skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
DES is arguably an exception to that. Twenty years after the standard was published, the EFF published designs for a machine that could brute-force a DES key in a matter of days.

But even when it was published, people were saying a 56-bit key was too small, which they aren't saying of modern cryptosystems (to my knowledge).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard
"Areva's EPR-proto has proved that western nuclear industry contractors had forgot (comparable to UK's Trident missile -case) how to actually build nuclear power plants."

I really wonder about this: surely the cited concrete problems can't be due to requirements that are entirely unique to building nuclear power plants? (In some case, though, I can well believe it, e.g. the foundation for the reactor, although it ought to be at least a bit like building serious bomb-proof fortifications.)

Have people forgotten how to forge metal? Very possibly, depending on the type and scale needed (I know there are general US issues with our defense industrial base here, then again we just aren't building military artifacts in the old ways anymore (e.g. modular Chobham tank armor vs. cast armor, construction of the B2 ws very different than the B1)), but we need more info than is provided in the source article: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Olkiluoto_pipe_welding_...

Which you'll notice the main topic of was a gross failure to properly direct and supervise pipe welding. When you all these three things up, it smells to me like serious supervisory incompetence on the part of the general contractor rather than anything likely to be unique to nuclear engineering.

Of course that could be due to the general contractor getting out of practice, but the concrete and pipe welding it relatively basic stuff (e.g. high quality pipe welding is critical to refinery and chemical plant construction). This sounds more like "out of practice at being serious about their job", which is a sort of institutional rot that can set in when an organization has no real work to do for too long. See e.g. Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail40...
I'd forget the the "writing cool stuff" part as much as possible, and focus as much as possible on "getting things done" and "making some money" (where "making some money" is short-hand for actually shipping code that somebody is willing to pay for.)

It's pretty easy, standing on the outside, to see where you're going wrong.

Let's start here:

I'm currently writing something SMTP based. First I started using Twisted and Python, which includes its own SMTP implementation,

So far, so good...

then I went on looking at scaling,

Warning, Will Robinson! Warning!

Forget scaling at this point-- scaling is a luxury problem, as it means you have enough customers that you actually need to scale. For now, focus on getting a first version out to the customers, and when the rate of uptake is significant enough, then you can start thinking about scaling.

In other words: always aim for the minimum. That's why they call it an MVP. Try to figure out what the absolute least amount of code you have to write is, to give the users an experience that they'd be willing to pay for. Then you have something to build on.
That is a different class of problem. The health problems Zed mentions affect you, not others. Doesn't matter to your coworkers if you have wrist pain or diabetes.

On the other hard, you smelling doesn't affect you in any way (you get used to your own stench), it affects others. So this is not a health issue, it's a generic "getting along with others" issue.
I added the ability to follow a thread ! Thanks for testing !
Indeed. Studies have shown that those that are used to caffeine don't get dehydrated from drinking caffeinated beverages.

The NYT examine this here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/nutrition/04real.ht...
24 Addictive Free Linux Games (Part 2 of 3)
It's not exactly the same, but it affects you in that people will start to avoid you as much as possible. Would you recommend someone with B.O. issues for a job?

One big distinction is that people often know they're unfit, but are normally oblivious to hygiene problems. I've never had the nerve to tell anyone myself.

Edit: It works both ways. If someone is unproductive due to their health problems, that definitely affects their coworkers. Diabetes, fair enough, but there's definitely an argument for putting many easily avoidable physical problems in the "getting along with others" category.

Edit Edit: If you're going to downvote, let's have your counter-arguments please.
Hi vyrotek,
I just added this feature. Hope you'll like it!
Where do ideas come from?
Hi rick_2047, the feature is implemented now. There are many approaches to do that, I hope the one I choose is good enough : receive the latest comments only (not the entire threads with the new comments highlighteds). Hope you'll like it, and thanks for the support.
this is completely not hacker news, but at the same time I loved it.
InfoQ: A Crash Course in Project Management
Sorry I am new to the site. And I am just realising this is not appropriate. Still "What do his leavings tell us?"
Everyone, and I do mean everyone, with a mental health issue understands the first problem with mental health: People try to laugh it off, or hide it out of fear that others will laugh it off. Since people literally end up dead at an early age because of this attitude, your flippant comment seems likely to be downvoted by folks who have encountered mental illness, and that is a lot of people. Such is the risk of being flippant. Fortunately there's a -4 limit and you'll live.

