skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Given the close proximity of this case to the News Corp phone-hacking case, any bets on whether similar conspiracy-to-hack charges will be brought against all the people who were involved in that one? Not putting large odds on it; I'd bet that if anybody goes to jail for it, it'll only be a person or two who can be shown to have actually personally done the break-in.
I'm literally trying to figure out if the item listed here are asserts the Federal Reserve acquired (through quantitative easing), or asserts the Federal Government acquired (as part of the federal budget). The latter is debt that is repaid. The former most definitely isn't. Unless the Federal Reserve will simply hold on to those assets forever.
^^^^ Ditto.
Well… I don't know.

Sure, it's easy to think "look, YC changed the title because it gave a bad light to a YC company!" and that might be part of it.

But the truth is that this story only got the spotlight here because it had AirBnB in the submission title, but the events it describes are not really specific to AirBnB. It could have happened through many other rental services.

Also it's typically frowned upon changing the title of a post for the submission.
The only time I've ever used an optical drive is to re-install the OS.

You can pick up a USB DVD drive for next to nothing for those rare times you need it.
There is virtually zero chance that a standard homeowner's insurance policy is going to cover an AirBNB-style rental. Rental insurance might -- I'm sure there are policies made for this -- but most people aren't going to have that kind of coverage unless it's bundled in some way with AirBNB as a value-add.
Small innovators don't have the legal muscle to play hardball with large players anyway. More small companies died after getting distracted with a patent lawsuit than were saved by one.
I found it interesting how he deleted all of his twitter updates with the exception of "You cannot arrest an idea"
If I had a place to stream it from, I could easily stream an HD movie with my connection. It's not like in the future /less/ people are going to have fast internet!
The world’s biggest hedge fund, run like a cult
it would be cool to make a leveldb backed fork of redis
This benchmark seems trustworthy because they have lots of benchmarks where LevelDB performs much worse than the competition (writing large objects; random reads with large caches)
Yep, didn't think the proxy would be getting +100k requests within 24 hours. Guess we need to wait for tomorrow :(
I couldn't agree with you more. My thoughts exactly.

There is simply no-such-thing as job training now. Even related experience often does not cut it. Companies expect to hire people with exact experience.
Excite rejected offer to buy Google for $1 million (in 1999)
This is a very important lesson, and one that I would argue that books such as "Built to Last" completely failed to foresee that many of the companies they thought were made of gold, turned out to be duds merely a couple years later when the late 90s stock market bubble burst.
HA!
You cannot arrest an idea!
+1

Logging in to see my results for Parkinson's, they show a very low confidence interval - 3 grey stars. That seems very honest to me.

Instead, I'm glad they could use all this data to advance the state of the art, and will more likely trust them if they report on some diseases that are more linked to genetics.
Interesting service. One thing I didn't like was having to enter a credit card in order to sign up for the free plan ... I'd get rid of that - don't ask for credit card information until they purchase a plan and you are going to charge them.
So is Brin going to stop worrying about Parkinsons?
Would someone break down for me what Dropbox needs all those people for?

Is Dropbox starting some big new project that can't be handled by the current number of employees?
I've hardly used an optical drive since I first got my Lenovo X61. It was only available in the base unit which spent over 99.9% of it's life on the shelf.

However, even if I haven't used man CDs or DVDs for a while I still get a "but, but I know I'll need them someday..." reaction.
Write-only my ass
Daniel, please stop using link-bait titles and openers. It makes it far more difficult for me to evaluate the actual ideas you're talking about, because I have to separate the link-bait stuff from your real points. (The "bait" from the "switch.") That takes more mental effort than I'm willing to afford an essay that starts off being disingenuous.
My wife and I been traveling around the world staying at airbnb's for the last 4 months (www.shenventure.com is our travel blog). During our stay in Hong Kong, our host required a photocopy of our passport or driver's license. I think this was a clever deterrent on his part.
I'm torn between upvoting this for good science and downvoting it for bad title, so I'll leave it as is.
One may still be charged with obstruction of justice if there is a definite attempt to make unavailable evidence needed for a case, even if the unavailability is temporary until a suitable mirror can be found. It's such a broad definition for a criminal charge to have, and in this case I really think they would consider it.
Maybe I'm just an ignorant not-involved-in-a-startup person, but what is Dropbox doing with these 400+ employees?

