skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Overall I thought it was great. I went through about 20 questions and got them all right. I also went through them about twice as fast as Captchas and I probably would have missed a few too.

I agree with the other posters though that it needs to be a bit more forgiving with spelling and adjectives. "Yellow Car" and "Red Apple" should both be accepted. I never saw Big Bird but if you decided to keep it, "bird" and "yellow bird" should be correct unfamiliar users.

I tried to use tineye.com to see if a spammer could automate searches to determine what the picture is of (obviously wouldn't work on all pictures though) and it failed for 'car' and 'pencil'. Google Googles on my phone identified the bird as a Lark: http://www.tropicalbirding.com/tripReports/TR_SouthIndia_Nov... which was interesting but not a correct answer.
I hate to say it, but I think this is a huge step in the wrong direction. First, there appear to be multiple correct answers for almost all the challenges. One showed a picture of a woman watering plants that appeared to have dollar bills as leaves. It asked me what she was doing. I had no clue what to put; is she "watering plants," "growing money," or just "watering?". I think you should at least provide multiple choice answers, even if the user has to enter in the full answer word for word. Forget about spam bots being able to figure these out, most humans would have a hard time!

Second, and this is a big one, I don't think there are many bloggers and web developers out there who are so frustrated with captchas that they'd be willing to use an ad-supported system, no matter how easy it makes things for the end user. I know I wouldn't. The ads also add a lot of confusion to the captcha. Again, on the money plant watering example, I saw an ad about making cash online. Combined with the strange money tree it made for a very confusing experience at best. I think having the same crap that spambots are likely to post on a site as advertisements on the very captcha that is trying to prevent it sends some pretty mixed signals.

Third, why does this need to be crowd-sourced? This seems like it's adding myriad quality control issues. I think if you sat down and came up with 10 or so internationally universal puzzles that are easily solved by all humans and not by robots, you would have enough variety to keep the bots guessing.

What I want to see is a captcha that determines I'm human without me having to do anything. I don't even know if this can be done, but to me all captcha solutions should be aiming toward that goal. In the meantime, I'll deal with the captchas that are out there right now.
Got another one here:
Hadoop/Java Developer - San Francisco, USA (Contract to perm, no telecommute, but work out a 4 day onsite work situation)

Top Silicon Valley tech firm (think old world internet, but still a relevant business model) is looking to completely revamp their back-end search and storage infrastructure with a massive Hadoop cluster (will rival Yahoo's and Facebook's when completed). They are hiring a team of core Java developers with experience building out Hadoop clusters.

Drop me a line: trent.krupp@constitutionllp.com
Google's privacy policy changes happening in October
Encoding for Streaming (2008)
I'm pretty ignorant of geology.. The main reason I added space mining was because a rush for resources, especially commercially exploitable ones, seems to have spurred significant third party interest in risky exploration.

Rather than the government funding everything, the mere possibility of being able to find a 100 ton lump of gold (or whatever) would get multiple space exploration efforts kicked up the butt immediately ;-)
Flipboard - SF Bay Area (Palo Alto) (no telecommuting)

Seeking awesome iOS or web developer who cares about design that works and building cool things.

[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@+hn@%@.com", @"charles", @"flipboard"]
neat experiment! lol
...or C) limit comment rights to a group of responsible, traceable people

...or D) moderate new registrants for a probationary period

...or E) enlist some of your users-in-good-standing for moderation

...or F) moderate just those comments which an automated system flags as having high spam likelihood (links, images, emails)

...or G) require some small demonstration/forfeit of value (such as a posting fee) for each post. (Risking a non-probationary account that took effort to create is a special case of this.)

...or H) blended variants of the above
Ask HN: OpenVPN vs. Hamachi/Remobo/etc
Does anyone recommend Hamachi2, Remobo, or any similar product over OpenVPN?
Python Devs who want to build a healthcare product that is fixing a big part of healthcare pain for patients and doctors. Looking for thoughtful pros, not egos and code ninjas.

http://www.covermymeds.com.

