skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The only point in here that's defensible is (5), and that's because it's so vague that it doesn't mean much.

(1) Split I and D memory aren't a silver bullet against memory corruption flaws; "Harvard" architecture machines have had remote code execution flaws. Attackers aren't writing directly to program text; they're writing to data structures that effect command & control (most famously the stack) inside the process. Over the past 10 years, randomization has been more effective than any explicit control over what can or can't be executed.

(2) Most modern memory corruption flaws don't involve someone's strcpy(). It's far more common to find math problems in the handling of counted data structures --- you know, like the ones Charlie Stross praises. Meanwhile, if you want "safe" string handling, you use a string library.

(3) We have pervasive TCP/IP encryption today. It does nothing to address computer integrity. Encryption only keeps attackers from talking to you if you can authenticate and authorize every connection. You talk to thousands of sites daily; authorizing them is untenable. Meanwhile, this business of "listeners promiscuously logging traffic and cracking it at leisure" (side note: nobody logs "promiscuously" anymore): it takes an awful lot of leisure to crack AES128, or even DES-EDE.

(4) "The world wide web" has problems, but it's unclear that Stross can actually point them out. Turning Javascript on is unlikely to make you "some script kid's bitch" (turning Java on is another story). People turn off Javascript to avoid XSS, which makes one site a bitch, but not your whole browser.

(6) Bloody Microsoft took security seriously sooner than any other large vendor, as we're all discovering to our chagrin today. Nobody took software security seriously in 2000 except for software security practitioners. It's as true in 2001 as it was in 1995 that a skilled attacker could have popped any Sun machine, any sufficiently complex web app, any document viewer, any graphics format, or any SSL stack. So why blame Microsoft? They at least got a grip on the problem.

Let me be direct: things would have been just as bad if our CPUs had split I&D memory. They'd have been just as bad if everyone used Pascal strings. They'd have been just as bad if we had pervasive IPSEC from day #1. They might be better if we didn't have the WWW, but then, we wouldn't care how good or bad things were (like we didn't seem to care so much when people were owning up DMS500 switches at the phone company in 1991). Things would have been just as bad --- maybe, believe it or not, worse --- had Solaris been the dominant OS in 2000.

The problem is, nobody really knows how to make correct software. It's a core problem in Software Engineering and it's unsolved. Without correct software, you can't have secure software. Sorry.
There's no hard and fast rule to acceptable bounce rates but here's some context. I have several sites and have worked with many companies on site optimization and have seen higher than 49%. The bounce rate of my personal site is 31%. Strong well established startups I've worked with that get qualified traffic are in the low 30% range. My other misc. projects are in the 40% to low 50% range.

Yes, you can still improve your 49%. Shoot for the high 30-s. From briefly glancing at your homepage there's a lot of glaring things you could be doing better:

As a start...
-Have one clear call-to-action that resides in a easy to see button. Right now you have several that are encompassed in easy to miss text links. As a visitor I'm not sure what to do to get started.

-Use graphics that show what your company does. Right now there's way too much text - people don't read, you've got about 3 seconds to show them what you do, and graphics are a visually compelling way to communicate this.

-Your logo is hard to read, and the value prop in your tagline isn't differentiated enough. (90% of social networking services can describe themselves using the same line). Think about your site's individual value prop and communicate that.

-Work on layout. Your current design looks like a template that's 5 years old (sorry!). Get a designer (99 Designs) to make you something good. It's worth it. This page is begging for a redesign.

-Test and iterate. Use Google Site Optimizer (free) for a/b testing and/or UserTesting.com (cheap) to get more info on how real people react to your site.

Good luck!
Inflation will be an issue at some point in the future, but with high unemployment I don't think it's likely for several years.

If you're risk averse, broader market decline is a bigger worry than inflation IMO.
> There really isn't that much to them, in my opinion, but every time I encounter them in the wild, they're never implemented correctly, with the variance ranging from really, really wrong to just sort of off.

My biggest issue with namespaces is the dichotomy between namespace URLs and namespace prefixes, and most people not understanding that prefixes are actually aliases for the URLs. For that reason, I quite like Clark's notation for namespaces (which is used by ElementTree and LXML), it makes the relation between element and namespace much clearer. Shame you can't use it in XML documents or XPath queries.

Also, that the default namespace only applies to elements, not attributes. I kind-of understand why they did that, but it's still very annoying.

> Some people use the namespaces in what appears to be a decorative manner. Some people mandate that the prefix be a certain thing <x:tag xmlns:x="thing"> works while <y:tag xmlns:y="thing"> doesn't

Oh yeah. Isn't it maven or something, which does that? Or did? I know I encountered it once or twice and I was using ElementTree 1.2 at the time (the one that went into the Python stdlib... and still is) and it doesn't keep track of XML namespace aliases (or defaults for that matter, and doesn't let you set them short of hacking through the private and undocumented namespace map) so everything comes out as `ns0:foo`, `ns1:bar`, ... Perfectly valid, and then you have a retarded tool which doesn't actually understand namespaces (even though the example documents say you need a namespace spec) and want an element called `foo:bar` and not "the element `bar` in the namespace http://foo.com.

