skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Tell HN: 3 Months in... Success (Real-Life Massive Multi-Player Spy Game)
Three months ago, I launched an idea without much of a site to see if people would show interest. In 48 hours my paypal account was just recovering from a hammering of interest.

Today I am happy to say, that three months in, we are breaking even - without any bootstrapping.

Take a look at the original post here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2138867

Come see how far we've come! And of course, please ask any questions you have.

http://www.iiaarg.com
> 12,700 non-US credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates [...] apparently from "an outdated database from 2007"

Fortunately that means ~100% of those numbers are expired by now. Can expired numbers be used for anything evil?
You can use Yodlee, although it is not cheap. I believe Wesable also opensourced their code to get bank info from customers.
When I wanted to get on forrst, I looked at the request process on the site and it was obviously broken. So I looked into other avenues of recieving an invite - much, much more effective. There are easily researched places where people have plenty of direct invites - all you have to do is show a portfolio.

Of course, that may not be necessary now since every forrst member effectively gets 2.5 invites a day for the request backlog and invites are not as strongly tied to your reputation.
it's fake. just didn't want to get 100+ stupid emails in my inbox ;)

that's brilliant!
Thanks. However, normalization is a rather simple case and the solution you propose works as expected. I posit that most code performing floating point division doesn't check all corner cases correctly; those that do are codes written by people who worry about NaN and the correct type of Inf.
I don't think your first sentence really matches the rest of what you're saying.

Obviously I'm not telling you to pull out your full spec and implementation roadmap to discuss with everyone on the street. But you should be willing to share the core idea in a way that anyone can understand. The "what", not the "how", essentially.

You can always divulge more if someone shows interest in helping you out, but you have to garner that interest by being willing to tell them something.
Whoa, that's such a great site! I think I've found my new addiction :)
Credit cards expire, but frequently the number remains the same. It's quite possible to just add four years to the expiration date and have a valid card. You still wouldn't have CCV, of course.
It's something I've felt a bit awkward about.

I think it's fair to be happy he's gone. And to feel relief that he's over.

I think there was no real option other than to execute him and bringing him to US soil to prosecute would have been too much. In fact, it was probably the most humane thing for him.

I don't think it's fair to chant U-S-A and to feel pride over killing a human. In my opinion, a more appropriate gesture would be a moment of silence for all those who've died because of his creation of al-Queada.
They were forced to do an audit, and lo and behold, they'd been hacked and hadn't noticed. The same thing would no doubt be true of most large corporations.
Dude, why didn't I think of a way to create a social experience around startups?
The design is overwhelmingly cluttered and noisy. I'm sorry that I don't really have any concrete suggestions, but I'd suggest getting a better feel for whitespace (e.g. http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whitespace) and visual hierarchy (http://www.google.com/search?q=visual+hierarchy).

Actually, I do have a concrete suggestion: Lose the orange stripes in the background. They don't serve a purpose and they actually interfere visually with the "log in" and "share a link" boxes, at least at my particular browser window size.
> only minor issues with copyright

Unfortunately, I don't think there's such a thing as "minor issues with copyright" in the current code.
In my experience, capnography is usually an accessory output available on a lot of commercial (and relatively expenseive) pulse oximetry machines. In a resuscitation scenario, the lack of a pulse doesn't necessarily mean the heart isn't working. A minimal level of end tidal CO2 concentration of expired air can indicate that exchange is in fact taking place in the lungs/pulmonary vasculature regardless of the presence of a pulse. This CO2 level has been used to predict outcome and help decide when to terminate resuscitation in such events.

Like pulse oximetry, capnography typically works by detecting infrared energy absorption at a specific wavelength compared to a reference energy source. One difficulty with the idea of making a cheap device that one might, for example, plug into a smart phone, is that unlike a pulse oximeter, you don't simply slip the energy source/detector over someone's fingertip - the capnographic sensor is usually adapted or otherwise attached to the endotracheal tube with which the person in extremis is intubated.
The case for MAC spoofing being common (at least with people "borrowing" your wi-fi) makes sense because some networks have MAC address based white lists, so this defense isn't quite as crazy as it sounds at first. IANAL etc.
Hmm.... I wonder how they'll be able to gain traction themselves with other beta sites out there already.
And like everything from Wikileaks, it makes me say, "no kidding..."
YC-backed ReadyForZero: Lessons In Taking on Big-Time Finance
I learned a valuable lesson today ... never give out my true email address to ANYONE! :p But seriously ... do people routinely create aliases for every form they submit on the net? In this case, I had an expectation of privacy. Feeling really screwed now :(
Thanks for that info. So far I got a new number every time - but I'll have to pay attention in the future. Never knew it's allowed to recycle the number.
I hope this happens, esp with the solution you outlines where the app is just the html+js+css etc. zipped up into a distro form (is there an open standard for manifest files in this type of distribution of web app?).

