skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Many great points; some more perspectives in the bugzilla thread here:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=724929

There are a number of choice quotes, but my two favorites are from Jacob Applebaum (@ioerror if you aren't already following him):

"TrustWave needs to be congratulated and as a reward, I think they should have their CA distrusted."

And another commenter 'Philip' (sorry I don't lurk there and don't have more detailed identity info for him...his words more than stand alone though):

"Trustwave appears to issue certificates directly from its root - this is not good practice. The root should be kept offline and never - ever - have a path to the internet."
...
"the trust chain was broken at the root level, so that is where this branch, and all leaves, must be pruned"

So I guess this is where I break slightly from tptacek's opinion: I'm not yet 100% convinced that the issuance of CA=YES certificates by public CA's is an abusive practice.

Installing organization-specific self-signed roots in all company devices is more than just 'a pain'; it's fundamentally impractical for any organization that wants to let employee-owned or public devices onto its network. So just don't do that? Or just put all the uncontrolled devices onto some airgapped public network? Well, airgapped according to whom, and as of what last physical audit date? Should all organizations that implement DLP have physical security measures similar to DoD installations, where a guard with a gun makes it clear that your iPad should be left locked in your car in the parking lot?

Not saying everything's cool, just saying "it's complicated." What is clear is that Trustwave added at least a couple extra layers of supreme jackassery in this case.

Trustwave's issuance of a CA=YES certificate directly from their topmost root is the most distressingly unprofessional method they could have chosen. That choice alone, in my view, is a coherent argument for why a) their root should be distrusted, and b) they deserve (at minimum) a long cool-down period before an alternative Trustwave root CA becomes a candidate for addition to the default trusted set.
I took much of last year off to focus on learning the technologies needed to build the product for my startup -- graph databases was the big one, and during the time I built Bulbs (https://github.com/espeed/bulbs), a Python framework for graph databases like Neo4j Server.

Eliminating all distractions has been key -- no side jobs, no girlfriends, no going out -- a period of complete focus.

Working out and exercising has been critical though for keeping my energy level up and maintaining mental clarity.
Just wait for Numpy on PyPy to be available :)
Is that still a thing? It's not like you'll be applying to law firms. I've found making yourself less available only makes your demand higher.
Single page URL for those who would rather not read an article split up across several pages:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/us/for-women-under-30-most...
Just to reiterate what others have said: work on something concrete. Opensource projects, your own side project, a subject-specific blog, etc.

A year of study is worth significantly less if the results are only in your head.

Also - working on something real can give you measurable milestones to work toward completing. (The fact is, the longer time you set aside, the more time you are in danger of wasting.)
You are describing a common gripe that young entrepreneurs have - unfair advantage (in this case celebrity status which is especially helpful for social software, but it could be a number of other things like access to capital, team, proprietary technology, etc.). And I understand - I really do, because I have been there.

But the key thing to realize is that everyone has been there. Caterina did not start as a celebrity - she created a useful product and built her reputation, which she is now leveraging. I bet that when she was starting she was looking at articles of experienced entrepreneurs wondering the same thing that you express in your blog.

And that's what entrepreneurship is all about - finding your angle, your opportunity to create an unfair advantage. It is not easy and there certainly is no standard "here's how you do it" answer - but I hope you don't fall into the trap of thinking that as a new entrepreneur there's nothing you can do to win against more experienced folks. That's the very definition of entrepreneurship - disrupting the status quo by creating something that satisfies a previously unrealized core need.
Calling it quits? When do you think enough is enough HN?
Hey HN. I'm a budding entrepreneur, with a team equally as enthusiastic as me. We're still in college, which makes things a bit different in various regards. Nonetheless, we've been working on a startup for about two and a half years now (www.criticrania.com).

We still like the idea, and think we have executed on the concept decently well. The problem? We have no substantial business plan to entice supporters, and we are experiencing the ever dangerous chicken and egg problem.

We always have more ideas, and we have the time, but when do you know when enough is enough?
UB.40 : HOMEGROWN IN HOLLAND - Live - Cherry Oh Baby
Because neither of those elements have any bearing on maintainability beyond what is customary for a Rails application. The wonders of pjax is that it doesn't require you to change your application style and structure at all, so it has zero impact on maintainability.

The granular caching scheme is similarly just a fragment caching setup using key-based expiration. Nothing new here, just that we used it to full effect.

So you're free to claim that writing Ruby on Rails applications are somehow inherently hard to maintain, but you'd be fighting against 8+ years of evidence to the contrary. Versus, you know, a very short amount of comparable evidence for JavaScript MVC applications based on current, recent frameworks.
Lots of very very good reasons for Delaware, yes. It totally makes sense for yc to have this as a rigid rule.. Still I'm interested to know if they have ever made an exception for anyone, and if so who and why.
Between the Folds is a great documentary. Amazing stuff, both artistically and in engineering.
This is why we need a government. He's stolen your intellectual property (a clear initiation of force), and you should be able to seek redress. There is only one organization that can ultimately serve as an objective arbiter between you and the thief: the government.

