skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Users can still interoperate with other Facebook users, so they don't need to migrate their social graph, which is the greatest hurdle to Diaspora's adoption.

No, the greatest hurdle to Diaspora's adoption is that Facebook doesn't provide the user with any means to export their own part of the social graph -- and in fact takes legal action against people who do.

I'm not interested in the argument of whether Facebook legally can or can't do this; the point is, for many people, this is not a world that they want to live in. Your suggestion doesn't do anything to address the central problem.

My next social networking service is going to provide me control over my social graph. It should also allow me to port basic profile features from one hosted service to another, much as I might do with an email address or a web site.

You're right that moving people off Facebook is going to be difficult, as there is a sunk cost issue. However, I doubt that the establishment of a Facebook-scale social network is going to be a unique event in human history, any more than MySpace or Friendster were. It may not be Diaspora that coaxes people away, but people will take the trouble if there are benefits to be had, and Facebook can't entirely stop all the tools to export friend lists.

Diaspora does not necessarily need to provide photo hosting, events, groups, and other core Facebook services (but it can).

Once again, the whole point is to interoperate seamlessly with services outside anyone's walled garden, especially for commonly shared items like photos, events, and discussion. It is already deeply annoying to have to make separate invites for Facebook and non-Facebook friends. I can't believe that you are even seriously proposing a dual system this while touting your own expertise on what users really want.

BTW, I personally have tried to make an FB app that unified Facebook events with events from other services such as Upcoming.org, and FB's API thwarted me in this regard. Certain bugs made it impossible to distinguish between the user's private and public Facebook events, so my app was inadvertently publishing private events to their FB page. Some of my users complained loudly about this -- you know, that privacy stuff that users don't care about. So I determined this was due to a FB API bug, but amazingly the developers WONTFIX'ed it as a documentation bug (the assertion that the API provided privacy was the "bug"!)

But that's what we get for relying on a service provided by kids just out of college who think they're god's gift to programming.

So, no, I'm not buying that one again.

No matter how well-funded, Diaspora is just one team with zero track record, so they're not likely to be the solution to these problems. But I'm definitely looking for something that fits the bill, and I highly doubt it's going to be a Facebook app.
> The command that lost data was hg qdel

Yes, so that deletes a patch. Anything in patches is basically in flux, and I wouldn't call losing a patch "data loss". If you call hg qdel "data loss", you'd call any sort of modification to a patch "data loss", since patches aren't versioned. If you want versioning with patches, use pbranches.

> Modifying history should not be considered advanced.

Maybe, but the only way I modify history in practice is through rebasing. I've never ever felt the need to modify history any other way. What use case do you have for modifying history in potentially destructive ways?
Amazon Stealing the Cloud
Unusual and amusing English words
That one is a bit of an urban myth: old version of make used to reply "make: don't know how to make love" if you told them to make love and the Makefile in the current directory didn't have a target called "love", but GNU make, which is what you get on most systems now, has for years responded much less poetically with "make: * No rule to make target `love'. Stop."

In any case, I don't think the "make love" error message is dumb -- it's just that you can manipulate the program into saying something amusing. The message in the OP, on the other hand, seems to be the result of very confused thinking on the part of the programmer.
How Venture Capitalists are Using Social Media
Brillant tool and quite easy to use.

My only suggestion is the "auto-fix" button, can you give me a preview as to what settings your application is going to change?
Congrats on the launch, and enjoy the ride!
Why not? Sybase makes both databases, and works in the telecom messaging space. What a merger with SAP might mean is interesting, will SAP kill off the telecom part of the business and focus on the financial vertical? Sounds like a great place for a new startup!
Awesome, looks good!
Git's repository structure, plus the built-in reflog prevents committed data being lost by any command, unless it explicitly erases the repository or reflog.
Useful jQuery Plugin for UI Developers 
WinX DVD Ripper for Mac is an all-in-one DVD ripper designed to make perfect 1:1 DVD copy to hard drive and rip your DVD movies on Mac OS to iTunes, MOV, MP4, FLV, etc
I was also wondering about the difference between patch theory and this. I wonder if one of the reasons for operational transformation is that it is more feasible in semi-realtime environments, for example because transforming the operations is (computationally) easier than doing a merge on the data itself.
Thx for the tip kes!
I think the parent is trying to say that why use a tool that is "hackerish" if they both do the same thing with the same few commands. Then if you need to do something more complex you already have git.

Edit: iPad mistype.
I'm showing how much I don't know about crypto, but I consider frequency analysis the easy way to crack a Caesar cipher, and expected the hard way to be a brute-force method hooked up to a dictionary.

(Or is it 'hard' in that no programming was used?)
Python is one of my favorite languages, but every time I use + to concatenate strings I get a kind of gross feeling.

