skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very nice. Not really related to what you've created but I'm really liking the use of Bootstrap in many of these kinds of projects. Back to ribbot, I created an account but my name is "New User" and I see no way of changing this.

Edit: I see going to profile shows an option to change the user name. You should consider sending the user there to set a user name upon first sign in.
Yeah, but it often isn't as long as a real man page. Plus for some reason zsh doesn't have it!
Jolee Bindo if memory serves.
"Yet we use gibberish Lorem Ipsum because well, hey, that's what that other designers do"

I explained why I use Lorem Ipsum, and that clearly was not the reason.

I appreciate the detailed responses, but don't misconstrue my argument.
Interesting idea. While it would be nice to have alternative log in options, I do give you credit for making the facebook log in just that - logging in, rather than asking for permission to post to my wall, etc. etc. etc. which turns me off right away from most sites.
Another advantage to using facebook for log in is that fact that you are basically inviting strangers into your home, so it wouldn't hurt to know something a little about their identity in advance.
I love space and programming more than anything. This article just filled my head with a bajillion ideas and made me wonder why on earth I haven't thought before about chasing both in my career choices.

A very inspiring read, complete with such nice asides about how operating as a startup with a mission can get so much fun and work accomplished, and shows that serving the interests of shareholders and profits first can utterly derail accomplishing your mission.
Investing in silver
No Comment: Another Newspaper Sold
Is it telling or amazing that the $110 Million acquisition of San Diego Union Tribune received only 4 total comments on the WSJ and NYT combined? Platinum Equity bought in 2009 for about $50 million turns around 2 years later and sells for 2X to an ultra-conservative hotel developer. Wow...poor San Diego.

NYT: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/san-diego-newspaper-sold-to-powerful-local-developer/#postComment
WSJ: http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/11/18/platinum-equity-to-sell-union-tribune-to-san-diego-entrepreneur/

Is local ownership of news media a good thing?

Can anyone be successful owning 1 or 2 local media outlets (news, tv, radio) in a single major metro market?
Startups are hard; even for Steve Jobs.

If you think about it, when he went back to Apple, he didn't have to worry about logo, coffee machines etc.

In fact, one point he made on the video was that over at NeXT they had forgotten "how to be scrappy", and hustle for discounts.
There is no way to stop people from doing this sort of thing because people are infinitely creative in ways to be dumb. The solution is not to have critical infrastructure controlled over the public internet.
Pepper Spray Cop Interactive
On the subject of Norway, I can't resist recommending the brilliant dystopian sci-fi film The Bothersome Man. It complements that essay nicely.
A Python-based CLI for working with Hacker News.
Factors When Learning Spanish
The primary factor you should consider while learning Spanish language is the amount of time you can devote for learning the language. You have to organize your thoughts properly for learning a new language.
Are you guys hiring locally?
I started this to specifically dump my saved stories to an XML feed, which I hook up to http://ifttt.com and auto-import into Pinboard. Working great, so far.

I know there are a bunch of HN CLIs out there, but none handle saved stories (the only thing this supports, right now).
I like the idea so I'd like to share my thought processes as I used it.

Firstly, I had a basic idea of what it probably was having heard about the hack involving file hashes a while back.

While it gets permissions for my entire Dropbox I was aware it only interacted with my Public folder. That's fine.

After signing up it wasn't obvious what to do next, even with the random link. I searched for a file that's in a folder with no luck. My first random file is one of my own. through that trial and error I figured out it only interacts with the top-level folder.

Personally, I organize my public folder. In fact, I have a "persistent" folder that I use to link to, to imply the links are largely non-transient. I'd love to be able to index folders of my choosing.

If you redirected to a page to control that it would be immediately obvious what's shared and what's not.

