skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Legislating this sort of thing is killing a cockroach with a shotgun. I'm of the opinion that they should be free to be sleazy with their users, as long as I'm free to not be a user (and I no longer am).

Quora is committing good-will suicide with this move, and them's the breaks, but a legal requirement preventing it is overkill.
Question is, will it turn out to be "News Feed" feature of FB or FB Beacon?

Their founding team were present when FB introduced News Feed and Beacon. I'm sure they've given lot of thought to it.

Common sense dictates, it is screwed up move. I had the same thought when I saw news feed feature. But it turned out to be pretty rad and successful. Not sure what Quora team are envisioning here.
I recommend that everyone who read this contemplates this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3889435 (AKA the voice of reason)
The 'generally accepted' theory on how to accomplish this well is some implementation of quantum entanglement.

A wormhole is another possibility, but connecting both ends of an Einstein-Rosen bridge to the same universe would render it too unstable to be used for any sort of communication, as it would collapse before light or radio signals could make it through. One could theoretically get around this by creating two wormholes to a separate universe, with the endpoints here separated by distance and the endpoints in the other universe very close (so that signals/matter/etc. travels to the other universe and back). In effect, this would work similarly to 'hyperspace' in some sci-fi (e.g. Babylon 5's jump gates).
Oh, but there's several shades of grey. Take running friendica or diaspora on your own webspace, for example. You're a customer to your webhost, but the software is free. Well, it does have the cost of being kinda slow or hard to set up respectively, but still.. there are public pods you can use and donate to, and where the product is mostly the warm fuzzy feeling people get from doing the right thing. I think you are underestimating human generosity and inventiveness.. shop around!
Thanks guys. I guess I need to be more aware/pro-active with my surroundings to find the problems.
"To see that page, please [Sign in with Twitter]"
I hate java.

I love the JVM.

90% of the benefits of java are benefits of the JVM.

the Java language itself is garbage though. Too many hacks, too slow release cycle, too slow adoption cycle.

Kotlin is actually a great language built on the JVM that handles the weaknesses of Java and builds on the strengths of the JVM.

So once again, I am sick of articles "Java s0x0rs!" and "Java r0x0rs!" Please be specific as to what is a problem Java or JVM, and address that.

The only issue I have with Java is the JVM's garbage collector. I hate that the JVM's GC can't automatically expand and collapse the total allocated space to make your application run as lean as possible, but also expand to take up as much ram as needed. And by the time OutOfMemory exception is thrown, you are screeeeewed, best u can do is die. Wish there were strategies for out-of-memory handling (like which memory can be scrapped in favor of application stability)... then again you probably have a well designed app at this point.
This is a nonsensical article. Ideology doesn't enter into it; say rather, a firm that sells directly to the user is open to market pressure from those users in a way that a firm that sells their users to a third party simply isn't.
This is actually one of my favourite throwaway jokes from the Hitch Hiker's Guide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_Th...
Showing it "to people at Stripe" and getting permission to use it are two different things.
They do. If you've donated you just have to ask for access to the alpha.

They're pretty snappy at responding too. They took less than five hours to activate me on Sunday.
>You know what I do during my lunch time? Trying to re-prove Fermat's Last Theorem

The people who are genuinely interested in math would still be doing that. We've tried teaching computation but the retention rate just isn't there, and isn't practical anyway. Why not do something useful with that time instead?
Combined market value of Australian banks now larger than euro zone's banks
This sparked an idea for me that I think I'll implement going forward - if you sign up with your email address and password, my server will try to login to your email account with those credentials, and if successful, say something like "hey, did you see that email [snippet of first email in inbox]". I feel this might encourage the user to use a different password.
The speed-of-light limitation is a local limitation. There have been experiments showing that it's possible to send information faster than the speed of light, and bypassing the speed of light by e.g. moving or changing your frame of reference is theoretically possible (e.g. wormholes, folding space, etc.)
The forced login stuff really enraged me. This is the rant I posted to Quora on the topic in hopes of getting them to change their minds:

For a long time I've been meaning to write personal stuff about my mom's death last year from a brain tumor. The question "Death and Dying: What does it feels like when doctor says you'll just live X days / months?" popped up in my feed. So I answered it. In detail. Crying as I went. At some point I realized I was hyperventilating from the sobs, but I knew if I stopped I wouldn't finish. So I wrote and wrote and clicked "Add Answer".

Since I was sharing it with the world, I decided to man up and share it with my loved ones. I copied the link and posted it to Facebook, so that my friends and family could read it. Like you'd do with any other link in the world.

And then began the fucking tech support circus. Within an hour, somebody said:

I'd like to read this but I'm unable to without giving them my FB login info. Am I missing something?

