skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This seems to be the MO for this particular site. There is a blog post calling out someone's faults (privacy, security, etc), some basic misinformation and a plug for his service as being better.

I don't mind him wanted to do PR, but it does seem a bit distasteful. This was basically an ad couched in something that was supposed to look like content.

As one of the previous posters said, there are tradeoffs made when using a SaaS service and it is not possible to run a system like theirs while using strong client side, opaque encryption. Besides, comparing a backup system to a online file management system is apples to oranges.
I think we should. I just worry that if one sides with "Internet Freedom", there will be others who will get votes for siding with "Internet censorship" (of child pornography, piracy, etc).

So at least we should send a strong signal that we ALL want Internet Freedom.
I don't see any compelling reason an admin should
have access to user data like uploaded files.

Mostly, uploaded files are stored unencrypted on a webserver though. The reason for this is that those are mostly "public" files in the sense that they can be accessed by a URL. Encrypting these does nothing really, except place additional load on the webserver when it has to decrypt them on-the-fly and admins would still be able to retrieve the key used for this from the software that is running on the server. This scenario is the most common one when it comes to user storage, and for good reason.
Computer Model Replays Europe's Cultural History
Great question. I bumped into it around 4 times. I, knowing it was down, still clicked through. Then again, and again.
Morals are not natural laws. People did not generally feel guilty or immoral for using slaves until the morals themselves changed. Similarly today with piracy: it doesn't feel morally wrong enough to warrant legal action to the minds of many. There needs to be a larger discussion about what is intellectual property (in fact, whether it exists) in the digital age. Legal experts should be discussing these issues but they seem too occupied with chasing pirates.
It would be nice. I was looking for most effect for the least amount of effort, but yes, fixing the system would be great.
I cringed at a lot of the coverage, so I know what you mean. A lot of the organizers were very new to this sort of politics. From what I've read (no articles on hand), they've moved into an office and have started acting like a coherent organization.

I'm sure we'll see a round two, and it'll have a clear message and better organization.
Want jobs? Upgrade your wireless network
> YCombinator has made it a successful business model to take founders and virtually catapult them far away from their idea reach, and succeed anyway through a combination of exceptional founder selection and world-class mentoring.

There's a bit of a logical flaw there: either it's "catapulting them away from their reach", or, through "founder selection", picking people who have a far reach in the first place.
Project: Global Inform
I'm not sure the claims of the article really stand up to scrutiny. For example: They [women] aspire to different goals — relationships over status; they communicate differently — collaborative over top-down; and thrive in different work environments — open-air over individual cubicles.

If true, women should flock to tech startups and academia and avoid big banks/corporates/government. In reality, the opposite occurs.

Similarly, consider the "routine and structure" that men supposedly require. It seems that stereotypically female professions (teaching, HR) have lots of structure and thrive on enforcing it, while stereotypically male professions (programming, sales) are characterized by an individualistic "get shit done" attitude. The article more or less agrees with this - it's women, not men, who work hard at squashing changes and making the system remain as rigid as a 1900's factory.

Overall, this is a fairly weakly reasoned article that should at least acknowledge where it differs from reality.
One of the problems in the American political culture is that wealthy interests set the terms of the debate, and the mass media goes along with that frame of reference, which means that certain political perspectives are dismissed as not worth considering before they even make their case.

The Occupy Wall Street protests and the “Internet strike” were both successful because they changed the terms of the debate. In the former case, the mass media, which had spent months obsessing over deficit deficit deficit, suddenly took notice of income inequality, and Romney’s Republican primary opponents started attacking him over his vulture-capitalist history. In the latter case, the fact that there was opposition to SOPA/PIPA, and that these opponents are not just “pirates”, finally became mainstream front-page news.

These are not legislative victories in and of themselves, but they are significant. The proper reaction is not “in the big scheme of things this is a small victory, so don’t feel smug about it” but “in the big scheme of things this is a small victory, so let’s build on it to go on to bigger victories”. Rome wasn’t sacked in a day.
EU asks why credit cards are so expensive
Yet another repost: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2636440
If you're using safari and do the two fingered swipe to go back, this doesn't look too great. It's the one thing I don't really like about the cool slide animation you get when you do that.
> "Morally? No. I have no moral problem with piracy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Those are the foundations of my morality. I would love it if people pirated things I made. That's my morality."

I assume, therefore, that you invite those with an interest in sadomasochism to inflict pain on you?

