skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Earlier you said: "Because if the CIA (or whoever in the US government) is trying to use another country's legal system to frame someone that would be considered the conducting operations on foreign soil. That's very much against International Law without getting the permission of the Swedish State Department."

The US doesn't care much about foreign law; the kidnapping in Italy is just one example. Carrying out covert actions on foreign soil is in the CIA's mission statement: "Conducting covert action at the direction of the President to preempt threats or achieve US policy objectives."

Do I think the CIA had anything to do with this? I have no idea. But I don't think the CIA can be ruled out based on the US's respect for foreign governments and international law.
A good digital photo of your eyes may be all that is needed:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.htm...
That's probably because the bubbles are naturally popping and putting lots of it in the air. When you drink from the cup you get more of that air, with the straw you don't.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1623022
Seriously? I really don't understand how someone can be an adult and not understand the CIA is reckless. One can just start with the Bay of Pigs, or Allende, or hell, all of South America for the last 40 years. Or Iraq's WMD. Or black prisons in E Europe. Or waterboarding. Or illegal renditions.
In every Indian history textbook, The East India company is listed as the initial vehicle which brought about the British rule in India.

Since I was brought up in India, I had a VERY -ve reaction just reading the story here on Hacker News. It was kind of built in.

I dont understand why this guy would pick this name for his company. Maybe he never intends to sell in India.
Disclosure: I work at foursquare, but my opinions are my own and not those of my employer.

Foursquare is a game to be played with yourself and with your friends, and was designed to encourage you to get out and explore your city, helping you discover new and interesting things about the world around you. Sure, you can cheat, but that's kind of like stealing Monopoly money from the bank in a game with your friends. You'll "win", but you're totally missing the point. We'll try our best to detect cheating and not reward that kind of behavior, but we're not going to get draconian about it. Ultimately, if you want to lie to your friends, that's your problem.

Getting businesses to give rewards to foursquare users was NOT a use case that was contemplated when the original game mechanic was built. But business owners were so excited about the engagement that foursquare users had with their business, that "mayor specials" started popping up organically. The demand for this kind of functionality was so great that it was built into the product, but it was not something that was there (or even contemplated) originally. Recognizing mayors was an obvious way to add rewards onto the existing game mechanic, but there are flaws with this approach. First, it doesn't scale very well, as there is only one mayor per venue. This isn't very useful for large retailers who have many customers. And it's also not great for users because as foursquare gets more popular then mayorships get more competitive and more difficult to retain. Second, as the original poster notes, there's much more incentive to cheat if there are real rewards being offered.

But "mayor specials" aren't the only way for businesses to reward their foursquare customers. Retailers like Gap, American Eagle, Steve Madden, and f.y.e. are offering discounts to anyone who checks in. Jimmy Choo ran a "Catch a Choo" campaign in London, where a pair of shoes were running around London checking in to places, and if you "caught" them when they checked in you got a free pair of shoes. Gogo is offering a badge if you check in using their in-flight wifi on any number of flights. Restaurants like Kona Grill and AJ Bombers have hosted "Swarm Parties" (you get a "Swarm" badge on foursquare if >50 people are checked in at the same venue at a time) with special menus and prices to attract customers and get them to unlock a badge together. Another restaurant, B&O American Brasserie, offers discounts for checking in and bringing friends with you (the more friends, the bigger the discount). All of these are by definition rewards that you can only benefit from if you are where you say you are.

It's early days in the space, and there are still a lot of issues that no one has figured out yet, but people who dismiss foursquare because of how easy it is to "cheat" are kind of missing the point.
Yes, I found one. It is open to public only on tuesday's, so I will have to check it out. Thanks for the tip.
Their money is not tied to a string with a bunch of reporting requirements, they are in the midst of Silicon Valley and have very good connections to the rest of the tech world.

Scale is not the most important factor when evaluating stuff like this.
Please read the terms & conditions http://www.corfo.cl/startupchile/download/Technical_and_admi...

