skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's the bit about all of this data tracking that bothers me the most.

The data is, in large part, a one-way street. The companies which are most aggressive in collecting information are also the most aggressive in not disclosing how they use, share, distribute, aggregate, correlate, etc., this information. Look at the NDAs and "no talk" policies of Google, Facebook, any of the credit bureaus, to say nothing of the vastly less visible enterprises which service the B2B markets of data mining and information. It's an area in which I had some experience and washed my hands in disgust years ago -- it's also an area in which I'd very much like to leverage open channels and tools to provide the public with the ability to fight back against the problem.

I've had a very clear view for over a decade now that this will not end well.

The truth is that the public has little understanding of what data are being used, how, or by whom. Much more pernicious is how data can be aggregated. Your insurance company gets information about your car and license. Your smog check station runs a standard battery of tests against your vehicle and reports this to the state in a large electronic record. Your state turns around and sells this database, at a very, very low charge, to companies providing services to the insurance industry, so that based on VIN and license information, a huge dump of data form your car's onboard data collection systems is now available to your insurer. They're mostly interested in total mileage, but as car data collection systems advance, there could be a great deal more information there -- accelleration/decelleration, speed, conceivably in the future, GPS waymarks.

And you'd never know about it.

The mileage stuff? That's for realz and has been for a decade or more.

Edit: and just to put a face on this: http://www.iso.com/

The truth? That few even within the datamining field know what others within the field are doing with data (see above WRT one-way information), unless that information is being directly marketed/sold. Where derived products (e.g.: risk/profitability profiles based on models in which individual inputs are not disclosed) are sold, even uses which are directly sold may be using information in way undisclosed to the data suppliers / users, let alone the members of the public who are being profiled.

What could possibly go wrong?
I guess for places where Navtek does not have coverage (similarly to how Google did expand coverage with mapmaker in Africa).
"They were abusing LinkedIn's service by competing with them."

What else would be a worthwhile use of an API?
In some areas. In some areas OSM is way better than Google Maps.

Google Maps is relatively consistent level of quality across a country (some countries are much better mapped than others in GM), whereas in OSM one part of a city might be well mapped, and another part poorly mapped.

OSM better than GM:

Sarajevo: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#...
POIs within Dublin: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?mt0=mapnik&mt1=googlemap&#...
Apple were using OSM in european capital cities aswell…
No. If I put my email address in my Facebook profile, it's because I want people to be able to have my email address. For the same reason, if I put my phone number in my Facebook profile, it is because I want people to be able to call me at that number.

I put the address there. It pisses me off that Facebook feels free to change my profile behind my back. How many people actually look at their own content information on Facebook? Precious few. Facebook is counting on this.
You could still license a non-transferrable patent.
tl;dw They freeze the view count at 300 to do some background checks for determing valid,non-robot views. Sometimes users are viewing simultaneously so the number can get to 301,302,etc before being stopped. Limiting number 300 was an arbitrary choice.
If anything it might be seen as forward thinking and caring, as opposed to people who thought it was a sin caused by the devil, and/or the person was cruel and wanted to do depraved things.

"It's a mental illness, don't blame the person", is kinder than "They are filthy amoral degenerate", but not as kind as "It's as valid a relationship type as heterosexuality"
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It's likely that the site uses oAuth. Your login on a mobile device grants you a token that you can use to access the site. Changing your password may not revoke the token (it could).

If you logout from your mobile device and log back in it should require your new password.
That's a feature.

Ada is a fairly strict language that allows for compilers to do a tremendous amount of static checks.
It is absolutely an MITM attack, if for no other reason that your email has no presumption of privacy once it is in the hands of Facebook. Read the TOS. They can do whatever they like with the data that passes through your account.

They are counting on your not noticing that they changed your publicly displayed email address, so that instead of a message going straight to you and bypassing facebook.com, it now goes to facebook.com. You still get the message. So do they.
That's not mentioned by the article, yet it seems important.

4 ounces is 110 ml - a reasonably bug gulp. It's not the kind of dose that you'd get from accidentally licking your finger, or absent mindedly eating an apple that had rested in a splash of cyanide.

The article is right about modern inquests needing clear evidence before they record a verdict of suicide. But that was even more so in the past, when suicide was a crime, and much more likely to be seen as sinful.
This article "hits home" for me and it's nice to see it on Hacker News, though I'm sure many here aren't real interested. I found it to be a great read but also heart-wrenching.

I am the IT manager at a non-profit Mental Health organization and I spend my days supporting the people who support the mentally ill. I also have mental illness in my family.