EDIT: As an aside, I found some pretty neat files I'd forgotten about!
Put in this perspective, it makes one wonder if a program to actively recruit and train psychopaths to act as impartial policemen with licenses to kill (re: Jedi) would or wouldn't work.
Until there's password protection for the "buy now" buttons on the Kindle, there's no way I'd let a kid borrow mine.
This doesn't surprise me AT ALL. You guys wouldn't believe some of the stuff I've seen out there. Work in the industrial automation field is largely done by individuals/companies called System Integrators. Integrators are cowboys and most of the industry is an unregulated wild-west. There is a pervasive "git-er-done" attitude; nothing else matters, security included.

(I'm a developer at one of the smaller SCADA software companies.)
Why Software Projects Are Terrible And How Not To Fix Them
123? That's the same password I have on my luggage
Nice!

Feedback:

- You should link to a demo page and/or have screenshots. As you mention in the HN comments, the Support page is a demo page, but that's not obvious from the site itself. Also, the demo page should have a decent amount of sample content, comments, etc; the Support page currently has one entry and zero comments.

- There should be a sign up button on every page (e.g. the Pricing page). The header is one possible location.

- On the one hand it makes sense that Ribbot Support's Home page is Ribbot Support, on the other hand it feels weird that after I click on Ribbot Support, there's no way to go back to Ribbot.com without hitting the back button.

- On the pricing page, change "Num Users" to "Number of Users".

- The pricing seems a little excessive at the upper tiers, but that's just a personal opinion. Usually when prices go above a few hundred dollars, pricing charts will say something like "call us!"

- For ad-supported vs paid, it's not clear what kind of ads there are, how obtrusive they are, etc.

- Nice domain name. It's screaming for a cute frog logo =)

- Just a personal opinion, but you should add a little background color to the site. Nothing glaring... but there's too much white right now, IMO.
Jolee Bindo was the black Jedi from the first KOTOR, and his sub plot makes pretty much no sense.

He rejected the religious ways of the Jedi as a Padawan, he became a smuggler, he got married even though he was a Jedi, he trained her in the force, and then Exar Kun converted her to the dark side, Jolee fought her, won, but couldn't kill her, and then she ran off to kill a bunch of Jedi before she was stopped.

And Jolee's punishment for all of this? They wanted to promote him to being a Jedi Knight. Seriously?
Amen to that. I do some work on the network side of control systems—and default passwords (or no passwords) are rampant, and often recommended under manufacturer guidelines. The last part there is the more worrisome.
There was a site similar to this in SF, HouseFed, but it looks like its down now. Another variation here is Munchery, where the meals are actually made by chefs.

I love cooking and hosting meals at my place, but I don't actually want to meet new people through my meals or make money. Instead, I just want to catch up with people I haven't seen in a while in a way that doesn't involve drinking (the default around here).

But I find it hard to figure out who to invite for meals, because I'm not sure who's around on any given night, and I don't want to invite too many people, and I don't want to invite someone too many times (and have them feel bad for having to say no so much). I wish I could just say "tonight I'm making X, come over if you're interested, reply by X so I can buy appropriate portions."

I've tried using G+ circles and Facebook lists, but everyone's on different networks and has different rates of response.

Anyway, that's my problem, would love an app with a solution. :)
The author's assertion that this is better than Isaacson's coverage of the same topic rings hollow. Isaacson definitely addresses the hallucinatory '87 deadline, Joanna's resistance, the "honeymoon is over" intro to the second Pebble Beach meeting. I wouldn't be surprised if Isaacson had access to this video as a source.

That said, it's a different perspective, which is nice. I just disagree with Panzarino's implicit assertion that a) Isaacson's biography missed this, and b) this gem of a video fills that purported void.
It's interesting how they attribute so much of their success to Apollo program information. So much data must have been created during that program - I wonder how much of it is sitting on dusty shelves unused?

I've often wondered what type of improvements you could make if you built a Saturn V type rocket with modern technology and materials. It looks like we're probably going to find out over the next ten years.
I'm confused; without any explanation of why you are posting this link here, it appears you are trying to trick people into thinking that this is the collaborative tech blog proposed in the submission, unless it is, in which case you could use a little help with the messaging on the landing page.