I would send him an email about it, and if he didn't take it down within a few days, I'd sue him.
It costs $300 SGD to register a company in Singapore. $5000 probably includes cost of other services such as legal and secretary fees.
Whats more interesting than what they get wrong is what they get right.

And notice how some of the things on the list are things humans still want to do, but can't. (Eg: Remove the pest aspect of mosquitoes and flies.) Which goes back to my hypothesis that humans have really had the same goals for technological advancement for most of history,

It's very rare to think of something nobody else has thought of before. In fact, an old adage goes that anything worth inventing will be invented twice. So instead of focusing on innovative ideas (Which any reading about past inventions will show you usually don't really exist.) focus on innovative executions.

After all, Facebook beat Myspace. But Facebook isn't really that radically different from Myspace, the core concept is the same: A long distance telecommunications platform that lets you use network effects to distribute memes to friends, family, and the public. (Photographs, Text, Video, even Audio.)
lack of health insurance isn't the issue it is in the US

Here's what I've found about health insurance in the US:

1) It's not terribly difficult or expensive to get, at least, emergency coverage. In my 30s and single, I've found interesting plans for around $150 per month which cover simple doctor's visits a few times per year, with around a $10k deductible for 'real' stuff. This is very doable with reasonable financial padding. ehealthinsurance.com is the site I've used every time I've been unemployed over the last decade.

2) The whole thing about guaranteed acceptance with continuous coverage only applies when you are coming off of "group coverage" (i.e. through an employer or some industry associations, I think). Bizarrely, having maintained continuous coverage on my own now for three years means absolutely nothing if I want to change from a personal plan to a new personal plan. I was rejected out of hand for a neck injury I had over three years ago, and I'm effectively uninsurable in this state (Oregon) for another seven years!
And if you need more proof that the color is not isotropic, try looking to other wavelengths. If you look through a near IR filter, you'll see a bright sky near the sun and a very dark sky far away from the sun. (Okay, so technically you'll see black everywhere because the human eye is so insensitive to IR.)

This is a major reason why IR photographs are so dramatic looking -- the isotropic sky allows photographers to create a black sky with white clouds in full daylight, and foliage is also fairly bright to IR.
Entrepreneur logic and VC logic are very different, so try to see it from their side. First off, not all of the VCs will get in on Pinwheel, and may be looking for something similar to invest in. Secondly, competition in a space simply validates the space and the companies in it.
Proof That Startups Don't Care About Privacy
Really good introduction to Sencha Touch. Highly recommended as there are many shared features with Ext JS 4.x so making the jump to Ext JS is easier.
Chile is pretty well ranked, coming in at #7 in the Heritage Foundation index, and #1 for Latin America.[1]

We were accepted to Startup Chile, and will be flying to Chile next week. I can't report on the state of Chile now, but I did visit the country in 2001 and remember being impressed at the time at how capitalist it was, compared to the USA. (culturally capitalist, which is not the same as having an entrepreneurial culture, which Startup Chile is working to improve.)

When you think about it, Startup Chile is a pretty audacious program. They put in twice the money of most bootstrapping programs, covering twice the period, and give you a 1 year visa for living and working in Chile. Can you imagine how hard it would be to get free one year visas for entrepreneurs coming to the USA? Even with a merit based contest like SU Chile?

There's a distinct possibility that we may remain in Chile for several years after the program, provided that continuing the Visa doesn't turn out to be a problem (and the reports I've read indicate that its generally not a problem at all.)

[1] http://www.heritage.org/index/default
> The methane/orange sky theory is news to me, does anyone have any ideas what might cause this?

The article could have mentioned that Saturn's moon Titan has (a) an atmosphere containing some methane, and (b) an orange appearance. But (b) is thought to be the result of organics in the atmosphere, not so much the methane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)): "The atmosphere of Titan is largely composed of nitrogen; minor components lead to the formation of methane and ethane clouds and nitrogen-rich organic smog."

So it seems the orange color results from ordinary preferential reflection of certain wavelengths from smog particles (as in many U.S. cities), not Rayleigh scattering or another similar effect as in earth's atmosphere. As to the early earth's atmospheric color, I think that's a stretch, depending on things we just don't know.

Also, the Wikipedia article's use of "organic" should be understood to mean "containing carbon compounds", not necessarily organic in a broader sense.
Or maybe the OP is just realistic? It certainly seems plausible that an established player will have an easier time raising money, generating buzz and getting a product out there than an unproven guy coding at home in a bathrobe.

While I agree with you that you need to be an optimist, you also need to be realistic. If you have no track record and start building a company to compete with virgin galactic you will fail.

