skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At my last "office" job, the new machines they brought in were fully networkable. (The next time you're using a newer generation copier, check whether there's some cat5/6 plugged into the back.)

So, if you copied something personal during your lunch break (considered a de facto perk, as long as exercised in restraint, e.g. that tax form before dropping same in the mail), would it remain on the copier hard drive? Worse, would it be deliberately archived in a company datastore?

This place was big enough and sophisticated enough to have some technologists dedicated to managing the machines (in conjunction with a service contract). Yet I ended up having to help them with some configuration difficulties. Which led and leads me to consider the implications also raised by this story. Any organization with a halfway decent security policy should understand and address these problems when first deciding the bring the machines in. Yet they apparently don't. And manufacturers should have addressed them up front in the feature set and use/management guidelines (e.g. a setting to wipe images on job completion, whether user controlled or in overall systems settings; a clear machine management feature to securely wipe (e.g. to a clearly defined and understood DoD standard) all drive data storage). Yet they apparently haven't. Or they don't clearly steer customers to knowledge and use of those features.

The reasons for the technological features are obvious. Their mis-management, unfortunately, seems all too familiar. I'm sure there were people arguing for better, but that would have been hard.
If passengers were encouraged (perhaps with a reduced fare, say) to register "transit plans" (like flight plans) before/while boarding, the system would always know roughly how many people were going to get on/off at each stop. Presumably it would use SMS, so you could text a train/bus/whatever to stop at your stop much like calling a taxi to your house.
> The leak of emails that made it crystal clear that a handful of members of the consensus group, on a handful of occasions, talked about keeping the other side out of the process of peer-review.

There, fixed that for you.

The consensus of biologists is that evolution is true. The consensus of astronomers is that the Big Bang happened. The consensus of archaeologists is that the KT extinction event happened and that it was due in significant part to the Chicxulub impact. The consensus of physicists is that quantum physics and relativity are accurate models of the universe at the appropriate scales.

The consensus of climate scientists is that the planet is warming and it is anthropogenic. Why is this fact irrelevant here, but not in other fields?
> Maybe you would need loops for overflow?

Or you could, in those circumstances, just... stop the train. ;)
Well, I won't argue with you that the more honorable response to accidentally killing children would probably be to break down in tears, go home and commit ritual seppukku.

However, these guys are paid to carry out the nasty state business of killing. It's their job. The immediate question is whether they did their job properly here. Did they carry out their orders properly? A bigger question is whether those orders were correct in the first place.

The question is NOT whether they responded to a killing with appropriate remorse. That part is pretty much irrelevant as soon as you volunteer to kill for the state.
Yes OpenCalais is plumbing, and here are some plumbers: Huffington Post, CBS Interactive / CNET, Feedly, The New Republic, Slate, Associated Content, Associated Newspapers (UK), DailyMe.com, Al Jazeera, Oracle, etc. See partner page here: http://www.opencalais.com/node/27153

Point well taken tho -- and we'll do more to surface these stories as they get buried over time in our many gallery pages.

Also announcing a dozen more fun partners next week. Will be sure to come back and share those names then as well.

Thanks,
-Krista
The OpenCalais Team.
This desperately needs linked sources for all numbers.
The best athletes have an improvisational quality--they're not just repeating techniques but applying the right technique to the given tactical situation in creative and unanticipated ways.
Not at all http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html

The conversation went something like this:

Me: I'd like to talk to you about something...
Him: Let me guess - you want to use Smalltalk.
Me: Er, no...
Him: Lisp?
Me: Right.
Him: No way.

And that was the end of Lisp at Google.
It would probably be better for the whales if nobody had kids.
I try to do the same, but sadly without seeming rude and asking friends to remove you from photos or leaving you out of messages, you leave it to chance.

For instance, I've never put a photo of myself online, yet Facebook has me tagged well over 300 times from going out to bars with friends. I'm ok with my friends seeing these since they actually know me, but I can't control the privacy settings on their albums -- only whether or not people can get to those photos from my page.

