skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Discontinued headphones that had great sonic characteristics, coupled with a lot of growth in the high-end headphone market.

The two that I owned were:

-- Joe Grado HP-1000 HP-1 (bought@ $700 , sold@ $1700)

-- AKG K-1000 (bought@ $750, sold@ $1250)

Both were amazing headphones. I especially loved the experience with the K-1000, but I never used them enough to justify them because I amped them with a pair of monoblock power amps which were normally connected to floorstanding speakers. The effort to change the cables coupled with the risk of burning out components if you wired something up loosely and one power amp was driven with no load lead me to rarely switch the floorstanders for the K-1000s.

Now I use a Denon D7000, which surprisingly works great unamped, but I'll be getting an amp in a few months probably.
The Swarm Economy is Not Silicon Valley's "Sharing Economy"
You can both benefit from adopting the Halmo's Spiral technique http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/36521/963.
They seriously need to fix their international pricing. For a 64GB model it's $913AUD to buy an iPhone 5s in the US, $1129AUD to buy one in Australia. What?
I won't be in this thread after this. I already see the rabbit-hole falling has begun.

Since we can actually measure & look at people in a very non-debatable way, you can get unquestionable & unbias data on how tall people are and the color of their skin. You cannot debate 6-foot tall versus 7-foot tall. We've(first-world at least) all agreed on what is a ruler. 12 inches is 12 inches. You also cannot debate the color red versus green as it has been defined.

The OP's generalization of people being equal is a fair generation to make considering the context of the world we live in today.

You should understand and be sensitive to the fact that racism is a real problem in the world today. As such, statements/questions implying directly, or indirectly, a characteristic of a group of people that support ideas aligning with racism should be done with care and not without quality evidence that suggests the negative characteristic; otherwise it just appears malicious. Especially for a group of people who have already experienced very similar abuse for many years and are still dealing with it today.
The security and related technological implications of the device seem relevant to any potential user and completely on topic to me. Agree it's unfortunate that battery life, form factor etc are overshadowed by recent revelations, and regrettable that Apple chose such a tasteless feature in the circumstances.
I've never heard of it... it's a start but unless there's actual money involved then I doubt that it can change much.
Did they make the same astute observation when Motorola Atrix was released?
How about phones having microphones?
Funny how people freak out about fingerprint scanner which is optional and may not send any data anywhere, but don't care about Google Now.
Didn't something like this happen in the Left Behind series? African nation gets better irrigation and raises food for rest of nation, or something like that?

Granted, Kenya isn't barren.

Maybe they could build a water park.
> Apple claims that even with access to the device, a nine digit passcode would take 2.5 years to brute force.

That's 2.5 iPhone-years of computation, though. A speedy desktop could be 10 times as fast, and that's before we get to GPUs or multiple machines.
Exactly.

I believe we will see a rise in credibility of foreign (for Americans) standard bodies. It could be Germany (would it be BSI?) or other country. I know for example Redhat had been getting their Common Criteria cert (needed to easier sell their systems to some government agencies) from Germany's BSI, but it was because of red tape not credibility.

http://investors.redhat.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=7168...

I believe similar things will happen with other standards, products and services related to security. It will be beneficial to advertise that it was some other rather agencies that certified the product/stand besides NIST. Or that somehow this service or product is better because we know NSA didn't stick its fingers in the pie. Kind of a negative advertisement. A real shame. This will hurt American companies (including jobs, taxes) quite a bit.
Emberassing for Johns Hopkins:

“We’ll have to re-evaluate that relationship,” Matthew D. Green, a cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in a blog post Thursday. “Trust has been violated.”

(Mr. Green said on Twitter Monday that Johns Hopkins asked him to remove that blog post. He was allowed to reinstate it hours later after the university realized the content was based on public news reports. The university later apologized.)
VAT, import tariffs etc. Apple doesn't need to fix anything.
Biometrics aren't secrets and cannot replace passwords but they can compliment them perhaps.

