skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That is all good advice, but we should remember that Baikal Environmental Wave, which is the main focus of the article, did have genuine Microsoft software, including receipts, boxes, and stickers on their computers.

Yet their computers were seized for five months and meanwhile Microsoft denied to help them prove that the software was genuine.

What is upsetting is that Microsoft is helping the authorities when the targets of these anti-piracy raids clearly is on organizations and journalists that peacefully oppose the Russian authorities in some way. They may run only legitimate software but still a raid is carried out.

'Mr. Kurt-Adzhiyev said he now realized that the authorities were not so much interested in convictions as in harassing opponents.'
It's a shame they didn't build a parallel version of the robot, especially if it could 'render' an animated image.
It does too! I have added it to my home screen but the accuracy does not seem to be that great - e.g. searching for a Roka restaurant in Canary wharf london doesn't work, postcode search in UK also doesn't seem to work
Reading articles like this almost makes me miss playing EVE Online, but then I remember that aside from the meta-game (which is admittedly pretty fun) it's really just a spreadsheet with pretty graphics.
Iirc it's totally free and clones different amazon AWS API by integrating Eucalyptus (http://open.eucalyptus.com/).

The problem is, that you need to rent/buy the maximum hardware size of your could upfront as amazon does it. Therefore it's a bigh myth you only pay what you use because the provider has to split all costs+interests among the customers (like EC2). Including costs of hardware/infrastructure not currently in use!

If you have your own rack(s), tools like eucalyptus/ubuntu cloud can help you to dynamically scale your apps and use your hardware more efficent.

But remember: To do this it needs more than some instant-on virtual machines: You need to be able to automatically spawn applications with tools like puppet or chef, too. This usually requires some amount of work and brain :-)

Claiming to be able to scale to infinity just because you're using EC2/Eucalyptus/OpenStack is a biiiiiig common lie.
I don't have to worry about proprietary source code working for Mozilla, but since I work in metrics, I have access to data that could potentially risk user privacy if it were stolen, so I keep my laptop locked down pretty tight.

I run PGP Whole Disk Encryption and am very happy with it.
I also use Super Duper for backing up to two different external drives. One is unencrypted which I keep in the firesafe at home, and the other is also encrypted with PGP WDE which I take with me when traveling. That way, if my laptop were stolen, I can pick up a new one and restore the drive to it.
Yep - but all the steps will fall to simple incremental improvements pretty quickly, would think.
Write Shakespeare Term Papers Effectively
Writing Shakespearean essays are a challenging task to many students. Although interesting reading, many students find the language incomprehensible. Writing a successful essay can only be accomplished if this obstacle is overcome.
Yes buying an SSD was the single biggest increase to speed I have ever seen from one component. I run SSDs on all my laptops and I would highly recommend it. Have a 2TB USB for all my storage so 128 or 64gb SSD which is not that expensive is fine.

Agree on software approach - I love Chromium and really struggle when forced to use Firefox for work. IE I wouldn't touch with a 40 foot pole and thanks the IE tab extension for Chrome I never need to :)
It seems to be based up on an extract from a plant root- it should be cheap to produce in that case.

edit: i checked the company website- they want about $1000 a month!
Assuming of course that all the data that you wish to protect is on your data partition, and that no protected data is, was, or ever will be on any other partition.
Full disk encryption removes the possibility of exposure of protected data showing up on non-encrypted partitions.

With most operating systems, I don't think that there is a way to ensure that no protected data will ever end up on a non-protected partition. Presumably - if there is any writable directory on an unencrypted partition, there is a reasonable chance that protected data will end up on that partition.
Daft Punk Tron soundtrack website has Ascii Easter Egg
Referring to cytomegalovirus as herpes is misleading. Herpes is both the name of a single virus and a family of viruses. What is commonly known as the herpes virus is Herpes simplex viruses 1 and 2. Cytomegalovirus is a herpes virus; that is, a member of the Herpesviridae virus family.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herpes_simplex_virus
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like PGP Whole Disk Encryption is the only product on the that supports whole-disk encryption for OS X. TrueCrypt on OS X and FileVault can only encrypt directory trees.
What information did you reveal? That you thought China would be fun?

Jeez this is verging on some conspiracy theory where you disclosing the fact that you had fun/thought you may have fun implicates you in someones murder.

Either you answer the question with a nondescript answer "I like China" or you're just being a dick.

Reminds me of the idiotic thinking of Richard Stallman.

I have no time for 'principled' martyr type people who cut off their nose to spite their face.
That's a nice little pun on "No man is an island."
What would everyone recommend as a first language for someone with a non-programming background?

I learnt BASIC at school a long time ago, and I know my way around html and very basic php.

