skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yes, they're taking a page out of Microsoft's playbook by using a blog post to respond in more detail to a security vulnerability. When executed well, it mollifies critics much better than the press release style of communication due to its appearance of informality.

That being said, I would have liked for them to say that they've reviewed their logs and saw no other issuance activity that followed the same pattern as the researchers, and that they will improve their operational monitoring and serial number sequencing to help protect against future potential attacks.
To be fair TFA ends with
"Maybe there are others that make your blood boil - or some Britishisms that really get under your skin."

Their list isn't the same as mine,
The colour/color language divide seems to be one that pisses off most people.
My personal list would have to include "Mom", perhaps because of the cloying hollywood kid actors that always say it.

For some reason differences in the language like this do seem to hit a nerve with people - I suppose it's because you learn it one way, and have to here the other "wrong" way.

(More in the case of USisms to British ears - we get a lot of American TV and films - although it's easy to pick out the US adverts that have just been dubbed; theres something comically cheesy about them).
I'm surprised top 10 lists aren't on there.
I like 'loo.'
Why would it be sweet? What do all you people who want tablet computers want them for?

I completely see that laptops with digitizer screens that can be turned into tablet form factor are enhanced laptops. Laptops+. Laptops 2.0. Yet they haven't really taken off, and nobody (except me) seems to think they're cool.

Instead people (you included) want Eric-the-half-a-laptop.

Why?
Don't worry -- I didn't call you a communist. I can cite counter-examples without name-calling.
In the paper itself, they reach the opposite conclusion:

"Question. Suppose that a criminal creates by our method his own rogue Certification Authority that is trusted by all browsers.
Are then only websites with certificates from the CA whose signature he used vulnerable to impersonation attacks?
Are only websites with certificates based on MD5 vulnerable to impersonation attacks?

Answer. No. When a criminal uses redirection attacks in combination with a rogue but trusted CA certificate, all websites are equally vulnerable."
Y A P L C: PostRank Popular Post Widget for blogger
>helps architects to work better
Is that proper grammar (I have no idea, but it sounds wrong).

I would have used:
>helps architects work better
I could die a happy man if people would simply stop misusing common words, such as "less" and "fewer". The latest slogan from TBS is "More movie, less commercials" and it makes me want to kill babies.

What makes me the most angry is misuse of "your" and "you're" because it is so bloody obvious which is which, assuming you have even a vague understanding of contractions.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Report is available.
I use the iPhone for web browsing. My wife uses it a lot for e-book reading. It would be much better with a bigger screen. If your mostly reading with only a little input, a tablet about the size indicated is very interesting.
One of my favorite quotes: "Being a startup founder in SF is like being an actor/model in LA."
The point of the anecdote was to show how anecdotes aren't a good way to argue. The anecdote doesn't show anything -- not my point, and not yours either.

Their specific story is not the point -- my point was that if you want to cherry-pick anecdotes of a program not working, one can always counter-argue with other anecdotes.

Either you believe that it is in the public interest to have some availability of low-income housing or you don't. I do think it's in my interest and I accept that I will pay more to have it be available.

Is rent-control the best way to achieve that goal -- I don't know -- this isn't an area of my expertise (judging from this thread, it isn't any HNer's) -- I haven't heard anyone propose something better -- just complain about it based on hearsay.
Some people pay with cash or check.
They basically sucked all the drama right out of it, which seems like exactly the right play.
> "I am guessing that some things like clothing, food, and housewares most people will never buy online."

Take food off that list. AmazonFresh delivers grocery to your home (sorry, Seattle area only for now). I've used this and am really happy with it.
Because it would be like bailing out 1000 Icelands.
On The Importance of the Middle Class: Lessons of the Housing Bust
Why does anyone care about Blodget's opinions given his track record?

He has been barred from the securities industry: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2003-56.htm

and, comes up with a lot of bad analysis:

http://moneyterms.co.uk/blog/200805-blodget-incentives

Apparently, people will listen if you are well known: it does not matter what you are well known for.
"Believe it or not, there are a ton of people who don't act exactly how economic theory says they maybe should."

