skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Privacy advocates are not a subset of libertarians. Libertarians may be privacy advocates, but there are many privacy advocates that are not libertarians.

Privacy advocacy is popular among the upper classes, because they really don't want anyone from the lower classes sticking their noses into their business.

Libertarians are unpopular because some of their policies are deeply unpopular. For example, many libertarians oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because they feel it violates their first amendment rights.
http://thelist.io
I think the brightest thing I've ever heard was what PG said..."if your not embarrassed when you launch, you waited too long."
According to what Sean Parker wrote, it's somewhat inaccurate to call it a $4.5 million wedding:

"I will say, against my better instinct to tell you, that we
spent roughly $4.5 million on prepping the site and big part of
that was restoring the forest floor (I should say, covering the
forest floor with plants) since it had been paved over in black
asphalt or cleared by bulldozers before we ever laid eyes on the
campground."

Taking what he wrote at face value, perhaps $3M or more of that remains behind as an improvement to the forest itself. If he spent that $4.5M renovating a dilapidated church and then had a potluck wedding where he spent nothing, would that still be a $4.5M wedding given that all the value accrues to the church itself?
Silicon Bayou rising: New Orleans drive to be the next great tech city
And after you read this you should read this: http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=1089 which was kind of fun as well.
Most people start from the (ostensibly reasonable) assumption that you can't win an argument on the internet. It doesn't matter how cogent, how thought-provoking, how thoroughly researched and meticulously cited your position may be. You're not convincing the other side of anything. At best you can "win the crowd" in the Gladiator sense of the term.

And this is what encourages most of the fallacy-citing, semantics nitpicking, and prosaic grandstanding seen in pseudo-sophisticated internet arguments. People aren't trying to convince the other side of anything in particular; they're trying to convince the audience -- oftentimes, more imagined than actual -- of their intellectual superiority.

People these days join conversations, by default, in fight-or-flight mode. They presume hostility is lurking in every response, or, conversely, that responding to a post necessitates correcting it in some way. If more of them assumed good intent until proven otherwise, they wouldn't rush headlong into internet arguments.
Fair enough. "Yet."

I've also noticed the same pattern with compromised cards: a couple of small auths to test the waters, and then increasingly large charges coming from decreasingly likely places. I regularly log onto my online banking and inspect the recent activity looking for exactly that kind of activity.

I've long wished for the same, "whitelist-only card" type thing, too. I think I might smell an opportunity...
I had some issues with a card several months ago that was used for very few things, including Linode. Security on one of the other services I used was actually pretty bad, rather than inadvertently bad: they resent me my own password, and I canceled immediately, so it may not have been Linode, but it's impossible to say.
No, age doesn't matter. We have a few guys in their late 40's doing their PHD's and teaching some engineering classes at our Uni.
I think the appstore updates 1 PM PST. You'll probably see it then.
> Even if this differential productivity remains, as tooling gets better I have to wonder how many software engineers will be needed in 20 years if all programmers become much more efficient?

Greater labor efficiency in the production of a good only decreases the quantity of labor directed to producing that good demanded in the market when there is either some non-labor (or different kind of labor) input to production of the good (e.g., in agricultural productivity, land would be the non-labor input) whose supply is limited, or quantity demanded of the output good goes past the point where cost declines are responded to 1:1 with increased quantity demanded.

Given the number of existing and potential markets for software and the relative transferrability of programmer skills and effort between those marktes, I would be surprised if the latter was true, and I don't see an obvious non-programming constraint on the production of software that would be limiting.
Defending illegally spying on Americans and trashing the US Constitution...yup that sounds like Obama. We are the enemy. Pay your taxes citizen.
I'm relying on my memory of the book from many years ago, and I don't have a copy any longer, but I think I recall that the telegraph eavesdropping began way before SHAMROCK, in the early days of the telegraph. In other words, as long as we have had electrical communications, our government has been listening in. Before that, of course, there was the post office....
You bring up a good point, in that knowing the software is no substitute for intellectual comprehension of the problem. An extremely capable engineer using outdated technology will often outperform less capable engineers using more modern tools, especially when the problem or task is complex.

Even though the average engineer may be more productive with modern tools than the average engineer without them, there is danger in assuming that any engineer with modern tools will outperform any engineer with less modern tools. Just like software, tools can be an enabler, but they do not make the engineer a commodity.
OP, I'm confused how your system for paying for things online works.

If it's a prepaid card, I'm assuming that you have to load it with money. Since you're just using it for Linode, you couldn't have loaded that much money on it (unless you're paying for huge Linodes). I'm wondering how large these large amounts were and why they didn't simply empty out the amount on the prepaid card.

Besides my confusion (if I were using your system, I would load $20 or whatever onto the card each month and then the maximum I could lose if the card was stolen was $20), I would also like to point out that while prepaid cards are easy to dispose of, Credit Cards typically provide better fraud protection.

