skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And now I've done a quick bit of Googling, I think I'd loosely speculate that iron with strong magnetic fields, consumed, might affect the performance of some medical equipment that use magnetic fields to perform their detection.

Specifically MRIs can detect oxygen carrying red blood cells because of the iron in hemoglobins and the change in magnetic strength when oxygen is attached to the red blood cell. Hemoglobins are apparently renewed, in part, by digesting iron (in things like cereals).

A wikipedia entry on MRI suggests that the sensitivity of FMRI (functional MRI) is fine enough to determine brain activity based on the magnetic response of hemoglobins.

So if the consumed iron had a stronger magnetic memory, this could have an effect on measurements of existing medical equipment which is tuned to the current norm.

I clearly have disclaimed that I don't truly know what I'm on about... I'm speculating. But I'd love to hear what these guys think: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1522-25...
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From the TechCrunch article comments:

"Roberto Alsina
Just a small clarification about this bit:

"They then start talking about money because they need to incorporate a company that can deal with companies outside of Argentina and that will cost $15,000. They also needed to know if they were going to make over $100k/year or 500k/year as that would require different registrations…"

I am from Argentina, and I own a company. Yes, in order to bill services to foreign customers, you need to register your company as an "exporter of services". And to do that you have to put money on escrow (but not $15000, only $7500), or your company has to demonstrate assets for over $12500.

If Russo has been working without an incorporated company (he could be a "monotributista", which is a way to bill as a physical person). A monotributista can export services, but... he's personally liable, so doing security consulting that way is insane.

That's probably why Russo could be asking for money up-front: if he didn't, he would have been doing business illegally."
Yes, then offer those glasses for free; sponsored with ads shot straight in your retina.
Stolen laptop e-mails mysterious photo to owner
A key point here is that he didn't use a proxy and doesn't seem to hide his identity during the sniffing around, which means he's either:
a) stupid.
b) not intending to do anything malicious.

I think a. is unlikely, because he did actually manage to break in, although, the hole itself might've been trivial and therefore this might not count. I don't think so, though.
Which leaves b.
Things can get really stuck - as the protagonistss appear to be on different continents
The apps I use most on my N1 is gmail, maps, voice and talk. All native apps. I don't know what they are talking about Google "staying clear of native apps on mobile devices"?
That's not quite what I meant. I was referring to the value your employment adds to the company, not the sales value of the final product.

And yes, that's extremely difficult to evaluate, but it seems to me that on average everyone has to be paid less than their contribution, otherwise there would be no profit or funds to pay salaries for people not directly contributing to production.

Nor was I passing judgement, by the way, so I don't go along with the "theft" thing. I do however think it is a form of taxation.
It's still on their site anyways.

http://download.skype.com/macosx/Skype_2.8.0.866.dmg
I... believe that's what I said?
As a matter of fact, I did. It's not easy, it's far from cheap, but having gone through all of that, another move -- at least to an English speaking country -- is comparatively trivial to what I've thought about it before.

And if you take offence at random remarks by strangers on the internet, you should have a long talk with yourself.
Flagged.

An article about {free themes} crammed with {free themes} keywords, without any real substance (so the cost and implications are, in short, that if we had to provide support for {free themes} that would be a lot of work that our {free themes} would cause us).

I don't know why this stuff gets upvoted. {free themes}!
Cool - I disengage my skepticism in the face of you informative response.
BS courses in Computer Science -- this is nothing new.

Also keep in mind that such courses do address serious issues, and sometimes such courses aren't BS.

The last thing to keep in mind, is that sometimes a person will encounter information which is vital to them, but they won't have the expertise to recognize it as such.

Keep this in mind if you ever find yourself trying to explain why automated tests or source control is important to pointy-haired bosses with glazed-over eyes. Even in 2011, this happens in the real world all the time.

That said, the stuff that's really important in a course like "Topics in Software Management" isn't likely to be taught well by a college professor. Few college professors have to succeed in their jobs by managing a group to produce good software, and if they used to do that stuff, the environment they worked in might bear very little resemblance to the place you'll work. Learn that stuff from people you admire who produce awesome results.
Well, there's enough for an educated guess. My own reading was "someone used a root privilege escalation to ferret out ssh private keys, and then used them to log into our cloud as the admin with the compromised key." (I don't see an implication that ssh itself was configured to allow root access.)

But there are other open questions --- the two of most interest to me are:

What was the root privilege escalation that coughed up the credentials in the first place, and could the attacker have used it to do something else?

