skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm getting really tired of seeing snarky comments like this show up in EVERY single post about Apple doing anything regardless of wether it was "good" or "bad". I'm also getting tired of "own" being used to mean "control", but that's a different argument.

There is nothing here to indicate that Apple has demonstrated any level of complete control over the devices they sell.

The only thing Apple demonstrated here is that once they determine an app is a bad actor that they are willing to terminate the services they provide utilized by those apps. There's no Big Brother style weight being thrown around here like it's some school yard fight, just a simple termination of contract and it's a benefit to users as well as Apple. It is also a mechanism that is severely limited in scope. Apple isn't capable of exerting full control over a person's phone only certain aspects which they have demonstrated a significant amount of restraint and have only been willing to execute any action when they have determined that there is either a security risk or a breach of terms. We can debate whether their determination of what constitutes a breach is appropriate, but I have seen nothing from Apple to demonstrate that they aren't acting in their customers' best interests in these cases. I can't say that of any other company I've owned products from with similar capabilities so I'm inclined to give them a little slack.

It's also important to remember that Apps do not define the functionality of Apple's devices, merely extend them, and weren't even available until consumers demanded it. Users have never "owned", in the sense of control, everything about the applications they install on any platform and I don't think we can rationally say they ever will, unless they build it themselves. You want examples of devices that can be considered "owned" by the company that produced them? How about Playstation or Kinect (before MS' shift)? There are plenty of examples of companies that publicly used the big hammer approach to dealing with things before they went with warnings, notices, policy change deadlines, service termination, or any other remediable approach, but so far I haven't seen Apple go that route and they don't deserve to be vilified for doing what we all wish everyone else would do when faced similar kinds of things. As far as I know Apple can't arbitrarily disable your phone from working as a phone.

I wouldn't want my business model challenged by the company that created the product I had based my business on either, but it is the height of folly to assume it wouldn't be when the model depends on "bending" a few rules that are otherwise considered to protect customers from foul play.

edit: edits.
Definitely, the article is conflating micro-managing and power. I'm sure there are ways Ilkka profoundly shapes the company and that kind of CEO influence is likely why he is able to delegate effectively.
Well, some Western programmers use Zen.
So much for the "small government" Republicans advocate, huh?
I started Boone in 96, and that Phish show was a campus legend.
There were almost as many Democratic YEAs (92) as Democratic NAYs (98).
Creating a HipChat Fuck Counter with Zapier
I think the point is that if i'm hanging a picture, the only thing i care about is the picture being on the wall. The process of that happening is irrelevant to me, i go to the hardware store to buy a drill bit because thats what i know will get my picture on the wall, i dont care if it has a carbon fibre tip and its heat resistant to 200 degrees, i just want my picture on the wall, so if you were to instead offer me a small hook with some double sided tape on the back that i can just stick to the wall, i'd probably take you up on that offer because it accomplishes the thing i care about with less hassle. Things like that are how businesses are born.
I guess we've known for a while (at least since EverQuest or World of Warcraft at the very latest) that when you combine "polish" with content designed to scratch some addiction-seeking itch in our brains, bad things can happen. At least with those you know the flat rate you're going to be paying over the course of the coming year? I'm sure there's an argument that can be made about you getting "your money's worth" for that $400 of entertainment... but jeez... $400? That's an awful lot of money for a video game. If you knew back when you first installed the game that you'd end up spending so much money on it again, do you think you'd still go ahead and install it?
No problem. Maybe just me (perhaps quite some people here as well) had a high expectation over Google. I thought Google pulled off that stunt from a human right stand, rather than from simply being patriotic to the USA. GOOG has much more resources than Elon Musk to do lots of stuffs meaningful for the greater good of human being.
In fairness, these elements of customer behaviour are actually in the favour of someone starting a designer clothes business targeting the rich:

- many of them didn't earn it themselves, so...
- they really don't really understand the concept of "value"
- they don't understand investing vs. consuming

(that's also why "designer" markets don't appeal to me as a startup space either)

A bigger issues with targeting rich spendthrift consumers is that most people considering a startup don't know any and don't understand them. I expect that irrespective of any issues with sharing their body size, wealthy women who buy fitted designer clothes really enjoy the experience of visiting high end stores to touch the material and be complimented on the fit by a helpful attendant, are prepared to pay the resulting premiums and wouldn't replace the experience with a super-efficient website even if they already do all their grocery shopping and flight-booking online. (But then that's a hypothesis too as none of my female friends qualify as rich yet)
Funny thing is that people simply go out and post their un-informed opinions and write off the work that people (moderators in this case) have been doing for years to keep HSI healthy. For example, I have never even met Webengage founder and he is certainly not a friend and hence getting upvoted. Friend of the community and getting upvoted? Maybe.

