skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Funny, I was just told a company could be charged with obstructing justice if they shut down in the face of NSA requests[1].

I too, obviously, believe Lavabit's choice was noble and to be emulated. If every company did this, we'd all be vastly better off.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6104229
There are significant security flaws in the ways that contracts are traditionally executed. This case illustrates just one of those flaws. Other flaws include alteration after signing, signature copying and forgery, and repudiation (meaning "I didn't sign that"). Most of these arise from the information security weaknesses inherent in paper documents and emailed PDFs.

I have given a lot of thought to this problem. I even had a startup once devoted to solving it. My current thinking is that some form of digital signatures--perhaps PGP--is the best solution to all of this. As I discussed in a previous HN thread, we have a long way to go before the PGP user experience is acceptable for most computer-literate people. (When I say "user experience," I mean much more than the GUI. I mean the whole process of learning about PGP, creating keypairs, signing keys, etc..)
Only after seeing your comment I realized there is a link to donate to the their legal fund.

Thanks.
I would wonder if this isn't caused by the fact that it's difficult to breathe something that isn't the fog when you're in an area with a fog machine. I don't know any smokers who don't take a breath of fresh air when they're smoking, or e-cig users who don't do the same. In a room with a fog machine going, there may not be any fresh air to breathe.
>You can develop a tolerance for almost all drugs

That seems to be the common wisdom, but is there any evidence that that's true?
Is it not still an alternative? It may be a difficult alternative, but it is still an alternative.
This is a reasonable question if you think of medical marijuana like most prescription drugs: primarily serving medicinal users, where some recreational users might get it by posing as medicinal users.

But this is not the case, at least not in California. Medicinal marijuana primarily serves recreational users. Medical users get it by posing as recreational users.

By that, I mean that you don't get a prescription for MMJ by going to your normal doctor. You go to the doctor advertised in that shady free newspaper by the bus stop, in the classified section, just past the escorts. That doctor almost certainly "specializes" in medical marijuana, which means that he doesn't actually practice medicine, or do any real evaluation of patients. He just writes prescriptions all day, $70 a pop. Nice gig if you can get it.

(A Colorado doctor landed in trouble for prescribing MMJ to a pregnant woman. He didn't even bother to take her basic medical history.)

This article shares one couple's experiences, with one sick person attempting to go through Kaiser, and one healthy person going through "Dr. Herb Smoker" (the actual name on the nametag): http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/10/california-medic...

An excerpt:

...medical pot is readily available to recreational users while it remains inaccessible for many truly sick people who might benefit from it. My wife has no plans to visit Price-Less Evaluations, and I suspect that many people like her wouldn't consult the likes of Dr. Herb Smoker.

So there's your harm. The medical marijuana industry is targeted towards recreational users, in every way - from the decor in the dispensaries, to selling strains bred for getting high instead of getting healthy. Medicinal users are an afterthought.
I don't understand the mindset of "oh, I'm just going to cook and do things and write some code sometimes". I mean that in an envious way -- it sounds nice. But I just can't think that way for some reason. I didn't grow up with a lot of security so not having money come in is really stressful for me, even if I have savings.
There isn't a Firefox extension yet, either. :) JavaScript polyfills are fun!

(Persona works on all major browsers, save MobileIE and Chrome for iOS. Fixes are in the works for those two.)
Interesting link, I think the author missed out the part that created Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) which is where officers of the company have to sign off, on threat of imprisonment, what strategy the company is pursuing.

There was a reason it was called : "Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act" you see protecting the Investors was another way of saying "protecting the shareholders" and the only protection they care about is that the securities they hold in a company don't lose value.

My experience when I rolled over my 401k into a self managed IRA, one where my financial advisor is buying / selling securities to maintain a specific mix but actually holding the securities in my name, was that I got to see just how many lawsuits were being filed on behalf of shareholders who felt they weren't being protected enough.

That said, the fact that you were poorly managed has more to do with your management than with the concept of shareholder value. Management is hard, its different than a job where you design/build/program things, and peoples ability to do it varies widely. I can certainly understand the idea that a poor manager had developed a crutch of using 'shareholder value' as an excuse for their actions, just like some use 'because I'm the boss' for theirs.

My goal was to point out that there are rules and regulations in place that put officers and executives at a company at risk of sanction, either financial or criminal, if they do not actively protect the interests of the people who have invested in their company, their shareholders.
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...
I find working with Flickr more cumbersome if you only use the web UI. For example, Flickr has a limit of 200 photos that you can upload in one batch, which is a problem when you have a slowish upload link (ADSL/cable).
Source: https://lavabit.com/?repost=true

This is very unfortunate and sad. I hope he wins in Court. The NSA/administration are really trying to destroy the last bit of privacy in the world, and they will fight relentlessly until they do (especially if the People aren't fighting back).
Why Vinyl Is Not Going To Save The Music Industry (And What Will)
Two responses:

Cynical response: not until the fabled teledildonics is working.