Do you really need an explanation of why programmers might be at risk of mental health problems? To first order, Zed's list speaks for itself: being in poor health tends to depress you, especially the part about bad sleep. The depression and the health effects feed back on each other in a nasty way.

But I'd add that loneliness is a big factor. These days we have amazing tech like IRC and Twitter and HN, and it's easy to imagine that we can have rich social lives without ever seeing another person except through the medium of text. Well, your brain, designed and conditioned as it is for the presence of actual physical humans, may think differently. I spent eighteen months working as a solo consultant in my office, meeting clients only via email and the occasional phone call, and it eventually drove me bananas. My wife still laughs about the day I took half an hour off to go to the barber and then raved about the awesome social experience.

Even if you work in an office the isolation can be frustrating, because as a programmer you routinely work on problems that nobody else understands or wants to understand - even your fellow programmers, who are trying to focus on problems of their own. To interact with others you need to really break your focus, but that causes you to slow down, so maybe you try not to do it, and before you know it everyone else has gone home and it is dark and you're wandering through an empty parking lot...

Remember, solitary confinement is one of the worst tortures you can inflict on a human.
metal punch cards, stored in low acid clay vessels in a very dry place. Seems to have worked so far... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_Scroll
Amazon S3 would surely be the most economical, right? No upfront costs, and running costs steadily decreasing?
If you don't read the rest of this, get a styrofoam foam noodle around 12" in diameter and 3 feet in length. Lie on it to relax and stretch your back. Back stores have them. They're expensive but I use mine twice a day.

For those of you who type like madmen with no regard for ergonomics and work breaks, I did that since I was 9. I have systems in place to avoid that now. Through grade school, high school, college. I was a blazing fast slouch typer. After I graduated from grad school, I started getting pains. So I would rest up and be as good as new overnight. There reaches a point where if you ignore the problem long enough it becomes persistent. Finally, it became such that even after a weekend of rest it would (pain, soreness) still remain. Maybe at a level three out of ten. I went to see a physical therapist and he tested my grip strength - my left hand was stronger. And I'm right handed. Leaving out thousands of ergonomics purchases, the best thing you can do is to start a swimming program. Swimming is zero-impact; you're not pounding the pavement. It is excellent for working your full body. Swimming is hard if you don't know how to swim because you're basically putting all your energy into fighting water resistance. Elite swimmers are three times more efficient than average swimmers (91% of energy fighting water vs 97% for average swimmers - meaning they can put 9% towards forward propulsion). Total Immersion has an awesome swim-like-a-fish program (http://totalimmersion.net). For eyestrain, rest your eyes by looking at least twenty feet away every twenty minutes for at least twenty seconds (the 20-20-20 rule). If you wear corrective lenses, ask your optometrist for a computer Rx (that you can use while screen working). WorkPace software from Wellnomics is awesome because it forces me to micro-pause every 4 minutes for 20 seconds and stop working for 4 minutes every 14 minutes. Believe me, I am a very efficient programmer. Also, use the mouse with your non-dominant hand.

For those of you who don't have health issues, realize that you will not take endless, pain-free typing for granted once you have soreness that becomes persistent. The only true rehabilitation would be to stop typing all together for a long time (2 years). Until then, I'm appreciating my job for what it is - something in the short term. Diversify your portfolio of skills - don't be over-weighted in tech. Start creating things that you own.
Romer is pushing colonialism (minus the militarism and racism), but giving it a new name for the purpose of marketing. That's hardly a popular position.
SSDs with batteries and/or solar power for 50 years?
Because, sadly, people have egos. Everyone wants to be famous and reach thousands of others, even when what he's spreading is completely irrelevant. Twitter enables this for everyone.
Put it encoded and distributed over Internet, so Google and other search engines can store it.
I am a big fan of Werner Herzog but this doesn't sound like him. It's a good idea to double check.
India is much, much better off today than they would have been had colonialism continued.

