skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Average-case complexity is a not a topic I know a lot about, and I can't easily get the paper itself, but what the abstract seems to say is that for some particular NP complete problem, if an efficient average case algorithm exists for that problem then efficient average case algorithms exist for all NP complete problems. There is no mention of showing that such an algorithm does not exist.

My reference is Impagliazzo's 1995 survey paper "A Personal View of Average-Case Complexity" where he lays out five possible worlds based on open problems in complexity theory. He calls the world where P!=NP but all NP problems are easy on average "Heuristica." This is still an open problem as far as I know.

On your second point I can say a bit more. Cryptosystems in general do not need all instances to be hard. With RSA for example, there are all kinds of weird attacks, like the modulus n can easily be factored if phi(n) or phi(phi(n)) are products of small primes. There is no need to filter out these cases because the probability of them occurring is so small. There are cryptosystems where an arbitrary instance of the problem is as hard as the average case. This was a notable selling point for lattice cryptosystems when they were first invented.

In the RSA case the probability of these corner case attacks decreases with the size of the instance. So for current parameters the probability is near zero. However, even if you only had a scheme where the probability didn't diminish with the instance size and there are attacks that you can't check for, you can still securely send messages. Say the probability that your key generation algorithm gives you an instance that is hard is 50% (or any constant). You can securely send messages with arbitrarily small probability of having your message decrypted by using multiple keys and breaking up your message with a secret sharing scheme (Shamir's for example) and encrypting each message share with each of the keys. The attacker, able to only get a constant number of decrypted message shares will not be able to get decrypt your message.
Sure. It will be no big deal if 50,000 companies have no source code repository next week and have to switch to Bitbucket immediately before they can continue working.

Guess those VCs who were throwing money at github had no idea what they were doing.

There was no big reason for Github to exist in the first place. Git is distributed anyway. People could always just fire up their own servers for repo hosting.

LOL.

Github is so obviously critical and more importantly quite relevant I can't believe that I am actually arguing about it.

Windows is a dinosaur.
Alt is a simpler and prettier interface to NewsBlur
Trail of Tears, internment of the Japanese during World War II, slavery, suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, Tuskeegee...
NewsBlur is also YC S12. I can't say I've tried them all to compare fairly, but I'm quite pleased with NewsBlur for my feed-reading needs. Samuel Clay has been quite responsive to the few GitHub issues I've filed, too.
Well, the good news for jwz is that these all seem pretty fixable. It's come a long way since the version I first saw after the Reader announcement. It took me a long time to warm up to Google Reader, and for it to have enough features for me. I was a Bloglines user for quite some time. Change is hard.

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/06/21/summary-of-the-last-100-da...
Your comment feels very "tall poppy syndrome" and made me read the post a couple more times. Nup, nothing in it screams pissy at all really.
Please save those books.

What's the bullets by police story? They used it as some firing range or that is crossfire marks?

I got to find such abandoned places here in India. Maybe there's some database or blog for that. Any pointers anyone?
More leaks, this time something huge, which I certainly expect Greenwald and Snowden are sitting on
1. I'm still not seeing backup for your claim that I was asking anyone to sacrifice themselves for the good of others.

2. You should read Objectivist Epistemology, where she connects her ethical system to her metaphysics. It's fairly execrable as philosophy goes, but it does underscore my point that she's fundamentally driven by her idealism, particularly about the nature of truth. (BTW that's why it's called Objectivism and not Selfishism).

Anyway, you really do sound like a young Randroid (again). In a few years you'll see that, well, she was wrong. Emotions are not vestigial. Reason is one tool in the box among others. And when self-interest, rather than self-restraint, becomes widely accepted as the criteria for merit, we end up with a system like we have today, where a docile public unable to even articulate a criticism of abuse of power, since there is no such thing as "abuse of power" in a framework that rewards only self-interest.

Adieu.
YC S12 testing startup looking for a web hacker as second hire
We're a 3 person product- and engineering-focused startup based in sunny SoMa in San Francisco looking for our second hire. We are all hackers (1 designer / front-end hacker, 2 full stackers). We know testing is broken - how is it that something so integral to developing great products is so damn time consuming? We are changing that by building a new way to do black-box QA, one that is automated, non-technical and simple to use.

We think developers should write their own unit tests, and we practise TDD as a company. But black-box testing (testing for regressions, functional and x-browser compatibility) is way too time consuming and technically demanding. Refactoring large 'automated' test suites is painful and inefficient, and doing manual QA (especially when several browsers are involved) is enough to make the most patient dev want to quit their job.

