skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm not familiar with the bleeding-edge practices for securing a server, I just use techniques like the ones in the article, but shouldn't there be a more RFC-friendly approach to locking down a server?

For instance, instead of this irregular "knock" routine, which is a fuss to implement, why can't there be a standard protocol for requesting firewall access? There's a standard for punching holes in local firewalls to open external ports, so why can't the same thing be applied in reverse to remote hosts?

With a proper access control mechanism, ssh-key driven, LDAP-backed or otherwise, it should be possible to send a packet to the remote firewall with enough information to verify identity and open the port as required. That would prevent scan attacks from working because none of the probes would be properly signed and the host port would appear closed.
My putty settings. What are yours? - Gabriel Weinberg's Blog
Buying your Expository Essay Online
An expository essay explains something to the reader. Therefore, there is a way in which it needs to be written. However, many students find the writing of any type of essay challenging. If they find expository writing challenging, all they need to do is buy their expository essay online.
FWIW, judging by "My team does not have experience in setting up a server" I doubt OP is going to be playing with any of that stuff.
Much more local coverage here for anyone interested:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/
so your definition of the cloud differs from the definition ryanelkins gave. This is all well and good, both the "completely abstracts hardware and OS details" definition that Ryan gave and the "just allows you to really quickly provision new hardware" definition you gave are fine definitions, and both are useful services in many cases. but my point is that you get five nerds in a room and you are going to have at least three completely different definitions of "cloud"
Is there a list of all the hidden HN pages located somewhere? There appear to be a few pages that you can't get to in your top navigation bar, eg:

- http://news.ycombinator.com/best

- http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories

- http://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments
Text of Steve Jobs' Commencement Address at Stanford (June 12, 2005)
I assumed that 'disrupt' meant 'jam the GPS and watch the carnage.' Thought it was an odd choice of wording at best.
From the discussion of WYSIWYG interfaces:

> "For example, a word may be printed in italic font for emphasis, as part of a book title, or as part of a quotation, but the specific meaning is lost if it is represented only by the fact that the characters are italicized.... [Markup languages can] preserve the semantic meaning inherent in the text and have rules for converting the text and semantics into their appearance on the printed page."

A lot of technologies (like CSS and XML) have taken exactly this approach. Semantic meaning is stored with an object, and the particular appearance can be converted across an entire document with a single change. I see "readability" [0] linked from HN fairly often; it's a technology that leverages this quite well.

[0] http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
I have to agree with you. The title itself feels like the author's taking a biast stand that s/he wants to vent. But the article itself is completely indecisive. Almost as if the author wants to speak ill of Chinese hands in Australian soil, but can't.

Either way, I found the article's facts interesting. I don't think many people know the scale of these operations, not the history of similar events with the Japanese. Both of these were news to me.
Like when Twitter acquired Tweetie and gave it away for free?

It doesn't seem like it's terribly impacted the other players, at least that's my perception. (could be wrong - someone with hard stats pls correct me)

My point being: that fear alone while is a rational one, should not be the only criteria to definitively say that an idea should not be pursued b/c it guarantees that you will fail in your startup
There are already 33 comments here, and not a lot of agreement. "The Cloud" just seems to me to be more marketing sucker-bait, basically (Web 2.0)2.0, I wonder what they are going to call ((Web 2.0)2.0)2.0?
App Store to have $2 billion in sales next year
"A 20-year-old off the street can come up to the Pilbara and earn A$92,000 a year," says Boxy. The median household income in Australia is A$67,000.

Talk about inflationary pressures.
Streams, junkfood, and making more of this whole network thing
Best Online meeting, video conferencing, and networking . Join for free
האתר מציע לכם את השירות לשלוח הודעות חינם לכל סלולרי
when he said, "the best way to make a lot of money", I was thinking a few million and that by best he meant easiest. It surely is easier to get rich tacking advantage of someone than trying to start the next microsoft.
It's not an editorial, it's a well written news article. It's goal was to cover multiple points of view of a massive event without explicitly endorsing one of them as canon.
V3 of the Google Maps API is blindingly fast. Unbelievable how much they've sped up since V2 , and V2 was already fast.
Point of clarification -

They bought the source code for SQL Server from Sybase; the foundations of the product weren't created at Microsoft. The wire protocol is still heavily compliant with sybase.
Despite the criticism directed towards Stallman's overly ideological emacs project managment and the failure to produce a widely adopted GNU micro-kernel, the values expressed in this video are fundamental knowledge for anyone creating software.

