skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Its much easier to invade privacy in the name of providing a better product than to actually figure out what the customer wants. Collecting huge swaths of data allows product to be tweaked to find a local maximum of profitability. Its an easier and safer alternative than to actually understand one's own product from a consumer perspective.

I fear this is where we're going in all corners of tech. Even moreso because we're already quickly eroding at any expectation that one should provide privacy to their users. All the while users are ignorant enough about tech in general and have no idea that their privacy can and is flying out the door. Software exists in such a way that the lay user can't ever understand the boundaries or capabilities of software to do things that they are completely unaware of. The numbers of people who do understand what is going on is so small that they are neither a significant portion of the market, nor a "reasonable person" in the eyes of courts.

Privacy will be dead before anyone even notices.
Great comment. Sums up the full range of humanity concisely - Generous people going out of their way to be awesome, normal people appreciative of someone being awesome, and whiners who manage to find something to complain about anyway.
I don't have anything against HAML, and actually think the syntax is alright. Even gave it a spin some smaller codebases. But I have a hard time finding reasons to switch to it. Until I find a compelling reason to use it, HTML works fine for me.

Most arguments I see seem to primarily argue around ascetics. I'd welcome anyone to post their thoughts to help me sway my position.

To the author's credit, I immediately recognize the benefits of SASS and CoffeeScript.
Mozilla's WebAPI takes shape, can now read battery state, send SMS, vibrate
If your aim is raw speed, not a lot beats a standard JVM array.
Don't get me wrong. It seems wonderful for those who have many projects. If you start supporting things other than gems (sbt for scala, maven for java, lein for clojure, etc), it can be a valualbe tool for many enterprises. Specially if you highlight which updates have security updates.

Nevertheless, at the moment, gemfresh is enough for my personal projects.
I'd surprisingly prefer storing all data indefinitely and not allowing users to delete what they submitted if and only if you also eliminate any way to group locations by a device.

This data is just too dangerous, even in spite of innocuous intentions. Data breaches happen, National Security Letters remain threats, and targeting ads based on a user's current location will tempt anyone. You will fill your users with confidence if you remove your ability to group the data points.

Moreover, you shouldn't discount the importance of historical barometric data. At some point, it might no longer be practical to store the data in its most atomic state, but maybe rolled up to a periodic snapshot (maybe hourly) of some geographic region.

What data would you be looking to store for longer than a month?
Adobe acquires Efficient Frontier to boost its digital marketing
Google Kills The Black Bar, Introduces a New Navigation Bar
http://duriansoftware.com/joe/An-intro-to-modern-OpenGL.-Tab...

Here's another one that's pretty good. Not as long but maybe a even a bit more thorough.
Could anyone recommend something similar for 2D programming in opengl, or anything else, or would that be covered in this tutorial? I'm mostly interested in building custom data visualizations beyond what is offered in the kind of visualization libraries I use like ggplot2.
>All user data (since it is a keylogger?) being logged and sent to a third party without user knowledge or consent

Where does anyone say that it is being sent to a third party? This rather noob-ish developer noted that they have a keyboard hook, but in no way does that mean that they send all of your keystrokes to a third party.

Honestly I think I expect too much from HN. The level of discourse on here is absolutely no better than any typical blowhard site.
To Become Rich Online, Create A Flow Of Passive Income
That's not far off. I've made good money fixing Rails apps that have no tests :)
Does it really?

http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/getting-little-tired-of-security...

There's no evidence that it sends this information to the company and no evidence that it actually logs it. Only that APIs are called containing it.
I am surprised the internet took this long to respond, considering that the HN discussion on this was started almost a week ago[1][2]. That said, after watching the video I'm all kinds of sceptical about the dude's claim.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3263955
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3273416
Perhaps one of these will help http://www.pdfonfly.com/, http://www.htm2pdf.co.uk/ ?
Interesting...

Two Things:

1) I'm surprised by how low C# is. Actually, maybe this is more of a not-advertised-on-twitter thing rather than the popularity of the language, which makes the difference interesting.