EDIT: Okay, I see your comment elsewhere on the page. You should probably post this as a child of that comment to avoid confusion.
Just Listed 2 Bedrooms, 1 Bathrooms, 744 Sqft. For $85,000 in Spokane, WA 99205
This is great when the bank only has a few hundred accounts. Sure, it is unlikely to guess a single individual, but a thief probably doesn't care who they steal from.
This line has made me laugh/driven me nuts since the first time I saw the movie — "Only the Sith deal in absolutes" is itself an absolute.
>You'd literally have to use the iPhone connection as your main internet source

why is this so crazy? its perfectly possible in areas without insane rates and no competition
What's stopping the SCADA software companies from taking on the integration work themselves?
As PG has said more than once, it's better to make a small group insanely happy than to make everyone "meh" about your stuff. The geek side of me is really happy to see long polling finally getting thrown out the window like the hack that it is, and if you want to make a stand against it, I'll love you more for it.

Pragmatically, though, you probably want to eventually have a fallback mode in this case, with a note telling people that they should probably use a better browser. Team apps are one of those least common denominator problems, after all.
You are absolutely right here. There is an inherent survivor bias by CS graduates at the moment simply because their skills are in demand right now.

All of us want to be assured that we are all complete masters of our own destinies, either by working harder or tackling something more challenging, et c. bad luck will not befall us.

However the reality is we simply don't.
Thanks for all the ideas. There is clearly no silver bullet or shortcut but this is some good stuff. Appreciated.
An interactive book is a good thing, but you have to know whether it is for increasing the parent/child reading experience, or to hand it over to the child for self entertainment (ie, stop bugging me for 5 minutes and read this).

In the first category - having things move/animate would be more important than story telling, in the second, having a self-led easy to use system for the child to work their own way through a story is important.

> do you think video games for young children (under 6-ish) present moral or developmental issues?

No, but if you let a young child endlessly play video games you've only got yourself to blame. Interactive books for children are to paper what illustrated is to text. There are no 'morals' in material (assuming the content is benign) ,only in the way they are allowed to access it. Developmentally, you have to bring up a child in the world it's going to live in, electronic devices are here to stay.
Yeah, the touchstone of a Star Wars essay is: "Is this essay diverting enough to make me forget all about George Lucas?"

This one doesn't quite get there. Indeed, so far I've only seen one essay incorporating the dreaded prequels that did:

http://km-515.livejournal.com/746.html

... though it's not as if I read widely in the genre. I generally prefer to pretend that all Star Wars footage filmed after 1984 was part of a bad dream I had in the mid-1980s. [1]

---

[1] I really did have a dream, sometime in the Eighties, where I was watching some sort of Star Wars movie on TV, but couldn't figure out which it was, and in the dream I eventually figured out it was some kind of made-for-TV Movie #4, and then I figured out that I probably hadn't heard of it because it was awful. And I was sad.

I assume this was actually a memory echo of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which I saw at a young age and have since managed to completely suppress except in nightmares.
Agreed. Though I've tried hard to do so. Kindle is just not a code-friendly device. Landscape helps, but is a pain in the ass to read the non-code text in landscape (for the same reasons as given by the poster above who complained about the wide website text) and advancing pages is painful.
Work for free, or for full price. Never for cheap.
Single Page version (+ Readability)

http://www.readability.com/articles/2pzowoyw
Australia isn't exactly America. In most ways we are much closer to Canada than the US.

For example, we have strong financial sector regulation, a public health care system etc etc.

In the telecommunications sector we have a powerful regulator (the ACCC) to enforce competition policy (usually against the old incumbent telco).

