skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Penetration testing
Anon account since I may do this type of work more and more.

I took the Ethical Hacker certification (C|EH) a few about 5 years ago and never did a lot with it from a professional standpoint.

I was asked by a company to point out vulnerabilities in their organization and I think that I can handle this.

I know a lot of the usual things like using Whois, social engineering, sql injection, network scanning, packet snipping, using e-mail account password hints...

What are other ways to gather information that I am not thinking about right now. I want to really evaluate my skills and ensure that I can do the right kind of job and not falsely lead anyone

Already their receptionist gives out way to much information. Their WhoIs record does as well. I was already able to send my wife into the organization with a small wireless base station where she was able to plug it into a conference room jack in 2 minutes without even any questions..Maybe security guards don't question attractive girls showing cleavage who ask to use the restooom....

Second, I am considering having a dedicated device for this kind of task. I have a CR-48. Maybe flash the bios, drop in a larger SSD and Ubuntu Net ReMix?

Thoughts are appreciated.
The argument is usually that university resources were used (wifi, computers, space, etc), so the university should receive compensation since tuition is to pay for receiving an education, not starting a business.

Having said that, schools that still enforce a policy like that are only hurting themselves by discouraging entrepreneurship, and it's only a matter of time until all schools have similar IP policies as this one. I'm lucky my university strongly believes in encouraging entrepreneurship and does not assert any ownership over student work, even if university equipment is used.
Which may explain why Google is very successful and Microsoft is forced to buy its customers (and have huge losses in that division).
I disagree. From some point of view somewhere this is "standing on the shoulders of giants."

Perspective changes things here, which means no one is "right" or "wrong".
Some will no doubt take that view, but others the opposite.

I was actually contacted by a certain multi-national company who specializing in search and advertising off the back of my SF contributions, to suggest that I might like to apply for one of the openings they had at the time. They contacted me (rather than the other way around, I'm not even job hunting ATM) which is as exact opposite of being put off by someone's contribution to that family of sites.

If they take high rep on those sites seriously (from a beneficial view point) then I'm guessing many other companies with similar positions to fill will as well. Links to my SF and SU accounts are certainly going on my CV next time I am properly job hunting.
I am looking for some PHP developers to work on an app in CodeIgniter and a couple e-commerce stores.

Also, I am looking for a part-time SEO consultant to run a lead generation website and advise a few other projects. Ongoing working, but probably only 5-10 hours per week.

Contact me via email (<hn username> at gmail) if interested. For PHP developers, please send along some example code.
I asked two questions, one about C and one about Objective C. I got answers to both, relatively quickly. The answers worked.

But, in the C question, I provided some more information by adding a comment instead of editing my post. Result? Comment deleted with a snotty note. In the Objective C question, I called the language "Objective C" instead of "Objective-C". Result? My question edited to fit someone else's idea of good style: http://stackoverflow.com/posts/2669817/revisions

It's that last one that really gets me. Someone with more karma gets to put words in my mouth? And my name gets left on the edited post? Wow. Done.

I get why they allow it, they want the site to be more searchable. And in a way I'm glad, because I get a lot from reading answers to things other people ask, but I will never again write anything there myself.
damn straight...my sister bought a bed from some non-Ikea store and I helped assemble...and it took me a whole day.

Seriously, when I opened that box, all I got was a bunch of pieces of wood and a bag full of screws.

Meanwhile, my bed was bought from Ikea and it took only an hour and a half.
Let me try to understand what happened. For some obscure searches that return no results normally, a handful of users searched on Google using IE's toolbar and then clicked on bogus results.

Those bogus results made it to Bing's results eventually.

Ok... So it proves Microsoft analyzes the toolbar behavior and when it has no other data, it will therefore look like a copy of Google search.

Sounds fair to me. Do you want to get into a discussion on how exactly Google tracks you online?
I don't think it's cheating. It's recognizing that you are only rational some of the time, and attempting to bind your future irrational self to the rational decisions you make right now.

I view his plan as being similar to not purchasing ice cream while you are dieting - if you were perfectly rational, you could rationally choose not to eat the ice cream in your freezer, but why give yourself the temptation to be irrational?
Because people have time to actually use it and decide what it's worth to them?
Further proof that mouse events and touch events are not the same.

I'm working on a concept for the iPad that is similar and came here hoping that it would work on a touch screen as well, but looks like there's no silver bullet.
This is a good point. Not only is degrading an issue but theres so many phones with different screen sizes and whatnot and that must be considered to be coded in. I havent really looked at frameworks enough including jqtouch but its certainly something to consider if your app is intented for a larger public audience.

