skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't know about you, but when I hand my credit card to somebody, I don't actually check out the brand name of the reader they're using. Whether the little gadget says Square or Circle or Rhombus on it has no effect on my expectation of a legitimate transaction.

If legitimate people using Square could have their numbers stolen because the upstream communication to the server wasn't encrypted, that would be a problem. That would be something to secure.

I mean, if the Square device couldn't read the raw numbers, then people would be complaining about how they own the hardware and they should be able to do whatever they want with it.
it's fairly standard terminology...you've doubled the amount of data that can be sent over a given chunk of spectrum per unit time, without changing the modulation/encoding scheme (bits/hz). A normal full duplex FDD system takes twice the bandwidth to pass the same amount of information as this theoretically can.

Rather than think about bursty, asymmetric Ethernet bits, consider passing something like a fully allocated T1 over it. Symmetric TDM links aren't totally dead, there are a lot of T1 radios out there. What used to take X Hz of bandwidth, theoretically can be done in X/2...without changing the modulation.

I don't think it will actually be used that way, but it is a breakthrough of sorts to be able to do so.
>> I picked the netbook edition for a laptop - thinking it might be optimised for long battery life as well as a small display.

> I really doubt that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that has historically been the case. The netbook edition contained some kernel tweaks to make it run better on Atom processors, and also used an interface optimized for smaller screens; most recently Unity.
This is the only relevant comment in this entire thread.

What's more, the 3-digit "security" code (pardon me, whilst I scoff) for these cards is printed on the card! If you hand someone your card, you're already saying that you trust them not to keep your card number and security code and submit false charges. The Square reader isn't making that process any harder or easier; it's totally irrelevant.
Is there a thread of sarcasm I'm missing in this?

That's what the honey is for, isn't it?
I think that those who repeatedly navigate the layoff cycle successfully are either incredibly competent or evil and incompetent. I have only come across evil and incompetent though.
1) It's hard to detect when to fallback. You'd have to set up a list of user-agents you've tested and code around their individual issues. This is not ideal.

2) It doesn't solve the iOS problem (which, as this post points out, has even more issues than desktop browsers)
That seems like the kind of thing that would work if you're (a genius like) Knuth, but maybe not so much if you're me. Even though I like to take some time to draw things out on paper, I don't think I'd ever have the confidence (or the skill) to assume that it would just work.
Without size and weight included, which are to me the primary attributes of a laptop, the comparison is moot.
"This whole "but you can do it on the black market for $20!" argument is, pardon the Latin, fucking ridiculous."

Nice way to add 'black market' in there to try to dismiss a valid point. You can get card readers from legitimate businesses. They are valid peripherals used all the time. Do a search for 'usb credit card reader' on Google. All those results are not black market.

As an aside, it's funny how you have a problem with GP saying 'Are you serious?' and thinking it implies your point is stupid but then take the exact same dismissive tone for your whole post.

"I seriously can't believe there are people in this thread, who identify themselves as IT specialists, siding with Square because credit card processing is a lost cause. "

The fact of the matter is that people hand their cards over all the time to pay for things and no one ever looks to see what kind of device it is. When you are paying for something in a shop, do you check out the credit card processing machine first to make sure it's secure? When you hand your card over to the waiter to take to the back and pay for your meal, do you follow him to make sure he isn't swiping it into another machine or writing the number down on paper? Nope. And the fact that the square reader is a plaintext device, like a lot of the readers on point-of-sale systems, really doesn't mean anything.
Show HN: Please review http://GetLocalNe.ws
Originally begun as a sort of 'weekend' project, it has been a bit of a struggle, but finally I think we've brought it to a state where I can request reviews, feedback etc.:

http://GetLocalNe.ws

Please feel free to report bugs/problems or post feedback/suggestions on any aspect of it.

Geolocation accuracy (or inaccuracy) reports will be highly appreciated.

Quality of data is being rigorously assessed now, but the current data should be at least reasonably okay. Please let me know otherwise.

Work on identifying and integrating XML/RSS feeds from news sources is on now and this will be implemented in phase-II, within a week or so.

Identification and addition of new news sources is also being carried out now. You can help (greatly) by suggesting additional news sources known to you using the 'Suggest a News Source' link.

Please feel free to post feedback at the site Guestbook too.

Over to you now:

http://GetLocalNe.ws
From the Discussion section:

This work shows that it is clearly possible to tie digital
identities together and, most likely, to real identities in
many cases only using ubiquitous usernames. We also showed
that, even though users are free to change their usernames
at will, they do not do it frequently and, when they do, it
is in a predictable way. Our technique might then be used as
an additional tool when investigating online crime. It is
however also subject to abuse and could result in breaches
in privacy. Advertisers could automatically build online
profiles of users with high accuracy and minimum effort,
without the consent of the users involved.