I think one reason is that python encourages the use of duck typing, and as a result when you look at a piece of code you can't really be positive what kinds of values the variables hold. So if you're writing some code that works as long as the arguments passed in support "+", it's jarring thinking that it might run on strings, but surely won't do what you expect.
This is great, but two things that I would really like to know about my privacy on Facebook are 1) which photos I'm tagged in that are publicly visible (even if I have elected not to display tagged photos to friends), and 2) which wall posts are accidentally tagged as everyone.

Those photos are indexed by Google and contain my name, even if I have chosen not to share photos I've been tagged in. I want to be able to see the list of public ones so that I can manually untag myself. Similarly, it would take too long for someone with thousands of wall posts to find the ones that might have accidentally been set to "everyone".

I think that it might have been better to wait until these were included before officially launching the tool, because the photo issue affects almost everyone on Facebook, and if people use this tool and everything checks out ok, they probably won't return again if you update it later.
A few months ago I extracted bmdiff from hypertable to use standalone. Give it a try: http://bitbucket.org/mattsta/bmz/src
Here's an excellent article on the death of the Rocky Mountain News:
<a href="http://www.johntemple.net/2009/09/lessons-from-rocky-mountai...;

The lessons mentioned in the article are easily applicable to any newspapers out there.

Newspapers need to find a new business model fast, to survive n the new competitive environment.

Experimentation is the way to go, as mentioned. It's all about trying, trying fast enough in hope to hit the jackpot.

While tablets might seem like the popular thing right now, they are just about distribution - getting content to people. That doesn't change the way how people will want to part their money.

Let me end with two quotes from Albert Einstein which I think are applicable here:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them."
World hottest news: No proof of mobile cancer risk, major study concludes
Next time I need a put-down for someone's argument, I think I might call it "jumentous," which according to this page means "[s]melling like horse urine."
I guess I meant the former, but both work. I've been building up a large collection of blogs with this sort of info for my own reading. (I've put some up on http://quantblog.com/library , but the whole site is still a work in progress). I can email you a larger list or post here if anyone is interested. Again, this caters to my interests, you may have other ideas in mind.
I desperately want to buy one of the old Titan I sites. Unfortunately, they cost about as much as a good house and are in the middle nowhere. Not to mention, most of the cheaper sites are in dire need to be restored and renovated before you could live/work out of them.

All of that said, if anyone wants to join forces, buy one up, and build a nifty datacenter; let me know.
An auction would have the benefit of helping you figure out what kind of CPM potential advertisers are ready to pay for.
Money quote: "By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?"
ANWR would need decades to begin production and even then would produce only modest amounts of oil. Nuclear power has proven to be extremely expensive; I am not aware of any country that generates a significant fraction of its power using nuclear power plants without massive investment and control by the state. Since the people generally opposed to government funding and control of industry on a massive scale are not usually liberal, your comment is of questionable veracity.
great suggestion. Maybe a screenshot on mouseover? I'm trying to watch bandwidth at the moment though.

Originally I made the scanner walk through each step and show what was happening, but it was too flaky.
I see friends' settings reported as insecure, and then asked the application to fix that, but those settings are still reported as insecure. Some more documentation on what that's about would be interesting to me.

Thanks for the great external links on your site. A very interesting application that I immediately told all my Facebook friends about.
I'm happy to donate money towards hosting costs; any intention of posting those numbers? (assuming you're not launching this as a money making venture).
The scanner appears unable to change those settings. If you click the link (left of "fix this") you will be able to change the settings manually.
True. It still sounds uncomfortably like trivia, but maybe that's because nobody's figured out how to measure it properly yet.

It sounds a lot like evaluating fielding, in both cricket and baseball, because in addition to keeping track of whether a player drops the ball (both figuratively and literally) or not, there are many would-haves and should-haves to take into account.

But you're right: good running between the wickets, and also shot selection with a view toward getting the better batsman more of the strike, is a real skill which should be measured, even if it is difficult and nobody really knows how yet. :)
I thought this was precisely why white hat war drivers unmounted their TCP stack when scanning. Is that not the case anymore?
Are they actually selling them? Do you have a URL to info on that?
At least two previous submissions here on HN, of which

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1348123

is the earlier.
I agree that I would like to see some code, but don't underestimate the importance of funding when running a startup. Even if Diaspora is not, strictly speaking, a startup, it's worth talking to press while the story is hot because it likely translates into more funding, and more funding can't hurt their chances of success.
This is not VC funding! This is seed capital... VCs hand out millions, not a couple hundred thousand. I believe in boot-strapping, and I boot-strapped my own start-up, but if these guys can get a small amount of money to work with, it is helpful.
That would be really interesting -- I'd love your list, as I'm interested in many of the same areas. Much appreciated. I'm @ aiwnycapts@gmail.com
What if 99% of the world's oil was in more difficult places like this, but we had already extracted the 1% that was easy to get?