Parent company: http://www.innova-partners.com/main/developers. We have virtually no turnover and treat people with respect.

Contact mscantland at covermymeds dot com.

Columbus, Ohio, no telecommute
The bottom of each weight is at about the same level as the bottom of the man's feet. A floor is the natural thing to assume. Otherwise it would be difficult to get them into this configuration.
For an in depth and also entertaining history of equal temperament (and some other tuning schemes) you should check out Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff.
Wow! I had a really strange experience there. I read the first post, thought to myself "Wow, this is a terrible troll, the rest of the comments can't be worthwhile", and hit Back. ("make use of open source projects, which is immoral" was the breaking point for me to decide it was a troll).

Then I came back to HN to complain about the troll, read your comment and the others here, and promptly turned around and went over to the site again to actually read the comments. And it's true! It was a very good discussion.

My troll filter isn't very sensitive -- I usually give people the benefit of the doubt -- but it unambiguously went off here.
Albany, NY Vicarious Visions (an Activision studio)

I work at a pretty amazing gaming studio and we're always looking for solid c++ developers. I've heard so many horror stories about working in the gaming industry and I can assure you at the studio I work at it is quite the opposite. Great people, amazingly fun environment, and we get paid to make video games!

email me if you are interested. jreine AT vvisions DOT com
It is, of course, literally true that data is composed of a collection of data points -- you could call them anecdotes if you wanted to. But the point of the aphorism is that you can't go the other direction.

Anecdotes are isolated instances, things people remember and tell because they are interesting. They lack any sort of statistical control or rigorous documentation. If you have a bunch of anecdotes about socially awkward homeschoolers, you don't have any actual data on the incidence of social awkwardness among homeschoolers. You just have have a bunch of anecdotes.
Absolutely not - I program in a real editor, and I won't be judged by some wannabe textbox.

Not to mention that you probably would wantto copy the code elsewhere anyway to test it.
ReadyForZero (YC10) Launches Assault on Credit Card Debt
Archos announces five new Android tablets from $100 to $350
Want your privacy back? Try disappearing
A great article, and a great illustration of the fact that you can't always judge the correctness of an action based on outcome, but only based on the information you had available at the time.

If QM turns out to be right, it doesn't mean Einstein was wrong to work against it. If string theory turns out to be right, doesn't mean the theoretical physics community was correct to invest all its time into it.
Because they're all written in C/C++, and it's impossible to write reliable software in C++ without a QA team that's 10x bigger than the development team.

But hey, at least it runs really fast sometimes!
Resort Attracts Men With Virtual Girlfriends
The Future of Mobile Sync
So Ping won't be available outside of the U.S.? Well, thank f*+k for that!
I don’t understand the ambivalence for stealing. If you’ve ever tried to teach someone something, you know it’s impossible to get them to where you are. Maybe worse, maybe better, but never your equivalent. And if it's worse, no worries; if it’s better, it fuels your own development.
Yes and yes. Google the blog "Energy from Thorium" for more details.
It's good to hear a "Sometimes things take time" point of view. The typical mental model of YC [1] can make one feel less than perfect for not having raised $5M by 19, made multiple angel investments by 22, then traveled around the world for philanthropy during your mid 20s because now, carefully managed, you're set for life.

[1]: How the press likes to portray YC: get unknown kids, accelerate them towards terminal funding velocity, stir for three years, and bam instant millionaires.
Same story submitted earlier, with comments ...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653396

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1654812
Vimeo, NYC

We're looking for web app devs and a sysadmin. Specifics here: vimeo.com/jobs

It's a great place to work, and it's growing like mad.
"Whenever you're sending sensitive information online—say, your credit card number to Amazon or a message over Gmail—the content is encrypted before being sent and then decrypted by the Web site you sent it to. (Sites using this secure mode have URLs that start with "https," and browsers add a padlock icon as well to demonstrate you're communicating securely.) Every vendor has its own rules for how to scramble information so that only it, the intended recipient, can decode it."

