skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Firesheep and Bruce Schneier? 
I wonder what Bruce Schneier thinks of the whole Firesheep thing, with his wifi network wide open?
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html

The money quote: "If I configure my computer to be secure regardless of the network it's on, then it simply doesn't matter. And if my computer isn't secure on a public network, securing my own network isn't going to reduce my risk very much."
same! there is also a docco fork on node called dox. http://github.com/visionmedia/dox

ever since seeing Dox I have made a much larger effort to essentially create a reference for everything I write (in a perfect world this would be a given).
In this case I will have a much wider range of referrers and I don't see Google being high on this list for this particular page. But social sites should be.

Its not so much cloning the ads the referrer is posting (Although this is an option) as targeting the ads at what the referrer is. So if the referrer is say Facebook maybe social networking ads, that kind of thing - but working across all possible types of referrers.

Edit: Just for a little more clarification the list of referrers would be endless and defined by the user.
This sounds like an interesting idea, but is it legal to run? Sure it might be a good thing to educate people about the dangers of accessing the internet over open wireless, but what if you accidentally run it on the account of someone who is willing to sue? Do they have a legal basis to sue you?

Just because they are doing something stupid, doesn't give you the right to mess with their accounts.
How I (try to) add value as an investor
Probably not ready for prime time just yet. I installed Unity on my 12.1" HP tablet and there were immediate and obvious bugs. Most notably, all menus and several other windows were skewed about 45 degrees.

I like the concept, and I think that in order for Ubuntu to compete with other distros and innovation among the major players (OS X and 7) a redesign of the UI is necessary. Considering the new features OS X Lion will be bringing, I think Unity is a necessary progression.
Fortunately, Joel is not the first or last word on any subject.
This is the number of request by agencies that bothered to get warrants.

It doesn't include three-letter-agencies that have their own access.
The reason is Canonical's, Redhat's and Novel's support at least. They should be able to solve it even between only 3 of them... Whether they will be able to, is another question. We'll have to wait and see.

Especially since Canonical wants to make it the default suite and they're going for userfriendly image these days.
The Air has a faster SSD than his older Macbook Pro. It isn't magically faster just because it's different. We aren't in fantasy land.

If you have a faster CPU, more (of the same speed) RAM and a faster SSD then it doesn't make any sense for it to be slower. Given that both are in a 64bit environment.

There is nothing magical happening! Get a new 900MB/s SSD and it'll be faster again, then I guess you'll move back.
Office 2011 for Mac arrives with Outlook, online collaboration
Netfilter hooks that a packet traverses in the Linux Kernel
YMMV is exactly the issue.
Don't take this the wrong way, but ...

> This highly educated Engineering graduate student
> didn't know that they lived on a planet. Its ironic.

And assuming you're reasonably well educated, and reasonably well informed, and reasonably intelligent, you didn't know, or care, that "its" as you've used it should've had an apostrophe. When you write "Its ironic" the "Its" is an abbreviation of "It is".

There are things that just don't matter in people's lives. For many, increasingly, traditionally "correct" usage of the apostrophe is one of them. For others, it is irrelevant that the word "planet" has a technical definition, that Jupiter and the Earth are examples, and Pluto no longer is.

Most people don't know that a sizeable proportion of the mass in wood comes from the air, or that the Earth goes round the Sun (in the simplest model of the Solar System) or that Google is not a web browser. These are things removed from people's concerns, irrelevant to them.

Before a few years ago I didn't know that Bach pre-dated Beethoven, even though I listened to their music all the time. Why should I care? No doubt I'd be laughed at by the self-declared "cultural" people, and then I'll ask them to quote the second law of thermodynamics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures
Oops, thanks for pointing that one out!
It's not that I think that the rankings aren't accurate, but I do think that they vary (slightly) in the ways you mentioned in your previous comment (locale, language, etc).

I should qualify that and say that based on the rank tracking I've been doing, so far every time I've manually checked my results they've been spot on but, as you point out, Google's own documentation suggests that this may not always be the case.

What I was getting at, but wasn't very clear about, is that these results are far from instant due to the fact that you're looking at potentially 27+ API requests per search term. (3 search engine APIs, up to 9 pages of results for each -- Google's API maxes out at 72 results)

I currently do this every hour while in testing and store the results in my datastore. Then I in the web-app I pass this data to the Google charts API. The result is presently something that looks like this - http://imgur.com/PidBG.png
MapCrunch: It’s Chatroulette Meets Google Street View
Using IE8 at work and there is an IE conditional showing through on the page just above the photo header:

<!--[if IE lt 9]> <![endif]-->
There's also Pocco (Python), Rocco (Ruby), and shocco (*sh)
http://tomayko.com/linkings/67644cabf40a7aa32c2a99fda9a42e20
I know. I put "Why does my {mom, dad, brother}" in there, and was instantly sorry I had.
Yes, I use celery/rabbitmq as a queue. But I don't bother checking for duplicates. If the feed is still in the queue by the time it comes back around for processing again, I let it run. That means that the queue is behind enough that it will even out in the wash.
In the last few days a tool has been released

That seems to imply it's a single tool, and once this is "stopped" you don't need to worry any more. Surely it should mention instead that a recently released tool is widely publicised? Firesheep didn't make this possible, it has been for a long time, it just made it more accessible.
Nicely made... shall have to look into it further.