(No, I don't think sadomasochism and piracy are alike, but the idea of making and breaking laws based on what one person is happy to have done to them is IMO ridiculous.)
Forum Commenting Is Not Just for Links
Anybody who wants an easy system for recording data - for example requesting days off or holiday times at work
Common Onsite Enterprise SEO Challenges
Java 7: How to write really fast Java code
> If true, women should flock to tech startups and academia and avoid big banks/corporates/government. In reality, the opposite occurs.

Maybe you missed the part where she said she comes in a little before 9am and leaves by 5. :)
Please address your issues here:
http://www.reactos.org/compat/?show=entry&id=428
If copyright were just to protect the investment of a company in development of an artist or product I'd broadly agree with this argument.

Where copyright seems objectionable to me, is where the initial cost of development was non-existent or large profits have been made for years. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Royalty_a...

For some copyright to last 95 years seems more like profiteering than protection of the creative industries considering creation is often based on the work of others.

I don't condone piracy, but I think piracy would be far less socially acceptable if:
- the creator can be seen to benefit from their work
- copyright better resembled its original intent of protecting investment in the creation of something new and not staking ownership over the work of others.
So, your boss will be happy he doesn't have to pay you. The question is how're you going to afford to live and how long will you work for someone who doesn't pay you anything?

Don't get me wrong I'm for communism and intentional communities; but are you really advocating that?
This seems in slightly bad taste, as it feels like a slightly disingenuous jab at 37signals so you can plug your own service.

I plead guilty to taking advantage of the opportunity to mention my service (although most of my readers are already very much aware of tarsnap), but I would have written the blog post anyway.

that market is going to have to trust them to some extent.

Sure, but I still think there's a huge gap between "we don't log sensitive information" and "we have a policy which says that we shouldn't look at the data we've logged".
Is there any limit to what it does past this? If the intention is to fit in with the worldwide agreement by doing what you describe, it should be written in a way that it can't be used to extend Mickey Mouse's protection or something shortly before it.
Ask HN: Serif or san serif font on a classic website?
I am working on a website tiered to the older generation with a 'newspaper' feel to it. I am currently using a serif font but I keep on thinking I should change it to sans-serif because it's cleaner and easier to read. NYTimes uses Times New Roman, so does The Times (UK) and few others. What do you think? Serif or san serif?
I think your logic is a bit facile. If you want people to take your creations, that is not piracy, more or less by definition.
just a mashup like Twits in London: http://tlondon.linkstore.ru
It's true that the 60's was a free-er time.

But it is wrong to say that you "ended the war and changed the world".

The "war" ended in 1975, long after all the protesting has slowed to a crawl. And the ending of the war mainly had to do with an exhaustion of resources amidst an economic and oil crisis, and, well, actually losing the damn thing. There is such a thing as a lost war.

Furthermore, people mainly protested not because the war was "illegal and immoral", but primarily because of the draft and how it affected them (or people they knew). Lesson learned: the government used only pro soldiers for their wars from them on, and no protests of that scale and that extend occurred again.

The baby-boomer, sixties "rebellion" was in all, a failure. It didn't "stop the war", and it didn't "change the world". It ended itself in the conformism and consumerism of the seventies and in a drug and "self-discovery" haze.

If the world has indeed changed since the 60s, it's for the worst, in the political sense, concerning society, freedom, public and international policy (technology and science have of course improved, but those two always do, since the dawn of time, and exponentially since around 1600).

Now, how about the societal change regarding the treatment of blacks? Well, that was due to their organized protests and political action (from the action around Rosa Parks to the Alabama march). And, to return to the point of Maddox, this is what the other sixties movements lacked (since SDS dissolved into irrelevance), and what we lack today.

If baby-boomers' sixties was a self-absorbed failure, there was indeed a time when Americans fought and won very significant rights. It was when they were actually organized, agitated, and fought (often to death), to gain their labour rights, regarding working conditions, eight hour day, etc. Here's an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

Without political action and determination, you cannot have change. Blacking out a webpage is idiotic. "But it spreads awareness". So? What is the viewer of your webpage supposed to do with this new found awareness? Until you can answer that, it's all in vain. And writing to your congressman is idiotic. What makes him "your" congressman? Even a boycott is silly, if it's just about individuals making a choice, instead of being the co-ordinated action of some group with a minimum program and coherency.
The law is nothing but a piece of paper. I'm glad it exists, as it provides a framework that protects me from harm and allows me to life my live, but I feel no moral obligation at all to follow it.

This style of argumentation is starting to tire me. Obviously, this author thinks piracy is morally wrong. Other people have no such moral qualms about piracy. Both points of view are fine!