To me Dropbox seems like it's a pretty simply and mature product feature-wise. Have they announced that they're expanding into other products? I just hope they won't bloat Dropbox the way that some of these one-main-feature softwares were inflated in the past (ICQ, etc).

edit: I guess what got me thinking about this is that I'm reading the book by Google employee #59, and Google had a working search engine and they were building their own hardware with less than 100 employees. Just not sure what Dropbox can do with 400+ since their product is a lot simpler and they're not dealing with datacenters, though maybe it makes sense if these people are mostly doing marketing and sales.
I agree that there are problems, but at any given time, with the choice between life and death, would you really ever pick death?

Check out "Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism": http://singinst.org/blog/2007/06/16/transhumanism-as-simplif...
my apps are currently ranked #2 and #4 in their respective categories but looking at usage stats I highly highly doubt that is factored in. Seems to be downloads only.
Terrible headline, I was reading the article trying to find out where exactly they stated that they disproved their business model.
Is this real? It sounds like a fictional story.It's awfully flowery prose for someone who was just victimized and "laying in fetal position in her stairwell." Nowhere does it say this isn't fiction. Awful lot of buzz and no further response from the author?

The journalist who commented on the blog who checked with SFPD was unable to find the case.

So -- real or fiction? Someone call in SNOPES!
I agree to the defined terms, and further purpose hacktivist is an activist who's chosen/preferred method is "technology", be it illegally accessing private systems, or building nifty robots out of servos and shit.

But, what cause or idea have they furthered? Computer security? Social injustices? Tax evasion by corporate amarica? I can't find one other then their own personal enjoyment.

I can not point to a single action they have taken and describe it as "constructive." The issues they do occasionally allude to could be furthered much more successfully, legally and in a morally responsible fashion (respecting individuals privacy) by other means.

As for their harm, it is fairly self explanatory, but to make it clear, releasing innocent individual's personal information and encouraging others to use it to commit further crimes is most decidedly not neutral.

I don't believe LulzSec's actions helped anyone. If you think they did some good, please enlighten me, point it out. I can't see it.
"the solution is to properly staff and fund the USPTO"

This is categorically impossible for software patents.

We will never have enough patent examiners with the necessary expertise much less time to make valid decisions on software patent applications. Look at the backlog. Any one on this board who designs software solutions and has ever read a patent knows this is true.

Thus it doesn't matter whether you like the idea of software patents in theory, in practice it is simply not a viable mechanism, period.
I was busted in much the same way in the early 90s in NYC.

Yes, it was the only realistic part of the movie. It is a bit frightening to be woken up by a man pointing a shotgun in your face when you are 13.

IIRC, there was a well known NYC hacker who was getting ready for school, and was in the shower, when the SS burst in and the scene was loosely based on him.
Why does Dropbox need 400 employees!? Really high headcounts are the guaranteed path to eventual mediocrity. Why do almost no companies see this and prevent it?
There's actually more than one such library; just about a week and half ago I announced my own effort:

Announcement: http://www.deepbluelambda.org/programs/baitha/announcing-bai...
GitHub: https://github.com/sattvik/baitha

The good news about these two libraries is that there is relatively little overlap, so it'd be great to get the best of both.
I'm distressed by the attitude towards 23andMe's research - isn't good science supposed to report all results, regardless of whether they support the desired hypothesis? Isn't it useful to discover the negatives as well as the positives?

