skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
you think? I'll give you a 4 character password correctly salted and hashed with Sha1 and would like to see you crack it ;)

Allowing password security to depend on what the user enters IS silly - but who would! 32haracter salts and sha256 is going to produce a fairly uncrackable password.

Even if you know the salt and the salting algorithm (because simply appending a salt is also silly) it can still take a while :)

Im not talking about just sticking "MYSECRETSTRING" on the end of every password and sha1-ing it :)
I think they missed the fact that the two people who built it are insanely famous in their target market.
The point is that this isn't a bug or fluke or outlier, it's just an extreme example of the usual Windows model of interaction.
I'd ask what technical communities they are part of
If by 'working with flash' you actually mean, 'producing a SWF to run in the Flash Player'...

1) I've been using Vim for years to produce SWFs. I hate their tool too - that's why I don't use it. You can use any text editor you want.

2) The 'Flash UI' is very skinnable (not as skinnable in Flex3 as in the upcoming Flex4, see: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/27/everything-there... )

3) I'm not sure what you mean by tedious. You might be referring to the Flash editor's use of the timeline. If that's the case then you'll want to look into the Flex SDK I mentioned. I haven't used a timeline for over 5 years.
Ask HN: Any tips for living cheaply in SF?
Hi!

I'm a young wannabe-hacker looking to move for a summer to SF area. I'm working on a web project (Rails) and will try to reach ramen profitability over summer. If I fail I'll go back to living with my parents/continue college in the fall.

I can't move until June 13 since I'll only be 18 then (and be able to rent). So 2.5 months of living.

I already have around $3000 (paid taxes recently) and mainly telecommute part-time on C++/COM gigs. I might continue working with my current employer down there but I don't think I should rely on that. I'd rather rely on what I already have rather than hope I don't get cut off :)

Can somewhere answer these questions:

a) Will it be easier to pick up some part-time C++/Rails gigs in SF bay than Seattle? I'd really like to have some continuous source of income so I'd have money to come back/extend my runway.

b) Is it possible to live on $1000/month in SF? I subtract $600 for transit gas, emergency, etc.

For the rest, I summed up rent+utilities to be around $700, $100 for food, and $200 for everything else.

Am I correct in my calculations? Is there anything I'm missing?

c) How is the weather down there? Is it much hotter than Seattle?

e) Am I fucking crazy?

Thank you much.
> I've been thinking for a while about a more complex form of this sort of game.

The game like this already exists, it's called Colobot:
http://www.ceebot.com/colobot/index-e.php

Just like you said - distant planet, searching for resources, replicating and building new robots... The differences are that they fight aliens instead of competing with each other, and there's actually a player, who writes program, but can also perform some actions.

And they are not full-size virtual PCs, they can be programmed in some sort of C++-like language.

Nice game, I love it, too bad they seem to stop developing.
I predict the future to be "AJAX + JS + Processing", if we just add AJAX that makes calls to PHP or PERL then it'll be more powerful and flexible than Flash or Silverlight.

Next step: We need (the open source community) to create a very solid framework for this to work and also to build powerful tools that make it easy to create a user interface.
the obvious problem is that it's going to take a generation of browsers before everyone has native <canvas> support along with a respectable Javascript engine.

IE6 market share is still 17% with IE7 at ~25% (source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)

I can't imagine advanced Processing/JS is going to run well without native canvas and SpiderMonkey/V8/Squirrelfish
How about measuring distance using the metric system.
How tall are you? How long is your hair? (in metres)
How big is this room? How far is it to your house?

They should be able to convert from being 127 cm tall
to being 1.27 metres tall, and then be able to run around
measuring things that are a fraction of a metre
and multiple metres.

A good concept to add would be understanding things in multiples of ten. For instance, once they know it is 1.5 kilometres (1500 m) from their house to the school, they can use their understanding of decimals to tell them it would take roughly 1000 kids like them laid end-to-end on the sidewalk to cover the distance from their house to their school. ... They know this just from shifting the decimal point when comparing 1500 m to 1.27 m. If you are lucky, they will even think about this lesson on their walk home!