SSL does not encrypt content and vendors don't all ahve their own rules about how SSL works. It's a standard. I really wish that journalists covering technical matters would do enough research to explain things properly.
Hum... yellow car. I entered Camaro told it was wrong. Was it a Chevelle?

It is clearly a Mustang Mach 1...'69 or '70 (http://www.bafflebot.com/challenges/main_image/39a43dd6d6e34... vs http://www.classiccarstudio.com/images/auction/1166/1.jpg)

I got one that could have been a rat or a mouse...hard to tell, but both were accepted. Same with the bird picture, bird and sparrow were accepted. But the picture of the corvette with the question "how many wheels does this object likely have?" is ambiguous. It could be 4, 5 (counting the spare tire), or 6 (if you're cheeky and count the steering wheel).
And he hasn't won the libel war battle, the other side simply retracted the case.

So no court decision, no new case law and nothing to stop them issuing a new writ tomorrow and doing it all over again - or them doing it to somebody else who can't afford $200,000 in legal fees to defend themselves.
How many different questions do you have? I ran it ~20 times and saw the same question 4-5 of those times.

One problem you might have is that classical captcha has 25^6 combinations, and you can generate a new set every x days by changing the algorithm used to generate the images.

Your set is human generated, and it seems that it wouldn't take long to build an answer set to use to break it, especially since it gives you a second and third chance at an answer.

A spammer could build a 'quiz' site with your questions and answers, and store the image hashes along with the answers in a db.
sorry; I made an edit with a clarification.

Basically if the weights are at rest on the floor then mkn's answer is the correct one. If they are at rest on the air, then my answer is the correct one.
It's very good if you are handling static sensitive electronics.
Sweaty feet and a concrete floor is much better than nylon carpets and plastic shoes.
zferral.com :: Looking for #3 and #4. Goal is to find another co-founder (or two). Both front & back-end. Email me.

remote is doable - prefer Midwest based.
I wouldn't buy a $250 toaster either, but if it actually lasts more than 6 months, that'd be one reason.
No, that's not right, because the dollars you are already earning might not be taxed at the marginal rate.
Ping: Why Bother?
ITunes 10 hands-on: snappier performance, questionable UI choices
It's quite possible that my relatives, even though they are zealous defenders of unschooling, have misunderstood this point somewhat, or have otherwise decided to revise Holt's original message for whatever reason. Unfortunately, a lot of ideas tend to take on a life of their own once they begin to spread, and the original inventor of the idea has little control over it; they may end up getting credit for ideas they never espoused, for better or for worse. I apologize if I've mischaracterized unschooling. Everything I know about it is based on what I've learned from my relatives.

To them, it's not quite about being inattentive to your children; quite the opposite. It's about giving them whatever they want. It would not be hyperbole to say that, in their view, a parent should serve the child much like a valet. So it's not that they ignore their children, it's just that they have infinite trust in their children to decide for themselves what is best. So, if they don't want to go to the doctor to get a shot, they don't have to. If they want to eat candy for supper instead of a nutritious meal, candy is what they'll eat. If they want to play instead of do chores, then they will play. They are never asked to do something that they don't want to do, because a parent is not allowed to impose their will upon the child. As such, the parents often run themselves ragged trying to keep up with their child's demands, and the children end up very spoiled and totally unprepared for adulthood.

From what you've described of John Holt's writings, it sounds like he and I would agree on a lot of things. I definitely believe in listening to your child's cues. I also believe in manipulating the situation so as to foster an interest. I'm not sure if he would agree with that or not. I call it a 'manipulation' because it's indirect: instead of directly insisting and pushing my child to read, I try to indirectly entice her into taking the initiative by showing that reading can be fun and rewarding.

