skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I couldn't even see the ask page before---did that have to do with my "activity points"?

Could someone point me to an explanation of the user configuration terms? (e.g. noprocrast, minaway)
New Facebook Messenger for Mobile
Facebook just launched "Facebook Messenger" an app for iOS and Android phones. This is their official blog post on the app.
I'm not aware of any operating system that allows perusal of swap through the filesystem. That'd be a pretty serious hole.
Visa plans NFC and Europay mobile payments
From the article: This defense is known as "exhaustion" — the third parties in question should be covered by the original license, so patent owners can't claim infringement by those third parties.

The company asserts that developers are its business partners, and therefore Apple has a material interest in protecting those partners from being sued over technology that it has previously licensed. The heart of the dispute hinges on the licensing terms Apple received from Intellectual Ventures, though the details of those terms apparently cannot be publicly revealed.

Apple believes the licence it has protects its partners. Without seeing the terms of the licence it is impossible to say if this is the case, but it is certainly possible.
tl;dr - "A corporation is shutting down something it made for free, and focusing on what it actually does as a business. But... think of the children!!!"
Rushing? What could possibly go wrong?
Thanks PG, you must wear many hats.
While I agree that restaurant sites in particular are quite lousy, Fleur de Lys did not strike me as a good example. Hubert Keller is a genuine personality and aspiring DJ. The restaurant is small, has no trouble staying full, the menu changes frequently and wants to surprise diners anyway.

But I'll reiterate, even thought the point has already been made a million times: not providing a web site that can be viewed on an iOS device is criminally insane, particularly for restaurants which frequently would be accessed by mobile devices.
Any time to address the endless number of reposts and the increase in volume of submissions?
Command Line Linux on a WebOS Phone (Or how to install Nethack on your phone)
Visualize your social graph in 2D space and see how it clusters into groups
They're not shutting down App Inventor, they're shutting down development of App Inventor.

Also, they're releasing the source.
I'd really like to see the corporate veil pierced and individuals civilly or criminally responsible for abuse of the patent system. (this would probably require some modifications to the law, either by congress or by a seriously activist court, but the end result would totally be worth it)
Another reason certainly is a lack of resources (cash) to commit to the project.

Sure, an established, profitable restaurant should have no trouble funding a modest, tidy, professionally built site. But the truth is, most restaurants youre visiting aren't "established" and "profitable."
You could have said the same thing about Dropbox when they launched. Or Google.

Lots of competitors is a sign there's something here that people want. Unless the incumbents are protected by some barrier to entry, the winner will be whoever executes best, even if they are a late arrival.
The "non-obvious" and "previous art" criteria are non-issues. This isn't a patent suit. Instead, it's a (very odd, IMHO) EU law that protects products from clones that would confuse consumers.

So I guess the standard here is whether or not someone would reasonably be fooled into thinking a Galaxy Tab was an iPad. Honestly, it seems reasonable to me. The Samsung looks like a clone.

Now, the law is ridiculous in the face of the fact that the devices aren't compatible. Treating the box that the things come in as the defining aspect that needs protection instead of the very different software contained therein is just insane. But apparently it's the law, and frankly it seems to have been applied correctly if I understand it right.
> in most of Europe lawyers cost a lot less than they do in the US

As a lawyer, I don't see how this is a positive thing :)

But seriously, nobody knows how many cases there are at the margin that don't get brought due to the loser pays system. Neither system is perfect though, and I can certainly make arguments in favor of either.
I'd like to see accounts that only submit the same site over and over again and don't otherwise participate penalized. That'd clear up the 'new' list a lot as well as dampen the duplicate submissions.
This is absolutely true and in the current climate not many small businesses (which is really what restaurants fall under, whether they are a tiny mom & pop or internationally renowned they are not typically very large organisations) can spare the cash to make a truly awesome website.
Not really relevant, since there's enough iPad apps that it doesn't matter: I use one pixel-doubled app on the iPad (Facebook) and they're coming out with a native app very soon anyway.
Free app brings Boxee love to the iPad
It's not personal. Sorry!
I had to ask this as I am dealing with a DotNetNuke based system right now which stores authentication details in a table (aspnet_membership) with the passwords encrypted with a private key (in web.config in IIS) and a password salt.

How would one go about securing such a system where there is no option but storing encrypted passwords that are reversible?!
You can see why it's not particularly useful arguing about encryption with you; for instance, the way you'd encrypt passwords, you'd need an "add-on salt" to keep password ciphertexts from being directly comparable.

The likelihood of me personally explaining why that's broken is low, because my sense is that you would immediately adopt some variant (but not exactly that) as part of "what you meant by proper encryption", and then mint another counterfactual from that.

64 comment-thread go-rounds later, you have indeed come up with a reasonably strong password storage system. Of course, you did it by cadging free consulting from the thread, missing the point that virtually nobody who builds these systems would even know that they needed that consulting in the first place.