The only thing I can see possibly being a concern is UI consistency - web apps are a free-for-all. Apple may release a UI kit
Often the numbers don't change on expired cards if the account is still active, and only the CCV and expire date are updated. Some purchases don't require CCV to be entered, and the new expiration date can be guessed (probably an interval of 2 years or whatever for different cards). I know this from experience when I had the expired card in my wallet, and had forgotten to switch out for the new one when making an online purchase.

Edit: cushman beat me to it
This is more or less the answer I've been giving myself. Thanks for confirming it!
Heh, the "removing" email was from "Techcruch Disupt"
Since the manufacturer typically provides a 3 year warranty, replacement costs aren't actually that high.
A hackathon with 500 TechCrunch readers? My guess is that there will be a total of 4 lines of code written. But hey, programming is really cool!
The first part was the context,

"People are trying to [take] PHP in ways it can't easily go ..."

Tools make hard jobs doable, the right tool for the job can make a difficult job trivially easy. The definition of the 'right' tool can then be expressed as 'doesn't cause you pain' and the inverse works as well, if your tool is causing you pain then it is not the right tool for what you're trying to accomplish.

Probably an example of tm;du (too meta; didn't understand) :-)
We Need Multi-Valued Columns in Spreadsheets.
"For instance, it’s now possible for developers to build applications that allow all users to back up files from their local hard drive to the cloud."

hmm...wonder who this is aimed at?
Excuse me? What rhetoric? And exactly how do you throw out what is not an argument, but a statement of fact.

I own the stuff I am made of, because I own myself as a person. The stuff I am made of is an informational pattern bound up in matter. What I own, and what I am, is that pattern. And while matter is organized by that pattern (i.e. after I eat something) I own that matter, too. Before that matter becomes a part of my being, it can be part of someone or something else's form.

If I had an identical twin, then he would own the informational pattern that shapes him. What does it matter if his pattern and my pattern are identical? Haven't you ever owned a CD or a game that someone else also owned a copy of?

This is not some philosophical debate. Its not a debate at all. Its the simple, basic, utter truth of how life bio-mechanically exists on Earth.
Why do you have the 'text file hidden away which contains hundreds of CC numbers' if you found that source, communicated the issue and saw that the issue was resolved?
I have a similar anecdote; my 2TB western digital green drive died after a few weeks, whereas my Intel X25-M G2 is still running fine after a year and a half
I am a parent, and apparently, you can't read. I quite narrowed my statement to cover situations where THE CHILD IS INJURED. Not when the child is throwing a tantrum, or trying to negotiate. WHEN INJURED. CAN YOU READ IT IN CAPS?
Speaking as someone who knows enough of both to break things but is by no means either a designer or a developer, I think that your best bet is to document your idea in as much detail as you can. Be extremely specific. Write down not only what it is, but also how it should function. Split it up into manageable parts and and work on getting a prototype created.

You cant make money without spending any aside from doing all the dev yourself which you have no apparent interest in. however, having everything documented very detailed will ensure that you get something you can build on top of if you decide to outsource anything.
Very good advice. This is the best suggestion: "As I've said before - the interview is very very honest. Its about you, the whiteboard, and what you can do."

In the interviews we do we include a written exercise you have to complete before you come in the door so that we can sit and talk about a problem you've been able to solve at your own pace - instead of seeing how well you think on your feet. Even then people try to come up with the fastest solution instead of something that represents them well.

Remember that the interviewer is always more impressed with a right answer than a fast answer.
> They also came up with a rather amusing security technique known as "double-salting".

Sounds like someone heard about HMAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC) but didn't bother to read the details...
Designing RavenFS
Great news. Now can we have the API?
It does do something, but it means if you find (or build) the Foo1 rainbow table you get all the passwords instead of just one. It's certainly a step above not hashing or not salting, and could even be a problem for the attacker if compromising the database does not mean they compromised the source code.

Not ideal, of course, but not the worst thing ever.
Fine, s/Python/JavaScript/ then. Nobody applauds JS for it but neither is it derided as PHP is for this reason.
Introducing Blinksale Unlimited
Did you know GroupMe was started at a TechCrunch hackathon?
I do - my personal email (I have my own domain) is only given out to personal friends and with the explicit instruction that they better not use it to sign up to competitions or 'tell a friend / share the reward' forms. Some still do of course, but at least gmail's spam filter filters out most of the junk.