> Some things get it right with xmlns:* , but don't understand what the bare xmlns itself means, so they only trigger namespace logic if there's a colon in the tag.

When that happens, somebody ought to get shot. Default namespaces are one of the most basic parts of namespaces (and it's not that hard to parse, though production might be a different issue).

> I'm still waiting to encounter the standard or software that actually uses them correctly.

libxml2 tended to work quite well in my experience (mostly though lxml), though I don't doubt I just missed its bugs.

edit: damn it, is there no way to escape those damn asterisks in yc?
the old trope that "the king is virtuous, but misled by wicked advisors"

That's very well put and I recognize the pattern, but never thought of it this way before. Is this something you figured out from observation, or did you learn it from some source (and if so, what)?
Clojure: superior from both Lisp and Java ends ^_-
Viral campaign pranks horny boys
I said "likely triggered the comment". I know it's speculative. But frankly, your tone was so aggressive that it was difficult not to think it was personal.

To the point, I think you and the author disagree on some definitions. Most likely "writing code" and "lines of code that make it to the final product". Plus the unspoken assumptions about the project (small or large, early or late…), but that has already been pointed out.

I also don't think the article suggests that "a great programmer is someone who connects together bits of code created by others, rather than writing his own code". What It does suggest is that great programmers don't write their own code when they shouldn't. That when they do anyway, it's probably out of laziness (screw the searching, I prefer coding), or arrogance (I can do better anyway), or ignorance (what? It has been done before?).

You are right to ridicule those who utter bullshit while claiming it's universal truths. But be careful not to leave holes in your rebuttal. That include angry tone and amplifying the opponent's words.
char *s = "Hi, Jacques"; // is immutable

char s[] = "Hi, Jacques"; // is writeable

"Hi, Jacques"[0] = 'S'; // is nonsensical
OpenGL 4.1 review
Although the arrest warrant has now been withdrawn:

"The warrant was issued late on Friday, said Karin Rosander, communications head at Sweden's prosecutors' office.

Swedish police have been trying to contact Mr Assange, but have not yet been able to, she told the BBC.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11047025

The initial article from the ”tabloid” also contained quotes from a prosecutor confirming the story.
The better point to make would be that nobody writes much C++ these days either.
John Cleese on Creativity
just call it "First time in Varanasi". ^_^

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi
"It is pretty much impossible for some man or woman or child who devotes a couple of hours per week to the market to outperform the professionals who spend 24×7 doing this for a living and when they are asleep, they have a workforce full of people doing more of the same. In this day and age, none of us are smarter than the market."

I agree that individual investors can't continue to try and play in the big leagues. When you're competing with bankers, you're going to lose because they're doing it 24/7, like Mark said.

However, there is a significant amount of the market (30%? Tried to google the figure and couldn't find it) that Wall Street doesn't cover, analyze or do much of anything about. For the most part, this is the playing field for the individual investor.

My only other advice is buy at a profit. Use value investing tenets to buy stocks that are significantly discounted to their fair value. It's much easier to calculate the value of a company than most think.
Both prosecutors are women. And it's the original arrest warrant that has been withdrawn; the investigation is still open.
10 bucks that there will be a movie on this guy coming out within a year.
Just had a look at your site, and michael is right that A/B testing will help. So will user testing: just showing the page to a bunch of friends to see what they get and don't get.
From looking at your page, I have a suggestion you might consider:
Add a big font (30+ px) sentence on what your site does, e.g., "Create beautiful photo album for FREE". That saves the trouble of reading the block of text explanation. You can add the secondary benefits in a bulleted list below: "-unlimited photos / -Google Maps links / Chatbox." Then give a picture of what it looks like. Put the search box top right in your header to give you more room.
Sometimes, The Better You Program, The Worse You Communicate
Lego Starcraft Brick Rush
What's the opposite of Inbox Zero? Cause that's what I have. I win.
Exactly. Von Neumann architecture, null string termination in C and lack of encryption in TCP/IP are all arguably the things we got spectacularly right. All these three are efficiency + simplicity vs features + complexity trade offs. Imagine how much extra energy and latency and points of failure would be introduced into the system if almost every network device was required to encrypt/decrypt every packet. Naughty things like error correction and oh a zillion tricks our everyday game programmer is using would be impossible.
Soldiers are court-martialed and arrested for killing civilians.

Sometimes they are. Oftentimes they are not. The fact that some are does not prove that regulations prohibiting the killing civilians are uniformly or frequently enforced. Anecdote is not the plural of data. Surely you see that?

