skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The reason I mention xylitol is because it's naturally ocurring in plants and our own body - unlike most sweeteners; has proven positive effects for oral health; and hasn't been linked to any ill effects so far, so it's high on the list of possible 100% safe sugar substitutes.
I admit by the time I made it through this comment thread, I wasn't quite laughing out loud, but I was having a good chuckle.
Also note that's "the typical (republican running in San Francisco)", as distinct from "(the typical republican) running in San Francisco", who would likely get even fewer votes.
I actually read it a really long time ago, but I just read it again. Let's review how my scenario is like that which allegedly causes fan death:

* I do not open any windows. Ever.
* My fan does not oscillate (it is a ceiling fan).
* I sleep directly under it.
* I have it on all the time.
* We face extreme heat. This is Arizona. It's well over 100 F all summer long, often closer to 110 F. That means 40+ C most of the time, for you metric users.
* The humidity is usually low, so if it kills you via evaporating all your sweat, these conditions should dry you out faster than anything else.

I have done this all summer every summer for some 15 years now. I am still alive. Heat stroke can kill you. "Fan death" will not.
The fact that the agencies have to apply pressure to obtain keys proves that the crypto is working.

Therefore, if you have, use and keep secret your own keys, the best-resourced intruders cannot practicably get your data.

Of course, http://xkcd.com/538/
I'm sorry, but you are displaying a remarkable level of naiveté about how the world works.

I'm not excusing the NSA, but the reason why the USA is exceptional is precisely BECAUSE things like this are an aberration and not accepted as a matter of course. We discuss them as a society and change our government when it gets out of line.

Lets not forget that it was a democratically elected government in Europe that started WWII. And killed millions for nothing more than being born who they were. Systematically, and with the full acquiescence of the favored population.
Great, that sounds like a fine opportunity for a "best guess": if newline, expect whitespace. Currently, I'd guess that 'whitespace except newline' is the default prediction for the switch() at line 451. I'd also guess that if not followed by a space or tab, a newline is frequently followed by another newline.

Maybe you could combine the case statements for space and newline, and do a branchless 'cmov' to increment loc.linenum if the match was a newline? This could be combined with loop to grab all the whitespace/newlines in one if you think whitespace is occurs in clumps.
I tried that once, very shortly after open on a Wednesday. The wait was 2-3 hours. It's a popular place.
> She has been a very strong supporter of gay rights, for example.

Unless those gays would rather not be spied on.
From NY on FiOS: ~80ms ping
Yep. The whole system seems backwards.

"This software is safe for use in a nuclear reactor". Not "this software, that I made in highschool for the lulz, is not safe to be used in a nuclear reactor".

Software should come with guarantees if guarantees are needed. It should not come with an exhaustive list of non-guarantees.
Obviously they didn't expect her to come since he didn't communicate his intentions ahead of time. I've worked security at these kind of events before. You say no to any special kind of request and if the guest insist you refer to a manager if they are available. If they aren't you go back to no. If you want a special request you communicate this ahead of time and definitely not 30 minutes before you have to be inside. Everyone has a story for why they should be allowed to bend the rules.

Seeing as we were that strict when the tickets were in the range of $30-$200 I personally think it was a failure of the initial security guards to even let her in the building to begin with.
Vena Artistica.
Slooow: U.S. slips to 9th in Internet speed
Ask HN: How to quit a side job that became too much work?
I've spent the past two years as a solo sub-contract developer building a custom ERP system. It's become too much work for me to do on my own and side work no longer fits into my work/life balance (now with 2 kids in 2 years).

The project started off with minimal requirements and sounded like a 3-4 month project. I've been working on it around my day job, around 10 hours per week. It seems to be in and endless "beta test" cycle and constantly changing requirements without before even going live. Eventually it's going to be a live system with over a hundred people using it for their daily operations. I was not aware of this at the time. I have no interest in maintaining it and need to find a way to get out.

I am working without a contract. I submit my invoices to another contractor who then submits his time and presumably my time with any applicable markup. I bill by the hour for tasks. I don't have a direct relationship with the end client. I've been doing side projects for the main contractor for the past 4 years. I have never signed anything other than an NDA about 4 years ago.

I mentioned to the main contractor that I don't want to do this long term and he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to replace me.