We could play a similarly fun game by arguing about how an attacker would coerce a shell out of an SQLI flaw. Or: better yet, we can not do that, and just assume you're mostly wrong.

The worst part of this attitude --- and it's not unique to you, it's a nerd trait, and I certainly have it in spades myself --- is that it strongly suggests my best incentives are to be as un- informative as possible, so as not to have to waste time refuting further counterfactuals that you invent post-facto.
They also posted in the who's hiring thread this month.
The DRM server was shut down years ago. They've been selling plain MP3s since then.
aquamacs?
> If I can get the password list, the key isn't far away.

What makes you think the key isn't far away?
Restaurants have websites? I just use Google Places or Yelp. Not only do I get the hours of operation, a rough idea of the price, and a phone number without even clicking, I also get reviews.

Who would even think to look for a restaurant's own page?
Creating tech jobs does nothing to solve the unemployment crisis. I don't have any stats, but my guess is that the unemployment numbers for qualified tech workers are already absurdly low. Unless these guys are building manufacturing plants in the mid-west, I doubt any of these companies will have any significant impact on unemployment numbers.
what about this one? www.parlapizza.com.br
Counterpoint: do restaurant customers (i.e. ordinary people) also think these websites are awful? When I see a website like that, I just think "it's not targeting me".

Also, I've actually given up on all websites of non-internet companies, including big retailers. It's just too tedious to find information, too slow loading. Their mobile sites often load quicker. but have even less info. You're better off ringing them.

(BTW: the kind of info I'm talking about is like opening hours - and often when they do post that info... it's wrong Yes. It is actually worse than useless).
Wasn't me. I figured it must be true; I just wanted to learn more. :)
Forgive my lack of worldliness but what is "MSMed"?
How do you know the "offenders" are storing in plaintext?
> 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

Not the OP and I may be misunderstanding the point of this. But don't we need some common definitions/clarification on usage in order to discuss things?
Amazon MP3 has been by far superior to iTunes. I wouldn't say Walmart is unable to compete with iTunes, I'd say it's unable to make a good MP3 app.
Why is this an abuse? They patented something and are suing people they think are infringing on their patents.

The problem is the concept of software patents in general, not the various ways of "enforcing" them.
Main-stream media.
Maybe I'm missing something, but what is the point of this? Why sacrifice the public perception and stability of your project in order to duke it out with a polished release from your competitor?
Restaurant websites often have menus and photos (of course, sometimes impossible to get to when using your phone).
Sublime Text 2 is hot. It's already gotten some Lion updates like Lion scroll bars and full screen support.

It's cross platform (Windows, Linux and Mac), but still feels excellent on OS X.

http://www.sublimetext.com/2
I felt exactly this way until a few months ago when I tried Sublime Text 2. Love it; keeps getting better every build (which actually happen quite frequently).
That's what I mean by "protection." I did read the article.
Another example not in the article: http://thecheesecakefactory.com
Sony thought servers would be easy to manage.
> While I agree that restaurant sites in particular are quite lousy, Fleur de Lys did not strike me as a good example. Hubert Keller is a genuine personality and aspiring DJ. The restaurant is small, has no trouble staying full, the menu changes frequently and wants to surprise diners anyway.

I think Hubert Keller is a genius as a chef, but I have no idea what the connection is between the last two sentences and the first two. He's cool; the restaurant is successful and good. What does that have to do with the website, which is truly god-awful.

Here's what I see when I open it in Safari on OSX Lion (stock - Flash is not installed): http://cl.ly/9AsG.

If anything, an interesting chef at a good restaurant - with a website this awful is the best example. It shows that even (otherwise) smart people and successful restaurants fall into this trap.

While I'm here, a favorite post on this theme: http://venomousporridge.com/post/389785000/a-conversation-i-...

[1] HN discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1130419
Craigslist for textbooks- Swepe.com (Feedback?)
Logo Interpreter
Facebook Messenger app for iOS from itunes
Mainstream media'd. Meaning someone from the mainstream media posted a link to that post, and the surge in traffic made everything slow.
I found it disquieting that DSPS was recognized by the ADA (meaning that one can't "discriminate" against an employee that refuses to show up during core office hours if they can convince a doctor to "diagnose" their sleeping habits as DSPS). But then I did some minimal research and found that you can in fact fire someone for refusing to show up at 10AM (or whatnot); you just have to be consistent about enforcing that rule with everyone.

And so we have another reason that companies might need to adopt fascist office hours: not doing so might get them sued.

(I strongly believe in the idea of the ADA and am not suggesting that the proverbial baby be thrown out with the &c &c).
Link to the article?

nm, here it is: http://www.pcworld.com/article/237616/baseball_bat_sales_ris...
I think there's definitely room for this type of service even with companies like AppSumo already existing (AppSumo deal quality has been trending down).