I don't walk around with the uneasy feeling that, at any time, I could be photographed and unknowingly put online... but I still think about it from time to time.
But not Lisp.
The Art of Enterprise Analytics
I'm no actual PE historian (somehow I doubt such a thing exists)

Apparently there is such a thing as PE history:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

(Ya, I'm surprised too)
Safari 4 - Download Safari Browser + Quicktime Player 7
That was really interesting but the EFF really should put a date somewhere on that page. A "last updated" or something because right now I have no clue when they wrote that and whether they're still investigating it.
I think they probably have a couple people that know Lisp... Peter Norvig probably knows some :)
Not true. A single pass of 0's is sufficient to make a magnetic drive unrecoverable. Anything more is FUD.
California hospital plans to utilize 100 Apple iPads
Err, might be a good idea for an admin to change the URL to a more credible source, like http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=8656

Or at least: http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/mcafee-update--shutting-d...
Quantify looks beautiful from the smallish images, but it doesn't jump out at me as being infinitely more usable than basecamp.

I'm not a fan of basecamp, but have used it and some of it's competitors on different projects.
What struck me about all these services isn't the design (though it isn't great), but that we rely more on email and local files to share the info, and basecamp is just something that is somewhere else that you are supposed to update.

It isn't integrated into the workflow, and that is the challenge I see, not design.
Docs.com (Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps + Facebook integration)
You think Google doesn't already have people who know Lisp and would love to use it if they were allowed to? :)
Well, monochrome is 1bpp, so it makes the raw image about 8Mbit or 1MB. The rest you'd only be able to determine empirically, and it depends quite a bit on what you're scanning and the scan quality.

"Noisy" images, including poor-quality scans or scans of halftones, don't compress well, but a crisp scan of high-contrast text or line art will be a fraction of that 1MB even with a trivial compression scheme like RLE. If you store as a TIFF with LZW, or something proprietary but similar to that, you're probably talking about an average of 200kB or less for a high-resolution scan. And this is assuming a fairly generous size/speed tradeoff, since you have a local hard drive to burn. I've seen huge document archives that go the other way (scan at lower resolutions, compress hard) that average 30-50kB/page.
Oh dear. I closed the tab and Firefox kept playing the music.
Airline flight scheduling and pricing is harder than lisp.
How does this support Chrome but not WebKit?
dupe - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1282850
Evince is wonderful. Small and fast and works cross platform.
"All the major manufacturers told us they offer security or encryption packages on their products. One product from Sharp automatically erases an image from the hard drive. It costs $500."

That's just outrageous. I can't think of a reason why copiers need to store images to begin with. It's a huge fail from the producers, and they shouldn't charge for cleaning up the mess.

Instead this should evoke a scandal like the Toyota braking thing and make producers have to recall their copiers, with millions or billions of losses.
Graph API - Facebook Developers
I've done a few recoveries from Photocopiers in the past - pretty much what everyone has suggested is correct.

Once you get the HDD out it's easily treated like any other drive. Most of the documents will be deleted (there is often a buffer of non-deleted documents) but recovering them is pretty trivial. Some of the newer ones do actually scrub data at intervals now.
If you are in the mission district of SF, Adobe books was recently featuring an art exhibit that included an oil rendition of her. It might still be up!
Same goes with O2. Their DNS gets flaky from time to time. 4.2.2.2 works great.
Tax Statistics in Wolfram Alpha
Now that all of our U.S. users have filed their taxes (we hope), they can explore IRS data about individual income taxes, broken down by adjusted gross income (AGI), from 1996 to 2007 [...]
How about kayak? Kayak buzz is extremely useful [not to mention a nice iphone app], and works for all pairs of cities while bing travel only has a limited amount of pairs.
While not terribly slow, I changed from my ISP's DNS servers to the Google ones because they occasionally don't work. When they work they are pretty fast. However, from time to time they were unresponsive. Sometimes that didn't happen for days, and sometimes they were unresponsive for 30-second bursts several times an hour, and then you couldn't browse the web or check your email.

