skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To be perfectly honest, I like the basic idea of the format that DOTA games present, I just find the execution to be quite awkward, and that's what kills it for me. It controls like an RTS since it came about as a Warcraft III map, and that continues to limit it.

Alternative takes on it tend to be fun for me (things like MNC), and I really feel like the genre would work a lot better with a more action-oriented control scheme. Something like a GW2 sPvP mode with a dota-style objective/flow would be quite excellent, in my opinion.
Hmm, interesting point about the Google DNS servers. I'm not too familiar with DNS servers; anyone can give more details on how they could be used to track people? Does a DNS request contain enough information to allow for the kind of thing?
I just switched my region to "No Region" and you're right, the top result is https://duckduckgo.com/newbang. Switching back to Japan gives the proper result.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: UK gives the proper result. Canada as well.
If you need raw performance, have a look at WebNX, they are specialized in high end dedicated servers, boxes with Xeon E5 and 64GB RAM are in the range $150-$200. I find Softlayer or Rackspace quite overpriced.

There are many other smaller hosting companies that offer good services and pricing. You just need to do some researchs.
One thing I've noticed in pirated copies of films is that if there is a language being spoken other than english there will often be no translation for it which is especially annoying when a foreign language scence goes on for two or three minutes. I've used http://www.opensubtitles.org/en and vlc to get around this.
The current state of technology in the DOD would require 10x that amount to even begin to modernize.

I would argue that the root of this issue is the federal contracting system. The barrier to entry, for any company, is so astronomical and laborious that even big companies steer clear. The detriment caused by the complexity of simply doing business with the federal government is only exceeded by the entire 8(a) program.

The result of these issues is that the innovators in technology simply don't participate, and as the systems get older and more hodge podge the cost of modernization skyrockets.
Arithmetic, Population, and Energy [Video]
I originally submitted this a few days ago with a poor title (the title I used was the title used in the YouTube submission, but was not very informative). I'm resubmitting with the title of the presentation as I believe this is a very interesting video that others may enjoy. I hope I'm not out of line by doing so ...
I suspect that if you started yelling in a foreign language while one of these teams was trying to secure your house, you'd end up just as dead as your dog.
This looks like an AMAZING trip. I am jealous as hell...if nothing else for the Rogue Whiskey.
I still think Bill Gates' DONKEY.BAS (described by him as "very thrilling") takes the prize as worst game ever.
That whiskey surprised me. I'd never heard of it when my buddy brought it along. I wasn't expecting much but it was excellent.
My employer is similar but a little stricter about how we use GitHub pull requests. All new code goes in via pull request. All pull requests are reviewed by another developer. Almost all pull requests are sent to QA to test acceptance criteria.

The sneaky commit will get you many frowny faces on chat.

It works rather well. Does anyone else work like this?
I've got a real-world example of that. Many years ago, I was an easily-angered driver. Once on the way to work, someone cut in front of me. I honked, and flipped off the driver as I passed. A few minutes later, pulling into work, that car was pulling into the same parking lot. Come to find out she was one of the directors at the company I worked for. I don't think I ever flipped off another car since then.
7 begin to be hard! The site promises more than 100 levels, what do you expect of the firsts 6?
Right - but some people want to play team games. I very much prefer cooperative type play to solo play, and that's obviously the case for a great number of people. Perhaps un-surprisingly, sucking in Starcraft team games (or Call of Duty, or Team Fortress) can be every bit as brutal as in Dota game.

