skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hah, I've long been considering writing a daily cron script that changes my Facebook birthday to the current date. This post may be what gets me off my lazy ass to do it
A thoughtful reply, thankyou.

> Why did Google succeed by beating the dead search horse? Why did Twitter succeed at selling SMS-meets-chat-meets-blog-meets-I'm-on-acid?

It so happens I recently wrote an essay on essentially this topic. Email me and I'll be happy to forward it to you.
It's getting to the point with Google that I'm half-considering firewalling my day-to-day browser from my "real" Google account, and adblocking Google out of existence except when referred to by Google sites itself. I already block their analytics etc. whenever I can.
I just tried to buy the historical 20 year NYSE data, but I can't complete the checkout process. The Confirm page just refreshes itself when you submit the form. :|
Can you list some of the patterns you encountered?
"This extension can access: Your data on all websites"

This part made me chuckle a bit. We are so afraid of Google and Facebook tracking our searches/web pages, yet we freely install plugins from 3rd party developers that can easily gather everything that Google and Facebook can get, and more. In theory, I could make a Facebook Disconnect 2, which secretly sends data back home about what pages have been visited, and nobody except the most vigilant (enough to read the source of the plugin) would know.

Why do we not trust large corporations who have billions of dollars at stake, but trust independent developers who have little skin in the game? Is it because we are those developers, so there's some form of camaraderie?
Ask HN: What can I sell in Times Square? 
A friend and I are hackers who want to learn how to sell better. We live in NYC, and we thought a good way to learn would be to sell stuff in Times Square. So far our list includes: 1) Buy a cheap costume, and then charge people to take pictures with us, 2) Sell I <3 NYC t-shirts in different languages, 3) Sell roses.
Any suggestions on what we could sell or thoughts about our project?
It's called critical thinking. When you see what facebook is doing to our identity then you start to realize just how creepy it is. Google seems to be going down the same path
Ok so why would one use a browser made by Big Evil Privacy-hating Spy Firm #1 and then install an extension to prevent logging by Big Evil Privacy-hating Spy Firm #2?

I'd be very amazed if Chrome would not, now or at some point in the (transparently and unstoppably auto-updated) future, keep track of what you're doing, too.
It has very little to do with Facebook. It's people who wish other people were more like them (concerned about privacy in this case) using some other event as an opportunity to push their agenda. It's a harmless circle jerk I suppose.
Considering that you can upgrade the binary without any downtime then yeah, it probably would. I personally think there are bigger issues that needs to be covered first, such as support for persistent connections to backends and HTTP/1.1 support when reverse proxying. (Was just added in 1.1.4, now it just needs testing!)
I voted your comment down.

I suppose it's good form to explain why - so here goes.

I guess I find your comment low signal as well. It doesn't help me understand why you think there is a smear campaign - or why you think it might be a conspiracy.

I personally don't want Facebook building a profile about me - and I don't trust them enough not to so act with their like buttons n whatnot. So this is a handy tool for me that I didn't know about before today.

I'm not sure why I have to be considered an anti-facebook zealot, part of the hive-mind, conspirator jerk just because I find such a tool useful.
I should have defined PC more clearly. To me a PC is any device that runs Intel's(or AMD's) X86 Architecture, Is windows based and is non-touch. Touch-based PC's are just an evolution of Tablets. See Lenovo's new Thinkpad Tablet, where for $100 you get a keyboard and it converts to a Touch-Based device running "Android"!!. Microsoft, in their new Touch-Based PC's is going to mainly use ARM processors, which means all the old windows software is not going to work. MS might just invent a new OS and Device for the same, but I guess for marketing purposes is calling these devices "PCs".
Nobody? :\
Twiddle-waka way of specifying gem versions in Gemfile for a rails application.
Should one specify versions for each and every gem in Gemfile? Or just specify name and bundler will take care of version ? What is best practice to handle this ?
you,re forgetting about google adsense. google has been tracking you across the internets before fb even existed.
Thanks guys for sharing these wonderful stories. It makes me work through frustration and stress.
> Go back and read what is said until you thoroughly understand the message

I read the article - thank you very much - and I am not enticed by snake oil. If that works for you, keep applying it.

