skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
from the @phpfog timeline : "Time for a contest! How many security enhancements were in PHP 5.3.6? First correct answer gets into the beta immediately."
4:22 PM Mar 18th vía Twitter for Mac
http://twitter.com/phpfog/status/48856795669737472
I was really hoping that was a cake..
However, when Professor Farnsworth says that, it usually means the news is not good - not good for his minions.
If the recruiter has no clue of geography, or heck is in a completely different country - what are the chances the position they are recruiting for is any good?
Google and Bing are doing billions of web pages, not millions. I process millions of web pages myself with 3 computers -- millions aren't a lot these days, although I'm not currently using clustering methods.

Rather I'm selective with my inputs so I start with unscrambled eggs so I can improve precision not by "a few percentage points" but rather reduce the false positive rate by an order of magnitude.

My use of ML so far has been modest, limited to solving a few straightforward problems. Personally I think search is boring (on webscale, too big of a game for small players plus search as we know it probably can't get much better because the queries are not precise -- better performance will require changing the game) but I've been forced to put effort into it because end users expect it.
That is correct. The judge fairly strongly hints at that; the verdict states breaking into a router may be socially unacceptable, but it is not computervredebreuk (breaching the peace and quiet of one's computer). For a verdict from an impartial judge, that is quite explicit.

In particular, lawyers discussing this think civil charges (for stealing bandwidth or electrical power) could still apply.
And wasn't battle.net a Kali ripoff in the first place?
TextExpander snippet site
At proximity or from a distance, technology is bringing people together
Not sure what the hack was for the main server, but I'm not even sure I would consider the steps mentioned at this site as hacks so much as "server administration." It's a pretty obvious thing to try. It was only a matter of time before someone decided to poke around and see what they could do.
I've been using Navicat, a native app for this purpose. Basically mySQL workbench but nicer to use, or that Sequel Pro thing but with more functionality. It's a very polished piece of software, and I highly recommend it.

http://www.navicat.com/
Automated deployment of node.js apps
Ruby is big on OSX, often used as a step up from applescript. Python is super-easy to learn. Java will give newbies a headache
chroot has not been designed as a security feature but as a system testing tool. you only need a local root exploit to get out of chroot. you need additional protection to have a proper jail; freebsd does this, openbsd used to, not sure how it is now.
I believe that their is a limit for how much they will reimburse, $600 if I remember correctly. The total cost of the flights would be about $6000 for myself and my two co-founders as well.

If would be nice if there was more time between knowing you've been invited for an interview (April 7th) and traveling for the interview (April 23-28th). Since that's less than a month's notice, it means that airfare will be at it's highest.
The original article sounds quite juvenile, even if you think their idea is silly or not: http://www.betabeat.com/2011/03/17/hashable-is-worthless/
Contact Form Tutorial Using Html and PHP
I think your view of the MBTI-traits is a little too black and white.
Being an introvert indeed does not meen that you lack communicatoin skills or are uncomfortable in social situations, it only means that you enjoy solitude more than an extroverted person, and even need it sometimes because social situations can be draining.
It basically could be described by getting your energy from being alone VS getting it from being with people.

The other traits aren't meaningless either, though I think their naming can be a little misleading. For example, always keeping deadlines or finishing prior to them is a high indicator of someone being a J. Ss tend to be more detail oriented, in-the-moment people, why Ns see the big picture, etc. I think if you spend some time really understanding the MBTI it can be of great help in dealing with people that are different than you.

So what I'm really trying to say - those traits don't describe how people behave, but how they process information and handle certain situations.
Not since the last one, but it appears the one before it had a pretty decent sized vulnerability.

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/security/PMASA-2011-2.ph...
Hey guys,

I'm Elliot Speck, one of the guys (let's be realistic, the main guy) behind the phpFog hack, I guess the record needs to be set straight about exactly what went down.

phpfogsucks.com isn't mine, I never contributed directly to it and any work credited by me is assumed by the creator and owner of that site.

My work was slightly different, I was proving that the system was horribly exploitable. Throughout the process I burnt into the box, gained root access, and took a screenshot. I also gained access to the phpFog Twitter account and posted a bit. I didn't damage any files, and when I finally came into contact with Lucas, I explained my methodology directly and gave him a few security pointers for immediate causes for concern. As a result, the project is now on standby as they fix up the issues that were made apparent by my break-in.

I don't consider what I did to be a bad thing. It's better me break in and make the fact I did public, than someone break in silently and wipe the box, losing hundreds of hours of both the team's and clients' time. That is below any moral standard I could possibly even consider upholding.