With credit cards, there is normally a $50 liability if the card is stolen and no time limits around reporting it. With debit cards, there are time limits around reporting the card being lost or stolen. With prepaid cards, they are not subject to the jurisdiction of the FDIC and consumer protections are voluntary on the part of the issuer.
I'm not positive that it was Linode, but I received this email from my bank about the card I used for Linode (bank name removed):

"We were notified by a payment processor that your debit card information, such as your name, debit card number and expiration date may have been compromised. Unauthorized access to non-_____ systems may have occurred through a merchant where you shopped or dined, or by other fraudulent activity. Specific details about the compromise were not reported to _____."
Animator Ian Padgham Flourishes Within Vine’s 6-Second Recording Limit
how do you do customer development in a forest, unless all your customers are gorillas and bears.
Day One looks really exciting, but the reviews are really up in arms about a lack of encryption. Does anyone know more about this supposed issue?
Vote: Pi Rate Party International(PRPI) ...Krypto-Anarchic-Socialists?
> Privacy advocacy is popular among the upper classes, because they really don't want anyone from the lower classes sticking their noses into their business.

That is, in my experience, my friends' only real problem with the TSA (other than the hassle). They hate people with GED's bossing them around.
Wow. Apart from how terrible that is, I am pretty impressed at the hypocrisy. "Stop using logic to try to shut down discussion. On an unrelated note, stop talking because misogyny/islamophobia/SJW nonsense."
Privacy and data security: why should investors care?
Thanks for that link. I think that means blowfish is approved as a standard encryption algorithm, but that doesn't mean it is approved as a standard way to store passwords.

From http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4781/do-any-secu..., I gather this: bcrypt is neither a NIST or FIPs standard, but PBKDF2 is.

> For any business required to comply with U.S. NIST or FIPS standards, bcrypt is not a valid option. Check every nation's laws and regulations separately if you do business there, of course.

However, from a comment on this other answer: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/11552/would-it-m..., someone mentions this:

> As far as I know, PCI doesn't specify actual technology, especially Encryption specifications. The legal cases I've seen support what's technically feasible, not technically ideal or perfect. I'm sure either one [bcrypt or PBKDF2] meets PCI requirements

An opinion shared by many people that deal with PCI, is that you follow PCI not to secure your systems, but to limit your exposure to PCI fines and remedies. It seems like it is a rock-solid defense for PCI compliance to choose the algorithm that is certified by NIST.
#2. This. Would you regret not going? If so, go. Now.
Anatomy of a cyber attack on business
"I don't see any way to fight it now. What are your suggestions?"

Develop and deploy good cryptosystems, and encourage people to use them. My mother uses OTR to chat with me; she does not fully understand why it matters (or even that it is being used), yet our conversations are safe from prying eyes. Sure, it is just a small step, but it is better than nothing. A lot of small steps would quickly make the NSA's program prohibitively expensive (even for the NSA).
the "checks and balances" we so hold dear in democracy are now null and void.

Well, there's one check / balance aspect that is still "in play" at least in theory: the 2nd Amendment.
This isn't because of Linode. Both the hackers and Linode themselves have shown that no credit card information was stolen.
Thanks. I'm primarily interested in the m:n case, but your explanation has given me the right terminology to use in searches.
I think that you are not the norm. I feel that I am a pretty smart guy, and I know how to do good, in depth research on the Internet. But I have to say, I got a lot of cringing looks from my girlfriends family when they first saw me using a chainsaw with an iPad propped up next to me with instructions on proper chainsaw operation techniques display displayed next to me.

There is data, there is information, there is knowledge, there is experience. And then there is wisdom.
Nope, there is not, the two are fundamentally different.
3D Picture of the Day: Funny
How does this compare with some of Basho's LevelDB performance work? https://github.com/basho/leveldb
Hey, that's my Nana who likes to keep tabs on me!
5 Things You Should Do Before Buying A Domain Name
Conflict and drama management
I personally think the easier battle is to protect access to strong encryption tools, but I wonder, do you think it would be incoherent for a 28th amendment to try to spell out some legal protection for personal thoughts that were stored remotely?

Saying it a different way, if javajosh were to concede that your definition of privacy is more useful and concede that you are making a clearer case for how such things developed historically, how does he gain some legal breathing room for his remotely stored documents?
Well from experience site wide paid links will get you dinged hard I know of one household name publication from a major publisher in the UK that had a salesman that thought it would be a good idea to sell links.

They where penalised hard by google - and they had to grovel to get back in.