By the way is jqtouch still being developed. I understand the lead developer when to work for sencha. Which ive tried but couldnt get to work. I was using jquery mobile but had problems with it which considering its only an alpha is understable.
If a page contains a unique word, and people who were on that page universally go to a different page, that could be enough evidence for bing to assume there's a link between the unique word and the target page.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein, (attributed)
Windows started doing pre-emptive caching with Vista, based on the applications you tend to run.
I love this project, congrats on reaching 1.0.

One question - do you have any plans to support replica sets, or can I currently specify a connection to a set of servers rather than one master? Thanks!
Grados are old-school ugly, but they sound fantastic and don't completely block out the world. I have the SR60.
I use a pair of Sennheiser HD201 headphones at work. They are unbeatable for $20. My ears do get a bit sore after 6 hours, but it's a good excuse to take a break.
You, Nathan and Brian have done a great job with 1.0 -- Way to Go!!

What happens if a Middleware never calls done() ?

Does setter transformation happen upon set or upon save?

I am excited to see Mongoose evolve -- the Middleware concept is exciting.

Some minor feedback on the new site:

Middleware are defined at the Schema level and are applied when the methods init (when a document is initialized with data from MongoDB), save (when a document or embedded document is saved).

I think you want to say something like "when the methods init or save are called", but the "are called" is missing from the above.

Then down a bit, you have "Serial Serial Middleware" and "Parallel Parallel Middleware"; not sure about the redundant first words.

The email address in the copyright notice is html-entities, but they are escaped: &lt;dev@learnboost.com&gt;

Final nitpick: the site is a little hard to read with the current background.

Overall, great work!!
Think of it this way: Your professor asks you for the name of the imaginary friend that the professor's son always talks about. You have no idea what the answer could possibly be, so in your head you choose "John," a reasonably common name with a very low probability of being right. Google answers with a strong conviction in it's voice that the answer is "Mark," another common name. You have no evidence to believe that your own guess is correct, so in the face of the appearance of belief on Google's behalf, aren't you the least bit tempted to say that it's Mark and not John?
I always think of that when I see a PBS show like NOVA, sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. At one time, they owned Hughes Aircraft, mainly as a tax dodge for Howard Hughes. The tax dodge has long outlived the company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes_Medical_Institute
Have you gone back and provided the answer to your first question? If not, then you're part of the reason that SO doesn't "really really work" in all cases.
Well this is why people look at frameworks such as phonegap and appcelarator and rhomobile. They theretically give you the best of both worlds. Theres issues with them though including a lack of documentation for each of them. But as you say if you dont need to access the underlying hardware then theres almost no reason to not use html5.
Buried halfway through the article:

"These searches returned no matches on Google or Bing — or a tiny number of poor quality matches, in a few cases — before the experiment went live. [...] Only a small number of the test searches produced this result, about 7 to 9 (depending on when exactly Google checked) out of the 100. Google says it doesn’t know why they didn’t all work, [...]"

The writer apparently thinks these results justify concluding the article with this takeaway:

"When Bing launched in 2009, the joke was that Bing stood for either “Because It’s Not Google” or “But It’s Not Google.” Mining Google’s searches makes me wonder if the joke should change to “Bing Is Now Google.”

okayyyy.
Am I the only person that doesn't get this whole Stack / Quora thing? Why does anyone care about points?

Don't get me wrong - I love the fact that there's a place I can go to ask a question and get it answered by knowledgeable people. But what does that have to do with points? If people want to help each other, then great. If not, then don't.

Newsgroups used to fill this role quite well without points, but came with all sorts of negatives (as detailed above). The benefit of the Stack / Quora stuff is that you don't have to wade through irrelevant stuff to find what you need. but points?
Insufficient, and certainly one sided information is all that's so far available. I'm taking it with a large grain of salt but if true, it's a monstrously stupid move. Unlike most Apple App "restrictions", even the most tech-unsavvy iOS owner will notice this one. You can bet it'd feature in upcoming ads for other tablets.

For these reasons, I'm suspicious. It's either just wrong, a silent test of the waters that will come to nothing, or a policy that won't last until Spring (much like the "Only Obj-C" attempt). If it's anything else, I worry for the future of the Apple App platform.
App to Look Out For: SocialCam
- My productivity levels

- Hours of sleep per night (Wakemate does this?)

