skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
More links about the site
http://romanculture.org/ http://www.villa-adriana.net/ http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/907
Why you shouldn't be worried about the Pinterest terms of use
Leslie sharpe is an ethnographer who wrote a whole book on organ donation after studying the topic called Strange Harvest. This article speaks to a lot of unnecessary and selfish criticism of organ donation practices. Doctors work very hard to ensure the patient is brain dead. There are a lot of reasons covered in the book about why it would make sense for doctors not to notify family members of what is about to happen to the dead body. The number one reason is that organ donation usually comes about from traumatic death, and it is often very difficult for the families to accept that the person truely is dead. Furthermore, the closer to death you can harvest the organs, the higher likelihood that the organ transplant will succeed. If the family has a decision in what happens to the dead body they might try to delay the process as they grieve and as they try to come to terms with the body truly being dead, and this can hurt the likelihood of success for organ transplantation.
Absolutely true. I learned this in an academic setting, after which it seemed so obvious. Very time efficient, and increases the chance that both sides leave happy.
I object to:

- the idea that changing grammar is a way to fix moral problems.

- any barrier, taboo, or artificial distance between what one think and what one write.
Exactly - this is currently the only reason we still use iframes in any capacity.
From an economics standpoint I'd like to sell my organs. From a morality standpoint, the article is disturbing, but you can still have my parts when I'm done with them.
I own an 'Animal', that I bought refurbished, and I've not only never had a problem with it, but it's been more reliable than any other vacuum cleaner I've ever owned and does actually clean better than others, in my opinion.

I've had mine for over 6 years now, so perhaps there's been a quality shift in the interim, but I've had nothing but good experience from mine.

Offtopic, while I haven't given it thought before now enough to consider myself a fanboy, I also quite like their bladeless fans and the hand dryers I've seen in rest stops.
Listing all the reasons it's hard is why the area is ripe for someone else to do it.
Author's here. Reading the comments I feel like clarifying a couple of things :)

--- Clarification 1 ---

The goal of "hashing/reduction" step is to sort all possible passwords into M buckets. Then when a hint request comes in, we check if the typed-in password is in the same bucket as the one we have on file.

That's it.

One way to do this classification is described above. It is not the only way. One can take an MD4 of a string, extract the middle byte and call it a class ID. That would work as well (though it would require computing password "class" upon user registration, when the password is still in a clear). What we want is for related strings such as "password" and "passworf" to be in different classes, and this maps naturally to using cryptographic hashes.

--- Clarification 2 ---

The indicator pictogram has exactly two states - black and gray. The gray state is animated by randomizing its pattern to provide visual feedback on typing. It does not indicate if the currently typed password is "closer" to or "farther" from the target one. The gray always means just one thing - the password is invalid.
It "is" possible that it's 6qubit bytes. I've read a lot regarding that, just follow the links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
I'm currently working through SICP and watching the 1986 lectures of Abelson & Sussman, and one interesting bit in Lecture 2b on Compound Data is when a student raises his hand and asks Hal Abelson about the axiom of doing all of your design before any of your code.

Abelson's response: "People who really believe that you design everything before you implement it are people who haven't designed many things. The real power is that you can pretend that you've made the decision and later on figure out which one is right, which decision you ought to have made, and when you can do that you have the best of both worlds."

Probably the same holds true for startups.
This article is ridiculous. I don't understand, either, why people are so afraid of dying… it's a normal part of life. For my part, if I have an accident, I don't care what criteria my death follows, I wouldn't want to live with a broken brainstem, nor be artificially revived. If my organs can help somebody else, all the better.
Cool. This is important. How can anyone in his right mind think about putting a 400-acre garbage dump right next to a World Heritage Site. Hadrian's Villa is one of the greatest archaeological treasures in the world!
They aren't forcing you to hold their stock.
A fellow staying in the same house as me ran across these guys and was highly skeptical of their operation. It's good to hear that it's actually a pretty cool story. :)
They're making marriage better by understanding and then changing the process by which it evolves -- fantastic!
Carrier Caught Selling a Illegitimate, Unlocked iPhone as New
Well, two things:

* Being possible is not the same as being easy or likely. For example, what if the system only accepts maps digitally signed by the company? You know have to either get the signing cert from the company or break digital cryptography.

* If there's a person inside, the can still take over and drive it themselves or tell it to park and ask for technical support.
Training New Jedis in the Force
بناء مجسماً لحائط البراق في حي بروكلين الامريكي على أنه حائط المبكى
So I have to ask, as someone that hasn't used pinterest, have any suggestions? I'm a guy but whatever, I just want to see some of the interesting stuff that drives certain people to it.
I'm not saying that there haven't been cases where doctors have been overzealous in harvesting organs, but most doctors are much more committed to keeping a patient alive than sending them out for harvest.