> The title says "a Million-Dollar Business THIS Weekend" and not "IN A Weekend," suggesting the initial effort to create an idea and verify that idea (and potentially creating the MVP) can be done within 48 hours.

I can't argue against rationalization. By your logic, it can very well say a million dollar business in 5 minutes, where 5 minutes is the time it took to read the article.
I have to disagree with you on the business market front. Most companies(excluding some obvious examples) use PC's/Netbooks only for doing basic data-entry and specialized enterprise software that usually runs of a browser anyway. Tablets when priced correctly will offer a significantly lower TCO to these companies compared to traditional PCs. Google, tried(unsuccessfully) with the Chromebook to tap into this sentiment, though I think their overall vision was right. If we are going to live with data on servers or cloud, why need a full blown PC. Its the pricing that is the current challenge to all vendors. Once, cheap tablet options come companies will realize that their TCO's will be significantly lowered by adopting these devices.
The Simpsons Season 23 Episode 1
Holla Sons!
The Simpsons Season 23 Episode 1 "The Falcon and the D’Ohman" will be airing on Sunday 25th September 2011 at 8.00 PM - FOX
The chances of a pack of cards being dealt out in a particular order are incredibly low (I'll leave it to the math's whiz kids to work out exactly how low) but you would hardly say it was a miracle if they came out in that order. Same with the chances of you existing. Things are always going to turn out some way, even if the likelihood of that outcome is very low.

Or in other words, the chances of the outcome having a very low probability are very high.
On Extroverted Programmers
Defaults matter. An extensive body of social science research tells us that users stick with the default settings.

In the area of security, Google recognizes the importance of setting safe defaults. See: "99.99% of Chrome users would never change the default settings. (The percentage is not an exaggeration.)"

http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/09/07/convergence.html

Having an option to block 3rd party cookies, but then hiding it in the chrome://flags/ menu is essentially worthless for most users.

Privacy enhancing technologies need to be easy to use, preferably, enabled by default.
Also, just to be nitpicky, I think Facebook's photo repository is much larger than Flickr's.
Tools vs Toys, Why Facebook timeline changes nothing.
People don't trust Facebook because they don't know what we (fellow Facebook Engineer[0]) know about what it's like on the inside. They don't believe that people are just legitimately interested in making stuff that people will like and use, that we obsess over the stats to make sure that we're making stuff that people and use (they think it's tracking them), and that ultimately, we just want to give people ads that they don't hate (for some reason this is called "selling data to advertisers").

Ultimately though, the opinions of Hacker Newsers (a group with which I've proudly associated for ~3 years now) are only a hint at how much we're helping (or hurting) the world, and while we should always keep it in mind, we need to recognize that this is a group which is accustomed to the IRC style of social networking.

I don't blame anyone at Hacker News for thinking "we" are evil, because we do a shitty job at communicating what we're actually doing and why[1] (and we can't really communicate everything anyway). Instead, we've just gotta try to address the problems that are legitimate and be as transparent as possible.

Shortly, if you call tin foil hat theories tin foil hat theories (even with sound logic as to why they are tin foil hat theories), all you're going to do is convince the tin foil hat theorists that it's yet another elaborate step in manipulating them into believing The Corporate Directive.

And, everyone else, for what it's worth, I'd much prefer it if we could just go back to hacker news on here. I'm a C Hacker first (before being assimilated, I contributed to open source projects like Chromium and Mongrel2, because I loved the problems (coincidentally the same reason I allowed myself to become assimilated into facebook -- I work on code that's hit my millions of users billions of times a day[2])

[0] Cache Infra in 1050 B2

[1] We've enabled applications to write to our network as they wish without introducing much friction or overhead (a single approval), but we've managed to communicate that in such a way that instead of leading people to believe that we've put the onus on developers (and users, as they must ultimately know which apps to trust), we've instead "put our tentacles" into yet another area and are again sharing without reason.