From the Conclusion section:

We extend this technique to cope with profiles that are linked
but have different usernames and tie our problem to the well
known problem of record linkage. All the methods we tried have
high precision in linking username couples that belong to the
same users.

Ultimately we show a new class of profiling techniques that can
be exploited to link together and abuse the public information
stored on online social networks and web services in general.
More about Netflix on EC2: ELB, memcached, SimpleDB, Cassandra, monitoring
How smooth is the Nook Color for navigating around an academic PDF? When I've played with one inside the store, it seemed a little jerky when zooming on the Nook Color manual PDF.
Yes, it's true.

I hope Mozilla and Google take advantage of this opportunity.
If you start one, I'll attend.
You are correct in that all of the distributions only vary by the set of packages installed by default. The server edition, however, is designed to run headless and is thus very functionally different (i.e. X is not running by default, there are no window managers installed, etc). Converting the "Desktop Edition" to the "Server Edition" is just as much about removing packages as it is about adding them.
The death of the magnetic stripe credit card
It does suck as a policy, but this has been going on for a long time regardless of how good or bad the economy is.

This is also why I am _always_ in a job search (even though I've never been laid off). There is definitely a career "cost" that comes from the stigma of a lay-off. And it absolutely is the case that being unemployed is a strike against you in an employer's eyes even if they don't go as far as excluding you from consideration.

I wish employers would take a more intelligent approach to hiring. Until they do, good employees will jump ship at the first sign of trouble to avoid the risk of a lay-off.
> Aside from the part where a vendor is required to keep your card number for refunds...

Vendors aren't required to retain the full card number. They are required to retain the last 5 digits (or last 4, I'm not 100% positive), as well as the transaction time. When a chargeback or refund comes around, they'll cross reference multiple forms of identification on the transaction, but they'll never have to handle the full card number.

All card readers are a two part solution. A hardware reader (USB, serial, whatever) is useless without some sort of {firm,soft}ware behind it. With Square, consumers will be trusting whoever they hand their card to be running current and legitimate software. How this is any different than me handing my card to an entirely random person at the corner store I don't understand, except this time I could write an alternate application to process the transaction myself without having to use a JTAG cable as I would for one of Verifone's closed systems.

edit: clarification of last paragraph.
DataMapper's dm-constraints plugin (https://github.com/datamapper/dm-constraints) can automatically add foreign key constraints to your associations, which has the side effect (in MySQL at least) of creating indices on the foreign key columns if they don't already exist.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.

(I am a square investor.)
I did the same thing. My name was unique 3 years ago and still is from what I've been able to tell.
(I'm speaking only for myself with this comment).

You know it's not a real security concern because it can't be mollified. The kernel of Verifone's argument requires that nobody ever accept credit cards with little white card reader dongles, because a little white card skimmer dongle is trivial to construct. If Square dongles had googley eyes and pink antennae, Verifone's argument would involve the ease with which criminals can procure googley eyes and antennae.

What's pernicious about this argument is the way they've tried to make it sound as if there's a real technical concern here, when in fact the real issue they're articulating implicates the entire business model.
I wish WordPress would use unique names for their software releases. Didn't they just have that namespace collision with Django? It's great that they checked with Mozilla before using the name "Jetpack", but it's still going to confuse some people if used without the prefix.
Adding physics to Minecraft
I was expecting a simple Heroku-style scalable cloud hosting solution for Wordpress with one-click deploy from wordpress.org. A few plugins that wordpress hosts doesn't seem like that exciting of a feature :\
Well, there goes any hopes of WebGL. It's a shame, too, the spec was just finalized last week.
Gmail Unveils Another Weapon Against Email Overload: Smart Labels
Joel Spolsky on the social engineering that made Stack Overflow successful
An odyssey of academic dishonesty
This is what happens when there's not enough quality coffee in my cup prior to hitting HN in the morning.
The point is that Square is marketed as a (presumably secure)
payment device. i.e. two (merchant and customer)
establish trust so that the customer feels comfortable making
a payment with the merchant's device.

I don't see anything on Square's site that says: "If someone is using Square, then they are trustworthy." And it's a good thing, because it would be a completely wrong thing to claim.

If I'm handing my credit card to someone I need to trust them no matter what device they happen to be using, because they have eyes and can read my information.

It doesn't matter if they're using Square, Veri-whatever, or some beige-colored plastic card reader with a register that looks like it's from the 90's -- my data is vulnerable before it ever gets to the card reader.

