skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I believe there are some studies showing that the risk of doing any jail time, as a binary measure, is the main way jail time deters crime, with length of sentence not being a particularly effective deterrent. If there's perceived to be a 1% risk of arrest for some crime, then whether the sentence is 6 months or 6 years tends not to matter a lot, because people tend to optimistically assume they won't be caught anyway and block the other possibility out of their mind.

Partly, iirc, because people are emboldened once they've successfully done something a few times and not gotten caught; they start convincing themselves that they've figured out how to beat the system, as opposed to just having gotten lucky so far. Hence I believe one of the most effective ways to deter shoplifting, for example, is just to catch a larger percentage of attempts, even if the punishment is nominal: if someone's caught on one of their first few attempts, many will be deterred from trying further, because getting caught becomes an observed reality rather than just a theoretical possibility that can be rationalized away. Basically, some percentage of people test the boundaries but will stop trying if they get some evidence that the boundaries are really there.
Human voice makes giant leap in space thanks to Curiosity
Should Creative Commons Drop Its NonCommercial & NoDerivatives License Options?
I wonder if you'll have problems with SNI as IPv4 exhaustion runs out. XP can't - ever - access SNI-protected SSL sites.
An Inside Look at Apple's Genius Training Manual
It's two-factor authentication: something you have (phone) and something you know (password to your ssh cert). So, you have to lose both in order to lose the server.
My wife and I of this generation, but it wasn't any economic conditions that inspired our dislike of "stuff". For me it was watching our parents' generation be driven further and further into the suburbs by the process of buying stuff and needing space for that stuff.

Realizing that the space for furniture and other crap costs much more than the purchase price has made a big improvement in our lives.
Five Traits of User Onboarding Craftsmen
How to read academic research papers effectively
This seems cool, but I don't understand how the given algorithm addresses the use case he gives.

The stated goal is to be able to verify pieces of a file that has been chunked up. But the first step in the algorithm is get a list of hashes for each chunk from a central server - if you have that, aren't you done?
Antibiotics Linked to Weight Gain
Hmm, as a dedicated bike commuter I am almost inclined to agree, but I can't really get that excited about property crimes when rates of violent crime have been decreasing.
Most features support HiDPI in the nightly builds since 4 days ago. http://nightly.mozilla.org/ That probably means it will be included in FF 17, in 3 months.
Zero-Sum Markets
PDFKey Pro: Unlock any Protected PDF.
The things you own end up owning you.

I think that stuff might be the single biggest source of stress in my life.

Not acute stress - it's not like I'm underwater on a loan or anything like that. Just a sort of constant low-grade 'micro-stress' that comes from always having to look at a cluttered living space and never being able to find that thing I'm looking for.
I wrote a Sinatra app to act as a Google Authenticator backend for our FreeRADIUS instance as well as our web SSO. It also handles enrollment via generating QR codes:

http://it.isevil.org/blog/2011/11/13/authentication-service-...