- My happiness level?
Ugh, not only that but it hosed my workspace :/

Don't try this in a project you're currently working on. Now I have to spend my morning trying to unfuck my project.
Why do they use js for the client side logic? Cant they use ruby? I know phonegap appelarator and rhomobile allow for this with rhomobile but all ruby. As im playing around with mobile applicaitons more im finding managing the javascript to be somewhat of a headache. So ive been wondering if theres ways to do with with other languages.
Agreed. I don't get it either. Time is precious - an hour spent solving customer problems or developing customer acquisition can provide significantly more return than an hour spent answering questions in exchange for the uncertain value of "points".

Now, I can understand if you have a question you need answered having it answered in a relevant way by experts is great. And if you can help someone else, that's great. That helps float all boats. But what is the drive to collect points? I don't get the point thing. On HN either, I just don't get it.
I'm pretty sure being a software developer is a higher status job than a bartender.

I'm pretty sure you are wrong, at least if we take ability to get laid as being an indicator of status.
You just hit the real way to work it.

I'm bootstrapping at the moment, so every morning I make the arduous telecommute to Southern California and bill out at my SoCal rate. A fella can bank away several years worth of beach runway in a short period that way.
First of all, who "hires" a co-founder? But that lexical issue aside, the biggest reason nobody will respond to this here is because nobody is interested working on a mystery project without anything to remotely pique our interest. You don't provide the slightest detail about the project, or even what industry or problem it might be relevant to. For all we know you are trying to get somebody to write a Wordpress theme. Please provide insight into your project or frame it in terms of how it is useful or important to this community. Or stop posting it again.
Excellent reply. SO far surpasses any other programming forum when it comes to getting answers for a specific problem, and that matters so much more than how easy it is for a user to get artificial karma.
Digg Dialogg w/ Digg CEO Matt Williams & Leo Laporte [video]
Re: "But to complain about a system where there are too many people answering questions is, to be perfectly blunt, ridiculous and narcissistic"

I've never tried to participate in Stack Overflow as a hyper-active question answerer, but as a sometimes-user of the site who ends up there via Google often when performing coding question searches, the site still suffers from what has been dubbed "The Fastest Gun in the West" problem. I can usually find answers that are at least a useful starting point to solving my core problem on Stack Overflow but they are very often not the top ranked answer and are often way at the bottom sitting with a 0 rating due to having been posted "long" after the question went live (and by "long" after I usually mean like the next day). The top rated stuff is often superficial junk answers that just happened to be the best available when the question was still a hot one.

So I'd argue that even from a non-poster's view, the site is broken (because I have to dig through it more than I should have to) though still ultimately useful.
Not to mention an easy way to charge for a service.
tcc is seriously awesome. Read the source - this is how C compilers should be written. It can add bounds checking to your programs. It's small enough to fit into a library you can use for dynamic code generation.

IMO tcc with support for more architectures is just as viable an alternative to gcc as clang is.
A question I haven't yet found a satisfactory answer to: should the mobile version of a webapp like Basecamp have mobile marketing pages or just a login form?
Still, a TechCrunch & BusinessWeek contributor that gets paid by Bing is interesting.
It tells you in the FAQ. http://stackoverflow.com/faq#reputation
That is what I was thinking of, thank you. Sorry for the mixup!
I think the problem with the OPs line of argument is that the goal is to begin commenting right away. When I give a good answer to a question that already has some answers I'll eventually get up votes. It takes time for new people to come looking for the same answer and vote up my answer, but it happens. A few of my answers are now voted higher than the accepted answer.

It takes time not effort, but I think that's the point.
Err, by that line of thinking, Google leveraged Linux (the hard work of volunteers) to earn tens of billions and does not release the modified code for use of the volunteers. Of course they are not required to, but it isn't fair to Linux developers who have worked their butts off to develop Linux.
"... we embrace and extend them."
What We Need to Win the Entrepreneurial Race
I often just turn swap off entirely. A normal workload on my 4GB linux machine will frequently fail to fill even 2GB of buffers. At the moment my machine has still managed to fail to fill 800MB of my RAM with anything and I'm running two virtual machines and doing my usual work load.

I do have a swap partition but only so I can hibernate.
Associating search queries and click stream behaviour is fine if it's your own search engine. Doing it for someone else's search engine isn't (regardless of who's doing it).
I highly advocate people going to work or travel abroad for a year or two, but it's important to note that this article is specifically recommending going to work in the Australian Outback. I've been to Australia and it's a lovely place with lovely people, but living deep in the Outback also means relative isolation, dust, and probably more boredom than you're expecting. You'll be at the mercy of the mix of long-term travelers in your location at that particular time, which might be good or bad.

Some folks (like myself) much prefer living in a bigger city with access to music, art, cuisine, culture, green space, and limitless people.

