skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have heard that Costco is brutal with their suppliers and has no compunction about dropping products if they can't get them at a price that makes sense, given the limited number of SKUs they're prepared to stock. Their customers are now more or less trained to expect this, but I think it's a definite weakness in their model. If Amazon can reliably provide me with my "favorite" detergent, I'm likely to forgive a few dollars a year in added cost.

Wine selection is probably a little easier to explain, given the bizarre maze of the three tier system. Thank god for the 21st Amendment, but the way states handle alcohol distribution makes me thankful for an expansive reading of the Commerce Clause.
The NYT really is a bunch. They come up with their own exclusive story by some "anonymous government official" (who even goes on record to to defend the program, as is SOP for any anonymous goverment source ever featured in the NYT), and suddenly you get big editorials.
:-) Although I kickstarted the project, I can't take a lot of credit for what it has become. It's a huge project now, with many people involved. Now, I'm just the crazy old uncle who can tell a good story about "the olden days". In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, Paul Hammant is the one who came up with the HTTP proxy JS injection technique. Dan Fabulich, Nelson Sproul, and Patrick Lightbody rewrote it and refined it. (Some sources: http://paulhammant.com/blog/selenium.html/ http://docs.seleniumhq.org/about/history.jsp)
Leap Motion : A developer point of view
Big business works similarly.
They've been around for almost 40 years and are highly profitable. You don't have to "hope" it's sustainable, as it clearly is.
This argument is really vacuous and makes an inappropriate analogy.

First, we need to distinguish between attaching ads to the mail experience versus injecting them into the actual content. In the original post, this service would actually open these letters and insert ads into them. This is not even remotely comparable to what most email providers do. They insert ads around the service, but never actually alter the content of the email. A better analogy would be receiving a discount on branded stamps or allowing advertisements to be displayed on your mailbox.

Second, the use of the term "read" when discussing advertising is asinine, disingenuous and probably detrimental to the conversation (inasmuch as it can provoke unnecessary fear in non-technical users). "Read" implies active evaluation and comprehension, conceivably by a person. The GMail algorithm does not "read" email in the classical sense. It systematically evaluates the content in a way isn't even remotely comparable to "reading." (This doesn't mean that this sort of advertising isn't bad, but portraying it in the way he did is just unnecessary fear mongering.)

Third, the OP seems to decry "keeping a copy" as some sort of violation. GMail is a webmail service. What the fuck are they supposed to do if not store your mail?

Fourth, this service actually seems like a good idea, and is probably something I would use for various types of mail. The price of mail been steadily increasing, and I would be fine with these practices if I knew they were saving me money. I'm willing to tolerate advertising so long as I know that the service is improving my life. Like I do with 95% of the things I use.

In conclusion, this is a very dubious analogy that doesn't really contribute to the pragmatic discussion of cost versus privacy.
If you are a parent yourself, you will know that suggesting education is not enough. By your logic, why is there an age limit to alcohol consumption? Your whole reasoning could be used for that as well - and enforcing alcohol age limit also costs time and money...
Harp, an open source Asset Pipeline Framework
The NYT editorial board was extremely fast in condemning the Obama administration, saying it had lost all credibility on the issues of transparency and accountability in an op-ed piece on June 6th.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-d...
How to unfuck performance reviews
To clarify, I meant the pattern of acting outraged while continuing to use the accused service. We're on the same page.
Prior votes influence future voters in social aggregators
Why is your own web site on DigitalOcean in the Netherlands then? :)
Nexus 7 has broken GPS
Google updates PageSpeed Insights with better mobile analysis
How Meteor Uses NodeJS
His professional email was likely secure moreso than we'd ever see. However, directing agency resources to cover for an affair would be more blatant than someone discovering his GMail drafts folder. Being in charge of security and having excellent delegation / leadership - doesn't make one the technical expert.
I think we've all seen this on HN: the rich (higher voted stories or comments) get richer. Furthermore, a few choice words by a well known commenter can dramatically change how a comment is perceived by the community.
The only time I remember being blocked from using a mailinator email it was a client side regex form validation - using one of Mailinator’s "alternate domains" got around that.

I would suspect that a lot of companies are willing to add a JS regex to their form validator, but are not willing to add SMTP headers sniffing to their validator. That barrier means that much of the time a simple domain name change will work.

The GPs comment is not unhelpful, and certainly not "Disinformation". It just isn’t completely reliable. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t depending on how motivated the author of the validation is.
ARM development board for $5
I'm not sure that's a weakness so much as merely a difference.

Some people have a "favorite detergent". Other people, such as myself, just want something of decent quality, and could not really care less what name is on the container.

For you, Amazon's approach is better, because you're willing to pay more for the specific item you want. For me, that's completely unimportant, so why would I pay more?