All it takes is a few people to behave greedily. And again, how come the condo market in NYC doesn't have these problems?

"Because it was your sweat-equity that made it not very bad."

I think you've got me confused with the cops. I did nothing to improve Jersey City or Harlem, I just live here.

"...you're just not getting your ass thrown to the street because of a market fluctuation."

I think you misspelled "be forced to move to a cheaper apartment in the next 30-60 days".

"I don't get what you're saying here. Who are we taxing?"

The locals that make a place undesirable to live in. You advocate rewarding certain stationary locals who create positive externalities ("make the neighborhood worth living in"). The flip side of that is to punish negative externalities.

It's something along the lines of rewarding the creators of public art (who create positive externalities), while punishing polluters (who create negative externalities).

"Because you're a caring human being? Because those wealthy enough to enjoy a mobile lifestyle can fend for themselves?"

If subsidizing the needy is your goal, then why not target neediness directly, rather than using mobility is a (very poor) proxy?

Using mobility, you hit (non-wealthy) guys like me. I moved once to be close to my job (underpaid postdoc), once to be close to my live-in girlfriend's job, and again last month because she became my ex-girlfriend. Stuff like that is uncorrelated to wealth.
My first instinct was also to verify the "no titles," thing at the employment page.
Where does this 1% come from? As a back of the envelope calculation, I would guess that almost all senior citizens are unprofitable to insure -- that's way more than 1%. Even if I'm off by a lot, it's still way more than 1% -- and I haven't addressed the rest of the population.
I think the whole idea of editing blog posts leads to a rehash of wikipedia. Why would I want to meaningfully edit someone else's opinions (pg's corrections aside) ? And if the person is stating facts that can be collaboratively edited, then you get a wiki article.
How dare they try to promote software they wrote.
TechCrunch recently specced something like this out and they came up with low cost model, 7in-9in, running Linux/Firefox, w/ WiFi for $200. Not bad...Of course, there's no way Apple will release a low end, low cost anything
I do not find most of the examples annoying. My top three are:

1) different than,
2) theatre for cinema (what do you call a theatre then?)
3) nouns used as verbs, and,
4) "i am good" for "I am well" - I rarely ask people about their moral standing...

Color/colour and spelling differences do not annoy me at all. I also find that the more educated the speaker or writer, and the more formal the context, the less likely I am likely to find anything annoying.
2009 Predictions for Microsoft
It makes some sense. It seems to be to be a sort of "fine grained capitalism". Not too different from the Silicon Valley, if you think of that as one big company. What I wonder is what prevents more companies from going this route?
That is incredible. I knew the feeling was strong but to actually influence buyers to pay face value over a discount wasn't what I expected. I guess I was more cynical but the instinct is very strong. It is probably a remnant from when there was no other reasonable option. Why ticket reselling became so vilified I always put down to fan enthusiasm (and therefore irrationality).
Apple's Jobs is (Still) Fine
Number Adjective Plural Noun for Target Audience, imperative 2009 edition.
Open source programming languages for kids
The IMF bailout was just enough to continue the most basic operations. It's nowhere close to enough to get them out of their present predicament.
Yeah, which is why we're phasing out the family URLs. Also, search engines are prohibited from indexing that content.
Notepad++ is relatively customizable once you get the hang of it.

This editor handles HTML and JS in PHP files very well. However, I've yet to find an editor for Win XP that does a good job with ruby syntax highlighting in erb files.
Wikipedia isn't intended to be anchored in the perspectives of a single person's views; in the ideal case Wikipedia is supposed to be completely neutral. Even if one's blog is more wiki-like, the owner would necessarily be associated with those perspectives and topics and interests.