2) Die flash Die!
It looks like basic multivitamins were given.

I've never heard of this solution before, but it seems it would be wise to consider it when contemplating extreme solutions like surgery.

"Patient A.B. aged 27 years, weighed on admission
456 lb (207 kg). During the 382 days of his fast,
vitamin supplements were given daily as 'Multivite'
(BDH), vitamin C and yeast for the first 10 months
and as 'Paladac' (Parke Davis), for the last 3 months.
Non-caloric fluids were allowed ad libitum. From
Day 93 to Day 162 only, he was given potassium
supplements (two effervescent potassium
tablets
BPC supplying 13 mEq daily) and from Day 345 to
Day 355 only he was given sodium supplements (2 5 g
sodium chloride daily). No other drug treatment was
given. "
Will Poonam Pandey discover Frrole? 
Well, she will, if she listens to this guy: https://twitter.com/#!/_iLiveLaughLove/status/141763927926251521

Now the first question is - what is Frrole? Frrole is a social newspaper for your city that we launched last week. Check out SF at http://frrole.com/san+francisco and see for yourself what it is all about.

Next question - Who is Poonam Pandey? Well, she is the girl, who, umm, well, broke a promise. A promise that let half of India down it seems. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BheVyS7c3UU and find out for yourself;-)
IE10 PP4 Surpasses Safari, Opera In HTML5 Support
If someone got your phone, they could get all the passwords you typed in. Its certainly not 'nothing' that they could discern.
There is no evidence the data is being logged and sent.

Accessed yes, logged, well nobody has found the log yet, and sent, nobody has found any network traffic.

It's still bad, but the reports seem to be over-hyped by journalists looking for a scoop.
This is post-approval, but good to keep in mind.
http://crazyviraj.blogspot.com/2011/08/dont-let-apples-laten...
To be fair, the response from CarrierIQ implies that this is the case:

"In an interview last week, Carrier IQ VP of Marketing Andrew Coward rejected claims the software posed a privacy threat because it never captured key presses.

“Our technology is not real time,” he said at the time. "It's not constantly reporting back. It's gathering information up and is usually transmitted in small doses.”

Note that last clause there.
Before reading, I guessed that "millions of phones" meant millions of Android phones. Because if this was happening on iPhones, that would merit mention in the headline. Funny how that works.
I find HAML mostly just replaces Rails tag helpers.

instead of:

<%= tag "div", {:id => "city", :data => {:name => "Boise", :rating => "good"}} %>

I can do

#city{:data => {:name => "Boise", :rating => "good"}}

Which is basically the same thing. All haml does is encourage using a taghelper like syntax for everything.
In a manner of speaking. Some things are difficult to do in HAML, which happen to be things you shouldn't be doing anyway.

For example, I don't know how to write multi-line Ruby code (with the exception of function calls) in HAML. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a way, but you can't just drop it in like you can with ERB. This means that if you need multiple lines of Ruby, you move the code a more appropriate area (model, helper, controller, etc).
If HAML is an unforgivable sin I want to be a sinner.

Btw, HAML eliminates a class of errors (improper tag nesting) and I find it much easier to read. To each his own, but I don't get why such an opinion piece is front page on HN. Is this the new Proggit?
Random Facts and Trivia (video)
Random Facts, Trivia & more!
So I've been thinking about this more since yesterday. I think some people misunderstood me and thought I was saying that pixel-perfect and polished designs are always necessary. They're not. Sometimes fast and sloppy UIs are what you need to build in order to learn the fastest, and eventually get to a better product. (Sometimes misaligned elements and odd typography gets the brand tone just right, like on hacker news.)

The part I haven't quite figured out how to think about yet, is how teams decide how much the details matter. How do you know when the fit and finish is good enough? I'm not sure. I do think though that as products are competing more on experience (easier, more delightful, focused, etc), that the details will matter more than they ever have in the past.
How to Snuggle Softly With your Product Error Messages
"Typing is not my bottleneck in coding. Thinking is."

