skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article gives every indication that Microsoft inherited all these behaviors via their purchase of Skype. This completed a little more than a year ago.

It would be hard to argue that providing a backdoor as Skype did, was a good thing. On the other hand, one would be hard pressed to see cutting the Chinese market off from Skype as a good thing, either.

While there are viable individual options suggested by the author, no plausible alternative courses for Microsoft are given. In my opinion, this is because over the short term, none are obvious.

It is only over the longer term that it is reasonable to expect positive change via an evolution of the interpretation of Chinese law and the implementation in the software.

To put this story in perspective, government backdoor access and special software versions were the decisions made by a startup in order to gain traction and market share. These were choices made by Skype's founders, not Microsoft.

Microsoft's decision was to continue a successful product, warts and all. That is the basis upon which their business should be judged.
Amazing how willing the poster is to criticize Nate Silvers based on assumed conflicts of interest and naivety about his own incentives mislead him, while remaining silent on her own.

> "He gets well-paid for his political consulting work and speaker appearances at hedge funds like D.E. Shaw and Jane Street, and, in order to maintain this income, it’s critical that he perfects a patina of modeling genius combined with an easily digested message for his financial and political clients."

> "Silver is selling a story we all want to hear, and a story we all want to be true. Unfortunately for us and for the world, it’s not."

And of course, she derives also derives her income from speaking, consulting, and is writing her own book. She certainly benefits from positioning herself as a more expert Nate Silvers. "This best seller is wrong, buy my book to find out the details why" is pretty effective marketing.

By her own logic we should criticize her just as strongly.
I don't think Google is an order of magnitude more trustworthy, but enough to matter - for now. The way Google would be an order of magnitude more trustworthy to me, would be to implement OTR and ZRTP in Google Talk and Hangouts, and to allow private-key encryption for Gmail and Google Drive, done from inside the browser. And of course these options should be right there for you to see when using the service, not buried in deep levels of settings. And they should be on by default, unless there's a technical or UX reason why that's a big negative, like for encrypting e-mails. But for all the other services it should be okay to set encryption on by default.

If you had an option to do so from inside the Gmail client, encryption would become much more mainstream. Techdirt [1] and ArsTechnica [2] had some good articles about it, although I disagree with TechDirt that they should offer "key management" for users. That would defeat the purpose - unless it's guaranteed to only be done by the browser, locally, and they wouldn't have access to that, and it could be easily verified that they're not lying. I think they sort of do this already for the master-password in Chrome.

I don't think these encryption options would hurt their ad-revenue much, and besides - I don't think Google, Microsoft or any other company should scour through my private messages to make their ads more relevant. I don't care how "anonymous" or secure they make it. It's okay if it's public data - but private data? No. Definitely not.

[1] - http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121218/16095921431/why-go...

[2] - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/op-ed-a-plea-to-g...
You know, Luxemburgerli are ridiculously expensive. But they're mostly marketed to adults, and as a luxury food that you get to indulge on, and don't even buy in huge amounts.

This is different from marketing something to children, or making something addictive, or doing both at the same time. And, this shows that you can make something with a big profit margin without relegating to abusing your customers.

Of course, games may be different. At some point everyone and their dog will own Minecraft, and not everyone can live off donations like Dwarf Fortress. I don't think that justifies going into dependency-forming mechanisms, though. If that means you can't ethically fund the rest of your life out of a single game (nor does it automatically make you ultra-wealthy), well, welcome to the movie business. Or book business.
He Philip, to be clear, my comment sounds more negative than it is I think. I love your initiative and I hope you get a lot of takers. I also hope people realize that you pay for quality. I'm just trying to see lower risk for startups. And you are right about the price (it's quite low even), thing is that I see a lot of economic changes which might, in some cases, no warrant that price. So let's say I'm seeking discussion about freelance hour prices in the EU.

