skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Former IC failure analyst here. This sort of stuff is possible, absolutely. But it gets exponentially harder as chip geometries get smaller.

Getting through the package to the chip's top surface isn't too bad, because you can play rough with it until you get pretty close to the chip itself. So you have all sorts of fun options: wet chemistry, laser ablation, and physical milling being most common. Once you get up all in the chip's personal space, wet chemistry is probably the way to go, though nitric acid will wreak havoc on any copper elements, potentially including bond wires if they're not gold. Alternately, you can go at it with a specialized plasma tool.

Delayering the chip is time-consuming, but not prohibitively so. Your choice of wet chemistry, plasma toolsets, and physical grinding on a wheel (which works _shockingly_ well for what feels like a stone-age process). It can take a lot of practice to do this cleanly so you don't penetrate and damage a lower layer while working on an upper one, but it can be done.

The nasty bit, from the point of view of doing this outside a major megacorp, is probing and analyzing smaller geometries. As things get smaller, they get a lot more delicate. You can't just scratch through the insulative layer above metal lines with a big needle anymore, because the tip of that needle is significantly larger than multiple metal lines under it. Laser ablation can still work for mid-sized geometries, but with modern digital ICs it's all about focused ion beam tooling. That's a high-vacuum device that slowly and precisely mills and/or deposits metal with...well, an ion beam. You can get down way below the visible light range in terms of size and precision. Really cool stuff, but good luck finding one for under seven figures!

Once that's done, if your geometry is large enough to use an optical microscope, probe needles range in price from a few bucks a pop to well into the multi-hundred range. If it's too small, the next option is to get a scanning electron microscope with built-in microprobes. That's...not exactly hobbyist budget.

Doing this for an entire modern CPU-scale IC (instead of focusing on a target block) would take ages and ages and ages. I don't even want to think about it for too long. Months, at the least.

Like I said, possible...but expensive (both in engineer and tool time), hard, and time consuming. The thing is, it's time consuming because the bulk of the work of decapsulating, probing, deprocessing, and analyzing the ICs is done manually and iteratively. A TON of it could potentially be automated, but the motivation to automate all this has traditionally been pretty low because the tooling itself is so expensive that it's low-volume work.
“I tried to teach my son some of the most horrible to learn languages. It didn't work out well.”

Colour me surprised.
Not sure I understand what you're trying to say. The things you've mentioned are completely valid points and they still exist.

I'm not trying to overlook Samsung's success, but they _do_ sell tons of different devices while Apple only sell one (but 3 different versions), and profits _do_ matter.

I'm not sure about this but I believe Apple still beats Galaxy S4 in terms of profits and iPhone 5 released last year in September.

I also don't get this type of discussions. Technology evolves everyday. Apple used to beat other companies in terms of profits and market share, now Samsung is at the helm. Let's see what Apple can do this fall. As long as us, the consumer wins, I don't care who makes more money.
This is probably not the lean agile answer you're looking for.

I was approached by a publisher who had seen some of my writing elsewhere. I pitched a book idea at them that I wanted to write; they liked the idea but not the exact content. I ended up rethinking a few things, and pitching a similar but different idea to them, which they loved.

I got a contract and started writing, and honestly the editing they gave me was unbelievable. I thought my writing was on the 'ok' end of decent, but they gave me some really valuable insights. The quality of the book was much better for going through their process. (It's a book in the Smashing Magazine series, some of which isn't technically amazing, but there are some great books in that series and I like to think my book is good ;)

If I was going to write another book, I'd possibly think about doing it myself, but in all honesty I'd probably go the traditional publisher route again.
Guy Proposed By Modding Contra, But She Had To Finish It First. Ouch.
>you don't even have the courage to stick your identity to your work.

Neither do you -- as far as I can tell by viewing your profile and googling on your user name.
Don't you think they might have damaged their brand by "trading them down a bit to increase market share"? Why don't BMW or Mercedes go trade down their margins to sell more cars?

I know engineers don't understand marketing very well, but they should at least understand the very simple principle of brand building.
That's the only valid “Why not X?” response. :-)
You see this too across device types. Some commentators trivialize "marketshare" when talking about iPhone, but when talking about iPads in separate posts, it's all about marketshare. Mental gymnastics.

The remaining goal posts by the way are where apps get built first and general app quality. The time that developers move to Android after first making their app on iOS is probably shrinking. The disparity of where apps get made first is also probably shrinking.

Another point about why is Android doing so well: Apple seriously needs to get better at services. They are amazing at hardware, they are great at software that runs on devices, but they have bombed again and again on software that runs as a service in the cloud. This severely limits them. Maps, mobile me, icloud syncing, they have trouble keeping their developer portal up, etc. I believe this is a problem with Apple's culture and what they value. Server software isn't pretty, and it's iterative. That is you bring up something that works, then make it better. Apple's culture is to wow with the first try, but they've been disappointing when it comes to software as a service.
Why not compare the companies based on their overall strategies/profits? Do people actually make investment decisions based on a single line of business?
Can somebody explain why Samsung didn't have this title in Q2 2012?