Contrary to the portrayal of mental health professionals in the piece, these people are intelligent well-meaning individuals who are severely over-burdened and undervalued (A masters-level social worker starts out making $12/hr). Combined with the absurdity of state laws and general ignorance in most communities, it's a wonder that anyone gets treated at all.
He did not bother to note that one is a Macmillan edition, one is Transworld (a UK publisher). The Macmillan one is now $9.99, Transworld is $9.49. I can't account for his higher price, unless Macmillan lowered it, since Macmillan as publisher sets the price, not Amazon.
I've read quite a few comments about what happens to Qt next. Short answer is, well no one knows. Long answer is that it's all open source, there's a lot of people using it for commercial products (myself included) who are committed to it.

Will the pace of progress slow down? Sure, you're going to be losing a lot of developers all in one go, who made the majority of the commits. Is it game over? Well, no, it will end up community lead by the very smart cookies in the community.

It's hugely sad Nokia has gotten rid of it, but if they hadn't it wouldn't have made any sense. They don't use it and they'll struggle to find uses for it now unless they ported it to Windows Phone 8, but that's a whole other level of interesting fantasy.
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Australia's favorite standover-man impersonator on yc - well, there you go!
> Ada is "mainstream"? C++ "failed" in the 1990s?

Do you realize that this report is written in "electronic design", or an embedded systems journal? It's not talking about the PC desktop here.

I don't know the exact numbers but Ada still plays a big role in security critical systems (airplanes etc.).

> Managed languages lead to "applications that are difficult to maintain over time"?

I think this is true regarding to embedded systems because they evolve very fast. Microsoft would have to take much effort to be on par, for many different kinds of embedded systems. The second point is that Microsoft's support for their operating systems is not unlimited. So if you have a long lasting embedded system technology then you simply cannot afford to use .NET.
But OSM can get better, and better faster. I toyed with it just a bit and fixed a few things myself. Google maps? I filed a bug or two, then two years later they closed it as not applicable.
Am I the only one that read this title and instantly thought it was referring to James Harden?
> Their time is coming up because these companies cannot update at the same pace as the rest of the world. It just costs too much. In many ways, this is similar to why Webkit will dominate as well.

Yes, it's exactly like how Windows dominates mobile. Other companies cannot update at the same pace and it just costs too much.

These trends are so easy to follow I wonder why anyone bothers to form their own company or build their own technology.

Oh wait, that's not true is it.
Best camera hack ever (turning a camera into a explosion detector)
I'm not arguing what is best for the customer. Just best for Facebook. It's their service an they get to do what they want. It sucks, and I wish it wouldn't happen but it does.

I know amazon does this for seller accounts, and I've run across it a few more places as well (craigslist, etc). Although Craigslist gives you the option to not obscure it.

I kind of saw the writing on the wall when the messaging platform was announced. They are trying to replace email for most people.
I noticed this undesirable change on my profile, and promptly corrected it.

This is yet another of not-quite-shady but not-quite-agreeable adjustments we've come to expect from Facebook. It will make it more difficult for me to look up a friend's e-mail address when I want to (since many users won't realize the address on their profile has silently changed). It consolidates Facebook's grip on people's connections, moving Facebook's position closer to a replacement for e-mail (rather than a complement). This is a position I will always reject. Long live e-mail!
Not really a new problem. I remember using the pre-ipredator PirateBay VPN provider and they got shoot down by PayPal as well. My current VPN sends me PayPal payment invoices for bogus products apparently just to avoid getting in trouble with PayPal. Running a VPN is not really a business I would want to be in.
Vons threatened to introduce the issue at trial. They were not allowed to introduce the evidence at trial, and they did not.

Ultimately, the shopper failed to prove his case. He claimed Vons was negligent for not cleaning up spilled yogurt, but during the trial somehow failed to prove (1) that there was some spilled substance which would have caused him to slip and (2) that his knee injury was caused by the slip and not by subsequent activities after he left the store.
We are all ever so impressed with how progressive you are.
Major Bitcoin exchange MtGox appears to be down...
Nothing new. As usual the faithful are the suckers.
No... read the quote again. "The ONLY reason you would buy one of these is because you can't afford﻿ a 911..."

He has it backwards. The only reason why the Boxster/Cayman is crippled as compared to the 911 is because the Porsche 911 "fans" are keeping it from becoming the best. If you go back far enough when they had the whole air-cooled vs water-cooled engine nonsense, it's the exact same thing.

You don't have to take my word for it. Ask the Porsche engineers why each subsequent iteration of the "best" 911, the GT3, has been shifting the engine closer to a midships layout.

Clarkson is not a car reviewer. He's an entertainer.
that is...completely ridiculous.
None the less, I can think of a time when you and I interacted, and some strange miscommunication took place. It was regarding the decor of the Madonna Inn in San Louis Obispo. If you and I had been discussing it over a beer, I'm sure the miscommunication would have never taken place.

