skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe something's changed in the four-and-a-half years since I left, but people were pretty ok with Lisa Brummel when I was at Microsoft. People gently made fun of the fact that she always wears shorts, but there was never anything mean-spirited in that.

She was seen as a huge step up from the guy she replaced, who was rumored to have been having an affair with an underling[1] at the same time that he recorded a video admonishing us to never have inappropriate relations with subordinates. He was also responsible for the infamous towel debacle, which came to define the worst aspects of penny-wise, pound-foolish cost-cutting at the company.

Edit: Thx to, uh, moron for pointing out the new Mini-MSFT post that includes this:

Is she really the most universally hated executive?
I don't know about that, but she certainly slipped away from being loved.
Thousands of employees used to cheer for her. Now?

http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2012/07/microsoft-fy12q4-result...

[1] In the (admittedly anonymous) comments: http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/06/locked-doors-martin-tay...

[2] http://www.scribd.com/doc/39324385/Towels-Talent
My startup ideas
That "Buy now with 1 click" button makes me nervous.
As is the core infrastructure of the internet...
I'm really not sure what the point of this debate is. There are countries oppressive enough where I'd be worried that most of the computers in them are backdoored and keylogged. HSTS doesn't have anything to say about that either.

Similarly: a country savvy enough to have a whole regime for ensuring they have custody of all transactions from first contact on probably isn't a country that offers safe access to browser binaries either, which kind of hurts the utility of baked-in SSL restrictions.
Which part? While I can't speak to the overall population statistics, there were many people upset about healthcare and the new stack ranking. Think devs and testers with cancer in the family. They attributed -- rightly or wrongly -- both decisions to LisaB, and they were not happy.

The title may be hyperbole, but the content of the blogpost seems spot on.
I would personally prefer to have my password at any time, rather than have to get in the "zone" to authenticate into my computer.
I've experimented with using transformations on the question text (e.g. using the third letter of the first word, the first of the second, etc, and then sprinkling capitals and l33ts by some repeatable and memorable process).

It was a pain in the neck, so I went back to gibberish answers, and accept that every year or so I will have to call a couple of banks and ask for a password reset. They always ask for my security answers. I say "I don't use them because they are less secure than my computer and my password." They usually agree.

I've also had success in the past with modifying the expiration date of the bank's "I remember you and your device" cookies. I usually forget to change them before they expire and get overwritten though.
All those only trigger if you share your files publicly. That's fine, but what I don't want is a cloud provider looking through and judging files that I don't choose to share with others.
> Although I consider myself on the cutting edge in many digital respects

You can change your mail client in your browser to use whatever webmail provider you have.
Modernizr 2.6 released
This seems like bad advice from someone who is not especially experienced at building startups. As he suggests, there are kernels of knowledge but the recommendations are unbalanced and in many cases suggest he made newbie mistakes (e.g. - I didn't know how to manage my lawyer, so you should not hire one at all!).

There seems to be an abundance of advice out there regarding startups from people who have very limited experience, and it's a bit worrying to see it get voted up on hackernews so easily.
Didnt this happen not so long ago and it only took a few months for the levels to go back up again?
A much better example!
Brilliant job by Flickr. This is also amazing: http://www.yahoobymayer.com/
And also timing. A paid analyst report might sell for $25,000 on release, could sell for $0 (free with registration) once it is superceded.
Internet Defense League creates “cat signal” to save Web from next SOPA
I don't think Ballmer is hated. People think he is inefficient. And upto some extent, rightly so. But in no way he deserves what's dished out at him in all those grudgingly written blogs by people who couldn't make anything out of themselves.
headlights of a headlights-less car probably qualify.
Are you trying to say that the utilization of existing technologies and concept to create or solve other technological problems (e.g. innovations) not technology or in the field of technology?

Does that mean that my Android phone is not a part of technology since, well, a phone existed long before a mobile phone was made? The GUI OS was "perfected" decades ago. So, the Android OS isn't part of the technology club either? What about using the internet on said device? I gather that it was/is very trivial to just hook up a phone and an OS and the internet and whatever other components of these mobile devices does not constitute it as technology because it should have been straight forward to just hook these things up together.

Basically all Computer Science really is is a collections of 0s and 1s thrown together to make things happen. I guess our minds and imaginations just doesn't compare to a room full of monkeys randomly typing 0s and 1s on a typewriter and having it go through a compiler. I'm sure they'll launch astronauts to the moon fairly soon.

Wikipedia defines technology as "...the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal or perform a specific function."

But, who knows, Wikipedia isn't always accurate, right?

