skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
voting exposes lives, rights and property of others to danger, the same way like driving on public roads. Thus one is[must be] allowed to drive or to vote or to perform other potentially damaging activity only after meeting the minimally necessary threshold of related education/skills/etc..
cool, super useful.

+++ superfast, the search-as-you-type is especially useful (not having to wait for something you just wanna "quickly lookup if you got it right in your head" is a MASSIVE plus!)

- you should really implement a "goto top" button, especially when there are more results

- placebo button. why is it there if it doesn't do anything? seems like you search after i type anyway, so why is there a button after all?

- wasn't clear what queries the search can handle, i.e. i wasn't sure what exactly could i look up. maybe you could give some examples on the start page, and also i would set the background of the search input field to say something like "search as you type", so it gets more clearer.

really, it's a fine site. but as there are only the site title "instaCSS", the tagline "gimme teh css" and a search field, it could have really profit for a bit more information about the service. not much, but subtle. it really wasn't clear what your service can do without the HN subtext.
if they got to the database!, what makes you think they didn't get to the app server?
We had an IRV election(under the name "ranked choice voting") in SF. It had some problems:

1. Anecdotes of people thinking it was literally three votes, or people who only voted for the first round, still came up.

2. Voting was too tactical for most people's tastes; in the mayoral race a majority never appeared, thus there were ultimately 11 rounds of runoffs(with 12 candidates), yet you could only pick the top three; voting only for minority candidates left your vote out in the final rounds as they got eliminated.

3. The election still had historic-low turnout.

On the other hand, I still think the result showed a lot of promise.
I must say, that's the most aggravating site I've read recently.

It's bad enough to start off the page by begging me to give it my email address (how about no?). But then I start scrolling down and... bingo, black screen and another begging for my email address. Sure, I could track down that little "close" button, but it's easier to close the tab and make a mental note to never look at the site again.
Fortunately, gimmicks tend to only be news once. No one will care about the second live-tweeted (ugh) marital fight.
I dont think my experience is at a similar scale, but it sure is immoral. I interviewed with a SF based YC startup recently. I already had plans of being in the area during the time they wanted to "fly me in" and I asked them if they could just reimburse me. They said yes, and then I got there, things didnt work out and they said they werent going to make me an offer. Thats all good, but then they said "their accountant" had told them they cant reimburse me the measly amount of $200. It just surprised me that people would swoop to such cheap behavior.
Apple issues first public "over the air" iOS update with 5.0.1
Sure, but you really should not underestimate how important it is that everyone understand how their vote is counted.

I had a roommate who worked for a voting reform nonprofit and he said even gathering signatures for "simple" IRV is quite challenging. It's just too hard to explain quickly.
Responses: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
It is too bad that more and more banks and credit cards companies are removing the ability to create one time credit card numbers because users are not using it. The only one of my credit cards that I have that allows it is my Bank of America Visa card.
Just what the 1% needs to masquerade as the 99% (or, why be greedy, the 51%).
One-time account numbers and cancelled/changed account numbers protect you from money going out, not money coming in. You can always get refunds.
Thanks for pointing that out, we've updated it to say "never share any personal information about you."

We've trained the analyzer to mentions of sharing PII with 3rd parties to point out sites that sell data.
ZeroCater looking for Account Managers
Wikipedia[1] has the refs:

The null reference was invented by C.A.R. Hoare in 1965 as part of the Algol W language. Hoare later (2009) described his invention as a "billion-dollar mistake":[10][11]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_pointer#Null_pointer

Where:

[10] http://qconlondon.com/london-2009/presentation/Null+Referenc...

[11] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billi...

Yes, the same video I linked above.
http://obaz.com looks awesome, who did your design TonyCoco?
I'm German myself and I'm always cringing a bit when it comes to German statups. At least in the past most of the 'bigger' ones were copies of already existing ideas and there is always the ones that seem to be afraid of new technology ("we use j2ee, oracle and hibernate").
Could somebody name a few successful Berlin (or German) startups besides soundcloud?
This looks nice.. you built this with Bootstrap?
I have used the one time numbers that my Bank of America card creates and have had to retire a few due to breaches and after they were retired I got a call asking me if I had authorised another charge to that now defunct account number, and I said no, so they didn't let the charge through.

I know for example that credit cards with expiration dates can still be charged for a couple of months after the expiration so that users who have not had the chance to update recurring services have more time to do so. Also, it is entirely possible that Apple had placed a hold on your account for the money and when it finally shipped it went from a hold to actual transaction and that is why it was still allowed through.
I assume one-time credit card numbers are only valid for one purchase.
What kind of one-time credit card number was that? Are you sure you are even talking about a one-time number? "old number had been cancelled, and the new one had not been activated"? With one time numbers there is no such concept of old and new numbers.

