skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To get custom computing gear built, you have to show your designs and plans and requirements to various potential vendors, so (and NDA or not) the vendors now know what you're doing.

If FB can cause these servers to be offered as standard configurations and produced in (much) higher volumes than when produced as custom solutions built for for FB (or Google), then the costs to FB drop, and FB can potentially also get the vendors to compete with each other.

It's a clever move.

(If you're just running big DCs, and not looking to move into the cloud hosting business.)
A system can easily be set up to lie about its MAC address, and you can't hide the legitimate MAC address. It's a very bad secret value.

The only thing you can do, without entering the reverse engineering arms race, is to add a real second-factor key to the equation --- meaning, something a user has to remember or read off a fob. And in fact, only the fob helps you here, since malware can (and does, every day, in bank fraud trojans) capture any secret you enter.

I agree that it would be better for security if Dropbox made rekeying happen more, but they can do the cost-benefit better than I can here.
Ask HN: Is mobile a good career path?
I am currently working as a web developer and have been for the past few years. I'm fairly happy at my current company, but I was recently approached by a consulting firm about becoming a mobile developer (iPhone, Android, perhaps some HTML5 apps). It seems like a good situation and I think it would be fun. My biggest question is, is mobile development a good field to get into, or would I be better suited in the long term to stay in web development?

My fear is that mobile may begin dying out over the next few years and leave me with a lot of unusable experience. On the other hand, mobile is a market currently experiencing a lot of growth, so it could be even bigger in the future.

All that to say, what direction do you see the mobile market going in the near-to-mid future?
That's what I am trying to figure out...how good are they at doing this.
It is interesting, how he is using OpenSSL, Node.js, Python, Twisted framework and still manages to take a swing at OSS development tools in favor of closed ones.

Does this issue even exists on serious operating systems?
I've done some work in photography in the wedding / party industry. I think the mobile / web app thing could be interesting, kind of like fanchatter (YC S09) for weddings or parties.
Try it now?

Agh, it's super scary to see this story stop getting votes the moment the server tanks. When I break the server I get fewer votes, my story falls off the frontpage faster, and fewer people find out about it. Get it fucking right, Kartik..
I thought I understood the basics of startup finance, but these seem fundamentally contradictory:
- Competitive salary (we’re funded & generate significant revenue)
- Stock options (… in a pre series A company)

Not the salary vs. stock options. I mean how can you both be funded and pre-series A?
ditto on the focus effect. reduces the value of the photo.
You're quite right about The Wire. Maybe this is just naturally the way that the art is going to be funded in the future.

Really, all television is developed exclusively at the network level. NBC, CBS, and HBO all fund the creation of TV that they then broadcast exclusively at a specified time. They go out through the cable wires to their subscribers who either pay by watching ads (NBC), or by paying for access (HBO) (or both, right? (basic cable?)). Then after a while, it comes out on DVD, and can be syndicated by other channels.

In that light, these new digital distributors really are changing things up. The idea that the show would be watchable somewhere besides the cable channel at the specific time and date is quite novel. So, the networks now make shows available on their own websites, on Hulu, on iTunes, eventually on Netflix.

I guess I just saw the digital distributors as competitors to cable as a whole instead of new 'networks'. There is some truth to my original impression: many different networks, creators of video, distribute their wares on these sites. You see shows from NBC, Fox, etc. all sharing space on Hulu. My guess is that those relationships are going to be strained by having these distributors also pushing their own video.

My worry is that now these distributors are becoming networks too, and that that is going to cause problems that didn't exist in the past. Perhaps it is going to solve some problems too, but we'll see.
Thank you for the advice. I have not logged into any of his accounts, but definitely have to reply to some of the "marriage proposals" he received, from another account saying that is not the right address.I'm in the US and I'm very sure he is in India. (All the banks, job sites, mortgage quotes, ecards, marriage proposals, friends sending stupid jokes are all from India.)
HTTPS, automatic installation, and UX that confounds security for end-users are my three objections to this gimmick.
Like @rdon stated, lawyers cost a lot, and that's fine if you have the capital. But if you are in the early stages of a start-up without the resources, all you need is a written document that states your terms that you would liked 'formalized', make a copy of it (prevents people from conveniently misplacing it), then both sign it with dates (consider having a witness sign it too). Then in the event that you need to 'sort' things out, both your pieces of the signed document act as your contact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_A_round

Angel funding. Many companies raise XXX,XXX this way, and it is considered pre series-A.
In fairness to the parent post, it may not always be that simple. I installed, symlinked as you described and am currently looking at a page filled with "Pow: Error Starting Application". (Apparently it thinks I don't have Bundler installed. This is likely an issue because of pow + rvm + gemsets + factor x.)