I love that statement.
Vim demystified: ten commands you can start using today
??? Really, how so. How are they going to get all of the passwords you typed in? Can you point out where anyone has noted any log on the device of this data?

This whole story is that they have system event hooks. That's it. Maybe a real security researcher will find something deeper, but as is it's a nothing story of limited interest. When people like you carry it further than reality you just add ignorance to the conversation.
Hope these guys have a contingency plan for when their massive DB gets compromised by some angry 15 year olds. Especially when said 15 year olds decide to dump a year's worth of plaintext keylog information.

What's most sad about this situation is that these guys were able to get this software on 150 million handsets and we're only finding out about this now.
Whether monetization increases or decreases other kinds of value is a topic for a different discussion; the only thing I said was that all types of value can be monetized.
Tha Reasons why Diets Fail
it'll be interesting to see the fate of flash over the coming months I think
I dont see how meta comments on HN help the discussion?

Directly from the article:

> “Our technology is not real time,” he said at the time. "It's not constantly reporting back. It's gathering information up and is usually transmitted in small doses.”

The issue is, we don't know what this software is gathering and sending. It is not being done with consent.

But you're right, this needs to be looked into before getting the pitchforks out. But certainly, having the presence of a keylogger is bad enough in itself.
Pretty Woman Movie Online | Watch Pretty Woman Julia Roberts
Boats are bigger than butts.
Groupon throws Zynga a Shovel. Facebook gets its Affairs in Order
Spotify Will Offer Apps and Open Platform to Developers
> A big part of what empowers node to make these kinds of interfaces possible is its asynchronous nature. No longer do you have statelessness imposed from on high by the likes of apache or rails. You can keep intermediate state around in memory just like in any ordinary program.

Should that not be:

A big part of what empowers node to make these kinds of interfaces possible is its "statefull" nature. ...

Really, that it is asynchronous is nice for performance (but only complicates the implementation). But the fact that you keep state in memory is indeed a big win for ease of implementation, and also performance, especially if state is not global but only relates to a single session. Of course, that is usually frowned upon by the web developer community which believes that this somehow hurts scalability (while it actually helps scalability).
This certainly looks like a tortuous infringement in the UK (and I'd posit Europe). I didn't get a "only in the US" notice on YouTube though.

I can't see how this is possibly "fair use" - it's the complete work of music and the visual design of the set, choreography and show that is being reproduced in full in a commercial way. Unless the uploaders bought a license with their ticket to reproduce and distribute online and allow derivative works of those reproductions ...

Would be fascinated to read the letter from your IP lawyer justifying this?
If the links don't work above, then adding them here hoping they will work:
First: https://twitter.com/#!/_iLiveLaughLove/status/14176392792625...

Second: http://frrole.com/san+francisco

Third: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BheVyS7c3UU
I have an European Orange-branded HTC Desire S and I see no Carrier IQ related tasks in my task manager.
Ask HN: any boilerplate ToS philosophically equivalent to the MIT license?
I like the MIT license for being straightforward and simple for code. It's easy to slap on any code that you want to share without worrying too much about what's done with it. For me, it means "here is it. This is my code, but feel free to do your thing"

So I'm wondering if there's something in the same spirit for Terms of Services. I'm afraid ToS have to be more tailored to specific sites though.

Is there anything you typically use for services that you want to share without the burden of committing to a specific conduct? Something like "Use at your own risk"?

Thanks!
Although you seem to have some content, none of it seems to be newer than 18 days old. That gap seems odd.

Also, I would make new content the default, rather than top content

Good luck.
YouTube are just doing a first pass filter. They're not saying that 30s of a work is legally allowed.
>Funny how that works

How what works?

I see just as many "Android phones do this naughtiness" headlines as I see "iPhones allow these shenanigans" headlines. The fact that is isn't mentioned in the header lends more credence to the author (and article).
A revolutionary virtual reality project on Kickstarter
I'm sure people consented through some random paragraph in a two hundred page long EULA, usually under the guise of quality monitoring.

