skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Re: Windows Domain Controllers - I wasn't aware they didn't have the ability to salt hashes (I last used domain controllers and active directory back in the Win2K days). I could be facetious and say "move to open ldap, samba 4, zarafa and an open stack" but I realise that isn't being very helpful :)

Re: spear phishing attacks

All it takes is a bit of training and common sense to significantly reduce the effectiveness of this vector. Examples:

1). Remove Flash and, if possible, Java from all the desktop PCs and work laptops. [0]

2). Use a non-Adobe product for reading PDFs

3). Standardise on one browser (e.g. Chrome), force all users to use it and have someone in IT be responsible for tracking all security announcements from the manufacturer.

4). Ban browser addons

5). Train staff to hover over any link in an email and verify where it's going to before clicking it (and to be especially vigilant if the url purports to be from a well known website i.e. amazon, twitter etc)

6). Ban staff from clicking on any link rendered by an url shortening service.

7). Ban staff from opening any attachment from a new/unrecognised email source (regardless of file format).

8). Re-work your provisioning, network architecture and file storage setup so that it becomes quick and painless to regularly (even randomly) format user's machines and install a clean image.

9). If feasible, configure all user's email programs to render emails in plain text and encourage staff to avoid checking their private accounts on work provided machines (especially high profile users).

10). Ban users from connecting non-work appliances to the network. Use MAC filtering if you have to enforce this.

Re: firewalling

That's why I said block everything going out and only white list a very limited number of _processes_ not ports. Do it via the native software firewall or something like TinyWall.

[0] If a user really needs either of these, they can apply for special dispensation and IT can (after making sure the user is security trained) give them a locked down virtualbox instance they can launch from the desktop. If possible this could also be scripted so that it gets deleted every day or week and re-provisioned from a "gold" vm image.

Some attacks would still make it through despite the above but that's life. At the very least it raises the bar needed for a successful attack, making vanity hacks (like in the case of the latest one on the NYT) less common.
Granted, I and the people I've described may be a minority. But in my observation and perhaps in staid corporate environments, those who benefit from colocation tend to be those who need to be herded and hand-held. Those who want and are really able to get shit down, don't mind face to face but are greatly frustrated with pointless and distracting face to face.

I too don't know what the numbers are like. I've seen great teams do great things remotely. I've seen great teams do great things co-located. Some of the very best teams I've seen have been co-located. I've also seen some distributed teams fail miserably. I've seen teams co-locate, try remote working, found it didn't work, and co-locate again. And so on.

I wish I knew the relative spread of how these things work out for people in different contexts and on different projects. I just find it suspicious that remote work is often presented as all upside since:

a) In my experience things are rarely all upside - I always start looking for the downside ;-)

b) For whatever reasons a chunk of the dev world tends to be a tad asocial. I know I can be like that. So when something comes up that supports that tendency I wonder if I may be overlooking problems because I would like something to be true.
Grammar reference: http://www.externsoft.ch/media/swf/cpp11-iso.html
Oh you're right =)
I don't disagree, but I also dislike the fact that every 37Signals post is instantly front-paged regardless of content.
Ask HN: how do I get an H1B visa and job in the US?
I've read about the basics on getting a job in the US with an H1B visa. You have to get an offer from a company in the US, prepare all the documentation by March (possibly with help from an attorney), apply in April, then wait for the result (possibly decided by lottery). If you get the visa, then you can start working around October.

Still, I'd love to hear concrete advice from:

1) people who got a software developer job with the H1B visa. How many companies you contacted? When did you contact them? Is February too late? Were you interviewed remotely or at their US office?

2) people who got an offer but for some reason failed to get the visa: besides the lottery, which is outside my control anyway, what should I be aware of?

3) people who got laid off or otherwise lost their jobs while working on a H1B visa. Did you find another job immediately, or did you have to leave the country?

Of course, I welcome replies from people involved in hiring too (though my intention isn't getting hired with this post).

Thanks in advance.
I am taking snapshots of emails and I will post it here, but let me make something clear for you.

Its known about Freelancer that they suspend a large number of accounts in a very suspicious behavior, and those accounts usually have from hundreds to thousands of dollars!

But I am still going to post snapshots for emails here and I challenge them indeed to respond! I sent them the link of this post and I am here waiting for their response!
It is a shame for the people. I believe that unemployment is a crazily high number - something like 90%
Demo install? Or at least a screenshot?
OpenPositioningSystem - GPS alternative with seismic sensors
Your argument on b) sounds incredibly naive to me. Children bully each other for far less than an unusual name.
What would a dollar cost averaging strategy have yielded from bitcoin investment over the past year?
>It has numerous technical shortcomings that other digital cash systems do not have.

