skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It is common editorial practice to express facts in a way that readers can easily understand. Imagine a US paper runs a story about a Japanese theft where 1,000,000 YEN are stolen. Let's assume I don't follow world currency markets, so I have no idea what the YEN:USD rate is. I might assume some level of equivalency and walk away with the impression that somewhere around a million USD were stolen. That would be inaccurate. The responsible editorial decision is to provide the reader some accessible basis for understanding the facts.

The reason you're being called out for condescension/trolling is because the point you're making is entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Is Bitcoin a real/valid currency? It doesn't matter in the context of this theft. What's relevant is the value of those Bitcoins at the time they were stolen. That's how matters of theft are assessed. Criminal charges are levied based on the value of the items stolen.

Another thing to consider is the thoughtlessness of discussing the relative merits of Bitcoin as a currency when someone just lost a couple hundred thousand dollars. Someone's life is sucking really hard right now, and pedantry is a great way to put people off. This just seems like a really inappropriate time and place to have that discussion.
Are there signs that the VCs are unhappy with their ROI?
MacBook Pro or Air?
Part of me sees things like this and my inner curmudgeon wakes up and yells "This is what happens when you use things that are new but not better! This is standard knowledge that has been around for 20 years! If you only used a _real_ web language/stack you wouldn't be reinventing everything! JMS anyone?!"

However, my better angels re-read it and say "Well, at some point you didn't know all that, and this is actually a well-written intro to the topic".

So ... good article!
As a grad I accidently changed hundreds of mortgage expiry dates from UK to US format (rectified immediately). Lesson learnt. Switching Facebook off for 5.5 million people trumps though!
Not if he entered it manually on every reboot. There'd still be attacks around snooping the contents of the wallet from memory, but the ability to do a root password reset that involves rebooting the box wouldn't be enough (and it seems like that may have been all the access that the attackers here had).
I really like the idea of applying things learnt in entrepreneurship to dealing with social problems.

I often think that many charities and other altruistic organisations are stuck in various anti-patterns, some left over from as long ago as the Victorian era.

We've learnt a lot about getting big things done in the modern world; there's no reason that that expertise should only be applied to profit-seeking.
I had a good talk with a potential customer two days ago and we covered non-relational databases in some detail. I blog about non-relational databases a lot so he thought it was 'religion' for me, but this is not the case at all: I default to wanting to use PostgreSQL (or another relational database) and instead choose MongoDB, CouchDB, etc. depending on special requirements.

As per the article, it is required to understand the CAP theorem and specific capabilities of different data stores.

Client library support varies a lot. Some ORM tools like Ruby's Datamapper let you design composite storage schemes using a relational database and, for example, MongoDB. For document oriented data stores I very much prefer writing client apps in languages like Ruby and CLojure that have a nice syntax for maps, etc.
There are startups in Munich?! ;-D
Yeah, there are bad questions. Always have been, always will be.

Sometimes, I take the time to explain to people how to make their question better (reduce the code down to a minimal example, and explain what you've already tried being the two most important pieces of advice). Sometimes I just downvote or vote to close if it's bad enough.

You have the freedom to chose the questions that you pay attention to. If you're feeling burned out by bad questions, just skip them and keep looking for good ones; or go elsewhere and do something else for a while.
You said "probably" twice in that sentence, which is a clear sign that you're speculating. There's no indication that they're not satisfied with their current ROI either. I'll be a contributing member of SO until I actually see evidence of something (whether it's the VCs or something else) hurting user experience.
Ask HN: Why does privacy matter?
I don't do anything illegal online, I don't visit much online I'd be embarrassed out, I occasionally buy stuff online and don't see an issue with Google serving me ads that are targeted to my interests. So what's so great about online privacy?

I feel stupid, naive, and completely wrong, but am not sure why.

This is your chance to school me HN (or resort to calling me names). Learn me something good ya'll!
Article MIGHT be correct.. But I don't really see how they can make this statement, not knowing what the iPad 3 will offer. It might be completely revolutional for all we know. Looking forward to the day when we can run OSX instead of iOS on iPads.
Bitcoin's status as a currency may not even be relevant. Your car isn't currency, it's property. If I steal it, I will be charged with theft relative to the value of the car.