Just because not all are found out and tried does not mean it is condoned by the military or US society.

I'd say that when high ranking political figures publicly advocate the killing of innocent people in revenge for the crimes of others without any sanction at all, then...yes, that does imply that American society condones their behavior.

You clearly have your own dogmatic view regarding US foreign policy and attitudes towards Muslims and I can't really argue with someone who has an almost religious belief in a point of view.

For someone with "almost religious beliefs", I seem to do a very good job justifying my arguments with evidence. Perhaps that is the main difficulty you face in discussions here.

Speaking as someone who almost joined the military and who who has read and studied a great deal in order to understand how military organizations function in practice, I don't think you're knowledgeable enough on the subject to effectively participate in discussion here.
Interesting find jmillerinc. Now I can have an alibi whenever I want ... :P
Let's track him down. Give him a computer. And finally get an unbiased opinion: vim or emacs?
Chile Wants to Borrow US Entrepreneurs for $40,000
Even the app store isn't immune to attack. Wasn't there a trojan type attack recently where an apparently innocent program had a dual purpose?

I don't have a link to hand I'm afraid...
Yes, Oscillococcinum, the wonderful 200C "preparation" of duck liver, which statically can not contain anything but sugar.
>And Microsoft, by dropping security support for older OSs, aren't helping the problem.

I disagree with this. The only way to get users off defunct OSes, and onto the newer, fundamentally more secure ones, is to stop supporting the old ones.
If the US government is going after Assange (and they clearly would like to talk with him on American soil), why? Isn't this akin to blaming the messenger. Fix your own dam leaks (pun intended).
> The Placebo effect is also used in the farmaceutical industry to sell old drugs under new names.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

> There are dozens and dozens of products based on a combination of Paracetamol and Vitamin C.

And?
"This sounds like a great strategy of using local customer and authoritative references to increase social proof to close sales."

Isn't that just what Facebook did? Got one notable school to adopt it, and then used that as social proof of its value to expand?

"A peep hole is not a disruptive product."

It is if you're a door-to-door salesperson. Big difference if people feel they can quietly ignore you after peeping out the hole, versus having to make some sort of contact and then trying to turn you away.
Meditation For A Stronger Brain
Glen Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990
it's true!
This might explain more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1293247...
Equities have been growing just fine. It's just that their market prices haven't been. The 10-year average earnings of publicly traded stocks--a rough but decent indicator of value--are quite a bit higher (70%, IIRC) than they were 10 years ago.

The lesson is not to avoid the stock market, but to avoid overpriced stocks.
East India Company brand returns after 135-year absence
So basically all the comments I saw where from people who are serial entrepreneurs? I see.
BTW, I am a programmer :)
You're still going to have this SAME problem....with Wholesalers.

What you want is a diversity of wholesale suppliers, not a diversity of end product creators, if you're looking for ingredient purity.
According to the interview with one of the victims, it was a consensual situation that got out of hand (in two separate cases). That description is perfectly consistent with the behavior of the prosecutors here; under Swedish law, depending on the exact details, such behaviour might be interpreted as rape, molestation, or just someone being an asshat. After digging into the details, the prosecutors seem to have gone from the rape end of the scale to the asshat end, and that's not a valid cause for arrest.
Hard to tell from my space. It's all OSX here.
Expressen is a tabloid.
C++ can only be compiled to C in the same sense that ANY language can be compiled to C. The point is moot if that's all that's being claimed.
Thanks for your time. I'll try your suggestions.
Am I the only one here who has a broad smattering of skills in that graph (around about C, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, HTML etc.) and don't see myself inferior/superior to anyone on that list? Incompetent programmers are incompetent no matter what language they use to (not) get the job done.
Common Lisp for work/fun. C and Java to wrap libraries for Lisp and clean up FFIs.

I know tens of programming languages. But other than Lisp, I just can't program comfortably in any of them without having a manual beside me. Mostly because I don't want/need to.

When it comes to "fun" languages, I prefer rigor to abundance of libraries (Citeseer/LtU to github.) I will happily spend a weekend on Mozart/Oz, Scheme, ML, along with hundreds upon hundreds of research languages that I pick up to follow a given text or area of research, but quickly forget once I get a general sense of the field and I am done reading the papers.

I also dabble in J2EE and C++ stuff, from "architecture" stand points; to quickly learn new design techniques, then translate them to Lisp semantics, or usually just obviate the need for them.