But implicitly or explicitly using morality as an argument for or against piracy is a bad style of argumentation and is almost an ad hominem. If I were to say that I am for piracy and someone told me that this was morally wrong, I would pay no attention to this person. But if he were to say that he personally feels piracy is morally wrong AND if he were to give me an argument as to why he feels that way, I would listen to this argument and at least think about it.
It's possible to do in principle at least, assuming all your users have modern browsers. You could use the Javascript file API to intercept file uploads and then to encrypt the data before it is sent to the server. You could then use XHRs to collect the encrypted binary data and decrypt it before presenting it to the user. If it was an image, you could use canvas to display the decrypted content.

You'd have to contend with what is probably a large performance hit, and I don't know of any libraries that do this so you'd need to spend a considerable amount of time writing one. I suspect that this approach would only be practical for very simple web applications. For instance, an encrypted image or file hosting web application might be a possibility.
Can you elaborate on that? If there's an infinite supply of something and say, a demand for that product with 20% of the people, wouldn't the situation be worse for the entertainment companies?

I left the costs etc out of the equation, which is obviously a wrong thing to do.
Interesting, though I'm a bit confused: Does the "Supporting DOX" section represent a bunch of actions the author doesn't spell out in detail?

It seems like a bunch of easy Google searches and whois looks-up, which I followed along with ("Oh, sure, okay. Yep, easy, that makes sense.") And then out of nowhere: Bank document? Passport?
Massively improve JS animation smoothness in Safari with one line of CSS
I thought I'd share this as it might be useful. Including the following CSS can massively improve the smoothness of JS animations in Safari desktop and mobile. It also solves weird flickering issues on iPad/iPhone Safari. Don't know why it works but it does and the improvements, at least for my web app, were spectacular.

html * { -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; }
People looks for excuses, and I suppose conflating different things like speed limits, copyright and cryptography is some way to nullify their possible importance. These are not on the same level:

* speeding and more generally, driving misbehaviour are directly responsible for deaths.

* Pirating software and music never killed anyone, but is about maximizing profits for some corporations.

* limiting cryptography is about government control, and is almost only a political matter.

Law can change the way people behave, notwithstanding their agreement :

Speed limits have been enforced much more severely in France in the past few years and guess what, people are speeding much less now. I, myself, changed too: I used to drive at 180 kph quite casually, and I don't anymore. In the same time, road casualties fell significantly, though of course this is for a large part because cars are much safer than they used to be (thank you to Euro-NCAP).
Almost everybody complains about the speed limits, the radars everywhere, higher fines, but it's hard to deny that the policy was efficient, and that it's good.

Now copyright is an entirely different matter. Copyright is only about maximizing profits; extremely tight and severely enforced copyright, or the absence of it, wouldn't change our lives that much, anyway.
Hi and thanks. It's super to depict a super cent - so the superman logo similarities are intentional. What font would you suggest?
Actually, I don't think you need the *:

html { -webkit-backface-visibility: hidden; } should do
I'd still like to have any real quotation. EPA claims about "Municipal Solid Waste":

"We estimated residential waste (including waste from apartment houses) to be 55 to 65 percent of total MSW generation. Waste from commercial and institutional locations,
such as schools, hospitals, and businesses, amounted to 35 to 45 percent."

http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/msw2009-fs...

See also what screwt writes: the rubble, for example, is not the kind of waste that has an environmental impact of the household waste (e.g. batteries with toxic materials etc). The important thing is environmental impact, not the absolute weight of the waste. I agree however that EPA seems to be too silent about the waste produced by factories.
I wonder (seriously) if banning names for bills wouldn't be a bad idea. No more cutesy names or names that are a blantant sympathy ploy ("Rachels's Law", or whatever). Just make them refer to it as HR3415 or whatever the actual designation is.
Dates for Ritesh and Genelia wedding announced.
Or the NDAA. Etc. Etc. Etc. Saying "We need a really shitty piece of legislation like SOPA in this country to be the spark that ignites the lazy, idle tinders of protest" ignores all the other "shitty pieces of legislation" that have been passed over the years without igniting the "lazy, idle tinders of protest." I (perhaps naively but hopefully) feel like SOPA could become the turning of that tide...
For all of you speculating about what business decisions took Kodak to the current situation let me give you my perspective as someone who still buys their film products. I'm also sort of experienced in shooting digital.

I personally believe Kodak screwed film.

I mean, their new emulsions are superb, and they can run around Ilford and Fuji in circles in everything except maybe slides, where Kodak is still better but ridiculously expensive. They screwed film because they where the only ones in a position to take film into the next technological level, but kept managing that division as if it was 1980 and everybody was still printing at the lab or at their own darkroom. They should have focused more on people who still develop at the lab but scan film themselves.

