skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Spot was Microsoft's attempt to kick-start the "internet of things": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_watch

Once again another thing where Microsoft was in the right place at the wrong time, and didn't follow-through on their initial work, instead leaving it in the ditch so that years later the press can be worked into a frothy fever over this very thing.

Apple did this with the Newton, it's true, but lately they've shown a lot more discipline in only launching things they're absolutely committed to. There hasn't been a Mac Cube in a long time.
For me, the biggest pros for Perl were it's extreme expressiveness and the power of CPAN. However, it wasn't without it's warts - odd threading, weird sub signatures, faked OO, etc .. I've spent a lot of time explaining the nuances of these warts to others, which only made me realize how serious these issues are.

I was sold on the promises of this thing they were calling Perl 6, that was supposed to break backwards compatibility and "fix all the things" in one shot. I followed it for a couple of years and then something happened...

Somebody pointed me to tryruby.org - I discovered a language that was more expressive than perl, followed similar values (i.e. There's more than one way to do it) and opened me up to a new world of meta programming. I embraced & absorbed it and today it's my weapon of choice for most of what I would have reached out to Perl for.
That's a huge change as well as it's from all accounts a massive single purpose data centre.
If you can tap large Internet connections then you can siphon off all HTTP and SMTP traffic and from there it's trivial to reconstruct sessions and from there get application level stuff.

I was doing similar things in the mid-1990s on shared Ethernet. It's really only a question of speed and scale and then of writing code that recognizes particular traffic (such as "this HTTP connection is a Facebook chat session").
Well, what does "efficient" actually mean here? I like Perl (for medium-small programs) because it's quick to write, doesn't require lots of boilerplate like Java does, and allows a much more direct translation of my intent than shell scripts do.
> VPN startups.

I took that to mean establishment of VPN connections, rather than companies operating VPN services.

Of course total security is impossible. But it would still be troubling if breaking common VPN services is not only possible but also doable with small enough resources that "any analyst" at NSA can just request it.
The NSA seems to have extensive monitoring in many countries, not just the United States.
Starbucks’ WiFi goes NSA :)
In high school I worked in a summer school program for the children of migrant farm workers. I used to be a math tutor at an after school program for Somali immigrants. There are a lot of volunteer tutoring programs.
michael: Wouldn't I need to do that for every provider that Authy is wrapping?
It's like a PC with a really crappy keyboard, unless you buy one that increases the price to the point where you should've bought a tablet notebook in the first place.
> humans can easily distinguish between freedom of expression and an offense.

Offense is interpretation. This is fundamental to Liberal Theory.

In some cultures, some things are considered racist, in others they are not. see: "Black Person Toothpaste" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlie (In China, a popular brand of toothpaste. In the UK, US, and I'd hope much of Europe, the name and the packaging would be considered extremely offensive[1].)

If "humans" don't agree on what's offensive (as I have proved with the toothpaste example), then something isn't "offensive" in and of itself; offense is an opinion about the object ("We think this opinion is offensive"). You can hardly convict someone of "causing our people to interpret something as offensive".

[1] although perhaps not in Italy... http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/jul/30/italy...
Exactly. I need those orthotics and I'd love to be able to get a custom version for less than the pros charge now. I think both orthopedists and dentists already have pretty sophisticated 3D tools today, though.
free and open, thats comedy by itself. you are the comedian sir.
"My phone is always auto-connecting to attwifi but it ends up paralyzing my phone because nothing works until I go to the browser and agree to their terms."

"Say hello to my little friend", which neatly encapsulates how I feel about stupid web login screens on wifi and exactly how I feel each time this app bypasses them for me:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.uk.syslynx....

aka "Wifi web login". Can be a bit touchy with some but I've not found one yet that it doesn't eventually work on. Once configured, it just transparently sits in the background, at work, or restaurants, or the library, or pretty much anywhere.

I would imagine there exists an iDevice work-alike.
Who said that they were using spinning storage? You can store an insane amount of data for your dollar if you are willing t use tape.
The TC piece adds nothing to the original Guardian article, which is currently at the top of the front page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6133349
lets be honest the number of "developers" who can't afford a proper PC is trivial in the USA just buy a newish pc second hand one ebay.
Not the much more important problem of a government that betrayed the trust of the people.

We've built a system that makes sure liars and demagogues get into office. Until people are on board with putting an end to such a system of elections, the only way to change the political landscape will be to circumvent it.
I love the concept of this, but I'm out of the use case for the time being (Windows / Linux user). The other key annoyance is that none of my desktop computers have bluetooth, because I built them for gaming, not wireless peripherals.

That being said, you probably already thought about using a centralized server or other methods of communication. Either it'll kill battery, or require some intermediary server - which would probably need two-factor authentication to authenticate.

