skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hmm, lots of anecdotes and complaining here. I've experienced no issues of the sort. Running perfectly smoothly here on 12.04, 64-bit. And I'm on a 4-year-old Pentium Dual Core machine, of all things.
Using server-side encryption at all means admins can get into your data, does it not? They can modify the source code so that when the server decrypts/encrypts the data at your request, it also saves a copy in cleartext. How would you avoid this without encrypting on the client side?
The Huxley reference could also be used to describe the '80 and the '90. “Amusing Ourselves to Death” describes most of the second half of the XX century.

Information Technology is in a core scientific plateau, I also believe that's true, but that does not mean the current development is trivial. There are a new set of problems that need to be solved, problems in engineering, managment and law. Very important problems. And there is an inmense amount of value being created, and people with money want a piece of that. People that, otherwise, wouldn't invest in tech.

There is "hype", but then again, we are in the middle of a process that is change society into something that has never been in the history of mankind.
BaGoMa puts your email in folders based on the first 2 characters of the file name.

eg 00/00a87... 00/00aa8... 0b/0b0a9...

So you'd have to do some folder shuffling before dumping the data into a Maildir server filesystem but that's not to hard.
It's not just a collection of software, every distro patches the apps on their repositories in a different way
Announcing Printchomp
I made the mistake of importing Compiz settings that I was using in 10.04 and 11.04 in an attempt to make Ubuntu more usable. It made it completely unusable.

KDE with nVidia's binary works for me. Everything with Gnome 2, 3 and Unity has been flickering whenever I move a window and window decorations like to disappear.

Early adoption of LTS and LTS^ releases is never and increasingly a bad idea.
Looks like an advertorial. No mention of socket.io and praise for a commercial solution that I didn't know after almost two years working with websockets.
I'm not sure I see the problem. They let the biggest debt buyer cut out the middle man. I'm sure there was some backroom dealing going on there, but it seems like the biggest losers there are the middlemen who wound up getting cut out.
Statsexchange is actually a great resource as well if you form that question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/
"investment community... limited in scope"

But how about the regulatory environment?

Maybe it might make a good base from which to launch a startup focused on reclaiming some standard expectations privacy for internet users, by using original internet peer-to-peer design instead of the prevalent "calf-cow" (client-server) model. Many, like the 60-something Harvard blogger who recently wrote about Facebook's flaws, are calling for an end to this design.

Consider the Skype example mentioned as one of Sweden's startup success stories. (And I believe he did eventually go to London for better access to capital.)
Ask: do you offer this web prototyping tool?
I code my web site/app prototypes by hand in html/js/css and although I love the level of detail I've come to realize that it's a very slow and tedious process.

I'm therefore looking for a (set of) tool that helps be code prototypes faster. I need 100% control over html/js/css but I would like shortcuts such as:

* import jQuery or Twitter Bootstrap with their addons/plugins/libraries

* Ability to add images, favicons and other assets

jsFiddle is the closest thing I've found but it focuses more on debugging than prototyping. I would happily pay good money for this tool.

I've tried and will not use Azure, Flair Builder, Balsamic mockups, Pencil, Visio.
I could die while driving--it happens tens of thousands of times per year--but I still drive places because it is much more convenient than the alternatives.

Gmail is very convenient, so I use it despite the very small risk that it will backfire on me.
Who are these people who can't butcher a hog but can plan an invasion?

In fact is there any 1 person in the world who could plan a modern invasion on their own?

I imagine the process of going to war involves large committees.
German teen solves 300-year-old mathematical riddle posed by Newton
AppFog supports Python and even has a flask jumpstart, you can have the same flask hello world in 30s at appfog.com
What a boring text!
M.Sc.in applied Mathematics
There's a bit of research going into this area right now. Verification strategies for hardware, etc. Another way around it is to bump up your integration of trusted FPGA platforms where you can write and use your own hardware in a potentially more trustworthy way.
That would be a problem if your Gmail was hacked.

