skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If the NSA didn't guard against him using accounts with more clearance to download documents he wasn't supposed to have access to, I don't think Snowden's intelligence is what we should be worried about.
Should the NSA director outsource NSAnet root?
Things I learned from reading this blog post: There are people who use their thumbs to press Alt (or cmd on a mac). That would never have occurred to me (either to do, or that anybody had ever done so).

I imagine that explains why keyboard manufacturers are so happy to put garbage keys I don't care about right next to my Shift, Ctrl and Alt keys. Personally, my ideal keyboard would have those expanded and the windows and fn keys removed off to the right side of the spacebar (or to the underside of the computer for the amount of use they actually get).
Using an Android Exploit to Take Control of a Corporate Google Admin Account
that worked, what is the common error though?
I've never heard of anyone uses ctrl as a leader. I do use comma myself.
> For general writing collaboration I would seriously consider not allowing arbitrary branches. Most people just get confused managing multiple independent outstanding branches that potentially branched from different points in the history.

Yep, absolutely true.

> One restriction could be that each user gets a single branch (their suggested change). As changes get merged into HEAD each user's branch must be rebased (with a click) before they can add more changes to it.

Heavily considering this approach.
Using Git to Fetch GitHub Pull Requests Locally
I was jumping around chronologically, the video was shown by a teacher I had in high school. That wasn't clear, sorry.
The OP is about loyal talent, not talent alone, and banks do not acutely need loyalty in their employees to the degree that spy agencies do.

For instance, they do not try to keep billion-dollar programs secret from the public.
The five performance bottlenecks: algorithms, programming language or compiler, operating system, processor, I/O system and devices.

One almost down I'm sure the I/O system will reach a wall soon as well. Only thing left is to optimize the software.
As someone who uses left-shift nigh exclusively, does this mean you use different shifts for different letters?

In general, for typing in ALL CAPS for me, I just rest my little finger on the shift key and then type as normal (at normal speed), but I've never had proper typing form. ;)
The Razing of Chicago
Actually an automobile did require a lot of PR to convince people it was better than horses. You just live in a world where everyone uses automobiles already.

If it wasn't for PR people then we wouldn't be engineers working on computers today. People initially didn't like computers either.

In both cases it wasn't immediately obvious why people would want to use these products.

I'm curious as to what you developed that was so immediately obvious to customers that you didn't need a sales team to become so wealthy and popular.
> North American cities used to be enormously ambitious (see also, for example, Boston's Back Bay). Contrast the fear, trepidation and status-quo obstructionism that characterizes municipal affairs today.

North American cities used to suffer with depressing frequency civil engineering disasters that killed dozens of people at a time. It truly would be odd if fear and trepidation regarding the topic is greater now, if that's actually true.

Caution might be greater, since we know more about the topic and more about what we need to be cautious of, but that's all to the good.
How much functional/end-user automated testing do you have? That's probably the biggest roadblock to roll with things like 1.0 to 1.x upgrades. Why are migrations considered risky? Is it risky because the functionality will break? Or is it risky because the next point release (say 1.2) is considered unstable?

Because the latter fixes itself with time as the community tests version 1.2 and patches come out, but not having tests for your own code that don't rely on the framework prevents you from being able to move fast on anything but the smallest of refactorings.

I think that's how you can get yourself out. Ruthlessly write end-user acceptance tests (something that drives a browser, headless or not, Selenium, PhantomJS/CasperJs, etc etc) that verify all your functionality. Only once you can quickly and automatically verify correct operation can you then do something like a framework migration (even if to latest Symfony 1.x).
Is measuring productivity isomorphic to the hiring problem?

Everybody says there's a "shortage of developers," but I know good developers who keep getting shitcanned after a few interviews where nothing seemingly went wrong.

We can't tell who's going to be productive. Since we can't tell, we come up with ten foot high marble walls to scale. Our sterile interview problems make us feel "well, at least the candidate can do our Arbitrary Task, and since we decided what Arbitrary Task would be, they must be good, because they did what we wanted them to do."