The downside of zero configuration is "What do you do when it doesn't just work?" (I'm digging around the manual now...)

(A quick follow-up: The second app I symlinked in the exact same way does "Just work", so I don't doubt that there's something odd about my config for the first. Still, no fun to debug.)
In their passionate commitment to creating, and their openness to sharing ideas, hackers see their online exploits as “a form of participation in the ‘work’ of God in creation,”

Given that logical reasoning is usually a strong trait common to hackers, it's a bit ironic to have the Vatican attempt to speak for hackers. Perhaps someone should email them this poll http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486594.
In addition to MAC address use adding no real security it would get in the way of running Dropbox on a flash drive, which works even if not ideally.
I don't agree with Anonymous's tactics, but look at it from their perspective: Corporate executives don't scare easily. What level of threat would convince Sony to change its policy?
We still have two keynotopia bundles from Appsumo to give out for free. Just Follow @thestartupcafe on Twitter. Tweet: “I love @thestartupcafe for giving away 3 #keynotopia bundles (worth $120) courtesy of @AppSumo http://bit.ly/eBjq8e”. Bonus points if you include a picture of your morning beverage of choice.
What it takes to rank in the Windows Phone 7 Market?
I most commonly do it to read the HTTP headers using HEAD.
Is Science Just a Matter of Faith?
I credit Apple's nimbleness with the way their product design teams limit the scope of what they're working on at any given time - they fight project creep, focus on creating a great user experience, and get the 10% of the product that users use 90% of the time right.

Microsoft, on the other hand, tries to be all things and spreads itself out like crazy. It's easier to be nimble when you're more focused.
I think since the data question is so hard, sites like these end up just showing me the big box retailers. For example, this product http://milo.com/samsung-vehicle-charger-1 shows as available from Best Buy for $39.99 but I actually bought one of these at a 99 Cent store, for, you guessed it: $0.99! Those are the finds I'm looking for in a local search. And I'm sure Fry's, Radio Shack, Target, and WalMart have these too, but they aren't on the list.
To find out the latest news I go straight to Twitter, otherwise it's HN and Slashdot
In a perverse sort of way I want this job, but only for the moment of mind-bending when I get a page from pagerduty telling me pagerduty is down.
I can't resist pointing out that you did not in fact prove any such thing... :-)
Why PayPal should buy WePay
joe.none@gmail.com, j.oenone@gmail.com, joenone@gmail.com, joenon.e@gmail.com is the same email/account as far as google is concerned. You should be able to login into your gmail/google account with either of these and your existing password simply because google doesnt care about that dot in the username.
So your problem is not with gmail, but with whoever is using your email account to register for things.
I doubt that mobile platforms/languages change as fast as the flavor-of-the-month in the web space..

Looking ahead several years, you're likely to be using a new language/tools regardless.
Learn to Start a Web Business With LaunchBit Classroom, Spring 2011
Sadly I erased my Facebook account with all my connections.
Oil tops $110 after Japan suffers another blow
My first full time software job, was writing C for PSION Workabout terminals. They had 2MB ram and their own custom plib for system access that ran more efficient than using clib functions.
curl -I

is an easy way to do that as well.

It requires fewer keystrokes :P
US Going Same Route as Greece, Portugal: Economist
I was assuming HTTPS based on this thread chain, but even in practice, most installers I see aren't downloaded over HTTPS.

How does this practice confound security more than a normal installer? sudo asks for my password just as a normal installer would.
Wow that's a very interesting spin on the morality of hacking. Maybe the priest should resign and become the PR person for the hacking community? ;p

I can understand the point made by the priest, but I wonder if he'd say the same about anarchists? Since just about all governments these days are corrupt and unsympathetic towards the plight of their constituency, then you would think the priest would also congratulate those who are philosophically and actively opposed to these un-Godly governments? Except...