Though that's not to say you can't enjoy living in the Outback--lots of people choose to live there and love it--but just be aware of what you're getting in to. There's a reason one place pays so much more than the other!
NoSQL Joins, or, So You're Writing an RDBMS
Or you can just answer your own question, which is completely acceptable behavior in SO.
"Those bogus results made it to Bing's results eventually."

... in 7-9% of cases.
Why no second Internet bubble?
For international relations data, Correlates of War hosts a number of data sets: http://www.correlatesofwar.org/Datasets.htm
Programmable robot from 1980's
why not both? single serving things as appropriate via micropayments, or unlimited via sub.
i've had trouble finding geographical boundaries on neighborhoods in U.S. cities (e.g. downtown areas and residential neighborhoods). anyone know where i can find this?
I've said a few times that if making pizza payed more than $10/hr, I'd go back and do it. I derived a lot of enjoyment from doing something really well, and a little bit of diversity in my environment was nice. There was a similar post here a while ago about a guy who was a lumberjack, so he could go home and hack all night. He didn't want to get burned out on development, and switching it up kept him fresh.
Color wheels are wrong? How color vision actually works
I've generally stopped answering questions on SO, unless they're explicitly related to the Delphi compiler and RTL and nobody else has answered them - and I find these with a combination of Google search alert and RSS feed on SO tags, which are delayed, rather than by visiting the site.

Something that would have kept me there is something along the lines of this:

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19659/search-filters...

If I could filter questions by minimum rep, I could look for questions that aren't by complete noobs - and the noobs are getting into the 2-5k rep range now owing to repeated asking of simple questions. It would be more stimulating to answer questions that stump expert users; as it is, I fear that the site is driving away these people post haste.

A more explicit version of my motivation for asking is in the original version:

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/posts/19659/revisions

... but it was downvoted as people seemed to be misreading me.
To me, the #1 problem with Stack Overflow is the number of plain bad answers that are given and often accepted. CSS question? Here’s someone’s un-researched and invalid first guess, that doen’t work in practice. +10 karma and accepted.

Hard question? Here’s some loser’s gut feeling of “can’t be done” in exchange for +2 karma, and then a knowledgeable follow-up a day later from someone who has actually been there, done that, and figured it out.

Example: Someone with 82k karma posts a non-answer rudely telling me I should be using another technology altogether, a cheap and worthless move that earned +2 karma: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4696128/bash-script-deter...

So often it’s apparent people are just throwing best-guess answers out there for karma, and this is hugely unhelpful. There should be a large penalty for stating incorrect guesses as fact.

It’s to the point where I instantly mistrust any answer from someone with over 10k reputation as I learned there is a good chance they are just shooting from the hip for karma.
Sure, but the 20%[1] of government spending that actually is explicitly in their interests is so fundamental to most rich people's ability to accumulate and enjoy their fortunes. The 80% of the rest of the spending is an acceptable price to pay if you consider it to be explicitly in their interest that the government is not subject to the capricious behaviour of the unaccountable ruler too. Today's government systems weren't designed by the poor.

[1]Pareto-inspired made-up-statistic
"How did he do it? By giving away his work for FREE"

That has less to do with it than the fact he is really, really good at what he does.
The voting is a crude proxy for correctness. I say crude because sometimes the first few answers get way too many votes for simply being the first but over time the correct answers float to the top.
You could always try the classic 'leave a usb key key in the parking lot' trick.
This is a great concept, but how does it compare with Glympse? http://www.glympse.com/get_glympse
Ask HN: Graphical Analysis for Pivotal Tracker?
I am a freelance contractor who is putting together a proposal for Pivotal Labs to add graphical analysis to Pivotal Tracker. My question for HN is: what new features would you like to see in Pivotal Tracker?

Pivotal Tracker already includes a couple of visual analyses, including the velocity chart, burndown graph, and point breakdown report. Are there any other metrics, or different approaches to those metrics, that you think would be helpful in visual form? On a larger scale, are there different groupings of data that you think would be useful, such as cross-team comparisons, or progress reports for each individual?

Thank you for your responses!
"But look you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of The Leopard'."
I don't think most people would consider that a very important indicator.
You may want to try automated tools like Nessus and OpenVAS. They are no replacement for having skills yourself, but they still have their uses.

http://www.nessus.org/nessus/intro.php
http://www.openvas.org/
how do I do upserts with Mongoose?
Gordon, fantastic post. You've covered a lot of ground, with some great anecdotes - I love the if.com stories. Your (i assume) diagram linking the 'emerging startup business stack' is useful for explain lean to non-believers. I've made this required reading for my whole team.

Could you expand on the demand curve you've included?