skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Ticket tracking systems?
Any recommendations for a startup graduating from emails and Skype chats to a ticket management system for support and keeping track of development?

Desired features:

- Relatively lightweight, this is the "bigger than a couple of people inside each other's heads, smaller than a giant organisation with management tiers" scale. Aiming to reduce busywork, not increase it!

- Integrates with email well for support.

- Hosted, or can be self-hosted on Linux.

- Open source a plus but not a fixed requirement.

Considering but have not yet evaluated:

- Request Tracker http://bestpractical.com/rt/

- Eventum http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum/

- Zendesk http://www.zendesk.com/

What else would you suggest looking at (or avoiding)?
I don't see this contradicting Anonymous's philosophy at all.

These are people tipping the police off anonymously. This is more often then not for crimes like drugs that Anonymous does not agree with.

They did exactly the same thing in the US a year or so ago.

The police are 'The man', people acting in secret with the police are not what Anonymous would see as on their side.
This oscillates back and forth: we're never going to get rid of one side so it's pointless to start claiming the world has changed when a 60-40 split flips.

As an example: all of the apps which still work if anything, anywhere, doesn't load and run a huge pile of JS correctly. c.f. Twitter, Gawker, etc. The client side is fragile to an extent which simply isn't true on the server – this doesn't mean you don't use it but rather that you still have to think about what happens when something breaks.
I knew my phone would be valuable some day!
To be clear, I think that vendors make their services "backdoorable" because they want to extract revenue from them and attract consumers.

I disagree. Most are "backdoorable" because it is easier to build a service that way.

For instance consider gmail. The hard requirement is that a person armed with a user name and password can login from a browser and get access to that email. The common requirement is that a person armed with the right cookie can get that email. Now in theory you could encrypt all of the emails on the server, but now your operations costs went through the roof. However if you store them in plain text then you can use smart indexing, and your operations costs are much more manageable.

However once you've decided to have plain text files on your server, EVEN IF you aren't doing anything with them other than storing/sending them to the user, you're now able to backdoor those files, and hence can be compared to by a court.

There have been many email systems out there. Open source (qmail, sendmail, etc), proprietary (Exchange, Dovecot, etc), hosted in the cloud (Hotmail, Gmail, etc), hosted at your company (Exim, Oracle Communications Messaging Server, etc), built on top of platforms not meant to do email (Lotus Notes being a prime example) and so on.

Every single one of the ones I named and many, many, more stored data in plain text and legal discovery could be compelled on them. Simply because that was the easiest way to build them. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions because they were meant to be. Hushmail comes to mind. However even there, even when it was designed to store data in encrypted format, if the government can find a way to force you to extract data, they will push you to do so. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail for a description of the way in which the government got Hushmail to capture plain text, even though the data was stored in plain text.)

The moral? Often the government has access not because evil profit-mongering corporations did wrong, but simply because obvious technical decisions leave them able to do so. And this can be true even when those corporations made a good faith effort to make that impossible.
French fries aren't a combination of things.
That is pretty cool. It would be handy if I can see the multiples of 7 that I have used already. That way I can figure out what to work towards next.
I can only recreate seeing it. I can't actually recreate the style with my own content, can I (or did I miss something?)
Cops: Trained That Cell Phones Could Be Guns to Possibly Avoid Going Viral
And you really think the best way to do that is to subsidize toys for rich folks?
So why did you comment then?
French Fries is not a combination of things.

And yogurt is a combination, once you add the sugar etc that is in the finished product.
What's new about this? Prior to Hangouts, calls to my Google Voice number always was routed to my cell phones and Google Talk.
I agree crypto on personal and business communication by default would be great, but it won't do much to truly protect the data from national security.

If using NSA approved crypto they'd love that such as RSA.

It's newer algorithms like PGP in the 90's that actually protect (or did) or extreme military grade encryption. Trapdoors and algos that can be broken by the NSA are more preferred and don't get the Zimmerman treatment because of that. If I were the NSA I'd do the same thing, it is their job.

There really is no way to fully encrypt that isn't undoable by the NSA. As long as it is only the NSA and not some other competitor spying on business ideas and private communications. Trapdoors for national security are typically in the software or a known flaw that makes it easier to decrypt and recover this information, obtain keys or enter the system to trigger and get the needed information to reverse. There are ways to trigger these modes within the software, software to be used by the NSA has to be approved by them. There is a reason you are subject to all sorts of scrutiny if you don't use approved algos/software wherever you do encryption/decryption (even when you upload a new app you are asked this and can cause problems if you aren't using the system crypto libraries).

http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2188
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2240

If you want to test this, simply make your own crypto lib and send some comms to a bad place in current geopolitics (I don't recommend it). Soon you will get a visit from the FBI and you may get the Phil Zimmerman treatment. Again, can't fault them, it is their job, but understand nothing is truly secure from national security. Yes it might be impossible for other businesses to read it or individuals but not the organization that employs the greatest cryptographers of all time.
The First Ever Web Page, Amazingly, Is Lost
"This is more often then not for crimes like drugs"

Citation needed, I guess?
Square Loses Two Execs, Including One Out Before His First Day on the Job
Thanks for that link--good read :)
The strategy somewhere (google?) where they charge or otherwise disincent consumption of unhealthy food and encourage healthy food is kind of interesting.