I would want to make basic webapps that make use of databases
Quite a bit of it has to do with YC and the tech community buzz and implicit validation. The founder of HipMunk mentioned that CNN contacted him out of the blue within a day after they launched.

If it was the same product done outside YC I don't think they would have got CNN coverage, at least not this soon.
I'm sorry but the whole concept of a private cloud makes no sense to me - why would you have a private electricity generator for your home?
The security issues are a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), I have written about it here:http://rakkhi.blogspot.com/2010/07/cloud-computing-security-...
Google went from nothing, no web browser at all, to best-of-breed in under two years

That's obviously wrong. The Chrome beta was over two years ago, and you can bet V8 didn't just appear overnight. Chrome is older than its 1.0. Not to mention that it's based on WebKit, which has been in development for a decade (if you start from KHTML).
In terms of prestige, I think it goes something like this (from most to least prestiges)

0) Turing

1) Kunth/Pike/Ritchie/Englebert/Kay/Steele

2) People who wrote a language or operating system people actually use. Linus, Matz, Wall, van Rossum, Hejlsberg etc.

3) Theoretical computer scientists who have developed stuff people actually use

4) Low level specialists: security specialists, people who work on operating systems and/or performance specialists

5) People who developed a programming framework in wide use today, and have good taste (Cutting/Williamson/Rod Johnson/DHH)

6) Developers on apps used by huge numbers of people. Core Windows/Linux/Parts of Google/Parts of Facebook/Parts of Apple/some embedded systems

7) Theoretical computer scientists who've never developed anything used by anyone beside themselves

8) Developer at a software company or open source project with a good reputation for writing solid software (Google/some Apache projects/3rd party Webkit committer/some parts of Microsoft or Oracle)

9) Developer at a software company (ie, software is the company's primary focus)

10) Developer in some Financial Services companies

11) Enterprise developer/Web developer

12) VB6 developer/COBOL developer/Pick programmer

13) Developer in some proprietary language

14) Your work features on http://thedailywtf.com/
Ecryptfs is a fantastic solution. If you're using the passphrase-wrapped-by-login-password method (convenient, I think Ubuntu implements this method) then security is not that great - because it's ultimately limited by the strength of your login password: if an attacker gets his hands on the wrapped passphrase, such as is the case when your laptop gets nicked, brute-force methods will suffice.

As for /tmp and swap: those are not required to be persistent over reboots. So you can regenerate those with a random key on every boot. <a href="http://paste.pocoo.org/show/260932/>Here are some pointers to help you do that with dm-crypt</a> for a swap device backed by a loopback device.
Too Long; Didn't Read: Proprietary extract of the dried root of Astragalus membranaceus which WikiPedia states is also known as "Yellow Leader":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astragalus_propinquus
I don't remember exactly how Boo.com went up and down, but wasn't the site extremely delayed? Atwood seems to talk about release early, release often (go fast, turn) and Boo.com, in my memory, did just the opposite.
With truecrypt you can also create file containers, which you can easily backup as a whole by copying them to another disk. In some situations, this has certain advantages e.g. when upgrading your hard disk. It also provides a way to allow access only to certain parts by distributing your documents over several containers. I use truecrypt on my netbook and haven't had any problems with it in years and found it a convenient way to securely share files between computers with different OSes. Truecrypt is also available for linux but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an ARM/android version available. On linux, I use encryptfs though.
Sorry for the misunderstanding. I CLEPed several things to wrap up my associate of arts. I don't recall if I CLEPed anything after that, though I did take some additional first year classes....let me see if I can reconstruct the timeline for you:

Took 2 years of college starting at age 18 at the local hometown college. Had no major the first year. Chose a history major the second year so I wouldn't have to change advisors and could largely continue taking whatever interested me. Dropped out because I got married and began following my husband's military career from place to place.

Spent many years checking out every available educational option at every duty station while having babies and doing the military wife thing. Much to my frustration, they never met my needs (will skip the details to try to keep this short).

Showed up in California, where in-state tuition (that I qualified for) at a community college was about $13/credit hour (and later dropped to $11). Talked to a college counselor. Enrolled in two classes and tested out of three others and was given credit for my 2 years of college from when I was a teen to wrap up an Associate of Arts in Humanities in May 1999.

That fall, much to my astonishment, enrolled in a bachelor's degree (I was astonished because I was trying to lock in those old credits for "some day, when I might return to school", which I had not envisioned to mean "like maybe this fall!"). The program: Bachelor of Science in Environmental Resource Management. Environmental studies degrees are typically rooted in geology departments at colleges and tend to be very science-heavy. Since I had a humanities degree, I was missing some of the lower level sciences I needed. I don't recall if I CLEPed any of those. I do know I took at least one such class at a different California community college. This was amidst a huge health crisis, so some of the details of that time in my life are a bit fuzzy.