Productivity is pretty much the same. There's "just get it done" versus "solving the entire class of problems." Is it being productive if you do 50 copies of "just get it done" when it's really one case of a general problem? I'm sure doing 50 copies of nearly the same thing make you look very busy and generates great results, but solving the general problem could take 1/20th the time, but leave you sitting less fully utilized after (see: automating yourself out of a job).
Not as far as I know... I could run a server that serves up HTML/JS and if that JS was modified by an attacker who hacked the server, consumers of my HTML/JS wouldn't know regardless of whether it's served up on HTTPS or not. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
You perfectly described why affirmative action will always exist.
Very nice. I think your value prop/statement on the homepage should be something along the lines of "Saving you the time and stress required to reimplement user account tiers and auth."

The main value will be people who are doing plans and payments - because they are the ones with money, so focusing on them in the value statement might be good.

Also I'd say mention it's for rails and node.js on the front page, I almost left the site because I wasn't sure if it was for anything other than rails (also explicitly state rails, obviously most people know that gem == rails but still worth being explicit).
Good feedback! We usually try to make all our stuff easy to get and don't put people through a sign up form, but it's good to know that the crazy big button looks a bit spammy. (I work at Moz. :)
This. A million times this.
Am I the only one who still uses Shift-Delete and Shift-Insert to cut and paste? I swear when I tell my fellow programmers, they look at me as if I'm from another planet.
> Perhaps the question should be: Would Dr. King have kept it locked up by copyright for more than 50 years?

> Actually, my question is this "SHOULD this speech (and other works) be kept locked up by copyright for more than 50 years?"

Agreed, on both counts.
Announcing Mixen: Multiple Inheritance in JavaScript
That's generally not how panels work. They'll commission expert reports, etc.
It's probably closer to whiteboard coding than relevant work. Designers need support and can't work in a vacuum. Without a deep understanding of the specific requirements designers will make generic (though perhaps beautiful) work.
The idea this is unfair or "spec" work seems silly to me. As a professional, you do a ton of stuff that you don't get paid for: attending classes, building your skillset, designing your portfolio, writing your resume, creating concepts, etc., etc. This is simply a fact of life.
I am familiar with 80% receivers and yes, they do rather readily demonstrate the absurdity of US gun laws (though I think the fact that the assault weapon's ban deals with bayonets attachment points demonstrates that better). But that's a legal technicality. If you actually outlawed most of the parts for a gun (particularly the barrel), it would be a lot harder to manufacture a decent gun, certainly harder than growing drugs.

How much harder? Technically, I'm not sure. However, Australia, England, and Germany, all of which have rather restrictive gun laws, don't seem to have that much of a problem with home built guns. Nor, as far as I know, do they have a large problem with illegally imported guns. They do, however, have problems with drugs.

Look, gun control has a lot of really stupid proponents(witness the assault weapon's ban on scary looking guns), but the argument that banning guns wouldn't work because prohibition of drugs failed is almost as stupid. It's almost as much of a blatant attempt at pandering to the liberal pro legalization crowd as the "think of the children" anti-gun stuff is to whoever listens to that crap. Countries have done it and it appears to work in so far as it does seriously reduce gun crime.

It's possible there are too many guns in the US to actually ban them, but that is not the argument of the "war on drugs" analogy. Furthermore, I think that's also moot. Criminals get arrested and get their guns confiscated, guns break, they get disposed off to avoid having evidence of a crime, the supply of extent criminal guns will dwindle. As to the large set of legal gun owners in the US, some of whom might have "boating accidents" and not turn in their guns, presumably they are not going to go out and start robbing connivence stores just because. Though I grant, this whole line of reasoning is a debatable point , but there is no real analogy to the war on drugs.

This doesn't mean prohibition is a good idea at all.