I changed to 8.8.8.8 and waited to see if that was the problem. Since I changed the problem hasn't reappeared, so I keep using 8.8.8.8. I'm no friend of giving Google all my data, but the privacy policy on their DNS servers is quite clear. They don't use the data to correlate it with anything and only cache it for some times for technical reasons, whiping it afterwards. It's fair and doesn't redirect you for failed queries.
And I've never understood that.
Botched McAfee update shutting down XP machines worldwide
And if anyone is wondering why there's very little discussion here, it's because everyone is talking about it in the chatbox on the spreadsheet.
I agree that the barrier to entry is lower now.

However, I think one of the reasons for their success is due to their roots - The Point, the startup using collective power to help people deal with local issues. Groupon's founder once said, "None of us would work here if it were only about selling stuff at a discount—ultimately, we're trying to give people an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy life."

I think a successful company needs to have a corporate mission that is bigger than making a profit. I believe their roots help them build a strong brand and user base, which is a very strong barrier to entry.
Apple Is The 7th Largest Company In The World
I've still been censoring myself since I got yelled at mid-talk at RubyConf for dropping too many fbombs. IIRC you won't have to edit my podcast.
Why wouldn't they just make the ad area one spot longer when they put up one of their ads?
A: I want to program in L, T: I want to program in L', L'', L''', ...
A bit disappointing that they are using Silverlight.

Not being able to use this on iPad seems to limit its utility.
Barely. The explanation of what you're opting into is terse and vague enough that most people won't really understand what's going on, and if you decide not to opt in, FB wipes out almost your entire profile.
The reason is complacency. For a long time, Flash was the king of its niche, so they didn't bother to make it perform better on systems other than Windows. Adobe needs a kick in the pants.

It's the same way with Acrobat Reader. How many people use alternative PDF readers? Bear in mind that HN is a very biased sample.
If you live in another country, or you were physically present in another country more than 330 days of the year, you can qualify for an exemption for up to $91,400 of income earned abroad. That is a pretty generous exemption, especially considering that most expats should enjoy a lower cost of living than in the US. Don't get me wrong, I don't love paying taxes either, but those taxes pay for services that benefit expats too, like evacuations to the US when there's a natural disaster, or help from your embassy when you need it, or military support from the US when your new home country is under attack. Actually, I would love to be taxed on income above $91,400 earned while living abroad. And I would NEVER give up my US citizenship.
"I think that the closed system that Apple is trying to create is bad for the industry, developers, and ultimately consumers, and that is not something that I want to actively promote," Chambers said. "We are at the beginning of a significant change in the industry, and I believe that ultimately open platforms will win out over the type of closed, locked-down platform that Apple is trying to create."

Apple's response:

"Someone has it backwards--it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe's Flash is closed and proprietary," said spokeswoman Trudy Miller in a statement.

(http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20003006-264.html)

To be fair, the Apple response doesn't address Chambers' appraisal of the App Store, but the fact is that iPhone still supports open development via the web.
Heroku (YC W08) Supporting Big Data: Part 1
Page is currently down for me.
Key point:

We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.
People are 50% more likely to lie via email vs pen and paper
Facebook Social Plugins
New $100 Bill Released Today by U.S. Treasury
If I were a trader, I'd short McAfee right now. This probably means lots of settlements.

EDIT: This could actually be a profitable venture. Somewith with at least basic HN-type knowledge and a daytrading account could make serious money. Finance professionals most probably have no idea how important specific IT news are during the day. One should be able to trade ahead of consensus pretty easily.
You need it to do multiple copies, double sided copies, collated etc.
All the major maker's built-in software does overwrites of the data to various levels of security. Otherwise the government wouldn't buy them.

