skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is it actually trivial to encrypt arbitrary text in such a way that it could be decrypted to the source text or a different but still meaningful alternate text? That sounds really hard to do. Is this indeed a solved problem and I just don't know about it?
On the one hand I get that losing your favorite restaurant kind of sucks, but on the other hand is it really worthwhile to artificially keep alive a company that cannot survive on its own. Also if the place is as good as pg seems to indicate then the people involved will no doubt find a new kitchen to call home and will be serving the food you love in short order. I mean my favorite Japanese place has closed down twice in recent times, but the head chef, and the reason the places where awesome, is still cooking.
So far, it's not clear at this point this guy has actually been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. From what I've seen on the forum, here, and reddit, there doesn't appear to be a criminal charge reported. It's entirely possible that he is being held in contempt due to some civil case.

What you're trying to do here is obvious, and I don't like it one bit. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. You're trying to introduce bias, and shame on you for doing it.
Lobbying doesn't strike me as being very similar to B2C customer service.
I have someone, other than flying kisses, how to reach you?
Let's not forget that legal fees are not entirely the fault of the litigants. The burden of laws and rules is so great, you need expensive experts to navigate it. The weight of the laws themselves is promoting abuse and injustice.

Consider the analogy of a number of prisoners being forced to walk through a different minefield each day. Even if they are given a map to memorize the night before, it does not make the event fair.
@gnosis I disagree
When the leaves in the tree move around (or disappear) based on points/scoring/etc, it's still harder to parse than something like slashdot where the positions don't change.
Braulin Chaves (from:Braulin92), Popular Bookmarks
Your guess seems reasonable in general, given your experience, but if you read about the history of Kazaa and Skype, I bet you change your opinion.

Those guys are worldclass experts at ownership control, contracting, the whole nine yards. In fact, I believe there are still lawsuits ongoing in Australia just to find out who _owns_ the Kazaa network.(!)
I wouldn't say this issue is fully "worked out" yet.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Most of what I know about this is from the last twenty minutes of googling.

In 2007 a federal judge ruled that passwords aren't like keys to a safe, and that the government can't force somebody to hand them over. (United States v. Boucher http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html )

However, that decision was partially overruled in 2009. ( http://www.bennettandbennett.com/node/5608 ) The judge ruled that the defendant didn't have to provide his password, but he did have to provide the contents on the hard drive. In other words, if the defendant happend to have an unencrypted copy of the hard drive hidden away somewhere he could have offered that in place of the password.

Using your safe analogy, it would be like saying that you don't have to provide the government with the key to the safe, but you do have to provide them with an identical copy of everything contained within the safe.

Now, like me you're probably wondering how the government could prove that the contents you provide from a secondary source really matches up with what's on the encrypted drive. The Boucher case mentioned above was unique because border control agents had already viewed the contents of the guy's laptop in unencrypted form, so they knew what to expect. (In his case, child porn.)

From what I can find, there don't appear to be any laws in the U.S. (and no case law) which specifically require people to hand over their passwords at the government's request.

Here are two more links I found which were helpful: http://volokh.com/files/BoucherDCT.1.pdf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Boucher
A couple of points ;
1: He said he attempted to comply but was unsuccessful. So he already seems to have conceded the principle of a right to not decrypt. It's now analagous to a judge telling him to produce something, him agreeing, then claiming he lost it and the judge not believing him.

2: Someone in his position may have made the rational choice that it's better to spend some time in jail for contempt rather than a lengthy sentence for a criminal conviction. However here's a case where someone was held for 14 years for contempt!

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=8101209&page=1
The consensus on CM tool choice is simply, "pick one that's comfortable for you and your team," and, "it doesn't matter which one you use, just be sure you're using configuration management." It's definitely better than dealing with shell scripts, since a lot of things you write in your CM language gets abstracted automatically for whatever operating system you're using (this is the biggest takeaway - you really don't want to rewrite shell scripts just because you've decided to add a different Linux distro or UNIX in your network.)

I've used both Puppet and Chef extensively, and they both do the same thing, they just go about it differently. (shameless plug of a blog post I wrote that compared the two: http://redbluemagenta.com/2011/05/21/puppet-vs-chef)

Also, it's almost always about how you approach configuration management - thankfully, with Puppet and Chef, you don't have to manage everything on a system in your CM right away. If you have to manage SSH authorized_key entries and it's getting annoying to do it by hand, then write a Puppet module / Chef cookbook to manage it for you. Then go on to manage /etc/hosts entries, then to deploying packages... you'll hit a point where you can reasonably rebuild a server from scratch without thinking about it.

There's other CM systems out there too: bcfg2, cfengine, etc.
Good analogy, but then developers are more mechanics than drivers.