Also, what was the extent of the compromised "zone", and how sure are they that the network partitioning held?
Great answer. Also when the people you have to answer to are only customers, then fixing that should lead to profit if you have the right type of customers.
2011 Annual Letter from Bill Gates
Ask HN: Who's Hiring? (February 2011 Edition)
As many have been posting about new beginnings and starting afresh, it's time for another Hiring thread.

Please lead with the location of the position and make it clear if working remotely is a possibility.
Oh yeah? How so? And you should check out the alternatives for your kids rather than flush the money down the toilet. Here they are: http://bit.ly/iewfpx
Microsoft Eliminates Server Fans in its Data Centers
Almost 41, started my first software business in 1994, and have been working at the second one for 12 years.
Thanks to you and "TheAmazingIdiot" (ugh, his name makes me call him a name, the delima!) for the feedback. I'm going to try sticking around a bit.
The victims are the users who mostly lack the technical fortitude to realize the perils of using a single user identifier/password combination across many different sites. The amount of identity theft that could occur by dint of PlentyOfFish's absolute carelessness renders them just as complicit in wrongdoing as the attackers who shed light on the problem. To call POF a 'victim' is absolutely wrong.
Notational Velocity got an awesome new icon.
Ask HN: Who Is Hiring Remote Workers? (February 2011 Edition)
Similar to the "Who is Hiring" thread but, please remote positions only.
Cheap Microsoft Surface Using a Projector and Kinect
> Perhaps if hackers get into my account, my account can finally get a date!

No, you have to wait for OKCupid to get hacked for that to happen.
The way of the spartan warrior
Robert Scoble's Severed Head, Truthiness, and the Surrender Chicken
no man, it's not my duty. and i dont believe any changes will happen when man still rules over man.
Considering that the powerful magnetic fields used in MRIs don't harm people at all, and that magnetic fields in general have no effect on our health, I don't think microscopic amounts of magnetized iron are going to have the FDA very alarmed.
In some ways it's no wonder POF was able to bootstrap and run this amazingly large system all written by one guy with limited hardware. Dunno what their stats (or headcount) are now, but years ago POF was heralded as some genius site because it was all put together by one guy and running on a few load balanced servers.

I'm not saying it takes multiple people to make something secure, but if one person either doesn't have the experience or knowledge to make something secure, and there's only that one person, there's no one else to even determine there's a problem.
4 Marvelous Alternatives To Internet Explorer
It's no longer AMD's fab, they spinned off their manufacturing arm as a new company named "Globalfoundries".
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My own experience with devices that can be filled up leads me to believe that there will always be an initial increase in buying rate because of the newness and emptiness of the device.

The rate at which you buy books to read can vary. If it increases, that doesn't mean you're buying books just to fill up a device. You're still buying them to read, just faster. I would imagine people who get a brand new device for reading likely increase their reading time too.
Anecdote:

I went to a decently-respected, and rather expensive, private college. Lots of wealthy folks sent their kids there (and the high tuition allowed the school to hand out big scholarships to kids like me, who couldn't have afforded it any other way). One of my friends was the son of an executive, worth more money than I or any ten people I know will ever be; once he was visiting his son, and being introduced to his friends. Anyway, at one point he said something that stuck with me, and given the mix of people he was talking to I'm pretty sure he wasn't just trying to make the liberal-arts folks feel better about themselves:

The thing about business degrees is this: I can hire someone who studied history or literature or whatever, and in six months teach them what they need to know about business. But if I hire someone who got a business degree, I can spend all the time in the world and never be able to teach them how to think.
Best of luck Tom, and thanks for sharing. I've signed up for Swaptitude so look forward to learning more.

(Some background, if anyone needs it - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859117)
IBM to Expand U.S. Investment in Entrepreneurs
I was curious to know the same thing. I do however like the code being side by side. It helps people who know PHP learn a little Lisp.
> the challenges involved

Facebook runs on C++, but is written in PHP, because it's easier to hire PHP developers. Apps run on ObjC / Java / etc and so that requires more developers, more languages. If it's just web apps instead, they can leverage their existing base of engineers. Certainly their native client for Android seems to be hurting from a lack of technical clout (for example, you can't read message threads if they get too long).
What is it like to get a job offer over Twitter?
We need VP8 like a fish needs a bicycle
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Why not a 128GB SSD acting as a cache for a much larger and slower 1.8" drive? I would be just fine having all of my audio and video files on the 1.8", so long as my development environment can be on the speedy SSD.
Reminds me of the recent conflict between the IcedTea (Java) and Moonlight (Silverlight) plugins in Chrome/Firefox http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2011/01/plugin-...

