skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I envisage a system where a few dozen independent organisations around the World run the root. They all have the same data. If any of them modify their local copy of the data or try to poison the distributed data, their trusted status is revoked.

So what happens if someone attacks/compromises more than half of these trusted nodes at once with bad data? Is the bad data then the good data
And that's how it always works in movies. Which is probably a big part of the problem (for both girls and guys).
The blog post looks at three main aspects to data storage:
- keeping data private (to you as a user)
- thinking about legal issues of location and control
- thinking about migration issues

Of the first point we outline how data leakage is possible in IaaS clouds. Some may already have measures in place to prevent this. We have our own measures too, some private others public. We offer encryption also as a free and convenient way to secure your data. This has nothing to do with securing physical access which is a totally separate issue. It relates to how customers secure access to their data. As outlined previously we don't have root access or file system level visibility into cloud servers in the way that other vendors generally do (although there are exceptions). As such it does pretty much come down to securing physical access. That isn't the case on other platforms for sure.

Here's another article that you might like (short but sweet) which actually talks directly about EBS and others and the problem of 'data remanance' in a way we can't as a competing vendor:

http://elastic-security.com/2010/01/07/data-remanence-in-the...

Here's an interesting quote:

"The technique of overwriting file sectors does not work without the collaboration of the cloud provider. You are not given access to the physical device, but only to higher level abstractions like file-systems (e.g. Amazon EBS) or key-value based APIs (e.g. Amazon S3). "

I'll get back to you on the loopback technique once I've spoken with the relevant storage guys in our company for feedback.

Kind regards,

Patrick
As many commenters have already stated, this essay clearly mischaracterizes both talent and passion.

In truth, both can coexist together. In fact, both are pieces of the same puzzle. As mechanical_fish pointed out, passionate but untalented people exist. And guess what? Talented but dispassionate people exist as well.

There was an article here on HN recently, discussing common creativity blocks. The article mentioned a certain study which found that, once a certain IQ threshold was reached, creativity no longer scaled with IQ. They became independent of one another. The same is likely true for passion and talent, with the ultimate effect being on ability. Once you reach a certain threshold for both, an increase in one will increase your ability to ultimately perform a task. This accounts for situations like those of the author, where a low perceived talent had little effect on his ability, as his passion was so great. It also accounts for situations like those described by mechanical_fish, where a person has not reached a certain natural talent threshold, and can therefore not increase his ability substantially through passion alone.

Most people have one in spades, and enough of the other. Those that have tons of both -- well, that explains savants.
State Department Warns Students Against Discussing WikiLeaks Social Networks
Do you really need the microcontroller to do that? He doesn't say exactly what the ATtiny does, but if it's just setting one of three LEDs based on two pins, it seems you could accomplish the same thing with a couple of logic gates? (But maybe these days it's easier to get a microcontroller than to wire up a few gates?)
I'm absolutely terrified of anything that comes close to my eyes, be that lasers, contacts, ophtalmologists...

I'm wearing glasses from 1987 and I will start thinking about eye surgery only when I'll stop programming. I'm not satisfied about a minimal risk, I want zero.
Well, what’s wrong with practicing your whole life to only be in the very-good, the excellent? There’s only 5-10 people who are absolute heroes in any discipline.

It’s like saying: "I’m not going to be Einstein, so why bother learning physics if I’ll only author 60 papers?"(insert correct number)
Wow, you serious? You think just any 4-year-old can play amazing music just because they have a lot of time to practice?

I think it'd be better to ask for a scientific study on the subject for 4 year olds, except finding an acceptable sample size would be nigh impossible.
I agree with you. I don't know why some people have no trouble believing that you have to be the right size to be a top weight lifter, and that you have to be the different right size to be a top marathon runner, but then they believe that everyone has got what it takes to be a top musician or top mathematician.
A wise man once said "you've got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away and know when to run".
Don't waste your life over a company, they'll go on without you or they won't. I've left several places where I thought I was irreplaceable and was even told I was irreplaceable, but somehow the went on without me. The cold hard fact is that everybody is replaceable.

GTFO
Natural Design Talent vs. Design Degree
If I were writing a block provisioning system I would keep a map of what blocks have not yet been written to and always read zero for those blocks. Then the first time it is written, allocate a block that has already been zeroed out. This way I don't waste time and electricity zeroing entire volumes before they are allocated or after they are deleted because there is just one pool of same-sized blocks to draw from. Choosing the block size to strike a balance between allocation delay and cost of blanking is an exercise left to the reader.
Er... Not sure if you guys know, there is also H1B1, it's a variation of H1B. More for both Chile and Singapore citizen to work in USA for short term. I am not sure about the fees though.
> There are people who play a hell of a lot of guitar and are
> nevertheless not very good.