The meta is pertinent. I expect the sort of knee-jerk reaction among non-software developers. I don't among a more educated in the realm crowd.

There is little chance this company is recording, much less transmitting, everything you type, every message you receive, etc. I would hazard a guess that they do, however, record basic usage patterns to let the carrier know how people are using their devices ("6975 characters average per day, send 256 messages while receiving 12. Spends an average 37 seconds in the dialer.").
Is this all-caps thing a meme?
I love this trend of decentralizing everything, even VC funding.
My understanding is:

When you are using a ruby or python based web framework, each request is a blocking request i.e. after each request you wait for the response before proceeding further e.g. urllib.urlopen(), which as a result causes the no of requests handled/second to go down. Using eventmachine or gevent respectively for ruby or python is one way to overcome this.

In node.js there is no such concept of blocking requests and everything is processed in a single thread. But you can always fork multiple processes using its cluster module http://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/cluster.html

edit: Oh, I was not trying not advocate anything. nodejs is indeed just a choice, if I didn't make myself very clear when I said "My understanding is:"
>What flaws are these?

Have you ever seen this piece? http://tnx.nl/php.html

Some of the issues mentioned have been dealt with in PHP5 but a lot of the problems will probably be there permanently, such as inconsistent function names, arguments and return values mentioned at the top of the piece.

That isn't an insult to people using PHP. Much like I sometimes say that soda sucks without implying that soda drinkers suck, he's saying that PHP sucks without implying that PHP users suck.
Sure the company is trying to shed liability - or rather the Owners are. That's why it is an LLC.

What I was getting at is that the fact that everything is kludged together in a way that would be unlikely in the corporate world doesn't mean that the product will be unsuccessful - it doesn't mean the job will suck either, though it does make it more likely for certain personality types.

The benefit of staying is that you are likely to see the operations sausage factory and that sort of experience will be harder to come by should you return to enterprise type work.

I'm not saying that staying is the best option, but since there weren't complaints about the workplace culture or pay, the items over which you have expressed concern appear to be very remote possibilities, and there does not appear to be any opportunity cost associated with your career; I don't see any substantial harm should you continue to play Dirty Harry for now.

Good Luck.
FTA: "Eckhart said he chose the HTC phone purely for demonstration purposes. Blackberrys, other Android-powered handsets, and smartphones from Nokia contain the same snooping software, he claims."

It's not "Android" phones alone, it seems like everything but iPhones and Windows phones. Thus, the title is accurate.
The positioning of applications in the menu is based on their popularity, and the sad truth is that Reader is not particularly popular.

But really, is the position that important? Do you actually rely on this to get to Reader?
I agree with this (maybe not 1000x worse, but still).

Anything Apple does wrong is blown out of proportion. Yes the Apple collected data wasn't encrypted, but now it is.

What if this data is compromised at this CIQ company? I hope the data is traceable to an IMEI number ONLY which would make it okay, but still! Why do they need to receive text messages coming in to the phone???
Easy Ways to Lose Weight
For the record that YouTube link works fine in Ireland.
Steve Jobs demolished Apple and replaced it with Next.
The PC is dead. Why no angry nerds?
Antacids can significantly slow the absorption of so many vitamins, minerals, and even prescription meds. It has to do with a liver enzyme that's commonly used to process all sorts of "stuff" (I'm blanking on words this morning). Antacids end up using up a significant portion of that enzyme and there's not much left to process anything else for a while until the antacid is fully metabolized and the enzyme replenished in the liver.

Don't ask me how I know that... It's not a fun answer.
If they gave $50M to the Open Source Ecology guys, we could start to change the basic food-production business model of society for the better.

Now THAT is properly leveraged cash. And something that has wide-reaching implications.

Spending $50M on photo-sharing apps? What the fuck kinda drugs are they smoking? And may I please refrain from partaking in the second-hand smoke thereof?
The Duolingo video. Private beta started today.
A Google Patent mentions my prior art
I know :) The comment made me smile because I wrote the script for a client who is a designer.