How can I step away from this work without completely leaving them in the lurch? Do I have any liability to complete the partially finished work which likely has bugs in it? I've intentionally operated as much as possible as a straight coder without wanting to take on any additional responsibility since it was side work.
The veto isn't guaranteed - this is a defense appropriations bill, and the President can't veto just this amendment. The eventual alternative without an override, if both sides stick to their guns, is no funding for any NSA activities (or drone strikes, or anything else...).
It's almost as though form-over-content and superstimuli combined with an easy-cash mentality aren't compatible with long-term profitability! What is this world coming to!
Killing the NSA Softly: Amash Nearly Beat the NSA — and Still Might
This is true, and I look forward to the Typesafe guys fixing both the default implicit ExecutionContext as well as any contexts that Akka creates. I actually implemented an ExecutionContext that does exactly what is described above, but ultimately we had to abandon it, since pretty much any library that deals with scala standard Futures in 2.10 has places where we could not provide our custom context. I can't wait until you guys get that ported upstream, because until then, I've explicitly banned the use of thread locals across our entire stack.
Ask HN: Good 'private' e-mail provider/setup
Hi all,

A little background:
A while back I stepped away from GMail as my main mail provider because of privacy concerns (now confirmed), but I am still not happy with my current e-mail. Mainly I am hosting with a big US based webhost that includes e-mail.

What I'd like is to host my e-mail in a country like Germany or Sweden or something. I'd rather not host in my own country (the Netherlands) because I think it might be a good strategy to not do so.

My question:
How can I setup e-mail in a rather 'NSA-proof-way' (as a HN post called it) without (preferably) resorting to self-hosting.

Main points of interest (from 'security' point of view) (feel free to add/subtract in comments):
1. SSL/TLS (obviously)
2. Some type of encryption on the server (see 3.)
3. Preferably an employee of the company can't see my e-mails (hard one it seems?)
4. Country's laws should make it hard to gain warrants for the e-mails

Apart from this some practical issues come into play:
1. Storage space (2GB <)
2. Number of mailboxes (8+)
3. Number of connections ('many' devices)
4. IMAP, SMTP, (Push has lost love?)
5. Reliable service
6. Good support
7. Webmail
8. Either backups or SSH access to do that myself

Have I left anything out? (it is late)

I understand that encryption on the server is something you can do better yourself (http://sealedabstract.com/code/nsa-proof-your-e-mail-in-2-hours/), but as far as I have understood managing your e-mail server is not much fun and can be a huge pain. I have to somewhat be able to rely on my e-mails working. I also understand that despite me caring about e-mails being encrypted, my recipients probably use GMail anyway, but THAT is outside of my control.

Pricing is less important as I'd first like to find out what the options are.

Any help/suggestions? Google has not been a great advisor on this one.
I remember a receptionist in a UK office complaining about the cleaning contractors the company was using. When I asked why they hadn't changed she mentioned there is apparently some union set up so that when you 'fire' the contractor, the new cleaners that you get are actually the same people, hired under a new contract.
Have you forgotten Google's history? i.e. StreetView cars guzzling down Wifi access point data.
I was initially tempted by DigitalOcean's prices and specs, but was quickly disappointed. My $20/m's VPS from them was outstandingly "meh". On paper it looked like a great deal, but the performance was nowhere near what they claimed it'd be.

About 6 months ago I switched over to Linode and have been loving it ever since. Their customer support and performance is top notch!
Google is a serial offender when it comes to privacy violations. Not really different from big banks who are caught committing fraud but always manage to settle with a big wad of cash, without having to admit any guilt whatsoever.
You do have to be careful how cheap you go on 3rd party toner cartridges though. At a previous IT job they went a bit too cheap and at least 10-20% of the cartridges leaked toner, covering the inside of the printer with black that frequently ended up on the pages.
Plans are in the works to respond to Linode and Digital Ocean. Plans have been in the works for... some time now; but... yeah. My 'automation debt' is absolutely killing me here. (lack of capital isn't helping much, either, but right now, insufficient automation, and my inherent conservatism are probably the biggest problems.) I'm doing existing customers first, of course, and starting with customers that I promised upgrades to a long time ago, which is actually slowing the whole process down quite a lot.

Another interesting thing is that right now, I charge a $4/account charge, then a incremental fee, right now $1 for every 64mib ram/1.5gb disk, which means that as you get a larger plan, you get more stuff for your money. As far as I can tell, none of the other players do that (and some competitors do the opposite, giving you more resources per dollar on the smaller plans than on the larger plans.) - so I am wondering if I should reduce or eliminate that fee.
This is why in my recent rant about how Microsoft could re-establish its relevance [1], one recommendation was that Microsoft differentiate itself as the only tech titan to champion a decentralized cloud. I fairly strongly feel that would be a competitive advantage.

(Of course if all self-managed security implemented on Microsoft operating systems can be subverted by the NSA, it's a moot point.)

[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft
The general terms of conditions explicitly mention seedbox's.