Though, overall, I love this idea a lot more than backing up my Google Authenticator app with Titanium Backup and restoring it each time I change phones/ROMs.
:). That's not me. I wish I was as good looking as the actor in the video. I am here: www.authy.com/about.
No need for techcrunch reproduction, the original story is already covered at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6133349
Intragram Videos from Inside North Korea
This is cool but I'm learning quite quickly that I'm no good at drawing circles with my mouse, perhaps a bit more forgivness when using the gear drawing tool might make life a bit easier?

Overall I'm impressed.
So I can see where Bret is coming from, many of this thoughts resonate with my ideas, but I'm not so sure there's an intentional conspiracy so much as just a simple alternate perspective that hackers have.

We naturally think of things slightly different than non-programmers. Part of the reason the tools he mention were despised by "all true hackers" is that they were limiting frameworks. We, almost by definition, tend to dislike limitations (especially when we can wield all of the power of lower level languages).

I was just pondering the other day with a co-worker, what it would be like to write a web server in xl (not sure you could, or would, but what would the mental model be like). It was an interesting experiment.

It's a similar reason to why we tend to prefer libraries to frameworks. I like code that helps me get things done quicker, but not if it enforces some mental models or comes with implementation limitations. Just yesterday I was working around a problem with a certain framework that wasn't making the right system calls the way I needed it. I knew what I wanted from it but couldn't twist the right nobs to get it to happen.
The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they believe their theories to be 99% certain instead of the most probable 1%. "I told you so" goes both ways except that conspiracy theorists never accept and admit it, there will always be another conspiracy to cover the current one.

In the overall game it simply makes much more mathematical sense to treat conspiracy theorists as crackpots since they will so often get it wrong. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
There's a small version of the original slide here, which has since been removed — http://archive.is/xcwg6
Umm ... hello? Defence contractors anybody?

In one sense, it is amateur hour ... but if you buy enough hours from enough amateurs ...
If you or I was in charge of the NSA there would not be a visual basic interface or a select foreignness dropdown. I'm calling bullshit on this.
Some nigger decides liking health food is good and msuterbaiting twice a day.

God says...
C:\TAD\Text\PLATO.TXT

Then I suppose that we ought to do good to the just and harm
to the unjust?

I like that better.

But see the consequence:--Many a man who is ignorant of human nature
has friends who are bad friends, and in that case he ought to do harm
to them; and he has good enemies whom he ought to benefit; but, if so,
we shall be saying the very opposite of that which we affirmed
to be the meaning of Simonides.

Very true, he said: and I think that we had better correct an error
into which we seem to ha
Honestly, when you first heard of "Bang With Friends," would you have been surprised if it was yet another quality Zynga production?

Even if you wouldn't have - "Bang With Friends" instantly connects with "Words With Friends" in my mind. This is a really unpopular and unexpected thing to say, but for once I don't think Zynga is in the wrong.
Very clear and to the point.
Because AT&T is so trustworthy in comparison?
Livestream: "Oversight of FISA Surveillance Program" judiciary hearing
I don't think it's a leap to assume that ALL TLS certificates are compromised and the NSA can monitor ALL Internet traffic.
At this point, the line itself is even made of tinfoil.
Awesome. Can you report back how it works for you - I'm curious for similar reasons.. and the friends using it aren't exactly exacting.
I'm not sure if I would call a company the size of Activision Blizzard "indie".
At this point the only thing protecting the US (and the world) from the worst tyranny imaginable is that USG's essentially unlimited power is wielded by individuals (rank and file workers, career bureaucrats, political appointees, and politicians) with a fairly reasonable sense of morality and belief that they are constrained by both the constitution and morality.

I'm don't think that is a stable long term system. Either some effective limitations (technical and political) are put in in the next several years, or a few decades of "us vs them" and self justifying security crises will produce a horrible result.
Intrigued by your statement I googled about and haven't been able to find any articles that cast doubt on Azure's suitability for financial, insurance or healthcare. Nor any articles that claim poor attitude of these industries towards azure in general. Actually, most of what I have encountered - are fairly enthusiastic articles, case studies and white papers claiming just the opposite. Would you care to provide some information to substantiate your claims? Thanks.
Ask HN: How to track a stolen phone?
Me and some friends launched a weather balloon equipped with an android phone and a GoPro the last weekend.

Via an app we developed it sent updates about the location and some photos. Unfortunately when it landed it had only little battery left and soon shut down automatically. In the time between we arrived at it's landing spot and the phone shutting down, someone found the package and took it away.

We left a phone number on the package but nobody called it. For obvious reasons i called my carrier to lock the sim card. The device is associated with my Google account so when somebody turns it on and connects to a wlan, i should be able to see it in my Google dashboard. This has not happened yet.

