skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This post comes at a very interesting time. I'm a non-developer. I did graduate with a computing science degree, but really struggled getting to grips with programming and software development, so when i left uni i never created any of my own apps. I did retain some simple software development principles knowledge however.

But recently, i've been very keen to get involved in helping developers on my team improve the user experience of our apps, which is why i started looking into cappuccino.

Atlas and Cappuccino, I have to say are great as frameworks, but only for people with Macs.

So, since then i've been heavily looking into jQuery and found it to be great for helping me create good user experiences, and with the addition of AJAX things tend to get very interesting.

I'm in no position to comment on what i think to future is since im so new to development, but from where im standing and certainly for someone that is just entering the fore, i'm someone that has been through these exact set of questions in the last few weeks, and came to a very similar conclusion through my own trial and error.
- Nobody has figured out how to make cross-language
interoperability work well.
- The network effects from language adoption are immense.

False. Depends on the context. Does REST "work well?" Does the ability of JRuby apps to call Java libraries "work well?" The answers are too context-dependent.

The 2nd is spot-on!
*american students
Ask HN: Using startups.ch to move to Switzerland. Non-EU citizens?
My understanding is that you can use startups.ch to incorporate and then take the certificate of having a company to the local government
office (Kreisburo) and tell them that you have moved to Switzerland. You tell them that you have your own Swiss company, and that you want a residence permit, then present your bank statement to show that you are not broke. Then you get a 5-year residence and work permit.

This is the procedure for European Union (EU) citizens. Does it work for non-EU citizens as well?

How much money do you need to have to show that you are not broke?
I should have been more specific:

> a great relationship is not something you find. It's something you (both) make.

This is something many people haven't figured out. I was happy to see one more who now has.
SSL is ugly because of backwards compatibility with SSLv2. Version 2 and previous versions did not have a secure way to negotiate version, so Paul stuck the version in the RSA padding field. It was the best option under the circumstances, but definitely not preferable.

The other thing that makes it ugly are the huge numbers of cipher suites and reliance on certificates (and thus usually centralized CAs.) The cipher suite growth came about because of export controls and then Internet-standards groups not seeing a problem with adding vanity modes. The reliance on CAs can be worked around with using your own cert store or using TLS-SRP for authentication, which is sorely underused.
Direct link to his site with video:

http://www.alecbrownstein.com/project.php?cat=3
Is it 1987? Also, just do your job and shut up about it.
When the heck is Google voice going to support number portability?
I think I can sum up the fundamental difference between my take on crypto (run away!) and Colin's ("use OAEP padding instead of PKCS!").

When Colin thinks of crypto he thinks of things like Tarsnap, which was built and designed to embrace cryptography; cryptography is part of the reason it exists. It is not an afterthought.

When I think of crypto, it's about all the places crypto pops up in normal non-secure CRUD-webapp situations. Like the guy who uses crypto to effect single-signon without sharing databases between apps. Or the team that encrypts URLs instead of implementing access control. Or the team that uses AES to "secure" a viewstate cookie.

If your goal is to produce a system like Tarsnap, which from day one is going to receive attention from security people because it is a security tool, I have less of a problem with Colin's recommendations.

But if you're trying to build client-side database-free single signon (ab)using crypto as a tool, this slide deck is terrible. Follow every piece of advice in it and you will very likely still produce a system that is easier to break than if you hadn't used crypto.
Nope. I'm not concerned about it. None of my Facebook data is private or valuable enough for me to care about privacy.
Mashable isn't responsible for that. Facebook is.

When you view any sort of "group" on Facebook, Facebook will randomly (or maybe not so randomly) show one of your friends if your friends are in that "group". Quite effective and clever.
Ask HN: Please help test Mugasha audio player on linux distributions
Hey guys,

I have been making many changes to our player and have had some folks complain about linux support. If you are using a linux distro, could you spare a few minutes and test it in a browser.

If everything works(or not) please reply to this post with your distribution and browser used.

http://mugasha.com/crossroads/28

Thank you :)

- Akshay
I'm tired of the implications that users are dumb and are the only people to blame for this debacle. My privacy settings were altered to be more public after this latest round of changes. Instant Personalization added half a dozen apps (some of them literally compromising personal information based on various websites I visited that automatically got access to my data) without my consent.

There are tons of stupid users that don't bother to check their privacy settings but I swear to God, I've edited and locked down mine 4-5 times in the last six months and I have to be vigilant about it because THEY SILENTLY CHANGE THE PRIVACY POLICY & TOS AND RESET MY PRIVACY SETTINGS.