(roughly 1000 is a better estimate than 100 or 10,000
and in many situations, that kind of estimate is good enough)
1) So use use the Flex SDK and your favorite editor. Or, if on Windows, flashdevelop. Or, if you like Eclipse and have some cash to spare, Flex Builder.

2) Your opinion. Assuming it was done well, a Flash/Flex based mail client could rock. As an added bonus, done right, it could also be a client side mail client (using AIR).

Also, if you're using Flex controls, reskinning isn't that hard.

3) Again, your opinion. Without knowing what you mean, I can only assume you mean the whole Flash Authoring Tool (damn Adobe for overloading Flash to mean the IDE, the VM, the framework, and the technology)/time line thing, you don't need to use it. There are loads of options. See #1, above.
I noticed that also - even at 5k/license that is buying at least 2 more dedicated boxes to throw (name your FOSS RDBMS) on
Comparing median household income to median house prices is probably 80% of what you need to explain the housing market, and this article does a pretty good job. The essence is that you can't sustainably spend more on a house than you make, so there is no reason to expect the historical ratio to change more.

The only way you can reasonably expect that ratio to change in a dramatic way the way it did is if there was some underlying structural change in how people live. For example, a massive migration to dense cities where you're not spending hundreds a month for a car means you can, spend a larger proportion on housing, pushing that ratio up. But of course, we know that hasn't happened and will take decades if it ever does.
How many browsers out there support Canvas? And how is this compared to Flash - performance wise?
We have funding and customers. That means I actually work in an office and have responsibilities. Not easy to leave before 7pm.

"Startup" life is a lot different after you get out of the garage.
That's incorrect.

"Accidents are very strictly defined, and none have happened in the history of the US Navy..."

...according to what isn't classified as a state secret. We have no idea whether or not the US Gov't has classified 0, 1, or many nuclear accidents the US Navy is responsible for.

My clip about the Hanford reactor above stated there were 8 occasions at Hanford in which releases of radiation were classified and made a state secret.

You cannot prove the safety record of the US Navy running nuclear reactors is clean, especially considering the limited info available about the losses of the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpian. I can document repeated incidences by US military and it's close allies in which nuclear accidents happened and then those accidents were classified as state secrets.
Great point, this is still very much a "the future is here, but not widely distributed yet" moment, but such great geek eye candy.
I'd recommend Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python (http://pythonbook.coffeeghost.net/book1/index.html). It's free online, and it geared towards exactly that kind of age and setting. It's written for a beginner at programming, and most kids would probably love writing their own games.
Sorry, to correct myself Capital Lounge, not Angel Lounge, is that night.
It also means you have some control over your schedule, doesn't it? Its just another business meeting, like any other. Sometimes people can make it, sometimes they can't.

Its been almost six months since one was held in the city, and I think I'm going to hold one every month, so if you can't make this one, make the next one.
While I'll definitely need to check this out further and keep a close eye on it (especially given V8, SquirrelFish and SpiderMonkey), I'm not sold on this being a "Flash Killer". Not yet, anyway.

Take games, for example. The Tower Defense game is nice enough, but no where near the quality of the Flash based versions. And this is a very, very simple game compared to, say, Fancy Pants Adventures or the like. Can processing.js. I mean, the missiles don't even point at their target, for crying out loud.

This is on the level of C64/PET character based graphics, more or less.

Again, I know nothing about processing.js at this point, so, perhaps it's possible to do much more.

Two other questions come to mind, though:

1. Flash already has its issues vis a vie cross-browser and cross-platform performance. It's not at all bad, and, because of the developer base, pretty well defined, but certainly not perfect. How does this technology compare, especially given the widely disparate support for native canvas and decent JavaScript engines?

2. What about packaging and distribution? .swfs can be self contained, making distribution to, say, portals nice and easy. A whole infrastructure for add supported apps has grown up in the Flash world, as well.
Google's Android's market share compares well with Apple's iPhone
Since those are the stats for w3schools.com itself, I assume they are biased quite strongly towards web developers. For a more inclusive picture, try this:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-daily-20080701...