Later got my Certificate in GIS, the equivalent of master's level work. But I still have not finished my bachelor's, due in part to a divorce and said health issues. I also now have a certificate my employer paid for, which is industry-specific. Employement-wise, no one cares that I have done the equivalent of master's level work. I don't have my bachelor's degree, so it's a big "So what?" My plans: make it on my own, where actual ability to Bring It matters more than a sheepskin.

Hope that makes more sense.
Yes, which means that the raid and confiscation of computers, etc, isn't really about copyright enforcement but about grabbing data, making data unavailable for use, or otherwise as the article suggests causing general hindrance. Verifying the legitimacy of Microsoft software, as far as I'm aware, is a fairly trivial matter of checking serial numbers, so this isn't something which would require computers to be seized for significant periods of time, or necessarily even moved from their desks.

That Microsoft declined to facilitate the checking of serial numbers after claims of piracy is reprehensible, and all the more reason not to use their software in the first place.
I'd think the combination of unnecessary complexity, esoteric syntax, etc. would do the opposite of appeasing interviewers, which might be a waste of time for you overall.

Perhaps you could put together the most elegant solution (to your taste) of a well-known toy problem, and use that in such situations?

Online judges are eminently suited to this sort of task. They're a-dime-a-dozen these days. Heck, you'll find one in my profile!
I really recommend the whole chapter this quotation comes from, and for that matter the whole book (Wind, Sand, and Stars, or in the original French, Terre des hommes). It’s a fantastically optimistic take on the relation of humans to technology (the specific example is airplanes, but the argument is quite general).

[Here’s the immediate context in French: http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Terre_des_hommes/III and in English: http://books.google.com/books?id=Ep-h7MuxLiIC&lpg=PP1...]
You are right, fixed it.
The point of the experiment isn't to determine whether or not it's possible. We know it's possible.

"The factors under study encompass physiological functions, immunity, fitness, and plasma cortisol levels to evaluate stress and adaptation; group structure, dynamics, communications and psychological resilience; monitoring of microbial ecology in the hermetic, confined quarters; the effect of dietary supplements on performance and mood, and many more."

I'm sure they'll learn a thing or two about how to make the journey more comfortable for when it eventually happens.
Women over 103 and men over 98 are not included in Japan's life expectancy statistics. So most of the fake centenarians will simply have absolutely no effect. This was repeatedly pointed out in the Japanese media when this scandal came to light a month ago.

E.g. http://www.nishinippon.co.jp/nnp/item/190712

(Google translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h... ... edit: I see that the machine translation managed to invert the sense of the last paragraph. The official quote there is actually "Even with this problem, we probably will NOT have to revise the average longevity".)

Unfortunately this factoid has been ignored in the Anglophone media, leaving it to a few nutcases on bulletin boards and blogs to try to get the word out (there is even a guy in the Economist comments section who mentions this).
It's ironic that there's a comment about intelligence tests being misleading, and that no scale is defined for the supposed IQ score of 250 to 300. 'IQ' means nothing by itself--you need to know which scale is being used (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabili...). 110 on one can equal 150 on another--and that's the main reason IQ scores are chiefly given in 'percentile of population', i.e. "higher than 98% of the population", nowadays.
Australia (salaries converted to US$), for a developer who can actually program

Graduate $45,000

2-5 years experience: $65-$80,000

Highest salary for pure programming: $110,000

A lot of development here is done contract basis. Rates range from $40/hour to $100+/hour. Most good programmers with 2-5 years experience in a language in demand (say Java or C#) get $60-80/hour.

Specialist skills & good negotiating will get you more, bad negotiation or career planning will get you in a dead end position and you'll get less.
I don't know about legal requirements, but I'd bet anything their training doesn't tell them to just say "have a nice day" when someone refuses to answer simple questions.

Then it should. He is under no legal obligation to answer their questions. If I were to try something similar, I'd be much more polite about it, but, rude or not, he was perfectly within his rights to refuse to answer.

Now, if other factors were enough to actually raise reasonable suspicion that he had done something wrong (such as smuggling some contraband into the country), then the proper response is to move him on to further screening.

It's unreasonable to treat them as goons for simply doing their job.

Ah, yes, the tried-and-true "just doing their job" argument. I don't buy it. People are responsible for their conduct while performing their job. Their employer may set policy, but in the end the person implementing that policy that must accept shared responsibility for that policy.

They're real people, most of them probably decent ones (because really, most people are decent people)

Wait, wait, wait. Now, I'm going on just the words of the author here, but:

"The officer changed tack to bad cop. 'Let this guy sit until he cools down,' the officer loudly said to a colleague. 'It could be two, three, four hours. He’s gonna sit there until he cools down.'"