For any 'commercial' site or correspondence, I create a unique alias. Well 'create' is too formal, I simply have a catch-all address so I can create 'aliases' on the spur of the moment. I rely on gmail's spam filter to filter out the rubbish and if a particular alias becomes 'compromised', I can create a custom rule that deletes email received at that particular alias.
Ask HN: Small software startup essential software
Need information for how to prevent code theft, 1) essential configuration for Ubuntu system which prevents copying via usb or cd. Any softwares/tools?
2) Bitbucket how can you prevent an user downloading code from your repo on another machine?

Any other must do's essentials from entrepreneurs is appreciated. Also, what kind of a desktop config you should provide devs? This is for a bootstrapped company so money is important.
That whole part was fake. It wasn't sent by TC.
He's over? He'll be inspiring generations. Martyrdom works.
I'm reminded of Alister Croll's article that "Twitter is a protocol, not a site" http://www.bitcurrent.com/twitters-not-a-site-its-a-protocol...

There is no reason why Tweetdeck couldn't co-exist with Twitter's main clients. Twitter power users are the ones who tweet the most and innovate the most. Think of RT, # tags, pictures. Having a bleeding edge product keeps the power users happy without alienating the existing users by moving their cheese all the time.
If the actions you are taking leave no observable trace (eg simply using hidden partitions on TrueCrypt) then theres no evidence to be gathered during the law enforcement raid.
http://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/2.webp
http://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/2.jpg
http://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/2.png

In WebP man's face is heavily blurred (especially nose), orange of the kayak is less saturated, subtle high-frequency noise on the water is gone.

I've also compared these images with my DSSIM tool[1] and WebP version was 14% more different from original than JPEG version (admittedly it doesn't mean that WebP looks that much worse, because good psychovisual enhancements in image encoder could be better than DSSIM's model of perception).

Google did not optimize Huffman tables in JPEGs in their gallery, which would make JPEGs 3-5% smaller.

WebP beats JPEG at very low bitrates where distortions are quite visible, especially that JPEGs compression just falls apart below "good" quality, so it's a great option for Opera Mini[2].

However, in high-quality range JPEG is pretty good and tendency to blur that saves WebP in low-quality images becomes a problem when you want noise and fine textures preserved.

I think we should modernize JPEG[3] instead of fragmenting image format landscape. Just like Gif survived PNG, JPEG is here to stay. Currently WebP doesn't even offer alpha channel, and supports less even color spaces than JPEG, so it's not even as superior as PNG was to Gif.

[1] https://github.com/pornel/dssim
[2] http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-turbocharges-opera-turbo/
[3] http://cbloomrants.blogspot.com/2010/10/10-08-10-optimal-bas...
Without turning this into another Python vs Ruby post, let me ask this:

How should someone choose between the two when the priorities are time and quality of the learning resources online? Rails has RailsforZombies and the Poignant guide. Does Django compete? Which would be more valuable on a resume?
Why, are you looking for ideas? :-D rummages for NDA
Its an interesting concept, but basically mechanical turk for code eh?

One way to incentivize it a bit more would be offering to sell a previous answer for half of the original cost. So buyer A pays $10 for an answer, if someone else wants it they can buy the same solution for $5. That creates a long tail effect and keeps people motivated to answer questions.
I had an expired card tied to a monthly service plan -- it continued to function for the automatic charges until 1 full year after the expiration date.

Since some companies issue cards that are good for 4 years, I'd say many of those people have good reasons to worry.
The article says 400K revoked certificates leading to 51MB uncompressed bloom filter. That's like 133 bytes per certificate, which seems wrong. Am I missing something?

If 1 out of 1024 false positive is the target, then using 8 bytes per entry should be more than enough, which gives ~3MB of data without any magic.

The article is a bit untidy, so it would be nice to get a clearer picture of the sizes of the different approaches.
I think he meant that a company is not bleeding red (its above break even point). AFAIK Twitter needs a lot of more Gs to be there.
They do that stuff in their spare time - its not just a job, its what they do because they love it.

Is there any other professional career where it's common practice to expect candidates to practice their profession in their spare time? My CPA ex never came home and crunched numbers for fun. My doctor never mentioned diagnosing his neighbors to relax.

This seems like a self-deluded way to weed out people who have families, physical limitations or injuries that prompt them to get away from their computer, etc.
This is why IEEE floating point has -0.0, which represents sequences approaching 0 (underflow) from the negative side; 0.0 represents underflow from the positive side.
Poetics: The first native implementation of CoffeeScript on the Rubinius VM
It is possible that JPEGs could have been even smaller with no noticeable drop in quality either.

You can't fairly compare it with recompression of JPEG to lower-quality JPEG, as this JPEG encoding its own artifacts will amplify them.