At the moment, the only way to get black-box coverage is by spending developer time. We think it's a waste of developer time to work on anything other than hacking on product. As devs we should be spending our time building great software, not wrangling with the complexities of outdated testing tools that are designed for a pre-continuous deployment world. We think that companies want to spend money, not developer time to get coverage, and so far the market agrees with us: we have over 400 companies waiting to use us, despite being in Alpha.

We need your help to execute on our vision of making QA simple, beautiful and accessible to all.

Us:

- Reinventing how developers test software

- Seed stage company based in SF (SoMa)

- Backed by the best investors + accelerator program in the world

- Currently 3 hackers

Our stack:

- Rails

- Postgres

- Coffeescript

- Backbone

- Git

You:

- Experienced web-software hacker

- Care deeply about simplicity and elegance in interfaces and in code

- Opinionated and diplomatic

- Want to play a major role in shaping our direction

- Have significant experience with personal projects / your own startup

What to expect:

- Work on complex, multi-faceted problems that have not been solved yet

- Freedom to choose what you work on

- Significant equity

- Competitive pay, paid health insurance

- Catered lunches

- Unlimited vacation policy

Apply at letsrevolutionizetesting@gmail.com, with a link to your github and why you'd be a great 2nd hire.
It wasn't about you at all, but your consistency is well noted.
I like the way you preview the features with the mouse over and image highlights.
Many startups are trying to consolidate news and social media posts — to become, basically, a one-stop shop for users.

I understand that this offers greater convenience, but it also overlooks something people enjoy about the Internet. People like having different websites and services to check, with notifications unique to each one.

It's kind of like spreading out your Christmas presents instead of tearing them open all at once.
Many many many thanks for this link. That's another resource in the bucket along with SICP[0] and MIT 6.00[1]. I'm gonna have a beastly year for learning.

[0]http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-4.html
[1]http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...
I appreciate his position but I have trouble taking advice on UI from somebody whose blog is eye-burning neon green text on a black background and has been since 1995. We know you're l33t, Jamie, you are a living legend. Can I get a readable color scheme already?
So the question is: Do we build an internet that is inherently private and secure and blinds the censors in the despotic regimes, or are we too afraid of that freedom now?
While I share the author's frustration that Google Reader is going away, I don't get all the hostility toward Feedly. In just a few months' time, they've replicated by far the most important aspect of Google - serving as a backend for any front end reader that choose to use their API.

I too tried the Feedly iOS app and found it didn't suit my workflow and stylistic preferences. But I didn't need it. My favorite way of consuming news over the past couple years has been with Newsify, with Google Reader as back end. Now my favorite way continues to be Newsify, but with Feedly as back end. The transition was seamless.

My only 2 complaints are:

1) I was only able to import 1000 starred items into Feedly.

2) No search - but that's coming.

So - I wish I hadn't had to spend a dozen or two hours over the past few months evaluating alternatives to Google Reader. But I'm quite happy that Feedly stepped up to take Google Reader's place.
The perils and potentials of ACR: hands on with Zeebox
FWIW, I started a vague attempt to round up the alternatives:

https://github.com/smithbr/rss-readers-list
> and other specific information that could get people hurt or killed,

You've described the loop hole for a slippery slope. And I promise you, the first suggestions would seem so reasonable. After all, you didn't mention the descriptions of the operatives. Or the supplies needed to support the troop movements. Both of which are not specifically described by you, but could easily be used against the troops and agents. Both of which are reasonable to keep secret...

But it's still a slope. We think we are here overnight, but we are not. PRISM didn't just happens. It's been in the making for decades before you were born.

That's the part we need to realize. Obama didn't do this. Bush didn't do this. Hell, your parents didn't do this. We've all done this, one way or the other. We've all been apart of this.
Rossmo's formula
They also say, "we are a government of laws, not of men." The government should enforce, and follow, the laws as they are written, not go by what one man or another considers to be "just" or "unjust."

And as a practical matter, the majority of Americans think Snowden should be prosecuted.
but it is at least possible to put procedural, legal, and technical safeguards

Seriously?
I did the same thing, but was copywriting for a now moderately successful hostel booking site. Loved it and learned a whole lot.
I've tried most. Not a single one has 80% of the usability of Google Reader.
Only a worthless person can say something that worthless. You are not worth anything. See i can write that too.
AFAIK, people skilled in prior art are often called into courts in order to arrive at the decision.