Square's security claims come into play once you trust that the person you're handing the card to doesn't want to rip you off. Once you accept that, then you can hold Square accountable for getting your data safely from that person to wherever it needs to go. But if you don't feel that the person you're physically giving the card to is legit, then Square can't possibly (or at least shouldn't) change your mind about that.
The other possibility is that they pay attention to the writing on the wall, keep their professional networks fresh and are ready to bail out in time before the lay-offs come.
I excelled when I was a MS CS student at Stanford (I can go into detail if anyone needs convincing), and I did it on very little sleep - 4-5 hours/night for weeks at a time. I absolutely positively couldn't have done what I did on 8 hours of sleep a night. There wouldn't have been enough time in the day.

I sleep much more now. Left to my own devices, I adjust to a roughly 28-hour clock during which I sleep 9-10 hours a cycle.
And if you ever want to see NK yourself from the inside, check out http://www.koryogroup.com - took a tour with them a couple years ago and was an interesting experience.
The data on the magnetic stipe isn't encrypted, just encoded. There is no exploited vector. No one has cracked anything. You can read all about the encoding used and implement your own card reader with just a little Googling. You aren't 'hacking' anything to do so.
Hmm, I think you missed my point. If the company is pre-Series A then the market value of the company is unknown. If, as a developer, you can arbitrage risk/time for money exactly like a VC does, but rather than cash equity you invest sweat equity.

So in the pre-Series A scenario, one would value the company the same way a investor would. Do you think this team can execute? What is the available market for their product? How much could they reasonably expect to capture? What is the upside if they capture more? What might be their valuation in a post-execution scenario (which is to say they've delivered their product into production). And, like a VC your risk is that they will not be able to execute and they will go under.

On a related note, I met a number of consultants in the dot com era who were operating like this. They were offering to take a portion of their fees in stock. This way, if they consulted at 10 different companies they have 10 chips in the game in case one of them 'wins.' The size of the stake they ended up with in various companies wasn't VC class (not millions of shares, more like thousands of shares) but it added upside down the road for them.

The larger point I was trying to make was that there are many variables that are unknown about this particular arrangement, one can posit values for the unknowns that would make it a 'good' deal and one can posit values that would make it a 'dumb' deal. Its an interesting Rorschach test to see how different people immediately jump to one side or the other. I think that can help people understand their own internal biases which they may, or may not, be aware of.
People will debate endlessly whether IE9 is a "modern" browser based on its HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, etc support.

The real smoking gun that it still isn't modern is that it doesn't include a spellcheck by default. You can't claim to be doing what users want while ignoring that elephant in the room.
No kidding.

>"In less than an hour, any reasonably skilled programmer can write an application that will "skim" – or steal – a consumer's financial and personal information right off the card utilizing an easily obtained Square card reader."

Oh, but wait, we already DID IT FOR YOU.

VeriFone, protecting consumers by posting hacked apps to skim credit card numbers.
Invisible Wi-Fi signals caught on camera
حظك اليوم 10-3-2011
Well IE7 and IE8 work on XP. Or are you just saying they should try to force the upgrade to IE8?
I deleted this game months ago because it is just a front to get players to purchase in-game crap with real cash. I moved onto better iOS games that focus on gameplay and not trying to get into my wallet.

This game is making more money on Android because it lacks other great games in the genre. While I applaud them for finding a way to improve their sales, it would be pretty wrongheaded for any developer to think that this is a long term profitable stance.
And yet Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all manage to do it regularly with games. I agree Amazon is set to dominate this market, but if B&N can figure out a way to leverage its brick and mortar stores in this fight, they could still be a solid competitor. For example, if they really embraced this and allowed people to browse around the store for a book, take it to the counter and buy the ebook and have the clerk put it on your Nook, they could continue to capture the crowd that wants to browse as well as expand the market to people who are more technology-phobic.
Jed, there are exactly two directions you can go from here, and I advise you to pick one of them instead of standing in the crossroads hollering and waving your arms.

On one road, you make the argument that it is fundamentally unsafe to accept credit cards with commodity mobile computing devices, because there is no way to do chain-of-custody control with insecure magstripe cards. There is a reasonable case to be made here. I'll disagree with it, but you won't automatically lose.

On the other road, you can provide one of more specific steps Square could take to make their commodity mobile card reader device meaningfully more secure. Be careful on this road because it is dangerous; people, myself included, will be standing on the side of the road shooting at you. Remember, anything you come up with must meaningfully improve the security of a device that can only interact with insecure magstripes.

You can also walk your argument back, which is what I'd do if I were in your shoes.
Actually, no. The good reason that IE9 does not run on Windows XP has been publicly stated for at least an year, if not actually longer. The FAQ on ietestdrive.com [1] answers this question. The short answer is that the Graphics stack that IE9 uses is not available on Windows XP.