You create a number, you set a dollar limit and expiration date. If you close it no one can bill it. It's called a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number
NB: This email is in the works, it didn't mean it was already sent out. The audience reading this is full of Steam users, so part of the point of the article is forewarning before that email is sent out. But yes, the message is displayed on the front page of Steam as well.
Thanks for the mention.

Unfortunately, all too often regulators and Government agencies take the wrong lessons from de-anonymization -- remove data altogether, try to ban de-anonymization, etc. [1] I'm actually visiting D.C. right now with my policy hat on.

In this case, I think we should be having a conversation about whether doctors' right to privacy is more important than public interest and patient safety. Ironically, a major reason why medical practitioners are often against public data release/reviews etc is apparently because they cannot publicly refute allegations or bad reviews, which is in turn because of patient privacy. Sometimes it feels like a morass of bad laws with unintended consequences.

[1] Recent proposed changes to HIPAA do exactly that, without even an exception for research.
I use 1Password in conjunction with Dropbox to keep my passwords secure and synced between OS X, Windows (XP and 7) and iOS. It's a fantastic product.
Way to build employee morale, Zynga
Works just like spam filtering: We're using a naive Bayesian classifier with training data. Built and tested a custom extractor that makes the most sense for the legalese of privacy policies.

Ideas: email me at michaelaiello (at) michaelaiello.com
Let me get this straight: you put words in peoples' mouths to create straw men that you sarcastically describe as fascinating?
How do i fix my curl pattern in my hair?
No, not one purchase. But yes one merchant. So even if the number is lost and the dollar limit still allows transactions a 3rd party can not charge it.
It's not a bad idea.. but it seems like there would only be a limited number of people interested in this information. Seems more like a service than a product, no?
> See if a site sells your personal information.

Rather, see if a site tells you that it sells your personal information. It's an important difference.
The issue may be more complex. Steam has been around for awhile now -- there may be an Amazon.com like issue where new passwords are secure, but older passwords are using crypt or something!
It uses the S5 slide tool. I'm not an org-mode user, for pretty much all my presentations anymore. I hacked up some m4 macros that make writing slides really simple.

More info on s5:

http://s5project.org/
I think they nailed a single group, the already fairly well connected tech and startups people. This also dragged along those interested in these people although they get less value from it as it's more of a Twitter like following medium unless lots of people are putting you in their circles.

Google certainly have the resources to nail more smaller groups, it's just not the way they operate as this doesn't scale well.
A bit more complex than that, but yeah, it doesn't really require funds so much as hacker labor.

A few examples of technologies that would help:

- Pervasive use of end-to-end encryption by default, at the host level in addition to any application-level security.

- Virtual Ring Routing: layer-2 mesh networking that scales to Internet-sized networks and never needs to floodfill the network with packets. Use encryption key fingerprints as the host addresses, so that this works well with end-to-end encryption.

- Tor-like onion routing.

- Key-fingerprint-based host naming, making DNS an optional (and selectable) directory service rather than a required core component. Of course, having end-to-end encryption means you can easily select a DNS server which gives you correct results, rather than one with various entries redirected to governmental agencies.

With all of the above, you have a network where you can't prevent or intercept any communication, without pulling the plug on the entire infrastructure at the hardware level. And even then, the pervasive availability of mesh networking means that packets can find and use any available egress, which includes satellites, cell towers, and long-distance wifi.
Loved this:

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"
Zynga's latest release is called Mafia Wars: Shakedown. Seems somewhat apt.
I recently built a prototype with Bootstrap. I will never be a designer, but you can turn something out quickly that looks quite professional with very little effort.

What I also like about Bootstrap is that it is continuing to be developed and is the core of one of the most successful products on the web.
it's (very) cool, but x-mixed-replace is not supported in all browsers. I sure hope the browsers that support it don't end up dropping their support.
If you made a Google Chrome or Firefox extension I'd install (both of) them. In fact, porting this service to an extension seems more logical and streamlined if it could push notifications in real time as you entered a website, the way Firefox can warn you if a website has a false certificate or is a registered scam/phishing website.
Actually I'm not sure that's true, since for instance Apple curate different stores for different regions, and my purchases appear on my credit card statement as:

06/11/2011	APPLE ITUNES STORE SYDNEY AUS	$1.98

IANAL but you can probably go after these guys in any of the jurisdictions that the knockoff app is sold in.
Tracelytics: The Structure of your Success [Analyzing for Performance]
We really have are turned into the world that George Orwell wrote about in 1984. If it's not the government recording us, it's our own fellow humans. It's kind of incredible and scary.