I hope people don't forget this part of history in times of all the nascent walled gardens.
So cloud service is an outsourced mainframe? That's about the only thing that fits all 3.
Show HN: Streak.ly tracks what you do daily and I'd love feedback on the concept
I've been working on a side project called Streak.ly with a friend of mine for the past month or so; it's intended to help keep you motivated to do otherwise mundane daily tasks (like do 10 pushups, read for an hour, etc.) by letting you log "streaks" — consecutive days in a row of doing something.

It's in private alpha/beta/gamma/whatever right now (has some rough edges to clean up), but is more or less functionally complete and pretty stable.

I'm a big fan of the Seinfeld calendar, and have seen other services which do similar things but were unsatisfying to use, either from an aesthetic or functional perspective. Streak.ly is designed to be simple, good-looking, fast, fun, (and hopefully addictive). (FWIW, it's also a place to experiment with user stickiness stuff I can potentially roll back in to Forrst.)

There are also some in-progress social/game/motivational features I plan to roll out in the next few weeks that hopefully contribute to the enjoyment factor of the app.

Streak.ly uses Twitter for authentication, and I've set up a URL to let HN folks in early: http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn

I'd love any and all feedback and/or criticism you may have.

Thanks!
Clickable: http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn
Do you realistically expect the US, Japan, or Korea to somehow fill the gap if China suddenly drops its demand for Australian commodities?

Probably not, but it depends. If you think the "China bubble" is because of Chinese domestic demand (ie, construction in China) then it will be hard to replace. If you think it is because of Chinese exports then it's possible another country could substitute.

Personally I reject the idea of a Chinese bubble altogether.

Household debt / disposable income in Australia is 157% versus 133% for the US shortly before the financial crisis.

It would be great if that was lower, but there are reasons for it. It's mainly because of high house prices. Unlike the US we don't have a housing bubble, because of our increasing population.

Average household debt is around 20% of household assets (http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Fe...). While the asset prices (ie houses) keep increasing that level of debt remains serviceable.
I'm biased; but I suspect that much like "Web 2.0" there is some truth to the "marketing". Web 2.0 saw the rise of user generated content, richer/leaner and more interactive websites and applications.

I suspect the "cloud" trend will continue to allow us to abstract more of our computing resources, and make computing/application construction pieces more of a utility/commodity then they ever have been.

So despite it being used a bit too much in marketing - I think there's some fire behind all the smoke, and dismissing it simply because marketing people are blowing it around a lot runs the risk of ignoring a major technological shift.
Learn that 70+ loc method definitions are a terrible thing, and never do it in your own code :)
You're right - and that worries me (personally, and professionally). I do think it's time the collective "we" start being a little bit more responsible with the term, so that others might.

Otherwise I'm worried we're going to see someone try to rebrand the internet as "the cloud" and then we're all doomed :)
Benefits of Partnering SEO and PR
Fwiw, I'll still be at Startup School. Thanks for asking PG, but I know he's got a lot of top tier speakers to choose from.
Thanks! Essentially we'd be in the same space. The ways this will differ is:

1) cheaper, one-time pricing, 2) opening up over-played questions to free, public use, 3) less complexity for test-assigners (at least I'd guess so, I haven't really used Codility to assign tests to candidates in real life).

Give it time, it's just getting warmed up. Personally I think this space will (and should) see a lot more competition. Single founder here.
"... Put them into a “networking” twitter list and stay on top of what they’re doing. Send them helpful resources and retweet resources they put out. ..."

This would probably make the beginning a good startup idea. If you do/don't have a card but do have a twit id a simple app to notify people you have met & manage the contacts (as long as you remember/record/contact their twit handles) - sort of an online business card. Stacks of contact apps have been built like this way but linking both the online/offline would be innovative.

But nothing beats having something physical to put in someones hand without the need to sling out your phone/computer. I use moo cards of flickr images ~ ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157616147825654... Unique, cheap & good looking they get the right information across. They are cheap enough for me to order a new batch every year with images I've taken making each one individual. By letting users select an image each is personalised.
Reminds me of one of Jim Carey's famous scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g1KcOw7zas
The problem with commodities like iron is they mean-revert.

Iron ore traditionally sells for under 40 cents. It's over 160. There is a big price bubble, because there was such a large spike in demand (thus a shortage, so customers bid the price up).

But if demand drops, those mining trucks can't just sit idle. They run 24 hours a day, whether they are raking in money or just eking out a profit. The same goes for the 2 mile trains, container ships, loaders, and so on. Quantities won't drop a lot, so price will, right down to the cost of production. Once it hits the cost of production, companies will start scrapping trucks, but that's a very bad way to lower quantities.
The tax was a great idea, and only hated by mining companies and people who happened to believe everything they see on TV. Most other big mining countries (Canada, Brazil, etc...) are also thinking about bringing in a mining tax like this.