I immediately checked, and I wasn't bothered when I clicked through, even when signed out of Quora. No idea what was going on. I thought it might be some referrer sniffing plus cookies; I suggested they copy-paste the link. Another friend made other suggestions. But that didn't solve it for everybody; another person just now commented:

I wanted to read, but I got this thing saying I need to approve an app called Quora - an app which "may post on my behalf" - which seems like a rather large presumption for an app to take. Or am I misunderstanding something which is actually quite benign? Sorry to interject a facebook question into this thread, but I do want to read what you wrote....

And they're right. It's a fucking giant presumption to ask for that just so my friends can read something I wrote and wanted to share with them. So I just gave up and copy-pasted the text into the little Facebook comment box, arguing meanwhile with Facebook about what the goddamn enter key means. (It means new line, motherfuckers.)

The end result: what I was hoping would be a solemn remembrance of my dead mom is now cluttered up with people trying to defend themselves against Quora's quest for better user numbers at their next fucking board meeting.

So thanks, Quora, for strip-mining my personal tragedy to up your AARRR metrics. I hope it was worth it, because you've lost a lot of my trust.

Edited to add links:

The rant on Quora: http://www.quora.com/rage-against-quora/Rage-forcing-Faceboo...
And the answer I wrote: http://www.quora.com/Death-and-Dying-1/What-does-it-feels-li...
You're assuming that advertisers never meet users needs.

If I'm selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I'm advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I'm also adding value for the customer. It's a mutually beneficial transaction.

I know it's blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the fact is, it is useful for users just as much as it's useful for companies in search of revenue.

edit: Has no one here ever clicked on a sponsored result in google? If not, bear in mind you're the exception rather than the rule.
zcvosdfdgj (hellbanned) posted:

that's just because you aren't big enough. Amazon has been caught testing prices previously, and there were a lot of upset people.
Noticing the test isn't what caused the outrage.. wait until you have thousands of people who find out they paid more than another person for the same item (ie in their minds: were ripped off).
Then you'll see how consumers feel about your test.
Also, there seems to be some sort of bug with the email collection modal. It refuses to go away, even though I've signed in with Twitter and provided my email. Makes it impossible to click the features stories.
I would love for these to take off - a telepresence robot in every meeting would be grand.

Ubiquity requires more than just the robot though - it requires real policy change and upsetting the status quo. I think that's the hardest part.

Also, RE: downvotes. It is far easier to downvote than it is to engage in a rational discussion. So, thank you for that tankbot. =)
Even if the substring is random and unique to a user it'll still be easy for an attacker to guess which part of the password that is, just like it is usually obvious which of the recaptcha words are the known and which is the unknown.

eg: mysillypasssoqpword Yeah, I think I can guess what happened there.
Well.. why not do it half client-side and half in the cloud?
For example, why not build an pwd-management application which sits in the cloud.

Have the application store in a secureDB in the cloud your encrypted list of passwords. These would be encrypted with a master pwd stored in the local pwd repository of your (mobile) browser.

The idea would be to have the browser do all the leg work for you and have the pwd management service available form anywhere.

The browser would automatically generate a new complex pwd for each new website you subscribe to, then encrypt it and send it over to the pwd mgmt app in the cloud.
When you authenticate to the website, the browser queries the pwd mgmt app for the pwd of the site. The app sends it to the client.

In this whole process the whole encryption/decrpytion happens locally, thus limiting the attack surface. It would be easy to use and overall seamlessly integrated with any device you own that has access to the internet.
"There is _no_ incentive for them to resell their user's private information."

The incentive is whatever someone else would pay for it. That may not be worth much currently compared to getting to claim to be above all that, but is your information permanently safe there? Do you trust that App.net will always be managed by the same people in the same way? I haven't seen this addressed much by proponents of the "be the customer, not the product" mantra. It would be very easy for someone to be both a customer and a product.
Other than education and pushing them to use a secure password manager, I'm not sure, but the solution shouldn't involve breaking existing and secure systems which are widely used even if only by a minority of users.
Actually you can use it in IE right now using Chrome Frame. Read this for more detailed info - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/discuss-webrtc/tKoh1wr....
I'm pretty sure this is a joke/parody. This has to be a joke...

On the homepage:

<!-- Le styles -->
(...)
<!-- Le fav and touch icons -->
(...)
<!-- Le HTML5 shim, for IE6-8 support of HTML5 elements -->

pow_devel/generate_controller.py:1

#!C:\Python26\python.exe -u

Even though the screencast is on a Mac and pythononwheels.org is running Debian Lenny.

pow_devel/pow_console.py:1

## {{{ http://code.activestate.com/recipes/355319/ (r1)

Hilarious webhost: https://www.server4you.de/templates/images/vserver/pic-710-v...

I really want to say that the criticism in these comments is just playing into the author's hands. Please tell me this is a joke?
Especially since it's already been done: http://friendica.com/

^ And that is hardly the only project, and it could use improvements like everything, but it's one that surprised me when I first heard of it, because it really does a lot and, well, nobody ever mentions it..!