The part I remember most vividly about 1984 was the one scene where the main character had this one, tiny area in his apartment where he could stand where the cameras couldn't see him, and he treasured it.

To think that we're living in such a world now where our own privacy is exactly like this, something that is fleeting and to be treasured, is frightening.
The same is true of any location, not just Seattle.
http://www.6wunderkinder.com/ is one example.
W3schools isn't the greatest source. I agree, MozDev would be a better target for your scraping.

Also, many examples appear twice. (Try text-shadow, border-spacing)
Ask HN: Is there a good way to create pseudo-random passwords mentally?
With more and more news about databases being cracked, and the fact that I use maybe 4 unique passwords for all the services I connect to, I'm wondering if any HNers have devised schemes for creating unique-ish passwords for the services they access.

I don't want to use a password manager because not all services I access will happen just from a laptop, I would love some kind of scheme that can be mentally recited while allowing for something approaching a unique key. Is there anything you guys use?
The Use bcrypt rant comes up on HN a lot, but I've actually never seen a website that uses bcrypt or PBKDF2 in the real world. Hell, I rarely encounter developers or admins who even know what it is. I doubt it was more than md5+salt, but maybe.

Edit: I should clarify - there certainly are examples of bcrypt being used, and I know there are tools available. But pick several random websites that have forums or user accounts and the number actually using it will be very small. That has been my experience once exposed to the code/infrastructure anyway.
Teachers are looking for stuff like this so the key to success is spreading the word. There certainly are competitors in your space (ClassParrot etc)

Just curious. Why did you choose to use Twilo as your SMS provider?
Well, I did. http://forr.st/-tonycoco
The main advantage would be that in PostFrenzy the emphasis is on getting you point where you have a single post in front of you so that you can zone in on the work at hand, versus being subjected to the endless distractions that are bound to occur on very active teams.
Salting a password doesn't make it uncrackable, it just makes it impervious to rainbow tables and other parallel attacks because it forces the attacker to recalculate the hash for every guess for every user account. You can certainly still run a mangled dictionary attack on a salted database, it will just take a lot longer.
I don't think that's very salient. You could raise analogous objections for Internet-based voting weaknesses, or most information leaks in general.
Also, win32 is a C++ project. There are significant advantages to writing in the same language as the underlying platform.
I love Berlin, but please let's cut the hyperbole:

Beautiful nature, lakes, canals, and parks

It's a pretty city, in some parts, but "Europe's greenest city" is just bullshit. And maybe technically there are more canals than in Venice and Amsterdam, but in reality you'll find that you have to walk quite a bit to get from one canal to the next, where in Venice and Amsterdam they are a defining part of the city.

Berlin’s central location makes it easy to travel around Europe

Around Eastern Europe, yes. Travelling to the UK, France, Spain, Italy, or Switzerland is easier from other parts of the continent.

The amazing, delicious döner kebabs

I like kebabs as much as the next guy and it's probably true that you can get the best ones in Berlin, but let's be honest, it's drunk food and often made from questionable ingredients.

That said, there really is lots of awesome food in Berlin in all price categories and from all the cuisines of the world. In fact, eating out in Berlin is such a great experience in general that I'm not sure why kebabs deserve special mention.

Again, I love Berlin and maneesh's other points hold true, I just don't think it needs to be glorified beyond what it is -- a wonderful, amazing city that isn't the most pretty one and isn't really the very best location in Europe in terms of climate and travelling options.

@maneesh: don't take this the wrong way, glad to hear you've had a great time, sounds like a lot of fun!
> "While there is no evidence that passwords and credit card information have been compromised, with the state of encryption cracking, it should only be a matter of time (and horsepower)."

Um. What? Assuming that a PCI-compliant level of encryption was used, "matter of time" is "heat death of the universe" if you don't have the encryption keys.
Healthy Breakfast Ideas
I love this idea, but here's how I think it could be improved:

1. Consider porting the entire service to a browser extension for Chrome or Firefox, and making the homepage more of an information/FAQ center.

2. Demo video. A good demo video explaining why "John Doe" should worry about his personal information being sold would be more convincing - this is how you get your service to less savvy internet users who aren't primarily concerned with privacy.

3. Find a way around inconsistencies. It would be better to report if a website actually sells/uses your personal information rather than returning a simple search result with TOS findings. A website can tweak or flat out lie. You should try to account for this.

4. Are you planning to commercialize this in any way? How do you plan to fund it, if at all?
I still don't see how this is any more useful than just using the default auto-complete with your standard country list. The data I've measured shows that selecting your country is not often a pain point.

Also, if it's for shipping, you can often work out the country by the address, and perhaps just show the matches.