They just repeat the same mistakes, i.e. they don't try to identify the areas they are weak in and improve on those. Mindless repetition does not bring much benefits, mindful practice does.
At first glance, yes! I'll dive into this.
Why is Hacker News only about "news" and implemented as such?
Some submissions are interesting for a long time (e.g., decades), yet Hacker News and other social news sites select submissions for the front page based on their newsworthiness.

For submissions that are interesting for a long time, there should be a way to show them on the front page for a long time to some fraction of users.

Ranking on the front page would be (partially) based on recent scores for submissions. Users could hide a submission once they are no longer interested in it.

Why don't social news sites do something like that?
There is nothing wrong with it. The OP says "there is no talent." I was just agreeing with the argument that talent, in fact, does exist (and matter).
Yes... Of course...

But if something like that did happen, the organisations would be able to roll back the data as long as more than half of them agreed.

If public key cryptography were used, then you could make it so that only change requests signed with the domain owners private key are accepted and distributed too.
There is such a thing as talent.

Talent is a natural aptitude for an activity.

Sometimes a person's physical and psychological make-up naturally aligns with the requirements for a specific task or group of tasks; it's entirely reasonable to state that such a person has talent.

Passion is important - it's what makes your journey seem less like work, and is what will keep you focused regardless of results.

However, the world is (and always will be) an unfair place. Some people have a head-start on the others. These are the people with talent.

Nothing is impossible - and I believe we can always overcome adversity .. but some people will have to fight harder.
I expect FSF to follow suit with rms making a personal appeal:

http://stallman.org/photos/rms-full-size.jpg
It's easier to be passionate about something when you've always been successful at it.

Also, somewhat related: Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe on how you shouldn't follow your passion but should go where everyone else didn't go. (link is a blog post discussing his TED Talk, which you should watch)

https://ramblingperfectionist.wordpress.com/2010/05/16/mike-...
Simultaneously Desalinate Water, Produce Hydrogen and Treat Wastewater
Man allegedly responsible for a third of spam e-mail busted.
I'm sure most of the people hanging out on HN have had experience with the word "computer genius". It's one of those terms I love to hate. People who make that assessment typically have no skill in the area so really have no basis for comparison. When someone calls someone else a computer genius I typically roll my eyes mentally, because those of us in the field understand it's mostly hard work and interest.

However passion isn't the only thing. The amount and type of practice/tinkering is deeply important. My favorite book on this subject is "Talent is overrated" by Geoff Colvin. It directly covers this issue. He breaks it down into time spent working on the fundamentals in a specific way - called deliberate practice and coaching. So the sheer amount of time isn't the fundamental issue, it's the amount of time spent practicing in a specific way and how good the quality of instruction you have access to. It's a fantastic read, but it will deeply challenge many assumptions that are culturally embedded in the U.S. It's amazing how addicted to the notion of talent people are. It helps people make sense of the world, it gives them excuses for not being world class. Yet at the end of the day, talent is overrated will strip that excuse from you and leave you with the question how much do you really want it?
It's enough to make me open Facebook and Twitter accounts just to mention WikiLeaks.
If there are 35 trusted organisations and governments around the World colluded to take over the network by taking over 18 of these organisations and getting them to "untrust" the other 17, then this would splinter the network, and people around the World would need to manually repoint their resolvers at the other group of 17.

This system relies on the fact that it is difficult to take down lots of independent organisations that are spread around the World at the same time easily.
It wasn't just Windows -- at the time I also heard that Exchange and Office were also affected.

There was also concern that the hackers might have inserted back doors into various software. I know one group that decided know verify each checkin over the four month period.
Can anyone comment as to what the next big technological advance is that might be worth waiting for? Ten years ago the answer seemed to be wavefront. But I gather that procedure is still not without some risks. Anything in the pipe that would make holding out another ten worthwhile? I don't really mind glasses and contacts, but am pretty blind (-8).
I agree with your comment about jurisdictional arbitrage (lovely phrase). Look at Google, Microsoft, and Linkedin using Ireland as a tax haven. Not only do they play arbitrage, they flex their economic muscle by telling Ireland, if you raise corporate taxes (above the current 12.5%) we'll leave. Instead, Ireland cuts the pay of all govt employees.
Actual link: http://lwn.net/Articles/411845/

There are several parts, links are on the bottom of each chapter.
Here's my assumption: Somebody released classified information. Somebody committed treason, violated their oaths, etc. Assange most likely was not the one.