Do you guys know of any methods to locate the device from remote?
Moodstocks SDK v3.6: OCR with image warping API
This is one of the reasons we started https://www.liveninja.com/ - therapy is just as effective and more affordable via the web which allows more people access to the treatments they need.
Hm, a conservative mark-and-sweep that uses tries to keep state. I wonder how the gc task is scheduled, but you're not feeling chatty; so I'll drop the topic.

I made claims based on what I (and everyone else) could see in rust.git; I have no reason to be either overtly pessimistic or overtly optimistic. At the end of the day, the proof is the pudding (aka. code): we are only debating facts, not hypotheticals.

Either way, it was an interesting read. Sure, I took a karma hit for saying unpopular things, and people feel sour/ hurt/ [insert irrational emotion here]; that's fine. Nevertheless, I hope the criticism helped think about some issues.
Interesting. So then this can be done with zero assistance from service providers? Could providers have taken any steps to render that stream of information inaccessible? And if so, is it a costly effort?
Blame unionization.
Why government employees are allowed to unionize will forever remain a mystery, for non-cynical reasons that is.
>The correct "route" has worked just fine in many other cases (Abu Ghraib, Mahmudiyah killings in Iraq).

On the contrary, there is no scarcity of examples of whistleblower protection failing miserably at protecting the whistleblower. It is a defective system that one would be a fool to put any trust in. Advocacy of that path is naive or ignorant at best.

>Regardless though, there were many other routes Manning could have taken that would have been more proper.

That is speculation, but I agree it is possible. Manning himself would probably agree with that. Hindsight is 20/20, and all that.

>And whatever route Manning took, he could have limited his disclosures to those detailing war crimes instead of a mass disclosure of classified operational information

That appears to be true, though the importance of the "classified operational information" appears to be wildly exaggerated for the most part. Lots of the material which is classified arguably shouldn't be.

Personally, my opinion is that the disclosures have been overall beneficial to US citizens and therefore to the US gov't. Far more useful to people all over the world who are interested in honest and just discourse, and foreign relations than to US enemies as operational intelligence.
I've been using Authy for all my accounts that support 2-factor auth for a while now and it's awesome! Google's app is crap and Authy's app is sexy and fast. It really kinda annoys me now when websites don't support 2-factor auth. It's easy enough for them with the Authy API and adds so much for me. More and more I see major websites having their hashed password databases stolen (just search HN). The situation's only getting worse.
> Why would Google (or anyone) link to them directly? with fiber no less! this stuff is alarming enough no need for FUD.

Who says Google has a choice or is even complicit? The backbone providers have mostly stayed mum and it's known that the likes of AT&T split their fiber for the NSA. If we're willing to go to the bottom of the ocean to tap fiber lines it's pretty easy to believe that we'd tap terrestrial lines too.
Chrome does!

>Going Incognito doesn't affect the behaviour of other people, servers or software. Be wary of:

> ...

>Surveillance by secret agents
Don't worry this is probably the worst titled article of the year.
Client and server, guys. A web browsing experience is a cooperative endeavor that occurs on property controlled by both the host (web server) and the visitor (user agent).

At a fine-grained level, different aspects of that experience can be said to occur specifically on client or server. Each of those aspects can be constrained or manipulated by the respective property owner.

When it comes to preferences of the visitor for certain server actions (or inactions), one can only make a request. This isn't a grand moral point, or a technical one, but one of basic property rights and personal freedom. And such a request is what the DNT header signifies.

Likewise, when the server has preferences for certain user agent actions (such as running JavaScript or storing cookies) again it can only request that this occur since the user agent can typically disable JavaScript or cookies. This is what certain HTML metadata elements and the Set-Cookie header signify.

If visitors are unhappy with the behavior of a server, they can avoid it. In aggregate, such avoidance can become a significant market force. At the same time, a website that does no analytics for DNT visitors and has a high ratio of DNT visitors may also become less competitive and valuable over time. Both can feedback into respective preference consideration. This is ultimately the meager value of DNT. It (combined with adequate education) provides extra context data that can motivate through market forces an adjustment to web browsing norms.

Along the lines of "adequate education", the option in Firefox should read "Tell websites to restrict their tracking of me. __(Learn more.)__"

Practically, how would you know in advance if a server will respect your DNT preference without first visiting the site? Well, in real life, how do you know whether someone who invites you over for dinner won't serve you poison? One way is through trusted third-parties, but the market hasn't yet demanded such a service (and may never).
Oakland accepts federal funds for controversial vast surveillance setup
Bret Victor's talk wasn't about any particular technology. It was about being able to change your mind. It's not important that "binary programmers" programmed in machine code. It's important that they refused to change their minds. We should avoid being "binary programmers" in this sense.