I suspect that in many cases, a blog-wiki wouldn't be terribly useful; there simply aren't enough interested readers to do much (though I've had many people point out simple corrections on my own blog). But in certain circumstances, a blog-wiki could be very interesting. One could imagine that the blogs of particularly prominent personalities could take on lives of their own.
John Carmack's Tesla Review at End of Latest Armadillo Update
Brown dwarfs might well have moons... unless you call them planets, I guess...
Niche? People who fly a lot. Basically the same size screen as what's on your seatback, but completely under your control. In general when I travel I'm almost always too lazy to drag out the Macbook Pro. Still small enough to fit in a jacket or parachute pants type pocket.
Useless Ivory Towers
Living on the edge of academia
I don't know about that. It could. But the US dollar is basically the world's reserve currency. If was devalued as much as the krona, I have no idea what would happen to the entire world, not just us.
Not mentioned is any thought about the cost of making the discs and disposing of them when they wear out. I'm betting the netflix model allows more people to efficiently share fewer physical discs than the blockbuster model.

What is stupid is that the movies could be delivered completely over the internet with no physical disks at all but this hasn't happened despite the technology existing that would make it trivial to do so.

I'd say itunes movies is as green as it gets so far.
Firstly, I don't really see the point here. Currently, it's basically a game that asks "Which tweet has a missing word?" There's no obvious reason behind why I would want to play it, though. I will assume by gaining "score" my tweets will show up on the site for others to "guess" about. However, as I was playing, I wasn't reading the tweets for comprehension, just to determine which was more likely to contain the (arbitrary) "missing word" and I certainly didn't click on any links (well, not that they were clickable). This basically nullifies any banner exchange benefit.

Secondly, the method you use to Captcha, i.e. missing words, is way too arbitrary and prone to wrong guesses. Take the following example: http://img.skitch.com/20081231-cexmqnxetfktd6ybbdfei8dpgp.pn...

The first tweet was just ".net" which I presumed was missing a URL at the very least. The second wasn't even English, if it was a language at all. The other huge issue with this is the fact that, in general, tweets are going to be missing words because of the character limitation. I got a couple wrong simply because both tweets were missing words that would form a complete sentence, but only one of them was missing the word you wanted me to notice.

Basically, aside from some sort of novelty, I see no use for this service. Perhaps I'm missing something.
"I have a startup" seems a very ODD way of saying what you do when people ask, anyway. It is almost intentionally oblique. Even as a serial entrepreneur, I would probably have a similar "midwestern" reaction if someone said that when I asked them what they did...it's just a weird, passionless answer.

If you ask a person at a big corporation what they do, they don't usually say "I have a job with a big corporation." Do they? Instead, they would usually say something like "I work in accounting for the largest trucking company in the US." or "I'm a salesman with a company that makes office copiers." Boring, but at least it's an honest answer.

An entrepreneur should be able to muster much more passion than "I have a startup" when asked what it is they do. People tend to respond positively when you show passion and enthusiasm and speak directly about what you do. Even if you have to 'dumb it down' for them to understand (or omit secret information.) Maybe this guy should have enthusiastically said, "Yeah, I'm working on a really neat piece of software that helps people to communicate better by XXX"

For some reason, "I have a startup" makes me think of a few people I know that have no passion for school, but have stayed in grad school for years on end so they can avoid choosing a career. People may have pity or confusion in their voice only because what you're saying has a cop-out or apologetic vibe to it...?
Finding a Company That Will Promptly Ship Your Sound Machines
One of the most convenient ways of buying our sound machines is to buy them online. Though online shopping is one of the most convenient ways of buying things, it does come with its own disadvantages. One of the nightmares of online shopping is getting the ordered products on time. It is not uncommon to hear people saying that they have not received their orders even after 6 weeks, the product that they received was not the one they ordered, or the product was damaged when it was delivered, etc.
Here are some lists:

- http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaUses

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_(programming_language)#Appl...

