skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well stated, most accept that it should be legalized, based on the essentially economic argument of Milton Friedman and others.

Given that, its health effect is still important, as it impacts how much it should be taxed, how we allow it to be advertised and sold, and whether we should treat vaporization differently (as, all evidence shows that vaporization is healthier than smoking).
Helped me quit smoking, as well as several of my friends. It's a much more effective transition because it mimics the entire ritual of smoking, not just the nicotine hit.

Mostly, nicotine was very secondary to the other reasons I would smoke. First, it's a great excuse to step outside alone, or with a small group. that's invaluable to an introvert-playing-an-extrovert like me. Second, cigarettes are a great study break. You let your mind wander, while your subconscious chews on problems. It's like taking a shower, but you can do it several times a night without leaving the library. Third, they're a countercultural flag. Want a good icebreaker when talking to hipsters, hackers, the Russian grad student programmers? Smoke a cig with them. Finally, there's a certain ritual to cigarettes that becomes very calming. Step outside, light up. Go to class, light up. Leave a party, light up.

E-cigs are so effective because they fulfill almost all of these needs. All in all, e-cigarettes probably added several years to my life.
But at the end of the day, I was just another dev.

This. A thousand times.

At every company I've EVER worked for, I eventually had this exact same feeling. Even as the lead engineer, team lead, tech lead, or whatever other "top developer" role I've held, I always feel like this. And I always eventually quit too.

It's gotten worse in the past few years. I can barely make it one year before I feel like "just another dev", become completely de-motivated and start heading for the exits.

I've realized, at age 31, that I am a shitty employee and I always will be. I'm not supposed to work for other people. It doesn't really make me happy. It doesn't matter if its at a startup or a Big Co, I always feel like "just another dev", bored and ultimately like my potential is being cut short.

In the past year, this was sort of an epiphany for me. I have to follow the beat of my own drummer, be my own boss, make my own destiny. Will this bring me to self actualization? Will this be what I'm looking for? Or, will I feel empty once I get there? I have no clue, but I've got to find out.

Thanks for sharing your story, Loren. You're in good company. Good luck with figuring out what's important to you.
I would love the source code just to read through as well. I also cannot PM you as it won't let me.
Thanks - a great tip from a different viewpoint.
Wow, someone mentioned these guys yesterday in some thread and I went to take a look. I was pretty interested, however, I noticed that some critical links were broken (e.g. login and sign up), so I wandered away. I guess I know why those links were broken...
I think people make the "where to put the helmet" into a bigger problem that it is. I wear a helmet when biking, and I ride my bike everywhere (I'm Danish). I always just hang the helmet on the handlebar, my reasoning "who would steal a helmet". I've been right the last 10 years.

Also really, do you care it's wet? It has holes in it, your going the get your head wet anyway.
If I could afford it I would donate, big time, to them.
Me too. It took a long time to update all of my account information for every website and service I use. It took me a long time to get all of my friends, colleagues, etc. notified that I had switched.

I now have a trail of being under my Lavabit account. Commits, patches, websites, services, friends all thinking I'm still under that account. Now I've got to do it once again, only a few weeks later.

Sigh. I can't blame Lavabit really. Just a situation I'd hope to avoid.
> The upgrade from 5->6 didn't break any apps by default.

Didn't rotation API changes make certain apps not work right, particularly on the iPad?
No, the alternative is cigarettes. The people who use these (myself included) tend to enjoy smoking and don't want to quit. We do however enjoy an alternative which leaves healthier and odor free. Hell, it even tastes better, assuming you're not using one of those cheap cig-alikes (Blu and pals, looking at you here).
Exactly right. Treat it like lettuce.
I know I've said this before in one of the other threads, but I believe donating to their Legal Defense Fund is a sensible thing to do if you care about your rights. Link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_b....
The main things are ubiquity, ease of use, and privacy.

- Persona works with any email address. This means you can reach anyone that hits your site, without forcing them to sign up with a third party provider.

- I can answer the question "what email address do you want to log in with?" I can't answer the question "what is your OpenID?" nor can I remember which of the 13 buttons on Stack Overflow I used last.

- OpenID requires phoning home with every login transaction. Persona explicitly does not. Your provider doesn't get to learn where you are logging in.

Edit: Put another way, can you tell me what your Google OpenID URL is without cheating? Can most people? If not, then you're only able to select a provider from a predetermined whitelist on each website. That undermines your ability to self-identify, self-assert, and choose who you trust. The open web deserves better.
I saw the talk. Guido's answer and tone is characterized correctly.
I submit that cooked food is far more likely to injure you...
Not if we don't want to quit. I like smoking, always will.
I want to make this into a javascript library. Would love to get some pointers from others.
The head of the NSA branded them as "the next terrorists".