Specific Objectives:

i) To attract 25 entrepreneurs with residence abroad, to Chile during 2010 with the
purpose to implement a Business Plan in Chile, through the application of a project.

Beneficiaries:

Natural person, national or foreign, with residence abroad, that have innovative
business plans for global markets and wish to develop them in Chile, may apply.
Thanks, Will. Distilled is very well-known and respected so I look forward to your feedback.

The agency question is tough to answer in a single soundbite. So here goes a long-winded response. :)

It is true that there are many companies trying to bring their SEO operations in-house (but not everybody, of course). I have helped quite a few do this successfully myself and this experience was one of the primary motivators for building Ginzametrics.

But the point is not to merely replace people (agencies or otherwise) with tools but to let talented people do their job better with more automation. We both know that there are still far too many Excel-jockeys in this industry doing work that should be automated. That's one of the things I'm focused on fixing.

Agencies are some my best customers because the agencies that I work with are bringing value to their customers above and beyond what those customers could do in-house due to their expertise, experience and local presence (in the case of global / local SEO projects). The fact that they are investing in tools such as Ginzametrics further shows their instinct to innovate and become more efficient.
... a photo like one with certain requirements used to create a passport perhaps?!?
The 14 facts the callee wants to know from the cold caller
Nobody was compared to the Nazis here. Strangely enough, we have a case where the Nazis' writings make it into the discussion as pearls of wisdom.

Just to give a bit of context, Hitler and Goebbels considered the US a failed state, ruled by Jews and corrupted by Negro culture

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

Their criticism (including "big lie" accusations) comes from this point of view.
I use it to keep a record of places I've gone to. I would check in when I get to a place if it were easier for me to do so. But when I go to a place, I'm usually with friends or trying to find them and don't feel like typing a location into my phone.

That's why I use it. Are you happy with that? How do you use it? Or if you don't use it, how do you think people are supposed to use it?
Assange may have violated 18 U.S.C. § 793.
By definition startups have a chance of failing. Betting Chile's software strategy on 25 startups is a risky business.

I don't see why lower taxes will reduce entrepreneurship there or introduce only outsourcing -- won't the locals use this chance to create their own startups ?

There are many things to discuss here but I assume some countries either culturally or financially encourage enterprises. If Chile doesn't have the right legal, tax and socio-educational framework then startups will never migrate there.

There are just too many aspects to look at but I do believe that a contest with some $40K prizes can't beat lowering taxes.
I am no where close to pune, but I will check it out when I come to visit my family.
Nobody said it was our responsibility to cure the world's cultural ills. There is a rather large middle ground between refusing to judge another culture and bombing its practitioners, isn't there? Let's try speech first, and see how that works.
Another interesting calc.exe quirk:

On "Standard" view, type:

1 + 2 * 3 =

Answer comes back as 9

Switch to "Scientific" view and type the same,

Answer comes back as 7

The reason (of course) is operator precedence; in standard mode it's interpreted as "1 + 2 =" then "* 3 =", while in scientific view it respects BODMAS.

But to me it's counter-intuitive that changing the View also changes the Mode of operation.

If they'd just named that menu "Mode" instead of "View" I'd be fine with it.
Hah! Was this really written after Oracle sued Google? So RIM should give up patent protection to switch to Dalvik?
RIM has an R&D location in Redwood City since 2008.
Take your pulse with your phone
You don't have to use Java just for Android. I am working on a tutorial for Android programming in Common Lisp. Shoot me an email so I can update you.
Yes, scheduling on multiple virtual processors is still not really a solved problem.
Very good point and this sums up my mind. Thanks!
Seems pretty accurate.
There are lots of those reports. Don't you read the galactic news?
Hey, the world from Stallman's The Right to Read is finally here. Embrace a DRM'd video game that only runs on non-Free platforms, or fail out of University.
In my (admittedly brief) experience with Blackberry development, this is anything but the case. Libraries are flaky, inconsistent and poorly documented, and aspects of the RIM JVM implementation are deeply flawed. For example, one of my coworkers recently discovered that static initialization blocks can be called multiple times if a class or interface has inheritors, blatantly violating the spec.

