skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
...there's nothing to crack here, so I find the title misleading. I would find articles such as "Cracking the ISBN code" or "Cracking the CRC32 code" equally misleading.

To me, cracking implies breaking through a barrier intended to be opaque. Hence, Ross Anderson's paper on an attack on the hardware security modules in ATM machines to brute force a PIN for a given account in less than the full PIN space is, truly, an example of cracking:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-560.pdf
If you want to go into "banking" (and have the skills needed), but would prefer a startup then maybe opengamma would be interesting: http://www.opengamma.com/
I went to Imperial (did CivEng) and I can confirm this, lecturers even joked about it.

At one point the people in the class who were actually going to go into engineering were asked to raise their hands - around 1/3 did.

To digress briefly, part of the reason the City likes Imperial so much is that they work you into the ground. If you can survive Imperial then you're likely to do well under city-levels of pressure.
My first reaction was that unlike most Quora questions, the answer summary is quite good on this. When I looked at it more, though, I realized that it didn't distinguish at all between more-popular and less-popular answers: the wisdom of the crowd (such as it is) has been lost. Also, credit for the answers isn't included; and neither are links ... so it's still far from ideal.
As opposed to removing the hard drive and reading the data directly...
The German system sounds good. But the UK Conservative Party's argument against simple AV has been "it's too complicated for people to understand". Trying to get people to vote for something that genuinely IS a bit complicated would be a complete non-starter at this point.

Anyway, right now it's AV or Continue As You Were. That's the choice we Brits have to make TODAY, and I do hope that any of you reading this will make sure that you do vote.
Feature, not product. No-one cares about recommendations by themselves, they just want to buy or look at stuff.

(DirectedEdge's product is, effectively, developer tools, so people who want the feature don't have to build their own. Hunch is heading that way too, looks like.)
Seconded.

Just wanted to add that it's possible to configure any auto-typing (the default is ${USER}TAB${PASS}), which means sites having all sorts of other info are easy to work with as well.

I actually wrote a blog post about using Keepass with various tricks: http://www.loopycode.com/solving-sign-up-anxiety/
Is there any way for other companies hiring devs in London to throw our weight behind this?
Hi, cturner. The HD guidelines say "Off-Topic: MOST stories about politics" (emphasis added). Votes say that this is one of the ones that is not MOST. Anyway, it'll all be over in less than nine hours, and I'll go back to reviewing programming books from the 1970s and 80s.
What's the opposite of Agile ? Chubby programming ?
So I just started using 1password and was thinking of lastpass. I'm still trying to figure out which is better. Anyone have any comments?
Contracts aren't enforceable under duress or coercion. If you have pressing medical needs you aren't in the mental state to agree to anything. Practically any lawyer can get an agreement like that tossed in a minute.

This is why pre-nups become unenforceable once someone gives an ultimatum (ie. Sign this prenup or I won't marry you) and why both parties will have lawyers.
If he likes the Terry Pratchett books then the 3 "Science of Discworld" books are surprisingly good (in both science and story) when I was half expecting something along the lines of a cut-away diagrams of space ships that you might find in a Science of Star Wars book from Dorling Kindersley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld
Kundendatenklau bei Ashampoo
George is a perfect example of great contributors, who probably don't consider themselves such. This ties back to my recent post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2516698) and the "Why I don't contribute" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2510964) post from the other day. People don't realize that anyone can contribute, and many people do without knowing it.

Open source isn't put together by a few talented rock stars, and it's not a shark tank (or rather, it shouldn't be) - it's put together by people who care - intelligent and bright people working with other intelligent bright people towards a common goal.

Thank you George.
Intel announces 3D transistor breakthrough
Nope, it doesn't. The Ka-50 is the only production helicopter to be equipped with an ejection seat.

Part of the reason other attack helicopters don't have them is that ejection seats in helicopters add complexity and weight for not that much of an increase in survivability, considering the usual flight profiles that these helicopters fly.