Even more cynical response: that won't stop gaming companies who already attempt to deliberately addict players to subscription gaming from building highly immersive addictive games.
The more important angle here isn't pitting shareholders against employees, it's keeping an eye on the ball: The ultimate purpose of a company isn't employing the highest possible number of employees, it's providing a product or a service to customers. If an employee isn't contributing to providing that product or service (even through no fault of their own), both parties are (ultimately, in the long term) better off if there are lay-offs. The longer an employee that isn't creating value is kept around, the harder it will be for him to get another job - not the mention the impact on morale not actually doing anything useful has.

Of course, I don't mean to imply that it's doing the employee a favour to lay them off - but the choice typically isn't between business as usual or mass lay-offs for the fun of it, it's between high probability of failure and a lower probability of failure (with a shot at turning the business around).

Forcing shareholders to prop up a failing business to save a few jobs for a short time is more than a little counter-productive.
You should write a "Why my company isn't going to buy your startup's product" blog post. It would help quite a few people.
Thanks, that looks like a good way to find a profitable startup idea.
But here I'm just looking for a small side project idea, and I'd like to find it quickly. So taking random people to lunch seems a bit overkill.
Crap, I had just recently migrated all of my accounts to my new Lavabit address, paid for a year of service, etc.

Although I've seen some mentioned, what recommendations does HN have for a new e-mail service? Preferably something stable and also respecting of a user's privacy. Or perhaps you can only have 1 of the aforementioned attributes.
>I believe PHP can be saved , the maintainers just dont want to do it ( remove 90% of its crappy features , move APIs out of the core ,etc ... ).

They've done a lot to improve it. Were you around in the PHP 4 days? They simply have their work cut out for them. There's too much gross in there!
Sorry about that, the title came from the news source that published my interview. I picked the quote from the article for the HN title because I thought it was much more interesting ;-)
I don't even mean to diss product managers. I realized that I basically am a product manager who also happens to be an effective technologist. I just have to find a job that lets me be both and realize that my needs may diverge from the needs of my employer, and that's OK.
They're relating their own experience. They are a their own source.
I served a slightly more than two year mission in the West Indies (I asked for and was given a 6 week "extension"). I am still active, though I often feel like a square peg in a round hole.

A mission is like college. It is what you make of it. For instance, I was a missionary with a mission. I didn't work too much with people that wanted to waste my time. I looked for people that were ready to make life changing decisions right now. I didn't find "knocking doors"/tracting to be very effective, and so while I did do it sporadically, I found other ways to meet people (ways that likely wouldn't work in the US, mind). I never sat still. I was either out meeting people, teaching them, and finding ways to help them or I was studying and thinking about better ways to help them.

I'm not sure that really made me founder material, but I did get the reap a lot of benefits of hard work. This resulted in me working harder to reap more benefits, and became a positive feedback loop for me.

This is what I have found, ten years later: Mormon missionaries are always two by two because they can't be by themselves (with the exception of being in the toilet). They aren't allowed. And you don't get to pick your "companion". You are assigned a companion and an area. Sometimes you get jerks. Sometimes you get people you just don't have anything in common with. And you don't get to put in a transfer request, or go stay at a friend's house to avoid them. You're with them. Period. This taught me to deal with people that are different than me, and not only "get along" with them, but be effective.
God do I ever want to get out of this ocean of sulphuric acid I work in every day :/
Other story that links directly to the Lavabit website, rather than boingboing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6180846

Notably to his IP address rather than the domain itself. Maybe there is an expectancy that he will have the domain removed by the FBI?
Heh. Me too. I suppose at any given time there are a certain number of people in the same boat so this shouldn't feel like so much of a coincidence.

Interesting post (and fellow Crossfitter, too!). Kudos on building up that much of a savings runway, though I'm finding that some level of time pressure is helpful in driving me forward faster to find my passions.

Personally, I found it hard to focus on other things outside of a demanding job. And I loved my job, so it wasn't hard to get sucked in. I had a forced leave due to an accident, and that really helped with evaluating priorities.
http://jennielees.net/departing-the-mother-ship/
1. Oh, i personally start from top, too. But the people around me tend to start from the bottom, because most of them are used to rails. You know, choose a datastore and start modeling/scaffolding right away, it's the rails way. That's why I inverted this in my post. I agree with you - the client is the most important thing to think about. When all is said and done only the client experience matters for your customers.