The GP is talking about Google themselves blocking access. I'm not worried that Google will reset my passwords in other accounts.
I think he works in a domain where a lot of these things are accepted by his colleagues as fact. Judging by the way this website is laid out, the general public is not his audience.
Shipping quickly is often a strategy used to discover the problem space. Some things should be done as quickly as possible and some things should not. The developers/tech management are responsible for forseeing such cases.

Hopefully the initial developers are good ones. If not, I'm sorry and I hope they pay you well. I've been there :-|
Cisco has been fighting with the Chinese over imitation network gear (branded as Cisco) for years. So rest assured that the switches are all backed-doored too. It's a big problem. Really, tribes out to forge their weapons at home.
State of Technology last week #60
Yup. It is an advertorial. Kaazing like promoting their own "WebSocket Gateway", and they're in a great position to, owning websocket.org

By the way, at the moment I'm using Python's Twisted with a simple wrapper called txWS: https://github.com/MostAwesomeDude/txWS

I'm not a big fan of socket.IO, seems too complex for my needs. I was quite happy to discover txWS, it's literally one more function call and you can just write ordinary Twisted code with no changes, which is a relief.

Edit: I'm tempted to purchase websockets.co...
Agreed. The Shuttle, as operated, was a pretty stupid design, compared to the alternatives. I admire the folks who ran it for making it run as long and safely as it did. But it was insanely expensive. And fundamentally inferior, inefficient and risker compared to say just having a cylindrical multi-stage rocket and putting a payload on top of it, ala Saturn, Delta, Falcon, etc.
Consider adding other "universal" things that can fit easily on top of coffee.

For example I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, and other than when I remember to buy a carton ahead of time I generally end up going to a shop each day specifically to buy them, they don't fit my general groceries timetable.

Somebody already suggested newspapers... maybe a few other easy-to-deliver snacks/drinks (can of coke, crisps..)? I'm sure there's some more things that X% of people are already buying once a day and would like to save hassle on.

The more you bring, the more the delivery charge looks good to the customer. Let's say each day you brought me a coffee (at cost), a pack of fags (at cost) and a can of coke (buy in bulk you could sell at retail cost and make some money there), still charge $1.50 delivery fee, but suddenly you're saving me three times as much hassle.
Emotions Every User Enjoys
Improving the Signal-to-Noise Ratio in Life and Social Media
Why can't you have both? Maybe a different design would become apparent while developing the product, as opposed to being discovered in the analysis phase. (I'm assuming you are talking about a process with a large and separate analysis phase).

The worst case is millions of dollars spent to build a product only to discover that there are issues late in the testing phase. Wouldn't is be less risky to experiment and validate assumptions earlier in the cycle?

Agile as opposed to methodology X is a bit fuzzy here, as I'm sure testing is extensive and expensive and the feedback cycle is inherently longer, so change is more expensive.

However, it seems that early feedback and validation of design is even more important in these circumstances, since changes late in the product development process and orders of magnitude more expensive than changes early in the process.
Eurovision statistics analysis, and an apology to the people of Malta
I'd be interested to hear, from people who have experience with these older systems, why they didn't take off.

Maybe it's that they were developed almost pre-web? I was using the web in 1994 on windows 3.1 but certainly never heard of smalltalk. I think it must have been the Microsoft ecosystem and then later the Linux ecosystem that kept "better" tools in the shadows. In 1994 windows was a fantastic upgrade from DOS. You could not just have multiple windows, but multitask!

These days it seems like programming platforms like node.js can take off astonishingly quickly because of faster and faster dissemination on the web. It's not just more adoption, but more contribution too.
> Also I looked at their report and it's cherry picked and very carefully worded, with several sloppy arguments, often contradicting themselves in the matter of a few sentences. Typical stuff for them.

I don't see anything wrong with their methodology, could point those out for me?
It launched with RHEL AMI's. There are no official CentOS AMI's, though there are plenty of images supplied by the community.
Aren't serialization/deserialization, sanitization and async concurrency management the most complicated and error-prone parts of JS development?