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/06/cyberscare_ex_nsa_chief_call...
Using the plural for "data" ("Where are they?" it says) increases the likelihood that "make up" just means "do" in that context.
I think that'd be a great idea - you could even use it to flag the user as 'uncommited' and get better analytics, then when they did something more involved you could pop up and suggest some security is needed.
I watched Casablanca the other night.

SPOILERS

I thought about how the Gestapo had Lazlow in their midst, at the same TABLE as them, and yet didn't do anything immediately other than deny him further travel. Of course, it's a movie, but it was an interesting thought. Nowadays, if Snowden were known to be hiding in a foreigner's Moroccan cafe, we'ds drone half the building.

Also, I noticed the pride and the wonder that America inspired in the workers and patrons of Rick's. It was a symbol of freedom and opportunity. I wonder how many people see it that way now.
That's really cool. The main thing it's missing is roads in between the buildings (or at least space where the roads would go).
Maybe somebody can bring CoLinux up to 3.8. http://www.colinux.org/?section=status
My problem with that analysis (and the original paper) is that it mixed the purpose of the company and the process by which the company executed its mission.

As a strawman, consider a company A which sells a cure for virus B. They can "make customers" by giving away free blankets that are carrying the virus. They should be a great company according to Drucker but the effect of their success is that nobody wants to be associated with them and so their 'value' goes down.

Rather than create a problem in solve it, I read Jensen as articulating how external interest to the company with a single metric (share price) can moderate the behaviours of an otherwise free market entity in a way which reflects the values of the wider group of people. Thus allowing a 'publicly' held company to achieve its goal in a morally superior way to a company that was not required to seek approval from the general public. This very closely mimics the behaviour changes in democratic societies (elected by the public) and theocratic or monarch type societies where the set of people that need to be 'ok' with the action of the leaders is much more constrained.

So what did you get out of Jensen?
out of curiosity, does apple read stuart's blog or HN? there must be a better way to signal this to ios7 program management when you are signed up for beta...do they have a dev feedback option, which many devs would request the same wish...
> cyclists' demands

My personal experience from living and biking in both Copenhagen and London is that that word - demands - sets a very adversarial tone that is not at all helpful in London. No-one talks about cyclist's "demands" in Copenhagen, but they are well accommodated in city planning because there are a lot of them (of course, there's a chicken-and-egg thing here). In London, the organised cyclists come off as extremely militant and righteous and I have no difficulty believing that's a turnoff for plenty of people, ultimately hurting the cause.
Lodsys is part of Intellectual Ventures, really? It makes sense, but I guess I'll have to listen to the podcast to find the citation.
Since the prof studied at the university of Neuchâtel and Salerno I guess it's save to assume he's not a native english speaker. So I think it's possible that it was just sloppy wording.

I'm curious what his statement is going to say.
It's also the same chemical used in asthma inhalers and, oh yeah, food. Your argument is completely irrational. Oh, it's used for 'X', it must be bad!
I just signed up three days ago, and was exchanging mail with one of their reps about opening a couple more accounts with them. I went to log in last night and noticed that the service was down, which I thought was a little odd (since everything was down at once). I'm going to have to read this again later when I get a chance but for now, wow. I respect their decision but I'll bet the timing sure was bad for a lot of people (especially those coming to Lavabit specifically to escape what's going on here).
You sound like a buyer who still has pain that is not being fulfilled :-) Why not share?
Sensitive? think you meant sensible?
Can't think of a better way to understand your users than to watch them use your app in real time. Implementing this in all my apps right now.
I'm in the process of moving any Saas offerings I use off USA-affiliated companies, but it's actually more difficult than I first thought. I believe there might even be a very profitable market in simply duplicating the functionality of Saas offerings at a higher price with security/privacy guarantees in Germany/HK/etc. Might be the next hot business to be in? You'd be surprised as to the number of people seeking alternatives at this point.

EDIT: Relevant XKCD for people calling for technical solutions to the problem: http://xkcd.com/538/
In short: easier to implement, everyone has an email address, improved privacy. OpenID tells the provider every time you log in to any website, Persona does not.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Persona/Why...
Donate to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund
Do what I do!

I have my own domain name, currently hosting with Google Apps. If I get the motivation to move to another host like myself, I can do it without changing contact information.
So now we know of one model of e-mail systems that's secure. I hope more e-mail service startups pop up that use similar techniques of managing e-mails.

Are there any more like it right now out there?
Seems like it would make sense for users to demand that any US based service includes a warrant canary, just like rsync.net's implementation. A global canary + separate canaries for individual accounts would also make sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

http://rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
You have twice as many kids as you're willing to allow to half the world's population?