When I started out, my chamber of commerce told me literally that I should not ask below 90 guilders (when they still existed) which would now be about E65. But then I was just starting out; I can ask E150-200 and I would get that <= 2008. What is normal now for different years of experience?
Alergia canina
Only if you don't mind a single party knowing what sites you use, and when you used them.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/183064/supercells_secr...

> "Now it's a lot more about the product quality and the product itself," Paananen notes. "If we want to create the best products, we need the best people. That was actually how the whole thing started, and where the name Supercell comes from. We're creating these small but ultra-dynamic teams of developers who work relatively independently. And despite the small size of the group, we have big dreams -- hence Supercell."
I'm not much of a gamer, but I thought I'd give this a go on my Debian amd64 system. However the package is i386 only, so it won't install.

Are they planning to support amd64 too?
I'm most likely misunderstanding you, but a debian package (though I think geared towards Ubuntu) was the first thing released, in fact a lot of those listed in this wiki page are built _from_ the debian package. http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/
Your BI/ETL/algoritms requirement is interesting. I'm a big data guy and I've been looking to do some freelance work in this area for some time now, but HN seems to be hiring Rails/iOS people predominantly.

Could you elaborate on your requirement?
Are Payphones making a comeback
THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT BRAND AMBASSADORS
Walks And Walking - Challenging Walks in Epping Forest
Source code please.
What were the top research papers of 2012 on social media?
picture: http://1984project.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/bigbrothersky...
The linked website is nothing official nor are those builds. I have no idea why this is getting upvoted. Move along.

Valve actually focused on Ubuntu, logical choice.
patraeus
Great advice! These set of advice can even translated into this crazy startup work that we all live in!
That may be a better comparison, but it's not what you'd say... you know, 'funny'.
IMHO they would never do that and you're just being naive ;)

Encryption in the browser would mean no targeted ads, less profit for shareholders, problems with the government.

Again IMHO the reality of today is governments and big business are controlled by a very few people, working against the interests of the masses - i.e. a huge conspiracy.
You can switch to Digimon if you run out of Pokémon.
Is anyone else confused?
To the layman it may appear that way, but I assure you the lightpeak cables don't have any DRM logic in them, they merely mux/demux signals. I think you're just a bit misinformed, or think anytime there's chips in basic things like cables, to consider them DRM devices. I suggest you wikipedia DRM to brush up on your definitions.

If there are more adopters of lightpeak, there will be other cable manufacturers, and users can buy any cable they want. People who don't understand electronics also wouldn't understand how this might benefit the user.

Personally, I think lightpeak is a fairly interesting way of implementing something, it enables ports to be a lot more capable without having to replace electronics on the motherboard.

Perhaps users who don't fully understand what is going on inside would prefer to think that it's something evil...
Pick up a copy of Beth Hensperger's "The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook."[1] My wife and I made Thanksgiving Jook (Congee) with some homemade turkey broth and bits of meat from the carcass after Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how cooking it on the stovetop would have made it taste better.

[1] http://www.harvardcommonpress.com/the-ultimate-rice-cooker-c...
IV: Don't Mind Our 2000 Shell Companies, That's Totally Normal
Last month we removed all ads because our REAL content is much more efficient. So, we basically try to create more content in less time and we are selling more in this way.
Gangnam Style hitting 1 billion YouTube views
Purely out of interest, when are you the product (when you pay for the product)?

- newspapers / magazines with ads

- subscription TV with ads

others?
Show HN: Servus for Mac and Dropbox
I've built a thing! A few months back someone (not me) posted my Mac app Droplings to HN. It was incredibly rough around the edges back then, and in alpha.

Well, it's finished now and sparkles like crazy. Please take a look! :)
This article just screams Directly.me , Facebook is lacking originality these days first copying Twitter & now Directly.me it’s too bad they failed on this occasion because Directly.me has a much stronger concept which allows people to search based on Skills, Past experiences, Occupation and Location.. was reading somewhere they got 450,000+ direct connections in just 2 weeks of launch to public.