Care to tell us what it is, or it doesn't exist.

Also, you don't sound someone who is doing his PhD, you sound more like someone from some government agency upset about a parallel currency system that has the potential to stop its users from being unknowingly abused of their personal information.

In my opinion, If Bitcoins are implemented on a massive scale, then there is a heavy chance that the rich will no longer become richer and the poor will no longer become poorer. If and only if implemented properly, on a massive scale. Right now, we can only hope.
It might just depend on one's previous experience. I've not been very impressed with Javascript the language. I've been a C++ programmer for years, so I'm well practised at being happy with what I have now rather than wishing for something better. But I find it difficult to be happy with a language that doesn't have proper block scope and won't even check function arity. (Dear computer, stop being so damn lazy.)

But, sadly, it fills a hole that nothing else does.
https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway
The GooGuns mystery
That's a great point. I guess my fear is that if I have to get a full-time job that it will delay me enough for someone else time to get their own MVP done. Since the application is geo-centric, they would just need to make it into markets that I'm not in yet. Groupon vs LivingSocial, for instance.

Having said that, I recognize that you guys are shooting in the dark. There's very little you can do without knowing what the application is. I'm putting together a demo to cut down on the time it takes me to present to restaurants & bars (my customers). I'm also in the middle of making some changes based on some initial feedback. Once I'm done, I'll consider posting it on this thread.

Thanks for your help man.
b) feels like a good thing but when everyone applies it it actually promotes the least common denominator names and depletes the name space. This is a problem of many protective measures and safe moves.

Parents give uniformly ordinary names to children, the divide between "ordinary" and "weird" name increases further.

And some cultures might end up with having to choose between little more than ten names.
Yeah but it is optional, meaning it only takes one person in your channel with it switched off to make the whole thing pointless.

As someone above said, they deal with it by making the whole network secure and not worrying about the irc application being secure.
The Power of Moderation
I'm wary of comparisons like that- the implication is that if the FBI weren't busy in Iceland they would have caught the child abductor. I don't see any evidence to suggest that is the case.
Sony Likely To Unveil PlayStation 4 On Feb. 20
Approximately none, I imagine.

If you register births — and I imagine most states do — then it doesn't take a lot to impose a whitelist of names you'll allow.

What people call their kids in the privacy of their homes isn't regulated, only what's on their birth certificate, after all.

(Not sure where I stand on this. I'm in the UK, where names are not regulated and one man famously changed his to 'Yorkshire Bank Are Fascist Bastards' following a dispute[1]).

[1] http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/yorkshire-bank-loses-its-good...
Ask HN: Would you like to receive job openings to your inbox?
I have been getting requests to run a newsletter with a strict focus on hacking job postings (world wide openings). I'm gathering interest here. If there are more than 100 subscribers (already have about 25) I will ship it out in a weekly (or bi-weekly) manner.

The newsletter will feature various security methods to reduce the amount of recruiter spam.

This would be a free service to the community. You will NOT receive SPAM of any kind. All will be securely handled by Mail Chimp. You can always unsubscribe.

If you are interested, subscribe here:

http://eepurl.com/uOdzP

If you have a job posting you want to publish, send it to:

codejobs.newsletter@gmail.com

PS. This is free. Give it a try.

Send me feedback to my email (on profile).
More FUD about the disk space issue... yes - there is a large recovery partition and yes - you can delete it to free up space. Any yes - perhaps MS would have been better off if they included a USB drive for recovery purposes (although I imagine trying to walk the average user through "booting from USB" to restore their partition would be a support nightmare).

This is just like the "omg - the desktop is gone and all we are left with is Metro!". Um yes... unless you "show desktop" and move on with your life...

And the "purpose of the surface pro"? How about "a tablet for those who need to be productive in a windows environment"?
This looks like a cool hack but note this is from an art project website, and may be just conceptual. Also the link to openps.org doesn't work and it doesn't show up on Google.

Still, interesting idea.
An example where the FBI did just that in the UK:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/08/fbi_indymedia_raids/
So, let's start a conversation that we've never had on HN before. How relevant will Microsoft be in 5 years?
Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2013)
Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or H1B if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome. Feel free to post any job that may interest HN readers from executive assistant to machine learning expert to CTO.

Also see:
I wonder how much money the leaders of Zimbabwe have on deposit outside of Africa?
Zimbabwe has debt too.
here you go: http://imgur.com/a/nyjs7
How does this compare to subway?

https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway
The Flask Mega-Tutorial, Part XIV: I18n and L10n
Python Amazon Web Services CLI (Developer Preview)
Very cool resource. Thanks for sharing.
Lots of good takeaways from this post, some of which might be a bit hidden or subtle.