Another difference to the US is that the incumbent telco (Telstra) is legally obliged to give access other players access to its exchanges. That has enabled other players to do things Telstra said were impossible or uneconomic (for example, smaller players rolled out ADSL2 much quicker than Telstra said was possible using this access).
I do think it ups your odds of receiving back, though a tricky thing I've been trying to sort out is how much it also matters that you actively try to "own" it, so as to capture some of the rebound value.

For example, I sometimes have trouble deciding between writing up an explanation of something as a blog post, versus starting or adding to its Wikipedia article. If I'm being honest, I think the Wikipedia option often provides the most value to the world at large: my contribution will be found/read by more people there, can be improved upon by others to snowball into even more usefulness, etc. But I would probably capture more of the value if I blogged it, because that'd build my personal brand, could generate AdSense/Amazon revenue, etc., while it's harder (though not impossible) to parlay being a respected Wikipedia editor into any sort of benefit.
It's less of an issue now that the Kindle's so much cheaper, admittedly.
Starting Your Own MLM Business
I feel that fixing the security holes has little to do with reducing the damage done due to increased attack surface.

If you're a software developer who is not doing security research, and who is mainly interested in some functionality offered by a module, you'd be better off giving the module exactly the privileges it needs, not more and not less. If not, wouldn't OS's run all user-space programs in ring-0? (Maybe I am stretching it a bit)

If Bernstein meant that this principle has been misquoted/abused/understood in all wrong ways (like most of the "premature optimization" quotes), then perhaps it makes some sense. :)
MLM As a Home Business
Talking about a city on Mars by the middle of this century—even as SpaceX has yet to fly its first cargo mission to Earth orbit—is one of the reasons space professionals are skeptical about Musk’s claims.

And yet, it's this kind of completely unrealistic goals that really pushes things forward. Even if SpaceX only gets... dunno, 25% of the way to that goal, chances are they'll have accomplished more than anyone else is trying.
Many years ago I worked for a defense contractor who not only had 123abc as the password for a workstation that held secret information and was connected to the internet, but a post-it note with "password: 123abc" was kept on top of a monitor which was visible through a window from a corridor that random members of the public had access to. When I brought this up as possibly a poor security practice the reaction was anger towards me, and then moving the post-it note to the side of the monitor so it would not be visible from the window.
This idea interests me, I'd love to help out in any way I can. Email is in my profile.
Piers Atkinson's Unique Creations
Some leads perhaps: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3226714
Some of the huge guys like Rockwell and Siemens may offer integration services; I'm not 100% sure though.

But I'm guessing it's mostly because system integrators are qualified in a way a software company isn't. The scope of a project that an integrator might take on can be vast and the SCADA software is generally only one piece of the equation.
Einstein was Probably Wrong About the Universe
The job opportunities are pretty much endless right now if you have experience. There's a $50MM company moving in across the street that keeps inviting me to parties because they can't find enough people to hire. I probably get 5 e-mails from recruiters a week.

In the contracting game, there are unfortunately a large number of people who don't have a good appreciation of your costs, much more so than web dev or other types of contracting. Sifting through the haystack to find the good gigs is a royal pain.

As for the work itself, it is definitely low-level development, and when done right, it is fun & rewarding. You get different kinds of performance problems than you would get with web dev, which is fun, and the release cycles cause you to come up with some interesting solutions for tracking down and fixing issues. When you're fixing bugs in that codebase from India, on the other hand, because they wrote 20 KLOC in a single file and not a lick of memory management in the lot, you start to ponder your sanity.
The Great Firewall of China, working to protect citizens from foreign influences
Given that I probably would have put "Hacked" in quotes then.
many many years ago, when modems were king, there was a breach similar to the 3 character password, UCB... well, the rest is history. I dont remember the details precisely, probably still can be found on some news or mailing list archives.
It would only work if it was regulated by people who understood IT security.
Thanks for your feedback. We agree with your two use cases, but we have no idea which will end up being dominant. I guess we will just have to ship it to find out.
Membership software
Membership software used to provide private membership username/password access accounts to your website visitors.
You just lost a commission.
When e-readers get down to the $10 price point, I'll certainly consider buying a stack for my kids!
Interesting observation and distinction! You're right.