My beverage of choice is Ito-En bottled green tea. I'd prefer if it came in glass vs. plastic bottles, though, and it is $1/bottle even at Costco, so at home or office I tend to just make my own using either matcha teabags (also from costco) or looseleaf green tea.
Not CA residents (assuming you do business in CA). http://www.tomwbell.com/NetLaw/Ch04/CalSpamLaw.html
That's a great idea! The trick will be finding a place to display it. Maybe I'll add a button next to the score, and clicking it will reveal an overlay with played numbers.
German firm to hire hundreds with autism
Neither is the Chinese wall. How does this have any bearing to my point above?
> .. the argument against nuclear energy; it produces too much waste.

??? Nuclear power produces less waste than any other energy source on earth - including solar and wind. And coal produces more nuclear waste (by volume, not intensity) than nuclear power does.
(Last time this came up was here, I think, but nearly 3 years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1331626 )
That's a good question.

What is your point anyway? How does being, or not being, a combination make any difference anyway?
The People of Postgres: Tom Lane
The author is confused about the technology. The government didn't intercept GPS signals from the phone because that's not possible. Only the GPS satellites transmit signals, and the devices merely receive them.

But the phone was transmitting its GPS coordinates to the phone company, who then passed this on to the government. From page 4 of the opinion: “Believing that Big Foot was carrying the 6447 phone, authorities obtained an order from a federal magistrate judge on July 12, 2006, authorizing the phone company to release subscriber information, cell site information, GPS real-time location, and ‘ping’ data for the 6447 phone in order to learn Big Foot's location while he was en route to deliver the drugs.”
If pushing the right buttons on a Video Poker machine to make it pay out 10x jackpot is a CFAA violation, then yes, writing a script to access an undocumented API is unauthorized access.

Then again, I'm pretty sure that company lost their case. How can you claim that it's not documented if you provide HTML and Javascript example code?
reminds me of a passage from In The Plex

Over the years Winograd had become an expert at figuring out where students stood on the spectrum of brainiacs who found their way into the department. Some were kids whose undergrad record was straight A pluses, GRE scores scraping perfection, who would come in and say,“What thesis should I work on?” On the other end of the spectrum were kids like Larry Page, who would come in and say, “Here’s what I think I can do.” And his proposals were crazy.
He’d come into the office and talk about doing something with space tethers or solar kites.
Show HN: Recreate Mondrian with just a black, red, yellow, and blue magic markers.
Steve Wilhite told the New York Times that he was "annoyed" there was still a debate over how to say the acronym.

What a legend.
I agree with you. I'd refine it further by eliminating all instances of "1,2,single page". If it's only two pages, just go straight to single page and don't force me to deal with something that's effectively a non-issue.
What, are you high? :)

In all seriousness, it's an intriguing idea, and you point out some interesting parallels, but the idea of the Silk Road seems really small for someone like Satoshi Nakamoto, given that BitCoin is a work of unusual genius that potentially has world-changing power, and the Silk Road is about trafficking narcotics. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I want to think the creator of BitCoin has larger, more expansive goals in mind than getting people high or even undermining the war on drugs.

Thinking that the creator of Silk Road is also the creator of BitCoin is like answering the question, "Why hasn't the miner of the first million BitCoins spent any of his currency?" by suggesting that Satoshi accidentally erased his wallet.

Which would be hilarious. 'Fuck me,' I would imagine him saying.
My tub of whey protein powder costs $50 for 5lbs. If this is becoming so endemic, please tell me where precisely to go so I can save barrels of money a year.
As neither a mechanic nor a photographer, thank you for the clear explanation. I learned a lot and was, at the same time, smiling... was your (now) fiance berating you during the development process for spending all of your time in the workshop/start up office or did she know what she is getting in to. Let's be honest, with your skill level on fabrication combined with curiosity I don't suppose this is the last project...

Meanwhile a (long and rambling) question. With some friends we bought a friend a quality lathe for their birthday. I was involved in sneaking it in to their basement, and holy * was that thing heavy! During the write up you make use of various tools - some seem appear to be professional level, base mounted etc, then at the end you mention the dremel... right place/right time... does it do the job you expect of it?

As an Englishman that moved to the US, 15 years later I am still trying to decipher infomercials, advertisements, brand names & US/Europe preconceptions, all comment welcome!
I don't think it is as much news as a hack (which is completely relevant for this forum). The reason for its attraction is because most of the demographic here utilizes github and cares about privacy.
This is fantastic. My only suggestion would be a stronger visual indication of when something gets added to the sum or the score. It probably sounds cosmetic, but visual feedback is helpful for reinforcing text explanations (at least for me, being a more hands-on learner).
I thought this was going to be a reverse-MD5 on their gravatar url. Interesting to know this is there, too!

(As a possible improvement you could also take all possible matches and compare their MD5's to the gravatar URL.)
I philosophically believe hacktivism or any kind of demonstrative breaking-of-unjust-rules is a good thing. But 'unjust' is the key. and I think this is reflective of the wiki-leaks/anarchist culture of "breaking 'any' rule is a good thing". It ceases to be activism of any sort, and becomes children playing with firearms. It also serves to undermine the impact of genuine hacktivism like that of Aaron Schwartz and Weev.

Genuine hactivists/activists harm institutions, and do their utmost to avoid harming innocents, as they know that undermines the cause.
Baby's life saved with 3-D printed device that restored his breathing
Why Does Hollywood Hate The Future?
For those that have a subscription, The New Yorker did an interesting profile of Makani in the 5/20 issue:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_...

Apparently Montague was actually seeking funding to create a kite-boat (he had previously help establish kite-boarding), but it was Larry and Sergey's idea to go down the wind energy route.
The publicly-funded system doesn't segment the market. Individual pieces of it do. The public schools will continue to service all segments, but some segments will have other options.

How is this not a pareto win (for students)?
That makes complete sense. I originally considered making a small noise when the sum was added to the score, though I'm leaning more towards flashing the updated score with a different color. Thank you for the feedback.
I recall some court rulings here in the US that a company could be required to install new software to write log data to disk, once the court found out that it was available in memory. This is only a special case of "information which they [do] have in their possession", but shows that that rule goes further than one might think.

I am concerned about another scenario. I'm working on a site where people can exchange messages they've encrypted at the endpoints, such that the participants alone have the decryption ability and the server does not (assuming drawkbox is mistaken in some of his claims). Will it be illegal to launch this in the US if the requested law is passed first?

Sometimes in tax law, courts have held that because Congress was considering a bill, the taxpayer was on notice that something was going to be illegal, and then the taxpayer was unable to rely on it, even though it was legal when he did it. Besides, USG in recent years has proved to be unrestrained by legal barriers to anything it has demanded.
I work for one of the biggest global wind turbine manufacturers. On one hand I recognize that this is exactly how disruption happens- small player with a tremendous idea and the opportunity to utilize wind resources in areas where traditional turbine designs can't be sited.

On the other, I don't envy the engineering team their road ahead- I see firsthand how many challenges we face every day with "ground-based" turbines, and have an inkling of how difficult an engineering challenge this will be. Best of luck to them- anything that pushes renewables forward in a meaningful way is a win for everybody.
LocalStorage + in-memory store
Because most people are poorly educated about diet. They think fat makes you fat. While fat has higher calories per gram than protein or carbs it also has a high satiety factor.
Slightly off topic, are there actually any good (i.e. recommendable) dumb phones? It has been an interesting market to try to navigate and research.
That is a completely reasonable size for an industrial pond.
Hangouts, phone calls and Google Voice
This breaks the back button, which is really annoying. It also slow, buggy, and throws countless errors in the console.
But … it took 5+ years not to freeze the UI if the network dropped a packet and lookupd ran out of threads. This was much worse if you used a network authentication service like LDAP – I submitted the same libldap client patches which I sent upstream to the OSS devs (http://chris.improbable.org/2008/03/15/borrowing-from-the-fu...) – but this and NFS client kernel deadlocks and other problems (they accidentally broke Unix permissions for a few releases in the 10.4 days) were generally either ignored or answered with something like “How many Macs does this problem prevent you from buying?” (NOT a joke).

iOS's WiFi still hasn't fixed the basic usability bugs I reported against 1.0 (simple things like “Don't capture the UI until the hotspot page has actually loaded” or “Don't nag me asking to reconnect to a marginal network I already requested you connect to”).

iOS autocomplete remains an embarrassment, frequently turning correct words into nonsense or failing to handle minor inconsistencies in input which didn't produce a valid word.

iOS backups don't backup the stuff you care about like passwords or settings but do backup things you can trivially re-download from the store like apps. This is not in any way documented and the backup status will simply claim the backup was successful without mentioning that it includes almost nothing important.

FileVault had data-loss bugs for multiple releases until v2 was released. Time Machine still doesn't check data integrity and the remaining users complain about weird UI bugs, performance impact, hangs & data loss, etc. Nobody at Apple appears to care.

iCloud sync is a disaster with uncontrollable delays and hangs (e.g. http://createlivelove.com/246). There's no sign of anyone at Apple caring since it hasn't impacted iPhone/iPad sales.