E.g. Do you mean Someplace, X or Someplace Y in a drop down.
Isn't the logical result of this the ability for a company to decide and change, at any time, up until IPO, how much upside an employee will get?
Emacs color boxes
"I want to vote on some stuff directly and let somebody else vote for me on stuff i dont care about." (emphasis mine)

The key for successful direct democracy is encouraging delegation of decision making.
Having lived in various areas from the rural to the suburban to the urban (albeit not downtown SF or NY-style urban) on the west coast, I've never come across a culture in which fighting about your marriage in a restaurant was acceptable behavior.

And the more rural the area, the more likely it would have been for someone to walk up and tell them they needed to take their BS elsewhere.
> There should be no reason to hide your cryptography method provided that it is secure.

I'm totally with you, and I suspect we may see a more technical explanation of the event in the coming days.

That said, this is a tough situation for Valve. They have many sorts of users, many of them who have no idea what MD5 hashing is or why it would be awful to use. You're already delivering bad news, so it may be wise not to make nontechnical users feel further discomfort at confronting terminology they don't understand.

In this, I feel like Valve has banked enough credibility for me to trust for the moment that they can evaluate their security and say "Oh, fuck, this will be cracked and it's only a matter of time," and then communicate that in clear terms in their message.
I spent a month in Berlin last year with the idea of possibly staying there longer-term. I had a great time there, and I might go back, but it does seem to be a young person's culture. It would be an amazing place to be 20-25.
Again, you're taking a very naïve view of my position by presenting extreme cases and saying "look what will happen!"

In actuality, courts will continue to exercise their right to interpret the vagaries of the law on a case-by-case basis and to set precedents for fair use.

> IMO what you're suggesting is a complete overreaching of privacy rights, and would make this society even more litigious and difficult to navigate than it is already.

And I feel we would be better off for it. Maybe we'll just have to leave it at that.
Aside from my main points I put in my comment, what are the main criteria for flagging a website? The way I see it is:

1. If it sells your information to third parties,
2. if it shares your information with ad campaigns without directly selling it

Would you make any other criteria that users might want to be aware of?
Microsoft asks ITC to compel Google to provide material about B&N antitrust
That didn't really say anything.

Perhaps someone could find another company that has threatened firings unless employees give back options, and Pincus can copy their CEO's memo to employees.
Every single person who moves to berlin ends up mixing minimal techno. It's uncanny.
do people here actually believe the current system isn't rigged? does anyone believe an internet based system wouldn't be rigged?
This discussion is specifically about facebook vs. G+; not a random site with 1,000 users.

We know that both sites have achieved significant user-base. We also know that one of those sites has crazy engagement and that it's had crazy engagement for a long time. That site is facebook. We know that the other site has 40+M members but publishes no engagement metrics and when pushed, avoids questions about engagement. It is not a stretch to assume from this that their engagement is not optimal. It is safe to say that facebook wins the engagement war.

The common counterargument is "but G+ only launched few months ago." To this, I counter that few months into facebook's launch, their engagement was very high.

The next common argument is that "but G+ got 40M+ members in few months." To this I say that the 40+M number says very little about G+ and says much about the Google search engine. As an example, I'd argue Google can launch a fictitious service and get tens of millions of signups for it by linking to it from google.com.
or have an option for source (just a radio with a default or something)
Ask HN: Help with writing a job-seeking article for sydney
Hi all,

I've been working a lot lately with a friend, helping with her job hunt as she has just finished her studies. I thought i'd write a blog article about it, as over the last few months we've tried a whole bunch of ideas, and was just wondering if anyone here would mind making a few suggestions?

When i finished writing it, i felt like there should be more to it, i feel like i've missed some important things, but i just can't put my finger on it for some reason.

Anyway here's the article:

http://splinter.com.au/how-to-get-a-programming-or-design-job-in-syd

Cheers all
Any modern Rails app is very likely using bcrypt to store password hashes. It's baked into most of the popular auth frameworks.
It is extremely easy to use bcrypt. http://www.openwall.com/phpass/
that is a fact, http://soundcloud.com/maneesh/minimally-nomadic
Does anyone else get a flash of black over the whole page once in a while during the transitions?
It's much more than just a grid. It has patterns for buttons, modals, pop-overs, hero-units, forms and such (including a small unobtrusive JavaScript library). If you need to rapidly prototype designs and layouts, use it. We use it as almost a living wire-frame. Where we can see interaction and UI/UX very close to the full-design spec with little effort from a designer.
I'd love to move to Berlin just for the hacker scene that is there, centered around Chaos Computer Club. The open source / hacking / copyleft scene seems bigger there than other places in Europe, at least from what I felt when I was there for Chaos Communication Conference.

Also the döner.