I used to use the ipfw commands directly. I didn't want the client to remember the syntax and also starting and stopping the throttling involved a couple of commands which can go wrong. So I wrote this and also had some default values so that he can just do throttle start and throttle stop
> With HTML/CSS/Javascript you can make something to run almost anywhere.

With gargantuan effort.

And your creation will still appear distorted in unpredictable ways to many users.
Excellent checklist. Thanks OP. I also like how you are keeping it up to date with commenter's suggestions.
The Fast Jet Stream Winds Cannot Contribute Much Renewable Energy After All
But today we live in the age of personalization; I think we can do better.
The Marines' New Target Dummies Ride Segways
There are a handful of comments here giving CarrierIQ the benefit of the doubt, because the video did not show CarrierIQ sending the logged data over the network.

If you're still inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, just read the CarrierIQ website. Their ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL is based on collecting data about mobile phone users!! Here's a choice excerptI found on their website after browsing their site for 30 seconds[1]:

Carrier IQ's Mobile Service Intelligence Platform (MSIP)...receives raw data (known as Metrics) from phones and converts them into reliable, repeatable Measures which feed into analytic applications.

Or you can read this comment from a discussion last week where a CarrierIQ recruiter told an HN member that they collect 10s of gigabytes of data PER DAY.[2]

These guys are indeed collecting RAW DATA from actions on your phone. There are tremendous opportunities for abuse here, should CarrierIQ decide to do so. CarrierIQ in blatant violation of privacy norms and could do enormous damage to national security of many countries, conduct corporate espionage, or simply violate the citizens' expectation of privacy when using their phone.

This is dangerous and should be stopped immediately.

1. http://www.carrieriq.com/overview/mobileservice/index.htm
2. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3264264
Where are they? All I can find are the compressed copies of the html + source files.
For the record, it works in Ireland.
Very cool and kudos on the idea. We built something about a year ago that's very similar (http://confideapp.com). It's a place where people have talked about suicide, sex, relationships, pain and joy. I'd be happy to chat about what we learned in hopes you could grow something bigger that will positively impact more people than we're able to. Happy holidays!
I would def have to say interesting because we are building off the same very concept. Not a jobs list, but what we call a social newspaper for the city. In fact, just submitted a thread myself, here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3295555

I had seen you post earlier when it made the top of HN, you are def doing some interesting work here.
An interesting side note: when you are viewing the document, it lists all the other anonymous users who are also viewing the document. The list is Anonymous User 1, Anonymous User 2, etc. However, the list also included a two Usuario anónimos: Usuario anónimo 1, Usuario anónimo 2. This is an odd information leak... it gives away an anonymous user's language settings.
Skeleton CSS Framework Ported to Less
Thanks. Though, as far as I understand, Source is different enough that the author would loos most of his edge.
Yeah, there's also phpjs.org when you miss things like strstr() in JS
We make clear and take advantage of their position that there is no "right to access" nor "property" as traditionally defined, on the net. We do this by "disconnecting" them. No technical support. Their ISP's free to discontinue service to / their business relationship with them.

Cut them off.

Practically, this probably won't happen -- and there would always be sell-outs raising the question of additional actions/escalation against them. But, fundamentally, this is how I see it. Their own arguments admit our ability to exclude them. And we should -- "route around the damage", and all that.

Mind you, in the above, I'm not advocating anything patently illegal. I'm not talking about "hacking (cracking)" their systems, nor DoS-ing them, etc. Just, don't do business with them, and don't support them. Shun them.
>Is there really a university IT department out there that's going to prevent students and professors from using an offsite, external website?

Yep. They'll quote policy and if that doesn't work pull out the FERPA card. But it isn't insurmountable. The ongoing push towards more unified assessment systems by the accreditation bodies means that many universities are purchasing third party systems that are hosted off-campus, and that seems to be opening up some avenues.