The two companies are covering different niches in that respect. Nothing wrong with that. No single company needs to be all things to all people, although I suspect Amazon wants to (and Costco does not).
I'm not talking about largest at all, that's not important at all. They surveyed lawmakers and congressional staffers and asked them which lobbying group is most INFLUENTIAL. That's what the data is about. Size doesn't matter, influence does. I looked for later data, but it looked like Fortune stopped doing the survey in 2001 and in 2001 the NRA was #1.

http://www.congresslink.org/print_lp_specialinterestgroups_f...

Straight from the horse's mouth:

"NRA ranks no. 1 in this year`s "Power 25", Fortune magazine`s listing of the most influential lobbying groups. Compiled by Fortune`s senior writer and Washington bureau chief Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, the "Power 25" is based on responses to a survey sent to over 2,900 people, including every member of Congress, senior Capitol Hill staffers, senior White House aides, professional lobbyists, and top-ranking officers of the largest lobbying groups in Washington."

http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/in-the-news/2001/5/nra-ran...
This website has got a wrong and expired SSL certificates.
They might have diverse sources of income, but the majority comes from Windows and Office. For at least the last decade I was watched as many new companies have been run with mac/linux. This doesn't mean much when they are little five person startups, but as the years go by those startups grew and now we have some very large companies that are not based upon Microsoft and plenty of medium size ones. This creates a feedback look of employees that don't train people how to write microsoft a check each quarter, but how to use linux servers etc. It is hard to ignore this as a long term trend. In fact it is so weird/odd/rare that stories get posted here on HN about the reasons why startup X choose to be a MS shop. Saying I am going to use github, amazon and google apps wouldn't get any interest, it is simply what people do these days.
I might pay not to be tracked, but I certainly wouldn't pay anything approaching $20 per month.
The most dangerous and stupid meme percolating in pop tech culture is that the people engaged with tech culture have a unique claim to computer science, electrical engineering, cryptography, information security, and privacy technology. The Slashdot diaspora genuinely believes that most of the world's computer engineering talent reads their comments.

The reality is that not only does money do a fine job of buying talent, but, if it's the USG you're thinking about, they don't even have to try hard; extremely qualified engineering graduates compete to secure positions at NSA, which has been ~10 years ahead of private industry for the last couple decades, before which time they were even further ahead.

Part of the reason the USG doesn't actually have a problem recruiting people is that actually believe in training people. I don't know how effective they really are at it, but I do know that our industry is fundamentally unserious about training. The kinds of commercial organizations that take in raw recruits generally turn out extremely mediocre J2EE and .NET developers. The rest, to a first approximation, run their recruiting programs based on measurements of reproductive organs. Giant defense contractors haul in green IT graduates by the truckload and adapt them to jobs that command significant premiums on the private market. Again, I'm not saying defense contractors can turn information management grads into electronic supersoldiers, but: they're not hurting for recruits.

The reason I think you care about this is because it informs you of a hidden handicap that private industry and activist groups have when facing down the government. I'm very sorry if I'm the first person to break this to you, but if you're an activist targeting the USG, your adversary isn't stupid. In fact, I think it's likely that they're significantly smarter than any of us. Bear that in mind when you design your NSA-proof email applications.

I don't do work for the USG, and haven't before, but I'm realistic about the impact of that decision; it has more to do with my own psychological welfare than it does with anyone else's.
My second line of defense: I'm not important enough to monitor :)
you can ssh/ftp into your VM but downloading it and uploading back is not possible atm, and i don't think if it is going to be the case. As for the second question i don't think it would be possible w/o running your VM locally. Thanks.
I'd love if we could add techdirt to the auto kill submission list. That would help cut down on the inflammatory noise articles being submitted without much substance.
Live planning: the key to launching sustainable startups
Because those machines create a profile of you the likes of which the NSA would have a wet dream over.

That profile can and will be used however Google wants' to use it.

Remember, Google's (the company's) only reason for existence is to make a profit, and ALL their revenues come from Advertising - 96 percent.

That's a hell of an incentive to know as much about you as possible, and use that against you to violate your privacy and abuse your eyeballs (sorry for the semantics, I know).
moln.is
High-speed 802.11ac Wi-Fi finally taking off
It depends on the size of the task. A task of 30 minutes to 3 hours is not that bad to ask of a candidate, depending on circumstances.

But I saw a recent job offer on a HN "Who's hiring?" which came with a programming challenge. Once I read it, I realized it might take several hours to get it all done, and they said "add even more to impress us!"

Well, I'm full-time, as are a lot of good candidates. I don't have time to mess with this. Normally I like small software development challenges, as I like software development.