Well, where money can be involved, I'd like to err on the side of cautious...

Or even if there are not money to be involved but just "good intentions".

How about the doctor doesn't give a rat's ass about the routine-check-deemed "brain dead" patient and overlooks some criteria to rush and help those in need of transplant? Is it absurd that a doctor could possibly prioritize helping other people over some badly injured guy?
I hesitated posting this item to HN because it seemed more like a Reddit item (I don't use Reddit), but I figured if no one at HN cared, it would just sink. Glad to see Moebius has fans here.
Israel helps New York compete with Silicon Valley
Actually I think that the advantages of networked communicating vehicles will outweigh the possible disadvantages related to security. Vehicles that communicate are much safer and more effective.

Not networking vehicles because they might be hacked into a botnet is a little bit like not networking personal computers for the same reason. We could have just decided to not have an internet. Or we could have decided that we wouldn't allow people to print flyers because they might organize a revolution.

We will definitely want communications security though.
Can anyone point to some studies that back up his claims? I find this incredibly interesting.
...investing in yourself is self-sacrifice. You sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term pleasure. You even sacrifice short-term success for long-term success. The long-term success is off the radar of most of your brain, so you need a mindset that sees your "sacrifice" in a positive light.

But that's not self-sacrifice by my definition, because you're still the one reaping the benefit. Getting up early to do work that will benefit someone else and not yourself - that is self-sacrifice. Getting up early to get ahead in your studies is just self-discipline.
Canada and Iceland: A loonie idea
The only part that alarmed me is the possibility that you could feel pain while your organs were being harvested. There are few things that I'm more afraid of than anesthesia awareness, and they're making it sound like there's a possibility of a similar thing.
We're actually building a giant brain; the Internet /is/ a global collective consciousness.

Well, we WERE building a global collective consciousness in the form of the internet, but the World Wide Web, and especially cat videos, put an end to it.
Seems a bit of a risk baiting and humiliating a group of previously white hatted hackers.
Spyware hits Russian opposition
It does. What I mean by 'the application' is the backend / web app.

To put it another way, a better design allows no application code to read the hash from storage; the application can only ask the storage or security service to compare a supplied value for correctness. Fail enough times in rapid succession and the security service locks the account for a few minutes, preventing any comparisons during that period.

Opening the door to testing the hash itself outside of these constraints is the weakness I am suggesting.

Also thanks for the downvote.
Hence why OP mentioned the need for a scifi novel and some court cases to create a market. I'm not sure that would work, it doesn't seem to have done so in other domains.
Efficient data transfer through zero copy in Java
These aren't "dumb" cars. For example, Google's have a high fidelity laser range finder that builds dense 360 point clouds 15 times second. If the car is given a bad map which sends it into a build or other cars, the collision avoidance system will recognize that fact before an accident occurs and stop the vehicle.
Steve Blank's presentation at SXSW 2012
This article wreaks of fear-mongering, but I don't see many disadvantages to just letting your family/partner/loved ones that you're cool with your organs being donated, rather than carrying a card. I suppose the only downside is the possibility of a mortal injury somewhere where your loved ones couldn't be contacted quickly enough, but for most people that would be extremely unlikely.
I'm not familiar with the procedures, but it sounds like the author's saying in the vast majority of cases the organs can't be harvested because of lung or heart failure, which deteriorates the organs. The implication being that most organ harvests occur on that 1%. Ambiguous, to say the least
Start-Up Lessons From Pandora | Entrepreneur Stories
So you my be only 99% braindead? Therefore you should selfishly screw the 3.3 people who would survive with your organs? Nice article.
Regarding bias, I read somewhere that Numenta claims that the can built conciousness.. however regardless of that it's still quite interesting to see progress in Neural Networks.

They say: They found the key for a new learning algorithm that automatically finds patterns in streams of data and predicts what is likely to occur next.

more http://t.co/cVXRj0F6 and http://t.co/seWjurbW
"black, thin, rectangular, with text and video displayed on-screen"

He better stay away from rounded corners.
> I don't understand, either, why people are so afraid of dying

That part is simple. Fear motivates people to avoid things, and organisms that avoid death are more likely to survive and reproduce.

Also, nice job posting an actual ellipsis character.
> you might as well check if it matches the full hash

It is possible to look at the sun in a telescope, but only twice in a lifetime :) What you say is possible, but I don't know how to coalesce the need for near real-time response and the resistance to the brute-force attacks. That's unless you are referring to once a second validation, in which case the brute-force is still an issue.

> if I were typing in a password I would hit enter and not wait for either a neat grid or a checkmark

I don't know about you, but I get a feeling that I mistyped a password now and then and sometimes I am actually right. So my options here are to wipe it clean and retype or to somehow check if the password is more or less OK. This is what hinting is for. Also, as I said on the description page, the second use is to quickly cycle through a list of (disposable) passwords to see which one I used on a site.