All is fine and "Godly" until hackers or anarchists engage in destructive behavior, which is not in line with the teachings of Jesus. This Robin Hood idea of stealing from the rich, or even destroying property because it's owned by "evil", is wrong because both are forms of violence, which Jesus was against for obvious reasons - both acts violate individuals. Whether or not these individuals deserved it or are "evil" is inconsequential: two wrongs don't make a right. So I'm kind of disappointed that this disclaimer wasn't brought up by the priest, if at least towards the end of his comment. There exist more positive ways to combat negative forms of competition or scarcity issues created by ownership of property; violation of individuals doesn't need to be the answer. Although seeing the sketchy and hypocritical history of Catholics, I shouldn't be too disappointed by the omission...
Almost all the controls at the bottom worked on the iPad but clicks in the drawing area didn't. I found it impossible to draw any pixels on. Perhaps I misunderstood how it is supposed to work, or does you JS specifically require mouse events?
I really don't see what's to object about. People who care about security can review it. People who just want it to work and don't care about security will blindly execute whatever instructions are written on the site. If the app is malicious then the latter group is screwed no matter what, doesn't matter whether it's 'curl | sh' or whether it's a .dmg/.zip/.tar.gz.
You're missing the point - trying to change a companies policies at the price of being decent human beings is worse than whatever offense Sony committed.
As near as I can tell at the moment, it doesn't seem to respect any gemsets specified in your project .rvmrc, just the ruby interpreter specified.
Agreed, I'd refine it further: "simply a whole lot more people today with easy access to knowledge".
More people + more knowledge + easier access means specialization is not only encouraged, in many cases it's possible to make a living being specialized where it wasn't before.
Last night I watched "The Next Day", a teaser film for the inevitable Tron 3. In it there's a Banksy-type group of hackers called "Flynn Lives" who commit acts of sabotage and mischief specifically against ENCOM. I thought to myself, "That's silly, how could there be an underground activist organization that focuses its efforts on undermining a tech company that, while big and vaguely sinister, doesn't actually seem to have committed any actual evil?"

Oh, 4chan, you've proved me wrong again.
I have this exact same issue. My nickname "nat" can be short for both Nathaniel and Natelie. And apparently there is a Natelie with the same last name as me, and she seems to use my email address with a dot in it. I've been getting frequent flier emails, school emails, and more. Whenever it is an automated email, I contact their customer service and explain the situation, then unsubscribe.

If the email seems to be personal, I respond and ask them to have "Natelie" contact me, but she never has.

I agree with you, it's very frustrating. I don't have any solution, but I'll be following this thread closely.
"I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless." ~Thoreau

Before condemning I'll wait to see what is done with this information. If someone dies, that'll be the end of it, but don't freak out over pizza deliveries. I've been waiting for Anon to start endorsing violence, so far they haven't.
I still dont understand why your startup incorporation has to be very difficult and expensive. There should be a template that works for 90% of startup cases(which would avoid any unneccessary annual taxes as mentioned in the HN post several days ago).
Sounds hard. How would you get all the data? How, for instance, do you find out that TJ Maxx has iPhone chargers without going there? You'd have to persuade the whole world to put some sort of catalogue online, or rely on user-generated data

I think it would have to be both. I think that because it is a hard question, there is lots of value in it. You're right, Google should be doing this. They already have Google Shopper where you can snap a picture of a product or barcode with your phone and get a price comparison. Maybe they could had a user-generated description to that so people can build up that database.

Or maybe it could be a scrappy startup like FourSquare for local products who turns it into a game. Like get badges for finding products at the weirdest places, or for finding the lowest price on an item in an area. Or how about a Groupon type deal where something goes on sale at a specific location for a set period of time, and users can sign up for alerts when a product they want is on sale near them, or when it is in stock. That would encourage the businesses to supply an XML feed of prices and inventory.
Long thread on the issue:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=2d9f3...

Short Story:
There's been an 'urban legend' that people from the early gmail invite days could register the same email, the only difference being dots. The more likely scenario is that he's filling in the wrong email on web forms, it's emailing you, and it's not emailing him at all. He doesn't have access to the email.

Is there anything that proves he also has access to a dot-version of the email account? You being sent emails from banks only proves that he's filling that email into a form, not that he has access to the account.
Ask HN: Cofounder Wishlist success?
A while back a spreadsheet was created where people posted their needs and abilities.

I'm curious how many relationships have been formed? Are still going? Failed? Any stories to share? Lessons learned?
This is a strategic attack on Google. A proliferation of scalable data centers hurts Google a lot more than Facebook by enabling Google's competitors. Cheap computation matters much more to search engines than social networking sites.
I totally agree about the families. That's way, way over the line. IANAL so I don't know whether there are actually laws being broken here, but there might be; freedom of speech in US law has exceptions for threats and putting people into harm and so on. The problem is that it may be hard to find out whom to prosecute; the name "Anonymous" is there for a reason. A lot of very bad things can be done behind a mask of anonymity, just as good things can be (c.f. Tor servers to help dissidents).
Correct, we've raised an angel round, but haven't yet done a series A. This allows us to offer a reasonable salary with a much larger ownership slice than would be possible with a post series A company.

By the way, it's also becoming more common to see angel rounds with X,XXX,XXX as the amount raised.
Upvoted solely for "keep 'em coming!"