For instance, I can think of identical twins who don't want the other to see their private photos etc...
I took it to be reflexive satire based on a deep cynicism of anything 'good' being allowed to benefit the African people.

Africa is complex, it's broken, and it is rich in resources. People from outside Africa have been exploiting it since wooden ships took its people to be their slaves to the present day where China signs "exclusive" mineral contracts with thugs.

I heard a little cry of anguish that the poster has to watch something that could do great good get crapped upon by unsavory external influences.
And serious failure on facts. iPhone is not the first phone to have fingerprint scanner, and "network-accessible" is false is Apple is telling the truth. Unless FSF know better than Apple.
Actually it's the Kenyan military that has managed to dislodge Al Shabaab from significant swarths of Southern Somalia (up to their Mogadishu, and including the largest port, Kismayu). Ethiopia generally used to roll in, depose the warlord they didn't like, then head on back home. The Kenyan military tried to stabilize the region.

It's not all altruism though, the intention was to create a buffer near the Kenyan border as the country intends to build a large port in Lamu, a coastal town nearer Somalia than Mombasa, the current main port.

*Edit: Minor tense correction.
There's GST in Australia rather than VAT (10% vs 17.5%), and last year the prices were almost at parity.
Depends what you define as being "an American".. Glenn Greenwald, the main journalist publishing the leaks, asserts his US citizenship and his American identity as the ultimate impetus behind his acts -- his belief in the American Constitution and the rights of American citizens
Here's my comment: This is the dumbest PRNG ever.
Did they just jump the gun and issue a statement on something they did not even touch? If fingerprints are network accessible is their main complaint, should they not wait till its out, check it and then issue a statement?
The 5C is important for one big reason: China. I expect the "unlocked" price won't reflect the kind of subsidies and discounts that China Mobile and Apple can give to make it affordable for their customers.
> Unrelated: you've said nothing to support this point anywhere throughout this thread.

That's not true.
New evidence reveals the most controversial relic in the world
It's the same in Europe. Such devices often cost the same amount in USD and EUR, yet 450 EUR vs. 599 EUR is quite a difference.
It is like you want to be downvoted. Exploring yourself to find out why could be useful.
And what about Google's dismissive attitude here? The same attitude that Tavis got fed up of. The motive was to highlight just that. Tavis bashed MS because he was riled up by their attitude, because maybe culture at Google was different regarding patching critical bugs and moved fast. Well then, look no further than Tom's post.

Tom was dealt with nearly same manner as Tavis says his ordeal was. Tavis immediately went ahead with publishing the exploit, but Tom but gave them 2 weeks, even after persistently demonstrating the criticality of the exploit.

Culture inside corporations is very different than outward facing one. Facebook's behavior recently could be excused partly due to poor wording (though onus was on FB), but what is the explanation here?
Ok, audio on Android does not really fit under "just works".
It's open source, is it fixed yet?
We have a pre-employment screening test for all employees at my company that I do the scoring on.

About 1 in 30 even gets passed on to HR to look at their resume. We get about 400-500 applicants a day (I don't personally look at all of them; a handful of us have this responsibility). Most people cheat, don't read the instructions or just give plain crap answers. A pretty significant number don't even try to get good answers - I wonder if they just have to show an attempt for unemployment money. We struggle to get even 2 strong answers out of all 5 questions. 2 strong answers will basically guarantee an interview. 1 - 1 1/2 answers will get passed on to HR with a "maybe".

Of those that interview, I think about 1 in 15 gets hired into our training group. Usually about 1/5-1/3 of these realize that they can't do the job in training and stop showing up or they get recommended no-hire. Usually by this time HR tells us it's too late to fire them but occasionally it will happen (we had a hairdresser who was coached by a very senior employee through the hiring process. she had absolutely no technical ability whatsoever and was fired).