I don't see any reason to put this stuff back into module interfaces when we already have module.exports -- and we can already use http.createServer on localhost if we want a (real, externally-compatible) HTTP interface to a module.
D3 Punchcard to Visualize SF Caltrain Schedule
A punchcard data vis using d3 (rip-off of what GitHub uses to view commit times) to display Caltrain schedule.
The essential difference is that extension methods are visible only in compilation units that explicitly import them, while adding a new method to an existing class makes it visible everywhere.
28 Mayıs 2012 Günlük Burç Yorumları
I doubt they will roll an entire mobile operating system in the time frame mentioned. A kindle-esque customized Android phone seems more likely.
this is extremely useful and it is one more reason why I really miss Chrome (and Firefox) on both tablets and smartphone. I read HN mostly on these devices where HN UX is really poor, this is one of those features I would love.

Another one is having bigger upvotes buttons and easier clickable links. Too often I have a hard time to click on the microscopic comments link, other times I open the wrong news or upvote the wrong one.
Here's what I think when I read it:

Maybe I should follow you on Twitter, maybe I will, but I don't think I wanna ever meet you in real life. You sound like you're a lot smarter than everybody else, and I'm not smart enough for you.
I'm a procrastinator, yet I get a lot of stuff done. So much stuff, that people ask me how I get so much stuff done. Remember, I'm a procrastinator.

How? I take on too many things. Invariably, I procrastinate doing whatever by doing something else. As long as I constantly have a revolving list of "something elses" that need done, stuff keeps getting done. Sure, some things will never get done, but I find that when I have a big list, I am able to prioritize the level of procrastination I apply to each item. Thus, the things that never get done are things that I don't really need to do anyways. I try to force myself to work on those things... then I start procrastinating and I get all sorts of other stuff on the list done.

Maybe this doesn't work for everyone. That's fine. But not having enough projects is a terrible fate for me... because then nothing gets done.
Are Browser Wars Returning For Mobile?
please make comments and upvote links easier to click on ipad.
Ask HN: What do you do for health insurance?
I've been paying for my own private health insurance policy since starting my company. About once every 6 months, I've gotten a notice that my premiums were going up "due to the rising cost of healthcare," to the tune of almost quintupling in price since I signed up 4 years ago.

This time it was too much. I'm looking into other options and I was wondering: what do the other HN self-employed do for health insurance?
The middle man was getting a cut anyway. It was mainly to make China's purchases secrete.

Primary dealers are not allowed to charge
customers money to bid on their behalf at Treasury
auctions, so China isn't saving money by cutting out
commission fees.
It is in the last paragraph. I thought the 90% of the article prior to that was a pretty good neutral overview of websockets vs prior 2-way alternatives.
Maybe they do not trust the FPGA's being supplied to Wall St.?

Does Wall St. check for backdoors in hardware?
You might want to look into V8 as a way to un-hook JavaScript from your browser while you are converting your apps. See: http://code.google.com/p/v8/ I've not investigated as I've been busy writing JavaScript apps for our projects browser/web app needs. :) Luck!
Nice! That looks very well executed. Personally I'm glad to see you explicitly mention that it's read-only. Separation of concerns and all that.
Sorry, if I add an e-mail address to my profile 'about:' field it can be seen by everyone. Also even if I have my e-mail address in the "email:" and "notifo:" fields I don't receive any notification.
UK cookie law changed at last minute to allow implied consent
I'm not sure I can articulate it very well, but my general point regards the access given to core functionality in both military hardware and finance. This doesn't really comport with the US's relationship to China that is portrayed in the mainstream.
Something like this?

http://foundation.zurb.com/
While definitely having an agenda, I still found it a useful high-level guide.
At the moment I go without.

It seems like the "best" compromise would be to buy catastrophic/atmospheric insurance, and otherwise mostly go without.