>> the result would be dramatically anti-software patent compared to

While I am still trying to understand what you mean, I do not yet see a connection of this to the anti-software patents view.
The Return Of The Anonymous Social Web
After waiting and waiting for Reeder to update their Mac version, I decided to go back to an old friend, NetNewsWire. It does not sync between devices, but that's ok for me. In fact, I kind of feel good about the fact that now there is no online entity keeping track of what feeds I subscribe to and what articles I read. ... well, if not none, at least one less entity keeping track.
If you are into that sort of thing - some photos I took of the abandoned Harlem Valley Psych Hospital

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mva/sets/72157618704382364/with...
nice. good point, thanks for the feedback. i'm making it a personal endeavor to add 5 or so items every time i go shopping to help build a list. i def don't think this is a short term victory, but probably a year or so of working at it.
Am I the only one who finds it hilarious that someone's complaining about UI of the source when the stuff under discussion already cleans up things for you and makes it readable?
I don't see how you can just dismiss dhh's story and then come up with a drab story of a workaholic chasing ambition as a "far better example". I have way more empathy for the 'first world rich boy' than your friend. I can't even tell if he actually exists -- it reads like an 8th grade book report. If you are going to be that dismissive, at least learn how to tell a story.

If he went to experience it, got caught up in winning and didn't enjoy any of it then perhaps he would have some sort of point.

How do you know he didn't get into racing for the experience of it? Seems like that's what his whole point is -- he got 2nd at Le Man's ('rich boy' or not, still a good thing), but instead of enjoying such an achievement, he's caught up in the fact that he didn't win.
I was trying to figure out what went wrong at Google.
Snowden case highlights Ecuador’s double standard
Also, isn't it true that the POTUS considers himself to have a remote killswitch for every American that exists?
U.S. Senators to NSA: That FISA fact sheet isn’t totally factual
Google Exec to Girls - "Tech Needs You"
Why 4 day workweeks are best
Meet the international revolutionary geek squad
Well I did. So far I have close to 100 native games and I have been able to play a lot of recent games with playonlinux. So not bad at all. One of the few things missing is decent Everything clone for linux - something that reads directly from the journal and is able to find files instantly by names without useless indexing of the contents.
I hope you don't wait another 20 years. These have been waiting long enough. :-)
And they can and do so for the rest of the world too, but who cares right? Only us citizens have a right to privacy at least according to hn.
That's not what this Gallup poll found:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-gover...

44% say Snowden did the right thing, 42% say it was wrong.

53% disapprove Government surveillance.

59% say it was right for the newspapers to publish the info.

Also: 31% say he's a patriot, 23% say he's a traitor:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-usa-security-po...
Without answering whether the Iraq war is justified; justifiable tactics in a theatre of war != justifiable tactics at home.

The amount of intrusion and disappearing civil liberties is far too high a cost to pay to try prevent essentially unpreventable terrorist attacks.

I was surprised to read the other day that I have a better chance of dying from cancer caused by airport body scanners (1 in 60,000,000) than I do from dying in a terrorist attack (1 in 90,000,000). Lets "evaluate the risk/reward and ROI" of that program!
4 Extreme Habits of Highly Successful Remote Teams
Uncomfortably Amusing Bug (golang)
> Because secret treason courts are where justice is best served?

What secret treason courts? Snowden is not charged with treason, and even if he were, he'd be tried in U.S. District Court.
It's a lot more diverse than that. We also find it strange that the US classifies most of its Spanish-speaking population as non-white.
"All I want is a version of Reeder that stores my .newsrc on Dropbox."

Get coding. This sort of angst is the inspiration behind a ton of open source projects.
More:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5571937

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4071178

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2932378

I really don't like DNSSEC. I think it's a bad design that will harm the Internet.
Actually, FP is easier to implement given their simple semantics, it can even be implemented to go very fast for a very long time (e.g. Caml). But most OOP languages are imperative, which definitely maps to the machine more easily (note: OO is orthogonal to imperative even if they are often coupled).

Object-oriented programming became popular when the number of programmers increased dramatically in the 80s/90s. Most of the high-end programmers do prefer FP, especially as they have the math background to appreciate it. But everyone else...objects have a usability advantage.
BlackBerry launches service to manage Android, Apple devices
Hear, hear. I just spent 5mn reading his post and then a few comments, then switched back to Hacker News and for about 20 seconds, my eyes were popping greed dots on my retina like fireworks.

