skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
They homebrewed their own password system.

the story says hbgary hired an outside company to make this cms for them, which may explain the crappy security on that particular system.

Can someone switch on the tptacek bat-signal?

thomas' security company also got hacked a couple years ago and had sensitive information plastered all over a mailing list. rumor was that it happened via their use of wordpress for their weblog.

i guess the moral of the story is... you will get hacked by crappy third-party software?
They didn't actually switch. They still use Ruby on Rails. They do use more things like Scala now than they used to.
I wish I could give you a 1000 up-votes for this. I'm so sick of hearing the rhetoric about language X not being able to scale.

Repeat after me, if your app doesn't scale it is YOUR fault, not a language, platform or framework. Scalability is about design and implementation, not what tools you use.
Perhaps you would be interested in purchasing my Scaling Insurance?

It costs a ton upfront, and it's likely to kill your nascent company, but if you ever make it big, you'll save a tiny bit of money in the long run!
We are using this; so far, it works well for small goals and simple tasks. I haven't done any big goals yet.
I'll be the first to admit, I am a bad manager. But sales I can do probably as well as my partner.

In hindsight, I should have just fired the designer. But I was trying to be a good partner and go to him with my issues first. He agreed and said he would take care of it.

I think I've downplayed how much power he's given this person. Not just design of marketing stuff, but actual product UI design. Plus a lot marketing/budgeting decisions, etc. Basically this person has become or directed the entire face of our company. For whatever reason, despite no sales growth, my partner hangs on and defends this person's every decision.

If it matters, I'll add that this person is a woman. My partner has assured me that they are not in a romantic relationship and have simply become extremely close friends. I believe him–but many people on the outside get the impression they are romantically involved.
<no-sarcasm>Can you please explain that?</no-sarcasm>
Extracted this out of a side-project that I am currently working on. In about 5 minutes, you can have a GetHipster inspired landing page up and collecting emails/Twitter. Slap on a custom domain and start making your actual app.
Off topic, but—I can't get over the dreary blog title. 'Defeated spirit'. It's so at odds with the can-do entrepreneurity of the blog.
Only if your referrer is google.com. If you link from here, for example (e.g. http://www.experts-exchange.com/Virus_and_Spyware/Anti-Virus...) you really will just see the paywall.
Google Maps now saves you one step when you enter a full address
Right, "biasing your talent pool" doesn't mean that everyone in that talent pool sucks. There are certainly some very talented C#/.NET devs.

The problem is that when you go to hire, you have very little information about just how badass a prospective dev is, unless you've worked with them before. So if you take a random dev out of the C# pool, chances are he'll be worse than a random dev in the Python pool.

http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
Doesn't this only work if you arrive via google search results?
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I'm curious how you conclude that ASP.NET developers suck ... there's a lot of shit programmers in all languages out there, that's why everyone's looking hard to find the rockstars/ninjas/whatevers.
I would be surprised if the thought of using in-app purchasing for subscriptions even moved their needle of interest at Netflix.

Again, if you're just providing a conduit for your subscription service, all this means is that you can't provide a direct call to action in your app.

They seem like the prototypical example of an company that couldn't care less about using the App Store as an app-based advertisement or purchasing platform.
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The search for web hosting reviews is a very important (if not the most important) part of your whole web hosting shopping strategy. Shopping for hosting is not exactly easy because today's hosting offer is very-very vast
Speaking of whois, I'm really glad I don't get the quantity of whois-based junk mail I used to see with the domain I registered ~10 years ago. That's one category of spam that seems to have improved over time.

P.S. It's a nitpick, but "just assume" should be "just as soon."
Trying to load this on my phone and I was greeted with nothing but a pay wall. Snarky indeed.
Context-Oriented Programming [pdf]
Cashing Out Start-Ups Gets More Complicated
Looks good.

My one UI nitpick would be that clicking the "Read another random clue" button takes you to a random clue but that button is not present on the new page. I spent ~5 confused seconds looking for the button again before I noticed the link in the header. In my opinion the button should also be present on the clue page.

If you are looking for some content to get the site started Reddit recently had a huge thread full of hints and tips like this.
> It’s not about the quality of the talent. It’s a simple supply and demand question.