I've been a customer of 23andme for 3 years, and they've always been very forthright about providing guidance on what you really could discern from the results they provide, including a measure of the strength of the scientific evidence that provided probabilities of you getting this disease or that one.

Personally, the highlights for me where when my Brother, Mother, Niece and Nephew tossed their results into 23andme, and it instantly identified them as relatives, and what their relationship to me was - without any last names or locations to go on. (Though admittedly, my niece and nephew were identified as "Niece/Aunt, Nephew/Uncle)

I've been happy with the sober, reasonable, and conservative approach that 23andme has taken. "Genewatch" on the other hand, sounds like they have an axe to grind - they certainly lost credibility with me based on the comments I read. Not sure what their issue is...
Well the solution there is not to accept a credit card as a form of identification.

I check into lots of hotels and about 50% of the time they require an actual government-issued photo ID; I assume for room-trashing situations and the probably more-common situation where somebody racks up a huge bill and then steals away in the middle of the night leaving nothing but a stolen CC number.

It's a lot more difficult, and the legal penalties are much steeper, for forging a government-issued identity document than for using a prepaid credit card with a false name on it.
Lets say I want to get in this field. I have a BBA in Econ -- but no upper level math -- would I be better off getting a BA in Math and then going off to grad school (in CS or Bio, or both..)? Or would it be a better use of time to take certain maths and then just head into a masters program?
> Thirty years ago, on July 27 1981, Microsoft bought the rights for QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for $25,000.

I have yet to see a definitive date for the creation of MS-DOS. This is just the date QDOS was purchased.

I run a public "Geeky Events" calendar[1] and the research I've done points to August 12th as the first date "MS-DOS" was created, but even that isn't 100%. Does anyone know the actual date?

[1]: https://www.google.com/calendar/b/0/embed?src=9t07jqib63if4k...
If you believe that your personality is encoded in the patterns of your physical brain, cyronics doesn't sound absurd at all.
Could you imagine the honesty that could be conveyed by Anonymous authoring such a book?

You would not only get correct info of how to secure a network or server but also such good advice as how to be a good cyber corporate citizen and how by not being a dick corporation pays dividends..okay part of this is sarcastic yes..
This sounds quite accurate. Just a minor thing to add: said DB vendor is heavy in politics, and getting off the Obstacle goggles is part of the cure.

And the environment will try to shoehorn "bioinformatics/medical informatics/etc" into "mostly a core services group" of technicians, like surface technicians, kitchen etc. Though in discussions, it will be admitted, that informatics/maths is one of the most promising keys to advance the medical research field.
J. Quackenbush called these groups of people intellectual peasants. Unless these groups are accepted as peers, I can hardly see any true systems approach succeed.
High Performance Compressive Sensing on the GPU
In the real world this small company would be counter sued with any random patent eg pattern matching. With reason or not the costs skyrockets... Guess who loses?
I did read the article. For you to believe that child prostitution is not a part of a culture of human trafficking and inherited prostitution make me think you are a bit naive. I would expect that many of the women are prostituting themselves by the age of 15, if not years earlier.

Why are we still discussing this? There are few people in western nations who believe that human trafficking of any kind is acceptable, nor would many say that inherited prostitution is acceptable. These issues are very much removed from the question of whether showing a woman's cleavage is sexist, or misogynist, or objectifies women. A woman showing cleavage in a photo is related to human sex trafficking in the same way that a man doing manual labor is related to slavery.
It's nothing new. Face detection, recognition and real-time tracking was demoed a year ago on the N900, so it's certainly possible: http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/philip.tresadern...
It's okay once you understand what it's doing. It's showing the asteroid's movement in relation to Earth - from a vantage point mostly fixed relative to Earth. The viewpoint sweeps above and below Earth's orbit to give you some idea of what the asteroid is doing in three dimensions.