[7.2] "The bandwidth is no longer guaranteed when the server or servers are used for the following activities: ... Server(s) used for downloading and sending files on peer to peer networks (including but not limited to: seedbox)"
Neither way (Angular or Backbone) is "right" or "wrong"...just different ways to solve the same problems.

Angular reduces the amount of boilerplate code you need to build nice applications immensely, but to get to that point (and beyond two way binding hello world demos) there's a nearly vertical learning curve.

Once you near the top of that curve though, apps just kind of come together like magic. It's really neat.
Where are you located? I know there are plenty iOS developers in Los Angeles (where I am). A couple links that may be of some use:

https://jobs.github.com/

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs
You expect merchantability of products all the time. Otherwise, people could sell you all kinds of products with known, dangerous defects (e.g your car). Why should software be different?
Meh. I've been using their 4.1 RC. CSV filtering / sorting / manipulation is still dog-slow for large files (>10MBytes).
> Integration of libmwaw written by Laurent Alonso brings support for a multitude of pre-OSX Mac word-processing documents in different file-formats.

Although it's great to support very old formats, I wonder if it makes sense to integrate this to the main distribution, and thus increase the code size with features few people need. They should have some kind of plugin system to support this.
You can also buy toner by the bottle and refill your cartridge a few times before needing to replace it.
If you put in five or six hours of focused, high-quality work in a day (i.e. not spending most of it attending meetings, checking your e-mail, rearranging icons on your desktop or whatever), you're doing about as much as can be sustainably done; charge for that day with a clear conscience.

If you spend a couple of hours trying to concentrate before realizing you didn't really get anything done, you're just messing around and you need a break, take the day off and don't charge for it.
How I learned to Code in Under 10 Months
> but as far as I have understood managing your e-mail server is not much fun and can be a huge pain.

Not at all, provided you stay away from "sendmail". Sendmail's config language is likely why "email hosting" gained such a bad reputation.

Check out postfix (http://www.postfix.org/). It is quite easy to setup (all things considered, you will have to learn a little bit, but such is life) and once setup the only involvement is when you want to change/upgrade/add something.
Alonso-packing: an NP-hard problem (pull request)
My point was that the argument that there is increased risk is based on a flimsy premise which could equally well be applied to just about anything; there's very few pieces of commonly used legal language where someone, somewhere hasn't at one time or another argued that something phrased in "roughly the same" manner means something that you'd want to avoid.
Isn't the valuation of $3.5 Billion a little too much?
> Haha, fine, then I'm arguing for inverting whatever the current standard seems to be

Insofar as long, rambling intros that don't get quickly to a point are the norm, that's a standard only insofar as "people don't bother to apply any writing advice anyone has ever given" is a standard.
Thanks for the UK idea. Luckily we can also chat with Prizeo, one of the companies in our YC batch.
It's like watching fireworks and thinking "ooh I really think that purple one is different!".
PC and SP for small CPUs - hacking CPUs
I think I have what you were really looking for: http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/1j1gbv/table_iama_hi...

Check out /r/tabled and /u/tabledresser - a bot that condenses the threads from /r/IAMA and /r/AskScience into easy to consume tables.
It's probably because you know a little too much about how the sausage is made.
Sure, but my point is that plausible deniability always comes paired with plausible accusibability. Hell, the very fact that you had one encrypted partition massively increases the probability that you have more than one. Most people don't even know how to set one up. I think you'd be way better off simply claiming you didn't have one.

One way or another, you're going to be relying on reasonable doubt in the end.
It would be interesting to see some ultrablack material in person http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/ultrablack/
Is that wrong? It allows them to offer location based services without making people use GPS. This is a service that you can disable, by the way.

I don't see anything wrong with collecting SSIDs that are being broadcasted onto public roads.

But to get back on topic- Google is doing a good thing here and should be commended for it.
Check middle class salary increase the last 30 years.
Based on the article, it seems like there's a bit of artistry involved in the tagging. They had to choose a time (and possibly a place?) to show the tag, and probably needed to make a choice that would disrupt the flow of the narrative the least. I don't think software is quite up to snuff just yet when it comes to this, though I am willing to be surprised.
That disclosure is pretty close to a lie with its alternate-history of Crunchfund. Arrington started Crunchfund in AOL's employ with AOL's money, and then they cut a check to Uber, and then some time later an AOL employee wrote this story about a company AOL is almost directly invested in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/technology/michael-arringt...
People buy ChromeCast just for TVs & home theaters.
Yep, they're trying to get rid of the provision that says ISPs/forums/etc. can't be held responsible for content their users post. If successful, they intend to... hold ISPs/forums/etc. responsible for content their users post.

This would be bad. People who operate ISPs/forums/etc. should oppose this attempt to change the law.