From the article:

"The California company made an estimated $3.2bn (£2.1bn) profit from iPhone sales in the second quarter of the year, according to the research firm Strategy Analytics, a marked drop from $4.6bn a year ago"
So, Apple 2012 Q2 : $4.6bn

"The same trend has squeezed Samsung's handset profits, which are down from an estimated $5.6bn in the second quarter of 2012"
Samsung 2012 Q2 : $5.6bn

Interesting figures anyway, Apple's drop of over $1bn is interesting, they've dropped over 3x as much as Samsung did.
See this is the thing: I can guarantee you the majority of the people that are getting those type of images aren't using a standard web connection and searching generic search terms into Google/Bing.
I don't know about that. A this point I wouldn't be too surprised to learn the US runs concentration camps.
It has nothing to do with humbleness.
I'd appreciate a tldr version too.
That status document is great. Thank you!
I've had an unfortunate opportunity to have to help out a cousin's girlfriend with python. She's studying informatics and it's their introductory course in programming (recently switched from pascal). But python has really too many abstract constructs to explain easily. One example they had was using the for loop. I don't know python, but from the examples and exercises the professor gave them, it doesn't seem to have a "normal" for loop. All the examples used the function range() to generate an array of indices to loop over. Which is silly, since they don't cover functions and arrays until later. I had a hard choice to either go into details of why it works or tell her to just memorise it. Later on in her materials, after introducing arrays, suddenly the for loop doesn't use indices and she has to unlearn the old way. The other problem was explaining strings and methods, which they use (such as str.uppercase()) but their introductory course doesn't cover OOP. The last atrocity was an example of looping over lines in a file using the for construct. Of course, polymorphism, iterator patterns and so on are too advanced, but it really bothers me that they have to just memorise stuff without knowing why it works. I'm glad I had C as the first language. Firstly you generally learn how the CPU actually handles instructions, since C is so close to metal. Secondly, after C you can really appreciate what other languages have to offer. And thirdly, I really prefer the bottom-up approach. Then again, my perspective might be a bit skewed, since I graduated in computer engineering, which is a bit more involved than informatics.
Yes, who cares, the user decides for an eco system and that's it. I am happy with Apple, they serve my every perceived need and as long as they are not too expensive or too far behind, I am not going to change.

This is mostly preaching to the choir anyway.
I must admit I didn't sign up yet - just read the homepage - but something that would be super useful on such a system is throttling tweets.

I've seen more than a few instances where an employee screws up or goes 'rogue' and either goes off on a rant or posts the same thing over and over. It'd be great to only allow employees to post, say, once per hour or whatever, so any problems could be contained.
I'm not on Github, sorry. But that code should be pretty easy to port to your app :)
"Other important biophysical changes alter the amount of water that evaporates or transpires from plants and the soil, the roughness or unevenness of the plant canopy, and ultimately the extent of convective clouds and rainfall."

I think the author misreads the referenced science reports, in which it seems to me they are suggesting the forest becomes less of a carbon sink as it gets warmer.

http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Canadell_2010_...
Lock in due to the usage of proprietary features like PL/SQL. Switching costs are too high for existing systems.
maybe HN is not what you are taking it for?
I believe the news is about profits, not market share.

Completely different thing (as many Apple-centric journalists like to point out).

Apple has never been a dominant force in market share but it has been the profit leader for many years until, apparently, now.
I still don't understand why google does not give option to download via torrent ? Downloading android studio from dl.google.com last week over a slow connection was a horrible experience. I had to retry three times before I managed to get a successful download.
Must be nice being a chaebol and having the complete backing of your government.
Apple devices are quite expensive, but when the iPhone 3G came out, I was happy to spend a lot, since the phone was light years ahead of the competition. Two years later, when the iPhone 4 was released, I bought it. It wasn't light years ahead anymore, since it had very solid hardware and a beautiful retina display. Apple was still ahead of the pack.

The last time I renewed my subscription, I didn't get the iPhone 5. It's only a marginal improvement over my iPhone 4, iOS was mostly frozen (until now), but it still has a premium price. So, I got a Lumia 820 instead. It was around half the price of an iPhone 5, has a nice display, a fresh and innovative OS (with its own limitations), and is a solid device. I am still primarily using my iPhone 4, but taking the competition into account, the iPhone 5 not worth the ~650 Euro to me. Apple should get ahead of the pack again or lower its prices.