I'm not sure what the point of your question was.
Landscape photography. Motosphotos.com
Home rennovation.

Physical and artistic hobbies just to get away from analytical thinking.
As an acaedmic and an entrepreneur, I find it disappointing when people keep on saying that "ideas do not matter, only execution does". In my experience, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to do the research that generates a good idea, but it takes very little time and effort to steal that idea.

Yes, I know execution matters a great deal, and I have done a lot of work executing on my ideas. But my point is that people who say ideas are the easy part often mean that it is very easy for them to take someone else's idea and that they have no need to do the difficult part of coming up with an idea in the first place. This is why the patent system was created, and the patent system was a key contributors to the West's rise to prominence. (I say this as an Arab who grew up watching the effects of piracy, and the crippling effects on a society of not respecting intellect.)

In the longer term, I do believe that ideas matter, and that dismissing the work of academics is dangerous to the competitiveness of Anglo-Saxon societies.
Sigh...

I thought I could give readers enough credit to not have to spell it out.

- Starting out with a track record of building an impressive startup and/or products;

- Seeking out the #1 company in the world he wants to work for;

- Calling the CEO to introduce himself then carefully crafting an email to express his intent and his offer;

- At his own substantial expense, travelling to NYC to spend 2 weeks in the company's office in the hope of proving himself;

- Spending his time carefully observing how the place operates and figuring out how best he could be of value;

- Persisting with the strategy until he achieved his goal;

- Ultimately, receiving recognition of his talents and being offered a permanent position.

Are you not able to identify in any of these 7 points, any hint of determination, intellect or talent?
The Pirate Bay goes down after legal pressure
Speech Recognition with Javascript
When did linking to press releases warrant a post here? Leave that to the likes of Computerworld magazine.
The value of having a guest editorial in the NYT goes far beyond whatever payment one might receive. Just ask the Diaspora quartet. (I realize they didn't have an editorial. Work with me. ;-) )

That component is so large, I'm not sure I can separate it enough to address the spirit of SA's question.

There's a certain component of esteem that goes along with most of our actions, but our desire to attain it can almost always be linked to a promise of tangible gain.
I completely agree with you about photo privacy, and I was hoping to keep it soft-launched while I added photo and wall-post privacy checks (my free time is limited). Lifehacker and RWW wrote about it this morning though, so not much of a choice.

Facebook is constantly changing this stuff though, so I'm hoping that the Facebook page and Twitter announcements will keep people up-to-date and re-running new privacy checks.

Source code is open, think you might have free time to help add some of those checks in tonight?

http://github.com/mjpizz/reclaimprivacy
Oh, I didn't say that it would have been brilliant if I had built it. But I'll bite anyway. Or at least provide a couple of thoughts.

The index is one of the key components in git, but it doesn't really have a name or label in the UI. Say that it was called "index"; then the current "git diff" would be equivalent to "git diff index", and the current "git diff --cached" to "git diff index..HEAD". Less special cases to remember. IMHO, of course.

The same way "git checkout index foo.c" would fetch foo.c from the index (I don't even remember the magic incantation for doing that now). Etc.

Also, I still think that using the index should be optional: "git diff" should default to "git diff HEAD", "git commit" should default to the current "git commit -a", etc.

"git checkout" tries to do too much. It creates and switches to branches, and copies blobs from the repository to the working tree. The first form is reasonably safe, and bails out without --force if you do something stupid, the second does not. At least for me, the only way to learn the difference is the hard way.

The branch-switching should probably be done by "git branch" instead, and the fetching of blobs by "git reset" (which sometimes already does this, but with very confusing options; I never remember the difference between --soft, --mixed, --hard, --mixed and whatever).

That's only a couple of changes that could have been made a long time ago. Now it is definitely too late. Even if the git UI could be made smaller and more logical (with a huge amount of work), it's not worth pissing off pretty much every git user out there...
My page view may be nonstandard, because I zoom in on most pages to favor my presbyopia. I don't see the link "(left of 'fix this')" to which you refer, and would appreciate tips on what manual changes to make in my own Facebook settings. Once you update that on your website documentation, I'll be sure to deep-link my friends to those same tips. Thanks.