This article was truly awesome. I'm kicking myself for having not thought of it before because it seems like such a simple concept! Makes me wonder what else out there I haven't thought of... ;)
Sometimes I wish it was the other way around (God doing this hacker's work) :)
If the water did spread, it would also dilute the radioactivity. So not really a concern.
Heh heh... we actually have a good solution to that problem. Join us and see ;)
Advanced Django debugging with werkzeug
Yeah what's up with that?! I think in this day and age people are more than capable of being both highly creative and logical.
Focus on people (sellers), not products or categories.
Unit-Testing iOS From the Command Line
Any chance to also consider a remote guy? Very eager to learn and work in a startup.
Its interesting to me that one of the most successful absolute monarchies, Great Britain, in the end became ruled by committee.

And eventually lost its empire, with the next great power ruled a committee constrained by a constitution. And that constitution eroding away has led to the committee pretty much pissing it away.

So, yeah, committees are not good. A system governed by sensible rules that rewards smart action, punishes bad actors and forgives errors is better.
This is a poorly implemented benchmark. He's including the startup time of the jvm, he's not warming up the jvm, and he's not type hinting the clojure code.

I don't know node, so I don't know if he's making similar mistakes on that side.
Can a game startup be lean?
Just set up a filter to move any email send to joenone to a special folder (tag) and look at it once in a while.
2nd half starts at 5pm PST.
My account re-enabled just a minute ago. There was a down time at admob's site, when its back i was able to login.
why?
The only other motive it suggests is garnering as much publicity for their innovation/company as they can. Facebook is notorious for being able to magnify a small announcement into a big event and reap the dividends -- remember the announcement of a redesign via 60 minutes? If you can get media and influences to come pay attention to cool stuff you're doing, why wouldn't you?
My only complaint about Anonymous is... Who watches the watchmen?
There are other methods on Integer and such - it was a contrived example because I was too lazy to read the docs.
There are earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger quite often, probably every week. And under 6 (like the 5.8) are even more common.
>there's a big difference between a group with a purpose and standards and a mob.

You're implying that this group doesn't have a purpose or standards? Seems like they have a fairly obvious purpose: discourage Sony from being heavy-handed against hobbyist hackers. And they also have standards: just ones you may disagree with. I'm sure if someone shot a Sony exec's kid the bulk of Anon would disagree with this action.

The back and forth of the establishment attempting to control and elements of the population pushing back is not a new thing.
New Google Trick: Search for the term "Tilt" and it will tilt the Screen
Wow this is a scary point to bring up, but I'm glad someone finally has. I've read numerous articles on this issue but no one has had the nerve to say that the US is a has-been economy. That the days of bountiful growth that followed WWII are unique. The growth curve experienced in that time is not going to be reproducible in the future.

The US was the dominant economy in the 20th century only because, I would argue, it was the only one running in the race who wasn't flat on the track with a sprained ankle. Now that Europe is long done rebuilding itself, and Asian countries have found some post-colonial stability, now that everyone is healthy and ready to race, America finds itself falling behind because it was used to running in a race of one. So how competitive were we ever in the past? We'll never know since a race of one really isn't a race, much less does it count as competition...

We'll see how this race turns out...
Bad Reasons to be a Moral Relativist
I wonder how many people who say ideas are worth nothing would be willing to publish every business idea of theirs as soon as they conceive it, before they get a chance to be the first to execute it?
Why can't the predators evolve to have the same cycle as the cicadas, with a prime number of years?
Review my startup: sanetax.com - A real Tax Professional prepares your taxes
>I think personal attacks like that degrade whatever credibility they gain by fighting for the little guy.

Sony is attempting to create discomfort for Geohot: Anon is returning in kind. It's not about PR.
Apple has solved this pretty elegantly using just the machine id. When you purchase an app on the appstore apple creates a receipt that contains a hash of your machine id as well as other meta data. The receipt is then signed with Apples certificate.

When you launch an app you verify the receipt was signed by Apple and that the hash of the current machine id matches the hash of the machine id in the receipt.

Dropbox could generate the same sort of receipt serverside when you first sign in. From then on each time the dropbox client launches it just validates the receipt against the current machine.
Sanetax is a service where a real Tax Professional prepares your taxes with the convenience of online interaction.
If you target everybody, you target nobody.

They're segmenting a crowded market (on both the investor and entrepreneur sides of the market), investing in founders they understand, and I wish them luck with their new niche.

Nordstrom's doesn't sell 2x4s. Lowes doesn't sell evening gowns. Non-designer founders don't launch from The Designer Fund. It'll be fun to see how this hypothesis works in practice.