The only feature they introduced that helped self-scanning was stronger carriers. They also claim dyes that ease color management in some of their color negative films but I call that bullshit. Color management in color negative film is a PITA unless you own a Kodak minilab. They had the opportunity to give everyone better color management technology by making targets that are affordable, making easy to use software or even making their own film scanner. They didn't, even thou there were strong rumors about it happening, and even while they still sell their stupid 4x6 print scanners.

Basically now scanning color negative films for most photographers is sort of a painfully inaccurate manual process. Slides are easier but also cost more and have less dynamic range than digital and similar color rendition and accuracy. Black and white can be managed by even amateur photographers but Kodak could still make it a whole lot easier.

I really would like for at least their film division to manage to go out of bankruptcy, since I have only recently began shooting Ektar and love Portra... But if they really go out of business I think I'll sell my MF film gear and start saving for a full frame 35mm DSLR or maybe a Pentax 645d.
The struggle isn't over yet. But over the last 50 years things have gotten better. To give an example, the UK has gone from "Homosexuality should be illegal" to a conversative tory prime minister saying "I support same sex marriage because it makes marriage stronger"
We'll have to disagree there. I'd be very surprised if
they did any more than looking at their log files

I'm probably a little less trusting on this. An admin seeing the filename in the logfile and just calling its URL out of curiosity seems like a very likely scenario to me. They said something like "...and it was a picture of a cat", not "...and it was named cat.jpg".

How does looking at individual files help to confirm that things are working?

Not in this case, but having access to the file storage system per se is common and useful.

But I didn't write that post because I wanted to plug Tarsnap;

I understand. The combination of pointing the finger at someone for wrongdoing and then asserting your own superiority seemed inappropriate to me though. I understand where you're coming from, but I also believe to you the world is now full of places that should have client-side encryption, when in fact I don't think this is a good fit for what 37signals does at all.

I wrote it because I saw the trust-is-fragile post on HN
Daily and felt that revising their privacy policy wasn't
the right response.

I'm not a 37signals user, and I haven't read their policy. I agree that changing the policy following this incident is very bad timing, but I think this maneuver does correct an unreasonable expectation users might have.
Sure; that's what I meant by "considerable technical hurdles". But if these technical obstacles did not exist, if browsers had APIs to handle encrypted data for instance, would there still be a reason to give admins access to those files?
This is the best post on SOPA I've read yet, and it really highlights the only way anything will get done for real: A targeted and wide-spread boycott of SOPA supporting companies.
Playing "happy birthday to you" in public might be a legit act of civil disobedience .

Pirating last weeks blockbuster isn't.
There is a blog post calling out someone's faults (privacy, security, etc), some basic misinformation and a plug for his service as being better.

I make lots of posts about security and cryptography. I happen to think that Tarsnap does things right; if I didn't, I would have Tarsnap do things differently.

I usually decide to blog about something based on (a) whether I think it's interesting, and (b) whether I think people will learn from it. (There are exceptions like calling out jungledisk for not fixing weaknesses in their cryptography, but those are rare.) The question "will this give me a chance to advertise Tarsnap" doesn't come into it -- for one thing, the vast majority of my readers are already aware of Tarsnap.
I usually hit digitally imported (http://www.di.fm/) and pick something from there.
"if you want to protest the crappy way these companies treat their customers, don't buy their stuff. but you can't have your cake and eat it. protest by not using or having it at all. they have something you want; even if you don't agree with their methods, it is still theirs to decide what to do with. all you are doing is supporting the industry in their drive to stamp out pirates; instead, support legal ways of obtaining this content through spotify and others. "

The one fault I see with this argument (mainly related to music) is this: There is no way to simply boycott the the recording companies' products without boycotting the artists as well. Recording companies have a monopoly on the artists they cover. While US contract law supports this arrangement, the model is broken in today's world of digital distribution.
For a few seconds at a time, during transitions between scenes or in the lead up to advert breaks. Synchronicity of relevant actions is minimum - ie a car driving, while someone sits in a room. the other two may be 2 sides of the same phone call.

There's not really ever 2 concurrent plots happening simultaneously.
From the article, it would appear he found these images from a "Lativan photo blogging site used by him". Why would he upload an image of his passport to a photo blog?
Google cache. ;-)
Digital 3d Model Creation with Sub-millimeter Precision
I don't think [client-side encryption] is a good fit for what 37signals does at all.

I'm inclined to agree with you. That's what I was getting at with my "even if 37signals doesn't want to offer cryptographically secure storage, they could at least remove the temptation to look at file names in log files by not writing sensitive information to log files in the first place" line.