They also have fairly small drives - the companies are out to make money - so at somewhere like kinkos your job would be overwritten multiple times by the end of the day.
It's only an issue if the system fails and the drive needs to be replaced - but anywhere operating under any sort of security regs would destroy the drive before it went off site.

We used to destroy them along with any waste explosive/munitions. Then health and safety stopped us and we had to buy a super monster shredder - which is a lot scarier than explosives but it can shred drives/entire files/interns etc.
The EURion constellation: how photocopiers avoid counterfeiting
This is the workstation a developer needs
Democracy, freedom of the press, and government data requests to Google
Ask HN: Should I use a host in the UK?
I'm setting up a new site in the near future that will cater almost exclusively to people in the UK. Is there a great advantage to using a host in the UK for this? I imagine there would be an advantage in speed, which google has started to use (a little) in its rankings, but I don't know how much that would matter.

Is there anything else I should be considering?
Some numbers for other companies, in a few different industries influenced by technology (taken from Wikipedia):

Dow Chemical 57514 / 46000 = 1.25 Million / employee

BASF 67787 / 104780 = 0.65

GE 157000 / 323000 = 0.49

Merck 27400 / 61500 = 0.45

du Pont 26100 / 60000 = 0.44

Alcoa 26900 / 87000 = 0.31

(These are revenue... profit margins will vary, of course.)
have any references for this? I've seen the same claim and would love to believe it.
Facebook Credits (call for developers)
Would be super cool to see the articles about Sun going around the Earth. Probably 99.9% of articles from the XV century would say that the Sun goes around the Earth. The mere 0.1% would say that the opposite true. So the consensus would be that the Sun goes around the Earth.

Democracy in science doesn't work. 2+2=4 and I don't care what the consensus is.
You can easily configure OpenDNS to work exactly like a normal resolver.

People always seem to forget this point.
With OpenDNS you can enable or disable NXDOMAIN: http://www.opendns.com/support/article/312
Yeh agreed. It's a much argued situation in the Forensic world - but this paper pretty much agrees that it is impossible: http://www.springerlink.com/content/408263ql11460147/
They don't compress the images - they are written as essentially bitmaps from the scanning engine then read back to the printing engine.
Most actually record 8bits/pixel even in mono because it lets you do lighter/darker and background level in software. so a typical page at 300dpi is something like 100sq in * 90000 pixels = 9Mb
Signs that the VC you're talking to is serious
World Bank Data Catalogue
Thanks! Was looking for a link like that.
Ouch.

When I have you back on as a guest, feel free to say whatever you want, however you want :) I'd rather you be yourself than what someone else thinks you should be.
u.s. tax rate vs u.s. gdp

u.s. tax rate vs agi

agi vs trade deficit
But seldom by a class action break.
New Graph API from Facebook developer documentation
Ask HN: A Better Term than "Users"?
As Tufte mentions, there's only one other industry where they refer to their customers as users. Is there a better term we can use?
Pure anecdote, but there was one class where I turned almost every assignment late in for. That class required work to be done in the computer lab on campus and my work schedule limited when I could get there, so virtually every assignment was late.

I worked it out with the professor and I got docked 10% on every assignment, but he also added a bonus question for everyone and that let me stay in the A range regardless.

At least in my admittedly anecodtal experience, most professors are willing to work with you if you are making an effort in the class and have a genuine reason besides laziness.
Really? _Really?_

You really think that there exist enough "incredibly intelligent" people to fill every tech role in existence?

Sure, every company can _ask_ for the top 1%, but unless they're delusional they're going to have to deal with the fact that some of the people they hire are just going to have to be average. Doubly so for a company offering no job security and long/chaotic hours for a very low chance of payoff in a few years.

