skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Yeah. They are all reading from scripts. "This is something that we take looks down at script very seriously." Also, it appears that they were all privy to what each other was going to say before the hearing. "looks down at script As you said ..." Does that disturb anyone else?
I don't own an i{Pad,Pod,Phone}; how would you (for example) open up an MP3 in a music editor, make some changes, and then open up the same MP3 in the music player?

The solution on the desktop is to give it a unique identifier in the form of a hierarchical filesystem.
I would say go step by step from html, css, JavaScript then jQuery. You will get better understanding of front-end after that. Go to w3school and learn those. You will have better understanding after at least two days or so depending on your learning speed. It worked for me
Photorealistic 3D Moon Demo in WebGL and JavaScript
Very few users are organization savvy enough to use deep hierarchies of folders and files to organize their data. They are lazy and just throw it in one place, relying on LRU caches (when new and active) and search (when old and inactive) to find what they need.

Developers are quite a different breed from mass conventional users. We still need file systems if only because we are more savvy enough to use it. Also, our tools tend to be low level and file oriented.
He's talking about the file system has a set of concepts (files, directories, etc) that are exposed to the user interface in almost every (desktop) application; it's not just the file managers like Explorer.

It is the filesystem, but as the UI semantics, not the underlying storage mechanism.
Ask HN: How do you secure your SaaS product financials?
In most SaaS products, the accounts / payments / financials are an integral part of the system.

This means your whole development team may potentially have access to extremely detailed and sensitive information about your business. There are several ways in which this could cause problems. Just to name a few:

1) If you are doing well, developers will use business performance data to demand a raise

2) If they see you are not doing well, they will lose motivation and could jump ship instead

3) If someone gets disgruntled (for whatever reason), they can abuse/disclose the info to hurt you

Large companies have elaborate security procedures and compartments with lots of accountants and lawyers to guard them. But what should a startup do to protect itself? Especially if it founder-owned, is generating solid cash-flow and is unable to say "that's the policy our investors set, so we cannot give you X or Y"?

Potentially there might be a few approaches to this concern:

1) Ignore the issue, let anyone have access to your production DB, hope for the best

2) Only let the founders to see the "master DB", have all employees work on a sanitized copy

3) Allow a few employees in the circle of trust, but still maintain some sort of data sanitization process

I thought many of HN members have been confronted with this issue and I am really interested in hearing how they dealt with it.
A more important question is "How passionately do you disapprove?"

For example, even though most Americans believe in tougher gun restrictions, it's not a high priority in how they vote. That meant politicians weren't going to spend any of their political capital fighting for that issue.

I suspect privacy isn't a major voting issue with many Americans, so this number is probably even weaker in terms of swaying politicians. It's politically easier for a politician to be strong on security with spying than to stand up for privacy and later have it revealed that information about an attack could have been known through these spying methods.

Edit: topic clarification and paragraph structure.
I think he meant more of a metaphorical god in the "We hold these truths to be self-evident" sense.
Gittip, Year One
A downward spiral for almost three decades while still being a multi-billion dollar company is a problem most hip startups would kill to have.
Games like Pac-Man expect the joystick to read Up,Down,Left or Right only.

8-Way joysticks either output combinations of the two directions (Left+Up=Northwest), or totally unique outputs that read as nothing to the 4-way game.

In either situation, gameplay gets clumsy or non-operational when the diagonals are hit. And some people like smoothly rotating the stick from Left to Up, let's say. That would look like Left...Idle...Up to Pac-Man. And that means certain doom if a ghost is behind you.
I think this differs very little from the other revelations.

This does make the government look bad in the eyes of US citizens--why are we crying foul at China when we are doing exactly the same thing, and may even be the more aggressive party?

If we are conducting this sort of warfare, the citizenry needs to know. It's probably a better issue to face publicly than to let it slowly morph into a new cold war espionage situation with China.
There must have been other reasons why his animated weather app was rejected by Apple. There are already very flashy iOS weather apps, just take for example a look at "Clear Day".
The author of this article doesn't get NFC.
Well as far as I can tell the only additional concern we have in this case is that people might see your 1-900-HOTWINK phone sex calls, given that PRISM itself doesn't actually pull more data than the NSA was able to pull before.

And either way, it's already happening. Remember the sorority president who had her pissed-off email to her "sisters" leaked to the media? Which led to people discovering her Twitter account that showed her to be a racist?

You can't blame that one on the gub'mint; we're already living in that particular brave new world, if people don't want to acknowledge it that's their problem.