2. Of course, there are many solutions out there. I especially like Backbone for it's minimalistic nature, forcing you to nothing else than using something jQuery-ish thing. Since it's written by the same guys that wrote coffeescript (i prefer over JS), i like the combination of both. subtile thingie.

3. Yeah, of course it's not a real framework. But for some usecases, like providing special APIs, pure node.js without express might be enough. If not, you may pick express or anything on top of it. (most frameworks seem to be built on top of express nowadays)

4. Well both know that rails won't die the next years or even centuries. Personally i am currently employed as a Rails developer and see the mindshift... slowly but steady. Many developers are playing with it, don't find it amazing first time ("nothing new to see here, i can do this too with language XYZ"), but after some time passed, they realize what's different and they're impressed more and more. Especially startups that built their first release with a classic rails/mysql-stack and need to (often struggling to) scale seem to be interested to switch over.

Finally, the most important point is: master JavaScript. This includes (!) stuff like Coffeescript if you like it. And then look at the vast and emerging ecosystem around it. If you don't need rocketscience-numbercrunching and/or don't have the tight constraints of embedded systems, nearly everything is possible. Take any other "server"-language, and you'll have to deal with tons of Javascript anyways. Just remove the mental burden you'd have with additional (fading?) ecosystems.
I'd like to see a "docker for web developers" post / guide.

I want to know how to write a dockerfile (?) that I can run a command against, and have a dev environment materialize. Something I can track in source control along with my "main" source. Something to replace the difficult-to-recreate and outside-of-source-control LAMP and Flask environments I have now.

And I'd like to know how my sites' source code or untracked files (e.g. .sqlite file, mongo dump files) fall into that, while still being accessible to the docker container.

I imagine this would cover a huge percentage of people interested in Docker.
Judgment has a negative effect on the efficiency of learning. Being graded causes stress and stress reduces your ability to learn.

Grading can be a motivator, however, causing you to push yourself to learn things you might not otherwise be motivated to do.

However, I think that learning without judgment is the most effective way to learn, when you otherwise have some intrinsic motivation. Likewise, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect which is not the same, but another effect that causes an extrinsic factor to diminish intrinsic motivation.

When I learn for my own benefit, all of my efforts are focused on developing new skills and new understanding. When I am learning to pass some test, my efforts are focused instead on not failing.

If these tools are used to guide study to make sure students get the requisite knowledge then they can be effective. I think they lose effectiveness when they are instead used to classify and rank students.

I have always scored well on tests, but I've always learned and understood things more fully doing things that were at my own direction.
World’s 2nd Largest Sport gets its Social Network
A Social Network for Cricket that helps Players, Coaches, Clubs and Cricket Fans across.
I like the part where he can't tell you why he's shutting down. As if we won't engage in rampant irresponsible speculation that they have told him to decrypt and forward everything to them in real time.
See Highway 4k (combined 4k winner at Assembly 2013!) for a REALLY SHINY example of what can be done with WebGL shaders:

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=61668
I'm tempted to make a smart-ass comment about as-a-service, but the reality is this is a global trend. Things that used to be bought or owned don't have to be. In a sense, this is financial. Why should I pay for full use of something I only use part of the time? Why not share it?

This first happened with cars. Then with software. Networks. Infrastructure. And now even jewelry and apartments.

What's wrong with all this renting, even if we're stuck with a bunch of new buzzwords?
If you find yourself repeatedly bored, take the test at JOCRF.org. Best ~$700 I ever spent on my career.
A friend and I were thinking of doing something similar to this for Smash and League of Legends. We probably should!
The paradox is that as Bitcoin gets more mainstream, in practical terms it will be more and more similar to "real" money.

Bitcoin has been off the radar for the SEC, but as it gains notoriety there will certainly be an interest in regulating it.

Imagine that tomorrow Bitcoin gets really big, it isn't crazy to think that many people will be worried about having all their money in the computer they use everyday and is connected to the Internet. Then some companies start offering a service which lets you deposit your bitcoins and they assure you that they won't get robbed and if they do, they will be held responsible for that. Oh, and they require you to have a verifiable identity for your account since that helps to prevent fraud. They just ask a monthly fee for the maintenance of your account and a small fee for every transaction you make through them. You have in front of you something similar to a bank.

So, if you have to pay bureaucratic costs of regulation, and institutions like banks for Bitcoin, then it's not that different from the money we are used to. The one which also hasn't intrinsic value and for most of us is just a number in a computer anyway.
Be careful with gifts. I work for a large corp and we have to be very careful about what we accept lest it be construed as a bribe.