When you start the discussion by saying we shouldn't even produce enough food to feed all seven billion people in the world and refuse to acknowledge the consequences of that, you're being dishonest. Maybe I should have asked: how many people should we produce food for, and how do we choose which people don't get food?

I'm in favor of reducing the ecological impact of agriculture, improving food quality, and reducing population growth. But you can't just ignore the requirements that we actually need to feed everyone who's already alive, and we shouldn't selectively implement coercive measures on people in other countries we are unwilling to impose on ourselves. It turns out there's a lot you can do within those constraints. That's the conversation worth having. I'm not going to entertain the notion that organic food is worth starving people and selectively depopulating entire continents over.
Thanks, I'll have to check it out.
Well, he may not have been able to hand over the old data, but he may have been asked to include an exploit for all mail going forward. That could have been as simple as the authorities inserting some middleware.
Medical opinion (at least as presented in the popular media) is changing:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/gupta-changed-mind-mari...

I'm not feeling very optimistic about anything these days, but this is a good sign.
I think personally that it might have to do with sandboxing python, so third-party apps could be run safely, stopped, restarted, etc.
And this reads as if someone was trying to force him to install means to spy on his users, and it wouldn't be surprising if the aim was to spy on Snowden directly (if he really used this service).
That's a nightmare. However, I do feel strongly that lavabit made the only right choice. The US government is entirely to blame.
It's only the people with the least amount of power, the least pull with authorities, who get droned.
So he pretty much does say why he's shutting down, the US gov. has demanded access and he said no. Kudos for standing up for his users, and he does raise an interesting point at the end:

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

The worst thing about this situation is that other governments like the UK, France and Germany are equally guilty.

For history on lavabit, see the cache, this page is now gone:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=tablet-...
what would you have him do? He's clearly under NSL, so he can't tell you what he was asked for. This is the strongest statement he can legally make (in fact, i'm sure some US lawyers would argue that it's actually beyond that).

I guess we now know how it must have felt to watch republican institutions spiral into tyranny in ancient Rome.
In French, sensible means both "sensible" and "sensitive".
I think that it's a save bet to say: rails has no advantages any longer. You'll find similar features in nearly every common "web-language" and their range of frameworks today. The only difference is the language itself, and you all know the holy wars fought about which is better, right?
On the matter of the academic-industrial complex, I humbly defer to Elon Musk: http://youtu.be/vDwzmJpI4io?t=9m31s
Many experienced (read; really into vaping) users do not use the tobacco flavored liquids. We all think that's what we want when we start, and then we realize that, for example, banana but bread tastes oh so much better than tobacco substitute.

But yeah, they are not 100% odorless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBRMq2Ioxsc
That doesn't make sense -- if the police really don't care, why you just steal one? It seems to me, that apart from having no ethical sense, you're simply a coward.

Quit rationailzing your behavior -- either sin boldly or stop doing it.
I don't think canaries are effective. You can't get around a court order just by mental gymnastics, they'll hold you in contempt. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I suspect that they'd simply order you to keep updating the canary.
Arguable. Probably depends on experience. The farmers that grow in the green triangle california mostly grow outdoors and they supply dispensaries.
Yea, CommonJS would be rad.
It wouldn't be resilient to interception of mail going to and coming from lavabit however, since email is essentially a plaintext public protocol.
I wanted to work at a startup because I saw it as the fastest path to personal growth. I'm sure it's possible to grow in big companies, but I did some analysis and decided that a smaller company was the best bet for me. Small team means big responsibility and many hats. And I have to say, I learned a ton while I was there. I don't regret it for a second.
TypeRacer, my bootstrapped game, reaches 1 million users after 5 years
Doesn't add much, though:

"The author has explained to us that the statement pertains to a compound that was ”downgraded” from something being isolated to a proposed intermediate. Hence, we have left the ASAP manuscript on the web for now."

Did the author explain whether or not he was asking a subordinate to fabricate data? That seems to be the more pressing issue here!
That's interesting. What did you learn about yourself from the test and what changes did you make after that?
Lavabit is totally unknown to me. Did it offer some special security features? Anyone have any insights?

UPDATE: I'll answer my own question with a google cache of Lavabit's feature list @ http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A6bRHXt...
haha..hence the developing! I really just want some feedback, to see if the business model I have in mind is any good; Ill be happy to make some recommendations in exchange, the OP doesn't have enough for me to help, and would like to ask some more directed questions.
100 Startup Ideas & Running
I honestly can't see how this made it through the peer review process and the editorial review process with out being noticed. Were the reviewers also not doing their due diligence?
Ah, that is a great illustration of parallel instances. It seems like it's mostly of theoretical relevance for parties of differing computational abilities, which is why I had a hard time grokking it. But it'd definitely come into play say if one ran two instances with the same RSA group.