I'm slowly (but steadily) using Lua to replace XML for software configuration.
"Moreover, unlike Japan and like Argentina and Iceland, the US is a debtor nation -- not a lender. This increases the likelihood of a run on the currency, which will result in significant currency devaluation."

I'm confused. Isn't Japan's national debt about 120% of its GDP? And our is about 75%. Doesn't that make Japan more of a debtor nation than us?
Fraiche, incidentally, has the best frozen yogurt I've ever tasted. I recommend it to anyone visiting Palo Alto. It's just a couple blocks south of University Ave, on Emerson.
Last line: "Disclosure: Long gold and silver." That was about as predictable as winter in December in Canada.
I'm definitely 4th level then as I do truly crave and desire failure ;)
Not arguing with you, but what does VB have to do with Haskell and C?
Respect has to be earned. If one's morale is buttressed by toadies and 'respecting' yes-men who gush about how awesome you are just because of your job title, things are more likely to go off the rails when the sun stops shining.

By all means mix with like-minded people, but your morale and motivation shouldn't depend upon whether or not your neighbour thinks you're 'cool'.
People in richer countries have fewer children and the birth rate falls with economic growth.

My personal observation is that people in Salford (not a nice area at all) have more children and MUCH earlier than those in Wimbledon (fairly affluent).

The study also found that education is negatively correlated to number of offspring: http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/so_muc...
Yeah, it's one of my favorite frozen yogurt places too. Definitely try the homemade mochi topping.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/fraiche-yogurt-palo-alto-2
Sardines--I love good sardines. Unfortunately, good sardines are like $3 a tin. Crappy sardines are less than $1 a tin, but they're approximately inedible. This is shopping at Wal-Mart grocery.

Anybody know of a good brand of sardines you can buy cheap online, or another way to get good sardines for $1-2 per tin?
I like the added dimension:

"In a poker room, you can only choose which table you want to sit at. But in business, you don't have to sit at an existing table. You can define your own, or make the one you're already at even bigger."
I wouldn't mind a filter for awful typography either...Firebug to the rescue.
I also use the iPhone for web browsing, but there are scant few places where I am all of: not at home or work and didn't bring my full laptop, yet can't manage with just an iPhone and would have been willing to bring a midsized thing and wouldn't prefer device with keyboard. Which isn't to say I want an Apple-netbook, but instead dream of an even better iPhone.

The iPhone wouldn't be better with a 7" screen; it would be at home because it wouldn't fit in my pocket - after all, I really only want one convergence device and that's got to be centered around my phone because a) that's the main functional thing that I want to carry around everywhere and b) what good is a portable device without a cellular radio these days anyway?

However, I can probably sum up my reply to:

I feel unjustifiable angst that Apple might be spending some of their limited quantities of human effort building
a wretched minitablet instead of any of the iPhone improvements I want to see, therefore I don't want it to happen, therefore I wont believe it even if trusted sources have actually held one.
I don't see that "libertarian" entails "anarchist" or even "trolling message boards."
"All it takes is a few people to behave greedily."

A few people acting greedily forces an unwilling owner to sell out? That makes no sense.

"And again, how come the condo market in NYC doesn't have these problems?"

I didn't address this before because it sounds like something you're pulling out of your ass - and you said it yourself, your building was built for condos but used for rent b/c the market for condos wasn't there. What, exactly, do you want me to argue against here?

"I think you've got me confused with the cops. I did nothing to improve Jersey City or Harlem, I just live here."

Did you mug anyone? Sell drugs? Piss on other people's porches? Litter? Pay your rent on time? Spend money in the local stores? Occasionally smile at your neighbors? Call the cops when you saw someone breaking into a car? You don't have to be a hero to make a part of town a better place.

"I think you misspelled 'be forced to move to a cheaper apartment in the next 30-60 days'."

Cute. 30-60 days, that does make things way easier. Gives people plenty of time to find a place they can afford that's really far away from their current job, so they spend less time with their family, or maybe even need to get a new one. Any local support systems? Churches that sometimes helped with groceries, trusted neighbors to help with babysitting, etc, all gone.