Let's all go against the flow and defend Facebook. Right.
It's so evil that I'm wondering why nobody has done it yet.
Multitasking ?

http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/general/woz-has-a...
Thanks for trying it out. The tool has been there for 2 months now and been talked about a lot already - http://blogsearch.google.co.in/?q=webklipper

Webklipper loves all its users (including yourself) for sure!
Excellent points. I would much rather have seen a talk on the hard issues such as these. Choosing an algorithm is simple if you already handle the above issues -- you've already heard a lot about AES by then. On the other hand, choosing AES-CTR as Colin recommends in the talk without handling the above issues is exactly where most developers are today.

Put another way: find me one crypto library or application implementing CTR mode that got all the above issues right but used a poor block cipher (not AES or 3DES).
You should look at Metaweb query language (http://mql.freebaseapps.com/ch03.html) -- it uses JSON in a reasonably intelligent way to do precisely this.
College for all? Experts say not necessarily
I completely see your point about the fixed rate. However, the benefit of a flexible plan is that you can lower the price of the initial payment and make a little money every time you are really helping your customers (detecting a no-show). You potentially save your customer money and take a fee for this service. I get now that that's not what you want - just wanted to offer a different perspective.
As has been pointed out elsewhere on the thread, the fact that there are multiple cellular radio standards in the USA (GSM and CDMA), combined with the fact that network coverage in the USA is so spotty (my colleagues in the Bay Area can't stop complaining about the poor AT&T coverage, whereas my AT&T coverage north of Boston is fine) means that you effectively don't have much choice of carrier. Once you choose a home and a phone you're very nearly stuck with one carrier. So unless you see yourself switching your service on and off over time, or you enjoy switching hardware more often than once every 24 months, there's no real disadvantage to signing the evil contract.
Why We Lie So Well
Yegge's post: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big-language.ht...
This video rocks!
Between this and some of their other projects like live streaming (http://www.utorrent.com/labs) it seems as if they're aiming for a broader vision of peer-based networking, as opposed to just file distribution.
Cool, thanks. It does seem like a good list... looking over it, I've read/listened to 4 so far... so only 95 to go! Ya right, but I will try to read one from each category this year.
scrypt is like PBKDF2 but with careful analysis and a focus on using up lots of memory per-password in addition to CPU. Both seem fine to me.
Looking to Delete Your Facebook Account? You're Not Alone
I didn't intend for my audience to be implementing everything themeselves. Knowing that OAEP is better than PKCS padding is useful even if you don't write a single line of code, because it helps you select the right library to use.
Startup Unfriendly Sections in Senate Finance Reform Bill Amended. Vote Monday.
I think they are on the right track. Given that this is a 3 year old project, I don't think we can compare it to smalltalk implementation with years of development. I wonder how well it would compare to something like pypy and other similar projects.
I want to be a fan. Just for for the sake of it.
Facebook's First President Was Fired Over A Cocaine Arrest
Better, add AES and SHA-256 support to NaCl. With your insight into preventing side channel attacks, it would be a great combo.
Will electric cars spread like cell phones or washing machines?
I still haven't seen anything in AS3 or Objective C that compares at all to the state of the art in native C++ interfaces (Photoshop, Cubase, Autocad etc), but that's not the 85% that counts. Javascript/HTML5 clearly has the momentum. If there's not 10x as much code being written five years from now in JS as Obj-C/AS3 I'll be very surprised.
One thing I'd appreciate with these kinds of announcements is a "what is it" paragraph preferably towards the top of the referenced web page. I suppose if I were working in Ruby I'd know what Rubinius is and why I'd care but a list of "what is new" doesn't particularly help me or folk like me.
Wow, I didn't read this as an attack on users or as a defense of facebook at all. Seems to me it's just the opposite and suggests that you can't trust anyone with your personal information.
I think that the idea behind his ad campaign was brilliant.
I wrote about this mistake before. Developers see a single-line RHS expression and think it evaluates without branching.

http://rdist.root.org/2010/01/07/timing-independent-array-co...
Not to put too fine a point on it, but, as a customer, I don't "need to recognize" anything.
Honestly, I don't care what old people like this have to say about Facebook.

If you're going to comment on an article, you might want to take the time to actually read it. The author graduated from college in 2004 and is in his mid to late 20's.
In particular, a memcmp()-style timing attack was successful against the Xbox360 CPU. This is a multi-Ghz processor.
Enter the ZSL: "I'm leaning toward BSD license but if your company uses any Ruby it'll be AGPL."
Yes, but often there's no way to entirely remove the effects thereof from your life thereafter.
For the first point, there resources out there, but I personally don't think there are many that are that easy to use and work with other social sites. This is actually an interest of mine and is the first side project that I have started working on. I hope to have something out there in the not-to-distant future and I hope to get feedback from people like you who are also looking for such an app.
His point is that the expectation of privacy on the internet is not wise. Despite the privacy settings on your account, you've already handed data over to a (in this case) for-profit company.