The problem isn't DOTA (though for obvious reasons its more extreme) - its the general format of unorganized online competitive team play. If I'm bad at Starcraft for instance, and get thrown onto a ranked team game - my team suffers, and balance can only control so much of that. The social infrastructure is too limited to be effective at preventing things like rude comments, scapegoating, lack of mentoring, or easy pairing with people you enjoy playing with. Immature young adults + no consequences + people they'll never see again = crap behavior. And sadly, the social features haven't progressed (in some cases regressed) since I played TF 15 years ago.
Dota 2 has fantastic matchmaking, so it avoids the problem of total newbies playing with experienced players. Because there are over 100 different heroes to choose from, sometimes you end up with people who are very experienced at the game but completely new to their heroes though, which can be frustrating for them.
How to Effectively and Safely Remove Online HD TV From Your PC
>I suppose you could just go without plates like Steve Jobs did and pay the fix-it tickets you end up getting.

A minor note, but he never paid any fix-it tickets. IIRC, there's a clause in California's vehicle laws that gives you up to 6 months from the date of purchase to affix plates to a vehicle (although it must still be registered).

Jobs just traded in his MB S500 every 6 months for a new one to avoid ever having to put plates on. It's not exactly feasible for the non-billionaires among us.
Enviro-Bear 2000 is actually fun, though.
My God, don't even get me started with how awful the ECSS debacle was. I didn't work on it, but had a buddy who did. For those reading this who don't know the random acronyms of the DoD, ECSS was a billion dollars flushed down the toilet attempting to integrate the dozens/hundreds? of the Air Force's logistics systems into a single ERP. The Air Force learned (far too late) that the only way these integrations can succeed is if all of the funding for the legacy IT systems is controlled by the executive in charge of replacing them with the new system. (believe it or not, they didn't have this in place before, so the legacy systems had an actual disincentive to cooperate.)

ECSS was an eye opener for me when it came to one of the key challenges in reforming IT in the DoD: geographically isolated fiefdoms that make up the legacy systems that any new, efficient, integrated will replace. The awful truth is that the knowledge required to build new, integrated systems is in the heads of the workers of the disparate legacy systems, scattered in helter skelter throughout the country. These workers don't WANT any new system to succeed. They know there is no way they are going to be have a job with the new consolidated system in place. They, for the most part, are coasters who haven't kept a remotely current skill set, and could NEVER get a job in the private sector. So they drag their feet, won't return the phone calls of business analysts, let alone cooperate with them in documenting the current data and processes.

I love the military community, especially the officers and enlisted. I like about a 1/4 of the civillians I encounter. The other 3/4 of the civillian workforce I encounter are either lazy or grossly incompetent. I hate saying that, but its been brewing too long in my head for me to think any different. The 12,000 asshats at DFAS are proof.
If the company never is sold and never goes public, you will likely be holding worthless options. That's the risk you take with startups. Also, imho, if the offer is not written, there is no offer.
you wouldn't believe how much effort was put to actually make LoL matchmaking reasonably correct. Game collects a lot of data points per match and it is fine tuned frequently
So it sounds like
a) there are more SWAT teams than incidents that need them, so they're being sent to incidents that don't need them
b) nobody who can do anything about it gives a shit that these teams can't ratchet down to the new incidents they are being given.

Proposed solution: every 2nd or 3rd SWAT deployment goes to the house of someone in their chain of command, or a member of another team. The team members never know if they are on a fake deployment or a real one. The chain of command AND the team starts caring about how the team deals with little old ladies and dogs because they might belong to someone important. And if someone thinks that constantly being on incidents that don't require them to be on a hair trigger and kill things is dulling their edge, maybe they'll stop deploying them to incidents that don't require hair trigger killing.
Hypothetically, this is true -- if you disassemble the right kind of mouse, put in a USB hub and a USB flash drive with malware.

It's not hypothetical. A friend of mine has created an USB based pen-test tool based on this very idea. The early prototype idea was to open up a mouse, splice a USB hub into the USB connection, then attach an "Arduino like" Teensy[1] to it such that, when the mouse was connected, in addition to the mouse being detected and registered by the host machine, it would also detect and install a new keyboard. The Teensy could then dump it's payload as anything that could be typed on a physical keyboard (subject to the memory limitations of the board).

