skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"and blowing himself on the plane" - I know you just missed a word, but good god that made me lol
This 21-year-old is turning trash into cash
This and also never forget that on a global scale we are all living in the very upscale parts of the metropolis.

Of all those sci-fi stories I've read where there is one major oppressive force with their boot on a smaller oppressed group, WE ARE THAT BIG TOTALITARIAN NATION!

I'm saying we as in, we in the over-developed world. I'm personally a slav living in Sweden.
I used https://github.com/cykod/CoderDeck for the javascript/html/css interpreter (DeckJS + http://codemirror.net/)
oh and sometimes I get spikes of memory usage over 10gb. Then it goes back down.
The NSA is collecting information; nerds rage at how the U.S. has become a third world dictatorship; lawyers argue about whether it's legal or not; the average American rightly realizes that nothing has happened that is worth burning tires and trying to overthrow the government over.

There is no civilized way to overthrow a government that no longer has the interests of its people at heart. Luckily, we don't live under such a government. At worst we have a bunch of misguided old people that don't realize that the internet is much more valuable to younger people than just the tool for commerce they perceive it as. At the end of the day, the kind of liberties that average Americans care about, the kind that affects the lives of Americans directly: being able to own guns, being able to get abortions, being able to belong to religious groups, however mainstream or wacky, being able to criticize the government, etc, are strongly in place. And despite the recession, Americans still enjoy among the highest standards of living of any large liberal democracy on the planet. Few Americans would trade places with someone in Spain or Italy, or the UK (with its oppressive laws re: speech and guns) for that matter.
What's the definition of a 'backdoor' here? As someone who implemented a version of ARM and MIPS in VHDL, I'm having a hard-time picturing a 'backdoor' in a CPU.

In fact, I'm tempted to classify this article as 'complete non-sense', only believable by someone who has no idea what a CPU is. Given some of the comments about the Linux 'kernal' (sic), I'm not surprised this article made it to the front page of HN.
you can do the same thing within your browser.
simply open the desired search on twitter.com (such as https://twitter.com/search?q=giacomoballi.com) and then paste the following in the address bar:

javascript:allFavs=document.getElementsByClassName("favorite");for(var a=0;a<allFavs.length;a++){allFavs[a].click();}
Which is why I added the "marginal cost of duplication" part. I understand that security via obscurity has been practically the only thing that's been happening. Hell, a simple talk to our own parents (mine're 50+, somewhat tech inclined but nothing deeper than the basic word editing, and web browsing) in relation to this reveals that they think "you shouldn't tell your secret to the whole internet", little realizing that publishing it will actually help you plug the holes.

The problem is, as long as it was a physical object it was all fine, sort of atleast. You could put anti tamper mechanism (like safes with relockers) that would destroy the core technology/secret if someone tries to pry it apart. But with computer code and mathematics, it's guaranteed that the attacker/pryer is able to make millions of duplicates at zero extra cost. So if approach #564 doesn't work, all he has to do is cp ../downloads/file ../project/reverseengineer/ and boom he has another copy to work with.

The only thing holding an intruder out of a system is the solidity of the mathematical concept that system is based on. And now that the intruder knows that there's a break, and that he potentially will gain a lot by discovering it, he can continue unhindered.

Obviously I'm preaching to the choir, but if you've encountered such people you should give this analogy. In the real world, the guy needs to buy your widget each time he fails to reverse-engineer the anti-intrusion mechanism, but if he were able to make a 100% replica copy of the widget and work on that copy he could try everything. So if he fails once, he'll just make another copy and try a new approach at opening your widget. He knows it's broken, and there's no real extra "cost" associated with duplicating the widget to try again, there's literally no stopping him until he gives up.