What I think will actually happen as far as societal change goes is that we will become used to the idea that people do grow up and mature and stop holding things against them that they said 20 years before.
IBM is the world's 24th most profitable company (2011). Only 23 companies in the entire world - not country but world - made more profit than IBM. Their revenue and profit grows year over year. Any definition of the term "downward path" that includes IBM is useless and provides no value.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/perfor...
Given the recent leaks, I think we should start using "terrorist" in quotes, at least when referring to NSA "terrorists".
Well...

No offense...

but I wouldn't want the younger crowd sitting around deciding when to launch a nuke.

It's fine to put us in charge of the "like" buttons, Farmville tractors, or a web pages like Yahoo or Facebook. But some things are a bit more important.

It's fine to have younger aids or advisers. Probably good to have youthful energy INFORM certain decisions. Not so sure it's a good idea, however, to have youthful energy MAKING certain decisions.

And I say that, I guess, as part of what's considered the "younger crowd".
And nothing of value was lost. It's a blog post with an intentionally hyperbolic headline to let you know he has a new book to sell.
Security researcher Steve Gibson goes in depth on PRISM (start at 22:40)
I pay for my coffee every day with NFC. The big 4 banking cartel here doesn't want an Apple or Google getting a foothold in the market and hurting their profits which is why NFC is a joke on mobile but on cards it does fine.
It seems like there is still hope for the younger generations. Says the 28 year old.
PRISM Would Have Come Off Better With Better PowerPoint Design
I wish i had trusted egghead.io sooner
Cesar was my advisor and I was his first student. I've never been happier to see someone make a splash.
the icons in that mockup are so much better.
Exclamation: yournameyahoo.com Can Be Yours
Ask HN: Moving away from the JAP tag
I'm one of the two programmers working on an news application to be launched soon. The founders hired a marketing guy and some designers who are taking care of the interface and identity of the application.

I perceive that I'm being tagged as JAP(just a programmer) and I'd like to move away from that tag. If the startup is succesful it'd be nice to be considered for a higher level position.

I'd like to know if someone has/had in a similar situation. Any advice is very welcomed.
no. it's not flat. it's not beveled and skeuomorphic. it's splits the middle. that's always bad -- as our friend yoda says, "do, or do not."

ios 7 basically says "i can't decide what i want. i don't want to be all textured and stuff because flat is cool! but, i also don't want to go straight-up flat because then i lose all the affordance like metro did. hrm... i know! let's do a little of each!"

no, indeed. this will end poorly for apple.

m3mnoch.
Yes, but I don't think the phone companies save your accelerometer data like they save your phone call metadata. You'd have to get access to the phone's accelerometer somehow.
The key takeaway is this: "Twenty-one percent of Americans disapprove of the government's actions, but say there could be circumstances in which it would be right for the government to carry out such a program, yielding a combined total of 58% of all Americans who either approve or could theoretically approve under certain circumstances."

I'd bet there are a lot of people in the administration who dislike the idea of surveillance in general, but approve of surveillance in this particular case because of the specifics of the situation. Not saying the belief is justified, but rather that this is always how such beliefs are justified. See the movie The Siege.
I do like the fuzzing idea, but you need some incentives in place. Bandwidth is pretty cheap these days but how would you convince people to install some software that just visited random websites and send randomly generated messages around? But how would actual people filter out the junk messages in a way that the NSA couldn't?

I seems unrealistic. Just run a Tor exit node and encourage a lot of other people to do the same, similar benefits and no downsides.

A more realistic and useful one would be for email clients sending mime email (almost all of them) to always send an encrypted version as well no matter the options in the client. No keys set up? Then just send random data that looks right.

Email providers might hate this because of the bandwidth but if you start sending a lot of encrypted data around right now you are going to match a profile you probably don't want to match. I think step one is to make sending encrypted text around a normal thing.
Respectfully disagree. Its Not common. Unless they collecting info to gain security clearance for OP. And from the way the OP worded it looks likes its not for security clearance.
What is confusing about his motivations? Nothing has been suspicious about the revelations he has made thus far or in his stated intent. The only thing slightly suspicious is that he chose Hong Kong, but there are many explanations for how it's a reasonable choice (The asylum application process is currently being reworked and he likely can't be extradited before that's complete, it's a major media capital from which he can engage with the story, it has one of the few governments that is in a position to stand up to the U.S. and that could cause major implications if anything fishy happened...)
How does hackernews store passwords?
The Price Of Damien Hirst Paintings
Oh, I don't believe you are either-- apologies. But I also believe you see more here than you're letting on, and I'm happy to leave it at that.

I think my complaint, such as it is, would not productively be addressed anywhere. As I said, there are thousands of stories, and I'm not usually one to piss in the ocean. But it pains me to see intelligent people engage with toxic arguments, and that's why I decided to reply to you specifically.