Also Facebook takes your money, the person on the receiving side gets NOTHING whereas Directly.me gives 80% to the person on the receiving end.
What's the use case for storing a time with timezone instead of just storing the UTC value?
The title is misleading; as the actual article states, it was the highest entry velocity recorded for recovered meteorites. It's not atypical that your run-of-the-mill shooting stars enter at relative velocities of over 50 km/s; for example, the entry velocity of the objects in the well-known Leonid swarm is circa 72 km/s.
I've built a thing! A few months back someone (not me) posted my Mac app Droplings to HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277856). It was incredibly rough around the edges back then, and in alpha.

By now Droplings has become Servus. It still is a Dropbox-powered sharing app for Mac. It's a menubar icon. If you drop a file on it, it'll build a nice preview page around it, upload both to your Dropbox, then copy the public preview link to your clipboard. The preview page can be entirely customizable via themes.

It's been released a few days ago, and it sparkles like Nibiru. Please take a look! :)
I don't believe Google is any better.

The confrontational way Google treats countries that actually try to protect their citizens rights and privacy against Google's invasive practices has me believing more and more that Google is just opportunistically waging a "governments bad, Google good" PR war, rather than actually displaying any ethics.

BTW, Google is an advertising company for which the users are the product, not the client. They are in no way "beholden to its users". That would apply to Microsoft, but not to Google.

In the long run, I prefer Microsoft's often clumsy and transparent nastiness over Google that actually tries to make people believe it's a force for good.
How much warning did we have for this Nuclear sized explosion to happen over California? Why am I just now hearing about this after the event? Are these asteroids that unpredictable to track?
Maybe if you want to schedule a meeting for 4pm local time, no matter the time zone. Some countries have very unpredictable daylight saving schedules.

(For example, http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=551195 - "To keep on with the great work our government has done the past two years
of deciding stuff with 2 or 3 days of anticipation, the government has just
decided that we won't switch to DST this Sunday.")
Is that first video to hit billion?
Thanks for the clarification. I do think the comfort of requiring a warrant comes form the fact it is Judicial (so check and balance applies). If all it takes is a prosecutor signing off, for example, a "lawful purpose" would run the risk of being pre-texted.
http://www.youtube.com/charts/videos_views?gl=US&t=a

Yes
Want More Movies online: Erotica
I wrote this guide, sorry for 502. I wasn't really anticipating this much interest. I'm doing something about it now.

Also you can blame me for including vim, but I'm conviced that basic vi knowledge is essential.
It is still legally theft though to sell stuff belonging to someone else even if it happens to be in your garage.

For it to not be theft you need an agreement which says he may sell it.
That was actually the point.
I wrote this guide and I'm convinced basic vi usage is essential to learn. I have to encouter a system without vi yet.
Nokia to get payments in patent deal with BlackBerry maker RIM
I'm usually inclined to agree, but it's not as clear cut with Clash of Clans as a Zynga game for example. Clash of Clans follows a traditional RTS model, building things takes time. Now, they've given you the option to purchase gems to automatically finish buildings.

This clearly exploits people's need for instant gratification. However, that need for gratification is up to the user, not the game. The game itself is quite fun and easy without ever spending a dime. There is nothing "game breaking" that has to be purchased with real funds. It's one of the truer time = money models out there.
This event was nice to prompt me to remove one more rarely used app from my phone. Seriously who cares. It is an app, pick another.
Let's remind some joke to everyone: http://i.imgur.com/dRxLv.jpg
For the curious, the government in question was argentina.
Yep, too many people found about my project somehow, I'm sorry for not anticipating this. Try now.
Bad news: apparently China does have compromised certificates:

http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/comments/156pyf/chinas_r...