First bug I noticed, most easily visible with Daring Fireball: click on a story from the bottom list. If there's more than one story headline in view, it also marks the bottom one as read.
You have to be smart to be lucky and lucky to be smart.
On a normal flight "switch off electronics while landing" happens once. If you think otherwise you have failed at flying (sorry, couldn't resist re-using your phrase there).
People have advocated man made islands that would reside outside the territory of any nation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading)

Sealand is an interesting example, some sort of British military base on a platform in the North Sea was claimed and declared an independent country, with little recognition by any established countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand)
Gowalla Monetizes Locations with Custom Stamps
>thats what we've turned the education system into, at least in America

This is in no part helped by NCLB testing. The school stopped normal classes for a week to spend time teaching us how to take tests so that the school could perform well.

Who can be surprised that the last thing people are actually learning in schools is how to best prepare for tests?
Machine guns are pretty handy for guerilla warfare.

Tanks, not so much.
It is interesting to draw a parallel between the philosophical idea of utilitarianism and democracy. Particularly in the sense that what is best for the 'greater good' is not always ethical.

Example: Take down a plane full of people to save a building full of people?
Ignore the stuff about this not being a startup. It's you, striking out. Good for you.

That aside, what are you going to do to promote yourself over and above 99designs and co? It looks like a crowded market to me, so how will you make yourself stand out?

A couple of questions, if you don't mind me being very intrusive:

How many $249 gigs a month do you need to be profitable?

How will you maintain your margins as you (hopefully) grow?

Best of luck though with the site and service.
Returning things in a different order is a total deal-breaker, and the mere possibility of that happening makes me wonder if screen-scraping is the only way to get reliable data.

All the factors you mention do influence ranking (local, preferences, etc), but I'm content to get de-personalized, non-geotargeted search results for this purpose.
As an inveterate Google Reader user, I say well done! One problem: the "Preferences" dialog has no text, just two blank radio buttons (using Chrome).
Is BudURL the link shortener that businesses have been looking for?
I was installing Ubuntu Linux on a older machine but with a new Nvidia graphics card and Ubuntu because of the new nouveau driver showed me a black screen while installing. I had to find a forum post on the issue only to find out that I had to edit the kernel boot parameters by adding something to the end of the boot line.

That pretty much ended that little escapade into trying to get that working... I don't want to tinker with my machines. I want to set them up and have them go for months if not years. Just set up Boxee on ArchLinux, don't plan on touching that for a long time. It does what it is supposed to do (play movies and tv shows) and that is that.
Even if you exercise, the more hours a day you sit, the greater your risk of early death
You have some great talent! ... fav. logo: Undropped.com.
There are some good sample logos on the page, but the overall design reads more as a vanity site/portfolio than as a marketing page.

Make every element on the page justify its presence. "Hey, coffee-stained TODO list in the top right corner, why do you exist? How are you helping me sell logos?"

Consider finding someone to do a thorough edit of your marketing copy. Lots of good ideas in there, but it's uneven.
Snapr API v0 Released
Twilio and Google Voice: Combining forces to better manage calls and SMS
US approves world's biggest solar energy project (Update)
That was just an example. Others include:

* helicopters

* jet airplanes

* satellites

* artillery

* light armored vehicles

* unmanned drones

etc.

As a side note, I fucking hate HN's formatting.
I thought the rest of the paragraph covered that, but I'm happy to edit it if you can suggest a rephrasing?

It's just supposed to be a quick introduction stating that the chances of being exploited are significantly higher now that the entry barrier is practically non-existent.
I think you've just said exactly what Bruce Schneier probably thinks of the whole Firesheep thing with the quote.

But then again, why not ask him instead of us?
Democrats data mine Facebook to get out the vote
I would imagine it's just as cumbersome a process as playing a dvd, laserdisc, betamax, vhs is today.

You included DVD in that list? One of these things is not like the other... I think I have six devices in this room right now which can play a DVD.

Piracy aside, what's the alternative to Blu-Ray? It's Apple or Apple, and an opportunity to have a file which plays only by the grace of Apple. No thanks.
Analyst: Intel preparing 450-mm push
> none of them support SNI. That includes (..) Google Chrome, FireFox, and Safari

You're wrong about Firefox! I'm writing this from an XP box and I've just tested a SNI site with Firefox 3.6. It works with SNI just fine.