...Did you mean the UI or something?
Occam's razor would point towards two young women looking for a bit of attention.
German: Explosion des Wissens

English: Explosion of Knowledge

The title itself isn't very interesting. The change is.
Probably because Microsoft is following Apple's lead in many ways with a clean elegant UI and a managed App Store. Android on the other hand seems to be adding complexity, UI has never been good, and the Market is descending into an even deeper level of chaos (apps stealing private data, fake banking apps, etc) So if you like the iPhone there's a good chance WM7 would appeal to you. If you like Android there's a good chance neither iPhone or WM7 would appeal to you. I don't plan to buy a WM7 device myself but I think it will be successful because so many people just don't want to deal with all this added complexity of an Android device. Going back to the original article I think simplicity is a big reason RIM is still doing fine. Lots of people just want a phone that can also do e-mail. I believe long term Android's complexity (UI, different models, different limitations per model, etc) is going to be a big problem for Google.
Absolutely, the bigcos (not Google) I'll be applying at probably won't appreciate my extra-curricular activities..
Some relational algebra with datatypes in Clojure 1.2
Dominos UK (pizza) has a fake Verisign SSL Seal
Spotted by a friend: http://twitter.com/Joolz/status/21776951960

Image is hosted at https://www.dominos.co.uk/assets/images/site/secure-payment.gif and even while looking at that image, your browser will confirm that the SSL certificate is supplied by COMODO CA Limited, not VeriSign.

Nice to see a big company either not understanding their own website or purposefully lying on it.
This is a very good alternative.
Pretty much. Twitter too if you believe those rumors from a couple of years ago. I'm just very skeptical of big companies buying little ones.
Yeah, I have a hard time believing that this is accurate. Definitely scary if true, but I would like to put my faith in Foursquare having checked this box a long time ago.

Also: why, after millions of checkins over public networks, is this only coming up now? Surely someone would have got burned by this by now?
Foursquare doesn't support SSL at all. The best you can do is request a long-lived OAuth token, but even doing that requires sending the user's email/password in plaintext (although only once!).
Double, and triple checked. You can reproduce this yourself. I'm using a MacBook Pro for this.

1. Plug your MBP to wired ethernet - you have one of these in your home, right?

2. Open an ad-hoc network in your MBP, and share Internet access via that ad-hoc network.

3. Connect your iPhone to your MBP's ad-hoc network, now it should be able to access the Internet via your MBP.

4. Install and fire up Wireshark in your MBP - make sure to read the instructions or otherwise it can't capture packets.

5. Get Wireshark to capture packets on the ad-hoc Wifi interface.

6. Filter out the HTTP packets going to *.foursquare.com by adding the filter 'http.host contains "foursquare"'

7. Fire up Foursquare on your iPhone, login if you haven't already

8. Boom, you've just sent your password in plain text, over the Internet.
Sure. But your view is a bit pessimistic. I would like to think that the management at RIM think they've got something unique that will give them an edge. Maybe it's more risky but if you believe in your company that's a risk you should take.

And RIM is not exactly a nobody: they've got a large chunk of the market. Your point is basically: "Forget your past glory, give up your profit margins, and join the Android crowd". Why not instead: "Improve your OS to be on par with the competition (no need to be better), and use your good hardware and your proprietary applications to make the difference".