That, and to pass the time :) I do take this subject very seriously, perhaps more than I have cause to, and I hope that isn't coming off as animosity.
What makes you think the pressure is against it?

I don't.
"listening in on your private phone calls"

I thought the programs that were in the news had nothing to do with listening in on phone calls. This poll also has nothing to do with the question of listening to phone calls.

Listening on a call and collecting metadata are two extremely different things. I'm personally opposed to both but they are miles apart from each other and shouldn't be confused.
Chalk another point up for 'selective enforcement'? :P
My understanding is that US law enforcement has access to Facebook "God view" where they can see all your Facebook posts.

Where do you get this understanding from?
Its Not common. Unless they collecting info to gain security clearance for You. And from the way the You worded it looks likes its not for security clearance. Have they told you what they are collecting this much info for ? Have they explicitly mentioned clearance ?
We deal with a lot of background checking. We don't do work for the USG, and so don't deal with clearances. I don't think intrusive questions are as uncommon as you think.

Generally, if the questions are coming from a background checking firm, I wouldn't worry to much about the use to which the contracting firm is going to put that information. (That doesn't mean I'd answer all those questions).
"Content first, essence, clarity, bla bla bla..."

There is such a thing as AESTHETICS that everyone of those rationally-thinking-wannabe designers forget about.

People do not wear the same gray robes and do not live in an apartment with bare concrete walls.

To feel comfortable a human needs some visual complexity, this is a part of aesthetics.

Too much complexity is bad taste, too little is lifeless and primitive.

Also, people tend to have different taste.

Actually, the worst thing for me about iOS 7 design was that unexpectedly I perceived it as made with bad taste. It could be flat, focused, minimal, stylish — that would be fine, such type of design is not for everyone, but would be fine with me.

But the worst thing happened — bad taste. The problem with the design is that it is offensively and illogically colorful, and geometrically disproportional. It is not stylish, and it is not minimal.

I am appalled. And what is with the trash can Mac Pro design. Does Johny Ive really have bad taste?
> The File System is by far the most confusing aspect of computing

My experience has been the complete opposite. I find the file system, far, far more intuitive than all the ad-hoc ways various applications attempt to manage my "content" for me. With these apps that abstract away the filesystem, you can never really be sure you have the right mental model of your data. The way apps like iTunes store your data is just so opaque.

Indeed, iTunes is the perfect example of this problem. I can't count how many people have come to me utterly confused about how syncing between your hard drive, iOS, the iTunes store, and iCloud works. They can't understand it because Apple imposes an ever-shifting system of abstractions onto your music storage. You don't have music files anymore. You have songs stored in certain libraries, and those libraries can be "synced" with each other in ways that often result in strange error messages and loss of data.

Imagine instead that things worked like the old days: You just have MP3 files, and you can put them in folders. The iPhone, when connected to the computer, can be accessed like any other filesystem. You move files in and out of a folder called iPhone/Music. In this alternate reality, you'd understand exactly what you're doing. You wouldn't have to guess at how "syncing" is going to change the state of your data.
That the U.S. may be the cyber aggressor is very important information for the American people.

If this is the case, it's difficult to believe the government of China doesn't already know...
>If this would have been my own company there would be tons of wiki pages.

Ah, to be young and naive again. This is one of those lofty goals that I'm sure everyone aspires to but absolutely no one really ends up doing.
This is a really niche use case, but let's try anyways since you can do it with Garage Band [1].

Music exists in its own data space on iOS organized by artist, genre, album, and so on...you know...what the user wants for playing music. Now, this definitely wouldn't work very well for meta-data free content...but how many users deal with data that lacks meta-data? File system path is just one awkward form of meta-data that they could manually specify.

[1] http://www.midnightmusic.com.au/2012/08/how-to-get-garageban...
This is exactly the scenario I was trying to describe. In a world where we're all technically violating the law at some point, and where we're all being monitored intensively, then it's essentially up to those in power to "decide" who is punished and who isn't, without any real standard of measure. In that world, it seems pretty clear who ends up in jail and who doesn't. ACAB.

Conversely, if we lived in the same world of intensive surveillance, but where law enforcement was instead 100% efficient, we wouldn't have the often valuable ability to break the law.

It's possible to say that we should have better laws, or different laws, or only the "right" laws. But we don't actually have any agency over that (or to the extent that we do, it's often a result of breaking those laws). What we do have some agency over is the internet, and the technical means to stymie surveillance.
> giving operational secrets or at least implying he is willing to reveal operational secrets for special treatment from china... and no doubt money

Could you please offer citation?
Diff-based restore with Arq
People do not wear the same gray robes and do not live in an apartment with bare concrete walls.