I share everything I learn - but only on my own website, not posted on some external site. I write book reviews and notes for every one I read, but only shared on my site, not even on Amazon where it would help more people. I guess it is somewhat selfish!

I want the benefit of getting the direct relationship with the reader, with no middleman.

It's not JUST giving, it's giving and wanting to capture the rebound value (as you say). Not as selfless as it seems.

Thanks for bringing this up. (And thanks for doing it on Hacker News, since I wouldn't have seen it on your own site.)
I've never understood why in many western industrialized countries telecommunications has not been regulated the same as sewage, roads, electricity, etc

Because the technology required for telecommunications changes quicker than that required for sewage, roads, electricity etc.

Highly regulated markets are slower to react than less regulated markets, and government owned monopolies are usually the slowest of the lot.

In general the model that seems to have generated the best outcome for consumers is government-mandated competition. This takes many forms (eg, local-loop unbundling in the UK and Europe, partial forced access regulation in Australia), but enables companies to compete on services, innovation and price whilst keeping the government involved to enforce consumer interests.
I think this is an answer to people who are "too smart to succeed" because they optimize the product only. It's just a matter of optimizing across domains, (e.g. trade-off cost and performance), which takes a certain adaptability and flexibility of mind. It's a kind of lateral intelligence and reframing which is useful in solving everything but textbook problems.

> Simplicity enables both reliability and low cost.

As Woz said - though Woz also mentioned the advantage of making it simple enough to fully hold in his head. (http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html). So, in a back-handed way, a limited working memory can be a gift (though I'm not suggesting that Woz's working memory was limited). http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3258655

one page (works) http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?expire=&tit...
SOPA: Who Is In Favor And Who Is Not.
McAfee: Nearly All New Mobile Malware In Q3 Targeted At Android Phones
If you lock the account, you allow a trivial DoS. If you lock the IP, anyone with a botnet can trivially work around it. And with enough accounts, you can just scan the entire space of (possible) accounts for anyone with a particular PIN.
Iterating Towards Bethlehem
Augmented Reality Pacman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIX6wJ1Wv90
Niels, it definitely wasn't my intention to imply that Isaacson don't touch on these matters at all, because he did. However, I must stick by my assertion that the discussions of Jobs' motives and methods during this era is very, very light. This video adds a significant amount of color to the conversation about NeXT and the way that he interacts with the staff is fascinating.

So yes, he may have pulled some quotes from the players involved, but I feel that this short video tells you more about Jobs' operational methods at the time than the entire section on NeXT in the bio.

Thank you very much for your thoughts though, it is definitely a possibility that this was part of the material used by Isaacson, good point.
Entrepreneurs: “Looking for a loophole, since 1532.”™ ☺
I don't think there has been significant government investment in mobile telecoms in Europe (citation requested if I'm wrong).

There is much higher levels of competition, enforced by government regulation though.
That's actually very weird. Wouldn't having an OS like Linux make it so you can't guarantee computation times and guarantee exactly when processes will start and end?

I don't really know much about OS's but I'd write control systems in a pure language compiled directly to machine code with no OS. That way you would have certain guarantees of execution and auditing the code would be significantly cheaper. I remember hearing that auditing code for satellites is outrageously expensive because most languages have side effects. So it's thousands and thousands of dollars per line of code to guarantee that it'll do what it says it will do regardless of execution path.
The Unique way for Wedding Invitation
Business phone systems are the same. Most manufactures only allow a 4 char password. Now phone systems are being hack left and right; "hackers" (more like organized crime) selling carrier service and the company gets the bill.
Are you a daring fireball fan?
The core memory module from a home built PDP-11
Some Popular Myths in Software Development