Very, very painful.
A Pew Research poll found that Americans believe Snowden should be prosecuted, by a substantial margin (54-38): http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/17/ameri....
No, this bug was encountered often by myself and many of my colleagues. Because I was so familiar with the problem, I could guess that this was a problem in their code after looking at it for a few seconds.

It really was a horrible wart that needed to be fixed.

Now if they would only fix the misleading lying dishonest "downcast on type bound" compiler error messages, then C# would lack warts all together.
Yes, I sincerely believe that. Think about it. And please, think honestly about it and don't just dismiss it out of hand.

I can give you one example of where controls have been shown to work right off the top of my head: the U.S. military itself. What's to stop the Combatant Commander in charge of USNORTHCOM from taking over the government by force?

At least with this we can use technical measures as well, apply the best crypto modern literature (and, you know, the NSA) has to offer to keep data-at-rest safe from rogue analysts while requiring accountability controls for its use in an investigation.

The problem has been that there don't seem to be many such controls that aren't policy-based in nature. That's a problem. But it's not an insurmountable one either, if we decide to solve it.
Canadian Government just shut down my rails bootcamp.
Adding another movie scout [3] to the list of folks who have uncovered neat NYC artefacts.

[3] http://www.scoutingny.com/?page_id=1363
Yeah, C#'s async is a weak version of F#'s workflows, but with a single hard-coded implementation. Research (Haskell) and other languages filter into F# (and team), which filters into C#. F# has had async workflows since 2007.

LINQ's another example of a place where the C# team sighted one end advantage (queries) and implemented the minimum to make it work. That's why all the features around the main LINQ part are half-assed (limited expression trees, ambiguous lambda syntax, very limited type inference.)

Overall, C#'s a nice enough language for a lot of projects. The tooling really helps sells it, too. It's just rather verbose and limiting, unnecessarily. I just can't think of any place where C# the language is significantly better than F#.

But, if you're ranking it against the likes of Java, then yes, C# is close to perfect.

Edit: C# implements a lot of stuff right into the compiler, things that'd be useful more generically. For instance, foreach and collection initializers use duck typing that's baked into the C# compiler. That's a generally useful feature, but again, hard coded for a specific scenario. F# has some of that too, but not to the same extent (F# warts arise mainly when you push the edge of F#-C#ish interop).
I was aware that something remotely similar is done when rewriting LINQ query expressions but I was not aware of this one. My first thought was that they added it to support dynamic and objects not implementing IEnumerable but as you mentioned exactly this seems to be the case where it would not work. I had a look at the C# 1.0 specification and it's already in there but a lot less verbose.

Any idea why they did this? The only thing this seems to achieve is that you can implement IEnumerable and IEnumerator without explicitly stating it. Are there any (common) classes to which this applies?
It is terrible. Yesterday I had to go long ways to help a friend install skype on w8. The thing pushed her towards the metro version and microsoft account.

So i had to find a direct link to desktop installer. Every non IT user I have seen hates 8. Most of the ITs too.
> What has resulted, however, is that there are multiple ways to skin a cat in C#, and there's very limited guidance on what's considered idiomatic.

I find C# to be much more idiomatic than C++ or Scala. If you think C# is bad...stay away from those languages.
In retrospect, the timing of Google introducing PFS is interesting. It's possible they introduced it because they either knew about or suspected the surveillance but either had no proof or were unable to talk about it. Of course, maybe they're just security conscious but it's interesting that Adam Langley so explicitly referred to the recording for later decryption scenario.
The design of this seems very similar to yoleoreader.com. I'm not having a go; I suspect that as this market space becomes more popular, we will see lots of similar designs (even if they're arrived at independently) -- but it might be worth spending some time to differentiate yourself a little more.
jwz is just a bit behind because he's on iOS.

As of this writing, only one iOS app (Newsify) is ready while two Android apps (Press and gReader) and a widget (Pure News) are. See: http://blog.feedly.com/2013/06/19/feedly-cloud/

This will presumably be sorted out soon. Perhaps the combination of Feedly's late deployment and Apple's approval process have complicated things for some developers. I did notice that both Press and gReader had to bugfix their initial Feedly support. I can certainly imagine an iOS developer having a harder time dealing with a late-breaking issue like that.
Interestingly, the guy who wrote NetNewsWire says Dropbox and RSS readers can't work together: http://inessential.com/2011/10/25/why_just_store_the_app_dat...