skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"When it comes to picking out frauds, you can usually tell by looking at the accounting who is playing loose and who is not."

Ever heard of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-balance-sheet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_purpose_entity

One can always obfuscate the accounting, make it so complex that no human brain can understand what the heck is going on.
I am very curious: what exactly do you think the US should do with countries whose culture you disapprove of? Bomb them? Invade them? Sanction them? Cut off all trade with them? Destabilize their government with covert action?

I mean, it seems like you don't consider "standing around and smiling" acceptable, so what alternative do you propose?
I will set up two of my neighbors home networks for them. They were asking me for recommendations and since I know how I'll set it up for them.
I grew up in rural Alaska. By the time I was 8, I was hunting small game unsupervised. I was allowed to operate an ATV on my own as soon as I was physically able to work all the controls (I rode it with a parent's assistance before that). It was a bit longer before I got to take out the motorboat on my own. I may have been a bit younger than average for the area when I started doing some of these things, but not by much.

None of these things caused problems. People didn't start having ATV or gun accidents until they discovered alcohol and inhalants. No children were eaten by wolves or bears. I was a much happier child because of the freedom, and I think, a much more self-reliant adult.
Exactly. After all these years people still defend the CIA with the phrase "This is so low they couldn't have possibly done it."
I disliked the way the reporter kept calling the man an Indian

It almost made me want to stop reading, but the story is quite interesting. I wonder what the 5 foot deep pits he digs are really for. Pit fall traps for.... vehicles?
Let us hope the retraction gets more press than the accusation. And that if the accusations were groundless that everyone involved in making a media spectacle of it gets disciplined.
Conversations about Wikileaks on HN are especially prone to comic book reinterpretations of foreign and domestic policy.

The reality is, as upset as the US no doubt is about the gravity of the information they managed to lose, Assange has almost certainly committed no actual crime (not being a citizen of the US or in any way obligated to safeguard military secrets), and probably faces reprisals no more fearsome than the rejection of any future US visa.

Oh, but it is fun to spin conjecture about his "enemy of the state" status, and the swarm of secret stealth drones that is no doubt speeding to his current undisclosed location as we speak!
What’s the difference between Ubuntu’s package managers?
Icons of the Web
Except politicians also like their pensions so they will never vote them away.

That's like expecting congress not to vote itself a pay raise or put themselves on regular health care like average people - it will never happen.

From what I have read, all sorts of games are played with pensions to make sure they are as high as possible, like giving people high salaries for their last few months, etc.

Why are pensions anything more than a minimum survival payout I would like to know? They should set a maximum cap of $10k per year per person if taxpayers have to pay it.
An 18 Billion Mile Journey is almost complete.
I can't imagine how C++ standardization efforts could possibly correlate in any way with industry adoption. The two things are completely orthogonal.

C++ hasn't been eradicated, but --- even in some embedded environments --- it is no longer the go-to language (Java seems to have that honor now).

Bringing this back to Stross' point, though: ASCIIZ strings aren't more relevant to modern computer security because of C++. Obviously, C++ disfavors them (though most C++ devs I know still drop to charstars when std::string gets frustrating), but, more importantly, they have almost nothing to do with Java, C#, Python, or PHP string handling.
I think exactly the opposite, apart from being completely unmanageable, people need to move around in most projects.

When you program keeping in mind that someone else will need to come in and change stuff without breaking it, you make sure its easy to follow, hard to break, you add comments, possibly even tests!

usually the other person is you and you will thank yourself no ends that you have made this module suitable for fresh eyes.
10K Apart Contest: Cheating by Compressing Your JavaScript and CSS to PNG Images
I'm like dead and across the river styx or something. I've not been in kansas anymore for many years. No surprise I can't reach the land of the living, or something like that.

Mental health problems are a sign of low IQ.

How about this one coming from the radio "Terry if the radio is talking with you, you should see a doctor."

This clown who wrote this story thinks I'm a moron! You are talking to me, indicating reality distortion while telling me I'm delusional. I might not be the smartest guy, but I see a logical bug.

Life's nice this side of Styx. Kick-back talk with God and live in the center of the Universe.

It'd be hilarious to spend real money on advertising meant for the living! Nope, fix reality before worrying about product quality or whatever! Reality fix must come first. That's what's broken.

God says...
concludeth slaying bottomless Be
Crappy Google translation:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&i...

It’s based on this article, but Google won’t translate it:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article7652935.ab
> Only in the heart of those that commit crimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Man invents machine to convert plastic into oil. [video]
> were gauging the media response

It is not that uncommon to conduct those. They basically rely on the media to just publish verbatim the release. I would be very foolish of them not to use that capability to conduct disinformation campaigns and public response testing before a major operation for example.