To reiterate: Apple doesn't obsess about quality unless it's needed to get people to buy the device.
Because you can’t see the difference: sure.
https://insouciant.org/tech/network-congestion-and-web-brows... had me thinking the same thing: useful post, better with a text-only view.
> Most are "backdoorable" because it is easier to build a service that way.

Okay sure, I can go with that. My point is that the reason is not "because the government makes them do it that way." I agree with all of what you are saying.

Tying into the original conversation, my beef with skype isn't so much that they were backdoorable but that they were backdoorable when they have been claiming for years that they are not.
This has never been the case for me, and I leave my Gmail open always. Do you have to opt in?
How to Build a Customer Focused Business
It always boils down to, we do what we want (to preserve the peace / our world order), and then if you try to do the same thing we'll come mess you up with our military. The whole point is to create legal and rhetorical justification for what amounts to administrative, State-sanctioned violence to protect the functioning of the empire. The ideas are as old as empire.

In the City of God, St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him “how dare he molest the sea”. “How dare you molest the whole world” the pirate replied. “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor”

Aptly the document is written by the Navy.
I believe Nokia Asha line of phones is leading the charge in dumb phones in developing countries, Nokia Asha 501 being the newest. It has pretty freaking awesome (especially in countries where access to electricity is a luxury) 48 day standby time (beat that iPhone!). In addition, Asha 501 actually has some kind of support for 3rd party apps.
It's not necessary to heat water in order to evaporate it. The energy calculations are completely off.

The main thing you need is low humidity, and/or lots of wind.
They QA both, but only the first patch is gratis.
Next-generation Kinect will eventually see a release on PC
I grant that I could be wrong as I'm not a hardcore Flickr user and don't have access to the statistics that Yahoo has on usage patterns. However, I'd bet that the overwhelming majority of people that would use Flickr won't come close to using anywhere near 1 TB of storage anytime soon.

More than anything, I think their announcement is really just a smart marketing gimmick that gets them on peoples' radar and gives them nerd credibility without doing much extra.
The odd thing about 1 is that Microsoft's empire is essentially based on the opposite premise. The foundation of their success was selling an open-for-developers OS on open hardware.
> And you also don't tend to put up signs like that unless your goal is to change everyone's behaviour.

Yes, "you" do. You specificaly may not do that, probably most people around here will not do that, but lots and lots of people do, enough so that most signs are put down by this kind of people.
For webapps, yes, but I'm not sure how they could do it that easily with iOS integration. I'm pretty sure Twitter views iOS/Android as much more important than web.

(although, most of their hacking/account hijacking probably happens over non-mobile. If they had a way to improve web login security and strongly separate out mobile integration logins to use a weaker system, that would work too. Although I think it wouldn't be too hard to present to Twitter as a mobile client when you're really a fuzzer or attack script.)
1 in 20 is a pretty high standard
The Funny, Occasionally Dirty, Hidden Messages in Your Favorite Games
Well really I'd just have to cite Anonymous thinks that. But true I have no evidence they do actually think this.
> Another ten cents, if it is largely water based, what about letting the water evaporate?

They could run it through reverse osmosis, which is already commonly done in industrial scale. This would not get rid of the all the water, but just take it down 90% would be enough.
The original claim was that there was no language as open as Dart. I vehemently disagree. Plenty of languages are as open as Dart, and there are several, including Python that are more open. I believe you are underestimating the importance of a language having its own foundation that exists for the sole purpose of ensuring that a language remains vibrant and free. Do you think the PSF would ever make a contributor sign a document before contributing as Google requires for Dart? Also, do you think it's better for a corporation to own the trademark for a programming language's name, or an independent, community run organization? Google owns DART's trademark.

I think Java is a great example of why corporate programming languages are a bad thing. Do you remember the first wave of Java adoption? Do you remember how it was adopted in all sorts of places it had no business being because Sun rammed it down everyone's throats through their sales force? The core of Java and the engineering behind the VM are thanks to Gosling, not Sun.

I'm not criticizing Sun here, either. That's just how it was done back then. Sun was positively benevolent compared to the likes of Cincom.
This is the most important point. The government of California is not god, and generally cannot force a business to do anything if you don't do business there.

All of the companies paying these credits are paying them because they choose to do business in that market.
It's the difference between being a hacker shop or a corporate drone shop. Both are somewhat viable strategies, but don't expect people to stay around for the transition. (also, it tends to be irreversible)
Google play: Unlimited Music
This is really awesome. Back when I was helping work on Pingie (an rss->sms service), I put some of this functionality into it (weather reports, stock quotes, traffic reports).

Good luck with this!