It's definitely not easy. You have to line up both high quality sellers as well as start building an email list and web site traffic. It's a considerable chick and egg situation. But not insurmountable. Good luck.
Shake Shack (http://shakeshack.com on mobile device or http://shakeshack.com/mobile/) is an example of a beautifully designed, minimal, useful mobile web site.

Mobile websites are more than putting a mobile template on. Contrast Shake Shack with Walmart's http://walmart.com (on a mobile device)

> However, the design firm pitches to the owner, not to the customers. And thus the website is designed to please them, rather than actually being useful for potential customers.

> Is OpenTable too big to fail (e.g. restaurants will continue to pay them annual maintenance because it is a legacy system)?

Yes and no. Once a restaurant has committed to a particular POS, it is very, very, very hard to get them away from it.

First, it cost them -- at a safe ballpark estimate -- $10,000 to install it in the first place, so they're going to milk it for as long as they can before paying for anything else, even if it costs them more money that way in the long run.

Second, change is really scary for these folks, because if they're trying a new POS, and it crashes on its first evening, they're going to have a lot of pissed off customers and that translates directly to empty seats. It doesn't help that every single system that they've tried -- or that their buddies in the industry have tried -- have been buggy, problematic, and prone to crankiness.
It doesn't matter if you know that you're selling the best system in the world at the cheapest price; the owners are still going to be really gun-shy about converting.

For a credible, sexy Open Table competitor: check out http://averoinc.com

Note: Some comments taken out of context from the threads linked below. I linked to these threads because they contain some good previous discussions about the restaurant industry and their systems. OpenTable is a reservation system (as refulgentis has pointed out).

These comments taken out of context from previous related discussions on News.YC:

"The hell that is a restaurant website"

http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=1130419

"Is OpenTable worth it?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904689

"Why are restaurant websites so bad?"

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2044259
For all of its other sins, simple functional programming (that is, first-order functions and the basic uses thereof, rather than immutability and the other more modern FP characteristics) is easier than in most languages. In fact it's easier in Perl than in Erlang, a putatively-functional language!

map { $_ * 2 } (1, 2, 3) - Perl
lists:map(fun (X) -> X * 2 end, [1, 2, 3]) - Erlang
map (*2) [1, 2, 3] - Haskell

The last one for comparison. Erlang can do better with a list comprehension, though:

[X * 2 | X <- [1, 2, 3]]

which except for case also works for Haskell. But that exclusively works with only map and filter (in Erlang [1]), Erlang is still surprisingly klunkier than Perl for everything else (folds, actually passing functions around, etc).

[1]: Haskell recently re-added monad comprehensions, so comprehensions aren't as limited anymore. http://blog.n-sch.de/2010/11/27/fun-with-monad-comprehension...
+1. I find that Textmate and aquamacs in tandem provide enough coverage for different coding tasks. Also, I find IntelliJ, RubyMine, and PyCharm great when I need auto-completion and a full IDE environment. (Some of my Clojure using friends may laugh, but IntelliJ with the Clojure plugin is my favorite Clojure hacking environment.)

Aquamacs is what I use for all Gambit-C Scheme and Common Lisp coding.
Because the email server (or application server or whatever is creating the text for that email) can access it to decrypt it. If that server gets hacked, then you can decrypt all of the passwords.
Will Google+ be a Facebook killer?
Slashdotted
Digged
Reddited

Pick one
I would not be surprised if this is just a proxy attack from google and apple's enemies. Main suspect: Microsoft.
Second suspect: Nokia
I like the jackknife metaphor.
This is awesome.

The site looked like it was put together by a novice and didn't even have a reset password system.

If someone set up a bank with no banking and no ownership identify on the internet, would you send them an envelope full of cash?

If the creator of this site made off with the money, good for him. It was the perfect con.
We got MSMed. The post about baseball bat sales in the UK was the perfect media bait and they all linked to the item page.

Hmm. The past 48 hours a lot of sites have been slow for me: HN, Salon, FARK, ...

I figured I was getting Cox'd. http://cox.com
Crazy that a site such as PCWorld could bog down a site as popular (or so it seemed) as Hacker News. Goes to show what kind of a small fish Hacker News is in a much bigger pond..
> "How would one go about securing such a system where there is no option but storing encrypted passwords that are reversible?!"

Change the system.
Facebook’s Messenger App will have video chat
Facebook released their Facebook messenger app today and in the code you can see they are developing video chat.
>The rest of the Web long ago did away with auto-playing music, Flash buttons and menus, and elaborate intro pages, but restaurant sites seem stuck in 1999.

I noticed medium sized bands tended to have the same godawful outdated website style, especially European metal bands. No idea if it is still like that -- I just started avoiding any such "official" pages.
I hope the two-pronged defense works.