It is not showing the asteroid's path around the Sun and isn't trying to. The asteroid's path relative to Earth is actually more relevant, for us to calculate how to observe it and to project any possible collision.
I find this strange in that if you have someone watching online you can make sure they watch the ads. Isn't that what they want?
My research concerns the genetic epidemiology of heart disease. The mathematics involved is not that deep.
PayPal, Amazon and Google can be great solutions, one confusing thing to keep in mind is that YOUR customers are actually THEIR customers, all the customer data belongs to them, not you. If you ever want to switch providers or you grow into needing your own merchant account, those customers are "locked in".

I'm the Founder at Simplified Ecommerce, and our goal is to help solve this unfair situation for startups and Entrepreneurs.

http://SimplifiedEcommerce.com/aboutus
Go back to Reddit.
BugMuncher founder/developer here - BugMuncher takes the entire DOM tree from the client and recreates it for the screenshot, so as long as any external CSS/images aren't behind authentication, it works fine on authenticated pages. In fact, most of our users use BugMuncher specifically on auth protected areas.
Threatening Lawsuit, HBGary Federal Intimidates Aaron Barr Out of DEFCON Panel
Context is key. It's about positioning people in an ornamental, demeaning way and calling it "good fun" and "humor."

That is what makes it sexist, because is reduced to, literally, a pair of tits and under the greater context of "Google is Sexy."

Nobody is arguing that just posting a pic of an attractive woman is sexist.

I noticed you didn't answer my question, though: What message do you think this sends to potential CS coeds?
Interesting that the Arpanet list was lost... Causes you to wonder what is being lost now.
Ask HN: How to structure a company given this complicated scenario
I think I've included all of the relevant info below, but I will be happy to provide any additional info to help clear up the matter.

Two colleagues and I are contemplating starting a company, NewCo, where one of the partners is the
CEO/founder of the company where I am currently employed, and the third partner was employed until
recently (which will be referred to as OldCo for the rest of the discussion). The new company will focuson developing a software product built around a concept that 2 of the partners discussed prior to their joining OldCo.

While the 3 partners were working together for OldCo the business aspect of the software was fleshed
out, and some initial proof of concept development work was undertaken. However due to external
factors the work was halted and OldCo decided to pursue other opportunities.

Currently OldCo is in negotiations to receive a large cash investment from a 3rd party. The investment includes a provision to release claims to any IP associated with the software product, and to provide seed funding for NewCo for which they expect a controlling share (51%). The investors won’t do any deal without gaining 51% of NewCo and we believe that we need them to relinquish their claims on any IP developed while the 3 of us were working for OldCo.

The equity negotiations between the founders of NewCo are very difficult, in part because the CEO
has personal interest in both NewCo & OldCo. I’m looking for any advice or insight that can help me
structure NewCo.
How to examine :active and :hover in Firebug
How is 23andMe misleading in scientific value? They just published "Web-based genome-wide association study identifies two novel loci and a substantial genetic component for Parkinson’s disease" in PLOS Genetics:

http://spittoon.23andme.com/2011/06/23/plos-genetics-parkins...

http://www.plosgenetics.org/doi/pgen.1002141
That would have been a much bigger assault on openness, to be sure. But this is quite bad as well - it clearly shows that Google cares more about pushing Chrome itself than pushing the open, standards-based web. As the article says, when Microsoft's web demos are more standards-based than Google's, you know something is messed up.

Not so long ago I don't think Google would have done such a thing. Apparently though there are changes happening.
That's a great point, Dropbox totally had a security bug that one time.
I forsee a terrible dispute when Ettinger and his two wives are brought back to life. Poor man.
"Would you have sex for $5?"
"No"
Would you have sex for $500?"
"Maybe"
"Would you have sex for $5,000,000?"
"Yes"

Everyone succumbs (snitches) with the right encouragement (threat)
On a related note, how much of a slashdoting can you expect for posting a link here? There aren't as many registered users as I expected, but it doesn't account for lurkers.