> Sadly the guy(who had first raised the concern) didn't post anything after that and neither the guy whose post was frowned upon.

The guy who was 'jumped on' is still active and commenting on HSI. So is the guy that posted the second thread.

In the end, please raise your concerns but don't discourage people from visiting HSI or 'mixing' without getting your facts right. Thanks
End to end, not client to server.
You've released? MAZAL TOV! I've been stalking you guys for a while now.
CISPA doesn't revoke ECPA or SCA. It overrides it, purportedly for the sole purpose of enabling the sharing of operational network security information, in roughly two scenarios: discovery/dissemination of new vulnerabilities, and ongoing incidents.
CISPA: Myths vs Facts [pdf]
Isn't he saying that even if the API provider requires SSL/TLS/https, an accidental http sends the username/key in plain text over the wire?
"So right now I'll chalk the VentureSource valuation data
up to some statistical anomaly. Unless MoneyTree looks
similar tomorrow, at which point we'd really have something
to talk about."

And then they pushed publish.
Yeah, your printer has to speak PCL for that to work.
grammer! :)
If Tylenol makes Americans less judgemental then it really is a miracle drug.
"If we let them persuade us we didn't actually make a difference, if we start seeing it as someone else's responsibility to do this work and it's our job to just go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch Transformers, well, then next time they might just win. Let's not let that happen"
I'm really proud of how you guys managed a 3-deep comment thread saying the same thing each time. It really speaks to the breadth of intellectual quality we have available here.
When I google frictionless owls, I get the following top 3:

www.frictionlessowls.com

frictionless-owls.com

www.frictionlessowls.co.uk

So the takeaway I guess is that hyphens are bad but not as bad as having to use .co.uk :-)
Unless I misread the bill, CISPA information sharing is opt-in. There is no legal obligation for a company to share your information.
2 Good Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years Away
If anyone is interested, PCA is used in scale development to help reduce the number of items down to something useful. It is typically followed by a factor analysis to determine factors, though far too many use PCA in place of a factor analysis. I didn't realize it was used much outside of measurement.
The reason this doesn't work is because the blackout would have to be invoked again and again, and sites are reluctant to do this because it disgruntles users. Lobbyists on the other hand have no problem introducing this kind of legislation a few times a year. We're already seeing resistance wearing off, especially since they're trying to be more gradual and fuzzy about introducing legislation that threatens the core of the internet.
Compare to category

Makes everything normalised to the searches related to the category "Computers and Electronics".
Is there a way to compute a "taste distance" for a combination of users reliably? I think if you just throw their ratings together you'll get a point with impossible taste (except if they like the same movies, in which case it won't matter). Maybe return only movies that were in the recommendations of both users?
> How is local storage in your experience? Last I talked to people about this, everyone was cursing it for lack of capacity and general quirkiness.

We've had no issues with it so far and I heard the same criticisms you did. If you make sure not to store too much stuff in localStorage (there is a limit for UIWebViews) you should be fine.

> My concern with HTML is that if FB and LinkedIn were unable to muster the required resources to overcome the engineering challenges of HTML, chances are I won't have those resources either

I get that, but it does overestimate the capabilities and resources of FB and LinkedIn. In the end, they are just developers like any other developers solving the same problems everyone else is, and simply throwing more money at the problem doesn't usually fix things. Keep in mind that there's a lot more pressure on FB and LinkedIn to deliver perfection so they are going to be less likely to "stick it out".

> Native is more predictable.

I agree, and there are lots of other benefits to native as well. They must be weighed against the detriments: having to write the same app multiple times for multiple platforms, having to play by Apple's rules, not being able to update apps for customers immediately (that's a huge problem IMO), working with painful layout tools, etc. As always, it's important to weight the pros and cons before choosing a strategy.

> Would you say your team is extraordinary in its capacity to wrangle with HTML, or is something like this available to your average YC startup, or to most startups out there?

I assure you we are not extraordinary. Anybody with a very basic level of native programming experience and who is competent with HTML5/CSS3 and the latest javascript frameworks (backbone, ember, angular, knockout, etc) can replicate what we did. I think the reason it seems extraordinary is because you only ever see articles about big, trendy companies ditching HTML5. "Small unknown team builds great HTML5 mobile app" just doesn't have the same punch. I also believe there is a bit of religious war going on between web developers and native developers so there's always a frenzy whenever there's a drop or two of blood in the water. Ignore all that crap and just choose the solution that suits both your app's requirements and your skills best.
CISPA: FAQ on What it is and Why it's Still Dangerous

https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq
i was wondering about the same thing. perhaps the result is a bit skewed because of people searching for the meaning if the fileextension js?

