skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The change password code could also encrypt it in two places - a one-way hash all systems can read for authentication purposes and a second, through one-way link (think crippled RS-232), that stores it in a way only the second system, the one that has no network access, can retrieve using its secret (embedded in hardware) ludicrously large key and only after being enabled by a certain user action and proper multi-human authorization.

But it doesn't matter how ridiculously complex the password recovery system is, allowing meatware to gain access to passwords is a no-no.
On the contrary; I find learning and production to be mutually self-reinforcing rather than conflicting.

I am a professional committed to both practicing my craft and consistently increasing my skill at my craft. For machine learning researchers, computer scientists, and engineers, a healthy ongoing dose of theory and practice is a great way to proceed.
Which, if I'm not mistaken, is really frowned upon since bad things could be hiding behind those urls.
Reddit joins Digg, Twitter on Cassandra
I agree about the murky definition of toxic: you're talking about mark to market, something all the banks refused to do, till the treasury + fed told them to start doing it, stat.

But this is just one part of it; certainly the balance sheets were all over the place (with most firms senior management unclear as to their end-day positions) - but it's just as valid to state that GS/JP's requests for greater collateral which took down Lehman's and AIG so fast, as was the short selling which SEC Chairman Cox failed to properly curb early enough. (the FSA protected some of the london banking sector against shorts which ended up helping them massively).

The truth is, it was a cascade of events, with a dozen or more senior players, all of whom could have changed things if took a different attitude.

Fuld (CEO, Lehman's) could have sold lehmans for more than it's worth now a handful of times, but held out for a bigger number (not because he was trying to self-enrich, but to make his staff richer: they all held stock and he was very much a company man);

Blankfein (CEO, GS) /Dimon (CEO, JP): could have given their trade partners (AIG, Lehman's) a break and not required them to post the majority of their capital reserve as collateral for their day-to-day;

Paulson, Bernanke et al: could have been less naive to think that the market would sort it out, and should have stood their ground and stepped in earlier with (ironically) less money, which would have facilitated liquidity sufficient to calm the market and let these banks deleverage the bad debt at a more acceptable pace;

Cox at the SEC: could have been less spineless.

Chris Flowers, Warren Buffet, others: could have been less picky and bought stuff, rather than requiring that the government go in with them on any deal they proposed without any backing or collateral.

etc etc.

there were (apparently) so many potential exit points for this thing, and well, the industry managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory often - if only because it wasn't the 'right thing to do'.

a very good read for anyone who wants to get a good grasp of the timeline of all this is Aaron Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail. It's a rather fascinating expose into some of the inner meetings and conversations.

the tl;dr of it:

- everyone tried to buy/acquire/merge/whatever everyone else. Fuld literally tried to sell Lehman's to every single member of the big banks

- this thing could have been solved a half dozen times if it weren't for something quite simple/trivial

- it turns out that the UK Treasury eventually were the ones to crush the last minute save of Lehman's via Barclay's Capital. A deal was struck, ALL the big banks posted collateral to support Lehman's, and yet Darling at the British Treasury shut it down over a procedural issue in Barclays' company charter... (and, well, because the political reality is that the deal wasn't as good as it could be...)
The work that you are doing is very useful for all of us, and like faramarz says; perhaps you'll reveal what you are doing in Buenos Aires and meet up with the HN/Startup community here. Thank you!
That might be the specific one I was thinking of actually.. thanks! :-) A pretty good article nonetheless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
Two words: red grapes.
We don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if the early adopter crowd has a lot of overlap with the twitter crowd. That said, I don't think it's worth trying to estimate sales that way
My fiance's brother has done multiple tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the IED group. From the experiences he's been able to share, "not so hard" could only be written by someone without active duty military experience. I would never want to see the things our soldiers see or have the experiences they do.

They do a great service for our country; and honestly, can end up fairly well off if they manage to survive 20 years + land an additional job after retirement at 38+.
It says.... any and all work created by me... while employed... will be owned by XXX company....

Is that the clause I should be looking at? It doesn't seem like there are any explicit exceptions to this written into the contract.
Valve's Gabe Newell shares his thoughts on DRM
Trash Track
I'd like to have the same for my bicycle, y/telling something like "you're supposed to give me 1 meter, not 30 centimeters".
Indeed. It's QUITE annoying to read HYPERTEXT where every fourth WORD or so is a BOLDED link to some silly TOPIC map.
Seems similar to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148328. The internals of any VPS aren't really secure from the hosting provider, although I don't why that means CSRs should have plaintext access to the root password.
Creating Impressive Flowcharts with Kivio
You can find "Christian" symbolism in anything. For crying out loud, people found it in the Lion King, the Matrix, and even the Ten Commandments! (The last one was a joke.)