The question of course is 1) does it actually reduce violent crime and 2) even if it did, is it morally right to take away people's ability to defend themselves.
Are they talking about su?
A secular education doesn't mean it's devoid of religious literature. On the contrary, it probably means you get to explore religious texts from a variety of cultures and religions.
Looks pretty much like my setup except Command-T. Command-T is awesome on Mac but it's a pain to make work on Linux and not sure about Windows. Moved on to ctrlp plugin.
Awesome stuff, I can see this being very useful.

I believe Airbnb has built an internal solution for this, I'm sure other people would be interested.
Hiring
Does anyone know of a Creative Director with tech chops looking for a job?

Peers is a new organization founded to support the sharing economy movement, and in need of a Chief Storyteller and Creative Director.

The full job description is at this link, and deadline to apply is September 6.
I've got mine mapped to f6 right now. My capslock is an extra ctrl button, but I might make it esc pretty soon.
How does this compare to Caja?

https://developers.google.com/caja/
Exactly. Sending a resume is cheap -- sending a design takes some time.
This is the real, modular keyboard for programmers/hackers:

http://acidfire.ca/keyboard/BDY14295.jpg

(It's a modular kit, the image above is just one of the configurations, the center part is an addon).

You can also have multiple layers, so you could create a dedicated programming layer. All firmware will be open source.

It's going to go up on kickstarter soon (when Canada launches in september).

More info here: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=44940.0

Some more images (the thread is pretty lengthy):

http://acidfire.ca/keyboard/BDY14209.jpg
http://acidfire.ca/keyboard/BDY14230.jpg
http://acidfire.ca/keyboard/BDY14300.jpg

Over the top: http://acidfire.ca/keyboard/BDY14284.jpg

Later on more modules will be sold, such as a trackball module that you could place in the center and so on.

There's also going to be a portable version:

http://acidfire.ca/keyboard/BDY14438.jpg
http://acidfire.ca/keyboard/BDY14440.jpg (variation)
Probably soon - I ordered one on Tuesday and it shipped yesterday. I guess they're selling quickly, I saw a tweet from Jeff Atwood last night saying anyone that wants one should order soon else they'll have to wait for the next batch.
Assuming that the web service is doing proper client side authentication most of the time (which, with enough effort, can be verified), and then gets coerced into sending compromised JS at some point in the future - we still have better security than the alternative of no client side security at all. Sure the increased chance of a malicious update is a real threat, but it is better than that attack not needing to be performed at all.

A further incremental improvement could be made using a Mega-style root of trust (ironically, an article explaining how they messed up the implementation explains it best: http://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/megafail.html). Only the initial loader page (with embedded hashes and MACs) needs to be checked for whether or not it has changed on each page load. If you want to be immune from a later malicious update, you just have to manually save the loader page and open it instead of re-requesting it from the Mega. Yes, during an update they can stop serving the old scripts and deny access, but you will at least always know when an update has occurred.
I can't talk to the complexities of India's fight for freedom. I will say that I've worked with Indians who hold Bose in higher regard than Ghandi due to Ghandi pushing for the separation of Hindu and Muslim countries and the conflicts and deaths that caused, but that's second hand information to me. Interesting nonetheless.

India's resistance to British imperialism is similar to the US response to British imperialism. Sometimes armed resistance is necessary but when done within the official context of an army, with rules of engagement and hierarchy, it can be legitimized.

However, when fringe militant resistance that is the definition of terrorism is used, it tends to have the opposite affect.

The Black Panthers weren't doing themselves any favors within the establishment by being so militant. LBJ wouldn't have spent 5 minutes bowing to their demands but had no choice politically to negotiate with a preacher leading a peaceful, rights-driven resistance.