Birthday card is OK, accepting gifts for my kids would probably get me fired.
Easily A/B Test Your Website's Call-to-Action Using Content Experiments API
The student is now a Postdoc in Brazil and the PI has since moved to Western Australia for another position. These moves happened in 2011 and 2012 respectively, according to their linkedin profiles. So unless they're still working on the project, it's unlikely the phrase 'just make up' means to put together.. rather it's more likely that it means to fabricate.

Basic elemental analysis is very easy to fake, and very hard to demonstrate it was faked.
Oracle is case sensitive by default.
Someone still needs to solve the "what verifier do I use problem" in a decentralized way, or we're going to see Persona follow OAuth and be dominated by Google, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.
Elon Musk has 'no plans' to actually build his Hyperloop design
"I can't tell you the reason" is a rather blatant way of saying "National Security Letter".
This is a real shame. 10 years of work gone, and they have to ask for help for the legal bills.
Time to donate to the EFF. They haven't been branded as a terrorist charity yet, AFAIK...
The line "A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company." seems to suggest that he may be working to create lavabit outside the borders of "Mordor".
Can he reopen it as a foreign business?
HTTP framework for time-based access to resource states -- Memento
That's a very good point that I should have addressed. The cited ACLU article goes on to say:

"King and Mauer (2005) estimate that at least 68,000 people were in prison, on probation, or serving a jail sentence for a marijuana offense in 2003"

So, that's 52% higher than the number I quoted for state prisons.
First images of DNA mix-ups linked to cancer
There are a lot of reasons people don't talk about this stuff, and I shouldn't either. I'm being a bit too loose with my mouth already.
Integrity means exactly what you extrapolated. Let me rephrase your extrapolation: "Integrity matters only when no one can see". What matters when ""others one can see" is called social contract.
Dragon Innovation Raises $2.3 Million To Help Build Hardware Startups
NVidia opensources SHIELD operating system
Internet Study Finds the Persuasive Power of ‘Like’
I just lost access to my primary email account.
clogged potties

surely smell like money

to plumbers

(and this is written in appreciation not scorn for those that fix the old things that many would rather not touch)
Mundane is hard, and working at a startup can require mundane work. Lots of it. Automate whatever you can whenever you have time.
I believe Clickpass was YC '07. Falling short of a Series A raise, Yola/Synthasite acquired them in 2008 [1]

Then a few years later (2012), Yola sold the IP and users to Janrain [2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=402973

[2] http://janrain.com/clickpass-acquired-by-janrain/

EDIT: my pleasure callahad :)
From 2011:

> Lavabit processes 70 gigabytes of data per day, is made up of 26 servers, hosts 260,000 email addresses, and processes 600,000 emails a day. That’s a lot of email.

http://www.dbasoul.com/2011/1008.html

Update: According to their stats page, they had 410k email accounts hosted before shutdown https://twitter.com/georgemaschke/status/365553445538775040
Which will work fine until countermail gets an NSL too.

Hosting your own, in your physical posession, with mercury-switch or dead-man-switch triggered thermite self-destruct is really the only option left.
I tend to be fairly transparent and vocal. Sometimes it gets me into trouble, but usually it works out for the best. If a potential employer asks why I left my job (which I entirely expect), I will be straightforward. Heck, I'll even send them a link to the blog post.

I'll tell them how I don't think sticking to what is easy is the best approach to building a successful business, even though it feels safe. I'll tell them how I think it's important to always be moving, and take calculated risks to push forward. I'll tell them how I learned (from mistakes) that it's okay to release an impefect product - because trying to get it perfect on the first time around will kill you.

I told my past employer all of this. They disagreed. And that's fine. They were smart guys, and they worked hard. Everyone has their own methods and ideas. We just weren't the right fit. But I'll try hard to make sure the next employer is.
*Freenode is not dead.

IRC everywhere else is dead.
Yes, taking ownership of your obvious flaws is often an effective maneuver. By so doing you minimize the effect of external critics calling attention to them. ( related: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging )

I do think he's doing the smart/right thing (now).
I'm in the exact same position. It's quite frustrating.

EDIT: I turned my frustration into a $100 donation to his legal defense. I hope that more people do the same.
So the US government will order you to suspend the privacy of your users, after which they turn around and intimidate you in not violating their privacy in what they are doing.

Got it.
For the unfamiliar: Lavabit was a webmail service, that (claimed to) encrypt emails in such a way that they literally did not have access to the content stored on their own servers. The linked email would lend some credence to those claims. It was originally designed in contrast to gmail scanning your email for targeted advertising, but my imperfect memory says that their system should also have been resilient to "we have a warrant, hand over the data."
That it made it through the reviewers suggests the rigor of the review process. :-) Was this a major journal?

I also wondered if there was something less nefarious in the explanation. Was it "Falsify some results" or "Toss up some BS about this topic". The latter is bad, but part of the academic paper business. The first is career ending.