Some people will say that with Apple you only pay for the brand, but I still believe they make better products in some categories (e.g. the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Retina).
Try Clojure libraries with ease using lein-try
Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
I have been programming for almost 5 years. In this period I have learnt Python/Django, HTML/CSS/JS and have just started learning Node.js/Meteor as part of Stanford's Startup Engineering Course. During this time I have developed several non-trivial MVC web apps (mostly side projects) and taken many Coursera/Udacity programming courses. I also have a web design business although I am currently struggling to find clients who are not affected by my age.

Frankly, I feel lost in this world of technology and startups. I assumed that the more I knew, the easier it would become, but experience has proved that this isn't the case. I feel I need guidance in order to gain any traction/reputation in a particular field. It would be greatly appreciated if I could have some suggestions as to which direction I should take next.

Many thanks in advance. I have been following HN for almost half a year now and the community here is one of the strongest I have ever seen.

EDIT: Thanks everyone! The feedback has been incredibly helpful and I will take a look at the resources you have commented soon. Also, if you have anything else you want to add more personally, send me an email at: harry01a (at) gmail (dot) com
Autobuzz - control your apartment's call box via SMS
I'll stick with HootSuite because of the functionality. It allows me to manage my Google+ pages, Facebook pages, and Twitter all in one place.

If you had the ability to do that, I may be interested.
Merely pointing out the hypocritical arguments of some Apple supporters does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

Merely pointing out the functional differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

Merely pointing out the philosophical differences between iOS and Android does not automatically make somebody an "Android fanboy".

To generalize this, merely pointing out things that can be perceived as negative about one product/company/person does not mean that the person expressing such ideas automatically supports some competing product/company/person.
Tangential to the discussion but:

Profits matter to the company. Not to you or me (unless you or I work for the company or have stock in them).

On the other hand, market share does affect consumers.
The more popular your particular device is, the better it is for you (in terms of app availability, web compatibility, tech support etc...).
Flattest thing I've seen today.
I've saw a few on 4chan.org/b/ about a year ago.
I don't see this as a world war because at the end countries are sharing a lot of intelligence between allies. I see this as a war against people, as a new way of developing absolutist states where they don't need to use violence domestically with so much information available.

All this happen while people are happy with the latest mobile devices and 4g connections.
Even more, it's surprising to see this mentality on Hacker News. You'd think that we love technology and try whatever is best at this moment. I have never really used Windows, but I like Microsoft's work on Metro and Windows Phone, so I also have a Lumia (besides being an Apple user in general).
MogileFS - distributed filesystem
Drone Blimps Hovering Over D.C. to Stop Cruise Missiles
The non-webdev part of me is rather depressed that we've resorted to storing N typically homogeneous records in a way which results in the serialization of field names N times.

Wouldn't it be nicer to make the default format an object of arrays rather than an array of objects?

In before "but gzip!"
ya ya, its possible but hard :D
That and those huge margins can only be sustained if (1) people at the very least believe that the product is much better than the competition, (2) it is a fashionable brand.
Why it matters that your mom ditches Internet Explorer 8
Updating the eggbox design
If what I'm trying to say isn't clear enough: these things are symptoms or indicators:

Profit
Selling more of 1 device or less of others
Market Share

These things are the real issues:

Features/Benefits
Price
Experience/'Freedom'

It doesn't really matter what those indicators look like over the last year. It is the real issues that will shape those indicators in the future.

I disagree about not caring who 'wins' though. If Apple wins, all developers have to build to Apple's closed platform. If Google wins, anybody can take Android and run the same apps (see: Amazon). Google winning is good for everyone. Apple winning is only good for Apple. Microsoft winning is also only good for Microsoft - so I wouldn't want them to win either.
The article is wrong. Samsung earned $3.64 billion in Q2 2012, from their phone business. They had an operating profit of $5.9b in Q2 2012 (which is the apparent source of confusion).

So Apple out-earned Samsung in phones last year, $4.6b to $3.64b.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/26/samsungs-q2-2012-earnings-s...
I think second world[2] might be more accurate, although really the distinction is more about economic policy than freedom.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_World
Code organization question: is this a common convention in Go, to nest the main package in a subdirectory and put all of the 'modules' in different files but with the same package name?

(I'm more used to the Clojure namespace/filesystem symmetry, so this is somewhat new to me. I like the more shallow project tree but it's not immediately apparent where things are defined.)
Blackhat will leave his slot open to commemorate.

https://www.blackhat.com/latestintel/07262013-remembering-ba...
If they appear on 4chan, they are almost immediately reported, deleted, reported to authorities and the IP address banned from 4chan.
> Paedophiles are often socially isolated; hated by society. They only speak to other offenders.
>
> This means that they can start to have thoughts about offending behaviour which are reinforced by other offenders.

Hum. No. Moreover they can't be socially isolated and in contact with other offenders at the same time.