What I did not do:

-Damage or otherwise alter any of the system files

-Damage, alter or view any client files

-Post or otherwise make public the methodology behind my access

-Post or otherwise make public the engine code for phpFog, this was done by someone else who I showed the code to in order to investigate further potential security holes before I alerted the phpFog team.

I'm posting here to clear the air, but if you have any questions you can contact me on Twitter: @ElliotSpeck.
Compare that to this: http://bit.ly/gdmYw6 how 37signals responded to a complaint
Here is a td;lr

Global warming causes glacial melt which changes stresses on tectonic plates. Readjustment to said stresses can cause earthquakes. Nobody knows whether this can only cause shallow earthquakes, or whether it could cause deeper ones to trigger as well. But there has been a significant increase in both earthquakes and major earthquakes over the last few decades, and it is possibly connected.
Hidden Treasures of the Python Standard Library
We call it "Spring plowing" in Iowa. Or "Fall Plowing", whatever works.
Started two years ago 19K first year.

Still have few more months in the second year,already passed the 50K+ mark.
Somewhat off-topic, but I trust the judgement of those here. I'm in the market to buy one of these. I was wondering whether current owners feel the extra 2MB of L3 cache justifies the price-bump of the 2.3GHz processor.
Just applied as a single founder as well ... good luck!
Poll: Did you apply to YC for S11?
I thought that it would be nice to know the number of start-ups that applied for S11.
I still have a few hours
Also you could put in your title, that it's a pdf file
Is it considered acceptable to offer a connection to one of your employer's customers if you have spoken with them personally (but don't work in sales etc)?
Yes but the whole idea is that YC can help you execute better.
The scalability you get really depends on the type of queries you fire, which depends on the kind of schema you have. A good schema designed for read (assuming that read is much more frequent than a write for some use-case) rather than write would definietly work out well with a SQL db.
I am pretty sure this judge knew the router stored data; that is where the police found the MAC address of the person accused.

Also, law is not explicit about what constitutes a 'computer'. All it says is:

"Onder geautomatiseerd werk wordt verstaan een inrichting die bestemd is
om langs elektronische weg gegevens op te slaan, te verwerken en over te dragen."

"with automated work, we mean an apparatus intended to e used to store, process,
and transport data using electronics means."

The only thing explicit here is that it must be electronic; breaking into hydraulic computers is not illegal. All others are open for interpretation (is copying data from an input port to an output port processing? Is digitally storing configuration data really different from having hardware switches?)

I suspect law will evolve nuances over time. For example, would an external hard disk with built-in encryption be an automated work? A SAN with built-in encryption? A home server? My guesses would be no (no real processing of information), no, and yes.
Their phpfogsucks is hosted with tomato.compwhizii.net:

http://sharingmyip.com/?site=phpfogsucks.com

The guy ( http://johnduhart.me/ )could be in trouble if they decide to go with legal action.
Immigration is going to get tougher in Canada from April

http://www.canadavisa.com/canada-immigration-discussion-boar...
I had the 13" 2010 version and got bumped up for the free exchange since i was in the one month window and got the new 2011 version.

I noticed that when i started Parallels and opened my second windows VM instance everything came to a stand still and i had to restart. I also saw someone in the Apple discussion threads mentioning a similar issue while running Vmware fusion. I will try the 'Automatic graphics switching' and hopefully it gets better, else back to the Apple store!
I've used SliceHost, Linode, and AWS, as well as some "no-name" providers. Linode is my top pick. I've thought about moving my stuff to AWS (due to the hourly vs monthly billing) multiple times but always ended up staying with Linode.
Become a Better Writer with Pooping, Bleeding, Painting, and 30 other ways
Indeed, that was my reasoning. I'm simply curious. It didn't even come into me to think of it as an attack. Any anti-communism or anti-introvert bias he might have read in my message is completely his own. I'm an introvert myself and I don't regard either capitalism or communism as evil in itself.
I like the part about how "“pivot” is start-up talk for “try to make something that’s at least a little less stupid than what you originally made”."
Agreed -- the author of the post is talking about writing or debugging algorithms; coding is the stuff you need your computer for.
Ask HN: YC S2011: Who Applied and why?
Just a simple question wondering who cares to share about their application to this batch of YC and why they chose to do it.

I'll start with myself. I applied to this batch with an idea that I hope will give sellers instead of buyers an upper hand in the consumer to consumer selling market.

I applied because I believe in the idea and am already considering working on it exclusively full time, but would like to get some outside validation that it is worth my time.

To compete with an ebay or craigslist eventually I think I would need a combination of both good funding and viral marketing. It seems like YC could help me significantly with both.