On the other hand, it started to rise in 2007 when ext.js 2.0 was released.
Slightly nicer PDF versions versions of all of them: http://www.scribd.com/collections/4230124/-why-s-return
Start-up on a Shoestring – Part 1
Sounds like they tried to mitigate the situation in a reasonable manner. If they name you as fourth, then the formerly fourth place finisher gets upset.

Some things are like futbol - there's no instant replay. Lawyering up isn't going to impress anyone.
Side note: Try "javascript" vs "jquery". It seems they're equal now and soon probably the latter will be searched more.
Can you tell a short story about how the legally-binding privacy protections in this bill work, that would prevent sharing with the government without a warrant?

The onus is not on the opposition to this bill to explain how privacy will go wrong, it is on the supporters since it is a new law with vague language and far-reaching potential consequences.

Also, having privacy amendments shot down or not brought to vote doesn't make CISPA seem very democratic.
Same applies to any sales (especially driven by sales engineers), but often demos go back to showing as much screens/options/features in the product as possible during given time
Yeah I like how the author summed up the analysts statement as "a big fat, dunno" when in reality she said "the data is incomplete".
Why 2 parts?

Cory D Oras.

Obviously.
The problem it seems to me with Stripe and others is that they stuff the API key in as the Basic Auth username. Wouldn't is be safer to use, say, a merchant ID as the username and then the API key as the password (since the password is not transmitted on the errant HTTP)?
The examples link gives 404.

EDIT: The examples link in the body: "Check out the examples page for ideas..."
Ironically, that has been the best part about this ordeal - a number of the top competitors have shown support through the forum as well as private emails. I compete alone, so this issue has given me the opportunity to get to know some of the other folks.

I am not certain I want to work on anymore Kaggle competitions. I put (just a guess) somewhere between 100 and 200 hours into FlightQuest. It is hard for me to rationalize putting this amount of effort into another Kaggle hosted competition after going through the experiences I went through for this competition.
My representative voted against it. Unfortunately, I know my senator is in favor of it.
What are your reasons to question Obama's veto threat?
Released where? I went to their webpage to find information on this, but I couldn't see anything. They said the call is out, but they only link to the member singup page, not actual information on the issue.
Gotcha, thanks.

I now feel bad for all the times I was annoyed by retail sales people asking me questions about what I was doing. I thought they were being nosy. Sounds like they were actually well trained and trying to help me solve my problem.
Are the MA representatives allowed to vote while not present? It seems very strange that an entire state's representatives will not have a vote on this issue because of a scheduling conflict. Can the votes not be phoned in?
Not appropriate for Hacker News and a pandering headline, flagged.
This is an excellent insight about getting hung up on product instead of value.

This is the inverse of the classic copywriting strategy of asking,"Therefore What?" after every marketing statement to identify the underlying benefits.
i.e.
we sell drills. therefore what?
you can use it to make holes. etc...
(my take on the saying, "you sell the hole, not the drill."

Just question everything they say and you'll stumble upon what really drives their decision.

Great Post.
I'd love to have a meaningful conversation about how we can make online activism actually have an effect on Congress. Any takers?

It seems to me like we need a new generation of tools that allow people to take actions that matter. Beyond relatively poorly designed click-to-call your congress person tools, we really don't have much right now. I think with better software we can do a lot more, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that'll look like.

I'd love to hear HN's thoughts.
The man wants you use end-to-end encryption. NIST has been trying to tell you how to do it for years. They even published Suite B to try to get us to use modern crypto instead of the '90s stuff we're using today.
Good point as to domain credibility. But I have to admit that I groan whenever I see a legit brand with a url that is: .com/our-red-widgets-are-perfect-for-your-classic-1957-red-chevy/

The sheer number of people doing it makes me wonder if at some point they'll implement it, if they haven't already.
"We got two models for you: either you continue running your site as you see fit, which of course will mean tons of take-down orders, NSLs and other harassment - OR you could OPT IN to our new system which necessitates no further action on your part, as long as you install our little black box here next to your server. Your call."
> "I've spent much of the last 5 or so years traveling the world and I don't regret a minute of it. But eventually I think you need some kind of familiar stability, an anchor, to feel more at peace."

Hear hear. I've lived in 8 cities in the last 9 years - intentionally. I don't regret any of it, and it was definitely a deliberate plan to see as much of the world as I can while minimizing career sacrifice (i.e., not just quitting everything and traveling), but the isolation becomes taxing after a while.