Ultimately it's about what you want to do with your life; you can reach for the stars, get a nice safe job at a big company or somewhere in between. But you should acknowledge that the more of a risk you take the likelier you are to fail. Most people with highflying dreams don't make it, and you should factor this into the equation.
I hope this really takes off. Though, for it to really take off it needs a large ecosystem. The fact that the source is hosted on Github is a good start.
Building a great product is step one. Marketing it is step two.

Zynga is really good at borrowing step one and executing step two, but they're not the only company that does this.
Spend some time to write a business plan and try with all you've got to pitch it. Success or failure that is a worthwhile learning experience.
Another reactor to shut down, leaving only 2 units online in Japan
Might be useful:

http://www.tranquilpc.co.uk/
http://www.quietpc.com/
I have - I left a a very stable job and pursued self-study for 9 months. I still pursue it, but not in a rigorous fashion as I had for those 9 months; once my startup levels out a bit more and I can hire more people to do my job, I will probably start going after more self-study.
Crowdfunding Platform ProFounder Shuts Down
Unfortunately, yes. Employers, and the non-technical gateways in particular, still have the mindset of "reject for anything, weeding people out means I'm doing my job!"
So what you're saying is

1. we should not ever attempt to defend people being abused until we erase all vestiges of abuse from our own country or at least 'condemn ourselves',

2. saying that it's bad that some country abuses its citizens is going to contribute in a small way to the potential for starting a war with a country who continuously flaunts its nuclear program in the face of every international body that opposes it and threatens our allies with total annihilation, so we shouldn't make them upset,

3. Canada's words are empty.

You seem to have an unrealistic view on our relations with Iran. You seem to think that us complaining about the unfair treatment of its' citizens will make them more likely to threaten war. This is not really the case. They could give a shit what we think of how they treat their citizens. What they do care about is our continued insistence that they not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. That and the pressure of the international community imposing sanctions on them makes them pissed off.

As you said, condemning them for this is a relatively minor thing. So minor that they will probably completely ignore it; it has no bearing on their nuclear operations or their arms deals or their not-so-secret terrorist war with Israel. The only way it will even pop up on their radar is when their international partners mention it as a concern, because we're concerned. Again, this does not inspire them to go to war, but it makes them realize they have to be more careful about how they abuse their citizens, which in effect does some good.

Finally, for the previous reasons Canada doesn't have to "start something" with Iran. Most conflicts between nations are not dealt with by their military, they are dealt with by sanctions. Our military leaders have stated time and again that it's the only practical thing we have to deal with them at the moment. Canada has resources and influence which may apply here.
Maybe years from now they'll get really specific and put the molecular formula of glass in the logo.
Thanks for the incredibly high praise. It definitely is possible to overload operators — operators are just functions with special syntax (see http://julialang.org/manual/functions/#Operators+Are+Functio...). We don't have bignum support, but adding it via GMP would be fairly easy. Just too many things to do!
This article says:

"Both GridION and MinION operate using the same technology: DNA is added to a solution containing enzymes that bind to the end of each strand. When a current is applied across the solution these enzymes and DNA are drawn to hundreds of wells in a membrane at the bottom of the solution, each just 10 micrometres in diameter."

Perhaps this method use fewer enzymes than the old one.
Maine Caucus Results Went to Spam Folder
Ask HN: PHP/MySQL Data Encryption
Forgive my ignorance, but I need to store some sensitive data in a MySQL database and this data will need to be retrieved and displayed to the user at a later time. I understand the various methods for encrypting/hashing and then comparing a password against the hash, but what I really need to do for this project is to be able to decrypt the data and display it as plain text.
I think the issue is the requirement to have a registered director located in Singapore.

Also, if you plan to apply for residency using the EntrePass it appears you need to have $50k SGD in "paid up capital", which is about $40,000 USD. I'm not sure what "paid up capital" means, though. (EG: is a business making $4,000 a year in profit valued at $40,000 thus considered to have $40k in paid up capital? Or does it mean you need to put $50k SGD in a local bank to sit there as a form of a bond?)
Nice - the thenewboston.com is completely new to me.

The other two are good ideas as well. It looks like these use resources that appear in other sites (AcademicEarth has OCW related content, YouTube has Khan Academy). It will be interesting to see over time what sites are the "starting points" for obtaining educational content.
I setup a business in Singapore last week.

We used a professional services firm - they cover all the Gov't requirements regarding minutes, company secretary etc.,

Was SGD$800
Most of what's in a newspaper is junk food, but there are very worthy parts: I find columns in NYT by Krugman, Brooks and Douthat to be thought-provoking even if I don't agree. And I find feature pieces of social or economic trends to be enlightening and helpful in terms of understanding people and the workings of our world.