As for assassination. I doubt they want to go that far in this case. Shaming and publicly discrediting him would be just as effective. They figured Wikileaks is riding a morality-based popularity at the moment. They are the righteous Robin-Hood type guys fighting a big, mean, empire. If they could just make them look "immoral" in any way they could deflate Julian's popularity balloon.

Not saying CIA is above assassinations. They have a track record to prove it. But I think in this case they not are ready to take it that far yet.
Also, Mirasol:

http://www.mirasoldisplays.com/ereader
That's awesome. The perfect gift for your low-self-esteem friend.
Let me know when Arch implements package signing. Though I'm not sure that I want to be in a community that thinks signed packages are an unnecessary feature for a production release.
For every underfunded pension, there is a beneficiary. There is somebody who reaped profits that they were stolen rather than earned.

It's sad and lazy that you'd advocate screwing the people who got burned, rather than advocating getting back the profits that were stolen rather than earned.

Unsurprising for this ignorant, arrogant, morally bankrupt website... but also sad and lazy.

Here's to hoping that somebody enters into a contractual agreement with you, completely screws you over, then the next generation votes to rescind any recourse do you.
The problem with JSON is that isn't very useful by itself because you always have to encode and decode it, and then analyze the structure to do something with the data. It works better as part of a protocol, not as a native data format.

If you convert your JSON data to XML (assuming it is structured in a way that makes it lossless) you have a whole lot more useful tools at your disposal.
I'm imagining a mind report in the intergalactic ether about the most isolated species on earth: humans. Attempts at contact with other isolated civilizations by the intergalactic community have often resulted in disaster, so for now, they've decided to clear a wide path around earth and wait.
It's also a total red herring.

Microsoft spends serious dollars shoring up the security of Windows XP, a 10-year-old operating system. What kind of security support do you think OS X 10.0 customers get?

Stross' comment here is probably sparked by news stories about Microsoft dropping support for Win2k and XPSP2. But the solution to the XPSP2 problem is simply to upgrade to XPSP3. I'm not sure, but I think that if you had auto-update on (and you're crazy if you don't), you got that automatically.

If you're deployed permanently on Win2K, nothing Microsoft does is going to make you secure. Win2K lives in places where access to the same Ethernet collision domain is already game-over for an attacker.

It is simply unreasonable to suggest that Microsoft is making people less secure by encouraging them to get off operating systems that were first released to QA in 1998.

NB: as always, I have to post the disclaimer that while we've done work for MSFT in the past, our entire company is standardized on Apple hardware and Apple operating systems.
Ask HN: Which superpower would you choose, invisibility or flight?
Last week's episode of This American Life was a rebroadcast of one from 2001, titled "Superpowers". A link to that episode can be found here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/178/superpowers

Act One (starts around 06:18) poses the question of which is better: the power of flight or the power of invisibility? The question has been stuck in my head for the whole week, and I've been debating the answer with myself constantly. It's a fun thought experiment, and I think it would be interesting to see the reactions and reasonings of fellow HNers.

--------------------------------------------------

Here is the scenario, as presented in the podcast by John Hodgman:
"Flight versus invisibility. This question is only for you. Whichever you pick, you'll be the only person in the world to have that particular superpower. You can't have both. Which do you choose?"

When choosing your superpower, assume the following:
(1) Invisibility means the power to become transparent at will, including your clothing, but anything you may pick up is visible. (2) Flight means the power to fly at any altitude within the earth's atmosphere at speeds up to 1000 MPH.

Why did you choose your superpower? What would you do with it? Would you use it for good or evil, or both?
The most horrible XML encoding I've encountered recently was the Gnome/Kde Xdg desktop menu system.

Rather than encode what menu item is in what pseudo-folder, it encodes every change made to the menu system as a diff and expects the applications will piece these together -- and the libraries that parse this monstrosity all huffily say "this code is NOT stable...".

http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/

Of course, this isn't so much XML's fault as the fault of the folks who kludged together this monstrosity. This shows, however, how XML is more or less a tool for knitting together two or more generally poorly-specified encodings. The good is that these might be somewhat better inside XML than running about wild but the bad is it lets them continue to exist all. See Microsoft's Office XML "standard".
The point wouldn't make sense even if its premise was accurate. The JVM is also implemented in C. But you don't see a lot of ASCIIZ overflows in Java code. The C++ std::string class doesn't suffer from C's wild-west memory handling on cfront-style compilers.
I think it's more about politicians liking to be in office—and knowing that trying to sunset pension policies would amount to political suicide.

I suppose it could be done but you'd have the challenge of trying to convince and rally a young generation while taking on huge unions/lobbies. Not good odds.