I don't see how using Android is a long term viable strategy for a company that currently has 17% of the market. It looks more like throwing the towel.
The Rise and Rise of the Digital Dashboard
Good beer should be good warm as well.
I heard somewhere that Deflation right now is a fact, inflation a belief. One would've lost a lot of money being short long-dated treasuries this year with that belief. If inflation is the answer to this (most likely the case), would you say that it could be hyperinflation versus the milder demand-driven inflation that America is used to?- Specifically, if the Fed devalues the dollar.
I don't think I said that.
Dr. Kaku Wants Your Thoughts on Science Fiction Movies and Characters
Actually group theory is discrete and algebraic.
Of course not. It's an upscale boutique store in London, selling colonial prestige to has-been ex-imperialists.
Already posted http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1622245
I personally don't use it, as none of my friends use it. But my point is that since you don't really use it either, except to keep a record of the places you've gone to, instead of its common usage of meeting up with friends, you may not be the best reference for how the service should be working. I don't think the single-player version of Foursquare is very emphasized; it's more of a multi-player-only game.
I do software consulting and contracting work for a number of clients, and I spend most of my time working in a cafe (free wifi, good chairs, they don't mind me being there 40 hours a week). They have a Foursquare special that gives me a free muffin for being the mayor.
Factor programming language (modern Forth)
Because they pay under $20/hr, offer no health insurance, dental, no vacation, termination at will, and little possibility for promotion or advancement of skills.

Half of this is mostly true, the other half is mostly not true. Tons of major companies in the service sector offer their employees (even their part-time employees) health, dental, and vacation. And employment should pretty much always be termination at will, unless the employee is under a contract and can't leave whenever they want, or is fired due to a protected class, whistleblowing, etc.
Brewer's CAP Theorem
HTTP port 80 traffic from Android app:

GET /v1/checkins?geolat=34.2842613&geolong=-118.2471837&geohacc=112.0 HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: com.joelapenna.foursquared:2010080500
Host: api.foursquare.com
Connection: Keep-Alive
Authorization: Basic dXNlckBleGFtcGxlLmNvbTpwYXNzd29yZA==

HTTP port 80 traffic from iPhone app:

POST /v1/checkin.json HTTP/1.1
Host: api.foursquare.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us)
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Authorization: Basic dXNlckBleGFtcGxlLmNvbTpwYXNzd29yZA==
Accept-Encoding: gzip
Accept: */*
Accept-Language: en-us
Content-Length: 250
Connection: keep-alive
Windows Mobile 7 is not available: You haven't used it or even read a reasonably accurate review of it, and your assumptions about its usability are completely baseless. The app store is not available. Further, Windows Mobile in no way will be limited to their "app store", completely undermining your comparison with Apple.

Your Android points are so far from reality that I don't even want to engage in that. Android complexity? Security?

The truth of the matter is that iPhone owners who wave the flag see Windows Mobile 7 as the crippled kid that they try to promote as the alternative to Android, singing its praises as a weak distraction. Every teenager saw this transparent technique play out, and I would hope that we can all recognize it for what it is now.
(As an aside, I've always wondered why this doesn't generate the same amount of bad PR as the entire video game industry, especially the "EA slave-ship").

I can't speak for everyone, but I know plenty of contractors (myself included) who have absolutely no interest in FTE with a company. I make much better money and have a lot more flexibility as a contractor / consultant than I ever would as an employee.
mmm-mm
There is no reason that Blackberry OS or QNX or anything else can't run Android apps.

Yeah, but then why not just use Android? Why spend a lot of R&D to build a QNX/Android chimera that's no better than vanilla Android?

I realize that RIM needs to modernize their OS, but given a choice of buying QNX or just downloading Android, I don't understand why they chose QNX.
I get the impression that he's deeply discontent. He's always doing things to prove himself. Warren Buffett on the other hand I wouldn't mind, he seems to have things figured out.
Is it possible you're experiencing worst episode ever! syndrome? I think after a while people just get sick of these shows and when you look back in retrospect you have dozens of hours of past seasons to cherry pick good moments/episodes from so they tend to stand out as being better. Maybe when the season concludes they will have the same ratio of good moments/episodes as any other season? I only saw the first episode of the new season. I'm waiting to just watch them all once the season is over. I find that to be one of the best remedies for worst episode ever! syndrome.
>>Also: why, after millions of checkins over public networks, is this only coming up now? Surely someone would have got burned by this by now?

maybe because people usually check in over the Cellular data network and not wireless networks. I guess it'll be the same if there was a way to sniff out cellular data. Simple oversight or absence of a security mindset in app development.