What you have to understand is that politically the Democrats had full control of the southern states up until the Civil Rights Act. After LBJ (a Texas, southern Democrat) got the CRA passed the entirety of the southern Democrats became Republicans - where those same states are to this day. It was done at a huge cost to LBJ and the Democrats, but it was the right choice.
Sell your Netflix stock to send a message: no DRM in HTML
I absolutely agree with this. It seemed the initial posting about our events website launch wasn't seen at all or by very few people. But, if this is an appropriate place to re-post, I'd love your feedback! http://planblock.com and like the page at http://facebook.com/planblock
> mimeograph machine

Showing your age? :)
awesome!
very good job!
Good points. I disagree with more parts of the premise than you do. It says: "Documentaries can only include small, five-second clips. Take a moment and ask the people sitting near you if they’ve ever heard the opening lines:"

I am one such. In fact, I heard it just the other day. It starts at 46:04 of http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/28/50_years_after_march_o... .

Democracy Now also has lengthy excerpts from MLK's "Beyond Vietnam" speech and his "I Have Been to the Mountain Top" (See http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/16/special_dr_martin_luth... ) and likely more speeches if you search the archives.

(It may be that since a news show isn't a documentary, it is one of the exceptions implied in 'most circumstances.')

I agree with you: the reason why 'ask the people sitting near you' works is likely more because - as you say - most people don't listen to speeches or watch documentaries with speeches in them.

I disagree with your religious imagery observation somewhat, because that speech doesn't include much in the way of religious imagery which needs to be explained. Looking through the copy at http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf , I see:

- references to the Gettysburg Address ("Five score years ago .. this hallowed spot")

- religious references ("captivity" can refer to the Babylonian captivity; "The whirlwinds of revolt" sounds like a reference to a verse from Hosea; "every valley shall be exalted ... all flesh shall see it together" is Isaiah 40:4-5.)

- Shakespeare ("This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent" is a reference to Richard III)

- perhaps Newton? ("meeting physical force with soul force" sound like "equal and opposite force")

- The Declaration of Independence ("We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal")

- the 1831 song "My Country 'Tis of Thee" (some 17 lines are a reference to the song)

This doesn't sound like any more use of religious imagery than other texts often taught in school. "To Kill a Mockingbird", for example, starts with a Methodist fleeing religious intolerance in England, and has an scene where the white children Scout and Jem go to Calpurnia's black church for a Sunday service.
Agreed, also goes for Emacs. Not a fan of starter kits, they tend to confuse experienced users and newbies alike.
HTTPS just tells you that you are talking to the 'right' server. It doesn't tell you anything about the validity of the javascript that the server is sending you.
Incredible! I feel like meteor is so unbelievably perfect for this.

Feedback: once you've clicked on a deck, there's no way I can see to get back to the home page as shown when you refresh the page.
wavesounds answered this below.
Apparently the answer is yes...
The point anon1385 is trying to make about JavaScript clients is that they can be changed at any time by the web service provider, where as open source clients can be 'verified' once by the open source community and then can't be easily changed by the service provider (unless they have an auto updater, which Tarsnap does not)
Somebody please endorse me with the "Dismissive of Linkedin Endorsements" skill...
Awesome, thanks for that.

I almost never use my browser full screen, often it's snapped with 50% width. In opera chrome and firefox, the width is a tad too big for that. It'd be nice if it was more fluid.

Well that improvement wouldn't be that useful for me tough, I'm going to integrate your website in zsh and emacs if someone doesn't do it before me.

Also, if you can make it so that the input area is still there when showing results, it saves a frequent 'back' in the case someone wants to check multiple commands.
Who wants to go work at the NSA now that it implies they merely believe you smart, not brilliant?
“What I Did Today” Doesn’t Work
That pretty ambiguous. If they don't have the same range, then you shouldn't just ballpark them as both "1km max" because that doesn't really tell me anything.
Google News Doesn't Index HTTPS Sites
If You Love Netflix, Thank Cable
:O What finger do you use instead? The pinky?
IMO the solution is not keeping the top cryptographers, security experts, et al. out of the agency that is supposed to protect the country from the top cryptographers and security experts from other countries. Seems like a flawed idea right from the start. You just need to make sure the people you hire are actually on your side.
Totally agree. It's definitely a "why didn't I think of that" idea.

