skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The only way to protect code running or content playing on an open system is security by obscurity. As a developer, choose your trade-off on the scale between inconvenient-but-quite-secure and simple-but-easy-to-copy and go with it. Any protection will be broken in time. Adjust based on customer feedback and the amount of cracking going on, but that's pretty much all you can do from a technical perspective.

NB: at a low enough level, all systems in the hands of the attacker are open. Hardware DRM is vulnerable to attack by equipment for scraping layers of atoms from the silicon and inspecting it with an electron microscope.
Don't be fooled, that advertising campaign only used a 'sensible', similarly-named insurance business to introduce an unusual niche company[1] to the market. It's a clever ploy, you can read about it in Aleksandr Orlov's book that came out a month ago.

[1] http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/
They talked about the iphone alarm bug on the news, it makes sense as well, the android bug is a fairly obscure and hard to trigger bug thats probably affected a few people, the iphone one affected everybody who uses the alarm
RIP Bill. Hopefully, the pain has stopped now.
Seems very much like the practices of customer development part of Lean startups. But leaner.
Motives don't matter: evaluate the argument
Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I had a bad experience trying this with some Lisp a couple of years ago -- I could not for the life of me turn off the stupid banner printout, but I did manage to disable the REPL. At the time I just gave up and moved on, but I'll give it another try.

The last time I actually programmed in Lisp was back in the mid-80s for my AI classes at GA Tech. I liked it then.
Do they still sell new cars with traditional keys?
You'd still need some kind of software support to trigger the exploit. At which point you may as well go with a software-only attack.
Considering a flock of blackbirds can consist of several million birds, 5000 aren't actually that many. Numbers like that are only relevant in context.
It wasn't that hard for me. I had a creative project. I had a plan and a reason for seeking funding upfront. I had something to give to those that funded me.

That seems to be the only real requirements.

Of course, I only got $25 pledge towards my $4,000 goal. So it must not of been that good of an idea.
That's what I get for not reading far enough!

Actually, it seems to me that if you were really serious, you'd soak for 6 to 12 hours in a basic solution to leach out oligosaccharides, then ferment with a prepared solution for another 12 to break down phytic acid, and then cook.
Ask HN: How save is VPN when trying to get around the ISPs?
After reading in this other HN Thread (link on the bottom) I wonder how save it actually is to use VPN. To make the connection to your trusted VPN Server you also have to trust your ISP for the first information exchange, right? For a country used to handle this kind of situation (like the Chinese government, greetings from China btw) it should be no problem to MITM your VPN connection, or am I wrong?

The other discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079223
I may just take you up on this in the summer...
IOS Core Text Fonts
Why is the cube metaphor better than desktop?
1994 Mercedes Benz e320
Mercedes Benz Company had introduced the 1994 Mercedes Benz E 320 model in four body styles. There are- 4 door wagon, 4-door sedan, 2-door coupe as well as 2-door convertible.
A more permanent link: http://xkcd.com/844/
Any chance to know how much for a bedroom? (just out of curiosity really)
As laughable as Microsoft buying Rimm. Why do people think these big companies will spend all their money on one big "splash"?

There's a zero percent chance this will happen.
As I understand, the news.arc program keeps a list of submitted URLs in memory, which go away when the program is restarted(?). In either case, old URLs can be re-submitted.

This is not always bad - some people may not have seen this the first time, and it is an interesting article. However, I always find it valuable when people point out earlier discussion, and I knew I'd seen it before, so I pointed at the earlier discussion.

For a more reliable view of what has/hasn't been posted, consider searchyc.com.
Value

^_____________________●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●

|____________●●●●●●●●●

|_________●●● <---- Apple

|_______●●

|______●

|_____●

|____●

|____●

|___●

|___●

|___● <---------- Facebook

|__●

+----------------------------> Time
Well, not for long - it looks like they have a fix: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392#c1460
Actual productivity?
Google Blog Recap 2010
I don't have a theory on the causes, but I'm not yet convinced this is anything more than the media reporting a trend that may not be statistically significant.

See also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079371
Not only that, but he's stripping out the two things that would actually drive traffic back to twitter.com: #hashtags and @names.

I can see why Twitter might want to slow this one down.
Well, to be fair, I'd be surprised if the number was any larger than that. Recording straight to CD in this day and age isn't what one usually calls a compelling proposition. Don't blame the store; don't generalize to others.

(NB, I'm sure the app is well-crafted and highly functional. But it seems fairly outdated, and the price point appears to be a little optimistic.)
I'm confused. The article seems to be about the ignition key mechanism, yet claims no trace of forced entry, which is unrelated. Surely you need to unlock the car doors and disable the alarm/immobiliser before you can drive off with it? Or are we assuming people leave their cars unlocked?