Trust me, I know the risks because I've worked almost exclusively with and for start-ups. To me it's completely self evident why startup culture attracts the crazies or "rockstar" programmers. Who else is going to gamble so much time and effort on a what's almost certainly a failed venture? Usually not the industry's top talent, unless they're one of the founders.

Of course, I'm speaking very generally and making sweeping, stereotypes based on my own experience, which may not accurately reflect reality.

--edit--

My post above sounds a bit more aggressive than I intended, sorry. All I'm saying is that "incredibly intelligent" programmers with good communication skills are rare and it's pretty unreasonable (IMO) for a startup founder to just expect them to show up just because he has an idea and a little bit of money.
the most interesting part is at the very tip of the inverted pyramid:
"The scientists also trained another group of people on the same game, but with a twist. They put a battery on top of the head of each subject, sending a small current through the surface of the brain toward a group of neurons in the primary motor cortex. The electric stimulation allowed people to learn the game better. By the end of five days of training, the battery-enhanced players could move the cursor faster and make fewer errors than the control group."

This is the second time this week I've seen something about neuroscience moving from correlation to causation. I can't remember where I saw the other one but it had to do with people making different moral judgments when certain brain regions were stimulated
Given that our government requires the destruction of storage devices to protect their secretes from seeing the light of day, I have to wonder why anyone would ever want to risk it: http://www.nsa.gov/ia/guidance/media_destruction_guidance/in...

Seriously, how expensive are hard drives these days?!
Why would you need nonvolatile storage for that? Why not just store it in RAM temporarily?
Why is it Hard to Bring Big Company Execs into Little Companies?
This is silly in the sense that it really doesn't consider companies who have attempted to scale horizontally in attempts to capture different markets than their core interest.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say Microsoft, absolutely could fire everyone not related to developing/selling/supporting Windows, still make 5 billion dollars a quarter from software sales, and easily be at the top of this list.

Likewise, Google's pure search and adwords team is probably much more 'efficient' at generating revenue than say the Android team, but you get diminishing returns at a certain point with your core product line. The smart thing for a company to do is to grow the company's revenue (and hopefully profit) when the time is right into other, less high margin sectors.

CraigsList is at the top because they do one thing very well. In five years, if they were a public company, their shareholders wouldn't be too happy if they kept their #1 efficiency spot but didn't continue their growth.
Just another nail in the coffin of the usefulness of AV systems. And good riddance.

My work computer actually has McAfee on it, which I've disabled through the registry. Don't like how slow it makes my computer.

Education, people! It's better than buying useless feel-good software.
So they've finally identified Windows as a virus? About damned time.
How would you support the claim that most people won't understand what is going on?

Edit: I guess the point I'm trying to make is that Facebook actually tests the UI and copy in experiments and in the lab before deploying it; so when you make a claim that it's not working, I'd like to see some supporting evidence.
You'll need to get the drive out. The connector needed is the only complication; it could be anything but is probably one of the mini IDE style connections.

Once out and connected to a computer you can recover data using any manner of tools.

I think FTK 1.8 still has a free trial you can use (http://accessdata.com/downloads.html). It's a bit of overkill for such a simple job but it will recover files fine. Otherwise just Google for programs to use on your OS of choice.
Hence, the only civilized thing to do is have thin people subsidize their health care.

And then, since that's unfair, apply social and legal pressure to encourage fat people to stop being such Bad Citizens.
MS Docs on Facebook
Sending emails has always been a problem for me. The email either gets placed in their spam box (people with aol and yahoo) or the email never arrive there at all (people with comcast and sbc emails). Does anyone have more additional information on how to fix this?
(also answer to pavs) Well, when Google acquired ReMail, everyone here said "It's a talent acquisition". So why should this be any different - $1b for the world's best Lisp hackers?
http://www.itasoftware.com/careers/puzzle_archive.html
I hadn't thought about that. Very good idea. The only issue is that cofounders have to be US citizens/residents. But it sounds like it would work well if you don't need that.