skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That assumes he wasn't doing anything wrong, and they blocked him in error.

If he was spamming, trying to amass 'friends', I'd say that is doing things the wrong way, and concentrating on real friends is a better plan.
Why don't they just disable whatever was causing the problem? Too many friends? Okay, disable the ability to add more friends. Too many emails? Okay, limit the number of emails. Stupid.
read John Resig's blog ejohn.org, he's also the creator of JQuery.
Unless you ride the train to work :(
I was going to quote one of my favorite lines by Churchill: This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

But I figured why not check the Google first, just in case. First thing I see is an old post from the inestimable Language Log arguing that the quote isn't Churchill's at all: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001715.h...

Basically, if you're famous, all the best jokes get attributed to you.
MySpace Opens Up The Data Pipe With Full Launch Of Data Availability
I use Mint. It's Ubuntu plus a better initial configuration and some custom desktop tools. My first impression of it, some years ago, was that it was the first distro I had used that correctly played back all my movies out of the box.
I realize it's a colloquialism and not to be taken too literally, but I don't care for the premise of Jeff's opening line:

I may not be smart enough to join Mensa, but I am smart enough not to build websites like the American Mensa website.

It implies that smartness is a single continuum (maybe, maybe not), and that you can measure it by looking at single actions like whether someone implements security feature X in a web site.

My feeling about something like this is that most people who get it right are probably people who have heard or read about the issues regarding plaintext passwords. That makes them more knowledgeable, which is a fine thing if you are hiring them to build a web application, but not the same thing as smart in this sense.

True, some people can work out the issues from first principles, which is definitely evidence of smartness, but I have strong doubts that you can get an accurate measure of smartness from just one "test" like this.

Overall, it would be a far better "zinger" if it were a security web site with a security flaw, something like the story of the identity protection company whose CEO had his identity stolen.

All that being said, I still upmodded the story. Blogging this kind of thing is a public service and a reminder for hackers doing start-ups can't hurt.

It would be terrible if you built a great service, were just about to raise a substantial round, and some know-it-all technoid working with the VC flipped your bozo bit because you stored passwords in plain text.
Books That Changed My Life
UC San Diego computer scientist turns his face into a remote control
Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Studio, Motion, LiveType, Color, ...
Possible? Sure. Dangerous? Maybe.
I'd give it 1 month on the market, max, before someone hacks a way to spoof the signal from a supercontroller device, giving anyone with internet access a way to control all the devices they want, if they so desire.
Don't.

If you're going to use any CMS for a framework for your site, use Drupal or something of the sort, but not Joomla.

I've had experience with Joomla for years (and Mambo before the fork.) It's powerful, but to a fault: it's large, bloated, and has too many features that you don't need.
Steve Jobs is notorious for inspecting product prototypes and sending products back to the drawing board because a certain gap is half a millimeter too big. This is pretty much the same behavior as Gates exhibits in the story. This is bad management?
Retention rate doesn't account for WoW having 10 million subscribers and climbing while EQ maxed out at 400,000 or so.
Installing killswitches in our engines is a fucking stupid idea. Isn't the stereotype criminal hell-bent on pimping his automobiles? It will be a cakewalk for a determined criminal to install an older engine. Unless laws are put into place (and likely even then) engines without computers will always be available, and in the end only criminals and enthusiasts will have ungelded engines. Perhaps the effort will affect a few desperate black carjackers, but not a determined criminal.

Only bad can come of this. You can see the real motivation for this push by the fact that terroristm is used as a justification. But although bullshit like this is technologically possible, it's users and politicians (and in the end "the people") who determine whether technological features like these will become a curiosity or a straitjacket. Oppression stems from politics, not technology.

In the worst case we will have the problem of DRM all over again: A lot of average people screwed over, while people like us are able to steer clear.
I find that Joel's essays are always a lot of fun to read. But complaints about his writing, not so much.
With all the respect to HN community, I don’t think this article belongs here. There are thousands of forums for religion and politics.
It would help us avoid expensive mistakes to correct non-problems. Imagine a world in which height is as politically charged as race. Every year, short people rail against the overrepresentation of the tall people in sports, in politics, in film, etc. And every year, the tall people talk about how some of their best friends are short, they themselves aren't prejudiced, they understand there's a horrible legacy of discrimination, perhaps short-person-related affirmative action programs are necessary.

But then some annoying researcher points out that of course tall people are better at basketball, because they are closer to the basket (among other things). And that within ethnic groups, height correlates with intelligence because of a confouding variable: malnutrition is known to reduce cognitive ability and height, and cognitive ability correlates very well with income.