You might not find such understanding of people and of the world to be worthy goal in itself, but even so such an understanding is useful as a framing device or an anology store for general reasonsing. In the same way that a mastery of philosophy has value as a reasoning device.

And, there is the value as source of inspiration: pointers towards topics to read up on or ideas to incorporate into one's life/work
That is exactly right. At the moment I think the only GPL library Julia uses is readline — but obviously that's pretty important for the repl, so we chose to do it this way.
A bit of hard earned experience: Check for health problems. If you hate what you're doing, you might just be sick.

That said, it is really good to think about what you really want to do every few years.
Can builds be done on a SETI at Home sort of arrangement?
There probably is a market, but it's a lot smaller than building general web/mobile applications.

The kind of clients that want to build an API 1) already have a main product/website and 2) are likely more technical than average. It's probably something they could do themselves.
I work in the industry, and this article is quite... misinforming.

For one, the sentence "Getting rid of QAM isn't a bad idea in the long run" is crazy. QAM is a general-purpose modulation technique used in numerous technologies. It has nothing to do with the evil cablecos trying to lock down their signal, or something.

Next, the sentence "the cable industry is currently lobbying the FCC for a rulemaking that would allow them to encrypt QAM" is hopelessly misinformed.

If you plug a QAM tuner into a cable subscriber's coaxial outlet, you'll be receiving data for a few hundred cable channels, but all but a dozen or two are _already encrypted_. The ones that aren't encrypted are you local ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, etc. The ones that are encrypted are "expanded basic" services.

Why are these encrypted? In part to prevent signal piracy to protect revenues, but also in part because the content providers require it. If you're a cableco, you can't offer ESPN or HBO without encrypting the signal - ESPN and HBO won't let you.

I can't speak for my cableco employer, but I have never had a conversation in which someone said "I wish we could encrypt our clear QAM channels" - it's always been the opposite. It's much easier to offer service if you can get the signal to a customer without having to buy some crappy converter box or spend a lot of money on a high end settop.
Ah, you're referring to the $3000 deposit + $3000/year requirement that professional nominated "Directors" require to setup the business. Yes, this can be an issue if you do not have relationships with any locals.

I believe many countries have restrictions on foreigners incorporating without a local director/shareholder?

But yes, it is a little bit annoying. What we ended up doing is getting a mentor/investor to become a nominee director.
Not to mention that this general technique has been around for decades (developed at Stanford), and using an fMRI is the only novel part of this new study: http://www.lucidity.com/SleepAndCognition.html

Though using an fMRI like this is pretty cool.
ShowHN:BTC-like cryptocash with arbitrary tradeable computation in proof of work
Doesn't everyone use XQuartz anyway?
It is absolutely still a thing. Since the current top comment (from cletus) mentions working at Google I'll relate a story from when I interviewed there. From what I understand, I made it pretty far in the process (to the "executive committee review") and that's when they asked me to explain a gap in my resume. They pressed me for a detailed breakdown of what I did during the gap and the reasons behind it, and said that they take it seriously. This was after 8 technical interviews and after I'd passed their hiring committee. I didn't get the job, although I suspect that this was not the reason. I'm sure experience varies here, and this would likely be less of an issue at a startup or other small company where a record of getting shit done is more important, but it's worth noting.

I would recommend that if you take time off for whatever reason, prepare for questions like these and be ready to provide a succinct and compelling explanation at the drop of a hat, because being blindsided isn't fun.
Just get out there, do the work, keep failing until you succeed. You don't have time to think about being realistic.
He didn't just copy the code, but he also put his name on it and gave it a GPL license.

http://cl.ly/1h0t1o1g283i2S0W371A
I just looked at the source for both sites, and it's obviously a direct copy that the other guy edited extremely lightly. The variable names and comments are exactly the same. (He did take the trouble to translate some of them from German to English.)
Well if you build a silicon valley style social site that require mass scale and has a chicken/egg problem - of course the silicon valley elite will dominate you.

But theres tons of other apps that solve real world problems, that don't feed off of that type of environment to succeed.

Solve a problem a lot of people have really well and you can compete on your own and then go on to raise capital to really compete.
The biggest effect this has for me is that I'll now need to find a good replacement for Wireshark.
Abstract:

I describe the design of NooShare, a decentralised ledger similar to
Bitcoin with the novel feature that its proofs of work are iterations
of essentially arbitrary Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) chains, the
scheduling of which can be purchased using the currency itself. It is
a novel economic basis for sharing fallow computational resources.

I've given serious thought to this problem, but I am by no means an expert on any aspect of it, and I welcome all critical feedback on all aspects of it.
Do you realise you are talking to a PyPy core dev? ;)
This "article" is BS. The average rating for Dream Heights on iTunes (at the time of my writing this) is above 4.5/5 stars. Hardly the overwhelming negative response this article claims.