For it to be "Christian" symbolism, it would have to be quite a bit more explicit than general themes like gardens and trees. Once you start turning fiction into symbolism you can make anything out of everything.
They have access to the HARDWARE. They could do anything they wish to with your data. That's why you have things like contracts and trust.

If you're using the same password for more than one account/login, then seriously, that's not a good idea. Don't do it. Ever.
Cool concept! I like the idea and just signed up. Will definitely give it a spin and give some deeper insight.

The design is sparse (almost in a good way). If I were you, I'd think of some ways to tighten up the feel. Rip off some other webapps' design features (header/footer style). I know this is sort of a "feeling it out" run so carry on. :-)
I liked the technology. It looked plausible, not primitive. Exoskeletons that are "beginning to be deployed" can plausibly be widespread in the future. I can believe that guns will continue to operate on the same principals as they have done for a thousand years.

They didn't show the same restraint with the nature, unfortunately. Why did everything need six legs and four eyes, and why didn't Na'vi hair evolve to be prehensile when they started needing to shove it down the data tubes of irate wildlife?

As an aside, having all those links in the text is very distracting.
Oh, it's atrocious to give employees access to your passwords, if not unforgivable. However, if we're going to challenge the big guys like Rackspace, we have to do it without making unfounded accusations.
>I could've just made a todo.txt file and just open it up, but that's stupid.

I hope that was tongue and cheek.
Or it could have been anyone else in the middle:

You: My password is "foo"
Random person: Yes, that's exactly what the screen says.

Little do you know, there is no screen.
One of the first things I did when I got here is help organize an HN meetup.

2 - 3 dozen guys showed up. I'd do it again if you want to help me set it up.

I'm here because I wanted to go in a cave and quietly work on my work without distractions. I don't speak the language here so I don't get caught up in aimless conversations. Most days I don't even put my contact lenses on.

I just spend most of the day improving my interviews. In the evenings I go out for a beer and/or steak with good friends. Or I stay at home with Olivia.
security 101 - use different passwords for everything.
I agree. Fitt's law falls apart at high resolution
MIT researchers discover new energy source
figure out how content is stored in brains, so we could skip learning and implement/initialize knowledge directly
Thanks for the interviews!
I asked a Rackspace rep about this. Here is the real deal:

- passwords are NOT stored in cleartext

- however, passwords are visible to customer service via a "secure, non-public tool"

- the reason for this is because "people generally prefer to give out a password to authenticate themselves [over the phone] than portions of the billing information"

- so if a user account database is stolen somehow, the malicious thief would not have access to convenient info like email/username/cleartext password. (However if a customer service rep is the bad guy, you're still in trouble since they have access to the tool.)

- at some point, Rackspace intends to "removing CSR access for SAS-70 purposes and moving to something like a challenge/response like the Managed division uses." AFAIK SAS-70 is some kind of audit regulation, but the wikipedia article put me to sleep after reading the first sentence.
The interviews are really really valuable. Keep up the good work :)

For me, this stuff is complete gold. Each interview contains little nuggets that you can act on and implement. Not wishy washy motivational 'life coach' stuff, but clear actionable advice that might work for you.
Scientists say Einstein's theory applies beyond the solar system
maybe somebody could make some shape-shifting general purpose key, locked/jailed down to only take the shapes matching the locks in your possession. Would need some very small actuators -- I guess, it's doable.
Ask HN: How do stories get on to HN's RSS feed?
I've begun noticing that some stories with very few votes (only 1 or 2 sometimes) make it on to the RSS feed.

Here are two examples:

3 points (2 votes): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187729

2 points (1 vote): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187709

Why does this happen?

In answer to "How are stories ranked?" the FAQ says "On the front page, by points divided by a power of the time since they were submitted. Stories on the new page and comments on the comments page are listed chronologically."

But what about the RSS feed? If the same criteria is used as on the front page, is just one single quick vote enough to get a story in to the feed?
The folks working in the China office have extended families and lives that are rooted in their country. You can't expect to uproot everyone, and for them to like it. Their action was appropriate. Because the China employees were left in the dark, they can say they had no part in it (important not to look like a dissident here), and they can leave while saving face.
Microsoft's Courier Is Already Doomed: A Simple iPad App Shows Why
OpenType? What's wrong with Computer Modern? ;)
that goes for the creature designs as well. there were "dogs" and "horses" in the movie. and in fact i'd argue that goes for the plot itself. a lot of people criticize the plot, but i think it was a very deliberate choice. a "screwy" or "clever" or too-sophisticated plot would have detracted from the rest of the movie
...or, why not some kind of Lego (?) nano bricks that can easily be ordered/reordered?
I think the term toxic comes from the idea that you can be damaged by being in contact with one.