In particular, the Attorneys General are trying to shut down backpage.com (craigslist competitor) because some people use it to post smutty ads. But if the change they suggest were to be made, it would be open season to enforce any state law via attacks on the online services that people use.
We need a well-organized lobbying effort to support the interests of United States internet companies. Those survey numbers are actually astounding.

The most surprising thing about lobbying and donation efforts is that they aren't really all that expensive. All it takes is a few hundred thousand to a million to swing a tight election. The amounts aren't that large. Maybe a crowdfunding campaign for a Free Internet PAC?
Man, every time I see this I feel like I somehowed failed in my self-learning. I went through "beginning programming for dummies" back in middle school (checked out at my local library), running around in the win95 version of QBASIC. Then I looked at C++, through "C++ for dummies" (could barely understand pointers), and spent so much time trying to figure out how anything worked.

I remember coming up with state machines to run little critters in a game I was trying to make, as well as writing up a UI library(with click listeners) in the beginning of high school, before people introduced me to those concepts. It was really fun to write the first time. Now I feel a bit stupid not putting these things into google, but I was on an old computer without internet access.

I spent a lot of time in high school goofing off in Actionscript too, looking around and copy-pasting code from the Newgrounds forums.

In the end, after 5 years of doing this I was still pretty worthless. Granted this was very much a part time hobby, but seeing people roll up so quickly is neat.
And the tinfoil heavy portfolio pays off for the paranoid investor!!
I think the orthodox interpretation of the commerce power is that it is intended to allow Congress to enact uniform economic regulation and prevent states from enacting economic regulation that prejudices out of state businesses. It's not intended to make doing business in multiple states easier by steamrolling over state criminal laws that only have an incidental effect on businesses.
> Do principles of cultural development such as the ones presented in "Guns, germs and steel" hold for non-Earth civilizations?

I find this particularly fascinating, because it could lead to a corollary to the Drake equation. This equation would quantify the (possibly insurmountable) barriers that a species must overcome to become a space-faring civilization: strength of the planet's gravity well, ease of access to and total planetary quantity of rare elements required to build space hardware, etc.

Basically, Guns, Germs, and Steel -- but on a planetary scale.
Hackers hijack software in a CAR and remotely control it using a laptop
This isn't snark. I legitimately tried explaining in my own words. I wasn't satisfied, so: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poignant
Arch is definitely a viable option for a personal server.
> there was a post very recently on HN from a surgeon claiming heart disease was rather linked to tissue inflammation than cholesterol

I believe the "surgeon" you referred to is Dwight Lundell. His claim is just that, a claim. Suffice to note that he has his medical license revoked because of "unprofessional conduct":

http://www.casewatch.org/board/med/lundell/order_2008.pdf

> reflects the current thinking of specialists

That means their recommendation reflects the current medical consensus. Of course American Cancer Society is going to make their recommendations based on current medical consensus instead of some wild claim made by someone who has his medical license revoked. To do anything else would be irresponsible.
Meet my little friend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln8-Y-fIbqM

God says...
Beginning Many zip hindereth does substances fellow-conspirators
enlarge student extol lustful ariseth accounted Affrighted
teaches listening reptiles devils sky shortened meekness
University super_computer effect flights doubtful sadness
comparing modification impiety reader succeeded reveal
division fellows goes Let's reform hear per seems concluded
heretofore sue Monnica accuser
I think this is the drone they are flying with... http://blackarmoreddrone.com/store/ Probably just a touch out of the hobby market price range with a $49k base. I think that's US dollars but I'm not 100pct sure.
Launching an Info Course part 1: Overcoming Doubt
You have no contract binding you to any terms, so I don't see what liability you have to complete the work. With no contract it sounds like you have no obligation to give any notice, but if I were in your shoes, I'd give 30 days courtesy notice, after which point you will no longer take on that work.

I can understand why they don't seem to be in a hurry to replace you -- "I don't want to do this long term" doesn't convey the same sense of urgency as "I am going to stop doing this after $date, so find someone else."
> I run a small, internet-based non-profit (in a totally unrelated sphere, contemporary art)

Early on we were approached by a budding organization that wanted to license our platform. I was initially excited by the potential for revenue, but shortly realized that what we were building would be too custom to us. Coming from a consulting background, I didn't think it would be worth it to the licensee.

> how to think about competition in the non-profit sector

Yes, this is interesting to think about. My personal opinion is that non-profits might be better off moving more towards a for-profit model in terms of needing an actual revenue model. There are a ton of great non-profits out there, but I'm not convinced fundraising is the only way to stay in business in the long term.

Thanks for the discussion!