Hitting the big Reset button on your social circles every year gets tiring after a while. I think I'll stick around my current place for a while.
So if they stop taxing us, you don't value your money anymore?
My first thoughts as well. Hiring in someone else over the top of a key hire can be problematic from a cultural standpoint.
If you encrypt the data coming from the client all the way to the database or any other persistence mechanism, then it doesn't matter if the company is obliged to forward your data to a gov database. It would be encrypted, hence not easily readable.

In my case, as a service provider, we are encrypting as much as we can, so that we can't even read the data even if obliged to. It becomes troublesome for some pieces of data because we need to decrypt it so that it can be displayed in the website. So if we can decrypt it, as a provider, then we would be obliged to decrypt it for government agencies.

It would be interesting to see what can we do as a provider, to protect our own customers without breaking the law.
He'll sign it with a signing statement going "I don't really like any of this, but I'm going to sign it anyway" and claim that is somehow a solution.
User-to-user encryption is really not feasible/possible for public forums, social media, blogging, photo sharing, or web search. It's hard enough to do where it actually is feasible, such as message interchange - especially considering the fact that we now all have multiple auto-synched devices.
This FAQ includes what I think are very misleading statements about CISPA; for instance, CISPA is clearly not intended to enforce copyright, and includes provisions that no copyright advocate would have accepted were that the purpose of the law. For instance, CISPA, unlike any other statute in the US Code, specifically exempts ToS violations from the purview of the statute.
Someone had an idea of integrating Communities into Wordpress blogs, too, as sort of a forum replacement. I thought it was a pretty good idea, since they kind of act that way. You get "groups" of post, and then you can see everyone's post as a forum thread.

I'd much rather implement something like that than BBPress.
Exactly the outcome I had in mind, raju. Thanks!
Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
They could always, you know, run their own..
That's not the legal obligation you should care about.

Under CISPA, there's no longer any legal obligation to protect your information. There is full immunity for not doing so.
Google Reader - "ebay"
The whole point of the bill is to facilitate the sharing of a limited set of operational network security data without warrants or court orders, so it is very difficult to respond to your question.
Not to be "that guy", but that's a C= 128.
Supercell is one of hundreds of developers on the App Store trying to make freemium mobile games.

They're doing well because they picked a winning business model for their games and then they went on to make great games. Clash of Clans was a breath of fresh air in an environment with tons of clones and uninspired crap. Also, entertainment is a hits driven business where if a product starts winning, it tends to dominate.

Picking a business model is crucial, but not sufficient, to be successful.
> to put things in perspective, SuperCell makes 10x more money per employee than Goldman Sachs.

That's...unbelievable. Wow.
Japan's National Police Agency to urge Internet providers to block users of Tor
Thanks. Fixed a couple minutes ago.
Maybe I'm having a brainfart or something... but since PCA is eigenvector/eigenspace-based and essentially determines linear noncorrellation of the different vectors, changing units of measurement shouldn't change which dimensions are most different about said vectors?

Edit: Ah right - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitening_transformation - let covariance matrix be I.
Thought the same thing - that the US is falling apart due to structural failings in its construction. Not sure the analogy of president is right though. The presidency may have strengthened its role in some ways but it is still hamstrung by congress and as a whole US government has got less powerful in recent decades not more, but to the gain of corporations and a small wealth elected not the people as a whole. Precisely because no branch of government is particularly powerful it has no effective remedy once corporations and individuals gain sufficient wealth and influence that they are able to demonstrate regulatory capture and wield power against any individual branch which causes problems to their interests.
» Building Out A Smart City Disruption
Plasma ring launcher developed at University of Missouri
It's half-and-half with dems though, while republicans while overwhelmingly in favor of it. There's a chance the democratic senate will reject it, but considering a large number of them are blue dog democrats, it's not looking good.
that's a good point. there are plenty of successful niche market businesses. sometimes 5% of market share is all you need. It stands to reason that the more niche your audience, the more important marketing becomes.
I'm willing to give them some credit for corporate strategy. Keep in mind Zynga is in the same business as they are and they are failing hard. Player count is dropping like a stone and layoffs abound.

The fact that Supercell has been able to succeed with the freemium model while many other mobile developers (both big and small) cannot, speaks to something unique about them.
The problem is that the first phrase has been held to be mere preamble, i.e., the goal for the second half of the Amendment. Unfortunately, the way it is written, the first phrase is clearly not a condition of the latter phrase and indeed, many past and present SCOTUS justices interpret the second half as barring any restrictions on gun ownership, including restrictions on felon ownership.

This is why courts have upheld the right to bear arms despite the existence of the National Guard and various other historical lawful militia.
The USG could do that without CISPA. Why would they need to pass a law to do that?
Rackspace support does this, drives me up a wall!