And, y'know, if I was unemployed, I would pour a bunch of time into this. The very worst case is that I learn and practice new things, and I would want to stand out from the pack.

But since I'm employed, I don't have time to spend 5+ hours on a project where the employer has not put in any effort of their own.

I found a news article about the company where they said they would get 600 resumes for a posting and set up challenges as a filter. I think they went way to far in the other direction.
The adolescents teaching each other how to get around filters - that is exactly what ends up happening. A few years back, Turkey had a pretty long ban on Youtube. Countless sites for tweaking browser settings specifically geared for Turkish Youtubers emerged. There was even a cartoon by a prominent artist that depicted the PM declaring his agenda: "We won't lift the ban until we have 70 million DNS experts."
Well, at $20 million a year that puts him in the company of the 100 highest compensated CEOs (despite being, well whatever his position is.)

http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/CEO-Pay-and-You/100-Hi...
relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/538/
Is webkit written in C++ instead of objective C?
56.4 TH/s of Avalon Bitcoin Mining ASICs Reportedly Held Up in Customs
German Companies to Automatically Encrypt Emails
Hang on, I'm a bit confused here.

Ann has a key. Ann must know that the key is Bob's key. If Ann isn't sure that the key is Bob's key there's a bunch of bad stuff that might happen.

So now Eve can get the metadata, and be pretty sure that the stuff sent to Bob actually is sent to Bob, and not someone else, because it's encrypted with Bob's public key.

Eve can't decrypt anything. But my post wasn't about Eve getting any content, it was about Eve getting metadata that's cryptographically tied to an identity.

Where am I going wrong?
I agree that Snowden is a hero, but fawning hero worship leaves less room for critical thought. This isn't about one man.
Buying alcohol doesn't require you to declare your desire to consume it, a barman does not check your name against a list when you order a drink and say "says here that you are teetotal, I cannot serve you until you call our head office and declare that you desire to now consume alcohol".
For all of those who are commenting about sysadmins grabbing as much data as they go out, I highly suspect that all of the newly unemployed sysadmins were or have been escorted by armed guards.
I've read he also dumped his girlfriend before he leaked (to save her from US revenge).

Imagine you have to dump your loved one (against your wishes).
He RISKED his whole life. He was fortunate and his plans turned out OK, and for the moment he remains beyond the reach of US power. He could have very easily ended up in US custody.
Currently 59 comments on this post, 2 hours old, I did a ctrl-F "epic" and get no results.

So apparently no one at Hacker News knows about EPIC:

http://epic.org/epic/about.html

which is, more or less, what the original poster is asking for. They're not militant, I suppose. They don't have the same level of anger that the NRA manages to harness, don't have talk radio hosts promoting them, that sort of thing. But they do exist and are focused on this one issue of electronic privacy, and yet apparently are failing at their job of self-promotion, because no one on HN knows they exist.

Are they failing to do enough outreach? Is a different organization really needed, or does EPIC just need to do a better job of marketing itself?
It comes down to this, Does the EFF scare Senators and Representatives at election time? If the organization that defends your rights doesn't scare the hell out of a campaign (to the point opponents demonize the organization and its members) then they are worthless for advocacy in this era.

The NRA does this and, like the ACLU, knows to defend the extremes. If we want the 4th amendment defended, then we need that type of organization.
I think it's really more just a way to give a bit of incentive to sticking around longer. With the money he now has personally he could do anything he wants - so we can assume that he at least in part wants to keep seeing Tumblr move forward.
There are two facts about crypto that often get mixed up in these discussions:

1. For a high value target like Edward Snowden, there is a broad spectrum of attacks, and any operational weakness is fatal. There are many examples of these attacks described on this thread. Unless you know what Snowden knows, odds are you will not get it right.

2. BUT, if everyone had easy encrypted email and real time communication, the mass surveillance machine would be blinded, because the kinds of attacks that are used against high value targets do not scale up well.
If you don't agree with blocking other forms of content, why would you think opt-in is a good idea? Surely opt-out is far more sensible all ways round.
What online ports should I open on the Wii U?
If these sysadmins are a security risk, giving them notice of redundancy can hardly improve security (in the short term). Especially for an organisation with such recent history of trouble with disgruntled ex-employees.
Working link: http://www.zdnet.com/linux-desktop-trojan-hand-of-thief-stea...
DotPeek - Free .NET decompiler from JetBrains updated
>"I asked officials to keep a close eye on the two men to make sure they don't escape back into the forest," he said."