Have you looked at HMOs? It seems that would be contracting with the medical providers as partial insurance agents, rather than going through a pure middleman/gatekeeper insurance company.
Ask HN: (Python) Web framework of the future?
There was an ASK HN thread earlier this year about web frameworks, and I recall someone said something I was quite intrigued by -- the framework of the future will not be WSGI based, because it will have to support websockets well.

Considering that, and any other criteria, what framework do you feel is going to be important in the future? Is it Brubeck (http://brubeck.io/) or Diesel (http://diesel.io/)? Or, more generally, what characteristics, qualities or traits are going to be important when it comes to frameworks?
Facebook Database Write Failed Error, May 27 2012
You can subscribe to HN Notify to get email notifications of replies. No, I don't have the link. No, I cannot look for it right this minute as I have an appointment.
For many, it might be easier to run a mail client than a python script though.
There's an account on twitter called @hackernewsbot that tweets the highest rated stories. Twitter accounts have RSS feeds, which are a bit awkward to find, but it's been automated, just type the username in here:
http://charlieharvey.org.uk/page/twitter_rss

Which gives:
https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_...

Hopefully this gives what you were after?
> "far too many people are confident in their ability to die gallantly"

Ain't you heard? Dying is easy, comedy is hard. :D

But overconfidence aside, I have a harder time gauging acceptable competence levels in a test like this. Anyone who is not physically disabled is capable of shoveling manure. But if you don't know what you are doing you are gonna work way harder than you need to, take forever and wind up making a mess. Same with building a wall, just pile stuff up and brace as necessary, but the first rain or wind will probably knock it over.
One way might be to run the audio stream through a speech-to-text engine and parse the resulting transcript.

A video recognition system could also be used to identify faces, landmarks and common objects.
As a kid who began writing code on an Apple II I cant believe you feel that today's situation is inferior to our own. I didn't know anyone who HAD a computer let alone could program it and I sure as hell never imagined that I could actually distribute my programs anywhere. Look at what kids have today - an infinite supply of resources, an infinite audience via a multitude of channels, and even the ability to really market and sell their wares (no pun...) seems like a worthwhile trade off for being able to go native to me. And if you really care, fire up a virtual machine and go nuts.
To play devil's advocate:

a) Money is a bit of a red herring. Or rather, if Apple gave away keys for free, would you no longer have a problem?

b) If you have physical layer access, you can override any security settings. Gatekeeper et al cannot change this fact. You will be able to write/run code, just not necessarily distribute it.

c) Code signing will nuke a large portion of malware. 99% of users are not developers, so why should the default state of the operating system be configured for our needs?

d) Code signing could be implemented on a javascript level, as well. Flash is/was an attempt at signed codebases/binaries distributed over the web. Presumably, for example, a site could required to pull resources from an HTML5 manifest style local cache that has been signed/verified. This could eliminate MITM style attacks (changing ads) that are already in use. Difficult? Yes. Impossible? No.

e) There's always Linux/BSD. Until the TPM security protocols of 2018 are implemented, of course.
True but some of the data looks to be "dated". According to Wikipedia, Safari, Chrome FF, and IE10 have WS support.
There are a couple of choices in the framework which need to be tested at a larger scale, but I felt the linkshui[0] application had reached a point that it was worth sharing.

The unified interface is meant to allow code to hide behind codified intentions: the requests. If a module makes a request to a configured URI, it encodes enough information in the request that any piece of code could step in to fulfill it.

This is the case in the *nix command line as well; you can compose command sequences which could be handled by whatever program is referred to.

The browser, however, doesn't really have an exchange system like that. It's up to the applications to specify how things are corralled, and that's why we have stuff like Backbone.js. Link is trying a different approach that focuses more on the operations level, abstracting the exchange between code so they can live independently.