It makes more sense to focus on improving the survivability of crashes through measures such as collapsing seats and landing gear designed to absorb impact forces. With these types of improvements the crew of modern helicopters can survive even severe accidents without serious injury.
They can use design solution, folding messages from one app to single message
Folks seem to focus on the "quiet" more than the "professional".

"Quiet professional" doesn't mean you sit by and watch your world go to pot. It doesn't mean that you remain silent either. It does mean that you don't spend your days hand-waving, bitching and rumor mongering, and look for productive solutions to problems.
General degree website: http://www.se.rit.edu/

Curriculum overview: http://www.se.rit.edu/?q=node/239
First, use or don’t use what you want. If you don’t like the cleaner CS syntax, stick to writing raw JS. Your other points aren’t especially valid though:

1) You can trivially use setTimeout just as you did before. CoffeeScript just gives you a couple extra tools for simplifying things when you have use cases like the one presented in the article.

2) As for the global namespace: if you want to attach something to the window object it’s much more readable to just write "window.foo = bar" or whatever. In general though, I defy you to come up with an example where you want to define global variables from some other scope where your code wouldn’t end up just as clear but more robust with cross-scope variables defined in some high-level scope. Pretty much everyone agrees that JavaScript’s "pollute the global namespace by default" feature was a mistake.

The ascii arrows are by far the best part. JavaScript turns out to be a very nice language (semantically) for writing functional-style code. Unfortunately, the regular JavaScript syntax makes defining functions so unpleasant that I go out of my way to avoid extra ones. CoffeeScript makes defining functions so easy that I go looking for ways to use more, instead.
I've never been lucky in the jobs department on Craigslist, but everything else I've used it for, including my current new apartment, has worked out fine. Granted, there's nothing sexy about it and it can be a slog to work through in order to get what you want, but it works and people use it. Any claims of its demise are ridiculous.
Faced with a decision between:

1. The system that doesn't take alternative preferences into account (FPTP);

2. The system that does (AV),

which would you pick? AV isn't the perfect preferential voting system, but it's our only hope of a transition to any form of preferential voting right now, which opens the door for refinement later instead of closing the debate for another 20 years.
You're a grad in a sea of grads, the value of which drops as the number of jobs drop

Banking pays more because there's more money involved

A little consistency goes a long way.
Might want to turn that icon into a smiling ninja. It looks a bit sad :-(
Ask HN: how to iterate or A/B test while you have small conversion rates?
So, I have a little side project that's showing some promise and occasionally converting.I want to get down with the A/B testing, of course, because it's been very useful in other projects.

Problem is, the conversions to sales don't occur often enough to be statistically useful - with one conversion per day on a very good week, from what I understand of A/B testing I'd need to run for about a month to get meaningful statistics. Not exactly rapid iteration!

So, how can I iterate in this case? It's a single-page sales letter with a "buy" link at the bottom - I guess I could try to capture email addresses initially or even split the pages up, but I'm not sure how statistically relevant the results would be, or if changing my sales model like that would actually reduce conversions!

I'm guessing I'm not the only guy in this position. Any ideas?
And where exactly did I promote such a solution?
Ok, I tell you one everyone knows: Excel.
And when the team goes out for beers, if you want to be a part of the team, you go out with them. And if you're not part of the team, you won't be progressing fast and getting a better salary.

And you soon realise that the clothes you wear make a difference to your career. You buy proper suits, proper shirts, proper shoes, and so on.

And after working your ass off like that all the time, you need a proper break every once in a while. So you take proper holidays in places far away from work. Those cost money too.
(I voted "Yes" at 8am.)

If I didn't have any views on which system is better, I would have been pursuaded to vote Yes by the "Vote No" adverts, such as http://i.imgur.com/yCyLv.jpg

Admitedly, the campaign for "Vote Yes" has frankly been terrible as well, but in a way that makes you think they don't have a clue about marketing, rather than a way that makes you want to strangle whoever came up with the adverts.
There is plenty of work doing GWT+(Spring|Guice) apps in areas more interesting than traditional enterprise Java.