> Not sure about Opera

Opera also works with SNI.
Other neat things: extrasolar planet discovery, Mars rovers.
Filling in missing information with a reasonable guess is vary different from having accurate information. Looking at a low res impressionist painting you are going to fill in based on reasonable estimates for the real world not what is actually there.
Unless they're running a honey-pot machine... how do they tell? You're coming from the same IP, with the same session. At best they can fingerprint your browser, which is far from proof and easy to change. Or nab things from Flash, maybe - but people likely to use this exploit to educate are probably more likely to run Flash blockers.
I believe the "Wal-Mart" is too American to ever make it as a SI unit.
The context of this article is the Iraq War Logs, and certainly comments relating to the executive's need for secrecy in relation to security are relevant. In some areas, a balance is needed. Would anyone be served by leaking the nuclear launch codes? I think I would rather some things were secret.

However, it's fairly common now to associate Wikileaks only with their leaks relating to the US war interests. They leak a lot more than that. I guess you leak what you can get, and the more secretive the information, the bigger the leak is.

I'm very happy that they leaked the proposed Australian internet censorship blacklist, even if it meant they were subsequently placed on it (I'm sure mirrors will sort that one out).
It's good, but it's submitted time and time and time again:

http://searchyc.com/submissions/pausch?sort=by_date
I've tried Lose It, it's a great app but it doesn't do what I need (like most weight lose app's).

It's very focused on weight. If you're not on the extreme end of being "overweight" - tracking how many pounds you weigh is not the correct approach to staying fit and trim. Instead, you need to track body fat % and muscle %.

Most people go on diets, weigh themselves, find they have lost many pounds and proclaim victory. Only later do they find that they have gained that weight back, and them some. This cycle typically continues and that person never finds success.
Just trying to help, not trying to dissuade you from doing this.

As someone who is in the market for logo design, what strikes me is this.

Currently, I if I go to 99designs or CrowdSpring or whatnot, I can get 30 something designers to submit ideas for basically the same price point. With your site, I get 6 versions from you. So roughly, I can get 5 times more submissions from other sites.

And since I don't know you (not meant to be offensive), it "feels" like I'm then paying a premium for your services, and it's not clear why I would want to pay a premium.

How would you respond? Keep in mind that lower price isn't necessarily the answer.
Yeah. Spotted it just after posting the comment (see above)
Where is the Zesty Logos logo?
My Best Hack
Paul Graham's article in Forbes got me thinking about my best hack.
Doesn't seem to line up much... his stance is about running his own open wireless access point, and how much FUD there is around it, not SSL on websites.

edit: ah, now I see what you were getting at. Though things have changed now that it's easier, and there's nothing inherently dangerous with open wifi - SSH to your server, and you're plenty secure.
I used to be the same and I think a lot of self respecting geeks see the configuration as a challenge rather than a chore. I used to have pride in being able to make my PC spin on it's head and knowing it was safe and secure (or at least as safe as XP could be).

But as I got older and my free time shrank it just felt like an overhead and time I'd rather spend doing other stuff.
NASA space telescope spots "starquakes"
Nitrosamines (a known carcinogen) found and consumed in regular and high quantities of processed meats (as sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite) can increase risk of stomach and pancreatic cancers by 67%. Specific carcinogenic qualities of nitrosamines are increases when exposed to carbonization by application to heat sources (direct and indirect such as frying, toasting or baking).

http://chemicallypure.com/nitrosamines

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16550597
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16865769
I actually thought it was pretty high. That's like 25 times per day Google is sending search information to law enforcement. One thing I do hope is that they are requiring a judge to sign off on these like wiretaps. I'd worry about a jealous husband in law enforcement trying to find out what his ex-gf is up to.

What I find kind of surprising is I've heard of very few cases that have used this information. They certainly never use it on Law & Order.
Indemnify them against lawsuits? I understand that a large part of the reason hardware manufacturers don't want open or third-party drivers is that they could be used as an excuse to troll through their product looking for potential IP violations that could fuel a patent infringement lawsuit.
"What for???"

Not to imply that I think it's likely, but Sony DOES have something that Apple might benefit from: manufacturing. Don't forget, Sony makes quite a few semiconductor products -- including, for example, the sensors in Nikon's digital SLRs.

Overall though, I agree with the prevailing opinion, that it's pretty unlikely.
Another question would be to the OS on the servers. Darwin running headless, maybe?
> But at least show some respect for tax payers. Asking for 250 million is the equivalent of asking 3000 people to work for nothing for a year.