There is nothing wrong with Wikileaks, but I find it to be wrong that somebody leaked classified documents.

Supporting Wikileaks is not wrong directly, but sites like Wikileaks provide incentive to those with classified information to leak it. That is not something I want to see happen.
Parallel printer port, which was often used for this kind of hacks, disappeared from PC several years ago. A USB device is usually the best for general purpose I/O.

And I don't know how to build a USB device 'with a couple of logic gates'.
I'm about to finish my PhD in CS, so my perspective is perhaps different than a professional programmer, but I define free-time as time not spent on CS. There are no predetermined "work hours" or "work days"; every hour is potentially a work hour, and every day is a work day. With that perspective, the hours of the day I choose not to work on any aspect of CS is my free-time.
مسلسل سيلا الحلقة 71
Varian (who is or was Google's chief economist) is also the author of a very good book, written in the late 1990s, that covers many of the same topics:

Shapiro, Carl and Varian, Hal. Information Rules: A Strategic to the Network Economy. Harvard Business School Press, 1998.

The book is a classic, and is actually at the top of the reading list in a current MIT course also called "The Economics of Information":

http://ebusiness.mit.edu/erik/567%202009%20syllabus-2009-11-...

There is a class blog here:

http://www.economicsofinformation.com/
I was going to mention that. There's certainly something to the notion of "knowing how to practice" or more generally, "knowing how to learn". I think that's pretty obvious to most people, and further goes against the OP blanket statement that "spending more time doing it" yields the same results.
Wikileaks uses Backupify; Backupify stores on AWS. Huh?
TechCrunch broke a story this morning about Wikileak's use of TweetBackup, run by Backupify, to keep secured copies of their tweets:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/05/wikileaks-twitter-twikileaks/

However, Backupify is built on the back of Amazon S3, a service provided by AWS.

Doesn't this seem percarious?
2H:)
Misleading. The alumn was probably just giving a heads-up on the matter.

From gawker (http://gawker.com/5705639/us-military-in-iraq-tries-to-intim...):

"State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson got back to us. She said that she's unaware of any State employees issuing any "directives" to any schools about what students should and shouldn't write on social networks. But would State look unfavorably upon a prospective employee who had written about the leaked cables on Facebook? "To talk about current events is one thing," she said. "Would talking about it make you ineligible for a job at the State Department? No. But to go into detail, and propagate information that was illegally obtained—I don't think that's a good move for anyone. Not Julian Assange, not Wikileaks, and not any U.S. citizen.""
I like the personal touch you see in these old letters. It'd be nice to see more technical blog posts/comments these days that open with a paragraph asking after the recipient's health, and close with sincere best wishes and congratulations for a recent success.
I think I saw your site on smashing magazine once. That is some great graphic design- did you do that or did someone do it for you?
> How does one revert this without physical access to the drive?

I know this was a rhetorical question, but I'll answer anyway: It isn't possible. Not only is there no way to read latent data normally from a drive that has been zeroed (drives that fail this test are called "defective"), but it is currently understood that recovering data from a modern drive that has been overwritten with a single pass of random data is impossible at any expense.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html#E...

However, data can still leak out of cloud stores in the same way that it leaks out of solid-state disks and even magnetic disks: there's no guarantee that a given logical block will always be mapped to the same underlying hardware. A mirrored drive may be fail and thrown in the trash with data still on it, or written blocks might be mapped to different places in an array for any number of reasons. This shouldn't result in leakage to other customers although it is up to the vendor to make sure this doesn't happen.

Depending on the implementation, vendor-supplied encryption may or may not mitigate this risk, but customer-supplied encryption always will because the customer knows where the dividing line stands.
Well
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit."

translates into.
"Hello world! Is here to cancel meals."
The article's headline is a bit more specific: NY sen. seeks bill to deter body scan image misuse.

It's a bill from Schumer (D-NY) that would make it "illegal to distribute or record the revealing images produced by full-body scanners at airports."

In New York City, there's a much stronger law being proposed that would ban the scanners from the city (including the airports), so he has incentive to show his home base that he cares about the issue.
Freelance Musicians Hear Mournful Coda as the Jobs Dry Up
This is not much different from the blog post yesterday about the semantics of "entrepreneurship". Who cares? JFDI
Archiving Photos - USB, DVD, something else?
I currently copy a DVD of original images (JPG) every time I make a physical photo album - and place the DVD in the album.

I'm considering moving to very small USB sticks because they are smaller, easier to manage, and have a better medium-term future (USB 3 slots will be USB 2 compatible whereas most computers in about a year look like they won't even have any optical drives anymore).