One link of note, not that much there yet but surely something I will watch eagerly: http://www.w3.org/community/fedsocweb/

If you wanna do it right, do it right.
An Interview with Dan Mall
Sorry, replace Matlab with Octave.
Winkel op het web: zo start je een eigen webshop
i second the collapsable threads. that would be a huge improvement.
Upvoted because I was just as confused as you ;)
I'm actually okay with twitter only having 12 users (plus me) - just as long as they are the correct 12 users. So far, 5 of the 12 have committed to using App.net.

I'm a relic though - I make a lot of use of skype-chat/AIM/SMS/iMessaging for my DMing - very little goes through @messages on twitter. For those who do all their messaging on twitter, broad uptake might be more important.

I'm hoping that App.Net establishes an equilibrium somewhat similar to to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL - in which a dedicated paying community of 5,000 to 10,000 is more than enough for viability - particularly as I think this 5-10K users will be among the most interesting on the internet, and will almost certainly avoid the "September Problem."

Regardless - it's something new, with a working Alpha, with an API, and an interesting group of people, lead by someone with a track record of Getting Things Done. The next year, at the very least will be interesting.
We just pushed out a fix for this - it was happening to people who were already on our email waitlist.

If you enter your email now it should go away :)

Sorry about that!
The comment wasn't assuming that they _never_ overlap, it was assuming that they don't _always_ overlap.
Change that to "internet advertisers", and that is exactly my assumption. Personally, I think that is a fine assumption to make. I have never seen an advertisement add value to a internet-based conversation I was having or article I was reading on the net.
Sometimes they're the same, but that doesn't mean they're the same.
Yes, the goal of a UX designer in an advertising-supported context is to create a tolerable experience for the user while delivering maximum exposure for the advertiser, whereas a UX designer for a fee-based service is focused on delivering a great experience for the user, period.
And just like that, I no longer have a Quora account.

This is a "dark pattern", and it's sleazy any way you slice it. They could have easily fixed it by popping up a dialog when I first sign in that says "Hey, do you want to share the things you read in your feed? Yes/No", and I could select "No" and be on my merry way. Instead, they decided that they would make a decision about my privacy for me, and they've lost me as a user in the process.
He's basically trying to sell Mathematica.
After Gawker was hacked (and my account with it), I have created a website that tells average folks how to solve these issues: http://www.passmix.com/. It's not a perfect solution, but it's way better than the same password for different websites.
"First off, App.net's interests are not economically aligned with its users. It wants money from those users, and all things being equal, those users want to keep their money. So their goals are actually diametrically opposed."

After I read that, I didn't need to read anymore.. I, and I presume many others, are perfectly alright with the idea of giving money to a company that is providing a worthy product or service in return. I understand that it costs money to make a good product or to provide quality services of any kind.
I agree, but advertising utility varies from site to site and in implementation method.

For example, I click quite frequently on Google Ads in my search results, because the ads are related to my activity.

On the other hand, I never click on Facebook ads, because a) they look ghetto/sleazy, b) they never provide any useful content related to my interests.
The author could have saved a lot of time and effort in coming to the conclusion that distance from the truth is problematic. Jean Baudrillard wrote about it in "Simulacrum and Simulation" 40 years ago, which was adapted into a movie called "Multiplicity," starring Michael Keaton.
Advertising can add value when it transmits novel information that would be hard to get some other way. But it usually doesn't.

It's mainly an arms race to distort natural market outcomes. Coca Cola doesn't spend over a billion dollars a year advertising because they want to make you aware of some new fact. They just think they can make much more than that billion back by manipulating you.
There's a ton of bad advertising. That doesn't mean it's all bad.

I agree. I've never clicked on a facebook ad either. They seem scammy to me. Advertising on social media is far harder than on a site where you have some indication of intent.
Why Customer Experience Is The Only Thing That Matters
Hopefully people will add more of their own approaches to alleviating issues of uniformity by commenting here or directly on blogger.
Kippt (YC S12) and Buffer Join Forces for Saving and Sharing Content
Why Online Education Won't Replace College — Yet
When Documents in the Cloud aren't
Tiny transmitters that cost a penny to print
Also, their real name policy (a while after I signed up, they emailed me asking me to use my real name).

There do seem to be anon posts, though. Not sure why.
I understand that these other sites have to cover the latest story or else they'll lose pageviews or be considered irrelevant or whatever, but to me that is the sign of a flawed system. If you don't have the resources to fact-check something (because you've laid off so many people), and other sites (like macrumors.com) do, then you should leave that story alone and let others fact-check it. I'm tired of every major news site trying to be all things to all people. We have aggregators now, so only a few sites need to cover any one thing, and people will still find out about it.