As for you statement, I guess I'll just deal with riding the short bus. This bus has a lot of fascinating things that are just simply mind-blowing to me. Yes, a lot of concepts existed before. Perhaps even better than what's presented in the blog. But the fact that someone did think of a really cool/elegant way to solve this "gross kludgely mess" and present to us for free is alright by me. I love this type of stuff, no matter how trivial it is. Its really a celebration of the human mind and spirit that we can overcome faults in existing problems. shrugs
Does anyone have suggestions for an alternative to Outright? I recently signed up with them and was really pretty happy with the service but GoDaddy has earned a permanent spot on my no-fly list and there's no way I want them to have access to my financials or my banking data.
An average email is roughly 75kb[1]. That same 75kb, plus TCP overhead, has to touch every single email server between you and the destination (wasn't able to find anything that suggested how many hops are average).

Some random googling specifies a number around 175 billion for number of spams sent per day.

That works out to an average of 12,223 terabytes per day - of just spam. Now multiply that by the number of hops that each message take. Assuming each message only has to touch one intermediary server between source and destination, that's still 3.6 petabytes.

[1] http://email.about.com/od/emailstatistics/f/What_is_the_Aver...
Backbone doesn't actually have controllers, only models and views. Even without that technical distinction, I'd still be hard-pressed to actively describe Backbone as MVC (especially compared to other JS frameworks like SproutCore or Ember, which do actively force you into a more traditional MVC structure).

It doesn't actively encourage you to structure your code in any particular way, other than "separate your business logic and DOM logic", which you probably want to be doing anyway if you're building the sort of JS-heavy rich web application that people tend to recommend Backbone for.
Right in the article. 60% of mobile litigation is started by Apple.
Kiln uses LINQ to SQL and Dapper, for the same reasons StackOverflow does: the combination combines speed with flexibility. We expect to ditch one or both in the medium future (we want to support more than just SQL Server), but it's a good fit for the moment.
Somewhat related question: It's fairly common for sites to have static files (images/css) served on a different (sub)domain. What are you supposed to do when the html content is being served on HTTPS? Should the static files be on HTTPS as well? If so, wouldn't it need a different certificate? Certificates are only valid for a single domain, after all.
Kim Dotcom predicts victory in war with Hollywood
Programming iOS 5 Book Review
Interesting that they put this in a Git repo (instead of TFS), but only to then push it to CodePlex (instead of Github)
MongoDB management solution for public/private clouds
Space has a Smell
Watching Hugo in 3D cures one man's stereoblindness
It is mainly an Xbox Live Arcade thing. They know they can apply exclusivity pressure to independent developers simply because enough of those developers will cave, since indies aren't generally willing to walk away from the deal.
Even if Microsoft retains the market they are sliding into trouble. Because they can't extract the high prices in licenses for Windows and Office anymore.
> or just following a checklist?

Well, OP didn't suggest a checklist (he did refer to the Boeing one as inspiration, so he might have thought about that).

And while they might be a hundred times more likely to follow a checklist, a hundred times (almost zero) is still (almost zero).

Let me re-iterate the question/problem:

> Random J. seeing a checklist: "ah, just following the steps. I can do this."

The question is: why would Random J. see the checklist? This is the crux that needs to be addressed. The content and existence of the list, while important, is a much easier problem to solve.
Original post - http://blog.fireeye.com/research/2012/07/grum-botnet-no-long...
Diablo 3 IS a beta launch -- "Thank you (paying) beta testers"
This was by a wide margin my favorite talk at HOPE this year.

(and a great advertisement for using Chrome in secure settings where you need a web browser)

The irony of Google being one of the main http-only JS resources for a long time was kind of amusing, though.
That phrase refers to LisaB, not Ballmer.
You can get SSL certs that are valid for wild card subdomains, e.g. *.example.com
This looks fine if you're a single developer working on a (relatively) small project, but what happens when you grow to two developers? Or you hand off the project? At that point shouldn't the API registration be tied to the application and not the developer?

That said, it's probably more important to lower the initial barrier for entry to drive adoption.
Does iTunes like this song? 
Does iTunes like this song? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92zTigbWnME&feature=plcp Carl Tilchen Singer/Songwriter
The latter clause is awfully broad and subjective. If someone put in their Dropbox account pictures of say, artifacts of the Nazi regime, would that be violating the rules? It's not at all clear that that would be advocating bigotry, religious, racial or ethnic hatred on the part of the user themselves, but it clearly was related to historical political movements which did so.
The IE logo does look at first glance to be the start orb thing. I hit that all the time trying to get to the start corner when my second monitor is to the left of my main monitor.