Code: https://github.com/bithive/example-totp-vault

For FreeRADIUS we use rlm_perl to define our own authenticate() method; it just calls the web service to validate the codes.
My experience has been most bike thieves are kids. It's a training in a way for car thieves. They chop the bikes up, and paint them, then ride or sell them. bikes are a valuable commodity in bad neighborhoods cuz lots of people can't afford cars and public transportation might not take them where they need to go.
Not everyone can choose to bike instead of drive. When my driving commute was an hour longer than it is now, such a tax would not have encouraged me to cycle instead.
If you mean lose access to the server, then the google-authenticator sets you up with a few emergency one-time codes you could write down on a note and keep safe, in case your phone is lost.
It seems so many successful small internet businesses lately are attacking meta-problems for the benefit of small internet businesses. Sort of like Levi selling bluejeans to gold miners in California.
Besides apparently being written by a fifth grader, the article is as plump with hyperbole as Mr. "Dotcom" himself.
Ironically, we just ended up not watching it that weekend, and as a consequence, we never ended up going out to see Prometheus while it was in theaters. Not out of spite or anything, just that watching the two movies in sequence had been our plan, and the plan had been broken. So the studio lost two sales resulting from a vain attempt to restrict one.
Sometimes I don't see a reply link on certain comments; clicking on the direct link for those comments, though, shows me the "reply" button.
Show HN: I'm bootstrapping my company and this is my first product. Thoughts?
Understanding Zend Framework’s Plugin: Resource Plugin...(Part Three)
Call me crazy, but I'm going to guess that the sniper suggestion was in jest.
Isn't this something that would be trivially bypassed by passing a big spark through the frame? Burn out all electronics, without harming the rest of the bike.
The load problem on Chrome seems to be audio decoding related. Reloading usually fixes it. Still investigating and looking for a better workaround.
We hosted Scott Case (Founding CTO of Priceline.com) at an event in Grand Rapids last week, covering the implications that the JOBS act will have on the Entrepreneurial and Investment communities alike.

It was...to date, the strongest representation of Michigan VCs I've ever seen gathered together at the same time. Absolutely overwhelmed by this group and the interest they had in health tech in the region.

At the same time, had the privilege of meeting a young Entrepreneur who went from founding Avomeen, to creating a very young startup called Labdoor. He's out of Ann Arbor. I'd bet on this kid in a second...he'll do massive things.
"Global mass market" meaning? try to have a more focused definition for your audience. It all depends on the audience in general. For example, if you're making an e-commerce site, you wouldn't want to limit it to just folks who have a twitter/facebook account...but then again that depends on what you're selling. If however you were making some sort of a social app that leverages people's connections already, then there's really no need to use any other authentication strategy than OAUTH. So I'd say think about your target audience and make your decision.
Like most places we run the gamut from 'hipster ville' to 'vanilla ville'. There is San Francisco which has all the same sort of complexes any urban city has, to the towns along the peninsula (notably San Carlos, Mtn View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara) which are pretty suburban, to pricey (Los Altos, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton), to remote (Scotts Valley, Los Gatos, Santa Cruz, Big Basin, Halfmoon Bay) to intellectual hangouts in the east bay (Berkeley and its neighboring towns).

We have decent rail service (Cal Train on the Peninsula and BART on the east bay) to get around, and of course people do drive. We've got both public and private schools that are considered top schools in the country, and of course there are failing schools as well. Our state government is pretty dysfunctional at the moment. Oh and the weather is really really nice more often than not. Oh and if you go north of the Bay there are a bunch of great places as well from Sausalito to Novato to Petaluma to Santa Rosa.

There is so much variety then the nine bay area counties that its been called its own country by tourists.

There are places where it is expensive and there are places where it is moderate, in general housing is a bit hard though because when a company goes public and mints a bunch of millionaires or nearly millionaires there is a brief run on housing as people go out, buy a house, and convert a variable priced asset into a fixed price one. Generally though for the same money the houses here compared to Chicago will seem like a big downgrade. ( I know two folks who went the other way, Bay Area -> Chicago, and they were quite thrilled )
To be fair, though, that was one of the more spammy ways of writing it. It's the sort of copy I'd expect from a banner ad.
His current leadership is poor, mainly since there is little of it, as I stated in the grand parent post. So we are in agreement.

We agree for most things except the last.

No, other fin mins could have stopped short. As I pointed out in my post, this went on for 2 years. Once the BoP crisis was over, and the gulf war induced oil shock was gone, they had no reason to stay on course.

Check a chart on the price of oil for the periods under question, they stabilize pretty quick.

more credit should be given to PV N Rao, who was the driving force and the source of courage behind Manmohan.

Many people fail during crises. Just because some people step up when the chips are down doesn't mean that their achievement was ordained. It means they had the mettle and is actually more praiseworthy for their ability under pressure.

This is also why I brought up Russia. They opened up their markets and it was eaten alive by corruption the way a wolf eats a new born lamb.