Are you refering to the UK scandal from months ago where it was found out that an unusual number of pedophiles were actual member of "protect-the-children" state-sponsored association ?
Graphics in general, handle graphics in particular, and no I'm not kidding. OOP for visualization can't be beat.
GM: loss of $2k on every car they sell in the EU. They have about 20% market share.
Porsche: profit of about $20k on every car sold in the EU. May not even have 1% market share.

So what you are telling me follow GM path?

Other phones are commodities and it's their nmanufacturers issue, not Apple's. I have S3 and can't wait to switch back to iPhone. It's like Mac vs. PC again. The thing frozes on me, is too complicated, has weak support, weak warranty, hey even looks cheap. I'd rather pay more for a product that's pure pleaseure to use vs. have frustrating experience with something that's just assembled without giving a second thought to the added value department.
Also buggy on Opera 12 in Linux.
I find meaning in work because it's what I leave behind once I'm dead. What I create, build, and put out into the world is part of my legacy. That's pretty important to me, perhaps not the same for others.
Empress Of (brooklyn musician) website - craigslist spoof
The issue of how to deal with people who seek out child porn troubles me. The tone accompanying an article such as this inevitably vilifies those who consume such material, as though this is a clear moral issue. This implies all of us have pedophilic urges, with only those who lack the moral fortitude to resist going on to seek out child porn. But this is not accurate -- I don't have the least desire to view such images, but instead feel a visceral disgust. Most others, I imagine, have the same reaction.

People who want to view sexually explicit images of children are sick, not immoral. They suffer from a deviant urge from which the rest of us are free. The issue, then, should not be how to punish them, but how to cure them of this urge. (Whether such a cure is possible is another matter altogether -- our sexual desires exert regrettable power over our behaviours.) In conjunction, we must do everything we can to halt the dissemination of such material, just as Microsoft is doing here. By shifting our reaction from wanting to punish consumers of child porn to wanting to rehabilitate them, we will encourage more to come forward for treatment, ultimately reducing the amount of such material that is consumed, and thus the number of children harmed in its creation.
In academia I'd say most programs are run (when finished) 2-3 times - once on a smallish testset when you decide that this version is correct, second time on the full data that you have to produce results for the paper (and you don't care how long it runs as long as it finishes before the submission date); and maybe a third time if you get a larger/better dataset somehow.
>Profits matter to the company. Not to you or me.

Absolutely. I wasn't trying to say that profits matter to consumers (Indirectly it may effect them though, because more profits means more freedom for a company to try new things without being too worried about wasting money).

>On the other hand, market share does affect consumers. The more popular your particular device is, the better it is for you.

I agree, but I don't think it matters all that much. Just look at the current situation. Can you honestly say that Windows' ecosystem is better than Mac's, despite the indisputable market share of Windows? Same goes with Android vs iOS (although they're pretty close). An argument could be made that Microsoft only makes the software while Apple does both software and hardware, but Mac support, ecosystem, app quality is miles ahead of Windows, in my opinion.
Ask HN:  Getting started with a web app
I have an idea for a web app (or 2). The more complex idea is to present information, then ask questions to test retention of the information.

I would appreciate advice regarding cheap hosting, recommended stacks for implementation and how to learn best practices for secure storage of data.

I'll continue looking on the web for info, however I have a feeling that those on here will have better answers.
This is where the car analogy breaks down: we can reasonably expect that a BMW or Mercedes can use the same roads as a Dacia. But once Apple doesn't have a significant share of the smartphone market anymore, Google and others could easily lock them out further by making services that are Android-only. It's hard to ignore a 40% audience, it's attractive to bully a 10% audience, that is willing to pay huge margins, into switching to Android.
Ikea’s new augmented reality app
Amazon's Little Known World Changing Good Deed
I think that Sedgewick's tilde notation [1] is nice if you want to include more information about constant factors.

[1] http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/14analysis/
Zero tolerance policies specifically disallow common sense though, as surely tolerance is a major part of common sense in these kinds of situations.

Also rare is an imprecise term.

The US jails more people per head than any other country, and also jails a larger percentage of its children than any other country in the world, so if you compare the situation in the US to the global norm, rather than rare, it would seem to be frighteningly common.
Show HN: My product lets you catalog your book collection online
My story:

I founded this a couple of years ago because my school (I was 11/12 at the time) had recently purchased a library system which was horrible and ugly. I thought it could be made much better, so I coded for months on end to get this product working.

I submitted this to a TV competition on national TV and got the opportunity to pitch this product in front of 500,000 viewers. I received a bursary of €2,000 from the show and used that money to grow the business.

Currently the business is thriving and is growing rapidly.

I'd really appreciate any feedback you might have.

Thanks,

Shane
Thats the thing about democracies. Sometime they sacrifice efficiency in their operations for their values. At least thats how its supposed to work.