So it basically transforms something from a political problem to a scientific fact. There is no longer anything to rectify, because everything is as it should be -- people have characteristics that make them better or worse at various tasks, and that's just the way things are. A short person who tries hard can succeed at tall-person fields, but not to the extent that they could if they were tall. A tall person can live a long time if they try hard to be healthy, but not as long as they could if they were short.
I like pictures. However, I keep them in ~/Photos (which is backed up nightly to my Bingodisk). That way they're mine... and nobody can take them from me if I spam facebook.

If I want to share them, I use iWeb to make a nice-looking page.
I'd rather have the layer of magic be in the part of the code I understand best so I can fix it when things go wrong.
We don't know that any spamming was involved. While concentrating on "real friends" is certainly a fine thing to do, if he were, say, a musician in an urban area, he could easily have 1000+ useful contacts, including fellow musicians, promoters, fans, his old college buddies, immediate and extended family, coworkers, and, of course, the "real friends."

Different people use facebook for different purposes. I completely agree that spamming strangers is not so good. However, simply having many contacts/friends doesn't seem so bad.
One of the funniest things I ever saw: a bumper sticker that said "Mensa" and was upside down.
Mainstream Media versus Blogosphere, an Analysis
I thought it was funny that they merged the closing "Still." paragraph into the preceding one, changing the meaning -- from hesitant ("Still, I wonder if he could have been talking about me.") to bitter ("He's still talking about those other Excel devs!").
Or you can pick up "smoking" and take a nap wherever you can outside.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Someone should create a standard way to build inbox addons... AND IT SHOULD NOT BE ME.
Intel (80,000 employees) skipping Vista
For real. If software is supposed to operate within a set of hard limits, and its trivial to detected the attempted breaching of those limits, it's stupid as all hell not to have the software account for that without gratuitously throwing away all of the user's data.
I find telling you to SHUT THE FUCK UP a lot of fun.
Here's a S3 calculator that can help you figure out costs:

http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

A quick check tells me that ~40,000GB storage is about $6k/month, not including xfer costs.
I am really enjoying these Bill Gates memos. He is actually spot on with his evaluation of the subscription. Unfortunately, his call for a "windows download service" is just another knee jerk reaction from msft as they got beat in yet another crucial consumer sector.
I'm pretty confident I can learn what I need about DB configs, so I'm more concerned about it being in the "right" place from a complexity and efficiency standpoint.
ICANN Allows Relaxed TLD Naming Schemes!
Ask around. 16 is quite late to start taking math seriously and end up at the very top. He wasn't doing math for fun. He wasn't asking himself mathematical questions. He wasn't doing math competitions. He had no knowledge outside of what was taught in school to students at his grade level. This is freakishly uncommon, but he shows it's possible.

25 is young. He is just a few years into his PhD, and he hasn't made many major achievements (he's been a grader for the IMO, written one paper that's still being refereed for publication). The point is that he's noticeably better than I am at almost every branch of mathematics except combinatorics, and he had no interest until he was 16.
Data Availability on Myspace
A snake game in 35 lines of Clojure
Computing students outsource homework to India and Romania
This is a really useful trick.

Does anyone know of an Oracle analog?
I tend to like logical / intelligent women but dating is more about clicking with someone than an abstract list of interests and attributes. IMO dating sites do little more than get a large group of single people to talk to each other. Which can work but you need to use them to meet people and not try and find your perfect match with what amounts to email.

PS: Granted I am probably not the best person to take dating advice from as I seem to only date the crazy.
Joel's essays are just that. Essays. He continues to ignore any and all research in the area and pretends to know what he's doing. If I wanted a bunch of misinformed opinions I could just ask non-programmers.
But it's still censorship?
In most documents, the number of tags that fit in a screenful completely dwarfs the number of tags that don't. So it makes sense to optimize for the former case. And I don't think forcing redundance everywhere is a proper way to "make it 'easier' to edit".

You seem to worry about counting closing parentheses but with s-expressions you don't count parentheses. You just look at indentation and the structure emerges.