Also, once you've driven the car away, you'll have to find another way of starting it in future; relaying still needs some kind of physical access (albeit at 8 metres distance) to the original key.

(I'm aware of broken crypto in some wireless keys, which is purely an implementation issue - you can make these secure. That's not what this article is about. Quote: The attack works no matter what cryptography and protocols the key and car use to communicate with each other.)
Things (shares, companies, objects, currencies, oppurtunities, gold) are worth what people will pay for them. That's it. There is no objective "value" other than that.
So, the attack starts out with the car stopped, and some sort of equipment to amplify the keyless entry signals to the car and vice versa, so the car thinks the key is within range. The car starts, and they drive away from the amplification system. What happens when the car drives out of range of the key while it is running? Does the engine just turn off, or does it keep going until you press the engine off button?
I wish I had a car to experiment with... but on the other hand I'll stick with the old fashioned keys, even if those are rather easy to get past too.
Although people go over the top in rudeness, which doesn't help anyone, it's a fact that a lot of bug reports by customers to big companies get ignored. So the screaming is not entirely unwarranted.
Would love to know what your idea was. Care to elaborate?
:-) I think you are taking things a bit too seriously. What I meant was your comments (i.e. your immediate call for the editors to change the title, rather than asking the submitter to do it, and the others) seem to address the whole title change issue "from the height of an unwritten book". You're right, when this impedance mismatch occurs in newsgroups it's best to let it go.

That being said, I found our small discussion less than satisfactory. Obviously you have been on HN much longer than I am (more than three times as long), so I respect your intuition about HN etiquette. However, in this case you seemed to have certain assumptions about my intentions (more clicks, etc.) to editorialize the title and you never discussed why you think the new title is so misleading for the story.

As for the idea of bowdlerizing Twain, the idea is generating such a backlash (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/l07twain.html, Google returns 25K hits from past month for "twain bowdlerize") that I think they are going to backpedal on this one. I hope.
When I'm connecting to the remote end of my VPN, I'm doing so on an encrypted connection, checking the certificate.

If the certificate has a mismatch, then the connection stops, and the VPN doesn't build up. Even if my ISP or government would play MITM, if I know the correct certificate of the other end (and, if all else fails, I can trust the VPN the first time around, and once inside, check the server's certificate locally, where there is no man in the middle, and compare it to what I received during the handshake earlier - if it's not the same, there's someone in between), there's no way they can fake that, to the best of my knowledge.
I have to agree. People here used to only downvote a comment like that to 0 or -1: it indicates disagreement, but without that "get him!" mob-piling-on effect.
$1b seems awfully high for TiVo. I'd peg them at half that or less. Their product although arguably superior to their competitors has been commoditized to no end. How can people buy ticks when comcast or directv offer their DVr "free"
Are there any certifying authorities which can be considered relatively free of government/corporate control?
I don't trust the cherry picked testimonials on your site.

I don't trust you that your website isn't spam.

I don't trust you with my credit card number.

I don't trust you that your program is well made and follows conventions.

I don't trust you that you won't install a Trojan on my machine.

I don't trust you that you won't put Adware all over.

I don't trust you that your app is bug free and won't ruin the performance on my computer.

But if Apple accepts your app into the app store, I don't have to worry about these things.
The XBox controller has a much larger difference between the buttons than the PS2/3 does. The PS1 one was absolutely terrible. I could never remember which bumper was 1 and which was 2, and I used the damn thing all the time.

Xbox's LB and LT make more sense, even if it isn't perfect.

Of course, I know plenty of people who could never remember that the Z button existed on the GameCube controller.

Of course, I was talking about average folks, and this product is clearly not aimed for them.
If you look at e.g. http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/3series/sedan/2008/all... and click the second icon under the image, "comfort access" - this seems to be optional. And we're not talking a thirty-year old Skoda here.
Tampa Airport: Moving magnetic poles forces runway changes
Comment 1013 by xiaweihua94, Jan 02 (5 days ago)
oh come on that's horrible,
the message which is supposed to my girlfriend went to my boss.
please fix it as soon as you guys can
You are an unusual example of your gender. You must know that.

I'm not sure this is true. What men say and do in public doesn't indicate a lot about what they'd say and do if the media didn't tell them they had to be violent to be a man. Always framing it as a war between the sexes is probably not the best way to stop it being a war between the sexes.

PPS: I'd be willing.
3 years later the situation is even worse. Not only has 4:3 disappeared entirely, 16:10 is going away too in favor of 16:9 (apparently, I hear, this is because the 16:9 form factor allows better yields in the lcd manufacturing process).

This wouldn't be much of a problem in 17" screens or above but below - which is where most portable devices fall - the 16:9 form factor feels like peeking at the world through a slit.