Uh oh. "Programmers are a commodity" again.
This really makes the case for much more public-key cryptography everywhere -- if all of the emails between HBGary, even internally only, were encrypted, HBGary would have gotten out with just a small DDOS and been meandering along just fine today. I think that people that run a computer security company should at least be able to figure out Enigmail.
Sir, excanvas is as slow as it can get. I am currently working on a web visualization and let me take you to earth, there are two graphic libraries to plot graphs (the ones with nodes and edges, not charts) out there:
1. The distinguished Protovis (http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/) which doesn't run on some outdated versions of IE8 (and due to company policy I can't run Windows Updates)
2. JIT (http://thejit.org/), which performs poorly (I hardly get more than 2 FPS, whereas in Firefox 3.6 and Chromium Dev it's running well, well over 15 FPS, the target I aim for).

And let me note that making my app work on IE took me two days of work. That is what IE doesn't get and why web developers are mad at IE.

It slows down the pace of amazing UX growth in the web.
This is a TED talk I gave in India last month (December 2010), here: http://theinkconference.com/

(Didn't want anyone to think it was going to be at the next 2011 TED Conference.)
You aren't long on options. I don't think anyone wants to buy half of a company against the will of the other founder. Nor can you force a dissolution of the company. Assuming you don't have an agreement that spells out what happens when one partner wants a split to happen, I think you're in a tough spot.

In your shoes, I would tell your partner that you don't feel like you're being treated like an equal partner... If you don't have veto power on any hire in the company, that isn't right.

If you can't find consensus on strategic or tactical decisions, then I'd ask for a negotiated split. You could sell the whole entity, buy his half, sell him your half, or something more creative. If you can't come to an agreement, you could suggest a mediator. But I don't think you can do anything without his goodwill, so I'd work on getting that. The good news is that he's in the same spot. Hopefully he'll be reasonable... And hopefully next time you make sure to have rules in place for stuff like this. I've always liked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_clause
When you start out, you're designing your site in hopes that someone other than your mom is going to use it. Usually, all you need is an app server and a database. I you get successful, that won't cut it. You usually need to start adding more and more pieces and rethink some technology decisions you made originally.
Startup Lets Anyone Invest in Socially Conscious Upstarts
I think it's more like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Sargasso Sea at least has really cool looking seahorses :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
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Thanks, I did not know that nuance.
I'll bite.

It's a fantastic idea. What is missing from it is how the infrastructure is and probably always will be under the domain (pun intended) of corporations.

For example, how do we provide "internet access" with these servers? We don't own the fiber; it it gets shut down we're dead in the water. ISPs run the networks and therefore control the content and charge for it as much as they want.

An alternative is state-controlled ISPs--but we all can guess how fun that would be.

I'm trying to think of yet other alternatives, but I'm drawing a blank.
Not if you use http://helma.org (SSJS), it has a build in ORM that caches results. 1 machine 2 GB ram serves 30 million hits per month.
I'd second the "mercy sex" explanation...
My beef with ASP.NET is that it makes it disturbingly easy to write code that doesn't scale well and then is ridiculously hard to scale after the fact.

It really is all about the initial design not the language. ASP.NET just makes it too easy to go with bad design and library choices, not to mention the tons of examples of bad design that newbies might accidentally follow at the beginning.
ITrolley 15AT - Computer trolleys for laptop and notebook PC's
RE Pocket-watch:
If you're going to fish something out of your pocket to look at alerts, what's the advantage over just grabbing the phone itself?
You're looking for developers who have faced the problems that a typical web startup is likely to have faced as it grows and gains users. It is naturally easier to find those developers if you write it in a language that those current hot web startups frequently use.
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lord. you're welcome to your interpretation of Tolkien's racism, but since you reference the Maiar, I'm going to assume you're being purposefully reductive to make your point.

> And Aragorn is noble and powerful and should be followed unquestioningly because he's distantly descended from royalty.

He's basically the archetypal benevolent dictator. He may get his claim to rule from his heritage, but he has practically the world's crappiest life until Sauron is destroyed, not out of circumstance but out of a sense of duty. He clearly believes that a king is in service to his subjects.

> And Denethor is crazy and wrong because he has the audacity to disagree with Aragorn despite not having royal blood.

a) Denethor had royal blood b) he was considered very wise and a great king of Gondor. It was only when he took up the tools of the enemy that he had his fall

> And elves are all naturally good and pure by nature of their race — to the point where they are basically immune to Sauron's corruption.

you reference the Maiar but you say this. have you read the silmarillion?? (perusing the wikipedia article will suffice)

> And orcs are their inherently evil cousin race. There is not a single good orc in the whole world. You can feel OK about killing them with impunity.

Will they are a fictional race specifically constructed to be a defilement of life. no, there's not a whole lot of subtle moral ambiguity there, but that's why it's good that there's more than one author ever.