[2] memcache protocol stack stuff, we issue lots (and lots and lots) of requests per page load :)
HubSpot: Why We Fire Our Best Employees
Client, Project, Staff, Support management in the Cloud
Have you reported the issues to the extension author?
Three Pitfalls to Avoid from While Taking part in the Real estate investment
Awesome! I'm glad you found a use for it :). I have a whole list of features I'm going to add, so stick around!
While you are right that Dell's ROE is higher than Apple's, you missed the trend:
Dell has gone from a 80% ROE to 49% currently.
http://ycharts.com/companies/DELL/return_on_equity
Apple has risen from 20% to 42%
http://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/return_on_equity#compCos=
How to delete Facebook Timeline
1. Keep my opt outs is not a serious privacy enhancing technology. If it were, it would be built into the browser by default, and enabled via a simple, easy to discover UI (or better, enabled by default).

Keep My Opt Outs is largely political propaganda, or if you will, privacy theater. It gives your DC people something to talk about when they testify before Congress or the FTC. It allows them to say, "look, we do offer users the ability to opt out", while knowing that few users will seek it out and turn it on.

Compare, for example, the 5% of Firefox users who have enabled DNT, vs. the 62k users of KMOO. That number of users is pathetic, given how many people use Chrome.

2. Since when does something need to have gone through the standards process for Google to ship it in Chrome?

Consider, for example, what Adam Langley wrote when he added support for DNSSEC certificates to Chrome:

"I'm also going to see how it goes for a while. The most likely outcome is that nobody uses [this feature] and I pull the code out in another year's time." See: http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/06/16/dnssecchrome.html

Google's approach to security (and in many other areas) is to iterate, quickly, see what works, and if it doesn't, kill it off.

Likewise, Chrome supports an early draft of WebSockets. The spec isn't finalized yet though. Google added support to a draft spec, and then will update Chrome to the final spec once it is done. See: http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/websocket-protocol-updated....).

It seems to only be in the area of privacy where Google wants to wait until technologies have gone through the slow standardization process. In the mean time, while you wait for things to work their way through the W3C, Google's ad business continues to build detailed behavioral profiles on Internet users.

The longer the W3C takes, from Google's perspective, the better.

Look - I get that it must be frustrating to be a privacy engineer working on Chrome, when upper management won't let you deploy serious privacy enhancing features to users. I get that it must be embarrassing to work on the only browser that doesn't support Do Not Track (usually, IE is last to the party). What I don't get, is why you tout features like KMOO and Google's involvement in the W3C process as though you expect them to be taken seriously.

Google is not committed to enabling users to easily protect themselves from Google's widespread collection of their private data. To argue otherwise is foolish.
Aardvark did this: http://vark.com/
Food/snacks (health laws?)
Plastic rain coats / umbrellas
local knowledge?
wow, that's really cool!

can they make a side by side comparator? it doesn't have to actually compare, can be just another frame ( or frames) where I can select the same and do the comparison myself.

For example I want to see the differences in raw broccoli and steamed broccoli.
It's a live video site, which Sean hopes will "eliminate loneliness." He's building it with Sean Fanning. [1]

Quite a large problem to try and tackle. From the splash it looks like they're trying to go big right from the start. I don't know about the name, though. Makes me think of Facetime which does something similar to what the vague description of this promises.

[1] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/09/22/sean-parker-and-sha...
Ubuntu Issues Critical Patch For Security Flaw
If you want to be completely pedantic about it, a master craftsmen is simply a person who has created, and successfully defended, a masterpiece (basically the medieval craft/trade-guild equivalent to a, well, Master's thesis.) This happened pretty early in life (you didn't enter a guild in full good standing until you became a master), so an arbitrarily-selected "master" wouldn't be nearly as experienced/talented as the few that come to mind when you think of the term.
Why would somebody write comments dissing Microsoft in Internet Explorer? Why would someone write an anti-Microsoft message in Word? Why would someone ask such arcane questions.

We trust the tools from Google, since it would be a huge backlash if they were caught doing something so nefarious as using Chrome to track people, without them knowing. And it is quite possible to test this.
I like the writing, it's clear and concise, and goes a long way to understand how shader programming works.

