skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
by trusting MS, surely RH can spare an HPC to sign the kernel every time...

http://blogs.technet.com/b/msrc/archive/2012/06/03/microsoft...

Not even to remember, that Mr. Sh. was in the random number selling and certification business in the first place. "I am what I am because of who we all are." -- VeriSign
When it says "static type checking" it does not mean "all static type checking" but rather "good static type checking". And this is what the study showed (ignoring issues of methodology and sample size for the sake of argument): a (good) static type system would have caught more errors than unit testing, therefore static typing is good.

Generalizing any comment to all static type systems is silly: there are language like C that have a static system but provide basically no additional safety at all. You can easily provide examples of really bad statically typed or dynamically typed languages, but these examples say nothing of static or dynamic typing in general: they're just bad. Questions about static vs dynamic typing can only be answered by the best (or at least good) examples of each.

Showing that a good statically typed system is more robust than a good dynamically typed system is a useful proxy for comparing static typing to dynamic typing. This is similar to a study on seat belts ignoring poor seat belts that strangle the passengers in the event of a crash.

In short: just because static typing is better does not mean all static type systems are better, because you can always come up with a sufficiently bad example of static typing.
Question from ignorance: Couldn't you internally buffer the geometries and, say, send them to the GPU every 5 frames or so?
To add insult to injury, there's a McDonald's within a few blocks of Bongo Burger (at Center St.) that's enormous and always packed. I'm not sure if we see this behavior because Americans are addicted to empty calories, or just don't want to venture outside their (dis)comfort zone to try something new, or what. It's sad.
I see your point. I suppose in the end if the idea of all of these security measures is to prevent unauthorized access of your data, then this is another hurdle for an attacker to get over. But the way I see it, if someone has physical access to your machine, and you aren't using full disk encryption, this isn't going to stop them from doing just that.

Safe Boot goes a long way in the scenarios where your boot loader can be changed by a software vulnerability, or if you're using full disk encryption and an attacker actually needs to alter your boot loader to get at your data(i.e. evil maid).
Definitely typing. I wasn't using any libraries.
http://www.weebly.com/ has been quietly hosting millions of free websites for years. They're a YC company from back in the day (W2007), and an awesome bunch of folks with a really cool service.
Implicit in your description of the different paths you and your friends have taken is an important fact: everyone's path to success is different. So is their definition of success.

Dropouts have made it. Dropouts have failed. People who stayed in school have made it. People who have stayed in school have failed.

Ultimately having conviction about what is right for you and not wavering with the startup flavor of the day sounds like it will serve you well. It may lead to a different path of success if these other opportunities involving you dropping out pan out well for those companies that you could have been a part of. But it in no way does it preclude future success or suggest that you won't have your own homerun later. Excellent self-aware post, Dan.
And it seems I was not clear enough on my previous comment; How can I test by myself the status of the service. I don't know, maybe an API endpoint, what host to ping, something, to be able to discard network connection problems, etc.
I really hope it's not premature optimization.
I'd rather see a good speaker lineup as a first priority and a diverse lineup coming second. I really don't care WHO presents, as long as the talk is good. I'd really hate to have to sit through bad talks just because somebody felt like they would have to favor diversity over content.
I obviously completely agree with you (being a long time reader of your blog). The point is not that Github is a special case, but that all startups are a special case, and every founder has to figure out what works and what it doesn't for their own.

I have spinned up the contrarian touch a bit in order to exactly get this kind of reaction, and to raise this conversation, which I don't think we have enough.
Note that the ranking is busted, so it puts e.g. a refurbished Blackberry with a single 5 star review above a popular phone that might average out to 4.99 over hundreds of reviews.
Announcing Windows Phone 8
Just extremely honest about it.
I've often been surprised by how silly the "Russian girl coming to the US" genre of spam sounds when reading it. "Oh, I decided to come to America, found you randomly on the 'net somewhere, and decided that I'd like to meet you." Like the Nigerian scammers, these folks want to induce selection bias toward a population of men who will suspend disbelief and do almost anything in a futile attempt to meet a girl. It would be interesting to respond to such spam in a way which suggests relatively low motivation and see how the scammers respond. Send a casually-shot photo of a reasonably attractive man and claim it to be yourself. Perhaps a photo of such a man with a reasonably attractive woman who quite plausibly could be an ex girlfriend. The idea is to imply that you have options for forming relationships beyond relying on a Russian woman's successful journey to the US. [The scam apparently involves asking for money to pay for unexpected airline fees, etc. -- pay the money, and the girl will be here soon] Then, for contrast, send a photo of an ugly man and compare the scammers' responses.
That sounds like more of a shortcut than anything. Clothes are available in a variety of sizes, and it's just faster to clips than it is to figure out exactly what size this model needs.
If you're interested in UAVs and looking for other resources, I'd suggest http://diydrones.com/.
Are there ultrabooks with dual monitor support? It seems to me that the graphics hardware is the limit (and all ultrabooks use the same one).
>99.999% of people buy computers with preinstalled windows. If they are computer-litrate enough to install windows, they are literate enough to authorize a new Windows boot sector (the hash/fingerprint of would be printed on a new Windows media or sticker).
I wouldn't have a problem with Microsoft's preinstalled key if I had reason to believe this will work well when you authorize other keys.