P.S. Friendly general advice for web developers who use JavaScript elements that display on webpages: TEST those for users who have different font size settings or zoom settings to favor their own vision issues, lest links or other elements of your design overlap and become unreadable.
Kind of like git branch -d, which, as http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-branch.h... states, deletes the reflog as well? If it doesn't delete the reflog, then it git world, at least, it probably isn't considered to be fully destructive!
Do you see an 'HN' effect? I wonder how much of this was driven by your postings here? That is - how much of your stock photo and ebook sales are truly organic?
I'm to poor to pay attention...
well said. and i think that's the point. a centralized forum of like-minded people would be an invaluable asset. just remains to be seen whether the average finance person is too short-sighted / in need of immediate gratification to contribute and make it what it should be.
Ask HN: Any thoughts on XWiki Watch?
I've been considering XWiki Watch for a product. Any used it? Would you recommend it? Any competition I should consider? It looks like just what I need but there seems to be limited documentation or support.
I'm I the only one a little wary of scanning for privacy by logging into Facebook and then injecting someone else's scripting code into the page?

(Edited for the pedantic)
Awesome job -- I think this will be a great service when you add photo privacy checks. Among my friends, that is usually their biggest concern.
Alexb911 -- Mapping, Hacking, and Jacking
Intractable Problems in Cryptography
It's a slippery slope, isn't it? Freedom from thought? Orwell was so prescient with 1984 that sometimes it's spooky.
Ask HN: Why can't I post this article?
I'm curious as to why I can't post this article:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/jruby-upgrade-features-java-accommodations-438

The submission appears to be accepted, but it doesn't show the discussion box, and, out of curiosity, when I tried it in another browser without being logged in, I couldn't see it at all in the new listing.

Now I know I'm quoted in the article, but surely that can't be the reason for rejection? :-)

Just wondering if I'm tripping up a hidden anti-spam rule, and would like to know what not to do in future.
Ending the dialogue with a worthless ad hominem attack seemed pretty weak to me.

I don't have to be a virtuoso to know crappy music when I hear it. I haven't directed a single film, but can tell you when I think a film sucks.
Yes, because the stolen prototype is just about Steve's ego, and not, for example, about calming the fears of the economic powerhouses of the entire area (and state).

I'm sure all the other silicon valley co's would sleep better knowing that, if one of their prototypes (physical or otherwise) got "lost" and then sold to a news outlet, nothing would happen legally.

The "finder" and "buyer" appear to have committed a crime. Asking the police to investigate a crime is not exactly fascism. I think you'll find, in fact, that it's the very definition of probity.

And the very fact that there's a special tech-related crimes task force shows you that the area govt knows it has to protect its economic powerhouses, and is eager to do so.

If you want to be wise, you have to think beyond your narrow little window. Things do not just happen to one person, or one company, they happen in a system.

End of story.
I thought Git handled huge files poorly too. What I'd read was that most algos in git assume that the whole file in revision control can be held in memory at once to do things like diff.

Has this changed, or was I always mistaken, or this guy talking about the sum of file sizes being a few gig?
right now I'm not sure what the numbers will be - AppEngine's estimate is currently fluctuating a lot because of the big traffic draw.

Haven't decided about other things that might make money in the future (maybe a Diaspora node?), but I fully intend to leave the current Javascript scanning functionality open and free :)
I was just trying to keep it simple. I considered an auction, and might move to it eventually though.
FWIW, daan started working on open-sourcing TIN more than a year ago.
As was pointed out the last couple times this article was posted, this is an ad hominem fallacy.

Criticism should be judged on its merit, not based on ones opinion of critics.

Jose Canseco is completely nuts and an asshole to boot (go check his Twitter feed for a few minutes of fun), but that doesn't mean his claims about the steroid era in baseball are meritless.
Certain sites are blacklisted. Perhaps infoworld is?
Please don't Godwin a thread right off the bat.

Hee hee.

If you traffic in stolen physical objects, I want the police to investigate thoroughly.

You're probably right, but the objection I agree with is the priority that Jobs/Apple got because of who Steve is. They wouldn't bust down the door for just anyone. If some small startup complained that a prototype was stolen, the police would not have acted so promptly and decisively.

And that's the problem I have with this. The response should have been proportional to the crime: it should have been "well, we have a lot of other complaints right now, and this isn't going to affect much of anything. Sorry." -- not "SIR YES SIR! We'll bust that door down forthwith, sir!"
I doubt you're the only one - thats why I made the source code completely open:

http://github.com/mjpizz/reclaimprivacy/blob/master/javascri...

The only compressed stuff is jQuery javascript, all other Javascript is uncompressed and commented. Hope that helps.

[edit: updated line number]
Make this but target it towards value investors (because they read a tremendous amount-- multidisciplinary stuff, newspapers, SEC filings, etc) and you will probably be able to attract a pretty good core following. Then you can gradually expand and widen the audience.

Feel free to contact me (see my profile) if you'd like some more input if you decide to move in that direction.
For sure. But I do think it's just a sign of good design that Git is easily usable in ways that are unexpected and outside its original intended purpose.