I think it's also important to note that these are state issues. My guess is people will simply move out of some of these irresponsible states once tax rates hit a tipping point.
An electric heater is inefficient if the electricity was generated inefficiently.

Inefficient: burn methane at a central point running a steam engine generator, dumping tons of waste steam into the air, run the electricity to your house and turn it into heat there.

Efficient: pump methane to your house and burn it there.

More efficient: burn the methane at a central location running a steam engine generator, carry both the steam and the electricity to your house, heating it and running appliances.

The moral: live densely enough that steam pipes are practical.
Quite interesting and detailed article. I wish every article in Wikipedia has the same depth and details.
I would choose invisibility, because I believe it offers more chances for good, evil, privacy, and just plain fun. I would want to keep my invisibility as big of a secret as possible; I wouldn't want to be known for my power, so I'd have to be careful when going into and out of invisibility.

Here's some example scenarios I thought up:

Fun:

- Messing with people's minds (which some may consider evil). For example, making them think their house is haunted. Slam doors, move furniture, flip switches, unplug stuff, etc.

- Instigate confrontations (may also be considered evil). Make someone think they shoved them, hit them, etc.

- Going into restricted areas just to see what's there.

- Listening to what people have to say about me when I'm not there (may end up being depressing...)

- People-watching for hours without looking creepy or suspicious

- Just doing normal things while invisible. See people's reactions while you drive a car, ride a bike, etc., while invisible. Doing that too often may draw too much attention to myself, though.

Good:

- Infiltrating terrorist cells; I'd be able to gain information relatively safely, maybe find Osama?

- Security. I can scream and throw shit to scare the hell out of people from stealing stuff.

- Crime-fighting. This is a toughie to imagine scenarios where an invisible man would stop crime, especially if you want to remain unknown. News reports about an invisible person fighting crime would definitely not be something I'm looking for. I'd probably have to learn some martial arts so I can actually kick some ass, and bulk up some. And it's not like you can dodge bullets; if criminals caught on and were aware of your presence, they would just pray-and-spray all over the place, and you'd be sure to get hit at some point. If the criminals aren't armed with firearms, then it could be easier.

Evil:

- Stealing stuff. Assuming that if I'm able to fit an object into my pocket or under a shirt/jacket, it will become invisibile, then it's fair game.

- Infiltrating governments, agencies, etc. for classified information. Maybe it will be considered good if I give the information to Wikileaks? :P

- Murder, or any extreme crimes. Any eyewitnesses would be completely baffled.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

- Useful for if you are trying to avoid someone, or conversely, if someone is trying to avoid you.

- If you've ever wanted to just disappear from the world for a little bit, you got it!

- I'd assume that while invisible, you don't just pass through someone or something, you still have to walk around it. So it would be annoying to constantly avoid people and objects while you walk around, especially if you're trying to be secretive about your power, or not alert people to your presence. No chance for clumsiness!

- It's always best to have a complimentary power, like super-strength. Just one superpower doesn't always cut it, especially for fighting crime.

That's all I'll put, it's getting too long.
Or a divorce settlement from a very rich person, which is similar.
I just committed a plugin, which implements this: http://github.com/beza1e1/later/commit/4d4660124e00859061836...
This is the first article on HN that specifically states it's 25 projects that get the $40.000, meaning they have an initial budget of $1M.

To put this in perspective, the iFund, which supports iOS projects has a $200M budget.

So, not that I have something with this Chile project, but I feel it's getting way too much "airtime" on HN. I don't need to see this daily on the RSS feed.

I've always disliked contests of this kind. If Chile wants to really push this industry in their country, make it really simple: reduce (or remove) the taxes for software companies. This would make them an instant target for entrepreneurs and would cost them nothing.
Agreed. A stock is a business and you're buying into it. It's a pity all the news is oriented around the trading aspect.

I both invest and trade, but I consider them different activities. Many don't.
This short video is packed with great advice and insight. None of it is new of course, but he presents it well.
Hmmm, I never thought of that. Good point.
I'm only familiar with these services in concept, what incentives do businesses give their mayors? Anything unique or just XX% off coupons?
Andrew Wilkie's website is feeling the strain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wilkie

Australian intelligence officer who quit and went public over Iraq invasion deceptions just elected as part of the small group who hold the balance of power in parliament.

http://www.andrewwilkie.org/
Thanks for the comment. I can see what you're saying. I'm trying to keep my mind open and use the down time to learn interesting and useful things.
That is amazingly low. Do you feel adequately compensated for that amount of work?
True, but that by itself does not invalidate their supposedly sourced reporting.
Can you expand on how you started? Your routine?
"City life is millions of people being lonesome together"

-Henry David Thoreau

"Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?"

http://nymag.com/news/features/52450/
File IO in Every Language
Prayer is also a framework for solving problems, albeit less useful in the general case. The description is not sufficient.