Manmohan is given credit as the architecht and designer of the reforms because he designed it and decided who was to head what committe and what they should aim for. He obviously had people execute it. He is given credit where it is due.

HPG Is given credit for Ycomb in a similar manner.

While you may have stopped being a supporter, like many of us, it should have no bearing on his past achievements.

If anything it only highlights how he would have performed with a stronger hand behind the throne, sadly.
> But are you actually an 'Indian'?

I used to work for Infosys, Bangalore. This is what it looks like http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Bangalore... (just one of about 50 buildings)

I couldn't find the image but the area immediately behind Infosys(For those who know, the pathway you take to get to the bus stop on Hosur Road) is in complete contrast - dirty, impoverished.

While passing through that area, it often happened that one of my friends would remark "this is the real India". And I always had the same question - What makes it any more real than the Infosys you are coming from, and what makes them any more Indian than I am(not by choice; I was born one)? Even if some category is in minority(an example; working, middle class people aren't minority in India), it's not any less real than the majority.

I am pretty sure whatever categorization you have for actually being an Indian, most of it won't be applicable to me. But the good thing is, the only thing required for actually being an India is to satisfy the constitutional requirements(born in India in my case). The opinion of what anyone else thinks about being an Indian doesn't matter much(well, so called guards of being Indian do cause trouble, but that's not legal).
If Goldman Sachs didn’t have more profitable market inefficencies to exploit, they might be out there arbitraging stolen bikes.

Funny how no explanation is needed for this line. Goldman Sachs (and hence, Wall Street) is now the poster child for risk-free crime.
Getting Started with Pinax Starter Projects
It could also be that the system of laws, lawmakers, courts & bureaucrats is just not very good at this sort of thing. Imagine that for some reason we needed this system to make decisions based on niceness or sexiness.
congrats Ev and Taylor!
What Successful Night Owls Get Done Before Bed
XP has IPv6 support.
Quick pitch: It's a time tracker with a robust goal-setting system that allows you to set up 'at most' and 'at least' goals. Spending too much time in your inbox? Set up a 'Do at most 1 hour going through email' goal. Want to work more on your side-project? 'Do at least 2 hours of side-project development'

I found this method of goal-setting to be pretty helpful for me both in maximizing time spent on things I want to do, and minimizing time spent on things I do that I'd rather not. What do you think?

Here are some free promo codes for those hesitant to take a closer look:

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Please comment if you take one so I can take it off the list.

I'd love feedback on just about anything: design, execution, features, etc.

Thanks so much for taking a look!

-Kamil
Ask HN: Free/MVP Website Demo Videos?
Does anyone know where I can find a website video maker or something similar to create a simple explanation of my app?

The kinetic stuff is `ok`, but overdone, open to suggestions.

Something like this: http://www.demoflick.com/
As weird as Kim is, I truly wish him to be successful on this, just to shake things up.

Nowadays there's a monopoly on culture, if you're not in USA you can't buy software in AppStore, you can't listen to music on Spotify, you can't stream a movie on Netflix. DRM is a load of bullshit, country restrictions idem, and companies adopting it are in a comfortable position because while they have the government enforcing it on them, they also have no real competitors (torrent sites can't be considered competition - downloading a lot of stuff with dubious quality is simply not a convenient way to consume media).

How long would country restrictions and DRM last if there was a global, non-restrictive and convenient source of content?
I've always wanted to buy a cheap bike and create a quick release bolt on the rear wheel that unspools as the wheel turns. I figure the culprit could get 3 or 4 revolutions before the back wheel falls off. Or maybe attach a length of wire to the front brake cable that wraps around the rear axel. Suddenly the wire snaps tight and yanks the front brakes. I figure it would make a good youtube series. My main fear is being stabbed to death by an angry bike thief...
Why a sales rep has to run for his life faster than a gazelle in Africa
The paper includes details that show the motivation a bit better. Broadcast erasure codes will multiply the number of blocks by a large amount, say 16. With traditional hashing, you have to generate all of these extra 'check blocks' to hash them as part of the publishing process. Using this technique, you only have to hash the actual file and can then generate all of the other hashes using the homomorphism.