Another thing that crossed my mind was this. The manufacturers would want to keep this knowledge (i.e. that the exploit exists) secret, but ~~if~~ when he discovers the backdoor, do you want to be considered responsible for your car being stolen instead of the manufacturer for the manufacturer's mistake? Would you not prefer that the manufacturer calls you and recalls your car to the garage and replace it with a better part? It's a shame because Bentleys, Porsches, and Audis are NOT cheap. You're paying for the name, and at times like this, when the name comes under fire they should do something and stand by their customers instead of against them.
Because Linus signed off on it. To get that complex change into the kernel, the NSA had to convince Linus that it's a good idea, which can be a next-to-impossible task. I trust him to review the code more than I trust myself.
Organize ourselves. The people need a way to influence the government more. We can do this through collecting money for specific causes and deciding, as a group, how best to influence politics, be it through billboard advertisements that shame particular representatives into acting in the interests of their constituents or by funding lobbyists to meet with congressmen etc. We need better tools to act as groups.
Venture Capital Performance Continues to Lag
For anyone who is an introvert, works with introverts or wants to understand more about people's behavior I would recommend reading her book. There is nothing groundbreaking or earth shattering but her points about how introverts and extroverts "recharge" are worth understanding. The book is a quick, good and easy read.
Or an external macro script that moves the mouse and clicks stuff?

Seriously, it's a ridiculous distinction and I'm discouraged that a Court would allow it to stand.
You are correct! Not all affiliates abuse the system, there were a lot of nice kids I met trying.

You are like a digital salesman for any manner of companies and products.

The cool thing about it is the scale that is possible. For example, in the one year I ran ads, my ads were displayed over 640 million times around the world.

I got so many clicks in Columbia that 20% of the male users in Columbia on Facebook clicked one of my ads.

OK. Got to get back to work now!
It worked for me, and it has an evidence base.

Regular exercise stimulates the production of new neurons in the brain, which is a normal process found to be slowed in depressed brains. (the research was presented at a conference, but not yet published as far as I know.)

Mindfullness training has clinical evidence as a treatment for depression, anxiety and other psychological illnesses, as well as having been shown to increase concentration span and effectiveness.

Not everyone has these issues; perhaps I said it wrong. All "normal humans" are subject to depression and anxiety cycles, and have brains that use the same "cognitive energy" for both thinking problems and willpower. Assuming you don't have an abnormality in your brain structure (would be highly unlikely), these techniques will (most likely) help with the problem you describe. Of course, it's only medical science, so it's sometimes wrong for one individual.
Steve Blank, "recognised as one of Silicon Valleys leading experts". I'll be sure to come to him next time I need to figure out why my car is making that noise. Or when I'm looking for a heart surgeon.

Wikipedia tells me Steve Blank is "recognized for developing the Customer Development methodology, which launched the Lean Startup movement". That doesn't sound to me like the kind of expertise that would be useful for determining whether silicon chips contain backdoors.

If Steve Blank figured there must be something funny going on at Area 51, would the headline be "Expert Says NASA Have Aliens in Nevada"?
> unless there's a physiological difference in people like me

I think there is: different people have differently tuned reward-centres in the brain.

The book "the procrastination equation" by Piers Steel tries to capture those differences in equation form. Although it's probably faux-math, the key idea seems good to me: procrastinators are more sensitive to the time-until-reward dimension of a given rational choice.

And of course, being physiologically different is not an excuse to procrastinate away. Once we understand the nature of the beast, we can game our brain (as the book describes), and (I hope) we can then maybe benefit from brain plasticity to get better at this stuff over time.
Ask HN: Startup founders, what degrees do you hold?
Alternatively, which degrees do you believe are most useful for running a startup?
Apparently St. Ives isn't the best thing for your face. "First, stop using St. Ives Apricot Scrub!!! The particles are large, non-uniform, sharp, and too abrasive to be suitable for facial use." from reddit.com/r/SkincareAddiction beginners guide (link below) I used that stuff at one point also. I haven't bought it in a while, I've just been using regular soap and then moisturizing after showering. I've been considering starting a routine like the reddit sub describes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SkincareAddiction/comments/19oiyy/th...
Relax. The Party is everything, knows everything. There are no spies, only brave members of the inner committee doing their duty for the empire.
No way. You sign away any rights to anything you come up with. You get the lecture on it. This guy Serge got shut down when he wanted to open source something. (although GS has open sourced some simple and non-strategic stuff, as a presumable PR move)