Also, there's one easy to overlook small paragraph that nonetheless caught my eye about how GCD was used to massively, and in an automatically scalable manner, improve performance.
This is the single most important differentiator I've found between people wishing and dreaming to start a business. I always encourage the get it done mentality but people find reasons not to instead. More for me I guess...
Thank God. I don't think my ego could handle it,
Amazon founder heads digital advance on Guardian books power list
No of course not I'm studying to be a doctor.
This article conflates facial detection and facial recognition, which is unfortunate.

I have no interest in avoiding facial detection, but avoiding facial recognition is interesting. I'd like to see more subtle forms of camouflage that aren't as obvious to humans but break the recognition algorithms.
I don't really like that he puts tracking javascript in his addons. Take a look at the source of this Facebook Disconnect addon, its at the bottom. Why don't people just write a simple bash script that toggles blocks for the facebook domains in the hosts file?
He actually is doing this. Take a look at the source code. He has tracking javascript right at the bottom. Its sort of ironic...
We took food/snacks off the table because it requires health permits. Plastic rain coats / umbrellas are weather dependent, but a good idea.
HN has a pagerank of 7. I'm currently running an anti-spam experiment with a guestbook on a PR 4 website; it gets 300 spams an hour.
> People don't trust Facebook because they don't know what we (fellow Facebook Engineer[0]) know about what it's like on the inside.

Bull. We don't trust Facebook because of its actions. Beacon, account deletion, random modification of privacy settings and policies. Facebook has done virtually nothing to earn trust, and taken several clear, conscious actions that violate trust.

Your perception of Facebook's intent does nothing to change what Facebook has actually done to its users.
Whoops, I have to take back what I wrote above.

Somehow my Chrome had lost its click-to-play setting. I don't remember unsetting that... hrm.

Anyway, with click-to-play enabled you are correct: Panopticlick cannot see my fonts. Sorry about the confusion.

However, with click-to-play definitely enabled, Panopticlick can still see my Browser Plugin Details.
VizAblate Transcervical Uterine Fibroid Therapy could ease painful condition
A device could set free millions of women from a painful condition called uterine fibroids. Uterine fibroids begin with lumps in and around the womb which affect one in four women at some point in their life. The gadget called the VizAblate made by US firm Gynesonics will give a greeting substitute to existing treatments.
Last year I was in NY doing some accounting and spent some time walking about.. One good con I fell for was some guys passing out demo CDs of thie mixtapes - sure I'll grab one as a souvinier! The guy offers to sign it and add your name - haha ok sounds fun. Turns out his fee for signing is $5! An it has your name on it too now. turned out a better souvinier than I expected. (just an anecdote, not a suggestion you learn how to street hustle)
Singham Hindi Movie 2011 : Story, Review, Release Date & Wallpapers
Singham is a 2011 Bollywood action film directed by Rohit Shetty starring AjaSingham Hindi Moviey Devgn and Kajal Aggarwal in lead roles. Ajay Devgan is very popular these days for his new look in Singham. He looks like a body builder with his steel body in the movie with Six Packs.Singham is the story of an honest policeman in a small village bordering Goa and Maharashtra. Bajirao Singham is loved by his people for the justice he metes out, relying more on the heart and human ties than legal procedures. This is a film about what happens when he crosses swords with the powerful criminal-politician Jaykanth Shikre. This film Music composed by Ajay-Atul. Singham music is song by Shreya Ghoshal and Ajay Gogavale. Singham is the title song of Singham movie. It is sung by Sukhwinder Singh. This film loaction for Goa. Singham 2011 movie has been scheduled to release on 22nd July, 2011.
Breathing in heavy traffic fumes can trigger heart attack risk
A UK research team says that breathing in heavy traffic fumes can trigger risk of heart attack. Pollution potentially accelerates rather than straightly cause attacks. The recurrent exposures to pollution are bad for your health and significantly shortening life expectancy. People should avoid pollution as far as is possible.
I understand that experience is experience, but wouldn't you say that there are better places and alternatives to spending time trying to sell things in a 'tourist' environment?
Cool, a screenshot from Game Never Ending! It had never occurred to me that those might be out there. Turns out there's actually a museum:

http://www.gnespy.com/museum/
I did the same for my posts and photos, except it was the final act BEFORE i deleted my Facebook profile 3 months ago.