He's now doing a Kickstarter campaign to manufacture and sell the things, which he calls The Glitch[2]. You can see pictures on the Kickstarter page, of the Glitch embedded in a generic mouse.

[1]: http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/

[2]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1186217328/the-glitch
Maybe the Pentagon should use some of its black budget funding to fix this situation?
Or is overpaying Halliburton, et al, a more acceptable use of TAXPAYER money?
Ask HN: There was an article for CEOs about talking about yourself...
... it was a blog post. It outlined how a CEO should prepare for conversations with others - outlining current accomplishments, future expected accomplishments, etc. Does anyone have a link to this?
Yeah, "Track Changes" and that feature that lets people put initialed notes in the margins of Word docs are pretty widely used among Word power users (it's how my wife and her supervisor are editing her thesis - my supervisor and I used a git-versioned LaTeX document with a custom macro for notes, but that's the difference between a humanities and a CS degree :-) )
DNS is a service that resolves a domain name to a specific IP address that handles requests for that domain, and is transparently invoked when visiting websites and other services.

See Google's FAQ: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#privacy
Ah yeah, I think you are correct, very clever. I still think that going with the fix-it ticket route would be feasible for the normal folks. Though I am not sure if they end up raising the price if you repeatedly get the same fix-it ticket, that might be a problem.
HN effect on the site?
He means they are paid by our taxes -- not that they collect them directly.

Snark FAIL.
If you want to go deeper, DOTA was actually originally modeled after a custom game in Starcraft (the first one) called "Aeon of Strife".

http://web.archive.org/web/20090624132302/http://www.gotfrag...
There's a word for people who think nothing of killing pets, and it's psychopath. Animals are not people, but a pet is emotionally equivalent to someone's child. If they don't see that they belong in prison, not on the police force.
It's low probability but a mouse can absolutely be an attack vector. See: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1186217328/the-glitch
My understanding is that the overwhelming majority of Federal employees on official duty from FBI, DHS, DOD, NSA, etc.. that attend DEFCON (and related conferences) are actually not agents at all, but rather low ranking analysts whose job at the conferences are to assess the material presented and report back. This is opposed to, say, recruiting CIs or surveilling targets.

Source: I asked a Fed.
Right, if it's a mouse that came from the OEM manufacturer and you know it is truly original, it's probably safe. But if there's any way that an outsider could have snuck a loaded mouse into your environment, then the mouse can certainly be setup to attack your system. See note above about The Glitch.
I have a lot of empathy for people that just don't know what's going on -- so I wouldn't make fun of them for the initial mistake; but when someone politely explains something simple to you /twice/ and you're still being a jerk about it, I don't think those people deserve any empathy at all. The customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is just an idiot. Kudos to her for her positive attitude, but I don't think the customer deserved her kindness.
There is no thumbs up big enough for this.
My first thought after reading the article was "what kind of lapdog are you trying to be, stand up for yourself woman!"
I immediately felt bad about that because she is trying to be an empathetic person, but how can you empathize with this? Someone tries to help you, you are an jerk to them. Would you keep helping your parents being an absolute jerk, or would you tell them to knock it off, then help them?

I occasionally work with customers nowadays (but spent years in customer service) and I cant help but think this is a person who is going to be worn out by hordes of inconsiderate jerks because they are empathizing too hard.
>(beyond sending the forms to say Joe/Jane is now this and should make $)

This is how it works now. The improvement needs to be the standardization of personnel record keeping. The root of DFAS's problems come from the fact that each branch has its entirely unique personnel codes, acronyms, and other stuff. If the DOD was ever able to standardize the personnel record then they could begin to standardize payroll.

An example: the last date that you are under contract to serve can be called the following: EAS, ECC, EOS, RCN, EOS*. All of which represent different dates to different branches and components.
Did anyone else look at the defcon21 logo and see a hand giving "the finger"? ("def" are the fingers, 21 is the palm, the top of the d is an extended finger)
You can rule out this post as having any sort of relevance or concrete information with regards to this article.