> Finally, I'm not thrilled with the idea of a page sending incomplete passwords to a server

I hear you, valid point. And don't get me started on a page sending incomplete search queries to the server.
Yeah Maciej, that's the gist. The VUPEN guys told us it was effective at preventing the JIT spray, so they used an information leak to bypass ASLR/DEP.
Blessing or Curse? Competing Visions of a Computer-Controlled Future
Case No. 3:12-cv-01082-JSC: Tradehill, Inc. v. Dwolla, Inc. et al
I'm curious as to how you're doing JIT spray detection. Do you have any info on this?
If you enable click-to-play for plugins, it'll prevent it from loading whatsoever before you click it.
Github Tricks
An EEG cannot and does not provide conclusive evidence of brain death. Far from it. It is merely a diagnostic tool to assist a diagnosis -- the actual diagnosis of death is medically and legally dependent upon a physician. There are criteria for establishing death but they are often out of date (drowning and freezing spring to mind) and can be poorly interpreted.

They have also got it wrong before -- times too numerous to mention.

Caution is very necessary here. Its a complicated subject (legally, morally, ethically, scientifically and medically) and questions do need to be asked about organ transplant practice and ethics from time to time.
Completely agree. I worked in the silicon valley scene for about 5 years and left last year because after a while I saw little value in the majority of what was being created in the ecosystem. Note the word majority - there are some groups doing very interesting important things but they are few and far between in my opinion.

I think the culprit is the incentive system of SV - the rewards seemingly go to a number of trivial things and Im not going to pretend to be smart enough to know completely why.

Whats increasingly strange to me is when America and the world have such glaring problems, you really don't see many in SV directing their efforts towards these areas. I'm not expecting for entrepreneurs to single handedly 'fix' healthcare, etc. - but I'm surprised there aren't more chipping away at these things directly or indirectly In my opinion, much of society is struggling on multiple basic fronts and naturally thats where the really interesting and great opportunities will be. Meanwhile we have hoardes of extremely bright people in SV trying to cook up the new flavor of the month photo app.
Surprised to see this on HN, but glad that he still has influence outside the traditional comic book set. Moebius was an inspiration to me back when I wanted to be a comic book artist. I still have many of his graphic novels (and took my HN username from one of his works). To say he will be missed is an understatement.
Thanks for the re-post, this login seems to have an automatic ban for some reason. Not sure what I did wrong :(
Database connection, you are dead to me.
You're right there is a difference. Google has better software. The car companies have better cars. If Google does continue to push the technology I hope they license it. I dread to think what an actual Google car would be like. It's an interesting market that's been progressing for years. It seems now that we are very close to seeing it in production models.
Add this Air Puffer to Your List of Silly Things Banned by the TSA
Wow! Unclear if this is fact but 2 things surprised me.

- I wasn't convinced it would be base 2.

- I thought if it was, base 8 made more intuitive sense.

The former mistaken opinion was a caution against viewing the world as computable. The latter was not heeding the caution.

Mother nature works in mysterious ways.
I believe LIFE IS A RANDOM GAME. You may argue that hard working can change the fate. Yes. But hard working should also be seen as an attribute that is set in your body when you are born, and it is random. So a person is created with random attributes, and he will live with random chances happening around him. That's the game of life.
Why don't they just install a background behind the subject that produces a checkerboard pattern? This is exactly why programs like Photoshop use a checkered background to make it trivial to detect transparency in your images.

Wouldn't that render the exploit this guy found obsolete?
Pycon 2012 Videos
10 Crazy Questions To Ask Siri
Hong Kong in Honduras?
This article is not like a lifehacker “10 neato things to be more productive on your mac” article. It's specifically about using DTrace to get detailed statistics on processes making system calls.

It's also several months old :)
"the banks who were way over levered would have seen their deposit insurance rates go up, and thus be incentivized to not be over levered."

That relies on the people selling insurance to be rational. Unfortunately, markets can act irrationally for long enough that disaster still strikes when they come to their senses. For example, it took way too long for CDS rates (i.e. insurance on loans) to rise on Greek debt. In the 19th century - before the creation of the Fed - banking crises and depressions were a dime a dozen in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banking_crises#19th_cen...