I've only partially thought through this argument, so I'm sure it has all sorts of holes and will be easy to misinterpret in every way possible, but I'm throwing it out there anyways.
That's exactly what Clipperz does :).

The main weak point is there's no way for the user to know if the javascript they're downloading is the correct Clipperz javascript, or a trojan'd version that will send my master password and decrypted database off somewhere. So, pretty much all is still lost if someone is able to break into Clipperz and modify the javascript without being noticed for a while.

A possible solution to that is to implement a browser extension to hash the javascript (and perhaps display it as a visual hash) so the user can at least easily check whether it's changed. This has been on my "possible side-project" list for a while...
Have you seen Perl poetry?
Python in 30 Days - Day 3
I have an account. It was setup in under 10 minutes.
I disagree with you - but I'm not downvoting you because I think you bring up an interesting point. The problem, though, is the advertising on buy.com, monoprice.com, amazon.com and even google.com is actually quite useful for me. Sometimes even the ads on dpreview.com are interesting. The issue here is intent - on these sites, I am looking to buy products, product reviews, or (in the case of google) searching for something that might be product related.

On my social networks (Path) - my intent is to see what my niece is up to, what my friends are doing, and what my mother's latest project is.

It is not (and never has been) to "Find a Female Friend in Redwood City", or, "Check out the Kmart Special".

It is this disconnect between intent and ad-presentation that makes the pollution of the twitter feed so offensive.
Yes. Eliminating conflicts of interest works wonders for an organization. And not just in the obvious ways: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair
Hi guys, I'm one of the founders of Leftronic. Please check out our solution - I'm sure you'll be impressed. If you have any feedback/questions/concerns, please email me: rajiv at leftronic dot com.
They don't think they are anybody special. What they think is that it is acceptable, normal behavior. This is not even irrational, considering the precedent set by Facebook - not only doing the same kind of awful stuff over and over again, but actually maintaining that nobody should have privacy. And Facebook has thousands of full-time defenders.

Apparently you (like a lot of savvy people otherwise concerned with privacy) will tolerate it from Facebook but not from Quora. So I guess what Quora should do is just get bought by Facebook; then you will not (be able to?) complain about their sketchy behavior.
> Honestly, it just works.

Honestly, it's a pain. My personal experience is vastly different. I have a 40min (one-way minimum) commute to work and I use that time where I can't create things to read news, so that I can spend time working at work and doing stuff at home. HN is simply an excruciating pain on a touch device. I regularly hit flag by mistake. I regulary miss the upvote arrow. I regularly downvote instead of upvote. It's just text and on my laptop I can see the content render like in those "Chrome is Fast" slow motion videos, except it's in real time (Chrome says 1+ second). Proxy apps simply don't cut it: they're either read only or have access to my credentials, and generally they appear to reach 90% of their development, and leave the remaining 90% undone.

> We go through this every now and then.

I'd take that as a clue that something's amiss.

> "don't fix it if it ain't broke"

But it is broken. It regularly times out on me, whether I load the site or I try to post a comment. I know it times out on me on votes, because I vote and then I come back later, and the vote arrow is there again. I don't know why, if that's because I'm across an ocean or whatever, but I have the feeling that ~3K characters of human text should not inflate by an order of magnitude with markup. I feel a code smell every time I browse here, the kind of which that could have an impact at scale. I'm not saying I know how to fix it, I'm not bragging I could do better, but hell yes is there something wrong. The only reason I put up with it is that the voting system is smart, and the content and community are great.

Now I will click 'reply', and as always I will take great care of copying the content of my reply, just in case.

</rant>
Hi,

I wrote the PoW framework. And want to give some short feedback on the comments here.

Yes, i need to get things cleaned up.
Shebangs are old and not used. So can and will be dropped. Good point i really forgot they were still there.
Yes, I am rewriting generate_* to encapsulate specific actions in functions... Can be much cleaner..
Typos on page where really bad , sorry.
And yes, the videos where really too long. But were online in just for 2 days. I replaced them with versions of 6minutes and (i think) 14 minutes for the weblog.

Some other remarks are just not true:(or outdated)
1. how do i install ? => 1. Watch 6 min screencast (thats exactly why i made them )but its just a simple unzip and pip the needed libs.
2. Directories hardcoded => no, are configurable.
3. Base in just one directory. => no. Structured stubs and generates a very structured mvc dir-tree.

4. Server errors on first 2 days => yes, was due to serving with simple_server (which is really not for prod ) now running apache mod_wsgi. Stable since 2 weeks... ;).

Again: lots to do in code refinement of course. Please keep in mind its pre-beta. The focus of the last weeks was in the generated code, more than the generators. Can you also give some feedback on that ? To my mind much better an OO than the flat generators which where really more form follows function. (which is no excuse for having much potential in there)

Thanks for feedbacks. Working dayly in improving the thing ;).