When I got a new 15" laptop last year I picked an older model that had just been discontinued, because it's successor moved from 16:10 to 16:9. Of course what I really wanted was a 14" 4:3 but you can't have that for any amount of money.
The Bodega logo is a straight rip-off from the Fender logo.
Using Gmail efficiently
"Taking a piss" is literally urinating. Piss is a synonym for urine. "Taking the piss" in this context means mocking somebody/something.

You can also "take the piss" if you're lying, exaggerating or any number of other social mistakes. If someone said that they had 5 years experience in PHP on their CV and you later found out they didn't, you could say they were taking the piss.

Obviously, it's quite an informal phrase. It's also one that just sounds wrong out of context, the correct context being quite hard to define. Like all slang you have to live amongst people using it before you pick up correct usage.
Apple Mac App Store hacked
Didn't Apple say that they weren't going to accept apps that already do the same thing as other apps

That would be very annoying.

Choice is good - and with proper categorization and search it would only add value, not remove any. The user-votes should bubble the good stuff to the top, right?
"Would bill gates and Warren buffet rather be climbing everest..."

Different people have different schtick. Why do you think that Bill Gates has a 12-year-old autistic kid do his powerpoints instead of hiring Nancy Duarte or whoever?

There are a lot of forces that influence what personalities will resonate with people, but one of them is that people tend to like stuff that's masturbatory. That is, things that make themselves feel like they could be successful doing what they're already doing. That's why for every life choice you could conceivably make, no matter how stupid, there is some incredibly successful person who has made it. There has to be, the market demands it, and if there wasn't then the market would anoint someone. Hence cheech & chong, william s. burroughs, ann coulter, etc.
If we don’t, remember me.
Have you played with the latest version of android's voice tools? They're amazing. Content creation should only be regulated to existing modes of input (keyboard) only if we don't come up with better input
methods.
If Apple buys anyone big, it will be Disney. [prediction #1]
Is there a weekly summary available for top news on Hacker News?
The Hacker news frontpage changes almost continuously. However, I want to batch my readings as opposed to checking the site (several times) daily. Is there a way to find the top N posts by rating for a given week? (also posted to Quora: http://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-weekly-summary-available-for-top-news-on-Hacker-News)
The question is - if they have a fix, how will they get it out to people who aren't upgrading to 2.4 (or whatever the next version is)?

Are people with HTC Wildfires and the like going to be stuck with this bug permanently?
That's their price, but price and worth are different things during periods of irrationality. I think it's pretty clear that people are projecting what Facebook will be worth when it hits a Microsoft 00s style plateau, and deciding on what the price should be now to reflect that.

After all, Yahoo's market cap peaked at $152 billion and Google's IPO was 1/6th today's price.
If you scroll down to '"Taking the piss"' there's an explanation here:
http://www.history.uk.com/history/a-dyeing-art-jess-dyde/
10% Unemployment Forever?
Marginal Revolution discussion:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/01...
Estonia institutes volunteer cyber army
You don't say the same thing about subscriptions do you?

Apple treats it like a subscription. They want one click buying.
Go to http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ to subscribe. I get it weekly, and it's pretty much great as a weekly round up.
It's all about their IP. If they win the current case with Dish they'll get hundreds of millions up front and earn monthy for each dish customer using a DVR. They'll also be able to go after other companies offering DVRs.

It all comes down to IF they win. I doubt anyone will buy them until that gets resolved.
5,000 birds across the country? That's about one for every area the size of Rhode Island. Blackbirds are the most abundant kind of bird on this continent. A few thousand here or there is literally not going to make any difference. This is not nearly on the same scale as the bee crisis.

Edit: Even if there are only 10 million blackbirds living at any given time (I'm sure there are more), and they have a lifespan of 5 years, that's a turnover of 5,400 on an average day.
Additional Info from 27c3

https://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4060.en....
So at least on day one of using the VPN connection - when you download the client and set everything up - you need to trust your connection.
Do People Really Want Apps on Their TVs?
People of HTML5 – Bruce Lawson
Dot versions are pushed, too (I'm on 2.3.1 right now) - so I suppose it will be in 2.3.2 and presumably whatever stable version of Froyo.

I guess we'll see.
Yep, boycott the nazi scum.
I listened to an explanation of this earlier (I will see if I can find documentation) -- the blackbirds travel in extremely large flocks and follow a leader very tightly (much closer in proximity to each other than most birds). The birds travel at night and can be disoriented by things such as fireworks, lightning, or other flashing lights. If the leading bird is disoriented, it could cause the bird to fly directly into the ground, a building, or any other large bird-killing object. This leads to an almost lemming-like mass suicide of the flock.

I also believe that it has been documented to have happened fairly regularly. The numbers I heard today were 16 times in the past 30 years there has been a mass death of over 1000 birds.