1) Apple tries to shield the iOS developers using its previous licensing agreement.

2) Someone else tries to get the patents invalidated. Several companies whose clients were targeted by Lodsys have filed preemptive lawsuits requesting declaratory judgements that Lodsys' patents are invalid, and some independent developers led by former Apple engineer Mike Lee have formed a legal defense fund to fight Lodsys and other patent trolls. Even if Apple believes the patents wouldn't stand up to reexamination, it is suspected that the secret terms of the license agreement with Intellectual Ventures prohibits Apple from attempting to have the patents invalidated.
It is preferred that the name you want is available (especially as a .com) and in other areas (such as twitter or facebook) as you have mentioned. It is particularly important to make sure it isn't trademarked.

That said, it's preferable, not required. Obviously a lot of companies don't use a .com, don't necessarily have the exact domain (delicious being an extreme case originally) and can still make it work. It's all about branding. The main thing you would lose is organic type-in traffic.

There's still room for creativity though.
Anonymous threatens to destroy Facebook
They aren't considered MSM.

NYT, Slate, Guardian, etc., rather.
Your use of the word "implemented" gives me pause.
I hope you mean "We've plugged the standard bcrypt library into our web app." and not "We found a pdf describing bcrypt on the internet and one of our 'rockstar ninja warlock' devs stayed up for a week writing an implementation that no one else is using and no one has reviewed."
I was wondering why the load times have been ridiculously long.

Also: I've been getting Cox'd as well the past three or so days. Maybe I should complain, or something.
I have no problems with the current MacVim and I like that it isn't "better integrated". I would rather it work the same on every platform that I use it on.
EEV Blog
As an example: The password list might consist of entries encrypted with a public key. The private key might only exist on an air gapped laptop with its communication ports filled with epoxy in a secured facility using trusted humans to enter the encrypted password and retrieve the decrypted plaintext.

I have no reason to believe the above is true, but there is also no reason to automatically believe there is a mechanism available to attackers of a compromised machine to decrypt all encoded materials on the machine.
Interesting that that post itself (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2864557) is now on the 2nd page despite having 400some upvotes in the past 7 hours (odd because there are several posts with many less votes in a similar timeframe on the homepage).

Does that happen due to being flagged too many times or some other reason?
My father is a sales rep dealing with large retailers (Sears, Walgreens, etc). They ALL know this is coming - DVDs, CDs, etc. are dead and online distribution will replace all things that can go digital.

You know who also knows this? Publishers - and they don't need store distribution anymore. For example, the video game industry is up in arms right now because developers/publishers no longer need B&M. In fact, they're just trying to buy (or develop their own) an online distribution platform. For example, Bethesda wanting to buy Valve[1].

[1] - http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/rumor_bethesda_looking...
I agree! After finishing DIP, I am looking for a book to introduce me what all is available in the python standard library.

I could use the official python library [1] but I usually prefer reading away from the computer and then getting back to get some actual work done; so I am looking for a dead-tree book.

Currently I am thinking b/w PER [2] or PSL by Example [3]. I see that PER gets referred to everywhere but that could also be due to the fact that it came out in 2009 and PSL by Example just came out last month.

On a quick look, it seems PSL by Example gives more of a tutorial feel (which I think is great!) whereby PER is essentially a reference. What would you recommend?

[1] http://docs.python.org/library/

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Python-Essential-Reference-David-Beazl...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Python-Standard-Library-Example-Develo...
ActiveState Komodo is pretty sweet. Has nice code-completion. File browser on the left pane.
I know some of these people. And they aren't just engineers. The worst is when they try leading the woman through a complicated pattern that requires strong leads - and risk hurting them and the people around them.

I do think it is unfair to broadly stereotype - some of the best dancers I know have full time engineering jobs (one even competed in the World Championship of Salsa), and even if they are "routine machines" - they are trying - getting out of their comfort zone - most macho men are too macho to even put their masculinity on the line by trying to learn how to partner dance.

Remember, the best part of the dance floor is no one cares who you are, what you do - only that you can hear the music and lead a dance to it - to connect through the music and to each other. I don't always achieve that but that is my goal.
The hundreds of thousands of CDs stolen from cars across the nation disagree with you.

It's also easier to damage or completely disable a CD than it is a phone/ipod/computer. Short of willful destruction or storage medium failure will these devices render you unable to access your music. A simple scratch from using the CD will render it useless. How do you recover your tracks then?

The original point was: as long as the service is running and available, I can get another copy of my music. Now that the service is going down, it's up to you to have backups, the original source is gone. This was equated to losing a disc, and not being able to recover the music you legally purchased because you didn't have a backup, and the original was gone. A very good point, in my opinion.
An XMPP interface for Campfire (node.js)
I thought it's quite a fresh breath of air from all the other apps. Conventions be damned!