How do you know what the condition of India would have been under British rule?

Was there a sharp upward trend in India's gdp/growth rates/etc after Britain left? Or did the 10 post-british years have higher growth rates than the last 10 british years? I'm genuinely curious.
Minecraft is free, the Alpha is pay-for IIRC. If people like Minecraft enough I guess they'll buy the Alpha.
Adopting the scientific methods to how people become successful.

Just because I might be intelligent I can't quite tell someone how to be intelligent. A scientist might be able to however if he does a lot of studies and is able to derive rules etc.

Besides, he is not serially successful, as in build one company and move on to the next, or successful in business, politics, history, medicine, physics. He just wrote one code. As I say sure it took some wits from him to make the deal and intelligence to write the code, but that in no way makes him qualified to know much about education, which is such an extensive topic.

And yes he was a drop out hence his genius idea of accrediting any knowledge however it was gained. If someone has some knowledge there are other ways to prove it to others than through accreditation. We have I think enough pieces of paper which misleads people as to our ability.
I like to maximize whatever window is in focus to minimize visual clutter. (one of my pet hates about Safari and Mac OS in general is it's aversion to full-screen windows.

As I've ranted about before multiple overlapping windows solve more problems than they create. Give me a single full-screen window plus the option to occasionally tile 2 (or 4) windows for those few occasions when I need that.
"then I went on looking at scaling"

Pick the tools that you are best with and that you enjoy using, fuck the rest. If your product takes off, then worry about scale.
Give up guitar. Write less. Think. Solve problems in ways that use least typing.
5 Blatant Toy Commercials Disguised As Kids Shows
Check out some of those campaigns? Complete madhouse!
Its not about semantics, it is about connecting a word to reality. America is not an empire. It is perhaps the most successful country on earth, it has great influence, but it is just a country. It might however be trying to become an empire with all those invasions, but it is hardly there yet.
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The BBC publish some real shit.
...preparing for the retirement boom...

Actually, there are very few investments we can make which will prevent retirements from destroying/severely harming the US.

Social security is directly indexed to wages, and medical spending tends to be proportional to the higher wage brackets as well (most medical spending is labor costs).

Virtually any productive investments we make would increase wages, and social security/medicare costs will rise commensurately. The only thing we can do to prepare for the retirement boom is either cut benefits, or massively increase productivity with no commensurate increase in wages.
Automakers turn to high-tech startups for edge
Nice idea. Probably no need for an actual modem in the encoding, I think that should be feasible with software nowadays?
Hi jason_tko applied just now - new to this community but been in japan for a while. Be great to meet som fellow hackers. Yoroshiku onegaitashimasu.
If your doing it along those lines a better solution would be to encrypt the data with something that you don't expect to be broken in 50 years and store the key on sealed paper, or whatever should last 50 years, in a time capsule for that time.
Their reasoning must be either that they find the native and cross-platform Ruby libraries to bee "good enough" or that rubyists that port their work to Windows do it in a way they keep the core cross-platform and the GUI thin and easily portable.

It would be interesting to have a WinGlade/WPFGlade GUI library that used the GUI descriptors Glade generates to build native Windows interfaces on-the-fly. That would make life very easy for porters. It's so interesting I find it unlikely I am the first to have this idea. Got to google it.

Would be even funnier to have a plugin for Visual Studio to "Save As Glade"...
A slightly related issue is that keyboards are usually incredibly dirty (especially those in public places). A habbit of touching your face after having typed on the keyboard can cause all sorts of problems.
Parsley is great for this. http://github.com/fizx/parsley
For Python: http://github.com/fizx/pyparsley

There use to be a website for sharing "parselet" scripts.
Really, though, you shouldn't need Zed, the NYT or anyone else to tell you whether coffee is dehydrating. You should be able to tell, for yourself, one way or the other.