Is there an equivalent to Video for Windows/GStreamer on OSX?
Data is the first step because we need to know which direction to head. He never said the data would get us there.
The Phases of Interface Builder:

newbie: Whoa! I can build a UI without writing any code? Cool!

novice: Damnit, why isn't this working right? IB Sucks. It must be IB's fault!

junior: Ah, to hell with it, I know enough code, I can just write all my views in code. TOTAL Powah is MINE!!!

journeyman: Locilawhat? Whoization? Whatever, I am tired of having to recompile and constantly change dozens of off-by-a-pixel issues in code. Maybe Interface Builder can be used, but I'll keep it on a short leash.

enlightenment: Interface Builder vs. code? You kids, you gotta, like, embrace the duality of the universe, man... everything in balance... feel it until you don't know where interface builder ends and code begins.... and anyway, its code all the way down, man! Have you got a light?

More seriously, there's a period where you feel like you're fighting interface builder all the time... and once you get past that, you use it where it makes sense and code where code makes sense. The app I'm working on today, the UI is done completely in interface builder, and it has saved a whole lot of time, though animations and stuff like that are done in code, of course.
Perhaps a valid criticism, but I'm not sure someone has developed a better alternative. I've seen too many "executives" whose decision making is based around

- superficial books they've picked up at the airport and read on the plane.

- soundbites they heard on cnn.com.

- random advice from other "executives" at parties.

Having been on both sides of case-based teaching, I'd say its a useful pedagogical device - imagining that 50 Harvard MBA students actually just "pronounce a decision" is kind of laughable, if you've ever participated in a case discussion. The cases are tools for discussion, and being able to convince others with a cogent powerful argument and build consensus is what is being taught. Something that is quite useful in management.

Not to mention that you get exposed to actual thinking beyond the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" crap. My B-School experience actually included seeing Henry Mintzberg speak.
It seems to be really popular in Europe. Virtually every single European company I've worked with has communicated over Skype.
When I use NemID, it asks for code number NNNXXX, where NNN is the sequential number of the codes (to make it easy to find) and XXX is a "check" to prevent phishing.
> Ideally

and therein lies the rub. As long as we have to care about browser bugs and inconsistencies, there are going to be limits to this.
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finance doesn't magically confer certain properties on humans. human seek to satisfy their wants with limited means. does the pursuit of money lead to evils? sure, but money is only a stand in for other wants. money is a good because it is transparent in a way that other methods of accounting for the distribution of goods isn't. if you can quantify the resources that go towards X instead of Y and yet society claims to value Y above X you have some very useful data to investigate. contrast this with the primary competition for money as a means of distribution: opaque and non-fungible social favor. when a system of social favor redirects resources in a way inconsistent with values it isn't a simple matter of pointing to quantifiable numbers.
The hacker's story certainly has less holes, however the style of writing out numbers as words is suspicious; I have only ever seen it in 419 scams: "28,000,000 (twenty eight million users)".
I agree with you. Defamation / libel laws are far more strict in Canada than in the US. This is clearly going to interfere with Chris Russo's ability to earn a living as a security researcher. I have a feeling he is going to get paid to go away at some point.
Frankly, Marcus does not sound like he is very computer Saavy. He sounds like one of these people who knows how to write some PHP scripts, but does not really understand the details of what goes on behind it - so assumes that what this guy is doing is some terribly complicated hack.

I think the argentine guy probably searched the website for vulnerabilities as a way to get business. He found one and contacted Marcus. Marcus then freaked out and panicked, leading to this.
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If you're losing customers because you won't provide free support for themes they didn't pay for, something tells me you're better off without them.
Kinda. The Touchstone charging system is an optional-- and not terribly cheap-- (US$50) accessory.

I use it, it's pretty neat. There's an advantage beyond the obvious: the charging puck is always stuck to a surface[1], and the phone should always be stuck to the puck, (using magnets built into the back of the phone) so I tend to lose the phone a lot less often. The OS can also tell if you're using the induction charger, if you pull it off the puck while the phone's ringing, it'll automatically pick it up, and switch to speakerphone if you put it on the puck during a call.