Our turnover rate for people in their first two weeks is high. I'm not going to lie, we're a very difficult company to work for and we don't have the best conditions for our employees (I can't change that).

Ultimately though, we have a staff of about 600 all of whom I interact with on a regular basis. I get about 1500-2200 tickets escalated to me personally each month, so I do deal with almost everyone. I could say that at present maybe 10 people can completely do their job effectively and maybe another 50 who can do most of it and have areas where they're significantly weak. The people who are very effective eventually get promoted to my team though.

For our newest hires, we've given up on recruiting technical skill completely and hire based on phone skills and business sense. The hope is that they can be trained to be effective. Our training department sucks and I have absolutely no hope for this plan to work, but we need butts in seats to meet SLA on our new contracts.

OP's numbers are very believable.
Yes but whenever NSA "suggests" changes such as certain constants or like classic S-boxes from DES. Those don't usually come with a clear explanation, more like "here makes these change, it will be better, trust us" kind of idea.

Another point is that most people (especially non-US citizens) don't necessarily view NSA and NIST as separate. They are seen as part of the same government. More like 2 offices in the same government department.

Now this also brings about an interesting thing I have been thinking about. NSA is also in charge of protecting its own data. So recommendations, practices and policies they tweak go into keeping its (and other agencies') classified data secure.

Given that they have managed to "tweak" and insert backdoors in some algorithms or systems, how likely they are to recommend those systems for its own and other government agency use? Do they want the communication or keys to the nuclear launch sites to use the "tweaked" version. They would need to have an pretty good feel that no other agency out there has also figured out the back door.
Hey folks,

I am one of the co-founders of the Vulnerability Reward Program at Google. It's one of the longest-running and most generous programs of this kind: since 2010, we have paid out around $1M in rewards for more than 1,500 qualifying bug reports in web applications alone. We take great pride in keeping the process responsive, friendly, and hassle-free.

Of course, it takes just one bad experience to undo much of that. Tom's report is a valid issue. The reward panel - of which I am a member - decided that it did not meet the bar for a financial reward. I stand by this decision, but I think we should have been more forthcoming, precise, and responsive when communicating that. In other words, I think we messed up.

PS. If you ever run into any problems of this type - or just want a friendly soul to chat - please do not hesitate to poke me at lcamtuf@google.com :-)
> you can't put new evidence in its place to support the same argument

Nah, no where did that happen. It's just hard for some people to handle truths and make connections.
If that is true, I can relate the HR or hiring people. It must be bad when majority of applicants are not suitable to job at all.

~2 months ago I started searching for a new job. I only applied that actually suits to me and I am capable. I only applied 3 places and all interviewed me, in the end I got 2 offers (I am starting next week!). I guess that is just me.
And when do they start to build cell towers?
Gmail doesn't run JavaScript in e-mails, though.
Resource thing is not quite true, parts of sub-saharan Africa have valuable resources and parts don't. Resources play a larger factor in African economies because they have little else. For example, while South Africa has gold mines but this place appears to lack water.
R & E | Advokātu birojs Rīgā
Zverinatu advokatu birojs Riga Rasa & Esenvalds. Juridiskie pakalpojumi privatpersonam, uznemumiem. Pieredzejusi, labi juristi.
I suppose that was a bit presumptuous of me. My apologies.

The whole spiel has made several rounds on HN, though [1], and Ars reported again on the matter about a week ago [2]. But I do acknowledge that doesn't necessarily mean much... not everyone has the time (or the inclination!) to follow such matters.

[1] https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=dual_ec_drbg&s...

[2] http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/the-nsas-work-to-mak...
Having lived in Potrero, I've noticed that the houses get significantly ritzier towards the top. But the side facing away from the city is a pretty steep downgrade.
I would recommend GAE. It is a pretty good fit for what you are describing, and best of all, it has a very reasonable free tier that never expires.