I particularly like how uniform the IE6 line is, suggesting a large percentage of the users are office-bound.

Also, have a look at Excanvas, which takes advantage of IE6's reasonable VML support to emulate the <canvas> tag. Quite impressive for such an old browser.
Hanford was reprocessing nuclear materials, what the author of the article was advocating in his article.

The horrible mess at Hanford is EXACTLY the kind of mess when you operate reprocessing reactors.
I agree. That's the way forward.

A password that they can remember beats a password written on their monitor, even if it's not that strong.
MTASC or haXe from Motion Twin are also good alternate .swf development compilers that you can integrate with your favorite development environment. I've played around with haXe with MinGW build tools on Win32 and was pleased with the results.
(1)You can build complete Flash applications using freely available Flex SDK & command line compiler. You dont have to stick on to Adobe Flash IDE or Adobe Flex Builder.

(2)'Cheesyness' depends a lot on how you implement fonts and how how much of a professional designer you are. Its is a function of your imagination and professionalism. See kontain.com

(3) Just like any other language, workflow tediousness depends on the kind of IDE you use. If you are of the developer kind and tries to use Flash IDE's timeline based designer workflow, it will be a disastrous experience.

Having said that , i wish Adobe open-sourced the Player.
Linkbait title, lots of empty facts, no meaningful conclusions...skip this one.
I have to admit, these demos are quite impressive for such a small amount of javascript. I was also surprised with how smoothly they ran. However, there is one thing that has been itching in the back of my mind every time I see an article on processing: it doesn't look like it is at all object oriented. Am I missing something?
I was at this speech yesterday (my sister just graduated from the University of Michigan) and it was excellent. His opening bit about how his parents met had the crowd roaring.
I'm not particularly familiar with this software but it appears to be some kind of project management software. I think the odds of someone beating an 8 character well chosen password are less than the value of the data protected by said password!
Giới trẻ mê du lịch 'bụi'
SASS: The Better, More Powerful CSS
Ask HN: Are any companies integrating social networking with digital cameras?
Mobile phone cameras (at least the ones I am aware of) aren't too great. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could post a high quality picture from my digital camera to a social network while I was at a concert? Are there any companies working on this?
Oops. Corrected, thanks. I wrote "Robert Morris", then realized that was ambiguous and added "(senior)", then I thought "wait, everybody just calls Robert Morris 'rtm'"...
Worked that way in many Unix systems - e.g. HP-UX as of ten years ago.

Doesn't seem to be that important - I'd worry more about a system that would reply to 10k/s remote login requests ...
I have never lived in SF, nor have any plans to — but what are your reasons to be there? Surely it'd be easier (or should I say cheaper) to work out of Seattle?
I'm on the other side: I can't stand apps made with flash.

I believe that Youtube's player is the only good thing ever created using flash. Everything else is just cheesy all-flash websites and apps which break basic functionality of the browser.
No, you're not crazy. Give it a shot. What do you have to lose really? Whether you will actually be able to find work is a question mark but as long as you have enough money so you won't be sleeping on a park bench, why not? Ah, to be 18 . . . worst year of my life . . . hope you make a better time of it than I did.
1/8 = one slice of pizza
Regarding the weather, I've lived in both places, San Francisco is much colder in the summer than Seattle. San Francisco, and most of coastal Northern California, barely has seasons.
Though Silicon Valley and the East Bay (Oakland, San Jose, etc) do get warmer, San Francisco, being surrounded by water on 3 sides, just doesn't get hot in the summer beyond a random handful of days. (On the the other hand, it also barely has winter :D)
Bring your jacket(s)!
That's like a huuuuuge PLUS as I really don't like hot air. Now I have another reason to go: get away from hot Seattlish weather.
I imagine many of the same arguments for and against Haml would apply to Sass. I'm thinking of James Britt's critique:

http://www.jamesbritt.com/2009/4/30/thoughts-on-haml

Would be curious to hear what people think of Sass. I'm considering using Haml/Sass as my templating engine.
I would really try to get a little bit of additional income, your numbers are very tight. Plus, you don't want to move to another city to stay in your room the whole time because you're broke, you want to enjoy your time in SF. $700/room is doable but still quite rare (especially without strange catches, like "3 bus rides away from X.") I'd put a bunch of energy into finding the room before you take off, maybe check out AirBNB? Have a separate post about housing hookup?
Yeah, it wasn't much of an article, but the point was still valid. Too many web designers use the div tag for absolutely everything. It works, but there's a reason for the other tags. They create semantics that make the web more accessible.
"a) Will it be easier to pick up some part-time C++/Rails gigs in SF bay than Seattle? I'd really like to have some continuous source of income so I'd have money to come back/extend my runway."

--Probably. As a rough lithmus test, you could run searches on startuply/ craigslist for both cities and compare the number of returns.

"b) Is it possible to live on $1000/month in SF? I subtract $600 for transit gas, emergency, etc."

--It's possible. 100 for food seems low ($3 per day). A big expense is rent; if you could cut that down you'd be better off.

"c) How is the weather down there? Is it much hotter than Seattle?"

--Not sure, I'm from NYC =)

"e) Am I fucking crazy?"

--No. And keep us in touch!
"a lot", not all.
a) probably -- SF is full of programming jobs
b) maybe -- rent isn't cheap (unless you live in a scary neighborhood) and finding a room to rent might be tough
c) it's rarely hot in SF -- it's usually mild to cool during the day, and often cool to cold at night
e) nope -- you should have a good time, especially if you live in a fun neighborhood (like the Mission)
I compared living costs using Craigslist. Turns out apartment prices all almost the same. The only cheaper thing is 200 bucks for gasoline to go there/back.

EDIT: I think that the advantage that moving down there will give me will outweigh the $200.
It also provides the incentive to spam the link more often than you would without the money.
Why would you use flash for something like kontain.com? It feels so weird. Nearly everything you see there could easily be done with html. Doing it in Flash only means that you are going to create a lot of inconsistencies with the way everything normally works. Strange context menus. Strange selection colors. Strange click behaviours. And so on.

Why would you want that? That’s crazy. Flash should be used as a last ressort. Video. Games. That sort of stuff. Use friggin’ html for the rest and do not confuse your users.
The likelihood of that greatly depends on whether or not your hair is curly now.
It is ridiculous to draw a connection between (a) giving a ridiculous reason to persuade my close friend to accept my offer to pay for his dinner, and (b) compelling an oppressed population in an occupied territory to accept their fate of continued suffering because, you know, it's been 50 years. My father killed your father, and we've managed to dominate you for half a century, so, you know, give it up. We won.
how hard is it to program a "password strength" detector into these apps?
Off-topic, but twittervision.com
Contact Justin.tv. They're looking for summer interns
Ok to prove what I am talking about (because it is only fair I do). Here are four 4 character password correctly hashed and salted.

6fe4bc5a51a3967a3a5e8d2f2baadd08db8cfa87934d88c142b7f89a

2faf5762d544eafaea9792e90660bfd224ffda2bb5f4dd4435a011ba

86096426b8cef5ebbf438a3f743b955100a4a0b4f72593af7485a1bb

0522e582fb1186fb79934998be7ee04f6c4a607009218fa3c35cffc6

The hash algorithm used is sha1. The salting scheme uses a randomly generated salt and a known salting roation.
I gave you 4 to give you fair chance to work on them. I'll give you more if you want. (there is no way to brute force these BTW so dont really bother :))
OT: I was in Michigan to see my brother graduate with his PhD. Soon before we left we found out that he couldn't walk because of rules and regulations(he still had to defend his thesis)and so we didn't attend commencement, just visited, ate out, took photos, etc.

We went to the Henry Ford estate yesterday. He was definitely the hacker-entrepreneur type. A substantial part of his house was basically a early 20th century laboratory, with engineers working on secret projects.
Nokia 6260 Slide Black (Unlocked), 5mp camera, GPS, WIFI, E-mail
The 5 Megapixel Camera with a Carl Zeiss lens and LED flash well speed you into a new world of photographic skills. Incredible storage is possible with this unlocked GSM cell phone; the MicroSD allows you to insert as many cards you want.
The whole concept of home value recovery is flawed.