> The only race that seems to actually have any moral subtlety is the Maiar, who can be good or evil with no obvious genetic reason. (I mean, they're still inherently superior beings, but they can at least be evil.)

This is the dumbest part. Look at the inherent contradictions of the numenoreans: benevolent and exploitive, generous but envious, and -- the ultimate sin in tolkien's universe -- so very proud. the dwarves often fought for good, but just as often did so for vengeful or petty reasons. the elves were just totally fucked, and even when they finally grew wise to the morgoths and the saurons of the world, they could find no peace in it, only weariness. the maiar, as you note, were often tempted to evil ways. and who caused all this? The ainur, the highest order of beings. And I don't just mean Melkor, though he of course sewed evil into every living thing. The Ainur were selfish with the elves, they were petty with Feanor and his sons, and they were cruel to humans. They might have wisdom "now," but, like the elves, they screwed everything up in the process.
Slight tangent: Here's a secret about forking. When you fork a project, you anger the loyalists. A lot of large open source projects fork because of deep disagreements / polarization within the team. For minor stuff, it usually just gets settled internally. If the project does get forked, it usually ends with either the original project dying or the fork dying. I can't recall any projects off the top of my head that were forked and both the fork and original remained successful.
"I have yet to see a single android based music player or iPad competitor."

http://www.google.com/search?q=android+tablets
http://www.google.com/search?q=galaxy+player+50
http://www.google.com/search?q=archos+32
>you can file a provisional patent up to a year after first public demo

Heed the caveat though - demonstration or use in public will be citable against an application elsewhere in the world. This is a good review of grace periods (from a European perspective but covering worldwide issues) -

http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/documents/GracePeriodinventionLa...
Whatever you chose - is it really a good plan to write an article that amounts to "my startup was written by somebody who's new to coding in general. And the whole point is to flip it" ?

(Yes, I believe "exit strategy" is a fancy word for "built to flip".)
Although I agree with the point that customers don't give a shit about the technology stack, did it seem to anyone else that he may be a little self-conscious about his choice of choosing ASP.NET? Read every single point. They all mention why he chose ASP.NET.

Edit: why the downvotes? I'm not saying that ASP.NET is a bad language. I'm just saying that his title doesn't agree with what he wrote.
I actually have been working on this same idea of my own. Good to see there will be some competition. :)
Thanks!

I think I understand why the initial design/technology decisions would rarely make it to a product that has to be largely scaled. This makes perfect sense for almost all cases.

Do you think that there are technologies that are inherently more scalable than others, so if some body was initially choosing them would stand more chances to scale up in a non painful manner?
I was trying to make the point that from my vantage point the talent pools are deep in each camp. Bad choice of words on my part.
The only thing I see in 2007 about this is an announcement that they're going to do it. Can you find a pointer to the blog entry announcing that it is available?
30 million hits/month is only about 11 QPS, which is fairly typical of most dynamic-languages frameworks.
Use of Social Networks by Pan Arab Youth
a university is a school, why are you trolling
Those are failures from "being too controlling"?

I'd say there are from being lackluster.
There are some very experienced shops out there charging about $120/hr. Given your (in)experience, adjust accordingly.
One point in favor of requiring ssh keys for external access is that the users don't get to blow it on passwords. Though it does require sysadmin staff who are willing to walk users through the process of creating the keys --- and stubborn enough to explain that this is the procedure until following it becomes the path of least resistance.
"They fused their secular expertise in social networks with a discipline culled from religious movements and combined the energy of soccer fans with the sophistication of surgeons. Breaking free from older veterans of the Arab political opposition, they relied on tactics of nonviolent resistance channeled from an American scholar through a Serbian youth brigade — but also on marketing tactics borrowed from Silicon Valley."
I really like the site, but I'm turned off by the insistence on Twitter as the only way to interact with it.

Can I at least log in with Facebook? Gmail? OpenID?

It should also be possible to submit a new clue from any page, not just the homepage, I spent a little bit of time hunting for a submit button near the top of the page.
I'm interested. fencerf at live.com
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Some love for Other countries, please
It's weird. Once things are set up, it's so much nicer than the alternatives.
http://androidandme.com/2010/03/news/rotten-apple-htc-sued-o...
I had a comment I was prepared to make, a complaint if you will about the tactics of Apple bashing. However, upon reading the article, I see that this fits into an entirely different category: just making up lies out of nothing.