[1] http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/FrequentlyAskedQuesti...
HP Envy 17 is clearly a rip off.
On the Possibility of Non-Conformity in a Conformist Career
> fraud liability on the card issuer instead of the consumer

The law may have put it on the issuer, but the issuers just fob it off on the merchants.

> The truth is credit card "security" is a bad joke.

Word.

[EDIT:] Some additional thoughts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2305899l
No sense in wasting resources on a desktop you'll never see.
StartupDigest Takes $200,000 To Curate Information For Entrepreneurs
Heh... fair enough, updated the doc -- the numbers show HP is getting better at cloning by the year:

Dimensions
---
MBP: 14.35 x 9.82 x 0.95
HPE: 14.01 x 9.33 x 1.17

Weight:
---
MBP: 5.6 lbs
HPE: 5.5 lbs
This has come up on HN many, many times: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1464142

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652650
[Official] Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 To Launch On March 14
It's enforceable, just hard to enforce. But we shouldn't stop laws from being on the books because they're hard to enforce. .

Given that if I were unemployed I think I'd prefer employers who have no intention of hiring me not waste my time with an interview.

While true in the abstract, how would you feel if couldn't get a job and people said, "We don't give jobs to your race. But aren't you glad you know so you don't waste time applying? And don't bother starting your own company, no one buys products from companies of your kind either. Better hope there's space in the welfare line."

While I may appreciate the time saved, I'd think it would be nice to be able to prevent this sort of practice from running rampant. Even if through some artificial measures like gov't contracts.
Just to save people some time, here are the nook color specs:

Power	Installed battery (8 hours with Wi-fi off)

CPU	800 Mhz ARM Cortex-A8-based TI OMAP3621[1] PowerVR SGX 530 (unconfirmed)

Storage capacity	8GB internal storage, 32GB expandable

Memory	512MB

Display	7-inch 1024 x 600 px WSVGA IPS LCD at 170 ppi

Input	Capacitive multitouch screen with side Volume, Nook Home, and Power buttons.

Connectivity	Wi-Fi USB

Dimensions
8.1 in (210 mm) (h), 5.0 in (130 mm) (w), 0.48 in (12 mm) (d), Weight	15.8 oz (450 g)
Mathematically Annoying Advertising
It's a bogus technical reason. Chrome and Firefox show that GPU acceleration can work on XP:

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/09/hardware-acceleration/

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/09/unleashing-gpu-acceleration...

If Microsoft wanted to support GPU acceleration through an alternate rendering path like two other browsers are doing on XP, they would have done so.

I find it more likely to conclude that they just didn't want to support XP and developed a browser GPU acceleration engine that wouldn't support it as a result of this high-level decision.
I was assuming that different sets of packages would be installed depending on a choice presented during installation.
At the ecommerce company I work for, I keep repeating this in terms of SEO:

"Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work."

Does creating a link farm hidden in the sitemap create value for users? What about spamming articles on ezines with no valuable content? Ha.
http://bitbucket.org here
Classifieds done right and looking the way they should look like in 2011.
Checking what's new at a first glance in a nicely presented way is outstanding. Searching not only extends beyond any classifieds type of web site, but also adds simplicity.
Knowing App engine keeps my posts and data trough my Google account feels safer than any other server's database. After all an information leeks are not an unknown issue nowadays.
Would love to have this UI available for my iPad ..
For more information about how to adjust your schedule so that you can fit in the essential 7-8 hours of sleep, why powering down before sleep is so critical and how to do it, and the secret to falling back sleep when you wake up and begin ruminating, register for Tony Schwartz' webinar, Sleep or Die, on March 22 at 1pm EST. Sign up at	https://theenergyproject.webex.com/theenergyproject/onstage/...
Improving User Experience: Preloading Images for Better Website Performance
Scheduling Algorithms for Procrastinators: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~bender/pub/JoS07-procrastinate.pdf

``We are writing this sentence two days before the deadline. Unfortunately that sentence (and this one) are among the ﬁrst that we have written. How could we have delayed so much when we have known about this
deadline for months? (...)''
Prisoners Will Help Build Patriot Missiles
I think it depends on degree of unemployment. Folks in this 99 week situations have been unemployed for nearly 2 years... you have to wonder at some point why they haven't gotten some sort of job -- even a lousy one. For an IT job, are you really qualified for many midlevel or senior positions after two years of inactivity?

That's a long time on the bench.
Not all jobs are as amenable to freelancing as software
TeX is great, but it is getting long in the tooth. I find the CMR family of fonts works well for a short paper, but it hurts my eyes to look at a book written in TeX.
clearly you've never actually ran an advanced SEO campaign. I can rank a shitty, spun article higher than most people's great articles with those "fiddly tactics" without ever touching the article itself.
Photo tour of Foursquare HQ right before biggest launch in company history