracy. Nothing is ever settled with finality because there are plenty of ways for future generations to change the laws we cherish today--for good or ill.

We could revoke the 13th and 14th Amendments and have slavery again--there is no legal impediment to that. That we don't do that is a reflection of our cultural values--today--which we continually discuss and reinforce.

We could abolish the EPA, or the IRS, or the NSA. We don't because these have enough supporters who value what they do, today. The 2nd Amendment remains strong today because millions of Americans work every day to keep it that way.

So, the long-term solution for strong encryption must be a cultural one. We have to be prepared to fight the crypto wars forever, like unions are still fighting the labor wars a century later. Like civil rights activists are fighting racism even today--and will be for the foreseeable future.

Is that depressing? Not to me; I find it inspiring, much better than a world in which government decisions are truly final. Beware that level of power IMO.
I hate Java because I hate the company behind it
How much processing power does IBM z890 have? What's it comparable to today?
Yes! Honestly, they need to hire someone to fix the start up time of their app, because it's the slowest by far of any webapp that I use. That should be their first hiring priority.
Well if they got access and there is any data that helps them bring prosecutions (eg against the neighbor who;s charged with helping the alleged terrorists) they'll have to say where that evidence originated.
> In most societies, you gotta work to eat. I don't think it's necessarily a function of capitalism.

If I had a billion dollars in the bank, I would not need to work to eat, despite living in a capitalist society. So yes, needing to work to eat is not a function of capitalism. Capitalism just says that an entity that has food gets to decide how to assign that food, since food is just another form of capital. Socialism would say that the community should decide.
I definitely fall on the other side of the fence, philosophically. Perhaps I've just fixed too many of those "trust me" bugs that programmers are constantly adding into code I have to maintain. I'm especially over the thinking that sufficient vigilance is something we should rely on humans to achieve when the computer is way, way better at it.
Why would the company used have any responsbility? Remember, the phone is owned by San Bernadino county. They wanted it cracked. The holder was the San Bernadino Sherrifs', they want it cracked. The FBI wants it cracked. The judge issued a warrant covering the data on it, and then the all writs act compelling companies to assist if they can.

Apple could not.

Cellebrite could.

I get what you're saying, but this is having your cake and eating it too. Apple chose not to assist. The FBI found someone who could. Why would that company then have to disclose to, basically, a third party (even a third party inventor of the phone) their standard work product and trade secrets?
The best I can find is this support ticket[0] (Google Cache[1] since it's current redirecting me to a login page) linked from the initial pre-order announcement[2]. The countries are:

* Austria (available as of February 2016)
* Australia
* Belgium
* Canada
* Denmark
* Finland
* France
* Germany
* Iceland
* Ireland
* Italy
* Japan
* Netherlands
* New Zealand
* Norway
* Poland
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland (available as of February 2016)
* Taiwan
* United Kingdom
* United States

[0]: https://support.oculus.com/hc/en-us/articles/216091397-Initi...

[1]: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Igifjz...

[2]: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/blog/oculus-rift-pre-orders-now...
>a negative ruling wouldn't have been an insurmountable problem

It was setting them up for a precedent-setting legal decision in a higher court that may very well have not gone the government's way.

>they couldn't proceed without lying to the court

You're assuming that this mysterious third party that showed up the day before the initial hearing with a method to crack the phone actually exists, and that this method was successful. That is certainly a possibility, but it is also possible that they never intended to see this through and hoped that they could intimidate Apple into doing exactly what they wanted.
Can't wait to find out what they found on it.
> It's perfectly possible to write spaghetti code and write a badly written test that notionally covers it.

Absolutely.

> Good coders code well. Bad coders don't.

Also true.

> TDD doesn't help here and if there is any relationship between TDD and good design, I'm certain it's correlation not causation.

I've used TDD and not used it. And when programming using TDD, my code was less "spaghetti" - more modular, better-designed interfaces. There definitely was causation, in my case - it made me write my non-test code differently. So that's anecdote and not data, but holding the programmer constant and changing the methodology, the style and quality of the code changed.

> >No, not "by their nature". Unit tests are supposed to test that a "unit" has the intended external behavior.

> i.e. it couples itself to a unit, which is an underlying implementation detail.

> If it's coupling itself to an externally facing interface it's an integration test or an end to end test.

Let's get specific, so that our terms can be better defined, and we can make sure that we're not just arguing about definitions of terms. Instead of "unit", let's say "C++ class". Now: By my definitions, my unit test should test the behavior of the public API of that class, not the private implementation. So the API is an implementation detail of the project, but not of the class. I will agree that the unit test definitely couples to the interface of the class. Done right, though, it doesn't couple to the implementation of the class.

> How those units talk to one another (their API contracts) is basically the most critical aspect of your project's architecture and the single biggest source of unavoidable technical debt.

A bigger source of technical debt than the bugs you can't find that are buried in the implementation of some class? I doubt it. And good tests mean that those bugs don't make it very far before getting exposed.

A bigger source of technical debt than that API that you don't know how to use, and so you call it wrong? Tests can actually serve as documentation for how to use an API. You have non-test documentation? You're lucky to have that, but the problem is, when the code implementing the class changes, the documentation might well not. If that happens with the tests, you find out the first time you run them.
Do you produce the cork in Australia? Maybe it's not worth to ship it around the world just to be serve as a cap on a consumable.

Cork is degradable, recyclable, and does a very good job at a specific thing. It's the bark of a tree which regenerates every few years, so its harvest leaves the tree unharmed.

Maybe it makes sense for Australia not to use it but I don't see why it should be replaced everywhere.
Rultor command line remote control, 0.4.3 released
I wouldn't be surprised if Meteor gains some traction after this. 1.3 is a great, long-awaited release with all the stuff that should be there from the beginning, really.

Just in time for NPM-Gate too!
Here's a slightly earlier article about this: http://www.phillymag.com/news/2016/03/25/speeding-ticket-sca...

Nothing in either story explains why the victims would be geographically clustered in Pennsylvania. But if the scam was prevalent elsewhere, I'd think we'd be hearing more people saying "I got one too!".

I wonder if there's some other angle than a shared smartphone app explains the locality better: a disgruntled neighbor with a radar gun, or something. The obvious problem with any local theory, though, is that it would have to explain discovery of the email addresses.
The secure enclave doesn't have separate storage, so even if this phone had one, the attack would still work.

I'd wager that this will no longer be true in the iPhone 7.
Different issues entirely.
If true, what's the significance of that speculation that it was an Israeli contractor that built this? Who gets access to this hack?
CastAR is pretty good. Better than Oculus.

Has no sickness problems.

http://castar.com/
> 99% of the time, replacing '/' with '\' and handling drive letters gets you there.

I think that's precisely the point; at scale, and with today's modular software culture (like last week's left-pad news cycle demonstrates), 99% correct software can mean millions of installations of bad code, all vulnerable to attack, or even just 1%-type bugs.

One way to think about the last 10 years of language design is an ongoing dialogue on how much or little to trust engineer intuition about which tools are safe for which jobs. The pendulum is swinging towards the belief that in general engineers should be given much more safety-oriented tools.
There is good journalism out there - you just have to be more picky to weed out all the bad sources. Fivethirtyeight is probably my favorite resource. Even though they have a niche, that niche is data driven articles, which to me means evidence driven journalism. I'll never get 100% of my news from them, but it is a strong start.
I honestly am not sure how they make money. I know they are owned by ESPN (so... Disney by extension?), but not much more than that.