When I lived in the bay area I'd say 50% of my co workers lived in apartments with bare walls and wore the same outfit everyday.
I appreciate the detailed response, I guess I've just been conditioned to equate "leader = manager" on account of their liberal and seemingly interchangeable use in job descriptions and roles (or perhaps that's my own misinterpretation). I do see the difference though, and think that I wouldn't mind being a leader as you describe it, and I believe I have most of the qualities you describe for it. I have thought of myself more as a silent leader (e.g. by example), or through peer coaching, but I am just wary of taking on a managerial role, and it sounds like for good reason: some of those qualities are my weaker points, and I plainly do not enjoy many of those things. Thanks again!
They used to dominate mainframe computing. They still do. Its just that the tech industry has become much much bigger than it used to be. PCs, internet, Mobile etc etc. You surely don't expect a single tech company to dominate the entire tech industry. It requires way too many competencies to make it work.
What about a felony where someone embezzles $500 million in taxpayer funds? Or knowingly sells defective vaccines to people who mercifully never actually catch ill?
I'm curious what HN users would ask as a qualifier to being technologically knowledgeable. What would the ideal question for that be?
Exactly. Why would Visa give away their market to Apple, Google, Verizon and AT&T?
Someone please edit the title - extremely misleading!

Here's what the article states: "In fact, in a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly, and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the carrier's antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals."

In other words, they need the location from which you made the call. This data is not available in a normal CDR (call detail record) that carriers routinely use for billing. This is the same data you see on your phone bill. All it has is the date/time, to/from, duration and outcome.

As for the location, there were a number of papers floated in the past that specified that anywhere from 3-5 destinations identified a person uniquely. In fact, a persons daily commute is enough to identify most people. (Don't have a link to paper that found this.)
You have rights regardless of the government. Absent government, you have the right to do whatever you want, as does everyone else. The proper purpose of the government is to protect your rights from other people; this is done by carefully and judiciously placing restrictions on everyone's rights via the law. Legal codes should be as minimalist as possible, to ensure people can exercise their rights as broadly as possible.

Of course, the question of whether rights exist in the absence of government or if rights are created by the law is as old as the hills, so we may have to just disagree on this one.
IBM was smart and got out of the PC business years ago. Selling PCs is a bad business.
Chartkick: create JS charts in Django
It is just a figure of speech, don't be pedantic about this.
Ask HN: Any js lib to implement the effects like apple mac pro ads?
The ad is here: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/.
http://sql-ex.ru/ - my place to practice some SQL.
Although this wasn't news to most people here, keep in mind that the US has always denied doing economic espionage, against China or anyone else. The Snowden leak also revealed that the largest target of US espionage in Europe is Germany -- I can't think of any reason for that other than economic espionage. This certainly raises questions.
The most important thing you can learn is that it's ok to not be a hipster.

It's ok to not be up-to-date with every technology choice. No matter how smart you are, please realize that front end engineering evolves at a dizzying rate, with new hyped up libraries, frameworks, techniques, and best practices emerging all of the time. Even if you do front end stuff full time you'll go mad trying to use half of what you read about.

I think that the best way to learn this stuff is to pick a problem that you want to solve and learn the pieces necessary to solve it in a logical fashion. You'll start out with HTML, try and style it with some CSS, and then add a touch of interactivity with some JQuery. Then you'll start to have more and more code and you'll logically reach out for tools like Sass, and RequireJS and others to organize things when it becomes overwhelming. Then once you start solving bigger and bigger problems you'll eventually look into Backbone, and maybe other frameworks once you can't build a maintainable solution with what you know. Learn stuff as appropriate to solve the problem you're working on.
I'd imagine technologically clueless people have more of an expectation of privacy from internet communications than technologically clueful people that know that know that random sysadmins at dozens of companies have access to your data.
Thanks, that is sort of my thinking too: it's a role and title that's bestowed upon you because you've earned it and proven yourself worthy, as opposed to some formal role within an organization.
Original submission [1] said it only had Ruby, now available for Django as well.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5698370
>hierarchy is the only mechanism that the human brain has for dealing with complexity. A few people balked, they don't like 'trees' or what have you but nobody could come up with an alternative.

None of you could think of anything better because you're engineers, not psychologists or philosophers.

The "human brain" deals with complexity through:

* causation
* hierarchy
* chunking
* association
* ordering

Complexity in general is managed using all the tools of analysis:

* drawing distinctions
* drawing similarities
* making definitions
* transforming concepts using other concepts

And this is all off the top of my head. It's been years since I took psychology of memory and philosophy of mind. But suffice to say your "top engineer" commenting on stuff outside his specialty and using the stupidity of undergrads to bolster his amateur argument is not convincing and is a pure expression of bathos.