I surely wasn't implying I have a total lack of crazy ;-)

Crucially, it was a brief disagreement and not one either of us wanted to spur on. You're right, miscommunication happens. Backing away from trivial misunderstandings, as we did, is the smart move IMHO. Sometimes explaining one's motivations or responses can cause a cascade of miscommunications that makes things worse.

The sad part comes when this natural bump and grind of discourse spirals, as you say, into lengthy, heated grudge matches that result in lasting antagonism (although without this, I doubt Usenet would have lasted so long ;-)). That is what's really worth avoiding. The natural bump and grind of textual discourse? It keeps things interesting, if we let it.
This is possibly the weakest article ever.
Keep in mind 95% of their site is not the product they are trying to sell. It is in craigslist's best interest to keep users glued to their site. If someone takes 30 minutes to find a used bike instead of five then great. Maybe there is a chance the user get's bored of cruising bike listings or on one of their many trips to see the latest postings will click on the job section. Craigslist uses their massive user base on the free portion of their site as a significant competitive advantage over all other job posting sites. It is actually in their best interest to make it harder for users to find what they want. Craigslist is not in the business of people selling stuff to each other, they are in the business of attracting enough eyeballs for enough time to their site to click on enough job listings to keep their revenues flowing. They have absolutely no incentive to change or improve. I am pretty sure when they look at their revenues (the ultimate metric), it is actually doing pretty well.
I don't like google more and more...when they didn't feel any competition out there, they gave you a very high price. And when there are some other choices, they reduce the price sharply. Why not just give the developers the low price first?

Take the GAE as the example, if you enable billing, you have to pay at least $9 a month, no matter how much more you are using over the quota.

Now, Google is not friendly to developers at all.
Taking this article seriously would seem to necessitate dismissing it.
Reminds me of that old quote
"social media had popularized non-fact based reality"

Macro is a mac developer, his friends are mac developers and he somehow determines Microsoft development is dead because he doesn't do it. And we are supposed to believe him in that.

Next step: profit?
Simple - the Mac was the only machine which could run all of the browsers you needed to test on. A Mac + VMWare (or Parallels) lets you test on Safari, multiple versions of IE, and Chrome/Opera/Firefox on both Windows, Mac and Linux.

Of course, the reason for this is that until very recently Apple wouldn't let any version of OS X run under virtualization on any other platform, so if you wanted to test in Safari you had to have a Mac. I think OS X can now be run virtualized, but that's a very recent change.

Aside from browser testing though, having a Unix-based operating system certainly makes development using the open source web stack much easier (though of course you can always run virtualized Ubuntu on Windows).
Ask HN: How much do you rely on Google Adword vs. organic growth?
Just curious how many of you guys rely on PPC systems like google, fb, or bing vs. growing traffic organically?

Is one preferred over the other?
This seems like security/session management 101

I kinda hope/expect any password change will invalidate all client side tokens when I am using an app web based or otherwise. At the least, invalidate it when I do something that requires a rights check. ( IE adding scammer@someplace.tld as the recovery email or w/e ).
This is a very insightful comment. I'd go further and argue that this kind of media-directed hate mail scales with a general unraveling of our faith in our institutions - the media being an important category. Although the OP has made a really good suggestion about how people take gadget reviews personally, he failed to bring up how a general lack of trust also creates a lot of fear and animosity.

Ah, and I'll add a possible contributing factor: envy. There may be a quite a lot of envy of the author's voice and audience, and acting out because the person feels powerless to influence their peers, like the author does.

The lack of trust and influence that contribute to the generation of such vitriol are actually very tightly linked. As standards for intellectual integrity go down, on a personal and societal level, trust decreases proportionally, and "influence" starts to depend more on emotion than reason. Seeing well-reasoned arguments lose again and again, people (quite reasonably) start adapting, start using the "effective" strategies for influence like invective, emotionally effective fallacies, and general buffoonery.

This is why Fox News is so corrosive. Whatever your politics, the people at Fox are all liars. A clearly biased news channel that bills themselves as "Fair & Balanced" - and yet they have a huge audience, and are extremely successful. People learn from this. This is also why people like Blagojevich are so corrosive: even though he (eventually) went to prison, his months of shameless pandering gave people the sense that shame and responsibility are truly outre. The Republican party in the US has been particularly bad about not accepting responsibility for mistakes, wrong-doings, or inconsistencies: they present a disciplined, consistent defense of any accusation of impropriety. And it works, and people see that it works, and it destroys us.
There appear to be a number of VPN providers accepting bitcoin: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Connectivity

edit: and the VPN service that the article talks about (https://torguard.net/) already accepts bitcoin.
Google's hybrid approach to research
Mars Interior As Wet As Earth’s | sciencefeature.com
Uh, so it's okay for the US to wink wink at Amazon, Paypal and numerous other financial payment providers when Wikileaks comes to play?

You sound like a true apologist. This stuff matters, it affects people's lives, and it it has NOTHING to do with ROI. That's a bunch of BS.