How does that describe the actions of a decent person? I don't care if the author was rude to the customs official. Declaring in a power-trip manner that you're going to make someone wait for 2-4 hours just because you can... how is that decent?

I do think the guy was a bit of a douche in how he handled the situation: "none of your business" is probably one of the rudest ways he could refuse to answer. Something more like, "I'm sorry, but I'm not legally required to answer your questions and would prefer not to," seems like it would have garnered a better response, both from the customs officials, and from the hordes of commenters calling him a douche. If he had done that, and still was subjected to the same mistreatment, I'd feel a lot more sympathetic. But still, he did nothing legally wrong, and exercised his rights as a US citizen, and was detained and hassled for it. That's wrong.
...bipolar attitudes towards sex (lots of porn; little actual sex)...

I don't see how the attitude toward sex or oppressive family are linked to life expectancy.

Sex is germy? No sex = no STDs?

(Not entirely kidding, but I'm sure my sense of humor is what is compelling me to remark upon it, which often spells trouble for me. :-/)
I'm a US citizen, and while I don't share the pain you describe, I do feel like it's easier and more pleasant (for me) to get into other countries than to get back into my own.
The site is completely broken without javascript enabled.

You can't download the framework, you can't view the feature list, you can't click the "technology" tab.

None of those things require any particular functionality of javascript and could work as simple anchor tags.
A bit off topic, but making it less likely you'll lose your laptop to begin with is important. Here are some ideas.

Most laptop have a special slot that accepts a cable lock. I make use of it whenever I'm in a coffee shop and have to leave the machine for more than a moment. I loop it through bag straps and my jacket too. You want to look hard to deal with.

Its also a good idea to make sure your laptop requires a password after closing the lid or whatever it is that you do when you walk away from your machine. And say hello to people around you and be helpful. They'll more likely to watch your back.

And as always, make sure no one can see what your keying in. To that end, it may help to use characters that are close together.

And yes, I know I'm a bit paranoid :-)
Much agree. I see how you want to have a unique url for each year. I think that's a cool idea too, though each time you slide I think it's fine if the url doesn't update. Maybe unique year urls are only for inbound links.
I'm intrigued. Do you have some examples of your work?
Beat me to it. Good call.
There is also another aspect worth mentioning. A lot of effort world-wide goes into Global Warming Alarmism instead of fighting against real environmental atrocities. I understand why the financial industry and the green-industrial complex are doing this, but a lot of people concerned about the environment get GW bullshit fed to them and spend their energy on a wild goose chase while real environmental criminals have a free hand.
Actually, my current plan is to learn to code. I dreamed that plan up at least a year ago. So far, I haven't learned a thing. I'm apparently a "patient" person...well, not really. I'm probably actually one of the most impatient people you will ever meet. But my impatience means I will often stick it out to do something in a way that makes sense t me rather than try to take some short-cut if it is clear to me that the short-cut is a case of "you can't get there from here". Since I don't think getting someone else to write my code will get there, why bother? I'll either figure out how to code or come up with some other solution for accomplishing my goal. But most people don't think in the long time frames I seem to think in.

Still, I have hopes someone will accidentally inject coding into my brain, like the programs they downloaded to Neo's brain in The Matrix. :-D (Yes, it's possible for the right person/right approach/right situation to make a huge difference in that regard and mentoring is part of how I learned HTML and CSS. So while I am being whimsical, I am not merely joking.)
the obvious: not every network is or can be connected to the internet, often for security reasons.
In house, interaction designer for our products.
gaming the Digg FP for traffic ala Cracked.com is now (for better or worse) basically over, I'm sure Cracked is seeing a massive loss of traffic.
I visited Japan last year, and while I was fingerprinted and photographed, the process was very quick. I spent about the same amount of time at the customs official's desk as I did when I returned home to the US, where I was asked the typical none-of-their-business questions about my trip.

So there we are... more anecdotal non-evidence.

Actually, this reminds me of my return from a business trip to Amsterdam a couple years ago. The customs official made some kind of drug-related joke/question, which I didn't respond to (aside from just smiling slightly). It made me a bit uncomfortable and felt like he was trying to get me to slip up and say something I'd regret.
I am not even sure what the second sentence means. Google no longer produces phones. Was it about OS? Then how do you compare order of the fiddles? By market share? Makes little sense. By revenue? Makes no sense in this case. By customer satisfaction?
iOS progress it tightly coupled with hardware: iPhones, iPad, iPod touch.
Android progress is handicapped by carriers — how do they push updates to handsets.
I might be missing something, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like a non-peer-reviewed pre-print written by employees/investors of companies that produce or sell the product being tested. There are also some red flags in the paper itself, such as the discussion about how the original data gathering was "hypothesis generating".
toe the line, not tow the line
redress the balance, not readdress the balance