edit: actually, the receiver should be able to use the homomorphism to generate hashes for the check blocks as well. so the list of authoritative hashes to download should only be for the original chunks. the goal of the technique is to be able to verify the check blocks before being able to reconstruct the original blocks.
Hi K, I remember your name from previous threads on this topic. Would love to meet you in Ann Arbor for coffee and learn more about what ya'll are working on.
I live in Wyoming and never heard of the Commerce Bank of Wyoming!
Look here: http://sviehb.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/viehboeck_wps.pdf

And here's a link to the tool: http://code.google.com/p/reaver-wps/
> Apples patents are clearly not patents on "smartphones with a rectangular touchscreen and no external UI buttons", but they cover many inventions that make such a phone usable.

Actually, per my understanding, Apple's design patents are exactly that (if you throw in beveled corners). It's true, though, that those aren't the patents at issue in this thread.
I think some of you may have misinterpreted the "It's time-consuming, technical, and inaccessible" bit. Sorry, but I should have been a little bit clearer about precisely WHAT is time-consuming, technical, and inaccessible.

Browsing and understanding the source (and even the release notes, and bug trackers) of open source projects is frequently time-consuming, technical, and inaccessible. Particularly when it's ensconced solely in a GIT or SVN repo, with no user-friendly web front-end, and is only accessible via a command line.

I disagree with "robin_reala".

Updating software at your leisure, ON YOUR OWN SCHEDULE AND NOT SOMEONE ELSE's, by downloading installers, patches and packages is often a pretty reasonable task. Especially when it's a browser like Firefox or Chrome. It's also better to have redistributable offline copies of installed software and updates that you can retain as backups (uninfected backups, of course), in the event that network connectivity is unavailable, or because the network was essentially the source of the infection in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... good security practices dictate that we are ALWAYS on someone else's schedule. Live in fear. Okay, yeah, that's great, I get it, we all get it.
> I'm very careful to adjust my clothing, hairstyle, etc.

That is interesting. Did you spend majority of your childhood elsewhere, because considering the diversity of India, it's pretty hard to tell.
General Zuckerberg’s Last Stand
Twitter Doesn't Want You
Is it really a priority? The vast majority of Firefox users do not own the new MBP.
This needs many upvotes. That IAmA is rather worth reading, with the in-depth responses of the two patent examiners to questions. For example, I think most people here wouldn't know that the "obviousness" of a idea is determined by whether previous patents or prior art can be combined to produce that idea (and not by whether a professional in the field would judge it to be obvious, or any other standard). Furthermore, prior art can include products/art from anywhere in the world, patented or not.

Some great questions and comments there too. I like the one by futurespacetraveler, apparently also of HN, who said this:

---

The price we pay to incentivize an inventor to disclose their invention is with decades of protection from competition. For a utility patent, that's 20 years from the date of the patent grant. And we always pay the same price, regardless of the underlying value of the invention to our society. So whether you invent a new method of swinging in a swing or a new drug to fight cancer, we pay the same price to know how it works.

And I think that's one of the key perspectives that often gets overlooked. We are paying for knowledge. The inventor is supposed to have figured something out that even skilled practitioners in the art hadn't thought of. We are paying for the secret sauce, so to speak. I think sofware "inventions", for many of us skilled in the art, seem so obviously non-insightful that we can't believe society has paid for such "knowledge" with a patent. Many of us realize that we don't even need to read most software patents to learn how to do what it explains. We're paying for "I was here first", rather than "I finally solved the problem no one else could". Yet we pay the same price regardless. That's why the Defend Innovation site wants to limit software patent terms to 5 years. Patent protection should be proportional to the value of the invention. But I believe that should be true for any invention.
You should really package this up, and provide a signed repo instead of relying on the busted SSL infrastructure and GitHub to provide security to your users.