This has to do with favors and stancing and has absolutely nothing to do with profitability or providing a service.

I'll show myself the door when I hear about how many chargebacks the VPN was getting.
when suicide was a crime

Punishable by death, ironically.
I manage 80 Macs at my company. Half of them have Thunderbolt ports. All of them use mini-displayport-to-DVI adaptors, and some of them are daisy-chained together with other thunderbolt devices.

If you have other Thunderbolt devices, just "slap the DVI adapter" on the end of the chain. You don't have to "hope it'll work". It's how the damn thing is designed!

Go back and study what a Thunderbolt port is, and stop downvoting people in ignorance.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/16/apple-thunderbolt-displa...

http://www.macworld.com/article/1162365/first_look_apple_thu...
Alright, much appreciated!
We can't force PayPal to do anything. They're not breaking the law and law should not be amended to make this behavior illegal.

Just don't use PayPal. I don't.
Try lolcommits: https://github.com/mroth/lolcommits/wiki/Installing-on-Windo...
Hi there, OP here.

You are right, I did not notice that they were different publishers. However, I would just like to point out that the prices you are seeing are still not the one I am seeing.

One of the commenters on my blog (and one on Reddit) mentioned that they were $0.50 apart now, and that is not the case for myself, as I still see a $3.13 difference in prices!

The Tor Books version is far and away better on the eyes due to the font, but from what I can tell, they are the exact same book.
Latest update about Facebook Smartphone
This problem seems pretty circular to me. Girls don't want to join companies like this because it's a boys club, but it stays a boys club because girls don't want to join. I do feel bad for women who wind up in situation like this, and I personally have no problem with girls writing code or managing projects or being involved with the tech world if they want to.

About the things that "suburban boys from Harvard would find cool" so that's why they were there, um, duh. They were suburban boys from Harvard who didn't really have a lot of women around the office. Obviously they're going to put things like that on the walls. Speaking from experience, the only thing dumber than a guy is a guy who is still in college. These aren't mature individuals yet, and while that's unfortunate, they have to be treated differently sometimes.

Here's my problem with the bearskin thing. We have to remember who picked it up and put it on. Everyone was drunk, everyone was having fun. She picked it up and put it on her head and was being funny. I challenge you to find one drunk person, guy or girl, who would tell someone to stop doing something that is funny. The picture sounds like an issue of most pictures that wind up on Facebook after a party. They were taken at an inopportune moment and you wish that no one would have taken it.

Long story short, some guys are dicks, and they have to work somewhere. When they get out of line, the issue should be dealt with like it was. Its unfortunate that the tech world still seems like a boys club, but it's a difficult problem to fix when the people working in the industry don't always see themselves for what they really are.
About twelve years ago, I wrote a CGI script with a loop like "for(i=10;i>0;i++){}", with the counter going in the wrong direction. Since it was running as apache, I did not have rights to kill it. My buddy used this server for his business and I had DOSed it for about fifteen minutes until the integer overflowed. If the language had used a bignum, it would have been worse.

I made as similar mistake on the school's server a couple of years later when I had an infinite loop in an XSLT file that I was developing. Fortunately, libxslt had a way of detecting infinite loops in which it logged a warning to /var/log/messages and, far less fortunately, repeated the loop. Once again, I did not have rights to stop it and I had run it on a weekend when nobody was working. The hard drive was full well before anyone came in to work on Monday.

Lessons learned: Test web-based programs from the command line whenever possible. If you're a server admin, let your users' CGIs run under their identities and consider using resource limits.
I don't think you need to be 100% precise on every hn comment.

You can do DNS based failover (short TTL), manually or automatically, and it's the easiest to set up using entirely your own infrastructure. This works great if you can tolerate a variable length outage for customers, or where you're not using it to deal with outage, but rather just migrating load -- say provider A suddenly gets expensive, you can migrate away, but don't need to hard kill provider A, at least until any DNS cache has expired.

You can do IP based failover (various techniques -- anycast, which doesn't really work for most apps, making your own announcements of the same netblock, IP address failover below the BGP level/internal to a network, arp stealing on a subnet (not useful across providers but good for HA), etc.

You can use a smart proxy in front of your app (an F5 "Global Load Balancer", something you've developed yourself, nginx with minimal state, or an inexpensive service like Cloudflare or their 1000x more expensive Prolexic competition).

You can do the best thing for non-web apps, a smart client, which knows to go down a list of servers (randomly?) and find the closest or best one. More intelligence in the client = more better.

I've set up all of these except Anycast (which I'd actually love to do sometime, but RIPE jacked my /24) and Prolexic (because I don't want to spend $30-100k/mo). Which is the best really expends, but IMO at least having a plan (even if it takes a week) to switch hosting providers is worthwhile for everyone.