Its not like i trust Facebook to honour the deletes, but one must try one's best.
It will be interesting once we start seeing numbers that matter, like active users or engagement metrics.
But if you hadn't been born, you wouldn't be alive to ponder the probability of being born.

While it may still feel lucky to exist, the probability of you being born given that you are asking the question is 1.
I'm self-aware enough to know that if I weren't single, I wouldn't use facebook at all. As with many things in life, facebook is attractive to women, and the men follow the women.
Here are some other great resources on understanding how the OS (in this case linux) manages the memory, and how the hardware works.

http://tldp.org/LDP/tlk/mm/memory.html

http://lwn.net/Articles/250967/
There may be more "productive" things to do, but it sounds like their trying to actually have some fun too. It sounds like a great combo to me.

@murtza They do things like this in the Apprentice all the time. There's probably some good ideas there.
15 Startups With $100 Million+ Valuations That Hardly Existed Last Year
Logging out of Facebook does not do enough. It still retains cookies that specify your account ID even after you logout.

You need to delete all of the Facebook cookies. Here is what cookies are retained, but you can test it for yourself to see.

While logged in:

datr, lu, openid_p, c_user, sct, xs and act

act is your account number. now a new, fresh request after hitting logout still sends the following cookies:

datr, openid_p, act, L, locale, lu, lsd, reg_fb_gate, reg_fb_ref

If you do not delete cookies Facebook know and can track every user that has ever logged in at your computer.
I agree. We spend a lot of time working on developing products. We just want a productive outlet when we decided to take a break.
I remember reading about how stuxnet works a while ago, and it didn't sound like the kind of thing you could 'drag and drop'. Whoever made it had to know specific things about the hardware being used in Iran, the network there, and machine code for the motors that were affected. Then they had to hide the whole thing in a virus in such a way that it took a while for the experts to figure out what was actually happening and where.

The idea could be used, sure: find some important place that you want to damage in some way. Find out if it has computers that hook into some kind of specialized hardware. Work out how that hardware can be damaged via those computers. Find out how those computers are vulnerable. Write an overly-complicated virus that hides what it's really doing, and set it loose, and hope it makes it all way to those specific computers, and delivers its payload. ...it kinda sounds like a single-use case, really.

More likely, stuxnet is just encouraging people (governments, whatever) to consider attacks that target non-computer run systems. The motors being damaged in Iran, if I understood it correctly, weren't being run by computers, just programmed by them. (I'd be surprised to learn that no one had thought of that before.)
I'm looking at the source code, and I'm not seeing what you're talking about. The code is only in content.js, and nothing is being talked to as far as I see. How is he sending out tracking data?
Thanks for the tip. I will read some episode summaries of the show to see what they sold.
Where? The source is exceedingly simple and there is no tracking JS:

http://code.google.com/p/byoogle/source/browse/trunk/google/...
Honey Badger don't care
I guess it can be done using some combination of RFID/Building Map, GPS/Google Map and an app(mobile/tablet/web) to manage it all.

We need cheap, mini(or sticker like)RFID/GPS systems, so that we can just stick it to the items we want to track.
I am sorry that you got conned, and I hope that did not ruin your NYC experience. We aim to be white hat street hustlers.
Travel Insurance
My New article Today ^^
check this out
Can you link to that? The source of the extension is about a dozen lines and doesn't contain anything of the sort.

http://code.google.com/p/byoogle/source/browse/trunk/google/...
don't you ever question the strange phenomenon of these giant inhuman corporations manipulating us to the point where we choose one as a team, adopting our allegiance to them as an salient feature of our identity?

they don't give a fuck about us, at all - by definition, they are incapable of doing so.