I just don't buy the "XML should be writable without a proper editor" argument. Why optimize for the couple clueless fools that will try to edit it in NotePad if it hampers the work of the tons of people who actually need to edit lots of XML and actually use a proper editor? Using a proper editor also fixes the undirected quotes problem. Besides, s-expressions might even work better than XML in NotePad because you don't have to indent the end tag because it's just a closing parenthesis that you don't indent.
Mozilla also has pages covering the features in Javascript 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8
Not a bad overview at all.
Depending on your projections for future growth and how much cash you have, I'd consider opening my own data center for that kind of storage.....
People have been asking homework questions (often verbatim) on forums and newsgroups for ages. The fact that people are now paying for that same advice just seems like CS students have hit a new low. Really, I expect better from cheaters.
Thanks for linking to a quote instead of the whole memo.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/PDF/Gates/gatesmail15.p...
i actually went through their interview process too, and I do agree that the questions were a joke for anyone with a real CS background, and I really think that part of the interview process was in fact meant to filter out people with strong personalities that don't reflexively subscribe to the culture they're located within.
Go to your car at lunch time, crack the windows, recline the seat, and put a mask on. This best one is here

http://mindfold.com/

30 minutes of heaven.
It seems like I'm not the only one searching.

Here's something from my own archives:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/ddl-partition...
Am I missing something or is this just the same as Facebook API 1, which they launched 2 years earlier?
In many cases AJAX can be used to simplify web form design.

Good example would be at www.launchsplash.com. Landing page is a simple form and the first form field implores you to enter a domain name. As you start typing you see the final result of what you are doing changing as you type right below where you are typing. When you type a dot your mode switches from sub-domain name to domain name form.

This kind of thing isn't going to work everywhere but it's an example of the power of AJAX and how it can be used to make form fields much simpler for the user. AJAX definitely doesn't make form fields simpler for the developer.
Best IT Places to Work 2008
What's the best way for a business software programmer to get into bioinformatics?
Noobindex.com Launches
This is a continuation of: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227879

A) Noobindex is a social networking site for noobs.

B) Noobindex is a social networking site for gamers to organize and communicate outside of the games themselves.

I took some of your advice and am not going to worry about the press until there is something worth reporting. I decided to launch here on HN to you guys. I don’t know which tag line I should use. I like A better than B. A isn’t very clear, but I kind of like that it doesn’t limit itself.

Thanks HN for being a great community to be a part of. I’m anxious to hear what you guys might have to say about this.
I wonder if the way he phrased it -- the idea of a "windows download service" -- indicates he was thinking about what it would do for Microsoft (especially versus Apple) rather than what it could do for potential customers. I can sympathize as I certainly find it baffling to empathize with average users, especially the ones with warped mental models who think Yahoo or Google is the Internet.

Anyway, Bill Gates knows Apple has better design (as indicated in this memo) and that Steve Jobs has better taste than he does (he's said publicly he'd give a lot to have it).
potentially possible that he needs money to establish an infrastructure to allow users.
Google Ad Planner Helps You to Refine Your Online Advertising
I think a company that goes: "OMG this is a serious vulnerability and there's lots of instances of it throughout the whole system but we'll fix ASAP!!" deserves a longer grace period than another that says: "SO WHAT man, our thing just works...".
CIO Tips on Clueful Management
the problem isn't entirely with sending a plain text password in an email. It is that the passwords are being stored in plain text in the database. This is just an SQL injection away from gaining an email-password list of all members of the site.

Couple this with the fact that many people use the same password for other accounts, including email, and you have a definite security problem for the users.
If math's content grows expotentially, it might explain why even one hundred years ago it was much easier to come up with serious work before studying for years.

Side note: it is interesting to precise what is the content actually. Besides the obvious definition, like theorems and proofs, I also see hidden content: paradigms and problem solving techniques. What else?
Microsoft buys portuguese mobile startup
http://research.nokia.com/bluesky/non-literacy-001-2005/inde...

http://www.smallsurfaces.com/tag/nonliterate/

http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/mt-search.cgi?tag=Kathmandu...
Hey, I finally got to use the "flag" button!

(In case the post above is deleted; it's about 1000 lines of "-" characters and nothing else.)
I do. Look, most users cannot care about this vulnerability because they don't even know about it. Besides, most of them have a good reason not to understand the implications: it's not their job.

I think users deserve more respect even if they're incompetent out of their fields of competence.
Just write a program to connect to oracle, run queries, and print the results in your desired format. It should be about 5 lines of code.