Found this regarding mass animal deaths --
http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/mortality_events/ongoing.jsp
Naah, if it's simply a few added instructions I agree with you.

But let's think in a wider scope (disclaimer: this is not my idea, I remember reading about it a long time ago): what if a certain cryptographic "magic code" at the beginning of a memory page would trigger the execution of arbitrary code embedded in that page?

Such a thing could be triggered over the network, wireless through bluetooth/wifi, or by specially crafted images on a webpage, or whatever creative technique you can think of. It'd effectively give the govt instant root access to any device with the affected CPUs.
I had read this before but went ahead and read it again anyway and was again struck by the practicality of Feynman's genius.

However, as always, every genius has their undesirable part:

"The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm."

When I was reading Feynman's biography (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!) one thing that really bothered me was the big difference in his approach to his son and daughter. He seemed to relish how, when his young boy got his interesting games, but sounded quite impatient with his daughter, saying she only wanted the same story repeated to her.
investigate? yes. panic? no.
What is the Key to Success?
Xen Online
Not that it will take your complain any further, though.
If you leave the included sites empty, and only supply excluded sites, then it searches everything and excludes those particular ones.
Conspiracy? Couldn't possibly be market forces at work. No, must be some grand conspiracy to make monitors the wrong size for programmers.
99% have to learn how to use a blacklist. If they dont they deserve to drown in spam, its evolution.
Buy Time Warner and Tivo. Keep them as a separate unit. Put the Tivo people in charge of the Time Warner folks. Make the transition to "new media" gradual.

On second thought, no. That would be like volunteering for the albatross. Time Warner is in the business both Apple and Tivo are trying to disrupt.
It takes about 10 minutes to download a VPN client (or, you could get one on CD or USB drive or whatever, from a trusted source, etc). Depending on the complexity of the VPN, it takes around an hour tops to make it work. And a few minutes to verify it's integrity.

If you can obtain the server's certificate from a trusted source, then it takes even less.
Actually... it does make a difference in some situations. Just strip the comments and count it as "people affected". Sure - coogle code issues already implement "star"-ing issues, but it's just another indication of "number of less techy people affected".

Also, many people know that, "I want to escalate", shouting, saying you'll sue, writing directly to a person higher up, etc. often can reorder the priority of your complaint... so they do that. Of course it doesn't work that well on the internet. If I got a penny for each issue I needed to handle out of order, because the customer could shout really loud... I'd have a pound maybe ;)
A/B testing increase website users
This isn't always true.

A company is worth the expected net present value of all future dividend payments. If a company is both unsexy and well-managed, you may be able to buy its stock at a very good price, and then collect a fat profit of the dividends.
Shipping containers of Li-ion batteries in the power grid
Err, I mentioned this well before the comment above:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2075437

It's not so much that it's a knowledge vacuum, just that someone didn't read the whole thread before replying.
What I'm specifically wondering though is if there are any special programs for situations like these. For example, it's common for corporations to have contracts with large computer manufacturers (like Dell) where they pay a flat sum and get upgrades every so often and support. Does anyone do that on a smaller scale? There's definitely no way I can support the hardware in addition to my app.

This could perhaps even be a new startup idea: A startup that provides consultation services or in some way handles all hardware related tasks for specific small businesses with specific needs.
hacking house sounds AWESOME!
theres eastcoast hackers man! where about are you? im here in pittsburgh
Mass Animal Deaths Are Not in Fact Unusual ... especially in the middle of winter, when food is hardest to find.
I look forward to getting the fix on my Motorola Milestone this time next year.
Seven Attributes of a Startup Dream Team CFO
The New Launch Car in 2011 : Shadow Hawk STV
Urine was historically used to produce saltpetre, one of the ingredients of gunpowder
An interesting note: filing your feelings away is what caused this whole thing. Of course, the ones you're filing away may not be as painful for you, but still.
Most of the cleaning service people are not really taxpayers[1], which is why including them distorts the equation. They are benefiting w/out contributing, and we do in fact, need them.
Also reinforcing my point, How can you claim that Defense is the only public good in the top 5? What percentage of the population must benefit to qualify?

[1]From other IRS data, we can see that in 2008, around 52 million tax returns were filed with either positive or negative AGI that used exemptions, deductions and tax credits to completely wipe out their federal income tax liability. Not only did they get back every dollar that the federal government withheld from their paychecks during 2008, but some even received more back from the IRS.
This is not an appropriate use of a PE multiple because different companies have different growth rates at various stages. The earlier the life cycle, the higher the PE given potential growth later on is much higher. This post is actually pretty misleading and gives people the wrong idea about how PE multiples should be applied.
"You cannot petition the lord with prayer."

Amen.