I'm assuming that you didn't understand what I wrote. For pre-installed Windows to work, it has to have the Microsoft keys enrolled. That's why their keys come preinstalled. If they weren't preinstalled, Windows wouldn't boot. That was my point about the 99.99%. I'm not sure what you're getting at, I assume you didn't understand. (And no, pressing "Next", "next", "next" in an installer is not the same as enrolling private keys into a write-only area of your computer's BIOS).

>I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'm willing to sell for a good price if you believe that.

Ok, I'll put you in the category of people that swore for years that Motorola's bootloader protection would be hacked. That was... 3 years now since they introduced that and nary a vulnerability found?

>PS3, XBox, XBox 360, Wii, iPhone {2G,3G,3GS,4,4S}, iPad {1,2} and many other devices all have secure boots. And all have, in the past, been rooted by software or a combination of software and minimal physical access.

Oh, you just don't know what you're talking about (or what Secure Boot is, one of the two). Only the Xbox 360 had boot verification in the style of secure boot and it was never compromised. [1] The others did NOT use a hardware based bootloader verification. The only other mainstream usage of this style (that I'm aware of) is Motorola's signed bootloaders

[1] While the Xbox was attacked via Hypervisor vulnerability, a timing attack found (both of which were fixed remotely) and now through electroshocking the CPU, the verified boot itself was not compromised.
I had one, and while the Zune devices were great the PC software was the worst media navigation stuff since Sony's Minidisc<->PC efforts. The sad thing is MS appear to have expanded the Zune PC thing to cover the entire OS.
I'd love to see his code and compare it side by side. Sadly, it appears he's considering it proprietary.
Tech founders immortalized in graphic novels
A New Definition of Collaboration: Are you best in a team, tribe, or co-group?
I wish my compiler course had used SML--then maybe I wouldn't have had to greenspun C++ so hard.
Some highlights I thought were interesting:

Integrated Internet calling: In Windows Phone 8, developers can create VoIP apps that plug into our existing calling feature so Internet calls can be answered like traditional phone calls, using the same calling interface.

Device encryption: To help keep everything from documents to passwords safe, Windows Phone 8 includes built-in technology to encrypt the entire device, including the operating system and data files.

Windows Phone 8 updates will be delivered wirelessly over-the-air, so you don’t have to bother plugging your phone into your PC to update anymore. Second, we will support devices with updates for at least 18 months from device launch.
If Microsoft delivers on the Phone <-> Tablet <-> Desktop connection, with:

- A decent ecosystem
- Free from totalitarian-regime control
- Access and compatibility with a wide range of current hardware devices:
- USB mice/trackball
- USB external drives
- Monitors
- Keyboards
- Printers
- Speakers
- HID devices
- Bluetooth without requiring a proprietary chip
- Non-proprietary peripherals in general
- USB memory sticks
- And generally anything that can connect to the device
- Without requiring the King to bless what you are doing
- Freedom from the 30% death-tax on mobile devices
- Freedom to write any app you care to for mobile and tablet without
the need for Royal authorization
- No requirement to buy super-custom-secret chips to do hardware
- No onerous requirements for expensive approval process on hardware
- Easy and publisher-controlled app updates
- Decent device pricing
- Wide availability
- Interoperability with existing systems
- Application compatibility (Desktop <-> Tablet)
- Sensible app deployment requirements without having to package megabytes of
crap you don't need for a phone just because you also want to offer the
app on a tablet that has greater resolution.
- And a few more things I can't think of right now

I, for one, will cast my vote and support their efforts both as a developer and consumer. If anything because I have a very strong feeling that Apple needs serious competition to remain in check. They have taken a far too totalitarian approach to their offerings and it is not getting any better.

Of course, I'll continue to support Apple as well. Just hope they see the light and consider taking off their sometimes-not-so-benevolent-dictator hat.
They dont cook the burger for the pictures, just the edges and outside of it.
Academic papers fail as a Reddit-style discussion forum because they were never meant to be a Reddit-style discussion forum.

If you need to discuss things with people, join a mailing list or go to a conference or get to know them. The paper is not supposed to be the transitional step where you are bouncing ideas off people.