For myself, it's headaches and feeling "parched" (for lack of a better term), preceded by the usual coffee-smelling piss. I usually don't let it get that far, but once my head starts to ache I quickly switch over to green tea and/or water.

Whether the latest journal reports caffeine is or isn't dehydrating may be interesting, but should mean fuck-all to your daily routine. Don't look for authorization in science. Look for it in careful examination of your own experience.
I always felt that it was pushed and pushed by tech blogs as the next big thing, until it did become the next big thing. I opened an account in 07, I believe, and never really used it, but heard over and over again how important it was from sites like techcrunch. That and the fact that they allowed anyone to build on top of it
Web app situation on iPhone has improved considerably since pre-SDK days:

• In 1.0 there was no offline cache or local storage. You had to download whole app each time over 2G.

• JS was many times slower (pre-SquirrelFish engine, slower hardware).

• No CSS transitions or animations. Now you can have 3D hardware-accelerated layers in CSS.

• You couldn't get rid of status bar and Safari toolbars. Now iOS allows apps to take over entire screen (if user bookmarks page on home screen).

Also developers needed some time to learn how to use WebKit features. Instead of dumbed-down CSS you can use some CSS3 and -webkit- properties. Instead of slow and limited onclick you can use non-standard touch events, etc.
I'm a bit surprised Zed didn't mention getting a standing desk, or better yet building one (it's simple and cheap to do so).

I think standing desks are an obvious remedy for back pain and discomfort. Your "core muscles" are used more than if you were sitting down, and it reduces the pressure on your spine caused by sitting upright in a typical office chair.

A good, low-tech way to do this is to buy an unfinished door and paint or finish it yourself. If it has a doorknob cutout, just use it for cable management. Then get a pair of adjustable Stanley FatMax workhorses and you're in business:

http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-11031-Telescopic-Plastic-Sawho...
He got to the heart of something, but it's not specific to Twitter.
This is one of the questions asked at the end of the Google Tech talk video. The author responds that they licensed it to apple for a nominal fee. He also says that he got paid pretty well as a contractor for apple so didn't feel bad not getting paid for a few months. He also apparently still works full time on this program and spoke passionately about upgrading it to take advantage of GPUs.
It's an ongoing series... yes, it rough right now, but I'm pretty sure I can make it equivalent - to the pixel - to the app.

In fact the only real challenges are scrolling (since Safari has a strange opinion on overflow:scroll) and embedded video (because the BBC is using some native iPlayer approach, as far as I can see).

Otherwise, my expectation is that a few 100k of HTML5 will be hard to distinguish from 6Mb or so of app. If you have a capped data plan, that might be, er, good news...
Ask HN: What is the best city to start a start-up in Europe?
What is the best city to start a start-up in Europe?
The LEGO World of Nathan Sawaya
I have had just over 10k uniques last month on my blog http://blog.dispatched.ch

Here's Google Analytics on screen resolution:

1.
1280x800
1,853	20.25%

2.
1440x900
1,337	14.61%

3.
1680x1050
1,186	12.96%

4.
1920x1200
1,071	11.70%

5.
1280x1024
749	8.18%

6.
1920x1080
451	4.93%

7.
1024x768
334	3.65%

8.
1366x768
317	3.46%

9.
768x1024
298	3.26%

10.
320x480
256	2.80%

Note: The current votes lead to believe that 1024*768 is the best resolution. I wouldn't concur. It doesn't even make 4% of my hits - besides: who would own such a monitor? Maybe house wifes or older people. If those are your target market, then go with it. If not: pick some resolution that was not hip 10a ago.
Thanks. Stay tuned. I'm actually waiting for a Cease & Desist letter from them ;-)
I've suffered from the low back problems he mentions, but mine was not primarily caused by sitting for long periods of time. It was from playing sports when I was younger--I really messed it up.