By both the letter of what you agree to and industry standard it's not really ethical to dump your employer's code into Dropbox or whatever. They go a long way to block it, blocking sharing sites, USB ports, etc. I'm not saying it doesn't happen all the time, just like brokers taking their client lists. People justify it by saying 'really, I'm supposed to look these people up in the phone book?' or 'really, I'm supposed to re-implement this simple function?'

How unethical sort of depends on how much of an edge you take, it's one thing if it's stuff you did yourself that would be inconvenient to recreate, the equivalent of your spiral notebook, something else if it's what other people did that would have been impossible to recreate.

But I think Serge demonstrates ignorance and naivete by thinking that was normal practice, and both Serge and Lewis demonstrate an ethical blind spot.

Did he deserve to be made an example of? I have no idea if he did or why that happened. Maybe there was stuff in there that was viewed as very proprietary. Maybe it was clever, or they just had an inflated sense of its value. Maybe what seemed trivial to Serge seemed extremely valuable and proprietary to GS. Or maybe he just pissed off the wrong guy. Or maybe they were getting poached a lot and decided to take a stand. I don't think we'll ever know. Certainly not based on this article.
+*******************************************************+
| NanoWE Inc. |
| Palo Alto, CA |
| |
|Lead Developer --> RoR --> India <--> Palo Alto, CA |
| |
+*******************************************************+
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| $10-$15k <-- salary/equity --> 1.0%-5.0% |
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+*******************************************************+
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| What’s in it for you? |
| |
| Experiencing 5th worldwide |
| technology revolution |
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| Making your 1st million dollars |
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+*******************************************************+
| Requirements |
| |
| Serial entrepreneurs |
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| You know top 30 things you want to do in life |
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| You meet deadlines and you do it all before lunch |
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+*******************************************************+
| Email me! |
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+*******************************************************+
I would be interested in the details of what law enforcement/surveillance methods are actually useful for counterterrorism and which ones simply make things more convenient but aren't really needed. It sounds to me like one side says they're all desperately needed and the other side says that they're all useless. Somehow I don't think the answer is either one of those.

But this bill looks like a great first step, and Rep. Holt makes a lot of great points about the role of oversight, the need for overseen agencies to buy into oversight, and the need for IC whistleblower protections that don't force well-intentioned staff to have to dump things to the media to avoid being treated like Thomas Drake.
This is how you deal with canned recruiter emails
They probably will.

This needs to be repeated every time btc ASICs are discussed: ASIC economics don't work like most physical products, and instead work more like software. For high-performance asics, the costs of design and masks completely overshadow the costs of actually making chips unless your volume is in the millions. To make the first chip costs many millions, to make the next chip costs $15. The most valuable assets they have are the masks. One of the least risky ways of bootstrapping an ASIC venture is to presell enough chips to pay off R&D, and when you can make them for cheap, keep the rest.
Steve Blank started by working in signals intelligence actually:

http://steveblank.com/tag/signals-intelligence/
OpenGlass project shows Google Glass for the visually impaired
Do all of these rallies insist on using Facebook for organizing their privacy protests?

The irony is stunning.
> The notion that the authorities now think it's ok to turn up at my doorstep for that is incredible.