I have only ever used python on GAE. PHP at the moment only accepts whitelisted applications.

Their database is NoSQL, but it does have a query language called GQL which shares some features and syntax of SQL.https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/datastor...

GAE has cron jobs which can run for up to 10 minutes. https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/config/c...

Applications are limited to 1GB of source files. It seems like this will be no problem for you.

You are limited to 1GB of data/day for free, $0.12/GB after. For you application, that's 100,000 requests/day.

It looks like Heroku wants to charge if you want more than 10,000 database entries.

Your English is great.
When I pass away my daughter will get an envelope with all my passwords. I would still like her to be able to open all my accounts.
Isn't it fair to be disappointed? They dropped the visual upgrade and introduced dozens of new bugs, forcing developers to put in some serious hours. And the result is what?

The best feature released is downloading new content in the background. That's wonderful, but not enough. iOS background processes are still crippled, so I can only have an open socket in the background if it's part of a VoIP app. And for some reason the VoIP flag also signals that I want the app to run on startup?

I don't see why we should care about iPhones or iOS anymore. The latest upgrade is a fingerprint scanner and it's faster. Ok. The operating system finally drops the idiotic skeuomorphism and lets people share photos with Apple's version of NFC. Includes a 2D game engine. Great. Oh beacons? Wonderful, now we can opt-in to targeted localized advertisements.

I'm more interested in getting a device that doesn't force its requirements inbetween me and my workflow. That means widgets, sideloading, intents, and applications that can edit the same files. Removing the animations or reducing their duration (jailbreak an iPhone, install the Accelerate package, and tell me that isn't a much better experience).

On iOS you still can't even delete their default apps if you don't want them. I thought Apple was supposed to be about style? My old iPod Touch still has a folder full of apps I don't want. And an empty Newsstand.

Apple is for children and the computer illiterate. The only benefit of iOS over Android is that you don't need to be totally vigilant over what you install. But the cost is living in a walled garden under the watchful eye of your nanny. I'm disappointed in iOS and the iPhone. They are becoming increasingly irrelevant. They're going to find that the preferred style changes over time, whereas Android is going to have a technical fan base for quite a while even after the "massive screens" fad dies down.
I would like to voice my support of this question. There are plenty of other places for this news, but few places for computer science stories. Perhaps www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/‎ ?
In contrast, an aquifer is hard to control: each liter of water isn't worth that much, and Kenya doesn't have the infrastructure to export water anyway.

My original question was what if these water supplies are found in areas of conflict. In such scenarios, transport is not an issue. And the question remains because although they wouldn't put prices on a liter of water, I'd say it's because the water is invaluable, not because the value is low. If it weren't so, it wouldn't be worth it to poison wells in the first place.
I suspect that NIST is just another government organization trying to do their jobs, and I don't think it's fair that their name got dragged through the mud. The truth is that the NSA practically co-opted NIST's decision-making strategy. I have confidence in NIST. Sadly, I don't have confidence in the NSA to not muddy up the process.
Execution matters.

My previous work computer was a Thinkpad (2011 model) with a fingerprint swipe-scanner, but it was flaky, wasn't baked into the OS, and didn't have any killer apps that supported it.

If, for example, Lenovo released something like 1Password but tied into the FP scanner for auth, that would've been really good… but that would require work to ensure it was secure and that particular sensor's flakiness would've killed the execution anyway.

I'm guessing it was there for military/secured installations where some bespoke software would interface with the scanner for a customer-specific purpose.
> If your webmail client does that, it's time to switch to a better one.

Academic users constitute an audience that's quite often bound to use a single, potentially-outdated webmail system. In our experience, academic/University users are utilizing what we consider "nonstandard" email systems with an order of magnitude more regularity than nonacademic users. You may wish to better understand the audience of the product before asserting that they should "switch".