Work for nothing? Or work for social security, medical care, roads, etc.?
The Rule of Thumb on Disrupting Digital Businesses
> fewer points of failure

Do hardware parts really fail enough to make it worth eliminating cpu sockets, memory slots, sata, pci express, etc?
Future features. They say ship while you're still embarrassed, right? Preferences are a high priority and will find their way in within the next couple weeks.
My goal from the beginning was to continue where JMC left off: to continue building Lisp up from axioms till I have a more complete language. I've compromised a bit to make it something runnable, which I think you need in order to test out your ideas on programs of substantial length. But "practical programming" is not in itself the main goal.

Paradoxical as it sounds, that may be the way to end up with the best language for practical programming. It worked for McCarthy, and I think there's more juice yet to be squeezed out of this orange.
As a lower bound, you can have a look at this joint paper with Christos Papadimitriou from 1976: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/Bounds%20For%20S...
I checked out SEOmoz, but I didn't know they offered an ad-hoc rank checker until you pointed it out. PRO members can check 100 ad-hoc rankings per day, which isn't quite enough for us on a busy day (a 3,000/mo quota would likely be plenty, but 100/day would leave us short some days).

Plus, I don't see an API for that particular tool (they have an API for other tools), which makes it tough to integrate into our internal toolkit.

If you do release your tool to the public, please let me know. I'd be interested in it as a subscription service or installable server-side software.
It's more a replacement for VMWare Server than VMWare ESX.
I think KVM/Xen are closer to ESX. VirtualBox ships with a webservice that you can write custom front-ends against (or script against).

Most of the VM tools seems to miss an ability to branch a VM (i.e. take a snapshot and break it off as a seperate instance). This would be hugely useful for installer testing.
Out of interest, do you use a Mac?

I ask because in four years with my MacBook using it for a whole range of stuff (including development, multimedia, general admin,, and installing whole loads of software I've bought in bundle sales) I've honestly never seen this problem.

I'm not saying it can't happen but from my experience you'd really have to be going for it to build up that sort of accumulation of stuff in just six months.
The Elements of Computing Systems ("From NAND to Tetris")
Some great ideas, but still missing smart deduping. This is a real pain when having master feeds and aggregators that might also include those feeds: you may see the same story on the same site multiple times as each aggregation displays it. It would be nice if a tool recognized that it's been read and marks it as read in all the aggregation feeds someone might also have in the same folder.
Clickables:

+ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1790564

+ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1791494

+ http://fcgadgets.blogspot.com/2010/10/ad-spaces-gadget.html
Though some of Apple's acquisitions fit that description (Nothing Real and eMagic -- though it seems like they managed to kill off Nothing Real, which is sad), they've also bought a few companies that didn't have any products at all, like Raycer Graphics and... I can't think of the name of that PPC design firm they bought. They had products that sounded promising, but didn't exist yet... same with Raycer.
Probably also a big deal for all the Oracle (Sun) employees who used to be working on a vital community project. Morale matters.
Do these gears really work? (yes, they do)
i put "right to privacy" in quotes because whether it exists at all is debatable (i take no view on the issue).

Whether its existence is debatable is also, apparently, debatable.
Yes, it went up, way up, now you have to buy ads on AOL.
“One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market. And then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that.”

I doubt that - maybe they could build a reliable sentiment indicator (paired with twitter data), but even that would have a lag. How would that be illegal anyways?
I went to the local Apple store to investigate that for myself.

They had an older MBA sitting in a corner, which was hot enough on the bottom that I nearly dropped it.

The newer ones, which people had been using all day, were no warmer than my iPad gets (and significantly cooler than the iPhone tends to get).

Hard to tell about the noise. The store was too loud.
So an external voting ring was created to submit and vote up articles that were created by digg's advertisers? Sorry, but I don't buy it.

If digg was behind this, then their actions are unethical. It essentially amounts to treating advertisements as content. It's saying "hey, the community likes this" when the truth is "someone paid us a boatload of money for this". Granted, the sanctity of digg's voting system had been violated long before this. But that still doesn't make it right.
Has there been a single report that this happened the first time they leaked the information?

Would we know, if there had?

Also, isn't justifying reckless behaviour on the grounds that it hasn't killed anyone yet a bit of a weak justification? The average drunk driver hasn't killed anyone yet.
While it may be unlikely for you to get caught in my mind that still doesn't make it a good idea to run Idiocy. In essence I consider it to be a form of cyber terrorism.

Terrorists use illegal or unsavory acts to gain attention and draw media coverage of their cause. Essentially idiocy is just cyber terrorism. It says "Look! I can take over your account. Now that you are scared let me show you what I want you to do."

I'm sure that if this takes off it will get media coverage, and may even cause people and websites to change their habits and protocols, but why should terrorism be used to accomplish a change to secure web protocols?

Then again I have never been a believer in "the end justifies the means" so even assuming that the end result of forcing people to use HTTPS is good, I don't think cyber terrorism is a good way to accomplish it.