I agree that academic journals should be open access. I don't agree that it is unfair for subject matter experts not to publish every crank who comes down the pike in every journal.

If you want to talk about enforcing conformity as a bad thing, a discussion forum (particularly one with upvotes and downvotes) is the last thing you should use as a model.

I guess you are more directly engaged with Less Wrong and Singularity Institute and other online fora which lack any academic credibility, but sort of pretend to have some.
Those were not predictions. Those things were already happening -- to paraphrase, the rest of the world got caught up in the future of 30 years ago.

The "F* u nvidia" seems also to catch on slowly in Finland ->
"there was a disturbance that they needed to take care of. The officer then asked what the disturbance was and the faculty member relented - they were worried that there would be an incident, but that it hadn't yet happened." -- http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/rms-ati-protest.html
LaTeX is built for typesetting, and is very good at that. HTML, of any variant, is not.
A more general lesson out of here: sunk costs are sunk, and Martingale strategy never pays off (it only pays back, and even then – if you're lucky).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
Microsoft Partners With Audible For Better Speech Recognition
Unfortunately no. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219#dispnum

Thunderbolt only chains to Thunderbolt. But the port coming out of the Mac will gladly connect to one of anything.
> Think about it, a programmer can very well exist without BAs/PMS etc but BAs/PMs can't exist without programmers.

I do a lot of programming, but I think I bring a lot more value in the programming I avoid (or otherwise stop from happening).

Code is always a liability. Functionality is often an asset.

A BAs/PMs can reach the conclusion that a private label implementation (or 3 of them, with some outsourced integration work outsourced to competent integrators) is a much better solution, whereas a programmer (with any ingrained survival instinct) is unlikely to say "you need to fire me and all my team, and outsource this", or even think that, regardless of how true it is.

So, BAs/PMs can exist without programmers, and often do.

The reason you are getting more money than your friend is that (a) he is easier to replace, (b) you - or at least people in your group - can demonstrate your worth to the company, and (c) if you go to work for a competitor, the knowledge that will leak through you is much more harmful to your current employer and helpful to your new employer.
This looks very promising!

JavaScript badly needs a package manager and the community badly needs to agree on a module format (AMD).
Do you think that will happen? How can we make that happen?

Every other language has package managers.. ruby has gems and bundler, node has npm, java has maven. That makes it so easy to develop any application or library that can be used by any other application or library.
ClientSide JavaScript finally has an amazing way to manage dependencies and build modular applications (AMD). All it needs now is a good package manager for being able to split large applications into individual components and manage external library dependencies.
I want to be able to configure jQuery, Backbone, jQuery plugins, Backbone plugins, any other JS library, my own subcomponents as dependencies, use them via AMD's require and optimize in a smart way when building (e.g. only build in a single copy of the given library and warn if multiple versions are required).

I'm really hoping Volo (https://github.com/volojs/volo) or Jam (or both if they become interoperable) will become the solution for this stuff.
You aren't getting downvoted for explaining, you're getting downvoted
for the ridiculous assertion that we need to throw out basic Freedoms
like the ability to do whatever the fuck with hardware we own (including
running whatever the fuck we want on it) because there's a chance we
might be compromised.

Those who would give up essential liberty
to purchase a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The problem with that though is the equity stake is an important piece of the puzzle. It may seem a little paradoxical, but by giving out an equity stake you're reinforcing the non monetary social rewards as much as the monetary ones. Not to say of course that the money isn't important because it is, but my point was there is many kinds of "rewards" an investor receives. Money is just one part of the equation.
Gay Men are Very Early Tech Adopters and Prefer Android to iPhone
Speak for yourself--I'd rather develop for Linux any day.
I don't think davesims is saying that should be the comparison. This particular complaint is about the conclusions, not the methodology. (I recognize he also criticized the methodology.) Conclusions should be useful. People shouldn't have to squint at the wording of your conclusion to determine what that means for them. So, you should bend over backwards in your conclusion, and err on the side of being clear.

With that in mind, I agree with davesims that the conclusion in the blog post is too strong. It is: "The application of static type checking to many programs written in dynamically typed programming languages would catch many defects that were not detected with unit testing" I say it is too strong because the author has not bent over backwards to make clear that this conclusion only applies to the "best" type systems, like Haskell.

For the record, I like the study, and once I run the author's conclusions through my bend-over-backwards-filter, I find them interesting. I upvoted this article. I also upvoted davesims' post because it is academic-reviewer level feedback.
Like I said, I'm only aware of two other major implementations of this style of security (Xbox 360 and Motorola's locked bootloaders) and the bootloaders themselves were never compromised, even with high/low-level OS access.

So you're right, they can simply wait until I've booted and then compromise Windows in some fashion. That will continue to be the case until that chain of trust is extended and enforced further and further.