All the enhancements for multi-monitor support, yet they still didn't anticipate having a monitor to the left of your main...
Minimsft's post today seems to suggest feelings toward her have changed:

"Is she really the most universally hated executive? I don't know about that, but she certainly slipped away from being loved. Thousands of employees used to cheer for her. Now?"
Ah, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks!
It's not that unlikely when Google is the author of some of these sites, sadly. At this point they seem to have a policy of writing Chrome-specific things first and then maybe making it work in other browsers and maybe not.
I have always used GIMP for all the graphics on my website. It has got some good filters that give great effects.
The thing which terrifies me is that most of the users in these "screwed" countries are probably using mobile phones connected to a state-owned PTT carrier (or a couple of licensed carriers), rather than laptops or desktops, at least for most organizing. True, a lot of the devices are purchased through the grey market unlocked vs. via the carrier, but it's not hard for a carrier to push OTA evil
UK Court Orders Apple To Publish Notice That Samsung Didn’t Copy iPad
Story from the Internet Defense League itself already on Hacker News front page with multiple comments:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4266112
Honestly, the 95% of the general population is the percent that still throws around cat pictures as though they're the newest and greatest things. My mother is often sending me cute animal pictures that were popular in the 90's and early 2000's.
A good developer does not (necessarily) a good CEO make.
Wait, are you talking about the GP, or the "Internet Defense League"?
I'm honestly wondering why we value management so much. It might be my lack of corporate experience but I have a lot of trouble seeing most management positions as important (in fact, my general feeling is that they're a hindrance most often than not).

Do companies really go down in flames if no one is there to try and measure, through various ineffective ways, the quality of other people's work (often in a field they don't even understand)?

Would a bunch of engineers really sit there doing nothing if they didn't have a manager to report to? Is said manager more apt at taking decisions than they are?

I'm curious and also pretty sure that if I ever started a company, I'd at least try to do it without any sort of formal management. At least to try.
Having never used github for authorization, I clicked on the sign-up button that Singly provided. Among the bullet points that github issues, this one seemed a bit more than mildly concerning.

* Update your public and private repositories (Commits, Issues, etc).

There is a zero chance of me ever agreeing to that.
"Ms Brummel also said Microsoft would scrap asystem that had forced managers to rate a certainnumber of workers as sub-standard each year"

Apparently that didn't happen?
Kevin Mitnick joins the Zimperium team | The Hacker News
And then you can't re-target (or fix a typo) in the same query in the same place, since the address bar will be replaced with the address of the loaded site. That's why I use the separate search bar.
No but old style senators still like good old fashioned vote buying, vote early, vote often my friends.

If shitty internet legislation costs them popularity or makes them look out of touch then they'll stop doing it.

The key is that this is going to be put in place on many sites so that the power can be readily abused to bring the kinds of legislative changes we want to see.

If it works within a few years you should start seeing earmarks for whoever controls the switch.
Is hooking up your toilet considered technology? This kind of plumbing used to be super-high-tech at one time in human history. I think you would find few people who think of it that way now, though.

Hey, make your own choice about what you want to do with your life and what you want to consider cool.
Flip-dot display is an advertising experience we can get behind
Don't know if anything has changed in the 20 years since I got my MBA, but "An MBA teaches you a lot of important facts about business and how to run it." is maybe only 60% true.

You learn a lot of theories and do a lot of case studies, but the "how" part is definitely lacking.

You are right about the types of people who enter MBA programs. I couldn't stand most of my peers. A lot of them were all about greed and status.
A Question of Intent
I never understood why not the upstreams of "bulletproof hosts" simply disconnect / de-peer the entire AS until they clean up their act? Why won't their BGP neighbors take action?

If you can't get ScumBagISP-A to clean up their act, go to ScumBagISP-Upstream-B, and then the next hop ScumBagISP-Upstream-Nexthop-C, and the next, until you find a responsible carrier who can de-peer?
NASA hires scent chemist to recreate the smell of space
"reducing functionality on the desktop."

That's a pretty bold claim when the desktop still exists exactly like it did in Windows 7. Basically you're saying that all of the functionality of Windows came from having a start menu that is a couple inches tall and a couple inches wide, and by increasing that space it is now less functional. Listen to yourself, seriously.

"Besides, who even /has/ a windows phone or tablet? Who would want one?"

Millions. And to answer the second question, millions.
What space smells like
> Would a bunch of engineers really sit there doing nothing

It's more likely they would be doing things that are personally interesting to them, but not right for the company.
The most bad-ass networking event of the summer on the bus.
The referral link that these guys followed might be a spammy link just to harvest emails. That's only one of the possibilities.
I agree with your premise. But I think when it gets momentum and gets picked up by the news media, there will be lots of 'explainers' on TV and the web.
Grum takedown: '50% of worldwide spam is gone'
"what you imagine it will be like greatly exceeeds what it actually will be like." According to Dan Gilbert, this is fallacy behind most life decisions. In both directions: we overestimate the future pain of negative events, too. http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...
Micromax X44 Bling: Dual-SIM with Dual Standby Mobile Phone & Price In India
What that statement is saying is that the author believes the stable fallback on HTML5 means it will only need to degrade to the point that IE10 will render it.
Idea of the week, 
what do you think?
I have been using Inconsolata since about a year ago. I was an avid user of tiny pixel fonts, but I felt an increasing amount of strain on my eyes. This worried me since I'm only 23, so I went out to look for bigger fonts. Pixel fonts look horrible in bigger sizes, and I was never a fan of anti-aliasing, so it took me a while before I found something I liked. Inconsolata made me switch, and I never looked back.