In any case, I wouldn't put it past my relatives to misconstrue the true foundations of the unschooling movement, which is why I am always careful to add that I might not be understanding it correctly.
Yeah I just did. Mongrel2 looks overly complex. But then it is C...
If you are not an expert there is no reliable way for you to tell whether someone outside the field is a genius or a crank. Both is possible (though I would argue that the cranks vastly outnumber the geniuses) but if even the experts inside the field are unable to tell the difference there is no chance in hell you can. That’s the big problem.

I doesn’t really help you that scientific discoveries are from time to time made by people outside the respective fields, if you are not an expert you have no way to discern the good stuff from the bad stuff.
can we get some invites?
50 - 100 tabs open at one time!? Why would anyone need that many windows open? I'm not saying that these issues aren't prevalent--but I have to imagine that this is an edge case. Just thinking about ever having more than 5 or 6 tabs open at any given time just makes my head hurt...
OAuth 1.0, RFC5849, April 2010: "if the client is a desktop application with freely available source code or an executable binary, an attacker may be able to download a copy for analysis. In such cases, attackers will be able to recover the client credentials. Accordingly, servers should not use the client credentials alone to verify the identity of the client. Where possible, other factors such as IP address should be used as well."

I strongly agree with your criticism of this article, but that is pretty clear. And Twitter does freely and clearly acknowledge that a "determined attacker" can snag the secrets from a given app. But they still want to have it both ways. They counsel obfuscation (even though an attacker will observe your secret without bothering to understand your obfuscation method; time spent on "best effort" here is clearly time wasted). They counsel doing things like "using the API through a homebrew proxy that actually holds the keys", which they immediately hedge by stating that they are "not actually recommending these avenues"... http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/msg/...

In the end, their "not actually recommended" path of pushing everything through a key-bearing proxy sure looks like the only way to develop desktop and mobile Twitter apps without taking a risk that the following chain of events will occur (and, as someone mentioned, maybe even be set into motion by a competitor): key disclosure, key revocation, app breakage, scrambling to get updates out, unhappy users + lost revenue, etc.

As you say, the problem of "how can we shut off malicious clients" is orthogonal to OAuth. But Twitter is choosing to involve a part of OAuth that is easily compromised in desktop/mobile contexts in solving that problem anyways.
Entrepreneurship Strategy: How to Pivot on a Dime
http://www.garywhitehill.com/2010/07/29/entrepreneurship-strategy-how-to-pivot-on-a-dime/
and Ohio and West Virginia and New York...
The Entrepreneurs Guide to Reality
Is There True Freedom of Speech on the Web?
Luck is not all it takes, but these sorts of self-congratulatory stories (and the hagiographies written about such people after they succeed) always seem to downplay this particular element of the story. Having a great idea and a great team are not enough and sometimes those who "get lucky" can make do with substandard ideas or teams. It is hard to admit that the most significant determinant to success is completely out of your control, but if you accept this fact and plan accordingly you will be better off than someone who things that their superior team and idea are all they need.

A lot of the success of agile businesses and the whole mvp product strategy could be explained by the fact that it embraces the possibility of randomness and unexpected outcomes rather than ignoring it completely.
I tried to download it - their new simple solution is to include it as part of Windows Live.

So I want a simple movie editor to clip 5secs off the beginning of a home movie - BUT to do this I have to sign up for an MS specific hotmail account, create a windows passport (I thought they had abandoned that?) get Windows messenger, windows photo viewer and be included in a whole bunch of MS specific social websites.

So I found a torrent of Movie maker 2.6 for XP - it works perfectly on Win7.
What can you possibly do with 100 tabs that 5 or 6 tabs can't accomplish?
There's the possibility of middle men who are supposed to make some of these obstacles easier to overcome: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1560072

Are you speaking from personal experience by the way?
I almost always have under 10-20+ tabs open.

I tried to use chrome but it always cries "Oh snap.." and all the tabs crap out (so much for individual). Firefox slows to a crawl, Safari and IE on windows both aren't even worth opening 1 tab in. So I stick with opera. It does the best overall job for lots of tabs. Although it takes quite a bit of memory..