Does this guy work for Fox news? <- please don't attribute this to me being 'a hate filled Democrat'. (A) I'm more close to libertarian on the political scale (NB: tea-party is a bunch of racist corporate-shills, so wrong again if that was your second guess) and (B) The Democrats are a bunch of complete pussies. All those complaints about how the Republicans halted congress and wouldn't let you pass any bills? That was EXACTLY what you should have been doing the previous 8 years. And here's a heads up: if you're not on their 'team', you are supposed to oppose them. But no, you went along with what the other team was doing, because you didn't want the dreaded label "not a team player". If the other team is raping the dead and rotting corpse of your beloved constitution, you're not supposed to help them!!! Pussies.
Whenever I hear about foreign currency translated into USD, I get nervous...

Is that $26 a month merely a direct translation at the going financial rate (about 200 HKD), or is that taking in to account the general wages of Hong Kong in general?

For example, when you're paid $3000/month, $26 is nothing, but if you're only paid $800 a month (like many in Hong Kong), then that 200HKD is no longer comparable to $26. It's more like $98 a month.

Living in Japan, I get a lot of comments about how expensive video games are here (6000yen or 71USD). The fact is 6000 yen is more like 60USD, as long as you're living and working in Japan. Just because the USD is in the crapper, doesn't mean that all of our products suddenly got more expensive.

</rant>

By the way, we have 1Gbps here in Japan as well... I believe it's only 70-100USD a month?
How is effectively booting popular services from their devices in the interest of their customers?
Has the @ symbol now become the standard symbol for denoting a user's "homepage" on a site? I thought it was generally used to link directly to their twitter page?
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How about a sample before I surrender my email address?
Their app would be pulled from the store. You do business in the App Store at Apple's pleasure. Attempting to flout the spirit of their asinine rules is unlikely to be successful.
When I saw the name "beepl" I thought it was a contraction of "beep"+"ppl" [people] - like signalling to people with a beep or something. Then I saw the little bees; perhaps it fits better my way? Was that intentional.

Twitter meets StackOverflow - Is that a reasonable summary?

Hope all goes well on 30th March for you.
Amazing write up - this is one of the best pieces of technical journalism I that I think I've seen. There is no hype, it's informed, it's detailed - but not super technical, i.e. math showing password complexity to rainbow table size tradeoffs etc.

Any journalists out there, this is how it's done.
I think that Facebook is doing some interesting things on the security front, but it doesn't seem to be working very well. Every week another friend of mine gets his or her account hacked and I often get free iPad spam or whatever. As far as I can see, Facebook hasn't made any progress on this issue.

Even worse, they don't seem to provide good resources that describe how to fix a hack after it happens. Also, I've heard that there's no simple way to mass delete the spam that spews from your account. You can't even find it unless you look at every one of your friends' walls to see if you spammed them.

Shouldn't these hacks be pretty easy to stop?
>the talent pools are deep in each camp

That doesn't really matter if in the PHP and .NET world you have to filter through 10,000 people to find somebody of the same median grade as you'd find in haskell/python/ruby/clojure.

I'm exaggerating for effect, but the take-home here is that if you don't have unlimited resources you need to have some way to differentiate and filter from the guys offering the sweet vacation packages and steady career options.

How exactly are you differentiating and filtering for higher quality people if not by technologies and developer freedom?

Do you have nice offices ala 37signals?

Are you an advocate of developer 'rights' such as Joel has been known to enumerate?

Why exactly should a dev tolerate using VisualStudio and Windows for the sake of working on your company?
First paragraph can be read as response to "not providing on XP". Microsoft tends to invent new (and ostensibly better, really just more unusable) API for 2D graphics acceleration with each version of Windows since 3.1. And IE9 seems to be their flagship application for current iteration of this 2D graphics API madness.
Bug: I was clicking random clue, and it worked fine for a few, but then I got: The webpage at http://cluedb.com/clue/7298Bb// has resulted in too many redirects.
The conclusion I've come to is that you're overreacting. You've gotten a lot of options on this thread. I'll add one more, listing it first. Pick one or more and do them.

* Hire another product lead to manage the front-end of the project.

* Convince your partner it's time to seek outside funding to scale the business.

* Hire a VP/Marketing, VP/Engineering, or VP/Sales to add a stakeholder who will be objective and put pressure on your team not to make dumb decisions.

* Convince your partner to add a minority partner, splitting the equity cost equally between the two of you, so that you can have another person who is fully focused on the business (and, don't say this to your partner, to break ties).

* Hire a mediator to hear you and your partner out and agree beforehand that you're going to abide by their decisions.

* Wait it out. For ~3 years or so your partner managed the business, kept things organized, got people paid, did sales at least as well as you did, and generally made up for all the gaps you (like everyone else) had. When things calm down with his personal life, maybe everything will be fine again.