Personally, I'm quite influenced by Pi's "Mathematics is the language of nature", though the sentiment dates at least to Galileo. For those of us who believe that alien intelligence must BY DEFINITION have recognizable mathematics (because we have no other way to recognize intelligence), this points to that universal quality, and also hints at the improbable success of mathematics in describing and predicting the physical universe.
Do I believe that the "CIA" might arrange to have a head of state or key political actor killed --- in circumstances where the likelihood of such a figure being killed was already nonzero --- if doing so would help tip the foreign policy of an entire region of the world in a US-friendly direction? Absolutely.

But Julian Assange is not Salvador Allende.

The US can't even figure out how to assassinate key military adversaries based on Baluchistan, one of the most violent and contentious areas in the world.

The idea that they'd be scheming to kill someone simply out of spite (for nothing they do at this point to Assange is going to keep the machinery he's put in motion from publishing every document disclosed to him) is an insult to our intelligence.

I reply to comments like this not because I'm a great believer in US intelligence and foreign policy (I'm not) and not because I'm a philosophical opponent to Wikileaks (though I am). I reply because my nerdy brain just can't accept notions as wrongheaded as the idea that Assange is important enough to merit "executive action".

I'd be shocked and offended --- not on moral grounds but on practical grounds --- if there had been a single executive order with Assange's name on it.
"Easy", as in least effort on your part, or "easy", as in highest probability of success?

Not at all the same thing.
My, my. This story just gets better and better.

So how do you have a rape allegation by two separate women (as I understand it?) that is baseless? I understand how the charges could be baseless, but the prosecution's job should be to determine if the allegations have merit, not try the case. So why do the charges have merit one day and not the next?

Look, if there is a charge, investigate it. If not, don't. But charging him one day and withdrawing the next just leads to even more conspiracy theory madness.

What this sounds like is "Well if he was just Joe Blow, we would have arrested him, but given the nature of his stature..."

I'm sure that's not the case, however. Would like to hear more on this. Must have been some information that we were not privy to.
Re. #1, Harvard architecture also does not solve problems with source code injection attacks, as we see with SQL queries and complex data structures that direct the flow of execution.

Harvard architecture is a pain in the ass anyway. When I designed a Harvard architecture chip (8051 derivative) into a product, I added an external address space mapper to turn it into a von Neumann architecture. The software folks had to write a custom file system/linker/loader and were thankful. The alternative was painfully reprogramming the chip with every recompile.

Re. #5, the large system developers I know love them their C# and sing the praises of Microsoft for making C/C++ avoidable. Their 500 kLOC distributed system integration project would be nearly untenable if they had to manually get every container iteration and bounds check exactly right. And Microsoft does not talk about it much, but I get the impression that they have been running heavy code reviews and static analyzers on their C/C++ software. At least there seems to have been a decline in exploitable bounds check errors.
Clojure multi-methods
Ask HN: Trusting contract developers with codebase?
So I’ve been working for several months on a web startup that I’m very excited about - something which I sincerely believe has a great deal of potential.

The idea itself is slightly (if subtly) unusual. More importantly, the implementation strategy is unique as far as I know.

Now it’s not uncommon to overvalue ideas, but the fact is that I do value a number of the ideas involved quite highly. To a large extent, I believe that they’re going to be critical to fighting competitors.

I’d love to be able to hire someone to help speed development, but I’m concerned about opening the codebase to any outsiders at this point.

What is the general consensus when it comes to these kinds of trust issues?

I can definitely continue on as I have been, working by myself - but I feel there’d be an advantage to getting out the door ASAP. And even if I get out the door by myself, the idea has a lot of growth potential - too much for one person to handle adequately.

The matter is complicated by the fact that the chances of finding someone with the right technical knowledge in my country are about nil: so I’d need to trust someone I don’t personally know, and that I’m only indirectly in contact with.

I’ve got trust issues, generally, so maybe I’m overreacting? Still, I can’t help shake the fear that a contract developer is going to (un)-intentionally leak code now or in the future.
Great point. That million-dollar homepage experiment where the guy sold pixels for $1 each took almost no effort on his part. "Easy"

The likelihood it would ever work again? Very very very slim. Not easy.
I always assumed these services had at least some very basic spoof protection, like an HMAC, with the secret obfuscated in their apps. I guess not, which means wireshark is all it takes to build a script like this.
Here is my theory: Assange tours Sweden, meets loads of female journalists. Sleeps with some of them. Does something during the act which the women don't like (but don't really think too much about). The women come into contact a week later in their work. They share details and blow whatever happened out of proportion. They go to the police and then tip off the tabloid they both work for. Prosecutor realize whatever happened can't be charged as rape or molestation.