Also, there are a lot of interesting infrastructure projects written in Java (Hadoop, Lucene, Cassandra etc). It's pretty easy to get started in any of them.

If you really want to do a new language then I doubt you'll find many people arguing against Python. But the real action is in Javascript (both server & clientside)
This guy is just awesome. His quote, I know how to control the universe. So tell me, why should I run for a million? actually gave me goosebumps.

Not many people actually live by their principles like this. Good for him.
My team often speaks of operating transparently, and by this we mean that management can easily see what we're doing and why. So think about the transparency if actions rather than some object.

Indeed, that is how tiles used the word:

The transparency with which Chrome did this

(but meant the opposite)
Zend Studio - Show Hidden Files on Explorer
I'm very much looking forward to making use of the associations rewrite by Jon Leighton (http://jonathanleighton.com/).

Nested has-many:through relationships are a go! :)
Don't most spinning-disk drives intended for portable use have accelerometers these days so they can pull power from the spindle and park the heads if they detect sudden movement? Not perfect, but it greatly reduces the chance of damage due to a throw or a drop.
Nine hours!? I'm stacking up the caffeine for Election Night Special...
(Which only has devolved results, but still).
Show HN: My side project: JobsTractor - AdSense for Jobs/Recruitment
I think its a great idea I'm especially interested in the custom UI code. I could learn a thing or two.
Economic value is not the only value society lives of.

The very fact that value is a subjective dynamic variable underlines the importance of not getting too focused on the actual fiscal numbers.

You can have societies where the oil industry makes up most of the value for the countries export but where the actual money does not benefit society in general.

And again I am not saying sod the bankers. I am simply questions whether they are making too much money compared to the value they provide to society.
Trading algorithms is a minute portion of what a bank does. The primary function (and activity) of investment banks is to help clients raise money (via bonds issues, shares issues, etc). Some secondary functions include helping them insure against risks (e.g. with futures contracts), and acting as brokers for speculators (e.g. hedge funds), or as market makers to make the markets more liquid so that more trading happens.

I'm missing quite a few things, of course, but my point is: this "algorithmic trading arms race" that you mention is basically something like 1% of what the average investment bank does (and 0% of what retail banks do).
Speaking as an Australian (we have preferential voting): Almost anything is better than first past the post.
Er, or perhaps banks have a lot more money than startups (and pretty much everyone else) eh?
"Someone from the internet did it!"
Thanks everyone! I'll definitely check them out.
document not in English but I understood
Given the level of skill, training and experience a pilot would need to be allowed to fly that thing, and after rehearsing the raid in a life size replica of the compound - I think it's unlikely.

Even doing a PPL you learn about the effects of vortexes, wind shear, turbine wash etc. And these guys have many, many, many orders of magnitude more training than that.

More likely some combination of weight, altitude, excess speed... but I guess we'll never know.
A good point - I was looking at things from a purely fiscal perspective, and trying to challenge the prevailing opinion in the UK that banks == bad, but you are right that they suck up a disproportionate amount of talent and skill.

I guess for many graduates the banks seem to offer the best answer to the risk/reward question.

The challenge is how to change that mindset, in a way which doesn't just lead to all the qants leaving the industry to build another social photo-sharing app :)
Microsoft's Future Home
This morning I ran into a No campaigner leafleting at Camden Tube station. When he tried handing me a leaflet, I informed him that I had just voted Yes.

As I walked away, he shouted that I must be "LibDem scum".
How is Wix Lounge? I have never been there before, but will definintely check it out. Yelp seems to have pretty good reviews. http://www.yelp.com/biz/wix-lounge-new-york
Somewhat strange to be advocating that people should vote for anything, when one of the big issues at stake is a more representative voting system that reduces (but does not eliminate) the chance that your vote will be wasted and have no impact whatsoever.