> For one thing, Forth is the machine code for the chips he designs.

You're right, I should've said Forth isn't just machine code.

> Forth does absolutely not share the ability to describe both high and low level equally well. Heck, Moore even rejects the idea of "levels" of programming.

This is a misunderstanding. He rejects complex programming hierarchies, wishing instead to simply have a programmer-Forth interface and a Forth-machine interface. He describes programming in Forth as building up the language towards the problem, from a lower level to a higher level:

"The whole point of Forth was that you didn't write programs in Forth, you wrote vocabularies in Forth. When you devised an application, you wrote a hundred words or so that discussed the application, and you used those hundred words to write a one line definition to solve the application. It is not easy to find those hundred words, but they exist, they always exist." [1]

Also:

"Yes, I am struck by the duality between Lisp and Lambda Calculus vs. Forth and postfix. But I am not impressed by the productivity of functional languages." [2]

Here's what others have said:

"Forth certainly starts out as a low-level language; however, as you define additional words, the level of abstraction increases arbitrarily." [3]

Do you consider Factor a Forth? I do.

"Factor allows the clean integration of high-level and low-level code with extensive support for calling libraries in other languages and for efficient manipulation of binary data." [4]

1. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ForthValues

2. http://developers.slashdot.org/story/01/09/11/139249/chuck-m...

3. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ForthVsLisp

4. http://factorcode.org/littledan/dls.pdf
Wow, that is a really interesting comment. Thanks for posting it.
Ask HN: What's happening to the "Learn X the Hard Way" series?
Zed Shaw has a very good collection of books titled "Learn X the Hard Way" where X in {Ruby, SQL, Regex, etc}. However it seems that on January 3rd he deleted most of these repos (see https://gitorious.org/~zedshaw and search for "deleted"), the sites look abandoned (see for example this link - http://regex.learncodethehardway.org/book/ex2.html - which contains a lot of "Input file is empty") and the remaining public clones of the book repositories don't seem to contain "buildeable" code.

Anyone knows what's happening? Anyone has "correct" copies of these books before the mass-deletion?
Your point applies more to PSD.rb then - there was a lot of PSD readers in Python, C, C++ and C# for ages :)

But it seems that reimplementing worked very well for them: API, language and a good timing really matters.
Great commercial. I feel like my mom would even understand 2-factor auth now.
That's a good summary. On the positive side, I think our disagreement at this point is fundamentally philosophical. Thanks for the debate.
Are these "PC" only for sale in the US?
Although HN policy is to change the original post title if it is misleading, adding "[satire]" in this case ruins it. Please allow the smart HN community to discover for themselves what this post is trying to say.
I'm with you, but there are a couple of downsides I've observed with staying out of management:

* It can make moving between jobs harder. Career managers are scared to death of people who are more technical than they are and entirely capable of doing their jobs. Nothing can convince them that we don't actually want their jobs. They will see fit to undermine you at every turn.

* Moving permanently into management in ~10 years seems to be such a common career path that it raises questions when someone hasn't done it. "What's wrong with him/her?"

* Many if not most organizations are stuck in a mindset managers must be paid above those they manage. In some places it's hard and fast rule.

On a related note, one of the worst situations I've ever had to deal with was working for a guy who had stopped being anything remotely technical at least half a decade earlier, but refused to acknowledge it. It made for a fullblown career manager who steadfastly believed that he was still the best and brightest engineer in any room.
300 "terrorists" caught for a few billion people's privacy completely destroyed at a price tag of 100 Billion (pulled out of my ass obviously). Absurdity at its finest.
Reference for that research?
It depends. Not only does it depend on how much of a threat those 300 really were, and how much damage they would have done had this system not been in place, it also depends on how much this system gets abused, and how much the world suffers because the most influential country on the international stage that was actively pushing for greater transparency and openness has just had the moral high ground ripped right out from underneath it's feet, emboldening all the genuinely corrupt and malicious actors in Russia and China.
How big data can help the developing world beat poverty
the religion you have offended has great sentimental values to the people who follow that religion. yet you ask people to save your startup because it has great sentimental values to you. what a pity.
The CPUC Gives Rideshare the Green Light
It's amazing the kind of shit people put up with in the US.

I'll remember to stare them in the face the next time a TSA agent touches my genitalia as a precursor to being allowed to board an aircraft.
Just a friendly reminder that if you looked at the slides, you have read a classified document, and therefore are guilty of a Federal felony. Cheers!
It's a typo. The real number is 429 million shares.
The NSA sells the job to naive college students on patriotism and generic descriptions of working with cutting edge cool stuff. Once you're in, it's easy to rationalize that all this will be used only for good. Especially if the alternative is quitting your stable job that supports your family.