All Australians deserve returns from the investment, not just the tiny number of miners, who earn ridiculous sums of money.
Apparix: directory bookmarks for your shell
And for power users only too! Pretty sure power users are less likely to be willing to pay for a service, because they're so used to finding free alternatives to paid stuff.
Also see:

* the "cdargs" utility, which lets you manipulate a menu of directory bookmarks in your shell:

http://github.com/cbxbiker61/cdargs

* "goto", which searches the "locate" database for directories to cd to:

http://sitaramc.googlepages.com/goto-considered-useful.html

* "autojump", which learns which are your most frequently used directories

http://github.com/joelthelion/autojump/wiki
nice looking but pretty limited for the moment. Honestly think most people who use tools like this will be looking for simplicity in their lives...and so convincing them to add another tool to their daily tools list is going very difficult considering all it can currently do (i realise it's alpha mind)
First, college material is only ~25% of society. The banks would cry screaming to their congress-critters if suddenly loans and credit were only allowed to college grads. What's next, only those holding degrees in econ are allowed to receive loans? Second, most folks getting loans by definition won't be college material. Third, there's then a required level of protection from themselves that must be in place in any Decent Society.

In the Randroid Universe, sure, every adult is logical, educated in accounting & finance, has a grasp of the market economy, is not socially nor financially desperate, and possesses enough self-restraint to not ever make such a blunder of a decision and accept a loan that is too big for them to ever pay off.

But here in the real world, we have extensive laws and regulations to stop just that from happening. Why? Because if those laws didn't exist, the banks would just steal everything that isn't nailed down, and turn everyone into a nation of debtors. This isn't the first time it happened in history either—I recommend reading some history about the economics behind the expansion of the rail roads and their collusion with banks in America just around the time of the closing of the Western frontier.
Yeah, but if the average Australian owes 1.6 times their annual salary, and house prices are 6X income, and they also have 2 years income locked into superannuation for their retirement (go boomers!), then things could go bad. Ask an American, English, Irish, Greek, Icelandic, or Japanese poster.
I think "the cloud" has never had a solid, specific meaning, and it probably never will. I don't begrudge marketing and middle management their own set of jargon. Really, letting marketing and middle management have their own overly vague words can be good sometimes. If the boss asks you to put something "In the cloud" you have a lot of latitude to choose the solution that is most suitable for the situation.

Hell, maybe "cloud" will end up in the vague but useful category like "solution" I mean, sure, "solution" is even more broad than "cloud", but sometimes it seems more concise than "product or service" in a sentence, so it's still a word that I use sometimes.
Those jobs are well paid for a reason.

They are in the middle of nowhere (unless you've been there you have no idea how isolated the Pilbara is), and the climate is less than ideal:

The climate of the Pilbara is semi-arid and arid, with high temperatures and low irregular rainfall that follows the summer cyclones. During the summer months, maximum temperatures exceed 32°C (90°F) almost every day, and temperatures in excess of 45°C (113°F) are not uncommon. The Pilbara town of Marble Bar set a world record of most consecutive days of maximum temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) or more, during a period of 160 such days from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924.[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilbara

In the non-open cut mines, many jobs are underground and a lot of people don't seem to cope well with being 1km underground.

A few well-paid jobs don't create inflation on their own. The inflation rate remains a steady 3%.
The (generally) light fluffy things in the air that produce rain.
To some level, yes, experienced cooks can. "I'm adding ingredient A because it adds flavor X/it gives texture Y/has color Z". Perhaps you cannot understand why the effect the cook says the ingredient has improves the result. But then the cook could make a dish with ingredient A and without ingredient A and then you can probably taste or see the difference. If you cannot then the ingredient probably wasn't important.

Similarly if the UX designer says "this label should go here" he should be able to explain why: "the form is easier to understand that way". And if the client doesn't see why it is easier to understand he should be able to make two versions, and the client should be able to see why one of them is better. If the client cannot see that and the UX designer cannot convince him then it probably isn't better.
Thank you, and totally makes sense. Hopefully there is a nice middle ground where this could fit. My theory is also that if I can a) show value to enough folks that they start to realize, "hey, this is pretty useful and I can probably manage to use it 5 mins a day" and then b) get them to invite small groups of friends, the upcoming features in that vein will create a stickiness in those groups. Probably obvious to most but makes sense in my head at least.
Don't forget level five: being invited to social functions with people you don't know very well. Not only are you not in the comfort of your own home, not in control of the situation, and not able to make amusing conversation, but now a large group of people bear witness to your interpersonal epicfail and once the conversation runs dry may find yourself simply sitting in silence listening to whatever racket is being played (usually very loud) in the background, frozen in your seats, preserved in awkwardness like some sort of distasteful museum exhibit.
To me, a cloud is a distributed system of computing resources where the resources can be dynamically allocated with an API. A hosted application should be able to increase or decrease the available processors, memory, and disk without human intervention. Human oversight should be implemented at points where it makes sense for business and security, rather than at points dictated by the limitations of technology. This means a cloud should do be able to do significant automated management of DNS, networking, and provisioning of fundamental operating system details.