When my niche website is finished, I'd like to share it with the hacker news crowd, but it's not built to scale to a bajillion users.
Why I Regret Choosing RightScale
I've shared the link you've kindly shared with the scientist who posted the link I posted here to an email list including participants in a behavioral genetics seminar.

http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall10/psy8935/syllabus_spr...

I suppose that part of what goes on in discussions like this is sorting out which findings are "significant" not just in the statistical sense but also in actual clinical practice.

I see Eric Turkheimer's faculty webpage

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ent3c

is temporarily unavailable. (I have just emailed him about that.) That is usually a good source of links to current literature on behavioral genetics, the subject that prompts my interest in genetics literature.
It's a shame that an exaggerated article about a browser-sniffing art project that Google worked on is bound to get more attention from the public than, say, the contemporaneously front-paged [open sourcing of LevelDB](http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/07/leveldb-fast-p...), which is a far more significant step in the direction of openness.
To all those wondering about 400+ new hires, you can view and vote on the proposed featureset at dropbox.com/votebox.

Some popular requests:

- sync folders outside of the My/Dropbox folder

- read/write permissions for shared files/folders

- remote destroy/purge if laptop is stolen

- streaming audio/video

- windows mobile support

- reseller/branding program

- internationalization

... and much more.
Just out of curiosity, why are you so certain that this woman has breast implants?
From the article:

As NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) is a licensee, units with its GPUs are not in violation.
However, models with graphics by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) or integrated
graphics from Intel Corp.'s (INTC) (such as the newly refreshed MacBook Air
lineup) are in violation.

Whoa. So this actually goes way beyond Apple. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
this is why you need to teach science in schools as early as possible and as much as possible, so the people wouldn't need BS guides on distinguishing good ... err... there is no such thing as a "bad science" so just science from anything else.
"It's not unusual in school to hear this religion of science put another way, science is the beautiful application of reason and logic that slowly and inexorably moves from ignorance to truth.

"Bullshit."

At this point, I stopped taking you seriously.

No. That is exactly what science is: an ongoing dialogue between scientists, using experiments to collect data to validate (improve certainty of) or disprove theories, theories which over time paint increasingly accurate pictures of how the thing we know as reality really works.

The garbage claims you ascribe to scientists are usually not made by scientists; instead, the claims usually come from the media who either don't understand the underlying science, or who do understand it but are sensationalizing the scientific result in an effort to get more people interested.

A problem only arises when Joe Sixpacks (who not only dominate society but Congress as well), who are completely ignorant of science, end up using media reporting of science to make decisions.
Ask HN: What would you like built on top of the G+ API when it is released?
You've been using G+ for a while, what apps would you like to see built on top its upcoming API?

You might have an app already in mind that you plan to build and don't wish to reveal, so this is more of a feature and app request thread.
Only feature I give a crap about personally is blocking extensions I don't want to be caught. I like my vim to create the files it needs while editing, and I kinda like them in folder, but I don't want dropbox syncing and unsyncing them.
Their business model for folks who got in on the $99 deal now seems be "Want to know your Alzheimer's risk? Pay more to get your DNA resequenced with our latest tools!"

How much is more? Another $299.
Well, back to The Pirate Bay. Seriously, what did they expect? If the pirates are providing a superior product (generally better encoding) and more convenience, then the pirates will win. Fox at least had something to offer when they let you stream the shows the day after. That at least improved the convenience part, because you don't have to wait for the download. But an 8-day wait is just throwing money away.
Should I state the obvious that, when you're looking for textbooks, it's important to choose a reputable publisher? They're suppose to catch stuff like this.
Submit it to the votebox. It's open to user submissions and comments.
Not mentioned in the article but significant is that this find represents a very easy asteroid to visit and return to Earth, either a manned mission or an unmanned sample return mission.
Come to TechCrunch Vienna on October 6, 2011
I SOLICIT Your HELP
Can any one please suggest a name for my site.I want it to pls include 'africa' in the name.thank you!
You should, I recommend it.