If you're launching your e-book, SaaS app, online course, etc. you'll need to build a reputation based on trust and value. Think about it: how many people will find themselves on your landing page, looking at some of your app screenshots and click on your big fat "Sign Up!" button because "Wow, I've only known this company existed for 3 seconds but here's my credit card!". You can do better!

In this case, a free guide to "Designing Forms That Convert" is a great example of educational and valuable material. Nathan gets your email address, you get some information you're interested in receiving and everyone is happy. If you educate people like this, frequently and with valuable content, you'll have their attention when you're ready to sell them something that they actually need.

(Patrick McKenzie earned a reputation in the HN community over the years by sharing what he's learned. Sharing == educating. When he's goes to sell a ~$500 video course on email [0], he seems to do pretty well.)

There's a reason why Nathan's CovertKit plans include thousands and thousands of emails. That's what you should be doing: sending emails and keeping a dialog with people who know you and your work. You don't have to pitch your SaaS app in the footer of every email, but it's important that you become an authoritative resource for the market/audience that you're working with. You'll likely have much better success selling to them.

Final point: writing good copy and valuable content is important and is what is going to make you money, not your perfectly refactored dashboard code. Are you a mediocre developer? Enough to handle CRUD and a few extras? Good. Now to get to work on your writing skills.

[0] https://training.kalzumeus.com/lifecycle-emails
Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2013)
Please lead with either SEEKING WORK or SEEKING FREELANCER, your location and whether remote work is a possibility.
That's the selling point of romance languages: very easy pronounciable by anyone.

Anyone can pronounce Ronaldo.
American Express used to require 6-8 alphanumerics. No more, no less. Fortunately they've upped this to... I think something like 20 characters.

Look, I get that there are other safety factors (I pray) in place to prevent someone from hacking my account (most commonly in the form of login-attempt limits), but that's absolutely no reason to stop me from making my password longer and more complex. If I want my door to have a deadbolt _and_ a chain lock I expect a damn good explanation if someone tells me I can't.
Fixing Foursquare: Data, Transactions, Curation
Some thoughts on how Foursquare must move away from mayorships and badges in order to meet their desired potential as a company.
I don't live here; I just rent.

Sometimes it's OK to just rent. If I want to own, I'll move elsewhere.
US "rich people who can afford high speed Internet" tend to live in suburbs, which are low density. In places like SF where there is higher density of rich people, there are services like webpass who do 100M/$40/mo.

In Europe, they tend to live in either cities or high-density towns (small population but very small area). The UK is an exception, but also has relatively crappy Internet, too.
Maybe it's just me, but all I see here is a giant wall of text and no clear idea as to what I'm doing here or what you're trying to sell me on. It's also devoid of pictures, so I can't even pick up on visual cues. You've given me the task of reading paragraphs of text trying to hunt out the information I want.

This website is like the sales guy that talks too much. Unless I've hit upon something I want or there is a clear indication this is leading towards something I want, every word on your page is another chance for someone to stop reading. You need to get to the point and make it clear what it is you're trying to sell.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. H1B[1]

Booking.com is always on the lookout for good developers, DBA's and sysadmins on-site in the center of Amsterdam. I'm a developer there currently working on infrastructure tasks and relocated over there about three years ago, and have been very happy with it.

We have people from all over the world relocating to work with us and are very well set up to handle relocation and visa issues, most of the people working in IT are expats so we've got a lot of experience with bringing people in.

It's a rapidly growing company that represents the biggest chunk of the Priceline (PCLN) group of companies where problems that look relatively mundane on paper become much more interesting due to the scale and growth levels we're operating at.

We use Perl for almost everything with a MySQL backend and Git for development. We get our changes out really fast, it's rare for your code not to be on our live systems within hours of you pushing it. We're also very open to open sourcing code that doesn't contain any business logic, I've personally been involved in open sourcing a few of our internal tools, including https://github.com/git-deploy and a few CPAN modules.

We have a relatively flat hierarchy with minimum levels of bureaucracy since we're very data driven and have a clear goal: helping our customers.
You don't have to know Perl in advance to be a developer there. We've hired people who've done C, Java etc. before. The sort of people we'd like to hire are good technically, excellent at communication, and can acquire a good sense of how they fit into the big picture.

I'd be happy to answer any questions at avarab@gmail.com and/or forward your resume, I've posted in a similar thread here a few times before andI've fielded a bunch of questions from would-be applicants. http://booking.com/jobs also has some good information.