On the downside I am a single founder and never finished college. Guess we'll see what happens

What's your idea and why did you apply? I am sure there are plenty of us out there that would love to hear it
Crockford has an article about it (http://javascript.crockford.com/tdop/tdop.html) in _Beautiful Code_, and there's a copy of the Pratt paper that escaped the clutches of the ACM's paywall at http://hall.org.ua/halls/wizzard/pdf/Vaughan.Pratt.TDOP.pdf . Spread it around!
Lucas notes some of the security improvements they plan on: http://help.phpfog.com/discussions/questions/84-details-on-t...

1) Every environment is going to be chrooted and Apache will be running under per-user mpm

2) The dedicated ec2 servers will be running in a way that has no security credentials of any sort, a walled garden that will not have access anywhere else.
phpMyAdmin needs a lot of work in my opinion, it feels incredibly outdated. SequelPro is probably the best MySQL front end I have ever used.
Like others in this thread, I have very good experience with Linode. I've used some local VPSs here, but Linode has the best specs for the price, and haven't had any reliability issues or mysterious out-of-memory issues with them.
No, it's not unusual at all. They employ people full time to do it! And it's not new either, before blogs recruiters contacted people who had a big presence on Usenet or mailing lists.

It is only unusual for someone to confuse it for an actual "job offer".
I would consider, " I also gained access to the phpFog Twitter account and posted a bit." to be a dick move.
I have a blog?
I am happy with Hostgator (starblogger.net) and so many other bloggers to. I am intending to buy a CDN service in order to increase the blog 's speed.

However, if your blog becomes bigger, I should try VPS for sure. Slicehost or VPS.net is worth to try.
I've seen VC being called the "dark side" of entrepreneurship a few times (as in "I launched a startup, got a successful exit and I now turned to the dark side of VC"). It's of course partly joking, but probably also revealing of how VCs are seen by the startup entrepreneurs.

I really says something about the record industry when comparing that "dark side" to the recording industry is seen as derogatory to the "dark side".

Kinda reminds me of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasStanda... on tvtropes.org
She probably read the email and thought: "Hacker? He's a hacker? We can't hire hackers! Good thing he told me straight away, he just saved us all a lot of time!"

We know what he means, but other people take the word hacker to mean something else.

If Sony came to this site and saw this article, they'd probably think the same thing too. If the email was sent to try and get them to change their ways, it probably won't have worked at all, since they might not even understand the meaning of the message.
So true. Giving OK presentations is a technical skill that can be acquired with a bit of training (and a sympathetic audience to bounce off for your unsuccessful shows). Most people who are brilliant public speakers are extroverts, but many extroverts are only passable or downright terrible at public speaking, because they never have acquired the skill, while an introvert can train themselves to be quite interesting and engaging.

These are unscientific observations on the basis of a bunch of academic conferences (which give you the opportunity of observing the same person in a public-speaking context and informally). YMMV.
Does wealth exist in a vacuum?
Would you rather that I hadn't, and instead just wiped the box?

How about I changed every DNS record for every domain to something like goatse.cx?

In perspective, it's not a dick move at all. I'm not academically subnormal, I wouldn't do stupid things with a public Twitter account excluding make it noted that it's temporarily under someone else's control. What's more, I willingly relinquished control of it back to Lucas about an hour later.
Rule of 72
It's OK to not check in on it or the people you're connected to for a year.

In the context of Facebook not being LinkedIn, you're correct. But for professional relationships, it is not okay to NOT check in on your contacts and see how their doing. Otherwise what's the point as listing them as someone you know if you're not going to bother following up on them, their company or their career? Do you even care?

These bridges are vital for every professional that cares to build them, and if you're not going to maintain it, ultimately it's your fault when a recruiter tries to cross that bridge only to fall through a weak plank when that contact goes "Who?"

It's not what you know.
It's not who you know.
It's who knows you.
The Razors-and-Blades Myth(s) [pdf]
This has been going on for a quite some time. There's another side-effect of this strategy that the author doesn't explicitly mention. Even if you're willing to pay the recruiter's fee, you'll sometimes get to the point of making an offer to a candidate and they'll essentially be offended by the offer, since it's lower than the amount listed in the recruiter-overhauled job description that they saw.

I had one candidate ask me point-blank if I was low-balling him because I thought he was under-qualified in some way. It turns out that perception was based on the job description he saw and after I explained that the number he saw wasn't ours, he accepted the offer. But I refuse to work with that recruiter any more.
Yes, he's been on a pretty consistent self-promotion tour with the blog and the twitter.
> But there has been a significant increase in both earthquakes and major earthquakes over the last few decades, and it is possibly connected.

Unrelated to the improvements in seismological monitoring, no doubt.
That's a false dichotomy. You didn't have to post on their Twitter account, just like you didn't have to wipe a box or alter DNS. I hope if you learn one thing from this, it's how real responsible disclosure works.
TitanFile.com is released. Share large files and track access.
Bradley Kuhn: Questioning The Original Analysis On The Bionic Debate
I'm just speechless about that computed re-creation assembling the four frames. Brilliant.