> in online digital cash protocols (like Chaum's), there is no need for an authority on identities, or even for identities

Actually there is, but that requirement is concentrated in the bank, which all users have to trust to steward the currency's value. While it's theoretically possible to bootstrap a trustable identity, there's little incentive to trust one party against whom you have no recourse, so adoption requires a real-world identity. These systems would be in widespread use if any government preserved individual rights. Alas.

> The problem with Bitcoin is that validity is not well-defined and can change without warning

So can Chaum's system. Three words: bank shuts down. The protocol instance is fine, but all real-world balances become invalid. In general, it feels like you're reacting to a lack of guarantees that are usually provided by the assumptions of existing systems, and that your definitions preclude the novel and necessary parts of Bitcoin.

If there were only one exchange, we would say validity is whatever it accepts (which would hopefully be well-defined and non-repudiable. yes, Bitcoin would make an absolutely terrible single-issuer protocol). But once you talk about multiple exchanges, the definition must become fluid. If exchange A calls coins stolen and refuses to exchange them, exchange B will still exchange them because it hasn't become aware of this yet, and less-reputable exchange C will exchange them at a 50% discount, are they "valid" ?

The reliance on hashing is another fallout from deconcentrating authority. I can think of a few other ways to remove trusted authorities, but they'd be equally disconcerting. This does line up with research, see https://gnunet.org/sites/default/files/Tech%20Report%20-%20A...
The law firm is dying, 3 ways technology can save it.
There are lots of good, discreet vaporizers. This one is the top of the line and freely available: http://www.ploom.com/pax
I tried submitting lavabit.com and the server responded by telling me not to submit spam. Perhaps the domain is blacklisted?
Do it anyway.

You learn far far more about an industry talking to someone immersed in it than any other way.

If you just want to spend the next few weeks coding, there are any number of github projects. If you want a side project - trust me, it will run and run for months if not years.

Get your linkedin page up, and find an admin at a local hospital, a CEO at a local charity. Take them to lunch.

go.
You kind of have to assume that if you're a customer.
Are you talking about Mormon culture, or Utah culture, because there is a distinction. For example, Utah's tend to be Republican, but not all Mormons are.

As far as General Authorities and church leaders, there's a reason for that. Much of their own living expenses are paid by themselves and not the Church. Mission Presidents, for example, pay their entire way and have to be able to go 3 years without working.

In short, that may be the perception that you have based on your upbringing or experience with certain church members, but shouldn't be extrapolated to the worldwide Church as a whole.
How many? ALL the smart people.

As for the dumb ones, they're storing their passwords on a sticky-post. Or using Chrome.
I agree, I'd run it production. Full disclosure: I know the team. But I'm a fan of the approach!
How long until PayPal suspends their legal defense fund?

On a serious note, if you want to donate to their defense fund, consider doing so anonymously. Pay cash for an Amex or Visa gift card, and use that to make your donation.
Not the whole storey. E.g. I plant 4 tomato plants. When they are half-grown, I pull up 2. Not because they each aren't worth more than the cost to me; but because I have water, soil, light, room enough for only 2.

So Its also naïve to think you're fired because you're not a profitable employee. Sometimes you get fired because it makes a large equation work out better.
I'd love to believe that the authorities in Germany are not also tapping lines like France or the UK. Do we have any proof that is the case? I agree this has made me think twice about hosting in the us, but also about crossing national boundaries full stop without encrypting traffic.
Don't give ideas.

Too bad that he does not have donations page. I would gladly donate. Also - respect for the decision he made. If he kickstarts a campaign for restoring the service I will be there too.
You might be an ostrich. Amber Alert Hack: http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2013/7/31/52b9fd86-29f0-4...
To be clear; most liquids are not really odorless, but the odor is not inherent to ecig vapor. It's the odor of the flavoring used, so fruit-flavored liquid will smell like fruit-flavored air freshener.
Takeaway:

> "This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."

It's kind of fitting. The nation that spawned the internet is the nation that's killing the internet biz on its own turf.
An additional argument is that a sip of coffee has order of magnitude more heat energy than a puff of e-cig.
Ask HN: How can we improve our website?
Hi HackerNews,

My name is Weston and we launched http://SwarmSports a few months ago. We provide sports fans with a quick overview of the top news articles daily.

Our website is sort-of a hybrid between the new Digg and TweetMeme. That means, some of our content is hand curated and some is automated.

What we're looking for is any feedback in how we can improve the website and if it's good. We're still Beta.

Also, any advice on getting the word out to users?

Thanks!
I'm also unsure of their proven effectiveness, but how could they hold you in contempt for _not_ taking an action?