CDSs and CDOs are contracts that carry cash flows in both directions. When you sell a CDS you receive the premium, but if there is a credit event you have to pay out way more than the premium. If you sold one in the good times you'd now be stuck with a contact to payout a whole load of money an no way to sell it off.

For a CDO you have a similar upside and downside, but it's a bit more complex. You can be in the position where your cotract exposes you to alot of risk, and no matter how cheap you make it no one wants to buy it. That's a toxic asset.
The RSS feed is just the top 10 stories from the front page, so yes, the criteria are the same, and one vote is often enough to (briefly) put a story in the top 10.
> My point is that we shouldn't exactly be relying on the U.S. government to do it. The best systems in the world are highly regulated but not actually run by governments.

My point is that the US govt will be doing the regulating.

Note that the US govt doesn't actually provide medical services under medicare either - it just "regulates" them.

I didn't say anything about what Obama could do - free rein means he gets to decide. He can go with regulation, govt hospitals, whatever.

> in a fee-for-service system, fewer errors just means less money.

IIRC, Medicare mandates fee-for-service. Under the terms of my deal, Obama gets to change that.

My private health care doesn't work on a fee-for-service system (at least as far as doctors and medical staff are concerned). I doubt that it's the only one.

Yes - it's in the US. If its existence surprises you....
How Being Sued For Libel Took Over Simon Singh's Life
Good idea in theory. Unfortunately every serious person doing programming / administration / ... will have at least 20 accounts on the internet (probably underestimated!: email, other email, HN, sourceforge, github, facebook, own pc, own pc admin, vps, stackoverflow, etc. etc.)

At some point it's not possible to remember them all anymore... You have a choice of storing them with master password (now I can get all of them in one file), using the same one, having a password scheme (like usualpwd_HN, usualpwd_gmail, ...) or ... ?

Edit: what I started doing is setting random password that I will not remember and just requesting a reset when I get logged out.
Heysan (YC mobile messaging startup) acquired earlier this year
I am sure most of you knew Heysan was acquired. I just found as I was trying to keep up with the company. Congratulations guys, I loved the idea of Heysan from the beginning.
Andrew, I think I speak for a large portion of HN when I say this—I can't thank you enough for being not only a source of inspiration but also ideas. You've really helped us become better, smarter entrepreneurs and probably have saved a few great startups in the process :)
It's a weakness in the user interface. The preference to control button placement isn't exposed in the Appearance applet, so the only way to change it is to set a gconf preference.
This has just too much overlap with the storyline of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Reflections
Ubuntu has a long history of making dumb little changes without warning and then committing to them against all reason. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, or not, but my favorite is when they broke the Apache configuration file by adding shell variables to it (thus making it it unparse-able by everything other than Ubuntu scripts; the Apache standard tools can't parse the Ubuntu configuration file without pre-processing, for an example of how absurd this decision was). All this breakage was caused just because someone was too lazy to parse out a few different types of variables from the existing configuration file syntax (I looked it up, and the comment about this in the changelog was that parsing it wasn't possible; despite the fact that numerous, probably hundreds, of applications and scripts do parse it correctly). The Ubuntu developer culture of superiority and self-importance is quite trying at times.
If that's so how did NPR go talk to this guy in Kansas and get one? They don't have a lot of money, and they aren't a bank. I bet this guy in Kansas is getting a lot of phone calls like this one.
Thanks. Mystery solved.
> I never clarified that because I assumed it was obvious

Thanks for confirming that your title was purposefully deceptive.

And, yes, I read the article and noticed what you did.

> it is about them being banned at a school

No. What was banned was a private lending library. Sort of like they "ban" candy sales. However, you wouldn't put it that way for candy.

There are lots of great reads, and none of them are banned. They're just not provided by public schools.
Awesome, I just downloaded the app and re-created this section from "Don't Worry, Be Happy" - http://posterous.jazzychad.com/dont-worry-be-happy-31

After spending a semester with ProTools creating multi-track recordings, I am going to have a lot of fun with this.
IMO it should split up the manual into pieces below the level of a level so one could collect those lesson snips one needs and skip the others. Could apply for any other kind of stuff to be teached too.
tongue in cheek:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_in_cheek
No package management? No thanks.
Until I read this comment, I didn't notice it was clickable at all. I was just really confused about the message.
Then, why not push it one step further -- some generalized recognition, independent of field of 'expertise' (well, we're talking about a machine/software here)
Why the downvotes?, that is pretty funny as in the titles of Mixergy's posts :)

eg: "How A Site Made More Money In 30 Days By Selling Access Than It Did In 2 Years Of Selling Ads with Tim Bourquin"
Anyone that's ever logged into their control panel knows the control panel can show you your password with a button click.