The interpretation of the blank spot is also quite nice and very Escher-esque, with the content literally jumping out of the frame. Probably Escher left the center patch blank because his construction method would have him exceed some technical/physical limitation, so instead of drawing an approximation he preferred a void.
This is something I have been doing with the idea guys on craigslist. Most of them are not even willing to buy me a cup of coffee to listen to their pitch. Out of 15 or so I have yet to see even a basic landing page get put up.
How to win at social media: Do something else
So, just to clear something up: those links to PHPFog code are dumps that you leaked to a third party, who then posted up this website?
The funny thing is that I've now heard of Hashable. It's also the kind of service where any publicity really is good publicity. Would not be surprised to now see them posting record hits.
Tell HN: Today is the last day for applying to YC Summer 2011 
Though, we are not submitting this time around. All the best to everyone who is applying, may the source be with you.
No, but it makes a pretty good story for the media, which will probably result in lots of more negative PR for Sony, which in turn will be something that Sony would worry about.
The website was allegedly posted before I obtained the engine code, however it then went on the site after I gave a copy of the engine code to someone in order to analyze and look for further exploits.

To clarify, I had no intention of hosting the files for public access and never did so. Any links to my site were immediately dead as they were only used so that a copy of the source could be obtained to analyze. The files were destroyed from the server after.
There's an OS X screensaver based on this work which animates the effect, in a similar way to "dive" animations into fractal images. Fascinating but also nauseating after a while.

http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/lotsablankers/lotsaescher
We use Clojure in our startup and it significantly speeds up development for us. Also, the resulting code runs correctly and many classes of bugs are eliminated just because of the language.

Clojure really shines in complex concurrent applications. In our case, it's a search engine for e-commerce, offered as SaaS, with instant search (so speed really matters). Without Clojure it would have been much more difficult to manage problems like concurrent switching to a new index while queries are being serviced.

I was initially skeptical and worried about implementation quality, but over 1.5 years of development we found exactly ZERO bugs in the language itself.

So there is beef. Start using Clojure and you'll find it.
Healthy naivety
I didn't have to at all, correct. But like you said, one doesn't have to wipe the box or redirect everything to goatse, however if you give many people the ability, there will be 10% who will do it. In perspective, me posting on the Twitter account (which was easily remedied, and like I said control was willingly relinquished) wasn't much of a bad thing.
I can vouch for my 13" model. It's rock solid, but when the fan does kick in, it sounds like a turbine spinning up. No freezes though, as this is almost definitely the fault of the ATI drivers (which the 13" model doesn't have).
boggles

Seriously, this is about as credible as "Hurricane Katrina was caused by God smiting us for embrace of the gays."

I mean, pull out your handy dandy globe. Note the positioning of Japan and Chile. Which do you think matters more to their tectonic plates -- ice, or that little blue splotch labeled the Pacific Ocean. (One hesitates to remind the carbon-angers-Gaia crowd of third grade science, but water masses the exact same whether frozen, liquid, or gaseous -- and if the question is local density where "local" is the size of a tectonic plate, when it melts it is one of very few things that gets more dense.)
Would you rather that I hadn't, and instead just wiped the box?

We would prefer if you had done neither.

This is a false dichotomy. You know it is. Feigned ignorance is the lowest form of intellectual dishonesty.
I'm much more concerned about them killing Rosetta than I would be about them dropping X.
Whats up with the attitude? Seriously. The arrogance and self righteousness on HN is ridiculous sometimes and really kills the conversation.

To your point though no i didnt read the article because there was so much noise between it and the flamewar going on here that it was difficult to figure out what was even going on. However, to quote you, "The article is about a PHP hosting company that is getting merc'd because of the security flaws inherent in PHP that lead to their design decision to use Amazon EC2."

Ya wasnt that the question i just asked? Seriously maybe you should read the question before just downvoting it and replying with no reply. My question was actually a serious question. I want to know if there are security flaws in php as i am looking at it for a few projects and would like to know if there are issues with it before i start them.
Aha. That's an unfortunate situation for you. Ultimately though, it seems like you dropped the ball by leaking the code to someone else: even if you weren't responsible directly for the site or for posting the code publicly, you were the one who made it possible. Hopefully you can learn from this experience.

---

Edit: You said "To clarify, I had no intention of hosting the files for public access and never did so. Any links to my site were immediately dead as they were only used so that a copy of the source could be obtained to analyze. The files were destroyed from the server after."

If that's the case, then mind explaining this?

https://twitter.com/#!/communistcake/status/4934029867707596...
Vimeo couchmode