If you wouldn't want to share it with the clerk at the grocery store, don't put it on the internet. Period.
Good to hear it. I think you'll come around to my way of thinking soon enough. =)
Media made better on websites - A chrome extension now as a bookmarklet
I won't quit Facebook for the moment. I'm second to none in trying to raise consciousness about Facebook privacy issues. (I always upvote such links here, and I share such links liberally from my Facebook profile, and on email lists I subscribe to.) But Facebook search

http://willmoffat.github.com/FacebookSearch/

and Give Me My Data

http://givememydata.com/

provide me enough spot checks on how my Facebook privacy is working. Consciousness-raising among my friends keeps their Facebook behavior in writing about me prudent. I like mash-up conversations among old friends and new about links I share--my main use of Facebook is to use it for social linking, like HN on all the topics I find interesting and would discuss with my friends anyhow.

But, yeah, I'll keep my eyes open for a reason to quit, and I do MUCH less "liking," "fanning," and "joining" on Facebook than I used to, since I found out how public those acts are. I still don't know if Facebook has a successful plan for monetizing its use by non-doofuses who refuse to read ads or play time-wasting games.
Congrats to Evan and the team!

Now that 1.0 is out, how about adding a blog and a mailing list?

I'd love to see Rubinius pick up a large following. IRC-only makes it a challenge to build a thriving community.
I got the exact same response when I left my job a few weeks earlier. I was pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming positive response and support almost from everyone (friends, acquaintances, (ex)co-workers etc). I am based near Delhi, India and entrepreneurship is not exactly a very hot thing here (compared to US).

All the best to the OP and you as well!
Another fun approach would be using google code search which allows for regexp searching. Looking for stuff of similar format to {D1531,1000,1501|}, I find these two results. The results indicate that this might be related to printers.

http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=\{D[0-9]{4},[0-9]{4},[0-9...
Entrepreneur looks to heat up solar
Like a Matrushka, WAN Optimization is Nested
Netcraft Finds 365,000 Sites on Amazon EC2
Companies abroad hiring U.S. freelancers
It's great to see Doc Searls discussing Facebook's place in the development of Internet use.

"[Facebook] is heavy weather, but the Net is geology. Our geology." Searls said it about Hailstorm (remember that?) back in the day. Historical perspective helps with understanding current events.
I'm interested in why you think that (I'm in listen mode here, not argue mode).
Awesome resume video!!! ;)
I keep hearing this 'don't post it if you'd never want it public' mantra; but surely there should be a way for us to post thoughts/content to friends with an expectation that only they will ever be able to see it?

The need to trust the person on the other side will always be there (people have always been able to pass on letters and repeat conversations) - but that doesn't change Facebook's role.
I'm not sure I understand... You were in a hospital with no phones?
"Crowdsourcing" works well when workers can vote on a best solution. But you only get one crack at a customer contact.
facebook serves its JS over http already...as does most of the internet. An attacker would just change that js if they had that type of access.
So we should all run our own email servers, then?
Actually, that's incorrect. Both the old-school POSIX subsystem and the Interix (Services For Unix) subsystem support a fork system call with copy-on-write semantics. In fact, the NT kernel itself can fork processes trivially, but this isn't exposed in the Win32 subsystem, like most of the fun stuff on NT.
Perhaps the service could build in some kind of opt-out option? It could either be at the point of making the appointment, or after receiving the first reminder.
Ask HN: What do you think about our new link blogging service?
Hi friends, we're a few weeks into development for our link blogging service and we'd love feedback. Basically a quick and easy way to post links for people who are lazy but like to share things, kind of like Facebook Links + Twitter.

We think we can evolve it into something interesting, not only a place for sharing content but discovering and discussing content too. Right now the focus is on making posting easy and look good.

http://www.howl.com

You can register or use (demo // asdfasdf)

Please give it a try, post bunch of different URLs, and try to break it. Let us know what you think about our product and market. Thanks!
Clickable: http://www.howl.com
By the developer of JQuery:

http://www.amazon.com/Pro-JavaScript-Techniques-John-Resig/d...
This is great. I have no idea whether this idea will work or not, but I really enjoyed reading about your process. It sounds like you have really embraced the lean startup, customer development philosophy. I have to admit that I had never heard of you until I saw you interview on Gabriel's website, but have been intrigued ever since. Thanks for sharing.
You don't rent, own, or pay utilities?
Very cool! I use Ruby 1.9.1 and JRuby 1.5 for production, but Rubinius may become dominant in the future because of using LLVM and because the code base must be much easier to work with.
I think that the difference with Hailstorm is that it never really gained traction. Facebook already has a lot of traction.
>it just isn't in their DNA

Very true. Google is a company with a very high revenue per employee. When I bought a N1 I had minor ordering issues and it was clearly that their support mechanisms were simply a joke -- they do that part absolutely terrible. I got much better responsiveness (and not just lame automatic email replies) when buying a $9 fan.
You can quite happily make your language the DEFAULT way to program on a platform even though it isn't necessarily the BEST way to program on that platform. Just ask Steve Jobs.
Create advanced filters for your Gmail account
This seems primarily like a marketing ploy. I signed up with my gmail account a few months ago and got my invite very soon (within 48 hours if not 24). Unless things have gotten worse, it seems more like an excuse to try to get students to sign up than Google giving students that much benefit.