But this has always been true. If your neighbor gets robbed, you're going to get a knock on your door to see if you saw anything. They could stop by and ask for a glass of lemonade. Who cares? You seem to imply that there was some intimidation, but I read nothing to indicate that.
What happens when you want to write a set of functions to handle a set of classes? Especially when you are given a class and want to figure out which handler to call dynamically - eg you have FooEvent, should the function be "handle_foo_event", "handle_FooEvent", "HandleFooEvent", or any of several other possibilities?
The article was very sympathetic toward Aleynikov and accounts his acquittal on appeal, so it breaks that "law" (which IMHO is upheld primarily due to confirmation bias).
I haven't used a live CD of Debian, but you should know that since Debian Squeeze, nonfree graphics drivers are not included. Perhaps that was an issue? If you want something that "just works", use a Debian derivative like Ubuntu. Debian is great and I use it on a few of my machines because I can install a minimal set of packages and build on top of it.
That seems pretty fragile.
I don't see why that's hard to believe.

I'm very good at selling myself and my skillset but I'm deathly afraid of girls.
Because they know that doing so would spike the difficulty and dramatically lower the expected value of bitcoins mined per unit. They can sell them for $20k a pop now, claiming that you can make that $20k back in a month of mining - but if they sell out and all their customers start mining back their $20k immediately, it'll take far longer. In the meantime, Bitfury already collected their money and are laughing on the way to the bank.
Having said that, this is one of the many reasons why young startups want to hire the brightest and smartest engineers out of college: they need warm bodies smart enough to move forward, to deal with legacy codebases and figuring a clever (but may be dirty) hack to workaround the legacy design decision, less on solving complex new problems.

Wasn't it the brightest and smartest engineers who created these problems?
Razuna 1.6 Release Candidate 2 available -
What if the child who cried wolf genuinely believed he'd seen wolves?

It's the same result in the end (no one believes you when it's most important), which is why it's necessary not to jump to conclusions that are not supported by evidence, especially conclusions that naturally mesh with your worldview.
Basically, there's an ideal balance of running it themselves and selling them, and I'm sure they've calculated out the maximum profit strategy and are executing it.
You suggested that a few rich people control the media and tell people what to care about. That's pretty much the definition of conspiracy theory.

Alternate hypothesis: you're in a tiny minority of people who think the internet is really important. Like, foundation of society important, as opposed to a convenient place to buy shit and message your friends and look up the release date of the latest Madden game. Surveillance of the internet seems more important to you than it does to other people, and you can't understand why and have to resort to an explanation involving the shadowy elite.
A few stuck out in particular:

- Don't be in such a goddam rush.

- You'll look back at the risks you took when you were younger and wonder what the hell possessed you to take them. On the other hand, they make for great stories that you'll treasure forever.

- Losing everything isn't so bad. You move on.

- You'll always think you have the world figured out, but you won't.

- What you think is important today will probably seem trivial in 10 years.

- The older you get, the more you tend to treasure relationships over status. This becomes doubly true when you're a father, and quadrupally true when you're a grandfather.

- Your circle of friends will shrink. Keep close friends close.

- Your family, no matter how fucked up, is still your family.

- A life without adversity makes you weak.

- Don't start a fight, but don't shy away from one either.

- You're not forever young.

- Stay in shape. The older you get, the harder it is to maintain your body (and the harder it is to START getting into shape!). It sucks needing assistance just to move around.

- People don't want to hear your complaints, but when you're old enough, they'll have no choice but to listen to your crap.
Employment limitations after intelligence/defense work?
How is one's career affected by working for an intelligence/defense agency?
I am particularly interested in hearing from people who either
1) Are directly affected by previous employment, or
2) Make hiring decisions.

By (1) I mean that you have at some point worked for an intelligence/defense
agency. What effect has this had on your career in the private sector?

By (2) I would like to hear from individuals who make/influence hiring
decisions at a private company. How would an applicants previous employment
at such an agency affect your hiring decision?

This question was directly motivated by comments in
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6143322
> Thank you for the details. It seems I've been living under a rock and this is new to me.