However, compression from original to same file size or quality as WebP could narrow gap between JPEG and WebP.
Full Color Printing by Using Full Color CMYK Printing Process
Idsketch.com brings unique full color stickers to its valued customers in various styles and shapes. We are leading the online printing market as we provide the facility of amazing custom full color stickers used for specific promotion.
What journalistic organization doesn't play favorites?

It is role of the reader and other journalistic organizations to balance out any inconsistencies in one organization's proclamations over another's. They do this by:

* writing counterpoints that refute a proclamation

* walking with their feet

It may take time and a lot of effort to counteract a journalistic organization that strays too far off the path, but that time and effort always results in the truth.
Great job Abel and Evan! Great to see Founders Network members doing well. Pogoseat is a simple idea, easy for consumers to get, easy to use and a strong business case for venues ~ additional revenue per attendee.
I work at Twilio, and we'd love to talk with you. Please get in touch with me if you haven't already reached someone in the company at danielle@twilio.com

I'm 26 and a college dropout. We've got several college dropouts on the team - we're about "doers", the people who get it done. http://www.twilio.com/doers
You are completely insane.

Why do you care if anyone thinks that you're making up stories? And if someone did accuse you of making up stories, what are you going to do? Decrypt and show them the file with hundreds of credit card numbers?

This is why well-meaning hackers end up with jail time whenever they're pulled over for a broken taillight.
The roomful of lawyers and lobbyists aren't the ones who get to pass the law. If you're Canadian then you likely know that a Harper/Conservative majority would love to ram this stuff through, whereas the other parties aren't so inclined. Given that we've had minority governments (a foreign concept to Americans) for the last three elections, a few votes can actually sway things quite a bit in this election.
Bingo -- this is exactly what they do. I consider this a serious angleshoot because we agreed upon a price and this is to me a verbal contract. To have someone fudge the terms of the contract by taking advantage of a 11th hour switch is unethical IMO. I would much rather send them on their way out of spite, and I'll have a grin knowing that they wasted $4.00 of gas to walk away empty handed.
Incidentally, the sorting algorithm described here is a counting sort:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_sort

When you're trying to get nice low asymptotic time bounds on things, it can really help to remember counting sort, radix sort, and tries. Counting and radix sort are O(n), and tries are a really handy data structure with the same worst-case asymptotic time as the expected amortized time of hash tables. They also support in-order key traversal and prefix/range queries.
Can someone please remind me to only deal with Sony in cash from here on out?

If they 'lose' that it isn't my problem.
Oh, come on. It's not like Sony LOST them. I mean, they got copied, but Sony still has them, right?
A lot of good programmers can recognize that a quick but inefficient VB script can do better.

Quite so. Some "best practices" only earn their keep once they become ingrained and automatic. Prior to that there's additional cost that only makes sense when amortized over a long enough time. If there's no real reason to expect that payoff then there's no good reason to make that extra effort.
The whole line of thinking here is very odd to me.

I mean, what good is evidence that you keep to prove you aren't lying if the evidence is never meant to be shown? And if it is meant to be shown you'd be committing a crime by doing it, which would be especially silly just to prove to someone you wouldn't make up such a mundane story.

Either way you should just delete that file. It serves no useful purpose (eg. you can't show it to me to prove you're not a liar) and despite all the good intentions you have shown in the past in getting the issue fixed you are likely committing a crime simply by keeping a copy of it around.
The scans that that companies like 23andme complete are for common SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), not full DNA sequencing, which is much cheaper but provides only a sample of your genotype.

Research scientists use the same technology to conduct GWA studies (Genome Wide Association), which seek to determine if these SNP's are associated with a disease phenotype across a population. These studies typically find one or two SNP's that are associated with a disease (e.g. Breast Cancer, Diabetes, Macular degeneration, etc), but with extremely small odds ratios. These studies help narrow down possible genetic areas of interest for other researchers.

As they are population based studies, they are of no use clinically at all. As one of the first people to document the GWA study methodology put it:

"Patients inquiring about genomewide association testing should be advised that at present the results of such testing have no value in predicting risk and are not clinically directive." ~ Teri A. Manolio. Genomewide association studies and assessment of the risk of disease. The New England Journal of Medicine, 363(2):166–176, July 2010

The trouble is that companies like 23andme tell their clients that because they have a particular SNP, they are likely to get a disease which is extremely disingenuous. They do this by reporting the odds ratio found by a GWA study as their personal odds ratio of getting a disease. The research they use to make their findings is not applicable to single cases yet they claim it is. This leads to stress in clients and then ties up medical resources better spent chasing actual disease, rather than phantoms.

I'm all for open access to genetic data, but the current crop of consumer genetic companies are pedalling fear rather than open information, and probably deserve to be regulated.
actually, those four lines are just UTF-8 BOM markers
What are some architectural reasons to use node.js aside from scalability?