[0] https://github.com/pfraze/linkshui
This is interesting:

the closest anyone has ever gotten to creating a full dynamic environment for a C-language platform is Alexia Massalin’s Synthesis operating system. If you are a programmer of any kind, I’ll wager that Alexia’s dissertation will blow your mind

There have to be people on HN who know about this. Tell us more!

Wikipedia [1] says that the Synthesis kernel relied heavily on self-modifying code and that adoption of its techniques was inhibited by its being written in assembly language. That makes sense; it probably relied on the code=data aspect of assembly language, something that (Forth aside) you mostly don't get back until you've left the lower levels well behind.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_kernel#Massalin.27s_S...
Sorry I will not. It's hilariously bad. Riddled with it. I've seen dozens of flaws with just a few paragraphs. It's very very carefully worded and has gaping statistical flaws and false conclusions. Even starting with the piece's title and 1st paragraph you should be able to see the propaganda shell game start shuffling around. I made my comment more for the sake of other readers of HN. Instead I'll offer it as a geeky intellectual challenge for yourself to take a fresh look at their report with a critical eye. Once you can spot all the "fnords" in one piece of a propaganda you'll get better at seeing it elsewhere as well. :)
I didn't know that Dustin Curtis was the first one that started it but every time I come across it, it slightly invalidates the authenticity of the post itself. It's like saying, "If you liked this post you should buy our product". It makes people feel that the post was solely written to convert you.
Hmm, I did that without looking and it seems the RSS urls aren't complicated any more. They used to need your uid not your screen name, which is why that tool exists.
I fail to see why you chose Javascript though. Surely a C base d approach would be the most platform independent. Works out of the box on most machines and much easier to port to Java/C#.

Also you need to spend some time without the tinfoil hat. App stores have resulted in a lot more independent developers because it provides them a cheap distribution channel. Likewise vendor required development tools have always been around. There really isn't anything to be afraid of.
Smalltalk was too expensive. You have some other reasons here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/711140/why-isnt-smalltalk...
There's an argument there - do you want to be at your distro's security update mercy, or have to remember/have two separate sets of security patch processes to run through?
Yes, I find it very valuable to attach my email and Twitter to my HN profile, definitely worthwhile. Having a way to contact you is important and you can get a lot of great feedback on a community like Hacker News.
Man I hate these undated Internet articles. Publishers use it to sneakily squeeze out a few extra page views from stale content. Hate it when I fall for that.

Besides support in recent browsers, anything else inaccurate in it?
If the poster is paranoid about the future then Mono isn't a good choice. Microsoft could easily revoke their license agreements and sue everyone for patent infringement.
Couldn't this be clarified greatly with just a few more words of explanation on the profile page itself? There are a few pages and blog posts scattered around HN which explain most of the fields on the profile but there's nothing like explaining frequently misunderstood settings on the page people are changing those settings.

Even "email: (not displayed)" would be a big step forward.
Their claim that "HTML5 Web Sockets can provide a 500:1 or—depending on the size of the HTTP headers—even a 1000:1 reduction" is also wrong as they dont account for TCP / IP Frame overhead. Sure it still is around 50:1, and sockets are awesome. But if you present numbers, please dont present misleading numbers.
Why physicists?
Thank you for the suggestion but I'm looking for something more interactive.
Maybe you could write a program that tries successive seeds and compares them to the sample, and then prints which seeds were the closest to the sound.
Could you edit this comment and double-line it so it's readable? Thanks!
http://www.hnnotify.com
> I am baffled at how people continue using such a service for something as important as e-mail in 2012, while still being fully aware that their access can be completely cut off at random with no reason or recourse.

I am consistently baffled that people with higher than average technical skills assume that everyone is at their level.

Many people worry about Gmail/Google cutting them off with no/ or little recourse. The mistake in your assumption that I'm pointing out as an example is that most people don't know how to run their own mail.

So, no: I don't think everyone is assuming it won't happen to them. They just don't know what to do, and that's no reason to cast Gmail users as afflicted with the 'psychological law of self exception' (or willfully ignorant).