However, I recently got an ergonomic chair after minor back surgery and it is awesome! It has made a big difference in how I sit and I am much more comfortable with it.

I would also add: don't sit at your desk and eat your lunch and surf to HN. :) Go outside for a 20-30 minute walk. Walk somewhere different every day and look at things you haven't seen before. Not only do you get good exercise, you will spur your creativity and curiosity.
Beagleboard based Dalek with stereo vision
There was a very similar thread not too long ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565375
Additional notes (too late to edit the comment above):

After a call with one of my hosting providers (yes, on a Sunday at that, how is that for service), they saw the 40Gbit barrier broken somewhere at the end of 2007, today they're prepared for a multiple of that but he says that because they are that well prepared they've become less of a target.

They've invested a very large sum of money in infrastructural components specifically to deal with DDOS attacks at the hardware level, and though he doesn't rule out the possibility that they'll be one day facing one they can't deal with he doesn't seem overly worried, he does not want to claim any upper limit.

The countries they've seen the most trouble from are hard to pin down, but apparently the former USSR states and China are pretty high on hist list for the 'bot masters'.

Extortion seems to have arrived on the internet to stay, if you're a small player and you become successful you'd better be prepared, sooner or later you'll be a target.

Even smaller websites can easily get 2 to 10 Gbps ddos attacks aimed at them, the first time this happened to me I was pretty happy that all that happened was that I received an email from my ISP informing me of the fact without any loss of service.
Print them out on an acid free paper (I have books that are over 300 years old), so this will definitely work.

After 50 years you can OCR the data etc (or ask your personal robot to do it for you) and print it using a variant of TeX/LaTex. This has already survived for 34 years, so another fifty years is almost guaranteed;) Knuth predicted some years back that TeX will last for about 100 years.
Among other things it's a form of validation/filtering. If you're hiring you want to filter down the applications to a measurable amount, and one of the best ways to do this is by seeing if they've done something in the past which requires high ability.

In CS this could be having gained entry to MIT or having worked at Google. In these cases you have an institute that you respect saying "we've evaluated this person previously and they've met our high standards". So regardless of the fact that went to MIT or worked at Google, the very fact they got in conveys valuable information to the future employer.

I'm willing to bet that if you applied to hundred companies with two applications both otherwise identical but one having a MIT degree and one having a state college degree, the MIT degree application would get you far more interviews.

Also there's the fact that schools are different. There are plenty of college which are essentially "java schools" which have very minimal coverage of CS beyond programming, which is significantly different from what you'd get at somewhere like MIT. The same applies to MBA schools, but even more, there's no standardised curriculum and the quality of the teachers varies far more, you could be taught by the person who invented in industry the business practices he teaches, or alternatively by a teacher with no real interest in the subject and no industry experience.

There's a lot that can be learnt from books, but there's a huge amount of knowledge that can only be learnt from people with industry experience and that's a rare thing.
WOW! Blown away! Although the video is 2 years old. Thanks for this.
micro-pause every 4 minutes for 20 seconds and stop working for 4 minutes every 14 minutes

I doubt that's feasible for anyone working in an office, rather than for themselves.

I ran the numbers a bit, and I assumed: a) that you work 4 minutes, break 20s, then work for - i.e. the clock resets after the break, b) the 14m breaks are wall clock, not non-break time, and c) when you return from a 14m break, the 4m clock resets.

According to this, you're taking 19m of breaks per hour. I'd be fired if I only worked 2/3 of every hour.

Edit: For anyone interested, I did this in Excel and it breaks down like this:

work 4m, break 20s, work 4m, break 20s, work 4m, break 20s, work 1m, break 4m, work 4m, break 20s, work 4m, break 20s, work 2m, break 4m, work 4m, break 20s, work 4m, break 20s, work 1m20s, break 4m, work 4m, break 20s, work 4m, break 20s, work 1m, break 4m