The mere fact alone that this could have mitigated the stealthiness and harm of Flame makes it easy for me to include that it can enhance security for individuals.
Comcast crushes porn owner’s “shakedown” of subscribers
ALthough the name is confusing type classes are very much like interfaces in Java: you define a set of operations that you want and then instantiate concrete types to that interface.

The major differences between type classes and interfaces are:
* In Java interfaces the interfaced type is restricted to the first argument (the this). In Haskell interfaces the interfaced type can also appear on return values and arguments.
* In Java you need to decide what interfaces to implement when you create your class. Haskell allows interfaces to be implemented for previously existing types.
* Java allows for subtyping. You can turn a monomorphic program into a polymorphic one just by creating subclasses while in Haskell you would need to rewrite your code to be explicitly polymorphic.
I believe you are confusing criticisms of the methodology with criticisms of the strength of conclusions.
My understanding is that SEC Rule 506[1] allows you to have up to 35 "sophisticated" but non-accredited investors. The catch is that you "cannot use general solicitation or advertising to market the securities" - which means friends and family who you approach directly are fine, but a public crowdfunding campaign is not.

The new crowdfunding rules will allow companies to publicly solicit a much larger number of investors, as long as the company is raising <$1 million, and each investor is investing <$10k or 10% of their annual income, whichever is lesser.

Disclaimers: This is an oversimplification, the law has been passed but the SEC rules have yet to be written and enacted, IANAL and really don't know what I'm talking about.

[1] http://www.sec.gov/answers/rule506.htm
> The only honest answer to the original question is the obvious one: because their normal burgers look like crap.

...how is "the burger on the ad is designed to show what's in the burger, the one you eat is designed to be eaten" not an honest answer?
Common Linux Misconceptions
Yeah, because we all know white men are incapable of giving bad presentations.
An in depth but easy to understand explanation of Naive Bayes Classifiers.
do your developer friends use linux laptops, or windows running linux vm?
I'll counter that - even not-so smart programmers with enormous egos would be able to ship something clunky, partly broken, not feature-perfect etc. (case in point: Linux - do you think they required full-time BAs to manage this very nicely working, feature-rich product? They did the BA/PM work themselves with Linus and others as anchors).

A team of super-smart skilled BA/PMs will produce zero, zilch, nada if there are no programmers.

"super-smart skilled programmers with attitudes" would figure out their priorities and the needs of their architecture. That's why Valve said that the single most important task is hiring - if you don't have super-smart people who can put egos and politics aside in favor of actually shipping something great, then you need BAs/PMs.

It's only when "who's doing what" becomes a problem that BAs etc are needed. If programmers were willing to spend some time doing "BA-work" and are willing to be bombarded by customers with inane queries and are willing to ask them questions to elicit their needs, then there'd be no need for BAs/PMs.

The only reason BA/PMs exist is because there are only 24 hours in a day and programmers can't do the above.
LinkedIn sued for $5 million over data breach
I didn't say anything about the cost.

I said they'd find an efficient (for them) way to deal with it.

The point was made that this could derail later rounds, and my response is that methods and approaches will be developed so that is not the case, because solving problems is what these people do.
Mirrors are not the only way to gain insight from an externality - other people hold up mirrors we can't see.

After the perceived slight from the conceptual poet, I would have pointed out that their question might not be a challenge or putdown but an invitation to a debate - best answered with another question. "Why would you think that your work is not intrinsically interesting to everyone?" etc. This insight did not and probably could not have come from within.

And again, "whenever I go out into the world, whenever I get involved in a relationship, my idea of who I think I am utterly collides with the reality of who I actually am."

That's at least one great reason to go out.
It's fallacious to assume that the majority, or even a sizable proportion of, developers use a portable device of any kind as their primary machine.
I don't think she's suggesting you favor diversity over content. Note that the bugs she mentions include, "men are better speakers than women".
> There is no good reason to deny anyone the four basic Freedoms.

Sure there is. First good reason: Provides the ability to turn a profit on the sale of software licenses, which is a tried and true method for producing better quality consumer software than we've ever seen from OSS products.

> Too bad people didn't listen, continue to trample everyone's Freedoms under their foots for their petty selfish greed while having the audacity to assert their actions to be perfectly ethical.

I write closed-source software, and sell it to people that want to buy it. If they prefer OSS solutions, that's fine -- they're under no obligation to buy.

They want what I'm selling.

If making a decent wage while giving people what they want is evil, well, call me Satan.

> ... it is the duty of every good man or woman to do anything in their power to stop it, lest evil will triumph.

Yeah, this right here? This is why I can't stand the GPLers.
So what do you think customers are going to do? They're going to buy an iPhone or an Android device, instead.