I wonder if China will ever have a revolution, and if the "winners" will even want to revert to a "normal" Internet. The problem is most Chinese don't even know what that is.
The Best Advice I Received In 2012
You may show an example. Is that dropbox sharelink that difficult? I understand the brand name. You could make some sales while using nice and good looking screen shots. It creates a feel and then a sale. The example you have shown is boring honestly.
The CEO of Supercells says that the "secret sauce" of his company's success is "product quality". Forgive me if I feel like I'm being sold to.
I really wish that MS didn't also name their file manager 'Explorer'. "Okay, now open Explorer... no, not Internet Explorer..."
The problem with that analogy though is that it rather long and convoluted for such a simple concept, a simple direct explanation would suffice here. I feel that there are two problems with it: 1) it's completely removed from what a real SQL injection is - sure, it's analogous, but then go to whoever received that explanation, present them with a form and ask them to tell you what each character in that tale is analogous to.
2) It's not succinct. Someone who isn't interested in knowing in the first place wont appreciate the verbosity. ....and someone who is interested will appreciate a better and more direct explanation.
Love it. Time to convert those design agencies that are still struggling with FTP or sending huge PSDs through email.
The similarity ends on the plot summary level -- which is the most superficial part in literature.

It's also 20 levels below in writing quality, like a messed up straight 20,000 lines amateur PHP monstrosity compared to something written by Rich Hickey.
Yeah, how does that work? If someone uploads a photo they took of me to Instagram, can Instagram now sell that to an advertiser and use the image of me without my consent?
Stupid title.

Just because Kryptos Part IV hasn't been broken so far doesn't mean that it won't be. It was designed to be broken.

Oh, wait, the actual title is "7 Codes You’ll Never Ever Break" instead of "Codes Hackers Will Never Ever Break". The actual title is more likely to be true, especially given the complete crackpots that appear in groups like Kryptos with outlandish 'breaks' to the codes that are complete crap.

Breaking codes is hard, takes a long time and requires method. Most people won't break these codes.
If you're calling from computer to computer, you shouldn't need a service like Skype. VOIP providers help you make calls to non-VOIP phones if necessary, but you should be able to "call" from one computer to another just using audio encoding and IP packets. And you should be able to encrypt it from end to end.

Do any of you already use desktop software like this?
"Offer HN" has traditionally been meant for offers of generosity, not to solicit freelance work at market rates.
In India, salary hike when jumping the job is about 30% to 50% during first 5 years of experience.

Within the company, the high will be about 8% to 20%. There are always exceptions.
Of course. So here's an example shared via Dropbox' own Share Link feature:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wckaf7i7anhtq4v/this-screenshot-se...

Here's the same picture shared via Servus.

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/l2zxws95dpwrfsq/index.html

The difference is that Dropbox' own page is not customizable at all, whereas Servus allows you to use your own theme for the preview pages. My example uses the built-in default theme.

Also, it's about convenience. When you drop a file on Servus' menubar icon, it'll automatically copy the public preview link to your clipboard after upload — or the direct link to the file, your choice.

With the native Dropbox client, to share a file you have to get to it in Finder, copy it to your Dropbox folder, right-click it and select "Share Link" — which will then take you to the Dropbox website where you are presented with the link. Let's just say it takes a while. ;)
The gods have spoken. The end of the world is neigh.
3 Vital Tips for Launching Your Product
Cheesecake - Client side capturing & uploading webcam images to S3
Does that make me a prophet for thinking that this is exactly what will happen and that the whole thing is a non issue?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4937548

No, I've just seen the same story play another 10 times for different companies. As we all did -- but some behave like they just came on the interwebs yesterday. Makes all those downvotes look silly in hindsight...
Cleartrip offers discount to IE9 users.
If far as I'm concerned, you were definitely in an extended out-of-service period, but this morning it appears you decided NOT to extend the offer. That's too bad.
Be a rebel, not a sheep: How to start a startup
4. Sınıf Fen Test Soruları 1. Dönem Deneme Çalışma Soruları
Is the Cure for Cancer Inside You?
Chad would have actively promoted that you add stuff to his garage.