There's also disadvantages. It can't transmit as much power as the USB cable, and it's quite inefficient, getting fairly warm in use. If induction chargers ever became popular, presumably the hippies would get upset about the pointless waste of electricity.

[1]: There's double sided foam tape on the bottom of the puck that's actually the first application I've ever seen of the gecko setae "superglue" that various tech sites have been banging on about for the last decade. It never loses its stickiness, but also gets dirty astonishingly easy.
A Question about CSRF JSON hijacking
I'm just glad we didn't kill Piggy.
Marcus taught himself ASP.net http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/06/14/how-i-started-a...
His story is pretty remarkable considering POF was a one man operation until recently.
It's the people not the software? >shudders< ;)
As a side note: the new Android Skype release is getting panned on the market because of horrible UI features (puts an icon in the notification area that cannot be removed) and other bugs. I finally removed skype from my droid, even though I do occasionally get calls from it.
Two thumbs way up, love it.

Wouldn't mind a way to slap a company name on there and reuse it. :P
Ask HN: How can I get up to speed?
Basically, when I was a teenager I taught myself HTML/CSS, did some low-quality podcasting and blogging with friends, read tech and startup news constantly and did some freelance web design. Then, I went to college across the country, lost touch with my tech friends, studied political science and then business administration, and I've been completely out of the loop letting what limited skills I do have get rusty. So, what is your advice for me (and for anyone else in a similar position, who either has no tech skills or who has rusty, very rudimentary ones) to get up to speed?

Super broad question, so any kind of feedback is welcome. Programming languages to learn, a book to read, a blog I should have in my reader, anything.
Do you have any evidence that he's wrong, an argument why he's wrong, or even a different assertion of the facts?

This is a futile discussion. It is an embarrassment for HN and, honestly, an embarrassment for the Canadian tech community.

Download caps are way too low, no doubt about it. Providers are protecting their own self interests by undermining businesses like Netflix, no doubt about it. However that is an entirely separate discussion.
Wow, considering our very non-spammy business and revenue model, I'm surprised you find it this way.

Actually pretty funny, as we've never spent 1 minute or $1 actually SEO'ing our own website. I couldn't care less about supposed keywords.
I think you have to split retail from investment banking.

Retail is ripe for disruption, bad service, poor websites, limited products etc. Creating a Retail Bank 2.0 could really change the sector.

I have difficulties seeing investment banking ever being disrupted. For one you have to be intimately involved to know what sort of products are needed. A 23yo SV hacker simply hasn't a clue what the mutual fund manager or forex dealer needs to make his life easier.

Once you're in the industry it isn't really radical disruption, if it were, the industry would be being disrupted all the time. Banks are massively competitive and any potential advantage inferred by new technologies and approaches would be assimilated into their business model rapidly.
I'll have a look at getting it on a public github, but in the meantime, it's just an index.html and a few js files. Feel free to nick it (just give distilled.co.uk / hiremarshal.com a link in appreciation).
Actually, for me, the WooThemes Playground was what got me to purchase a theme. The Playground lets you try out all of the the themes WooThemes sales for free on a temporary hosted WordPress blog on their site. If you like what you made, you can just copy the export code, buy the theme and put it on your site, then import your code from before. Works great, and was what pushed me to finally buy a theme from them.

I think the moral of the story with this is, you should always have a way for potential customers to really try out your product before they buy it. For many, it may get them to buy when otherwise they might have waited out.
Clojure + Processing + Live-coding at the REPL
Iterating on the Programmatic Programming Font Exploration
Thanks for all the suggestions you gave in this discussion:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2147834

I've tried to incorporate the feedback to make it easier to compare the fonts and to include a few of the more popular ones that I missed.
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Writing numbers as words is a legal norm in many countries.

Whilst Nigeria is one of such countries, it doesn't follow that all documents with alphabetised numbers are illegit.
If this:

"The strength of the academic enterprise imo is doing hard-to-monetize basic research: developing the ideas and techniques that after several more iterations will produce or enable interesting things. I tend to think of tech-heavy startups as essentially mining ideas and results that are promising but have never been made practical; academia's job is to keep restocking that mine."

and this:

"The explanation is that, with all its aloofness, the
university has an essential role to play, viz. to explain
to the world the foolishness of its ways."

Are the purpose of academia, then that's fine for academics in the sciences and math. However, that still gives little justification for academics specializing somewhere deep in liberal arts.
Someone has root. Everything on the system can't be trusted.

The assumption should be the opposite, by default.