And claiming something is not a security issue because you're trusting a client you don't control to behave well is naive at best, and apologist at worst. It's genuinely upsetting to hear coming from someone who classifies vulnerabilities.
Scrolling on `Day 162` is shaky and often misses final position when moving the mouse rapidly.
Firstly I see all biometrics as a username not a password.

I assert I am lifeisstillgood - and I enter my shared secret so that pg can make a reasonable assumption that the person he originally told the secret too has not shared it and therefore is at the other end if the transaction.

The problem with fingerprint recognition is it is a zero-factor authentication. What we have here is a very long username with say 44 bits of entropy(#). No matter how long that username, it's not a secret. I wonder around leaving it everywhere - just like "lifeisstillgood".

Without a shared secret, a username is not a sufficient security device - it's just what I am asserting - zero factor authentication is a problem.

(#) now this is an interesting issue. Fingerprints have been assumed to be 100% unique amoung humans. But with DNA fingerprinting came a confidence level, and now forensic scientists are resisting assigning confidence levels to fingerprints mostly I think for the apocalypse of having to review 30 years of convictions then made unsafe.
Alternatively, a Github for legislation, with change commits tied to the names of representatives.
Apple Unveils Panicked Man With No Ideas
Again, I did not imply anything racist. I did not make any generalizations, about a race, a country, or EVEN a continent! Please listen to what I'm saying!

Just because you constantly assert I'm a racist without actually listening to the substance and nuance of anything I have said does not make me a racist.

Please, specifically point out what statement I said was a generalization about a race?

Just because I do not agree with the OP, does not mean I agree with the opposite. Just like how if you're not with the US on Iraq does not mean you are with the terrorists.

My question "how do you know?" is simply a thought experiment showing the fallacy in the OP's assertion that in fact Africans are not more corrupt or warlike than anyone else. It is totally possible they are. He does not know, nor do I. The point is that he doesn't know anymore than I do. I am not, and have never, stated Africans are more corrupt or warlike either! If I did in fact, state this, please point this out otherwise I will be inadvertently spreading racist beliefs (which I do not. I am totally on your side with this. Let's work together okay?).

The OP is the one who made a generalization (Africans are not more corrupt or warlike than other people). All I did was question his generalization. He could have also said "Africans are not any more black than other people." That one is easier to verify that he is wrong, so if I pointed that out by saying "how do you know?" I would have gotten many more up votes.

By ignoring the possibility that Africans might have genetic, cultural, societal, or other factors causing the corruption and "warlike" is doing a disservice to the issue, reason, and scientific method.
> My experience suggests that it's very rare to get a superstar from any passive method (that finds active job seekers). That pool is just to dilute with talent. To get the strong candidates, you have to be active (to have a shot at the passive candidates) or extremely lucky.

It's a two-part problem though. Some companies don't have a management structure that allows superstars to thrive. Large companies that need to passively hire active job seekers often don't give any kind of ownership over your own work. Responsibility and accountability, I find, are really key to both nurturing high-performing employees and weeding out the ones that try to hide.

Still other companies have a culture where being a superstar paints a target on your back. Offices are filled with petty bullshit.
Sure they do, if the ad is about getting a larger member or getting ripped. The role-model effect.
Point taken, but I think you know what I meant. :P
Mine was "do they have an API?" and to my amazement, yes they do.
Agreed. Let's face it, NIST and CMVP have been shoving EC-DRBG down everyone's throats for years. This is in spite of the whole conspiracy around EC-DRBG being achingly old.

There is no new information, no fresh concerns. Anyone remotely connected to cryptography has been suspect of EC-DRBG for years. The only thing that has changed is that the main stream media has picked this up.

"Very well, if that is the way the winds are blowing, let no one say I don't also blow." - Mayor Quimby October, 1994.
How else should one predict on-the-job performance if not the conventional application/review process?
Tom Van Goethem makes a strong case that this is a security vulnerability and it does deserve an award. Can you explain why not?
I don't want to be called a hacker