Looking forward to the oh-my-zsh extension that puts this in my shell. Or a chrome extension that inserts it on random code snippets.
That would be my guess.
Very well done - though I'd suggest refining the value statement/homepage tagline (maybe look at Duolingo.com for inspiration), and also changing the font color, the orange feels a bit strong.

Great site though, I can see the value it provides.
I complain a lot about documentation in Ruby and Rails, but wow, Drupal eats those deficiencies for lunch. It was where I concluded that, sometimes, know-how is held closely as a profit center. It's not even a learning curve thing where the ladder to expertise is long, but that several rungs are entirely missing, if not kicked through by previous climbers.
"," is kinda becoming the "default" key for leader. After multiple years of using it, it has become very natural.
I know that McDougal includes it in their teachings. Here's the lesson plan that I learned off of and that is still taught now: http://www.classzone.com/books/language_of_lit_gr07/page_bui...
>>There is no need going back and forth and I do not want to be remembered as the person being antagonistic towards PG. So I will end with this comment.

I'm juzt glad you never tried to zell uz a bridge.

O, wait, I'm pattern matching here. My bad.
I get an error when running rake:

Checking connectivity... done
Submodule path 'vim/bundle/jshint': checked out 'da21f0eb658d9af6696ee34a00c13d1717d85095'
Cloning into 'vim/bundle/kwbd'...
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Aaaaand it's dead.

The only features I want in a "programming" keyboard that make it different from a normal, vanilla, cheap commodity keyboard:

1) An underscore key in between the space bar and right "ALT".

2) Add the numbers A through F above the numpad.

3) Move the caps-lock key the heck away from its current prime real-estate above the shift-key.

If you wanted to be really fancy, a built-in macro recording/playback facility could be handy if I'm working with something exceptionally primitive and need to automate something.
I agree with a lot of this, but Jobs made plenty of blunders as well. Computers without disk drives, keyboards without arrow keys, etc - all things that were put on the market with Jobs vehemently arguing that it was the only, and correct choice, .... and then Apple backpedaled.

Which is not intended to counter your "next-level" talent claim - I wholeheartedly agree. I guess statements like "he knew what to keep" give me pause because he did, clearly, make plenty of blunders. As Woz said [1] "Steve never created a great computer. In that period, he had failure after failure after failure. He had an incredible vision, but he didn't have the ability to execute on it. I would be surprised if the movie portrays the truth."

One can be (must be?) flawed and still a genius. Some people (not you) deny the flawed part, and that rankles me.
[1]http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jobs-ashton-kutcher-re...

edit: sorry, the floppy thing was NeXT, not Apple.
Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now?  By Julian Assange
Why Business Intelligence Tools Need a Real-time Service Provider
This is why you don't hire ethical people for jobs like these.
Indeed! You're right. I wasn't quite remembering why gamers preferred PS/2 and took a guess it had something to do with speed. But you're right, it's because PS/2 has a higher capacity for simultaneously reporting multiple keys being held down concurrently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_%28key%29
I disagree, the solution is more likely not doing anything morally questionable because the pool of talented people without morals is significantly shallower than the pool with, in my experience.
I just read the article's conclusion, and it's just says "more gun control != fewer deaths". My comment is saying that their data is wrong (or cherrypicked) and their attempt to disprove any correlation doesn't hold water.

What I would expect to see would be a scatter graph showing all the countries in the world with guns on one axis and homicides on the other axis - that would make the article a bit more scientific rather than just cherrypicking a few countries. Most of their argument seems to be based on the fact that Russia has a high homicide rate and they have banned handguns. However we all know that Russia has law and order issues.

EDIT: I just did a quick search, and it seems there are graphs of homicides vs gun ownership for all countries, e.g. http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/07/doing-math-guns

So it certainly does look like gun ownership isn't correlated to homicide rates. However that doesn't necessarily mean that gun control is a bad idea. Does gun control reduce homicides when you control for other factors? The article is arguing that it does not, but my argument is that Canada vs USA shows that it does.