I can't see how Bitcoins would be treated any differently. They're property, and they can be readily traded at an established value, so I don't see why someone couldn't be charged for stealing them.
And http://physics.aps.org/story/v9/st29, which is an older Focus story linked to from my original post.
really like the idea, good job! would probably come quite useful for a number of my friends.
Home page is a bit confusing and empty though, takes a second to realize what it is. Also the preview of the list view (the first thing I've seen after inputting my userid) is a bit narrow, embedded youtube videos seem to jump out of the div but I guess it's not a massive problem ;)
Teachers or Computers: Discussing the Issue
Teachers or Computers: Discussing the Issue
Did you try increasing the screen brightness with the keyboard function? Happens to me too, but it's the brightness getting set to 0.
How Windows 8 Transforms Enterprise Computing
How Windows 8 Transforms Enterprise Computing
Just so you're aware, I've used a PM tool called Projector before, but it's not you guys: http://www.projectorpsa.com/project_management.html

It also does time tracking and whatnot for a consulting firm. You may run into some TM issues with the name.
Absolutely. To me, that is a large part of the value: learning while offering help. Points have no value but the knowledge does. Right now, SO offers a good platform for such.
It is technically possible for the earth to be hit by a comet tomorrow, wiping out all life. Just because this hasn't happened in our lifetimes does not guarantee it won't.

Instead of posting comments on the internet, you should be spending time with your loved ones.
Why speculate on what might happen? I can always bail out and stop contributing if something changes and Stack Overflow stops being a valuable resource for me as a developer.
IBM and Business Partners Drive Client Success in the Cloud
IBM and Business Partners Drive Client Success in the Cloud
Show HN: Recently launched Business Management System for the service industry
Unrelated, but which font are you using for the tagline "Beautifully Simple Websites" ?
I'd bump domain names up the list – it's one of the first things I look for in most services I want to put my time, effort and money into.
Problem Set: The Codensity Transformation
For those who are just interested in the questions that Dr. Tyson chose to answer (along with the answers, of course): http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/qcyqa/
Trusting Intel and trusting your fab are different problems. Intel creates a design and sends it to the fab. Intel has to trust that the fab will not alter their design, but in general that is an extremely difficult attack to carry out and would most likely require the fab to have a much more in-depth understanding of the IC design than they likely have. However, Intel can put whatever they want into an IC and it would be incredibly difficult for anyone to find it.

Also, trusting your compiler is different from trusting your CPU because one is much, much easier to check than the other. You can build GCC yourself, look at the source code, manually check the output. You could even write your own compiler. In general, we can't make our own processors or verify their internals, yet.
Washington Post ombudsman eats crow over "who invented e-mail" article
Most recent developments indicate it's going the other way around, with OSX becoming morel like iOS.
Why stop there? Isn't it true that space aliens could in fact target Jimbo Wales' brain with their brain de-braining modulators to coerce Wikipedia into erecting a paywall? Sure it's unlikely! That's the point of bringing it up as if it were a real issue on a message board! Points for cleverness!

What sucks is, in the meantime, until we can see the greens of the aliens zgrnkzorks, we're stuck judging people by their actions and sometimes even taking them at their word.
There is no perfectly generalisable strategy. Simplify or die works for Apple, but it assumes you know exactly what the customer wants and are willing to have those you guessed wrong for walk away.

Tim Cook used to hand out Competing Against Time, which advocates reducing cycle time to increase variety (Apple tweaks this to variety over time, i.e. rapid development).

I agree, however, that consumers should have one version that smartly configures itself. Keep price discrimination for corporate/enterprise customers.
How Cloud Computing Is Forcing IT Evolution
How Cloud Computing Is Forcing IT Evolution
Apple and Samsung patent cases dismissed
What I'm trying to suggest is that the point at which a schema is powerful and generic enough to work as a general-purpose web service API for an arbitrary use case, it has become more difficult and complicated to learn, configure and use than a much simpler, discoverable ad-hoc schema that closely matches the functionality of your web service.

In general, REST principles give more than they take, which is why I try to follow them; but you're always going to have to find the sweet spot of abstraction that provides the right amount of power and flexibility combined with the right amount of discoverability and predictability.

> What's the cost of just changing the mediatype to some different string?

I'm happy to change a server's content-type from application/json to application/vnd.my-adhoc-service+json, but that won't change the client's need to read my documentation and play with the service before they can figure out how to use it. That's true even if I move the documentation out to an RFC.

One real advantage I can see is to use the media type for versioning, but even that doesn't remove the need for a client to intervene if they want to upgrade their code to work with the newer API version.

So it's not really clear to me that a custom media type is significantly more useful for the client, even if it is more 'proper'. When a constraint feels ceremonial, I become suspicious that it exists to drive purity-for-its-own-sake rather than a real benefit.
Glad to see people suggesting exercise (spacefood, chaostheory, juliano_q, others), as well as other tools to change the underlying depression. I think the important takeaway is that this is not "startup depression" -- it's depression. You'll be happier/more successful if you find a way to get rid of it.

Sure, running a startup is going to have ups and downs. Sure, you'll sometimes fail at what you're trying to do, and you'll sometimes feel that failure deeply. Failing comes from trying to do something really difficult; taking that failure personally comes from being human.

But as a general rule, the founders I know from the (pretty hoppin') Boston scene are born optimists. More than any other group of people I know, they believe despite the odds, they bounce back quickly, and they have pretty tough skins.