I've long felt that the popularity of this kind of encouragement to vote, as if it was a civic duty, regardless of how broken the system was, has held back reform of the system.

So vote Yes on AV, vote in scottish elections with partial-PR and feel free not to vote in any election where your vote is not going to count and explain why at great and boring length to anyone who tells you that you have to vote or you have no right to complain etc.
Ask HN: The friendliest project management tool for programmers (developers)?
Hi HN,

i have a small (<20) software development company. We have teams of 2-5 programmers working on different projects.

I would need a project management tool:

Mandatory features:

simple time tracking per projects,
simple task tracking tied to the time tracking, allows me to generate simple worklog report at the end of every month, is programmer friendly (my developers are geeks, they should feel home with it)

Would be good: absence tracking features, simple chat integrated (so all conversation is kept on projects)

Do you have any suggestion ?

Thanks,
Max.
Android To Surpass Apple’s App Store In Size By August
If "quiet" doesn't mean "quiet", then it was a silly phrase to use.
i am 16 years old so i think that the main thing is not to shove anything down his throat. if you do that, he will intrinsically hate that thing, most of the time. and just have him read, think, be intellectual. and the rest has to come from him
Of course, he could have taken the money and given it to charity...
Judges have a lot of authority, and he is right, after all.
Hmm...

The Wired article (linked within under "can control the universe") seemed to suggest that he solved the problem by "channeling Jesus"...which seems to misrepresent that he was talking about his childhood training, rather than how he actually solved the conjecture.
To give him at least some credit, that's a pretty good insult now days!

That actually comes as a bit of a suprise to me, in my head (and in my limited experiences), the kind of person who volunteers to promote a political campaign in the UK isn't normally the type of person who would get particularly aggressive. Admitedly my personal experiences are based in a fairly middle class area of Oxford, so perhaps not representative.
The German system can be presented more simply. First, here are your local candidates. Which one do you want? Second, here are the global parties. Which one do you want? That's pretty simple.
The Death of the Scrollbar
Economics in One Lesson by the same Hazlitt is also a good one. Of course it all depends on his interests.
Given that you know Java, you could consider transition to Android - it is a lot simpler than enterprise Java (because it has to run on a phone) and most of the APIs have been reworked.

But then that is just me.
> If people knew he had been captured, securing his release by threatening future terrorist atrocities would become aim #1 for Al Qaeda

Indeed. Even if he is alive, he's dead. At least until Al Qaeda is effectively neutralized.
How do you suggest the business generate revenue? It's gonna be rather complicated business model. Charge entry fee? Charge for coffee?
Creator of Google Voice Starts a Company Starter
Or he could have pulled a Ludwig Wittgenstein and given it to the "already-corrupted" rich.
The day that the banks choose to bail out it's customers I might consider changing my opinioin about the value the provide to society. (not saying that they don't provide any)
Thanks, I will have to check them out.
I would suggest experimenting with Groovy/Grails on some weekend projects. Grails is similar to Rails so you could easily leverage this knowledge if you ever wanted to move to RoR.

Beyond that I would agree with earlier commentators that the real action over the next few years will be in JavaScript. Both server and clientside. The former being particularly interesting.
Sorry to hear about that -- its never a good time to get hacked. Here is the Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MC2xPhH...
Actually the AV result isn't due until 8pm tomorrow, so more than thirty hours away. Even the first results from AV aren't expected until after 5pm tomorrow.
What do you want to do? What do you want to build? What gets you excited?

Try various things, and pick one that actually gets you excited, and makes you think "wow, this is so cool" - not something that makes you think "well, the market seems to be moving in this direction, so there'll probably be decent money there".
In what way do I rely on Dropbox for securing or accessing my login details?