1. Well, not H1B, but we'll take care of the Dutch equivalent
When you create good free content for the user, they automatically asume that the paid content will be even better, which makes the selling point so much easier.
Ask HN: What should I study at HackerSchool?
Hacker School is a three-month, full-time school in New York for becoming a better programmer. It's free, and there's no curricula, so it's up to me to decide what to work on.

I'm a self-taught web programmer who's skill-set is incredibly narrow: node.js, browser js, extremely basic ruby, python & PHP, comfortable with git, linux, mongodb, redis.

The question:

What would you study if:

a. You wanted to become more employable. By this I mean having a skill-set applicable to the greatest number of opportunities in the market.

b. You wanted to become the most 'powerful'? By this I mean capable of doing really novel/magical things even it means working with languages & frameworks that most people, and employers don't.
Most people visiting our homepage are small business owners looking for a new payments solution - this is typically done from the office, behind a desk.

By way of comparison, we also host payment "checkout pages" which allow these merchants to accept payment from their customers. These customers are much more likely to be using mobile devices, so we spent a lot of time making these checkout pages responsive & fast-loading by stripping out unnecessary javascript & other assets etc.

You can see an example of the checkout pages here; https://gocardless.com/example-checkout
Very nice. I love the fact he is using AngularJS with Zurb Foundation instead of Bootstrap.
From the article:

>There is a list of 1,853 female names, and 1,712 male ones, and parents must pick from these lists or seek permission from a special committee.

Maybe it is a volunteer committee but they almost certainly could find something better to do with their time.
BMR BMI Rechner - Body Mass Index, BMI Formula & Body Fat Calculator
Find your BMI by giving your Height and Weight values. The results indicate that your BMI/BMR and their significance whether overweight, obese, underweight or normal.
No, it's not. Reasearch shows chiropratic is, at best, approximately equal to physical therapy for your back but with a much higher risk of injury. Your spine doesn't get out of alignment as they claim.
> I think legislators should be held to a more rigorous standard.

There is a long democratic tradition (and politics is as much about tradition as it is about common sense) that says representatives should resemble those they represent. This is why there are two houses of congress -- the house of representatives (aptly named) to accommodate those who think representatives should be ordinary people, and the senate, to accommodate those who think representatives should be a cut above. The founding fathers also deliberately produced multiple branches of government to avoid too much power in too few hands.

The senate can't enact legislation without the cooperation of the "lower" house, and vice versa. Just as the founding fathers intended.

There is a term for the kind of government you're describing -- "elitism". If history teaches us anything, it is that people who have law degrees aren't better at representing the pubic's interest than those who don't.
BIZZBY ~ LONDON, UK ~ FULL TIME

Bizzby is a well-funded startup preparing to revolutionize the economy. We are a team of talented, highly-motivated developers and designers based in Shoreditch, working hard to deliver jaw-dropping software within the next few months. There are two vacant positions that we'd love to fill. Come and be extraordinary with us!

* Back-end developer (Node.js, CoffeeScript, MongoDB)

You should have a deep understanding of the principles of good object oriented software design and prefer writing code test-driven out of choice. Experience with CoffeeScript is not essential but knowledge of JavaScript and a passion for learning is.

* QA engineer (iOS, Android, mobile web)

You should come with a strategy for test automation across a wide range of devices and operating systems, backed by the technical chops and experience to put your plans into practice. We want you to break our stuff then help us to make it better!

The salary for both positions is above market rates for the right candidate and comes with gym membership, iPhone and more Mac equipment than you can shake a stick at.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, send your CV to phil@bizzby.com - no remote workers or agencies please.
SEEKING WORK - London or remote.

I specialize in algorithmic problems. Here are some things I've been working on lately:

Scalable recommendations engine - https://github.com/jamii/springer-recommendations

Concise pattern matching and parsing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4902219

Parallelizing a constraint solver - http://scattered-thoughts.net/blog/2012/12/19/search-trees-a...

I have a strong background in math (real analysis, probability, discrete maths) and computer science (randomized algorithms, AI / epistemic logic, machine learning). I'm comfortable with clojure, python, erlang and ocaml but I will learn whatever is the right tool for the job.

I would consider full-time work for the right problem/team. I'm also interested in partnering with other freelance developers to cover the whole stack.

Resume - http://scattered-thoughts.net/about.html

Github - https://github.com/jamii

jamie@scattered-thoughts.net
Presumably your first name is Admiral_19231
Looks like a good idea, but its a bit expensive imho. I'd just build it myself. Your audience may be the non-technical, though, so I understand why you may price it this way. My 2c
That would make an excellent passphrase

It's funny that the descriptions of password requirements would make much stronger passwords than any password a reasonable person would ever use.