Pity that getting burned once didn't make them take our advice on SEO.
Ask HN: What is the next "social" bubble?
I guess every one of us knows someone who invents "brand new social network that will change the world forever". New social networks appear and die every year. Pinterest is a good example - it was praised by online marketers a year ago and almost dead now. Are there any new potential social bubbles that grow quick at this moment?
Maybe if they are debit cards, but the hassle of changing cards everywhere combined with the protection against fraudulent charges banks give, I don't plan on doing anything just for the heck of it. IE, lets say your correct and I start seeing fraudulent charges? I call my bank and they reverse them all immediately, it's not a big deal.
Hotlinking or embedding on another site is not the only thing that breaks.

- Downloading

- Search engines

- Caching

- Sharing (usually nabs thumbnail)

It's just not a good idea. And it doesn't really work. Any scraper worth their salt would just fake the referrer and be fine.
To which you respond, "Then why do you have your curtains drawn?" Most people parrot the "I have nothing to hide" line without realizing that they actually do want some measure of privacy.

You can also put it in terms of hackers: maybe they have nothing to hide from the government, but what about from hackers? People seem to be more concerned about that sort of thing. The same technologies that would thwart the NSA also happen to be good at thwarting other attackers.
I had childhood friends living way out in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. They had electricity and telephone service. On a pole at the bottom of their pasture was a directional antenna connected to a cordless telephone base station. One time we took a hike down the mountain, along the creek and up the other side. There was the homestead of the family who's telephone that was. They lived in a hexagonal treehouse and an old school bus. They had solar power and the handset connected to another home-made antenna pointing across the valley. The father was a programmer.

He wrote software for parking meters and used a hand-held GPS receiver to keep track of the ginseng he had planted in the National Forest.
Seriously man, just finish. No one regrets finishing their degree. I was once in that position: I dropped out for awhile, then came back.

I spent all this time justifying why I didn't need to finish. Then I finished anyway, and it wasn't a big deal. Looking back on all these notes I have for "why I don't need a degree" looks pretty silly right now.
Wait, this sounds way harder than the previous solution and entering the password over a remote IPMI console.
Use Fewer Buttons
Owning up:

> He provided some details, which have reduced the boiling of my blood to a simmer.

Yep, nice apology.
I uninstalled Day One when it fired off an alarm at 3am reminding me to write in my diary.

An honest mistake on their part, but still very annoying.
Life hacks from the dark side
Actually, in a good debate, the fallacies are taken as (Bayesian) evidence, even if obviously imperfect.

Appeal to authority/experts: The fact that experts believe something is evidence in favor of it (albeit imperfect and overridable).

Appeal to tradition: The fact that things have historically been done a certain way, in a highly immodular system with complex dependencies, without catastrophic failure is evidence in favor of it (albeit imperfect and overridable).

Appeal/reduction to absurdity: Absurd ideas are usually false, even if the presumption can be overridden.

Genetic fallacy: Actually, the reason a conclusion was reached is exactly how you should judge it. (The true fallacy is thinking that you can pick an arbitrary reason a conclusion was reached -- e.g. snake dreams and Benzene -- rather than the best reason -- the later empirical confirmation of the model's predictive power.)

And so on.

Generally, the "Fallacy fallacy" is to jump from

"Hey, this piece of evidence isn't perfect (i.e. an infinite likelihood ratio, which is impossible anyway)"

to

"So I can ignore it."
It seemed to hijack in Firefox but not Chrome (Ubuntu), but it's a little hard to tell since the site's dependency on documentup.com, which appears to be taking a shit right now, is screwing with page loads and such.
The entire purpose of having separate public and private keys is for the private key to be stored in a secure location. That way, when your data-writer is compromised, none of the previously written data is at risk without an additional compromise of the key bastion.

If the private key is stored in the same directory, then there no effectively no additional security over simple symmetric-key encryption with a passphrase.
I think it's also the stupidity. You know you're going through this ordeal that could be easily circumvented by even a moderately clever attacker. It just seems like such a waste.
Clean Code Cheat Sheet
>... I find it hard to care.

A name defines, your name and your privacy; defines you exclusive of everything and everybody else. Without privacy, arguably you do not exist.
The problem is that Kerr's assessment of the impact of technology on searches and seizure is exactly backwards. Modern technology makes it far easier to intercept people's private correspondence, track their movements, and perform undetectable surveillance against them.

It's utterly absurd to suggest that technology gives us more opportunities for private conversations now than it did when audio and video couldn't be recorded and when written correspondence existed in the form of single-instance physical documents that could be sealed and examined for tampering.