My passwords are encrypted and accessible at all times, even if Dropbox is down or I lack Internet access...
The Tory stance seems ridiculous to me (as an outsider) considering that the UK's devolved assembly elections use PR-STV or other similarly "complicated" systems. FWIW we use PR-STV in Ireland and are currently going through a debate about conceivably switching to a "list" system, or possibly a hybrid list system tempered as they do in Germany.
Its plain stupidity to store plain passwords. Some user said,he tried forgot password ,it returned him 'his original' password.
Ah--suggesting the question "what is the correlation between having taste and (collectively) being able to spend a billion dollars on tools when there are equivalents to be had for free?"
CC Avenue denies the attack: http://ndtv.in/jy6RAO
I've done a ton of spring / hibernate enterprisey stuff and am now focusing on iOS and Android development.

For one off stuff I usually use ruby nowadays, and if mobile would not be my thing, I'd definitely be delving in to Rails (have some previous experience here) and Node.js.

I've done some projects in Django but didn't really dig that as much. There's a ton of Python frameworks out there though, and Python the language is pretty cool to work with and a breath of fresh air if Java has been your mainstay for the last decade.
...what is a search engine if not a recommender of content?
'tis possible, though judging by googling around on this I am not the only one having trouble downloading xcode in a reasonable amount of time.

Maybe they should put it out as a torrent + simply seed the thing? Seems a perfect fit, given the size of the download + the number of people getting it.
the genius refused the prize, claiming the knowledge gained to be worth more than the financial reward.

It's a reason, but certainly a deeply personal one specific to him. Pragmatically, taking the money doesn't mean he loses the knowledge, even if the knowledge is "worth more" - it's just extra on top.

I suspect the more mundane reason is that if you want to stay living in a working class Russian neighborhood, being known to have accepted $1m is going to make your life pretty tough.
Exactly, especially since Oracle won't be able to use dropped claims in any case against Android in the future.
I didn't even read the article but I'm just tired of the titles. Yesterday it was "be a quiet pro", today is "don't be a quiet pro" and people arguing about it like it could be argued about.

That's what diversity is about. Be quiet if you're a quiet guy or don't be quiet if it is your type. Or just take the best out of the two.

I'm just fed up with those posts that tell you to act boldly without discernment.
I guess you can be matematically genius while being economically retard.
If Facebook were to police their API like Jobs they would have to do another billion dollar VC round.
Recommended online reading:

Some high-quality discussion of this from Tim Gowers (mathematician, Fields Medal winner, very smart chap): http://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/is-av-better-than-fpt... http://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/av-vs-fptp-a-suppleme... http://gowers.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/av-vs-fptp-the-shorte... (if you're only going to read one -- and I wouldn't blame you, because they're very long -- read the last one).

Some nice graphics illustrating some pathologies with AV: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ (note: http://zesty.ca/ is full of interesting things).

Anti-AV material by an advocate of range voting (note: he dislikes plurality voting, aka first-past-the-post, even more): http://rangevoting.org/IrvPathologySurvey.html
I had him read the lesson, and the chapter on the broken window fallacy. He likes business books
unless of course they start charging, which I doubt they'll ever do.
I don't understand why you think I wont be able to access my data anytime? Dropbox synchronises the files so you have a local copy on each of your Dropbox hosts. So if Dropbox is offline, or you get disconnected from the Internet, you can still access them...

Worse case scenario is something causes the file to get deleted and that propagates to all of the other hosts and deletes their local copies. But yes, I have backups so that isn't a problem.
Some in the UK hold the opinion that the Liberal Democrats capitulated too easily to the Conservatives during the negotiation process that led to the formation of our current government. Whilst they only have a relatively small number of MPs they still hold the balance of power and could perhaps have held out for PR. Their apparent willingness to compromise this and other principles of their party in exchange for a share of power has led to a plummet in their popularity. Their leader has been spat at in the street and had dog poo through his letterbox.
I can't help but read this in Jeff Goldblum's voice as the guy from Jurassic Park.
Staying there, wallowing in the mud, is an option, though most of us here wouldn't call it a good one.