With that said I really notice a lot of slowness on sites that use embedded fonts, more so then anything else. Next is flash, if I block flash from running my browser really speeds up. However Javascript has been replacing EVERYTHING. Even when it shouldn't it does, and is required by many sites, so I cannot turn it off, and some sites use a lot of resources for this mostly pointless js.
Because people stopped writing web pages and started writing javascript applications.
I guess: yes.

The only place i see it is in some old scripts running at customers and they ALWAYS are a nightmare, unmaintainable, horrific, spaghetti code that oftern enough makes me want to poke my eyeballs out. Mostly, the customer agrees with me, but usually those scripts are too big to be replaced quickly... :/
In your thought experiment you make the weight difference so small that otherwise insignificant factors (e.g. friction) take over. Go the opposite direction and make the weight difference enormous.
Those aren't her initials, if that's what you mean. But this sounds exactly like what my relatives practice. Thanks for the information, I was not aware of a distinction between unschooling and radical unschooling.
I wonder whether she would have the same problem if she blocked Flash.
The fact that Gates regularly attempted to eat Microsoft's dog food (alas he couldn't get the can open in this case) is encouraging; but ultimately it doesn't seem to have helped much.
This is a great reminder (to me) that software UI should be designed around how many pieces of information it needs from the user, not how many things it needs to do.
That's likely because artists who are presently on board Ping represent 1% of 1% of all of the artist data that exist in Genius. If the recommendation engine is giving poor recommendations, it's probably because there is a lack of variety now, and also because it's still learning based on user behavior. Again, nothing that time can't solve.
I don't know enough about certificate revocation lists (CRLs) to be sure, but isn't it possible for individual browser users to import them?

In that case, couldn't the EFF or similar organizations take matters into their own hands, and release lists of certificates they think users should be cautious about?

I suspect libel laws make this more difficult, but perhaps not impossible, if revocation providers are careful not to overstate their case, but just say "here's a list of certificates of organizations who have been documented to meet the following criteria...".

[Edited to add:]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revocation_list#Publishing_Revo... says that "To prevent spoofing or denial-of-service attacks, CRLs usually carry a digital signature associated with the CA by which they are published. To validate a specific CRL prior to relying on it, the certificate of its corresponding CA is needed, which can usually be found in a public directory." It's not clear whether the browser checks this signature, or whether the user is expected to. In the latter case, a CRL could be signed by the 3rd party revocation provider instead.
I was hired one year ago and I have to say that it's a pleasure to work here. The atmosphere is awesome and it's a continuous learning and rewarding experience.
Of course no mention of the numerous new features and improvements Fx 4 contains.... Seems a bit biased.
Learn Python and you'll notice why perl doesn't make sense.
Allowing the person that writes the answer to submit a link is problematic, IMHO. Of the 3 I tried, 2 said "I love you" and linked to Glenn Beck. I personally dislike Mr. Beck very much, and that alone would keep me from using this on any project.

You are going to run afoul of people just as easily if someone links to Keith Olbermann, or a site about Gay Rights, or kicking out immigrants, or atheism, or the KKK, or [insert inflammatory thing here].

The whole reason for captcha's is so someone can't put arbitrary links on YOUR site, embedding your anti-captcha solution just makes sure they are always in the same place. No thanks, I'll just use ReCaptcha.
I can't reply to you davepell, as your reply here is [dead], but I too would like to get to the bottom of this.
This is a question, but isn't it used fairly often in the finance industry?
Not if you include Asia. It's huge there, especially in Japan.
Why would anyone need more than 640k?
I found that uninstalling flash stops my tabbed browsing sessions from crashing. With 2-6 flash ads per page, a typical session could have 20-50 tabs open, so that there is usually well over 100 flash adverts running. All it takes is a single advert to crash flash, then flash takes down the browser application.