You haven't been living under a rock. The affiliate marketing industry is hiding under a really big rock :)

> Just to make sure I understand ... the way this used to work is that you acted as an affiliate for another site (e.g. aff). They would pay you a commission for signups you generate. You then market on sites such as Facebook and get the affiliate fees.

That is a good summary. An example is eHarmony. They paid me $4.25 to fill out a signup form on their site (first name, last name, email, gender, interested-in, location). I created a web site to tell people about them and then sent traffic to the site from various sources (Facebook, Display Ads, Search, etc.)

You don't always have to create web sites in between the ad and the advertiser, but often it helps because you can "seal the deal" by convincing them about the product.

> As an affiliate, one is sort of a marketing firm for the web site. However, people abuse this setup by misleading clicks/signups.

People abuse it through many different ways. The most notorious is Jenny's Diet Blog. An affiliate marketer made a fake blog about "Jenny" and her diet "miracle", espousing the ease of losing weight through acai berry and colon cleaning product free trials. The affiliate was paid ~$40 per signup for each.

The abuse is through misleading ads, outright lying on web pages, scammy merchants (they are just as bad) and more.

> Is this an accurate summary?

You definitely are on the right track.

> Edit: Also, how does one learn about these affiliate programs? Word-of-mouth?

There are a lot of affiliate networks that host the offers, track performance and handle payouts. They provide ways for affiliates to discover things to promote and also serve as a trusted source of payment.
OCaml sees a lot of use in the applied program analysis community, which has applications to automated reverse engineering and formal verification. A company in this area recently started by CMU assistant professor David Brumley is: http://www.forallsecure.com/mayhem.html.
The scalpers are just "adding liquidity to the market". /sarcasm
Fair enough. I can't imagine that most users will want to pass access tokens through your proxy, despite the hassle it saves. I would suggest making proxied auth /not/ the default or at least divulging the use of the proxy in a more prominent fashion in your documentation. Just a suggestion. People get sensitive when it comes to their personal cloud storage.
you make 130k, you have a whole team working under you, and you are 21 years old, and you have trouble getting laid.

That is the description of the entire SF tech industry.
I would right away move from Google, Microsoft, Apple, products if I had good alternatives.

Basically I do not use any Apple products, but Skype is the only Microsoft thing I use.

Duck Duck Go as search engine works, but still I like my personalized search results, they get me faster where I want to go. Though my search results should be secure and not spied upon. Duck Duck Go is also missing image search and some other problems like 25 Mb / 25 MB does not give me 0.125, but instead Provincial Trunk Highway 25, Brandon, Manitoba

Then comes the problem of phone operation systems. Ubuntu Unity, Firefox OS could be nice, but they are long way to come here. Only mobile operation system options for me are iOS, Android or that damn Windows currently.

It's pretty damn hard to stop using Facebook, Google+ or Twitter just for the reason of spying, because everyone of your friends is in one of them.

If I decide to stop using these systems where I can be spied upon I most likely will lose ability to contact most of my friends who are not technically skilled to use something like torchat or does not care that much to learn to use it.

If I leave these systems I can no longer easily inform my friends about the dangers of the systems they are using.

Thing is walled gardens are walled gardens and they are hard to compete with. Do I wait that people create better and secure services or go offline and never come back?
> Americans don't know outrage.

Americans have never experienced anything really worth being outraged about, at least not the current generation of people.
There's gotta be a better way to say that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHe_BVY_9c
I have never noticed what people have been complaining about regarding fonts. Ubuntu uses some freetype patches that have not been accepted upstream, right? The fonts look just fine to me. It's a very minor gripe at best.
A common practice in config files is to comment out whole sections e.g. optional proxy server settings. This sort of multi-line comment is not addressed by this hack
Linus doesn't review everything. He delegates and trusts.

That's tangential, though. More importantly, I expect NSA contributions to be poured over because the NSA isn't highly trusted, and it would make a great mailing list post to say "The NSA has a backdoor in our code here, here, and here."

Many eyes and a suspect contributor make all backdoors shallow.