I think one of the other geo-social-apps mandated checkins over WiFi (Loopt star i believe) .. It'll be interesting to see if they have the same flaw. In that case, it actually might be a bigger threat as the only way to send over information is over the wi-fi network.
I've used cheap scientific calculators that perform operations from left to right. It's awful when you are answering a uni exam and you don't know why the results you get looks fishy.

On computer calculators, I always type "1 + 2 * 3 =" as "2 * 3 =", "+ 1 =" because I learned the hard way that I can't asume that a calculator is going to respect order of precedence or not.
Missed the point, I think. The extra code is perturbation to avoid automation detection. Your line is regular, and can be easily programmatically filtered out.
I am not convinced that Android will do so great in the long term: well yes, great maybe not.

My guess would be more along the lines of (obviously I am no analyst and this are really just guesses):

Android: 25%
Apple: 25%
WP7: 20%
Meego/Symbian: 15%
RIM: 15%

with Apple and Android aiming mostly at the consumer market, and, Windows and RIM at the business market. Meego will be a generic blog that will work in every field but will never excel. And Symbian will control the cheap, 3rd-world country phones.

I do have hopes though that maybe Meego will end up being a surprise. (I wish, I really liked Nokia back in the days).
The Supreme Court has never heard a § 793 case. Not even for American citizens. The constitutional problems with the Espionage Act are manifold, starting with the fact that it criminalizes speech. The notion that the government is going to successfully prosecute a case against a foreign national living on foreign soil for violating it seems far fetched.

Note also that to make this case, the government would have to claim "evil intent": either an intent to harm the United States, or an attempt to aid a foreign nation, or a reason to believe his actions would result in either. Assange may be no friend to the US national security apparatus, but he clearly seems to believe he's acting for the benefit of everyone, including the US. Check out US vs. Truong Dinh Hung (and the recent APAC case) for more detail; search for "scienter", the technical term for the requirement.
I'm running calc.exe on Windows XP, and while it is true that there is no square root button, square roots may be calculated using Inv x^2. The Inv checkbox also enables cube roots (Inv x^3), exponentials (Inv ln and Inv log), and the usual inverse trig functions.
Deep Read: Nassim Taleb (The Black Swan Guy) : Planet Money
I wouldn't really call it trolling. There's no intention of malice, he doesn't feign seriousness when making a controversial point, he is very self-deprecating, and everything is said interspersed with jokes (that of course are sometimes hit-or-miss).

In many ways, I think he uses one of the best techniques for coming up with new ideas and provoking discussions: asking questions (even ones that seem stupid at first -- and sometimes later as well), suggesting thought experiments, using humor, and above all, never taking yourself seriously.
http://factorcode.org/littledan/dls.pdf

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffactorcode.or...

Good introduction to the language for beginners.
I've always felt neglected trying to find tutorials that will actually help me as a programmer learn a new language, as opposed to tutorials that spend a lot of time teaching how to program.
Probably just because it's not very practical and there is no obvious payoff. You would have to sit around a popular spot for hours with a laptop sniffing the wifi to collect logins. What do you do with them? For SPAM purposes it would be easier to just make new accounts. As far as I know there's not a whole lot of valuable information in a FourSquare account like credit card numbers or banking information. Seems like the only thing you could really do is embarrass people.
True that there is no obvious threat to having access to someone's foursquare account and the worst that could happen to someone is checkins at random joints that could lead to embarrassment for some (viz. strip joints, certain clubs and so on).

However, unfortunately, there are people out there who will probably have the same password for their Facebook/Twitter accounts and even email accounts. Those are the people at threat here.
A lot of people use the same passwords for GMail, bank, credit card, Facebook, ..., and Foursquare. So it's a big deal if you can easily collect passwords from any one of these services.