Escape a horrific war, live free for 40 years, die a prisoner.
Tomorrow's news today: "Chinese NSA break-in was caused by unpatched code, overwork and corner-cutting after staffing was reduced in the name of limiting access to secure data, sources say."
Two different jobs. I realise now that it could be confusing
The threat is certainly more direct and concrete. A lot of people don't know that the recent assault weapons ban that was proposed would make millions of people felons and punishable by 10 years in prison if they did not register their rifles under the NFA (which is currently used for machine gun collectors - it's a painful bureaucratic process that takes months, but allows the ownership of machine guns, suppressors, and other items deemed dangerous by the government).

Practically, NFA registration is something that is not accessible to many citizens due to local roadblocks (requirements for local law enforcement to sign off who have no obligation to do so). It also takes well over 6 months with the relatively rare items it covers now. Adding millions of records to that would have overwhelmed the ATF, and instantly turned millions of people into felons for doing absolutely nothing.

That will get your attention.
PGP encrypts the body of the email. It leaves the metadata as-is. There's a surprising amount of information in there - the subject, to/from, IP addresses, DKIM signing information, References headers, etc.

This would likely be enough information for a lot of the metadata path discovery that the government wants to do.
Smart move by Intuit...acqui-hire and kill some competition early for a lower price.
> They don't have the same level of anger that the NRA manages to harness, don't have talk radio hosts promoting them, that sort of thing.

Then they are not going to be effective during election time.
Petraeus' security failures are no indication of the general availability of privacy.

He was appointed to the CIA directorship after a career in the Armed Forces, where one would not have expected him to gain such security skills.

Also being head of an organization does not imply that one necessarily has the skills to do the work of the organization.
20 reasons why your conference news needs to be digital
Conspiracy Zero: Hijacking the term "conspiracy".

It's crazy to make affirmative declarations without solid evidence. But it's equally crazy not to make a reasonable inquiry into the possibility that you are being deceived by any person or group with the means, motive and oppurtunity to do so.

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." - Adam Smith
Hard to have the tech industry back it when most of it is taking part in the surveillance.
Agree somewhat except "don't know, click here to generate one"... I personally don't want Facebook to generate key-pairs. That is even worse then not having privacy.

The private key should never leave the users machine and should definitely not find it's way to one of the worlds biggest eavesdroppers.
I wish Hacker News had more articles targeting Enterprise software.

I'm involved w/ enterprise startup and I've found a lot of things like MVP, feeder landing pages, etc. just don't apply for customer acquisition. We have a lot of issues with targeting the software at the users, but needing approval from other people...

But thanks for this article.
He's an artist who uses archive footage to tell a story. The story is often so simple that it isn't strictly true, but it's still worth a watch. I think his films will be treasured by future historians to get an insight into the current events of our time.
you're right, we should, we're a small team and early optimization is not the best friend of a startup, we test it in modern browsers w/ up to date operating systems, assuming what a developer(our target audience) would use. However i admit that it is still not a valid excuse, i would just say give it some time. Thanks for the comment.
While it's a common belief that the police in Belarus are reasonably corrupt, this is usually limited to bribery. Perhaps his visa was expired?
I don't know if any of those sites use it, but I really like this open source replay analysis library: https://github.com/GraylinKim/sc2reader
Let's wait to see if the whole system crashes now before we conclude that.

Not that we'll ever know.
Sounds like a good time to launch BetterApril :)
To me, the most fascinating aspect of the article is the list of Yahoo acquisitions since Mayer joined:

July 17, 2012
Marissa Mayer becomes Yahoo CEO

October 25, 2012
Stamped
(Social Recommendation)

December 4, 2012
OnTheAir
(Video Conferencing)

January 22, 2013
Snip.it
(Social Network)

February 12, 2013
Alike
(Social Recommendation)

March 20, 2013
Jybe
(Social Recommendation)

March 25, 2013
Summly
(News Aggregation, Summarization)

May 1, 2013
Astrid
(Productivity)

May 9, 2013
GoPollGo
(Real-time Surveys)

May 9, 2013
MileWise
(Reward Programs)

May 10, 2013
Loki Studios
(Mobile Gaming)

May 17, 2013
Tumblr
(Blogging)

May 23, 2013
PlayerScale
(Online Gaming)

June 12, 2013
GhostBird Software
(Mobile Photography Apps)

June 13, 2013
Rondee
(Video Conferencing)

July 2, 2013
Bignoggins
(Fantasy Sports)

July 2, 2013
Qwiki
(Automated Video Production)

July 3, 2013
Xobni
(Address Book Apps/CRM)

July 18, 2013
Ztelic
(Social Analytics)

July 31, 2013
Lexity
(E-commerce App Platform)
Hey, at least it will produce another generation of tech savvy Internet users! Maybe we'll get some more engineers out of it.
Enough hyperbole. These people aren't being killed, they're being released back into the labor pool to either find new jobs, or make new jobs. Maybe some of these admins will start their own datacenters or consulting firms instead of working for someone else's.