That would be true if Chad were running a storage service, which he isn't!
That's absurd, since the constitution has provisions that plainly describe what the US government is and isn't allowed to do with regard to foreign nations. For example, the US constitution clearly states that the US government is forbidden to carry out prolonged military operations in other nations without a congressionally approved declaration of war. This means that under the US constitution, any person in the world at least has the right not to be bombed at the whim of the US executive branch with absolutely no review.
Going off on a tangent, I confess that the phrase "going forward" always reminds me of David Mitchell's rant on this YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRr7H3woFn4

It's sometimes hard to take corporate announcements seriously, even if they're genuine.
I was expecting it to be free as well, to pad a portfolio or similar. We have a freelancer thread every month do we not?
I know this is not the right place, but I've to mention 2 things: I visited the site: http://www.startupdiaries.info/
1) I could not find any way to contact you.
2) When I register on the site, I got the activation mail, which had the URL starting with: "http://localhost:3000
"There's literally nothing wrong with boiling meat. It's a perfectly cromulent cooking technique. You just have to know what you are doing. Boiled meat dishes have been royal court food for thousands of years in some places."

I second this motion: boiled (at least 2 hours) meat plus an appropriate base (rice, pasta) and sauce along with a steamed or boiled vegetable makes a wonderful and absolutely foolproof meal. Be sure to cook the meat to the point where it just begins to fall apart.

Meat: the cheapest cuts from the local market, with or without bones (the meat will fall off the bone).

Base: rice, any pasta, Ramen noodles prepared as you wish.

Sauces: anything that appeals, from plain soy sauce to Ramen noodle flavor packets to prepared pepper sauces from the local Chinese market (esp. Szechuan pepper sauces).

Indeed a meal fit for a king!
That makes me laugh every time I read 21th.
Forward the iOS developer details to me also, we are hiring.
I hope they'll release an iOS version soon.
Someone must translate this.

Why public cloud is so difficult to build in China

http://www.pingwest.com/why-public-cloud-is-so-difficult-to-...

That's why most western companies don't have VPS, IDC or CDN in China.
It's currently not feasible to track such small objects. Fortunately, there's no real need to - a kiloton-scale explosion high in the atmosphere is pretty much a non-event. Asteroids circa 10m in diameter impact the atmosphere approximately once per year - no casualties have ever been recorded from such events (actually, there are no human casualties from any impact event in the recorded history.)

The real blind spot currently lies in the 100m scale - these could cause massive local damage on impact (cf. Tunguska) and there are no comprehensive tracking programs in place at the time. Such events are predicted to occur every 100 to 1000 years (but the probability of hitting a densely inhabited area is still extremely low.)
Is there any cumulative statistics about purchasing of iFart apps?)
Surely it would have made a better analogy if Chad had ended up hiring out stuff stored rather than selling it.
I think it's important to keep saying it so that the general population begins to understand it. Eventually it will trickle out. I don't think it has yet. So, while I agree with you that it's an old saying in our circles, your friend's sister may not realize it.
If you do see anyone there who you know worked on this, let them know they did a phenomenal job.
This article is incorrect - this is not North Korea's first video game, they have been producing video games for quite a while, there are a number of companies which even outsource production there. From an article in 2010 (http://www.pcworld.com/article/198555/the_worlds_most_unusua...) :

The outsourcer with the highest profile is probably Nosotek. The company, established in 2007, is also one of the few Western IT ventures in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

Nosotek's main work revolves around development of Flash games and games for mobile phones. It's had some success and claims that one iPhone title made the Apple Store Germany's top 10 for at least a week, though it wouldn't say which one.

Several Nosotek-developed games are distributed by Germany's Exozet Games, including one block-based game called "Bobby's Blocks."
I can recall a situation in one of my first experiences with linux where I wound up rebooting a machine because I couldn't figure out how to get out of vim.
The Economy of Stolen iPhones: How Apple and ATT Fail US