There's just so much utter waste in here from saying that VMWare is crap, to the "majority of IT" being HP to claiming that there is a "non-existent startup scene."

Java, C# and PHP? LOL Do you even know what those are? Android apps are written in Java, Europe and the rest of the world is predominantly Android driven, PHP is one of the most robust and popular server-side languages in the world. You sir, are smoking the good stuff!

Some of the smartest and most brilliant engineers have come and continue to come out of Bulgaria and that part of the world in general; the first digital computer was invented by a Bulgarian!

Good god man.
But you were billing someone for it, right?
They don't really get to do that in this situation. (if you were)
Try the non-SSL version if you're having trouble accessing the site. http://www.defcon.org/#dc21fedbreak
There were issues yesterday too:
https://twitter.com/_defcon_/status/354873376675868674
Good points on the opportunities/challenges today's SEC ruling on general solicitation brings to startup funding. At Bison.co, we believe the important changes from these new rules will have less to do with accredited investors and more to do with increasing data openness in the private equity industry. Check out our latest blog post for details on how it will play out... (http://blog.bison.co/2013/07/10/hello-private-equity-marketi...)
I thought the reason the red fire ambulance needed to be around was because regular EMTs aren't allowed to administer oxygen do to its high flammability, which important in many emergencies. This according to one EMT that I know.

In general, the EMTs you see carrying out an elderly woman are people with a few months of training. When people are getting stabbed, shot, or on the brink of life, you sort of need people with better training.

https://www.cpc.mednet.ucla.edu/node/27
Entry (since the site is down):

"Feds, we need some time apart.
Posted 7.10.13

For over two decades DEF CON has been an open nexus of hacker culture, a place where seasoned pros, hackers, academics, and feds can meet, share ideas and party on neutral territory. Our community operates in the spirit of openness, verified trust, and mutual respect.

When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about this relationship. Therefore, I think it would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a "time-out" and not attend DEF CON this year.

This will give everybody time to think about how we got here, and what comes next.

The Dark Tangent"
Left-out of this article is that the Denisovans seem to be one of the ancestors of the Melanesian peoples living in and near Papua New Guinea: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_d....

More about the Melanesians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesians
Apple Found Guilty in E-books Conspiracy
I don't see why these need to take off and land horizontally. Give them the capability to take off and land on their tails, and the size of the carrier can shrink dramatically. The reason why we don't use tail sitting craft is because they are too awkward for human pilots to land. Drones wouldn't be so limited.
Ask HN: Why hasn't Rap Genius been shut down?
Given the news of the recent raid of Undertexter, I'm curious how a service like Rap Genius stays online?

Undertexter profited, via banner ads on the site, for the community sourced subtitles.

Rap Genius, while not currently profitable, did take a 15 million USD round of funding for their site hosting community sourced song lyrics.

Undertexter created derivative work by creating translation of copyrighted subtitles to native languages.

Rap Genius created derivative work by creating an annotation layer on top of copyrighted subtitles.

In both cases, neither party had obtained permission or licensing.

So how is Rap Genius's model or execution different from Undertexter?
Ask HN: Unexpected Seed Investment Offer (Angels/VCs/Entrepreneurs)
My partner and I have been quietly working on our (lean) startup for a about 7 months, bootstrapping and not looking for investments unless absolutely necessary. We are pre-launch though we already have the interest of a handful of clients and are quite assured of our ability to generate revenue. If anything, we would only consider looking for capital investment once we have some real numbers to put on the table for negotiation, and only if needed.<p>On the downside, as of late we've been slowed in our progress due to professional commitments and a lack of cash flow to invest in contractors. As a result, our timelines are delayed, and that is obviously a painful issue for us.<p>We have found ourselves facing a seed investment offer when we didn't seek one, and we are only considering it because it would quicken the pace of the project and get the idea off the ground. The downside, of course, is that we don't want to give away too much if we do enter into an investment agreement.<p>Any advice for us?
Because the person who gets to make the call is often either someone on the team, or someone who is likely friends with the members of the team, who is not fiscally responsible for the optimal use of resources, and because the officers get paid more for high-risk jobs (such as SWAT raids).
Just piecing together known data here but...