Screenshot for great justice!
http://shot.ninjaloot.se/20120719.201001.png
tl;dr T-Mobile's routing to 5/8 is broken. If your server's IP's are 5.x.x.x T-Mobile customers will not be able to reach you.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I would love to see a charasmatic product guy like Scott Guthrie at the helm.

But, Ballmer had nearly 20 years experience running teams in a large and successful technology company before he was became CEO.

Furthermore, the dude has a mathematics degree (with honors) from Harvard. That means that he probably earned an 'A' in Math 55, the hardest undergraduate course at Harvard[1], which implies that he would have no trouble keeping up with most of the theoretical computer science stuff.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_55
What's the big deal, I remember a CD of Janes books used to cost $10,000, and that was in the 90's without widely available broadband.
But in the end (shareholders aside, which if you have any I guess you have to please), a company without management would only have engineers to please, making this kind of a circular problem.
A good manager will get you what you need (computers, the right chair, a good desk, etc.) An engineer (or admin, etc.) who has everything required is a powerful thing.

A good manager will act as an umbrella and abstraction layer protecting you from metaphorical objects falling from above and give you time and space to work without interruption. It's hard to overstate what this can do for both your work and mental health.

A good manager will be looking out for your interests /as well as/ their own. That means compensation, vacations, work rules, etc. Some companies make this impossible, but where it is possible it is amazingly helpful.

A good manager will make sure you stay focused, provide useful feedback (both positive and negative), and make sure you are staying on target without getting in your way or hurting your morale.

A bad manager, of course, can ruin your day, week, and possibly year.
pretty sure that if I ever started a company, I'd at least try to do it without any sort of formal management.

Valve does that:

How could a 300-person company not have any formal
management? My observation is that it takes new hires
about six months before they fully accept that no one is
going to tell them what to do, that no manager is going
to give them a review, that there is no such thing as a
promotion or a job title or even a fixed role (although
there are generous raises and bonuses based on value to
the company, as assessed by peers). That it is their
responsibility, and theirs alone, to allocate the most
valuable resource in the company – their time – by
figuring out what it is that they can do that is most
valuable for the company, and then to go do it. That if
they decide that they should be doing something
different, there’s no manager to convince to let them
go; they just move their desk to the new group (the
desks are on wheels, with computers attached) and start
in on the new thing. (Obviously they should choose a
good point at which to do this, and coordinate with both
groups, but that’s common sense, not a rule, and isn’t
enforced in any way.) That everyone on a project team is
an individual contributor, doing coding, artwork, level
design, music, and so on, including the leads; there is
no such thing as a pure management or architect or
designer role. That any part of the company can change
direction instantly at any time, because there are no
managers to cling to their people and their territory,
no reorgs to plan, no budgets to work around. That there
are things that Gabe badly wants the company to do that
aren’t happening, because no one has signed up to do
them.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-w...
What open source robust and performant system are you proposing here?
I don't understand how a minor holiday has any bearing on how well a software release will be received?
Hash Kracker v1.0 - All-in-one Hash Passwaord Recovery Tool
I don't have much of a problem with gigantic price tags on research reports sold to buyers.

I do have a problem with the business model that soaks vendors for "valuable research" as a pretext for pay-to-play appearances in reports.

I cannot say that that is the business model of any specific firm, including the firm whose report is the subject of this thread. Just that I've been very closely involved in A.R. for a couple companies now and know how the market works.
I have a couple apps that use backbone.

* One is just a fancy web page, it uses Backbone in a traditional sort of MVC way. I don't use the router tho, doing my own thing with pushState and gradual enhancement. Lots of views and models keep things separated sanely.

* Another uses it because I wanted an easy mechanism to map between storage and app. I think the only reason I used views in this case was because I had already been using a template, so I just threw it in a view to tie events together.

* The last I don't use any of the "talk to the server" features, but use the event model because it allowed for easier reactive style stuff with events and forms, and tying into canvas frameworks than alternatives. The data model doesn't fit nicely with Backbone, so I did my own thing.

The point is, Backbone keeps it easy to not get sucked into the whole model if you don't want to.
Management isn't the only approach to solving that problem. F.ex Simco or Valve have self-organising teams with high degrees of democracy, which cause roughly the same effect.