See also DBI::Shell on CPAN.
I was hoping the article would also discuss topic selection and accuracy of MSM vs blogs. The traffic results weren't too surprising.
100gb Ethernet over copper? It could happen
Considering all the things (none come to mind, sorry) we formerly thought we shouldn't do (because of false beliefs) that turned out to be beneficial in the end, I'd say we should go with the experiments.
Deadline Approaching to Apply for New NASA Astronaut Class
One could help with OpenMRS, which would help to improve the medical information infrastructure of countries in Africa.

http://feed.openmrs.org/tag/global%20health
Firefox still leaks like a sieve, but at least it doesn't make X leak anymore. So I can just restart firefox instead of restarting my X session.
no, this is data portability and it is coming before facebook's "facebook connect". data portability means allowing the profile data to be temporarily available to sites out of the social network's domain.
Good Job Search Engine for the tech/biomedical fields
I know people that met in an MMORPG and got married. Like, for real married with kids and everything.

I still have friends I met through EQ.

It was also something to talk about with my brother at Thanksgiving.
Hey, I like the minimal look of your app. I'm not a gamer so my comments might be a bit off, so adjust accordingly :)

I don't like "social networking site" because it sounds too technical/formal?

C) Noobindex is a place for gamers to meet, join forces, and to (plan/interact/communicate)?

edit: Upon further review. Once landing on your homepage, I don't really know what my next step would be. I know you have the register/login links in your nav, but beyond that, I don't know why I would register.

Also for "find a group" and "find a user" you should list out the groups and users so people could browse and explore on their own. What you have currently is like a blank restaurant menu. I don't know what I'm ordering because I don't know what you serve?
OpenMRS is a project to enable modern medical records technology, which is now used in Africa.

http://feed.openmrs.org/tag/global%20health
Mark Zuckerberg's profile on Socialbrowse
;)
ICANN approves relaxation of TLD rules
That was a misinterpretation. I think Apple is pushing ahead with its SDK and increasing its user base with a cheaper iPhone to secure its lead over Android and OpenMoko.
Why is the parent being voted down?

Sure you may not agree with his idea and service suggestions but finding a creative solution to this problem wouldn't hurt. If I remember correctly, the hot or not guy did this (mentioned in Jessica's book). I don't have the book with me so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
We should think of the average joe's mental model as being warped, but be honest about why it's warped. Those who have engineered the UIs haven't given Joe Average the right feedback and information to form the correct models.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=04cFCVXC_AUC&...
Especially since a lot of the contractors seem to be turning around and seeking advice from usenet! One old professor of mine told us that he had seen one of his own final essay questions appear on a real time programming group, posted from India.
It's not like Blizzard commissioned a set of commercials to explain this.

Shatner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyUNDbo2KMU

Mr. T http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqJE5TH5jhc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FET09MYis_g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNg5ysYd0zc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZqcW-xu5c
Hmm, I don't like the minimal look. It's just too minimal... looks almost unfriendly.

Noobs are noobs... they need rounded corners and friendly colours, not sharp red corners :-)

</my $0.02>
"Physics" and "conclusive" used together? HA!

Besides, if the universe is destroyed, nobody will be around to complain about it.
It's a bit of satirical DH5. Nice.
How much karma do you need to be able to flag?
Not to veer off into politics, but the Bush administration would seem to be an existence proof that at least some part of your statement is incorrect. (Yes, I realize Bush has an MBA.) I've run into this attitude fairly often, and not just among MBAs.
I'm going to go exactly with the grain of all my previous comments here and call you full of it.

Did you read the post? We reported this over a year ago. We notified them repeatedly. We withheld the name of the vendor for over a year as a courtesy. They started with a "soft no", and, when Dave checked in a few months later, they simply ignored our email.

Also: 37Signals has nothing to do with the recent Ruby "controversy" (where by controversy, you mean "someone found security vulnerabilities in it, and some blogger freaked out about it"). 37Signals doesn't produce Ruby; an Open Source team does.

The issue here is that one of 37Signals signature philosophies is "just say no" and be true to your own vision of your product when users request things you don't want to do. Fine. But there's a slippery slope to that logic, and you need to be careful not to fall down it. Some requests that you don't want to do, especially when they come from paying customers, can't be blown off.
I think he is just ranting in general.
I heard about some ex-soviet scientists who developed a little control box to prevent backflow in big pipes (like at refineries.) They were able to sell $10 worth of hardware for something like $150,000 because of the money it would save refineries.

Of course, what made it really valuable was the software in the box.
...and this was the fundamental failing of Microsoft. They were so involved in finding the next generation of revenue and growing (instead of just putting out dividends and cautiously expanding out of their core competency) that they lost focus.

I like their keyboards, though. :)
I'd rather see a daring fireball link with some commentary then a direct link to a pdf
nice breakdown!