Edit: Apparently the situation has gotten significantly worse since I signed up, which is not that long ago.
I could be wrong, but I don't think NaCl is portable anywhere but x86 or x86_64. ARM needs good crypto too. Though I suppose we could ask for ARM support in NaCl too since we're asking for ponies :)

Also, does NaCl support signing? I think crypto_box offers "authentication" which is a slightly different promise.
Now this is where Ruby is winning, so many different implementations, and that too successful ones! I love the community. Congratulations to the team. :-)
Reading up on the NACL project now. Amazing stuff.
J Moore has been working on computer proof systems for some time, and has built one that he used to prove the AMD K12 architecture correct:
http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/acl2-doc.html
As a side note, he teaches a good introduction to logic course :)
I'm not quite sure why I need a tool to remind me to stay in touch with people I'm already in touch with all the time... It's the others I need reminders for!
"for students who have a .edu email address", no?

My university doesn't hand those out. :(
Google, don't lose heart. It's not you. It's just that people in US don't know that they can buy phones in open market without signing away a chunk of income to cell companies every month.

As far as I know, only T-Mobile USA has really come on board so far to make non-subsidized phones a better deal. T-Mobile has cheaper rates if you are not on contract. If you buy the AT&T compatible Nexus One, for example, you still pay the phone "subsidy" the entire time are using AT&T, even though you own the phone outright.
I think it's more a question of providing their usual level of mediocre, black-hole customer support, where there's no way to talk to someone about problems or issues. They fixed this about a month after launch (set up a phone line), I still have the sense that properly supporting end-users isn't in Google's DNA.
Startups: Don't Hire a PR Agency
We have a mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/rubinius-dev, though it hasn't taken off much yet. Perhaps now that 1.0 is out people will use it more.

Blog wise, what would you like to see on a Rubinius blog?
One last thought on this: In DropBox's lessons learned slides they said they had a lot of trouble getting customers via search because that was just a way to harvest demand, not create it. This product feels like it may fall in the same trap. DropBox at least had a 2-syllable name to fall back on for word of mouth marketing, but this has an 8 syllable name and could have more trouble.
No. I use Facebook for business and there's not another website that my startup will have 18k fans on.
Actually, overall I love the idea! I think there is tremendous value in this service.

I would just want one additional feature: allowing people to opt-out. A lot of appointments are recurring, take hair-cut for an example. This will work effectively for the first time, however some customers (who actually remember appointment) may started fearing that they would get a useless call even though they perfectly remember where and when they need to go.

So, a simple Press 7 if you don't wish to have automated reminders next time will be a great addition.
When the heck are telcos going to support number portability to services like Google Voice?
Better question: What happens if companies like google start eyeballing it and putting some real money behind it.
Thanks. I'm going to be couch surfing with friends for awhile, and if that runs dry I'll probably resort to actual couchsurfing via couchsurfing.com

Any particular places you enjoy in the mission?
No, but we should assume that someone working at the company where our mail is hosted could look at it. And more important, we should assume that the recipient could publish it someday.
It depends. Ben horowitz wrote a blog post recently on why they prefer founding CEOs :

http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/28/why-we-prefer-founding-ceos/
SBCL SuperBallistic Common Lisp BlueGene P supercomputer port announcement
As Capri is to Italy, Catalina Island is to California
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's exactly the attitude that keeps companies and customers pissed off at each-other.
As long as it's not all black, half colors/mixed colors should be fine for most uses, no? Mine had a small stripe of a different color on the front that most people used to write anything on, but was otherwise black. Bad idea :)
An extension that delivers similar functionality to PeerGuardian (http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/) would go down very well I bet.
it comes in handy when studying abroad (free international calls if you use with gizmo)
Hey, I was thinking of doing something like this. If you're interested in collaborating, let me know.
Why not just make a web client?

It wasn't obvious from the video that the desktop client does anything which can't be done in a browser window.

It could be pretty compelling since you can drag and drop media onto the browser window, mark it up, and be right on the results/sharing page without having to mentally context switch from your app to the browser window.
Shared resources across multiple concurrent processes is not a good way to ensure a full night's sleep. I would follow the documentation's advice and pass arguments to the child process and not try and depend on the state of global objects.