Most mainstream languages bore me, and I find them lacking in quality peer-reviewed papers or ground-breaking work. So far they're just a synthesis of old ideas into a nice, accessible package, or fixes of previous short-comings. I am also idiot-intolerant; if I find a language attracts loud blowhards, corporate types, shrieking excited newbs, and generally uninformed pundits, I am more likely to avoid it just to avoid their company ..
The startup opportunity I see is not removing anyone in the process to make it easier to acquire content. Rather, the opportunity I see is a framework that makes it much easier to navigate the legal necessities required. Most legalese is boilerplate after the first couple uses, right? A webapp could take inputs for who's involved in the process (with auto-complete fields) and then have a checklist with buttons for sending legalese and paying license fees.
This is a weak article. There are plenty of ways to beat the market averages while being just one individual with a small sum of capital.

A while back Buffett said that he thinks he could average 50% annually if he only had a small sum of capital. Here are some of the things he would likely be doing:

1. Go where the big investors can't

Many large institutional fund managers cannot go below certain market caps. Typically you can find a rich hunting ground of undervalued and ignored companies below $100M.

During the crisis I found it pretty useful to actually screen for negative enterprise value stocks. These were companies where they were trading BELOW the cash they had on their balance sheets. (EV = Market Cap + Debt - Cash). Some of these companies were pretty tiny, $10 to $50M mkt cap, but they worked out well. You have to be willing to deal with illiquidity though.

2. Odd lot tender offers

You can find situations where a company wants to go private and delist. To do that they need to buy out shareholders and get below 300 public shareholders. To do that sometimes they will pay a premium for you to tender shares if you have below 100 shares. Again, this is an area where a small investor can do well but where large institutions are precluded from being active.

3. Look for areas where institutions are forced to sell

Spinoffs are the classic example. Academic research has shown that spinoffs will in general outperform the greater market. Why?

Many index funds are mandated to only hold stocks that are a part of the index. Sometimes an index member will spinoff a smaller unit which cannot make it into the index. The index funds will be forced to sell that company and so its pricing may get below its actual value. That's why spinoffs tend to outperform the market in their 2nd and 3rd year of trading.

---

There are plenty of other areas too. These are just a few but it is all pretty well publicized.
Why would he believe that? They've tried to contact him before.
Ask HN: What´s the easiest, legal way to make 1 million bucks?
Seriously, I am sure lots of HN´ers have found many ways to do this, but as with most things in life, there´s always a better away. Would like to see your thoughts/experience either from you or from someone you know.

Thanx
I don't buy that. Maybe it's true in the "reads Hacker News" monoculture (or the "comments on Hacker News" monoculture), but that sample is not representative of the wider programming world.

Apple's not going to spend several million dollars of engineering effort to create another C++ compiler if nobody's writing C++. Companies aren't going to spend money on sending representatives to C++0x standards meetings if their customers aren't using C++.

People are realizing that they don't have to program in C++ for many different areas. That doesn't mean that they're aren't still writing parts of their apps in C++. And there's a lot of existing C++ code out there that still has to be extended, debugged, and maintained.
Support makes such a difference. I just got locked out from my PayPal account and there's no way to get it back without talking to someone on Monday (that's 48 hours away). Seriously, it's a huge company and they can't run a call center on the weekends. I'm going to cancel my account and use the WePay guys instead.
"Because people buy stocks for only one reason, they want them to go up in price."

Actually I've been buying them for their dividends, with the hope that the stock price itself will just keep pace with inflation.
Actually, if one is to believe the media over here, the rape charges have been dropped. The molestation ones still remain, though.
Bolshevism. An S&P 500 index will crush any bond, CD, whatever, over the next 20 years. When you are investing long term, the ups and downs and whatever volatility traders and hedge funds cause do not matter, you are still owning a piece of the company that on average will grow exponentially in value.

With inflation on the horizon, stocks are a way better hedge than cash or bonds.

And that said, if you go hunting for value and well priced stocks, you will be way better off.
I sat on a jury in a case that involved allegations of rape. One constant refrain from the nurses who examine rape victims is that there is often little to no physical trauma even when there has been a struggle. Furthermore, except in cases where it's a totally random event, the victim ofte may know the person. Even in the case where someone meets a person in a club and goes home with them, there are still legitimate explanations for lots of the physical evidence. So then it all comes down to whether or not you believe the plantiff or not. Shows like CSI and NCIS make people think that all kinds of science can prove this stuff, but in reality, the evidence is never as clear cut as you would like to think.
It's no wonder that you hear "I HATE PayPal" from half the people who hear the company's name. Here's a company with an arguably good product that's going up in flames because of their terrible support.
Company-wide, with some occasional exceptions (but 'company-wide' refers to a dev team of four people). It is a boot-strapped startup so there isn't money to throw around either.

(edit: the more I think about it, the more I want to claim that it happens to me a little more, because I end up taking on the challenges and producing results, without the support I think I should have)
Here's a blog post by Yaron describing the talk:

http://ocaml.janestreet.com/?q=node/75
"We're an XML shop": who says that?
And yet we still wonder about the Fermi Paradox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox