skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ha. Re pseudonyms, I just realized the problem I'm beginning to face; Multiple Persona Disorder. ;-)

(If today is Tuesday, I must be...)

Seriously, though, that is a plus, if it is reasonably defensible within the Google ecosystem. I'm an "opt in" kind of guy (there goes the gender anonymity); that includes personally identifiable information.

Over the years, I've seen a lot of quite productive and meaningful communication that's been facilitated, or entirely enabled, by selective anonymity.

Online. And "in real life".

You can have a conversation with a stranger in a cafe, without proffering so much as a first name. People should have the same ability online.

I've known some people (in real life) for months at a time on such a basis, e.g. in a particular venue, and gotten to know them fairly well. Selective anonymity is not a new feature, or "aberration", created by the internet, and its value as an element/feature in society is in my mind long-standing and well demonstrated.
Of course it is still relevant. The Internet can do many things, but it can't spontaneously create information; someone has to put it on the net for you to read.

So maybe the Montesinos of the 21st century will revert to bribing (or coercing) those with, say, a high Klout score. The medium may be different, but the methods will remain the same....
Let's say I use bcrypt and want to increase the work factor every year. Is it possible to determine the work factor of an existing hash, or will I need to maintain this information alongside the hash? The java and python bcrypt APIs don't have any function that returns the work factor.

Can I increase the work factor of an existing hash, or must I wait until the user logs in and then use the plaintext password to generate a new hash?

Is there a bcrypt API that provides a hash comparison function that addresses timing attacks? The py-bcrypt example code uses the '==' operator to compare hash strings, leaking timing information:

# Check that an unencrypted password matches one that has
# previously been hashed
if bcrypt.hashpw(password, hashed) == hashed:
print "It matches"
else:
print "It does not match"

(from http://www.mindrot.org/projects/py-bcrypt/)
Tools for bootstrapped startups : Personal Cloud
Fred, doesn't get it yet..

FB is fully public everyone

G+ is user controlled sharing for both public and private..big difference
The class action suit against Dropbox sounds frivolous... the claimant says she wasn't even aware of the possible security lapse until days later when she read about it from a news source. That's on top of not being notified by Dropbox, which means her account wasn't accessed during the problem window. What possible damages could she be claiming?
great idea, didn't think of that.
That analysis is partly true, but it is not the main reason. In Peru at the time, whoever controlled the media controlled the thoughts of the people. The politicians have always had a disconnect with the people, and as such, had never carried true political weight from their voters. Ironically, the government was so corrupt, that the job of the media was to provide the checks and balances because they did carry more political weight than any single politician. The main political media venues that were the most serious, had the most integrity and stood against the government were in 1) printed form and 2) not free. In a country that had (still has) high illiteracy rates and where most of their population is below the poverty line, this was a problem. TV is free, and although some people could not read, they most certainly had a TV. Let me disclose that being the son of a politician that had to escape Per because of Montesino's henchman and being lucky to still be alive after a "little" failed bomb incident and various other things, I am glad that son-of-a-bitch is rotting in a prison.
I note that you're ducking the question of why something that is clearly relevant to a useful product is not a good idea simply because the wrong person has a patent.

> If you have an idea and do nothing with it, society is not better off.

Define nothing. If I write a textbook that other folks use to do something, most people would claim that my textbook made society better off. Do you disagree? Note that patents are disclosure....

> The scenario you described is an unintended consequence, or a perversion, of how patent system is supposed to work.

Oh really? The patent literature says that patents are a trade - a limited term monopoly for disclosure of an idea. You seem to think that patents are protection for folks making stuff.
Researchers locate cell phones by tagging, analyzing ambient noises
what, no Crash Bandicoot jokes yet? I'm actually surprised they didn't mention that on the About page in some fashion, given how much overlap there is between the hacker and gaming communities.
I've wrote a ruby gem to act as an equivalent of TextMate's mate command, OS X only I'm afraid.

gem install slime
They're not autonomous though - individual branches don't hold the value of all their customers' accounts as cash. You're subject to a daily limit (though you can take more if you give them notice).
Hm, does Moonlight (linux port of Microsoft's Silverlight - their "flash/javafx/..." answer) also count as a Microsoft product for Linux?
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
pen + paper
Broadcast media (as compared with "narrowcast" grassroots media) still plays an enormous role in shaping the national narrative in the US. I would imagine it's the same in Peru.
My first job at a startup was when I was 17. I was hired as their first design and within 2 months was labelled as their lead designer when they began to hire more designers. Considering it was also my first job, it was very strange leading people who were 5-8 years older than me.
Google plus, where to go from here?
Totally agree.

I also wish the tab text collapsing worked differently. Once you have over a certain number of tabs they become pretty much useless as you can't see any titles anymore. In contrast, TextMate keeps all the tab titles visible and just moves the extra tabs into a dropdown. It's not perfect, but it's more usable than what Sublime currently does.
2010 online social impact review
the noob guide to online marketing: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-online-marketin...

you will find it helpful.
This is really excellent. I've always wanted to learn prolog and surprisingly not been able to find a good way. This resource is clear to the point of being boring, which is precisely what I needed. {Add statement about how in the good ole days people understood how to write programming tutorials.}
First thoughts on Google+
If Facebook can grow to 750m users this quickly isn't it safe to say the infrastructure/adoption exists for another company to grow to that number even faster? Let's stop pretending it's the 80's and only one company can figure out how to rule a market (Microsoft).

Facebook, too, shall pass. We of the technology world should know this better than anyone.
The best thing is the cross-browser compatibility. Normally, you see fancy things that only work on Webkit browsers or some such, which gives it little application.
Off topic, but the OP links to a post called "Be your own bitch" that contains the following paragraph that makes me happy:

"The thing that I have come to appreciate most about founders is a deep obsession about one thing over a long period of time. When we first met Joshua Schachter he had launched three versions of what were sort of social bookmarking, that he had then shut down before he launched Delicious. Dennis Crowley has been working on what has become Four Square since vindigo, which was a flat iron portfolio company that we invested in over 10 years ago. Jack Dorsey you know, came up with the original version of twitter back in the late 90's and he had been obsessed about that idea for almost a decade before he built it inside ODEO. And I can go on and on and on, but that sort of maniacal obsession about a specific issue and a specific domain and a specific kind of service, is the thing that to me is the most compelling trait of an entrepreneur."

http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/23/fred-wilson-be-your-own-bit...
cloud9 also has Google App Engine integration in the works, http://cloud9ide.posterous.com/cloud9-ide-google-io-2011
WILLET WILLET WILLET!!!
I don't see how this will "kill" other services. I hope that it might centralize and compartmentalize the idiosyncratic inanity in one place to clean up the noise on other platforms.
would love an invite!
mortenoien@gmail.com
Google Docs with everyones email - http://bit.ly/ktOYnj

People needing invites add your name to the invite part, and I/someone else will send you an invite whenever.
Fwiw, in your Google Plus settings menu, one of the top level items is "Data Liberation", where you can download all your data, including your conversation streams, in zip and/or json. Nice to see that in there from the start.
you are assuming that all people can read and have access to the Internet. In Peru, this is most definitely not the case
That's why Google+ is important. Even if it doesn't take off, at least it keeps the 'check and balance' on Facebook's power in the social space, well with they hype it is getting now. Competition is good!
Yellow Man in DC - front lines
Does that happen often in business?
Unfortunately i rely on facebook for traffic. When i started, Dave Morin was in charge and things were looking good. Since then, we've only seen limitations constant changes, unenforced policies, things breaking etc etc. At this point it is indeed really in a bad shape, and a good reason may be that they don't feel any competition.
Well for cookies chrome only shows the value, gives less control than firecookie. Other extensions seems 'hacky' solutions, doesn't feel integrated, some time slow. Also for css editing like add style, increasing/decreasing css rule value firebug is still better than chrome inspector (chrome still does not support increasing/decreasing in metrics tab). But javascript debugging experience is better in chrome. Chrome has good profiler, can add XHR breakpoint, listen for various event listener.

On an unrelated note I can't live without tree style tabs(On average I have 30+ open tabs, which is unmanageable in chrome, hangs some time) and vimperator. All in all I still prefer firefox.
To answer my first question, the work factor can be extracted from the hash. It is stored as a 2-digit decimal number in the fifth and sixth bytes of the hash. See http://code.google.com/p/py-bcrypt/source/browse/bcrypt/bcry...
It's a competitive tactic to be open when you're small and less open when you're big. For example, you can download your entire profile as a .zip file from Facebook (not sure if you can get the email), and you can allow any apps to access your data (again, probably not email), even though Facebook is the largest social network on the web.

In comparison, Google doesn't let you download your entire search history and everything else that they collect about you--what sort of ads you like, keywords that have worked well for you, links you've clicked on. To me, my "search history" is my profile on Google while my wall/profile is my data on Facebook.
Is this a different video from the one posted a few days ago?

Edit: it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2689999
Thanks Bram, you made internet better place.
Gawk 4.0.0 Now Available
Ruby Reloaded (Ruby course)
So, to get down to business, it's reasonable to hope that google will provide an oAuth 1.0 api for your social stuff, as they do with other services. The question is: what communication channels shall G+ give to developers? Also, will google use opensocial (I really hope not)
A Conversation With Julian Assange, Slavoj Zizek & Amy Goodman (Live)
Ok, it's over - here is whole conversation: http://www.livestream.com/democracynow/video?clipId=pla_b539748a-c5e0-4525-b3ca-570594482d97&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
You have confused FB with Twitter...
Wow, people from the Green Party really consider Google evil? I wonder what they would say, were Google not to invest in renewable energy, and in reducing energy consumption * ... I can see how some people might be concerned about privacy, but there are many more companies I would consider evil before Google.

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org#Renewable_energy

http://www.google.com/green/

*: reducing their energy expenditure is obviously not entirely altruistic. Powering data centers is costly. But still...
Rather than drag the lawyers into this, (just more paperwork)why don't we look at it from the perspective of the tools we are using? For SQL injection, what stops databases from building an input scrubber that sits between the database and user input and scrubs input to block SQL injection? Or for that matter, why don't we see languages and frameworks used for web development touting the fact they include robust security that's easy to use?

Part of it is culture, we actually have to care about security and part of it is ease of security. If we build tools that make it easier to create a (more) secure environment and push it by default, we can at least make improving security easier.
Great graphic! Just what I needed...

"Claim your brand on popular networks..."
http://twitter.com/#!/TextbookCentral is taken already. Damn.

Tweeted them to ask if I could have it.
http://twitter.com/#!/merican_au
They also do a whole lot of marketing. Some month ago there was a campaign all around the city advertising Chrome on billboards and in the subway. Software ads are kinda rare here, I think the last time I've seen some was at the launch of Windows7. Seeing Chrome posters in public at a time, where only developers where using it, was kinda surprising.
I am no fan of opensocial and i hope they have a simpler, rest-based api
Funny Urban vs Definition voting site
This is similar to SHA512 crypt: http://packages.python.org/passlib/lib/passlib.hash.sha512_c...
The snoopiest govts according to Google: USA is #1
1. That the unfair competitive practices Dropbox engaged in when they told people untruths about their security caused her and people like her to select suboptimal storage solutions, which is a claim that arises from a California unfair competition law.

2. That some people in the class had their privacy invaded, the precise number of whom might be found during discovery.

3. That the negligence involved in opening this hole in Dropbox incurred damages at customers for instance by requiring them to take time off to move files off Dropbox.

4. That Dropbox breached its warranty and owes its customers a refund.

Happy to help.
+1. The "Coding Soundtrack" room seems to be the most popular room on the whole site.
Nothing stops them from doing that. But they don't. Now what? See, we're back at the premise of the article.
Your terms of service seem to be for a different site. It states: "shoutfast.com provides users with a search engine service to locate mp3 files and metadata from external web sites throughout the internet."

Would be great to let users know what each field is for in the signup form. They're all blank in Firefox.

Other than that I think it's a cool idea. Good luck!
Oops. Was searching for "braid", didn't find it.
Current computer security for companies is analogous to medieval castles: large crude systems with large support requirements and little concern for the security of small individual contributors. Once computer infrastructure effectively moves to less crude large scale centralized forms and provides effective minimal security for every small contributor will the key be available.

My home is my castle; my community infrastructure supports that implementation. Therefore the community does not require a castle. When personal computing equipment is equally robust, large computing systems will not be as necessary and neither will the legal implementations.

Laws and lawyers at the individual level are the key to computer security.
I see that several countries have fewer than half of their requests honoured at all or in part, with Hungary and Turkey having a grand total of zero requests being accommodated.
I don't get it. Isn't anyone else as creeped-out by the idea of a Google social network as I am?

I'm definitely not thrilled at the idea of Facebook being the One True Social Network, but the idea of a Google social network makes me sad, and more than a little nervous. The fact that Google is trying to exploit their search dominance to funnel people into a Facebook competitor screams "anti-trust violation" to me, and the information-control consequences make me a little woozy -- I'd rather that Facebook dominate the space completely than give Google any more of my personal information. Google+ may not be evil, but it isn't exactly lily-pure, either.

I'm hoping that this is another classic case of Nerd Blindness (much like Rob Malda's famous proclamation that the original iPod was 'lame'): Google has an exceptionally good technical reputation, so techies are foaming at the mouth to get access to their newest plaything, while everyone else just sees this as an attempt by a gigantic company to destroy a good service that it sees as a threat.

Cheering for Google to win in the social network space seems to be to be a bit like hoping that IBM will take down Microsoft. When giants fight, I can't summon up any other feeling than fear that the rest of us are going to get squashed.
Actually, since google strives to make a difference here, they should cater to kids as well. Teens love social networking and, if anything, google can use its knowledge of the web to provide a safer, child and teen-safe environment even more than facebook did. It's actually going to be impossible to keep teens away if G+ ever becomes trendy.
Indeed, how did I miss that. Thanks.
I must admit that the first sentence greeting the reader being "This document ("Work") is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties." is a bit off-putting.
You're wrong. You can export your search history as an RSS feed (well I can't, as I have web history turned off). Not sure how that would be useful though... And to be fair, Facebook doesn't let you download your entire search history and everything else that they collect about you either. They only let you download what you put in. Google does the same, you can download your Gmail contacts (or sync them to another service), Picasa photos, Reader subscriptions, etc.
I'm one of the people behind Scratch <http://scratch.mit.edu>; and I can tell you that Automatoon is seriously cool. I can already see a lot of our users would like your tool. Kudos to you for empowering amateur users!
What is a flat iron portfolio company such that it is similar enough to Foursquare to support the obsession thesis?
Didn't they just map SSIDs to locations for their geo database? I don't think they have a case there. Actually it's pretty stupid not to do that, when you're company invests in the task of driving through every single street in the whole country. The judges should asks themselves how their phones are so good at knowing their exact location at any point of time and what kind of tremendous work it is to make that feature work so well.
NASA's Open Source Cloud
My dad, for example, doesn't want any of those experiences. He might like Google+. It's a lot like email. He can curate groups of friends; his friends from school, his friends from the army, his friends from the community he lives in, and share information with them quickly and easily.

OK so I don't really get it. This is nothing that can't be done easily with any email service now, using mailing lists. Dad can have a mailing list of his school friends, army buddies, etc. Why put another layer on top of that? Using email doesn't require any of the participants to have register or create yet another profile with yet another service. I don't see this as a very compelling example.
Yeah, the types of problems we had (I sort of wrote about it elsewhere[1]) were just totally inexplicable. I forget the precise specifics but one of them was something along the lines of things that would work one day but not the next, etc. Just really wild stuff that made me have no trust for the reliability of the platform.

Edit: The "best" part, if you follow that link, is that the project I mentioned that ended up cancelled would've had to be rewritten anyway now that FBML is on the way out.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2693190
He proposes abolition of the TSA. Which I endorse.

Nothing about what to replace it with. Long on emotion, short on details.
Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter Volume 1, July 2011
<sarcasm> Well radios are dead since long and WiFi is the newest gig in town. Besides no one has ever heard anyone talking over WiFi.
</sarcasm>

Wow people really did believe it was anything but sarcasm! Oh well.. But it is not hard to see how lay people can end up thinking there is no connection between WiFi and Radios.
The author meant compared to Twitter, Facebook and the like. He goes on explaining how Google+ has a better privacy control.
CommonJS Is The Future For Rails JavaScript Packaging
The client-side math described sounds pretty interesting. Any chance you'll open-source the CoffeeScript bits?

http://www.automatoon.com/documentation/faq.html says that the player's source is up on GitHub, but that link appears to 404 at the moment.
It would be silly to not expect Firefox, Safari and Chrome to continue improving as well. IE is finally coming out it a pathetic slumber, but so what? If it's ever good enough that I could picture using it, I'll check back here.
I was thinking at the Developers' part instead.
What's the plan with Games and Apps?
Is G+ going to offer the same conditions as for its Web store? (more likely)

That would be a huge game changer (FB has 30% cut) expecially for those biggies like Zynga.
Could this be related to Zynga's "rush" for the IPO?
16. I started a business before I had sex.
Flat-Iron Partners or some such was a venture-capital fund Fred was involved in.
It would be nice to know how many of these are not just online, but fully operational (no 404s, fresh data, etc.). If it's a good proportion of 80+, that's great news for Rails Rumble.
I'm loving circles. 3 weeks ago I culled my friend list on FB down to 3 people (fellow page admins) and stopped using it for anything other than marketing at people.

I left for 2 reasons. First I couldn't manage the lists without a lot of pain. They have implemented lists and selective posting grudgingly, and obfuscated it out of the reach of most users.

Secondly, after 3 years of my handing them huge swathes of personal data they still fail to effectively advertise anything to me that I'm remotely interested in. I get that the price of a 'free' service is my personal data, I'm fine with that, I'd just like it to be used in a manner that's actually relevant to me.

As g+ stands, still in inimitable Google beta mode, has hit the nail almost entirely on the head for what I want a social network to do, and I can rest assured that when the advertising finally turns up it might be for something I'm interested in.

So here's to this staying only as a hack, FB not catching up, and to talking everyone I know onto g+ :)
That's great, and a huge step above the dump that Facebook emails you, but that's not quite the same as federation.
Change your mental perspective