If you're a Rackspace customer, you trust them run your network fabric and your hardware. They don't need your password to see what you're doing, but you may as well trust them with that too.

Speaking of trust -- if your machine password gives a Rackspace CSR access to your app's private data, you're just as guilty as you're accusing them of being. You're not storing your private data in the clear, are you?

(As for why they might do this: Most users aren't sophisticated enough to use a password generator and manager, making "What's my password again?" a common support question. Providing the "Show me my password" function in the web control panel means a CSR doesn't have a job reason to look at it. And even if they do, cloud customers already trust Rackspace support with the reboot switch, and for that matter, with the "delete this whole image and all its backups" button.)
You could use a password scheme for sites you don't really care much about and stronger separate passwords for important and often used sites.

I do this and it works out well and if you use the important sites enough you will and do remember your strong passwords but for the ones you don't you always can reset your password by email which isn't that inconvenient if you think about how often you are accessing the website that you cannot remember your password.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

Assuming the IDs are sequential, anyway. Surely Apple isn't that dumb?
Your interviews are excellent Andrew, please keep up the good work!
If they really don't want to verify hashes, is it really that hard to do a secure, partial information authentication system?

- set a separate password for over-the-phone stuff

- N specified letters from the password are requested by the customer service (3 <= N << len(password))

- customer service puts them into the system and gets a yes/no response

I don't reveal the root password to the person, they get good enough proof that I know the over-the-phone secret.

Alternatively, set a separate phone password and just verify it against the hash. I don't see any excuse for anyone to know my root password in full.
...or... writing a simple script that given a key, generates you a password based on it.

I probably have 50+ passwords at least, and every one is different. I just run my little script with a "key" and it tells me the password.

And of course browsers remember them anyway.

eg

./get_my_password.sh mygmail
./get_my_password.sh server_1_mysql_root

I think 1password etc do similar things though.
AirBnB and Weebly interviews now online
I don't get it. If it was "blessed" by an English law firm that indicated that the transaction was only valid under English law, then how does it still apply under American law? It sounds like they broke the rules, they just made it look like they weren't to anyone who wasn't paying close enough attention.
Thank you Andrew! The benefits of your work on this side of the table are IMMENSE. Your consistent refinement to do a better job than the time before is an amazing example of your commitment and drive. Your work has direct impact on the choices we make trying to achieve our own goals. Cheers!
Thank you, this is an excellent link. I'd upvote more if I could
Yeah. Assuming orderID's are sequential, you'd at least want a bunch of data bout how many orders per hour there are on a typical day.
Google should obey the law. If they don't like the current law, they should work from within, talk to legislators, see if they can't drum up grassroots support to change the law.

Oh, wait....
Thanks, love your work! Keep it up!
Sometimes frustration with one system can cause one to tolerate the learning curve on a new one.

There are some people who don't mind learning things about their computers but in my experience they are pretty rare as a segment of the whole population.
SXSW buzz network data visualization
Right, but the thing is that nobody could present to KDE an idea that was likely to work out better than the traditional desktop/windowing model.
Im building a search engine that doesn't index Mahalo pages. It will be called aWorldWithoutMattCutts.com/awesome
I would look at what the feature cost me to offer and use that as the basis of my decision.
Have you ever seen one that worked at a larger scale than that? Bigger systems require more layers of organization: there are more places for disagreements to crop up, and resolving them is a bigger and harder problem. Disagreements about the fundamental defining purposes of an institution multiply, and these conflicts need to be resolved somehow. Everyone needs these definitions to be mostly compatible for institutions to function, and this just isn't feasible without some structure at larger size. At the size of a single family, it can work pretty well – doesn’t usually, but I know some families that are shockingly egalitarian. There also exist small companies, university academic departments, primary schools, research labs, etc. which are culturally uniform and cohesive enough for this to work. Even at the size of a city, I think it’s mostly impossible: the best we can hope for is widely supported representatives who operate transparently and are accountable for their actions.

Iceland is a pretty unique case: everyone there is pretty much everyone else’s cousin, and they’re on an island. They look the same, have roughly the same beliefs, etc. etc. And I’m still far from convinced that medieval Iceland was really so utopic.

I'm thinking of Sparta though, which was by many accounts pretty culturally uniform and egalitarian/meritocratic, at least for citizens.

* * *

I think the best analysis I know is still Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I also recommend The Federalist Papers, particularly Nos. 10 and 51, for a pragmatic solution to these kinds of problems, based on the decades of first-hand experience some smart blokes like Madison and Jefferson had trying to run fledgling democratic states. (And Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is probably worth a read too.)

For a more literary exploration, read some Balzac novels: early 19th century France was the beginning of the cross-over from aristocracy to bourgeoisie, and rapidly growing cities quickly accumulated bureaucracies.
I guess my point was, some things must be done even if not economical.