We don't talk about the recovery of gasoline prices. The concept that a bubbles peak price is somehow correct is by definition flawed.
I don't remember the exact words, but in his video lectures about linear algebra Gilbert Strang says he has no real visual concept of higher dimensions.
You probably figured this out already, but living a little bit out of town (along the peninsula for example) can cut your rent by 40%, which would be more than the caltrain/bart fare to get you into town every day.

Depending on your motivations, it could completely defeat the purpose of heading here though.
Don't get me wrong, I love github, but it seems like every bug on sites I use exists on a site that was developed with Rails or some other framework that advertises rapid development. I'm not accusing you of incompetence, but out of every site I go to it's the one that's most often got some feature disabled because it was too buggy, unplanned, or what have you. Granted, it's also the one with the most new features popping up.

Yes, shit happens, but there's a pretty strong correlation between agile development and bugginess, whether it's the mentality it encourages or some other factor.
SHA-512 and Whirlpool are still designed to be very fast. The point is, you want to slow down the password hashing operation. So SHA-512, SHA-256, and SHA-1 are all fine, as long as you iterate them several thousand times.
In a down economy, with huge unemployment in the valley (lots of competitors, unless you're unique in some way?) are you not better investing in yourself by continuing college?
If I fail I'll go back to living with my parents/continue college in the fall.

Why not just do it from home? I don't really see the benefit of moving to SF. You'll reach Ramen profitability a lot more easily if your costs are $0. You might even start college with something that most students can only dream of: income.
Why? Is there really a point to moving to SF? I see no plan here and really no reason for you to take such a leap, so why bother wasting your money just to move locations for the summer. Anything you would be doing there could be done from where you are. Save your $3000, continue working on what you have, and if it seems to be a good idea, invest it into that product. You gain nothing by moving there (unless you find actual work). I really don't understand why everyone here is telling you to do it. I know at 18 it can seem glamorous to do something so crazy but if you sit back and think about it for a second, its pretty stupid. If you have a finished product and have something to gain by moving there (like finding people to work with or for you on it) then I could see it. If you were simply planning on looking for work then I could see it. I just see no plan and it seems like a big waste to just do something so irrational.
I felt I needed to comment on this because it hits too close to home and I qualify - 1) dealt with IP vs. another music lable (hint!) 2) we have our own IP lawyers 3) the music labels want you to assume they have a "battery" of lawyers 4) they probably do but they're entangled in other litigation issues or they don't want study the finer points so they issue pre-emptive attacks or don't do anything at all 5) even on our side of the fence, the best IP lawyer/s don't want to study the finer points of the argument (you'd wish they'd do that) 6) in the end, it becomes a question of will and who has the war chest. I understand where Matt is coming from but it looks different when you're neck deep into this.
> Now I have another reason to go: get away from hot Seattlish weather

As someone who lives in Atlanta, this sentence about made me spit coffee out my nose... =)

(FWIW, I'd love to move to Seattle area, but it's just not in the cards for me.)
That's pretty irrelevant.
Yikes. Whoever created kontain.com did not know what they were doing. Not only does it break some basic browser functionality, like opening a link in new tab, but because it is all flash it is also painfully slow. It takes 9 seconds to display the first page (which is very simple and would render in under 2 seconds if it was done in HTML) and 14 seconds for every photo page. I bet it also doesn't play well with mobile browsers.

Using this site as an example of "professionalism" is just wrong.
hi matt, commented on your other post. From experience, the music labels would like us to believe they have a battery of lawyers who study this, sad to say - it's not the case, from BOTH sides of the fence.
Pretty cool. I think I semi-broke it (or at least found a bug):

http://marcusvorwaller.com/look/Mozilla_Firefox-20090503-095...
VPS Comparison between Slicehost and Prgmr: is an $8 instance as good as a $20 one?