You can use your cool and deep automotive engineering knowledge to "do mechanics", but most of the time is not efficient cost/benefit wise. Most of the time it's more important to get the thing running in order to start the business.
Shoot me an email; I'd love to learn more about the site. I majored in marketing and am working on my own startup but depending on the time commitment you're looking for I may be able to help. I see you're up in Seattle; I'm actually in Portland, OR myself. Cheers!

claydani [at] gmail.com
Mozilla Firefox 5.0 DLL Hijacking Exploit
Dropbox: Fewer Than 100 Accounts Affected
In the mobile market, Opera is the top browser.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201005-...
I tried looking up the case number in PACER (http://www.pacer.gov/) but when I went to register I saw that they charge 8 cents for every page returned, that is every page of a document clicked on as well as every page linked to in a search result. Transparency comes with a price tag these days I guess.
That's right, because of

a) the effective monopoly of facebook in the space,

b) of the secretive facebook-zynga deal and

c) of the sheer size of the developer community who depend on the platform financially and the investments on it

In the current size of facebook (3/4 of a billion), the excuse "but it's a free platform" is not exactly valid. Unfortunately, due to lack of a common standard (opensocial failed) and organization on the part of developers, its imposible to set a strategy. App developers have no protection against the provider.
Facebook only reports "active" users because it is possible for them to do it in a positive light. If they had the same sort of usage that Foursquare undoubtedly has, they would be counting all users that signed up as well.

That said, I still give Facebook credit for doing it.
A couple things.

1. I think I speak for everyone on HN when I say this is a really valuable communication to all of us who have worked with Facebook.

2. When a user shares content through an application, you should not penalize the application itself when someone hides that content. I am almost positive this is a large reason why these bans are happening. It is a ridiculous measure of spamminess.

3. You say you are trying to make the platform a better place for users by preventing spammy content from appearing in their feeds. This in itself is fine. But Facebook's actions are making feeds worse, not better. The actions of a few should not impact the experience of many.

PS. Putting up the link to the appeals process is a really strange way to help anyone out. As far as I recall, when my app was banned a couple of months ago, that form wouldn't even work for me.

In other words, just step up and give the affected devs your email address so that you can actually give them a real response. Putting their complaints / concern into what is potentially a block hole inbox isn't very calming.
Don't Start A Business With Friends
Disco has a tag based DDFS which is very awesome, http://discoproject.org/ .

You are asking too much for a drop in DFS solution. You will need to roll something. I would use Riak and Python FUSE. Should only take you a weekend.

I posted some notes here to get you started.
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Dn2JTbfd
Color’s latest innovation: A handwritten note from the CEO
The Growth Epiphany
HTC HD7 TOUCHSCREEN PHONE WITH WINDOWS PHONE OS7 FEATURES
I see where you're coming from - however, the great thing about CM tools is that they abstract a lot of the weird differences between UNIX's and Linux distributions. Defining a user in Puppet or Chef will create that user the same way, whether it's in RHEL, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc.

Puppet is also more lightweight than Chef in terms of the amount of dependencies it requires, given an already existing installation of Ruby (in fact, I think there's only one dependency: facter.) The only problem is that it comes with a lot less available language features out of the box than Chef, mainly because Puppet doesn't have a way to store and serve configurations of other machines out of the box without something backing the data store, like MySQL or CouchDB.
I looked at Google Health. It is insecure. It was not ahead of its time: it failed to satisfy basic tech needs for protected, reliable health information.

The forms we have patients fill out in the waiting room are indeed a pain. However, locking them away in a file room prevents 99.9% of the harm a physician can do with medical records: breaching privacy...which you might agree is more than just a "pain" - it has the potential to ruin someone's life.

I think you will find that physicians are much more tech savvy than not, and are likely dealing with issues of trust and privacy that many non-medical people don't fully appreciate. Most physicians rightly will not entrust their patient's data to insecure technology.
i don't get it. Is "you have the right to remain silent" limited only to oral means of communication? Or does it include the right to remain silent with respect to any means of communication, including writing, keyboard typing, sign language gesturing, etc ...?
I've heard anywhere from .50 to 1.50, but you can sell them for anywhere from 3-$7 if you're an agency :-)
Not saying MongoHQ isn't a nice service, but Mongo is about the easiest database I've ever used...
Chef has decent documentation, but the last time I checked, it was a lot less polished than Puppet's documentation. With that said, the folks in #chef on irc.freenode.net are quite helpful, and it's possible that the documentation has improved since the release of 0.10.
Good news, guys, you can sell your foursquare accounts for $60 each.
Their own technology and response to security questions hasn't reassured many of us about their commitment to privacy, as I've stated here in response to several of their press releases.
Well, you can’t very well call that “design fiction.”
Aren't there statutes against forced self-incrimination by the court? I am definitely not a lawyer.
So is possible now to attack a competitor's app by flagging it as spam from multiple accounts/IPs?
Over at Seattle Biomed, we keep everything in the same branch (for now) - all of our nodes are defined in nodes.pp, and we have modules that install software/configuration files as needed. We include modules in the node definition that should comprise the service we want to run on the server.
>Apple’s computing hardware, and the software development behind OS X, actually cost more to manufacture.

Does Apple really spend more on software development than Microsoft? It's slightly plausible that they spend more on items specifically related to home users and designers, but overall?

This link: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/11/07/apple-adds-staff-boosts-randd... has Apple spending a little more than $1B on overall R&D, and this one: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/08/04/charts-micros... has MS spending about $8B.
sorry, i need my dbs to be close to my middle tier, at worst on the LAN if noton the same switch. i just can't see what is compelling about a db on the WAN.
Pachube augmented reality demo
We report 10 million _registered_ users. We've never reported (or made any claims about) active users.

Most tech companies report registered users; Facebook being the notable exception. When Twitter says they have 200M users or Skype says they have 650M users, they're reporting registered, not active, users. That Foursquare only reports registered users is in line with what most of the rest of the industry does.
(It seems like all the points in my list have been interpreted in many different ways here, so I apologize beforehand if any of you misinterpreted my list.)

I'm not talking about wasting years here, I'm talking about something that is possible to learn in a single course. [1] Also, I'm not talking about making a computer from scratch by building your own circuit board and make your completely own compiler to your newly designed programming language for your home made OS without any proper design. I meant simple stuff - simple compilers[2] and operative systems, because it may actually come back and help you someday - even if you're not going to make a programming language[3] or an operating system.

[1] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507#

[2] http://norvig.com/lispy.html (maybe not THAT simple, but the idea is that doesn't have to take that long or be that hard.)

[3] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food...
Hey, my email is david-at-wordstash.com
I think Google's customer service is atrociously bad. Or rather, entirely non-existent.
Every time I did these I got 98% or higher. I only got worse grades when I didn't have time to do all these things because of how many classes I was taking simultaneously.
this is incredibly relevant to my interests.
I beg to differ. I think it is actually a pretty good analogy. Humans originated in tribes, no? Besides being a bit more complex socially, how is a tribe so different from a pack?

Have you ever noticed just how well dogs integrate into the human family? It's weird sometimes- I find dogs in general behave almost exactly like a particularly stupid but happy human.
Microsoft Isnt producing the computers though which apple does so you have to compare the software cost to that of say HP:s software cost.
I'm on FF 6.0a2 (Aurora channel) and none of those examples have ellipses for me.
We need a black Mark Zuckerberg
I think Elop is having a big dilemma right now. If he lets or even encourages N9 to succeed, and gains a lot of traction, he'll think they'd be forced to deviate from their original plan with WP7.

If he kills N9 too early, they won't make any money from it. I mean Nokia is already in a financial pit with Symbian phones being blocked at sales channels and WP7 phones barely starting to show up at the end of the year. Nokia needs something to survive by then.

I have a feeling he'd rather risk Nokia than risk N9/Meego becoming a huge success.
That was a conclusion I came to as well, however, with that aside, they could build the tech in a way that can be more easily understood and consumed by the masses.
Tesco: Homeplus Subway Virtual Store
There's some good advice in there, but mixed in with lots of not-so-good advice, errors, or overly broad claims:

- "The classic typographic scale ... relies on the notion that these sizes, when used together, look pleasing to the eye."

The typographic scale has a fixed set of sizes because fonts used to be physical. Having a 71pt font would be a whole new box of lead.

- "I generally take the largest font I want to use and the smallest font I want to use, and place the headers into that scale at even measures."

For something like scale, a geometric progression makes more sense so that relative sizes are at even proportion (say each is smaller than the previous by 15%) then a linear progression of sizes. The difference between 72pt and 70pt is unnoticeable. The difference between 10pt and 8pt is huge.

- "One way is to adjust the kerning and tracking settings in your design program."

Another way, not mentioned, is to just choose a different weight.

- The "stroke width should be as even and consistent as possible"

It says Georgia has a more even width than Krungthep, which is visibly not the case. Some stroke variation seems to aid readability but too much (like modern serif faces) harms it.

- "Georgia features a larger x-height than Tekton Pro."

That isn't Tekton. WTF.
I love how Bezos chooses to spend his money. When you think of being a billionaire, you (or the common train of thought is) think of consuming stuff or investing in businesses/buying companies.

You hardly think about doing large civilization-type stuff. Or rather, I hardly hear about it so I don't think about it much.

But this is so awesome. Feels like we are in the days of the Roman empire that made statues and told stories of legends from generation-to-generation.
Do you mean in beta or something? I though FF6 would be released in 3 months, FF7 three more after that.
It is trivial. Just encrypt the true plaintext and the alternate plaintext with separate keys and place the results in a container. To decrypt, try both ciphertexts and return the one that validly decrypts with the provided key.
A little more info: http://www.ypsort.com/info/GA/3899392/

Searching on the address finds some info, but the names do not match up. There is a phone number listed however. Im not calling it though.
With new laws giving more ability to charge people secretly, you'll see more and more people in this situation. Not saying that this is what's going on here, but the purpose of the secrecy provisions of the Patriot Act and similar is to make it harder to identify when citizens are being abused.
Just ask Alberto 'do not recall' Gonzales.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who reviewed their stock grants... (good news :))
I'm familiar with the impact of the new law on your business (commented on it with you before).

What's the current status of FaceCash? Can you continue operating?
It's called the Fifth Amendment.

"nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"
That's covered in Anathem; you should check it out.
Mobile browser market is small potatoes compared to desktop browser market :(.
Congrats Jason & Ben. This is great for the MongoDB ecosystem.
1. Start with where you live, go into your app and pull a list of all of the concerts in your area for the next week.

2. Go to Facebook and make a small ad campaign, put in like $100-$200 for it.

3. Make a few ads for fans of each band in your area, limit their age to say 18-34 years old. Each ad should say "See X Band Live", have an image of the band (if you can find a public domain one) and then say in the body "See X Band live @ this place, this day. Hurry, tickets will sell out soon!"

4. Run that baby!

This will give you a targeted campaign for the people that are specifically interested in those bands, in your area, in the primary age range that attends concerts. Whether or not they actually go see it, you've gotten them to check out your app.

Liberally sprinkly some like buttons too. If you can make a page for each show with a map of the location and way for them to get directions, do so. Stick a like button on it too.

Hope this helps as an idea and best of luck! :)
Do you think that some form of dynamic time warping algorithm, performed on the data of each distinct group, could help give a better overall view of that group's behavior in a static heatmap image? Presuming participants share similar scanpaths within a group.

Just a thought, I understand the data may be too noisy / have too much variance for this to work in practice.
Only if you're the Attorney General.
Is selling an oil painting of a copyrighted photo allowed?
There are several tools you can use for 'hacking' your site. In my logs I see 1000's of requests 'fuzzing' my server looking for known URLs with vulnerable versions. I haven't kept up with the tools, but I would look at metasploit to get started. http://www.metasploit.com/
Ask HN: Where do you go to Learn Online?
Wikipedia is great for research and I often go to YouTube for video tutorials. But where do you all go if you want to go more in depth and learn a new skill or subject?
I think the fact that there are no other large competing social gaming web platforms shows that it is actually not at all a guaranteed success.
I dont think when Facebook said they had 500 million users that they meant they had 500 million active users. I thought I saw a post today (or this week) that they hit 750 million users (without the word active in it...or so I think).

The definition of active is so obtuse and varies wildly from company to company that it doesnt even matter :).
They're different. There's certainly some cross-over. Rework is more tailored to businesses in general, whilst Getting Real is more specifically about launching web-based businesses (particularly web applications).
The short answer on this is no. Check out unicity distance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicity_distance
Preview released of XNA port for iOS and Silverlight
Love that this is coming together. I shed a nerd tear of loneliness watching the GSL at the wee hours of the morning :) We should get a group together for that.
Congratulations Jason and Ben!
Nicely handled by Drew, congrats. From PR perspective the only thing missing is a statement on how they are going to prevent such situations from happening in the future.
Mailing yourself anything is useless in all lines of IP.
Interesting point. I was thinking of the exact same thing. I cringe to the idea that such a defense might lead to some creative rubber-hose cryptanalysis though. The way I see it, this guy is half-way there. I wish I could help him.
I know, but it's rubbish and they do piss users off. It's like a bank obstructing the entrance until you give them the amount of 10 previous deposits in your account. There's got to be a better way.
These guys are awesome ... great service and nice people. Congrats!
Property News at Global Property Guide
I highly doubt that the 'conspiracy theories' popping up against the photo apps are correct. If they are, then facebook has bigger problems than lack of API stability. Good tech companies and engineers should be confident enough in their work. Try searching for 'search' on Google.
I'm not one either, but laws against self-incrimination do not mean you can withhold/destroy evidence.
For frivolous litigation, the loser pays, but the standard for litigation being frivolous is pretty high. Maybe there could be a position in between loser always pays and loser almost never pays. Say, loser pays if there's no "reasonable" argument for his side of his case, analogous to how you only go to jail (in theory, anyway) if there's no reasonable doubt that you are innocent.