So if the fourth amendment is to remain "technology-neutral", we need to be far more aggressive in its application, not less so. Encryption is, at best, a tool that helps people restore the former level of privacy that they would have expected in their correspondence.
Didn't they already like several years ago? I don't get it.
This is awesome - both the blog post and your product. Thanks for the detailed posting, explanation ... and cool product! B-)
Yeah, but they've got their claws in down here with their ping-pong ball monitoring centre in Waihopai. Echelon, we in whether we like it or not - New Zealand is the lapdog I'm part of. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
NY Courts Back Livery Cab Street Pickups, E-Hail Pilot
"Shutting off" compulsive behavior with a flash of light
Email Addiction Is The New Cocaine
Avoid spoilers on Twitter and Facebook. Silencer is the answer.
Watson is nearing passing the US Medical Licensing Exam (video)
Maybe he is taking "Lean Startup" a bit too seriously ;-)

But otherwise great idea. I wonder how far into the swedish wilderness their mobile broadband extends and how soon someone is going to rob him of his posessions...
Free product shots for marketing materials
Free source of high-fidelity product shots to demo iOS screenshots on iPhones, iPads, Thunderbolt displays, MacBooks and so on. Great for product mockups in other areas such as books, flyers, bottles yadda yadda yadda. Hope you find it useful.

www.psdcovers.com
Interesting read. As someone trying to build my own company it's nice to have Seth reminding us that the companies that have sudden surges in users is not the norm. For the ones that do have a sudden increase, most were working diligently for many months or years before.

This part rang particularly true for me: "The new fast company isn't fast at all. It's gradual, slow, measured, and organized. It's making small bets. Which, it turns out, is the fastest way of all to get back to where you want to be."
A little off on the ad hominem thing.
I'll go ahead and contribute to this discussion, since, well, I'm a Mormon. I was a little bit shocked to see this be the top comment.

I served a mission in eastern Ukraine (Донецк, Харьков) from 2008-2010 and there learned to speak Russian fluently. Since returning home I've had probably a half dozen offers to work for the FBI or other government offices. Every now and then the highest level Russian classes at BYU will get an announcement from some government agency trying to recruit us, and a lot of them are rumored to actually be the CIA.

It's more than just the language fluency (not all return missionaries speak the same level of Russian,) it's also having lived in the culture and living very conservative lifestyles (no smoking/drinking, emphasis on families, etc.) and fierce loyalty. It's the overall perfect stereotype for what government agencies want.

Combine that with how cheap everything is ($80K/year is a pretty solid job here and $500K bought my parents a 3-story 3,000 square foot house). That's the reason Adobe, Microsoft, Novell, eBay, Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs etc. have all started to put up shop in Utah - it's ideal if you want people who are content to do a good job with their 8-5 and go home to their families.

The new data center in utah is probably a mixture of all of these things; everything is uber-cheap including workforce, so why not put a data center there? (Bluehost is here as well).
> No, I didn't. I don't think most people put that under "terrorist attack", as it was an overt action by an organized nation-state as part of an active military strategy.

Also, Hawaii at the time was not even a state.

The US actually hasn't fought a war on it's own soil since 1812.

(It HAS had numerous terrorist attacks on foreign soil, however - the Beirut barracks bombings in 1983 would be but one example. In fact, 9/11 was not really an isolated incident, but the next progression in a number of terrorist attacks against the US. It just happened to be the biggest one and the first one on US soil (not counting the failed 1993 WTC bombing)).
I'm now getting 404 errors for the web profiles:

http://www.snapchat.com/username

...but I was building a crawler for fun and have been making tons of requests - the other pages seem to be working just fine. Anyone else having trouble? Did Snapchat do the right thing and shut down user profiles?
Tangentially:

Why do merchants really need to store CC numbers? From the consumers' standpoint, there would be no difference if, during the first transaction, the merchant is issued some alterate key with which to charge the account. Each merchant would be issued their own key, so there would be no risk of a security breach spreading outside of the merchant.
Google Mobile Sex Advice Boosted Cheating in Uganda
Thanks for your inputs.

> First, consider building it as a SaaS web app rather than a desktop app. ... I want to be able to see things from my phone, other computers, etc.

I will consider it. I was thinking of making this a desktop app, because I was visualizing it as something I would use only while coding. I had not considered that someone may want to access the list through a phone. But now that you mention it, I can see the possibilities.

For example, someone may want refer back to the list of open bugs on their personal project, while commuting back from work. Or someone may think of a great idea for their app while not being near their desktop, and may want to make a note of it.

> what does this offer me that I can't get elsewhere, for free?

Most apps (Redmine, Mantis, Bugzilla etc.) are browser based ones, and I believe desktop apps can be slicker and faster. More importantly, most bug-tracking apps force the user to adapt to them, rather than letting the user adapt the app. I also find them a little too complex for a solo developer.

Thanks again for your inputs!
Denver Airport Baggage System
But think about it this way:

So, I want to check my diary and see what I need to do today. Anything really important should flash, so I know I need to take care of that. But, I know that my boss is waiting for me to finish that puff piece on our new acquisition, so double flash that. Also let me know I need to buy cat food. Stat.

Make a program that can parse that piece of text and you're onto a winner. (I'm trying)