The line between any classic distributed system or cluster and a 'cloud' is blurry, but generally speaking a cloud's API should be internet-compatible and capable of using commodity hardware to scale up with minimal (and preferably asynchronous) intervention from system administrators.

As for 'The Cloud' -- currently I don't think there is 'The Cloud' the way there is 'The World Wide Web', but it's theoretically possible. Right now 'The Cloud' generally means 'A Public Cloud', which is a publicly available distributed system like the one I described above. A Virtual Private Hosting service is not a cloud, because allocation of resources typically involves a sales contract of some sort. But the service itself it might theoretically run on a cloud, and you can build a cloud out of VPSs.
A major point made in the article is that the standard big data stack does not fit all big data needs.

There's a growing assumption that this stack is sort of all that's needed, and that's just not the case.
Pretty sure only introverts have trouble with this kind of stuff. Extroverts (people who get energized by social situations) don't.
Coming soon to Streak.ly... Serial killers
True, but that isn't really that hard to do now. I can basically keep up to date by subscribing to top journals in my field.
For a simple webapp like this, please don't make me get a twitter account/sign in to use.

Generate a unique URL for me to use, or hash my email address or something like that.
Reduce friction, I want to be able to use this with 1 click.
Look at the bottom left of the page - left most menu says "lists" and takes you to http://news.ycombinator.com/lists
Very good point. I've got plans to add "use it now, sign up later" stuff in, it's just not made it into production yet.
I've had one of these since 2008, it's been a useful phone to have for hikes or trips where you won't get charge.
Eh, honestly be grateful there are people that want to talk to you. Learn some basic assertiveness if such friendly interactions are excruciating for you.
I used this phone for over a year. Texting is incredibly awkward, all lower-case, and you can only see seven characters at a time. I got used to it, but I preferred not to. Address book is stored only in the SIM, which I think is fairly unique in the US. MMSes show up as weird bits of text with URLs, but that might have been a by-product of T-Mobile's service. It was solidly constructed, and had excellent reception and battery life.

I'm not sure I saw the "500 hours" of standby time, but I doubt I went 20 days without a text message or a phone call. Heavy use and I still had to charge it every couple of days. Regular to light use and I could go a week.
very true, hate that.

but its not quite a trap when someone invites you to the trap, telling you "hey, I'm having a trap. Wanna come?" Plus, you can leave the trap by saying "I have another trap to go to."
I'm using it and trying to setup our journal club through it. Nice tool.
even extroverts can be bored out of their mind by someone playing head games. People who love to eat can still avoid things that are painful to eat
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother" -- Albert Einstein

Do you think the experienced cook can necessarily explain exactly why some things work and others don't?

They should be able to!

It's not magic - there are well accepted rules for what works and what doesn't. If they can't explain them then they are probably just following a recipe very well. That's fine, and may make great food, but creativity takes understanding, and understanding means they can explain what is occurring (at least to themselves).
Most striking is WSJ's mention of two another wildly over budget project in the same district.

One is a school that cost $377 million (~4x over budget) that "ranks in the bottom third of schools with similar demographics on state tests".

Add to that the variety of administrators pointing fingers at eachother, a quick throwaway excuse about needing to complete a project "to show respect for the neighborhood's Latino children" and you've got a microcosm of the insanity that is California politics summed up in a tidy package.

Zero accountability, knee jerk political tomfoolery, and a bevy of unionized contractors feeding at the pork barrel that are running the "oh wont somebody please think of the children" commercials that push through these insane bond measures to begin with.

Hard to see light at the end of the tunnel.
Including this post!
I just completed "Kill Someone" 14 days in a row on Streak.ly
Tumblr is awesome, and in my opinion the easiest hosted blog platform to use. WordPress.com, though, is the most powerful, and you can actually use a couple of the themes basically as a free hosted CMS for a small website with static pages. Another advantage of WordPress.com is that it works almost the same as full WordPress.org, so anything you learn on it would be knowledge you can use with any WordPress-powered site. At the end of the day, it really depends on what you need:

- Tumblr is by far the easiest, and has the most features (domain mapping, CSS/HTML editing) for free

- WordPress.com is the most powerful, and has more advanced features (full site with just pages, shortcodes) than most other free hosted platforms.
Don't explain it, show them.

If they are simple user interaction concepts, then presumably there are examples you can show them. Often that gives them an anchor point where you can discuss things you'd like to change about that specific example.