Depression is hard to sort out, but totally worth it. It's worth it for anybody, but necessary for founders because of the up & down nature of running a startup. I spent much of my adult life beating my head against a wall, occasionally being depressed, and not understanding why I couldn't make sh*t happen. Then a few years ago I figured myself out (combination of exercise, gratitude, & therapy), and since then everything has been different. Externally, my life took a major turn for the better in every arena from relationships to finances. Internally, I just don't have the resistance I used to really suffer from, and my downs are pretty short. It rocks.

So I guess I feel your pain, but don't glorify it. Do the work to get over it. You'll be much happier.
Malware authors expand use of domain generation algorithms
Thanks for the feedback. Mentioned in the comments is having a couple of example users to try and get the concept across quicker.

I'm also opening up the site designs for anyone to make ( http://qiip.me/create ) as there are much better designers out there than me :) Do like a ThemeForest marketplace.
Then they wouldn't make any money - which is I feel the subtext of this blog post...
Totally. Most of the highest rated posts in SO are now "off topic". Those are the posts that gets linked over and over in other sites. Hidden gems of [programming language] posts show up in Hacker News every now and then and reaps upvotes because they are informative.

SO seems to be evolving so that each question eventually has its own individual community. I used to only have one account on SO, but now I have to track programmers, dsp, math, serverfault, superuser. Every time my questions get "migrated", I try to find answers elsewhere
You're lucky. I'd love it if our politicians in Mexico had those priorities.
OSX isn't released once a year. With the exception of the just-announced Mountain Lion, it has received major updates every two years since 2003. It also gets "service packs" in the form of point releases every couple of months.

$29.99 still seems like a great deal to me.
>how is trusting your fab any different than trusting Intel?

You increase the cost of an attack - it's harder to change a processor's behavior by editing the mask than the VHDL. If you were super-paranoid you could source to multiple different fabs and run the chips you get back in parallel, with some sort of trap that goes off whenever you get different results from one or other processor.

>if you were paranoid enough to be worrying about CPU backdoors, why would you trust your compiler?

If you don't trust your compiler, why are you even bothering worrying about CPU backdoors when you've got a much easier attack vector open?
Agreed. Copying page layouts is pretty bad, but, pre-Internet, nobody would have been upset if a company opened in San Diego that emulated another in New York.

Like you say, if they're not serving the market, then somebody else should.
I'm definitely in.

Venue suggestions, both central, both proven as meetup places for the Google technology user group in Munich:
- Niederlassung (niederlassung.org, bar close to Gärtnerplatz)
- Cafe Netzwerk (cafe-netzwerk.de, non-profit web cafe / workshop place close to Hauptbahnhof)
It's profitable now, yes, and probably always will be. But what happens when the site inevitably stagnates but the investors keep demanding revenue growth?
Yes, of course :-)
It's "Bree Serif", available for free from here http://www.type-together.com/index.php?action=portal/viewCon...
Create advanced grid systems on the web.
How to Become the Best Friend of Panda Algorithm?
It's not necessarily marginal. The EU has 2.5x the population of the US but 20x the languages, address/phone formats, cultural differences/expectations, etc.

When things are changing rapidly and getting new features, localizing and testing that many locales is a large time sink.
Unfortunately, my attorney brought this up to me the other day. We'll more than likely ultimately need to rebrand - probably sooner than later.

Thanks for the heads up :-)
A violently true depiction of what war really is
Hey Greg! Great talks at JFokus a few weeks back, keep it up!
...for Tablets
On a tangential note, here's something useful for back of the envelope calculations: a billion seconds is \pi centuries.
There are already a ton of clones doing this. We keep a list. http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/2267/stack-overflow-...
This is not going to add much to the conversation, but.. Urgh!
StartUp Founder Smugness: A Growing Problem Exists
Create awesome HTML5 apps without sacrificing device capabilities
So if you don't communicate that the version of the structure of your response has changed through the Content-Type, where would you do it?
It took a year, but Linux graphics finally runs on Sandy Bridge hardware: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel...
Joel, I think you have the right product and are sincere about this, but I believe Greg Young, the author of the article, brought up a few good points. I read the article and one analogy quickly came to my mind. EE was like AltaVista/Lycos/Infoseek, and Stack Overflow is like the younger version of Google.

+ The latter is clearly superior in technology (or content) to the other.

+ The latter makes user happy by giving them real value, whereas the former focused on milking the users for revenue.

+ The latter made promises to the users (Google: "don't be evil", SO: "contents are the community's property") and the users liked it.

+ Last but not least, "the competition is only a click away" (Google). "You can start a SO competitor in a heartbeat" (SO).