While this one isn't quite as offensive as some, all these curl/sudo/bash combos really make me sad, particularly when used to "increase" security.
Here's tech demo!

https://developer.mozilla.org/media/uploads/demos/a/z/azakai...
One of the links hidden away in the article is actually quite amusing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/opinion/bike-thief.html?_r...
It is a video if a guy stealing a bike a few times with saw/crowbar etc. (Except it's actually a hidden camera setup and it's his bike. Spoiler alert: Many people walk by, noone cares)
Hey Hollywood, forget SOPA, ACTA & TPP. Embrace Netflix instead
Ask HN: Would you pay for a 24/7 "sysadmin as a service"?
Hello,

In a recent discussion someone said they wonder why no-one is offering a 24/7 sysadmin service [0]. As I have been thinking about setting up a business around this in the future, I'm keen to know what other HN readers think.

"24/7 sysadmin" could mean a few things. The services I would like to offer are:

- 24/7 support for linux-based servers and applications. Support would cover all off-the-shelf components, as well as 1st/2nd line support for the customer's application

- responsibility for the usual sysadmin stuff: backups, disaster recovery, security, monitoring, alerting, configuration management, documentation

- ad hoc projects, and large projects such as migrating to AWS

- performance optimisation, cost optimisation for cloud hosting (e.g. reducing AWS bills)

- training for sysadmin best practices

Initially this would be aimed at startups, as I have a decent amount of startup and scaling experience. There was a discussion a while back (sorry, can't find link) which raised the question of whether or not startups even need sysadmins any more.

While many startups have a sysadmin or a developer who knows how to set these things up, I think a lot of startups could benefit from having someone available for responding to emergencies, as well as being on retainer for sysadmin work. At some point it will make sense for these companies to hire a full-time sysadmin, but I would like to help them grow smoothly until they reach that point.

And now, the big question: would you pay for this service for your startup?

Slightly smaller, but equally important question: what pricing model would be most suited for this business model? I was thinking of a monthly fee for emergency support, with X hours per month of ad hoc work included.

I know that no idea is original, so, has anyone tried this before? How did it go? Or did you never get started because of some massive flaw I have yet to uncover?

0 - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4432546
I can't speak for Google Authenticator but Duo works great with RADIUS http://www.duosecurity.com/docs/radius
This is great but one thing bugs me. When you add a new user, you have to restart SSH? Wouldn't that prevent people from connecting every time a new user is added?
The Economics of Crime
Show HN: Fashion Genome
Tech may have found its next SXSW
Which is kind of the problem. The standard way of doing it is major release.minor release.build

If it wasn't for this whole "Let's start bumping our version number to match Chrome's insanity" thing, we'd still be on Firefox 9 something.
Does this mean that you ping them whenever you ssh? Does this mean that if their service is down you won't be able to ssh anymore?
Right now?
Helping out country men from the north east, and surviving the daily tribulations of India with stoicism, and the ability to be open to all castes, creeds and colors

The one thing that united most of India was mysticism and the belief that we are one under some god.

You can experiment with that as a start. It's what bound the Sufis, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and several other religions during the best of our times.

We don't want to emulate our worst times.
While I mostly agree with you, there is a third option none of us really want to consider. And that's that HBO/MPAA/etc get so efficient at catching and prosecuting piracy, that piracy itself dies off.

Now we at first think, "this is impossible, where there are bits, there are ways to copy said bits". But don't forget What happened with DirecTV at the turn of the century. They implemented an "unhackable" card that stopped all satellite piracy on their network. No biggie, pirates just moved over to the hackable DishNetwork and began purchasing FTA boxes and hacking them to emulate cards. Dish spent a ton of money implementing their new "unhackable" Nagra3 encryption and mostly eradicated the problem. Sure you have a few people doing some sort of private card sharing... but effectively, satellite piracy is dead. I don't want to sound like chicken little... but let's at least consider that these draconian ways could persist and push us back to the dark ages.