Our economy is ruled by people, like our governments are run by people. The higher up you go, the more scope there is for mistakes, and IMO the less likely you'll see good quality market mechanics. Instead, you see power games, financial hostage taking, threats and counter-threats, etc.
MediaWiki has been extended a whole lot for dynamic content in Wikipedia. That might be one reason for the author choosing it. There has been work outside Wikipedia in making content features more powerful, with Semantic Mediawiki and DBpedia.
My selfish 2 cents. Let's say there is a 1 in 1000 chance the doctor is wrong. (or even 1 in 50) I will live better knowing my death saves 3.3 lives - well enough to take the risk. Organ donorship is the easiest way to save life outside of giving blood.
Ever since I upgraded to Lion, a double tab in Safari to zoom into the content part of the text is all it took to avoid the vomit.
Dartendo lets you play your nintendo games in browser
What are the estimated costs of getting a lawsuit to the Supreme Court?
Surely this:

>a way of arriving at a globally optimal solution //

has very little direct relationship with this:

>the flexibility to make sure you win on the issues you care about and lose on the ones you don't //

This is the statesmanly way to do things. But generally speaking what one cares about and what is "globally optimal", lets say most beneficial for both parties, is seldom coterminous.
The problem here is that politics is largely not about facts, but the difference in interpretation of those facts.
And it definitely should not be until they sort their security and stop pissing around with Linux. Flash is proprietary, crashy, bullshit that can't die sooner. The only advantage it has for video is pretty neat streaming support that could most likely be solved in other ways, and being able to place adverts over the damn video.
I read the petition. There are many important scholars from all over the world who've signed it. Italy would have to be crazy to ignore such influential folks....
An interesting note from Sebastian Thrun--I think in the second office hours of his CS373 course--Google's self driving car can't currently drive in snow because it covers up the road, and the sensors can't see the lines on the road (but they can adjust for the rain).
>I consider it a badge of honor to have restricted features but still have a working account. They care enough to limit us, but they don't want us completely gone.

Hey, that's a nice way of looking at it.. I lost my flag link during "bitcoin week" last summer.
Why is this important or interesting? I know weekends are slow for HN...but really?
If you win on the issues that you care about, the other side wins on the issues they care about, and the two sets don't intersect much, surely you've reached a global optimum?
Many, many people have misinterpreted this kind of story and tried to apply prices to everything (eg. "buying" support time from staff in the IT department). That doesn't work either, because you can do the same tricks with money as you can with any other metric.

For example, in the dotcom days, lots of companies would inflate their revenues (as much as they wanted!) by simply buying ads from each other, back and forth.
Can someone please explain why it cost $750,000 to $2M for a transplant?
That's where you trust that both parties will fight hard for what they most want. If you fight as hard as you can for your terms, and they fight as hard as they can for their terms, then presumably all the issues will be laid out on the table and the agreement simply won't get signed unless it's as good as it can be.

It's the same reason that adversarial systems law, economics, international relations, etc. tend to work. People have more information about their own desires than that of others, so if you task each person with looking out for his own interests but ensure that they also respect the clearly-expressed interests of others, you end up bringing as much information to bear as you can.
Isn't that like learning fluid dynamics as a precursor to learning to swim? It should get your there with a deal of hard work but there's better ways to do it.

Now once you've got the basics and want to understand more fully the how and why of swimming/negotiating then learning fluid dynamics/game theory may provide some insight but I very much doubt that knowledge of either is really going to give you much edge over someone who concentrates on learning the practice itself.
I for one, am baffled by peoples faith in currencies. If we are to believe polular discourse, the adoptation of the euro was the primary cause of Greece's troubles and reversion to the drachme as the inevitable solution. Funny how Iceland managed to screw up without the euro and are now considering joining it.

Now that I think of it, has a country ever managed to deliberately introduce a weaker currency to save the economy? I can only think of examples leading to hyper inflation.
UI Designs for the upcoming Firefox Camera API
One of the benefits of something like Y Combinator is that if you have one of these ideas, and you can actually make it work, YC and its associated network of people can be massively helpful in spreading the word.

In fact, that may be the major benefit of YC.
Not every employer of software engineers can fill their ranks with A players
Thanks! Keep up the great work!
I lost mine recently too. I'd been trying to keep the number of political stories down as they very rarely have any useful discussion.
The full feature overview can be found here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Platform/Features/Camera_API

I've been looking at the UI overviews for Firefox's upcoming features, and it's remarkable how they compress a ton of UX information into a series of small PNGs that anyone can understand. Here's one that includes CSS style guides for a new design: http://people.mozilla.com/~jboriss/specs/home_tab_first_iter...

What a great way to get software developers in sync with UX designers!
I doubt you understand how different kinds of addictions work...
It doesn't actually need to be noninvasive. If an invasive procedure is useful enough and can be made safe, eventually it will be ubiquitous.
No, it does not :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689024

And I didn't downvote you (not that I even can).
Really sad to hear about this. Tremendously influential in comics and modern art, but I don't think we've even begun to see how big his art is.

(Also responsible for influencing a great part of The 5th Element, one of my favorite movies)

A wonderfully different vision of the future than what we saw produced in the U.S.
I don't find this sort of post riveting, either, but I'm glad someone took the time to put it together. The browser stats from a technical audience are definitely interesting, as is the fact that HN now drives half the amount of traffic as TC.