My IP address requests a particular site form DNS, in theory that request could be recorded.
Even if Google doesn't know that I'm at that IP (which they could have gotten from some other site I'm logged into (say Amazon)) they know that my particular ip address has requested certain sites. They can then serve ads to that IP based on context
Two years ago in my E & M lab, one of my profs was showing off on of his research projects into materials with negative permeability and negative permittivity… it started to make me think about if people could have clothes(or objects) and spray a lining of these type of materials on them, it could render them "invisible" to traditional optics… Isn't the military doing research like this too? I know they work close with academia as well…
Calling it a 'drone' kind of understates the accomplishment here. :) Navy drones have already taken off from and been recovered onto ships, in the VTOL configuration.

This is essentially an unmanned jet aircraft. It recently successfully managed a catapult-assisted takeoff from a carrier.

Now it has completed the other end of the deal, an arrested landing. (i.e. it had to catch its tailhook on one of the arresting wires, execute a proper glide path descent onto a moving platform, etc.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_server
> You're married to the bad teammate. If you drop, the game brands you a leaver. You won't be scrambled. The round won't even end any time soon - you're just stuck with him for many, many minutes of play. But the worst part is, he's actually feeding power to the enemy. Every time you get in a fight and get your ass kicked, you're going to think of the screwups your bad teammate did.

It sounds like you need to do the opposite -- help the bad teammate. Yelling at the person is just going to make them less cooperative. How is it that we've been programmed to yell at these people when that makes it worse? (or have we learned that yelling works and we apply it to everything?)
This is more about making a statement than anything else. Will the information still reach the feds? Sure.

But the request is deliberately creating a delineation: the government is no longer for the people or part of the people, it exists for it's own sake.

Will the government understand and ramp itself down?

Whatever you thought about Ron Paul, his politics would have prevented all of this. All of the wars. All the foreign aid. And we would live in paradise ;)
Differences on Cybertheft Complicate China Talks
Ask HN: My Personal Data Manager
I have built this data management app running on iPad, Win8 and Android (www.mypersonaldatamanager.com).

I have had an acceptable number of downloads for this kind of app, but not much comments. It's free on all plateforms, no adds, no in-app purchases.

I would greatly appreciate some feedback. Tell me what you like, what you don't like, what you'd like to see, ...

Thanks,
Marc.
New o Hackers
Inventors Seek to Save Art of Handwriting With Linux Pen
So what? They still work for law enforcement.
The scale of this problem is hard to overestimate. I estimate that people collectively spend 100 billion hours in PowerPoint annually. We're tackling the same problem at LiveLoop (http://getliveloop.com)... but we capture edits keystroke by keystroke so you don't have to click "sync" to see each others edits. Somewhat like Etherpad inside PowerPoint. The other big problem we've identified is participating in PowerPoint from tablets... So we have a mobile client that also lets you see presentations in keystroke-by-keystroke realtime.
Always thought Desert Bus was a brilliant piece of art.

Here's a couple of people beating the initial trip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl9D6kCv2eY

Here's where you can play it ported to Java:
http://desertbus-game.org/
We're not on GitHub (to my dismay) but my company does use Atlassian Stash, and they've been mimicking GitHub more and more with each update.

Our development process does include pull requests, and code review is mandatory (with the number of reviewers configurable at some level), as is a successful build from Jenkins. Stash's UI will not permit a merge operation without satisfying those criteria. There's also a restriction on the master branch so the sneaky commit isn't even possible.
The Last Pixel: Closing the book on Pixel Pusher