"The locals that make a place undesirable to live in."

Okay, you come up with a way to enforce it, I'm all for it. Rent control is easy, and it has roughly the same effect in upwardly-mobile neighborhoods.

"If subsidizing the needy is your goal, then why not target neediness directly, rather than using mobility is a (very poor) proxy?"

Subsidizing the needy isn't my goal. My goal is not kicking people out of their homes because rich people would rather have them.

"Using mobility, you hit (non-wealthy) guys like me. I moved once to be close to my job (underpaid postdoc), once to be close to my live-in girlfriend's job, and again last month because she became my ex-girlfriend. Stuff like that is uncorrelated to wealth."

So, wait, hold on: you want to kick people who are even worse off than you financially out of their homes so that you can afford a bit cheaper apartment now that your girlfriend broke up with you?
Actually what Paul is proposing isn't new - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliki. It looks like the idea hasn't really hasn't taken off in the purest form, where anyone can edit a personal blog.
The battery life on such a device would ensure that I have to keep buying a new to replace the old one that I keep smashing out of frustration.
Pageviews! Pageviews! Pageviews!
The scary part was (at least a few years ago when I had something to do with another Tesco-branded site) that they took one pound in every eight of all retail in the UK.

Not as scary, though, as the fact that they were taking one in every FOUR pounds spent online.
> For an extreme example, see Cuba, where social engineering routed the market, with results that are disastrous in many ways.

Disastrous for whom? Compared to what? Cubans have a high literacy rate, high life expectancy, low numbers of extreme poor, etc. Indeed, the country has done much better than similar Caribbean/Latin American states which followed different political paths over the past few decades. The government's actions shouldn't be whitewashed, but nor should Cuba's accomplishments be dismissed with vague platitudes about the glories of the market.
Oh, I see, as in the teller at a bank.
Here's my prediction for Fall of 2009:

Apple makes another gadget
"But because technical people get away with saying "even if you're not authenticated, you're at least encrypted", it isn't the end of the world when Comodo (or RapidSSL) screws up."

Speaking for myself, the causality flows in the other direction. Because there will always be somebody like Comodo who will issue certs with insufficient verification (Comodo being an extreme but there's been a long history of merely insufficient verification; ISTR a lot of "fax me a letter on official letterhead", which is just total BS), the PKI component of SSL, being basically a binary yes/no system, is fundamentally flawed. Market forces compel a race to the bottom in this situation and there's just no way around it. (Not even moving it to a government function; nobody is immune to having money waved under their nose.) So all you get from SSL is encryption, not authentication. Whether you like it or not.

If you really insist on the dichotomy of "SSL provides either perfect security or no security", then the answer is, it provides no security, because it is impossible to use it properly.* The legitimate owner can do everything right and still get CA-rooted with non-zero (and significant-in-practice) probability.

If that's a problem, get designing and implementing.

* Or, even more precisely, the only proper use is to use a separate communications channel with the website to verify the key they are sending out, regardless of who putatively signed the cert. And this use is a myth in the general case, because I can't imagine more than the barest fraction of SSL sites have ever gotten this query and I bet the majority of organizations would either have no idea what to tell you since you can't talk to the guy who knows (if any), or would even think you were a hacker or something trying to get something from them you shouldn't.
There's some sensationalist stuff popping up:

"Yes, Trust In The PKI Is Broken"
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/12/ye...
"Rather, what we have in common is a certain mentality, a way of thinking that allows us to overcome many obstacles and take advantage of many opportunities as they arise. I call it the knack."

Does this remind anyone else of that Dilbert episode (yeah back when it was a TV show, too) where Dilbert loses The Knack?

Good read though.
2009 Will Be the Year of the Bootstrapper
This sort of thing is one of the most convincing signs of how much future growth there still is left in software. Companies of all types are effectively turning into software companies. And this is still the beginning of the trend.
Is there a description of what it actually does?