So far so good. But guess what happened to Google? They got good. They got big. They were no longer satisifed with being the king of search. They started Plus. They started saying "If you don't want people to know what you do, you shouldn't do that anyway". They now want your data to be shared among their properties and you cannot opt out. They got jealous of Apple. They got freaked out by Facebook.

I don't doubt Google started with a conscience, and a genuine focus to build a better search engine. They succeeded. Wildly. But except for the most hard-core Google believers, I doubt that many people still trust their "Don't be evil" mantra in its absolute. Frankly, do people even say that with a straight face outside of comparison with Microsoft?

I love SO and believe in the integrity of Joel and Jeff and others. You guys really rock. But time will change. Tide will change. A tidepool that is fun for little kids could become a fatal trap the very next day (sadly, this happens often). So please keep the warning in mind.
WTF is Pinterest: Interesting Facts & Figures
I'm familiar with the tool, and I enjoy it tremendously. In this case, however, I think we're dealing with the sometimes hard to distinguish "spouting nonsense" tool. :-)

After a certain price point (say 10,000 for CAD packages and the like, where you're actually paying for some seriously specialized and advanced software) it's no longer about the software, it's about the customization. That's what those overpriced sales people come to talk to you about. Not only that, but once they're done you'll get and army of project managers and senior devs that come to visit you to figure out exactly what it is you need and by the time these people are done and all their salaries are paid, yes, you'll have paid somewhere upwards of 75,000 dollars but it's not a piece of software you've bought, it's custom development tailoring a specific package to your exact (hopefully) needs.
Yes, but how did they steal the credentials? Did they find a sticky note with the username and password written down? Or was there a vulnerability in the admin interface that allowed someone to sniff credentials? Or did they hack into the personal computer of someone with admin privileges?

Basically, this announcement gives me no confidence that they've done due diligence in fixing this problem. They haven't explained what the vulnerability actually was, nor what they have done to avoid it in the future.

Of course, this does speak to the dangers of using hosted services for anything that needs a high level of security. Anyone with appropriate admin privileges on the host system can compromise any user. That increases the attack area considerably; you don't need to attack the system directly, nor the users of the system in question, you just need to find one person who has admin privileges who is vulnerable, steal their credentials, then attack any users at your leisure.
Your g+ and example site made it immediately clear to me. Maybe make that more prominent?

Cool project, by the way.
> So, if we buy a laptop from vendor X, that might be based in some not-fully-democratic country

Like, say, the US...
Totally misleading.

Not just developers, and not just people on top of their field, will take less money if it means a better quality of life, all the time.

This can be as simple as a shorter commute, or simply a less stressful job. As long as this still results in a minimum level of income they've decided they need.
Full disclosure, bdunn's firm built my app (@aeir_talk), and take it from me, they make great products. I am so excited to see them putting their own products out. Especially one that is meeting a critical need for its users.
If SOPA were limited to indicted suspects who sold counterfeit, dangerous, prescription-required drugs, I'd support it wholeheartedly.
FBI: Cyberattacks could shove aside terrorism as No. 1 threat to US
Basket.js: A simple script loader that caches scripts with localStorage
Unlikely. It's worth $215k on some open markets. But that's highly variable, so it's not obvious that it's actually worth that amount of USD.

And yes, it is like the Wild West. That's part of the point of BitCoin, there are no chargebacks, and no-one can freeze your account. Once the money moves, the money moves. This has disadvantages if you are the victim of a theft (like this) and you're bitcoins are essentially gone.
Speak for yourself please :).
That depends on personality. Many artists found looking or spending time with beautiful woman their way to achieve something otherwise they couldn't. They were their "inspiring thing". While to others, its a distraction from higher goals. So, his advice may work 50/50.
The site itself is not a conspiracy site. The article is written in a completely neutral point of view.

It's your opinion that any conspiracy theories involving the aforementioned subjects are quackery. If you think conspiracies never happen, you're wrong and if you believe that all of our institutions exist for the good of mankind you're even more wrong.

So, what was your point anyway? I was just pointing out that there's a theory that exists. Are you accusing me of some sort of subterfuge here?
Let's go kick some ass! Or at least have a blast :)
No, 1 billion seconds would be (around) π decades...
YELP trading at 60% higher than target IPO price
The sad thing is that even at that angle, their real motivation is to shut down foreign pharmacies selling generic drugs (often made on the same production line as their branded equivalent) directly to Americans without the price-gouge they're able to inflict with their market dominance.
CodeIgniter and CakePHP are great examples of code badly brought forward into PHP5 from PHP4 roots. I wouldn't recommend either to either a novice or an expert; CodeIgniter is a fantastic example of out-of-date practices and CakePHP an example of writing such abjectly slow code that everybody else benchmarks against you to look good.

If you're going to use PHP5, Symfony2 is a well-reasoned, best-of-breed system.
People are getting better and better with linkbait titles here on HN. Wish we could tag as linkbait....