Has anybody seen studies that examine the use of USB (Flash) storage for archiving - and if there are some technologies that are better suited to the task than others? Any other advice?
I am afraid that mozart at the age of 4, more or less played the works of Bach et al. to audiences after 2 years of strict practice with his father. (He saw that his son had interest in music when he would patiently sit through his sister's lessons and then he started pushing him to see how far he could go)

The Mozart we know didn't emerge until he was a teenager and he started composing at the grand old age of 13. Yes, he did have a talent, but perhaps that talent was the gift of accelerated learning. Not the gift of magical music.
Compete.com does H1B's. But Compete's not a startup anymore.

You should be looking at startups with at least a few US employees. Currently, I think you'll find it rare for a startup with < 3-4 US employees to be able to sponsor an h1b. Homeland security has been getting pretty strict about this.

I believe it generally costs about ~$6k to sponsor one. More if you premium process.
I personally don't have anything, but I might be able to put you in contact with someone who does.

He needs a facebook app. Not exactly sure what, but a game or something that will provide some marketing.

Email is in my profile.
Speaking only as an EC2 user, I have not seen any evidence that there's any kind of "king of the hill" bidding going on w/ spot instances. You get machines if your "bid" exceeds the current spot price AND there is available capacity. What controls the current spot price? I don't know.

I get the feeling that Amazon is experimenting with really trying to create a market here, but that there are still some very strong controls and limits with respect to how the pricing is computed. For example, most spot prices tend to max out at the reserved instance rate. I highly doubt that's a market effect. It's certainly worth bidding over the reserved, but under the normal, instance rate. I'm guessing that it's going to be difficult to create a market that is unrestricted but still preserves the quality of the user experience, in terms of rapid oscillations around different support points of bid prices, preventing anyone from keeping a server up for a coherent amount of time. You could bid-bomb DOS the market too, for example, if you were willing to spend a little money. You only need to hold the machines for an hour...
Is it not possible to simply steer the USB pins high or low just like with a serial port?
I can't help with work, but I can suggest some steps you can take now:

1) Ensure you communicate with your creditors. Keep them in the loop - burying your head in the sand is the absolute worst thing you can do.

2) Create a budget describing your monthly income and expenditure.

3) Work out what you can lose. If you can cancel contracts for luxuries, downgrade phone contracts etc. - do so. Reduce your monthly expenditure as much as (reasonably) possible.

3) When you realise that your income doesn't meet your reduced expenditure; prioritise your debts. Priority debts are generally the debts where defaulting will lead to homelessness or prison. Ensure you pay these first.

4) Contact the remaining creditors and start negotiating over reduced payments. You'll be surprised how many will be happy to help. Don't accept no for an answer. If your financial situation gets far worse, your creditors ultimately stand to receive nothing - remind them of this fact.

5) Consider contacting a credit counselling service, there's a lot of (free) advice that's worth investigating.

6. Realise that this is temporary - there are a lot of people who are working through similarly unfortunate circumstances. You will recover.
My OS of choice has a nice implementation of this functionality

C-x f <filename> [enter]

;)
I can only suppose that you are correct about Google Translate. Wikipedia's translation is strange, however, as "lorem" is not a word in latin. The "Lorem ipsum" text is derived from a work of Cicero written in 45BC, in which the following is present:

Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit...

As seen here, the placeholder text is wrought with strange omissions from the original.
Photos stored in camera for 68 years - Pearl Harbor Bombing
Explorer's Protected Mode can be bypassed
The Non-Story Story
Interesting idea, but I believe it's very hard to trick the USB host controller into flipping pins as you intend.
I think the definitions are simply wrong.

Talent is the genetic (and nurtured) predisposition toward something.

Being great at something - often conversationally referred to as "talent" - is the combination of predisposition and practice. 10 000 hours of practice is probably not far off mark for any given field, physical or mental.

While the middle of the talent curve for any given field can somewhat make up for predisposition variance with working harder, it is not a good value proposition for those at the lower end of the curve. It is often a waste of time to slog at something you are naturally geared for when the alternate is to work on something you are better suited for.

Passion, drive, curiosity, ambition and mental fortitude also highly variable among people. The "you could do it if you only made an effort"-sentiments really irritate me, even though they usually spring from the inability to understand different minds rather than any malice or sense of superiority.

Virtually everyone has a few talents, and the question is mostly of opportunity to discover them (which does not exist for everyone, even in wealthy societies), "passion" for it - which could less romantically simply be described as the perseverance to work at it through the highs and lows.

In other words, humbug.