skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
For many people utility bills are a large expenditure, not an insignificant one. A company that can make it easier for folks to budget, plan, predict, etc could potentially reap rewards as they can take on lower income or risky utility customers who historically have high default rates and lower the default rate through proactive management. Furthermore a regular person might appreciate a utility company that bends over backwards to ensure there are no surprises on the monthly utility bill.

The roughly 17 million people who are unbanked are the target market: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/09/wh...

That doesn't just go for electric power but other things as well like mobile phones, cable TV, internet, etc. I'm not optimistic that the Congress will get their shit together in the near future and force last-mile monopolies to provide access again like the FCC required for a while. But if they do, look out!
The Touch ID is less secure because you can force a person to put their fingerprint to unlock their own phone. Forcing the passcode out of someone can prove more difficult and the phone will wipe itself after 10 tries (if you have that feature enabled).

I could steal your phone and manage to unlock in the process by taking your hand and unlocking the phone before walking away, somewhat more difficult to do with a passcode.
Steve Wozniak on new iPhones, smart watches, Google Glass, and more
Dont panic! this loophole is easy to fix if AAPL gives free mittens(cuter than gloves) to its users with clear instructions to take them off only when unlocking the phone.
Coder: a simple way to make web stuff on Raspberry Pi
I think you have it backwards in the first paragraph. A general misunderstanding of this 'weird universe' is that 'politics' declared science and technology as the top goals, and the entire soviet planned economy revolved around plans for industrial projects, be they exploratory or defense, or agriculture. Most aspects of Soviet space program were scientific and exploratory in nature. Sending a new lab satellite into space every few month, rovers to Moon, Venus, Mars long before US. What was the military point of that? On the other hand US put a much bigger emphasis on star wars than substantive exploration.
Actually, it wasn't being reused to secure the public insurance file - we still don't know know the password for that. The problem was that other people managed to get their hands on the encryped file for the Guardian journalist under dubious circumstances involving a prominent ex-Wikileaks member sabotaging them.
Can you explain how it keeps smartphone prices artificially high everywhere?
Western media is used to accuse Soviet system in technology copying. However sometimes the accusations go a little bit too far. Particularly in the aerospace area it would be naive to deny the Soviets their prowess - with Buran, which differs significantly from the Shuttle (see the article above), with Tu-144, which flew before Concord, not to mention today's half-broken Soviet-era technology which manages to lift about half of world space payloads to orbit and provides West with rocket technology - RD-180 for Atlas, NK-33 for Antares etc.
64 bits. It’s Nothing. You Don’t Need It. And We’ll Have It In 6 Months
Google thanks MIT for granting permission to use this URL for the purposes of testing web connectivity.

That's from Google's help page† on using their public DNS servers, at 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4.

†https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using#te...
I think that's a bit of a leap. There will always be some lawsuit to fend off. A company the size of LinkedIn is probably defending 20 cases at once. It's just the nature of the lawyer industry.

This case sorta-kinda reminds me of the class action where people are saying that when you mail someone at Gmail, Google "intercepts" the message. There's always going to be class actions like that one. Whatever a lawyer can dream up, he can litigate as a civil action.
>We know what works, a look at Finland is sufficient. The subject has been studied.

You're right, the subject has been studied. All we need to do now is replace our children with Finns.
Those of you who are young enough may not realize this is Tim Berners-Lee's nightmare -- in which the Web disintegrates into a multitude of factions, each using a different browser.

"Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network." -- Tim Berners-Lee.

I think by describing this technical Balkanization as an artifact of a quaint past, Berners-Lee may have been overly optimistic.
Civilian-use drones and virtual reality culminating in the functional equivalents of androids and holodecks.
Yeah, I'm curious about that too. What sort of insane intro CS class is this?
To me it looked like the authors tried to express some of their true thoughts, but were often forced to change or include parts into the script to reflect a more positive America, that really stood out.

I'm not stating flat out you're wrong, but do you have any actual evidence of parts they were "often forced to change?" Isn't it possible they included pro-American material because they didn't necessarily have a completely negative point of view about the US and the military? Not every opinion that America is less than evil necessarily has to be propaganda.
I've been thinking about this idea for a couple months and here it is. There are no original ideas.
Biometrics ARE a more secure replacement/alternative to passwords.

Are they perfect ? No. But nothing is.
This seems correct. Apple's moved the bar to breaking into those phones from having the phone and a 4 digit or no passcode to having:

-- the phone

-- a 2400 dpi resolution image of the correct fingerprint

-- a 1200 dpi laser printer & transparent paper

-- pink latex milk or white woodglue

-- a non-trivial amount of time
They can (and often are), but some of the drones are capable of completely computer controlled take off and landing. I remember seeing somewhere that the human drone pilots caused more crashes when landing than the computer controlled ones.
I disagree about people working fewer hours. Work that used to be performed by humans has already been automated to a large degree.

Rather than a uniform reduction in hours, the result appears to be a swelling class of unemployed and increasing hours worked by those who are employed.

Those who have time do not have money and vice versa.
Since developed countries are experiencing population aging, I would guess if someone could help women prolong their window of having healthy births.

I say this because if you look at the last ten years, the rate of births in the age ranges of < 18, 18-35 have been decreasing while the age of women getting pregnant in the 35+ range has been increasing.

The birth rate of the United States is only as high as is now largely because of the immigrant population.

As more women in developed countries choose to have careers and go through higher education, the median age of pregnancies will continue to rise.
> I'm not a lawyer, but I thought most contracts had clauses that said that if one part of this contract is found to be invalid, the rest of the contract still holds.

Yes, one sees that. Unfortunately, a contract that includes such statements, designed to avoid the consequences of unconscionable terms, are themselves unconscionable.

My point is that you can't put language into a contract that contradicts contract law, and the idea of invalidating a contract based on unconscionable terms, terms no rational person would agree to, is part of contract law.

Just speaking from experience, and IANAL.
It keeps the high-end phone prices artificially high. Manufacturers cannot sell the same phone to consumers for less than they sell to carriers. This is why high-end phones are less popular in areas where paying full price for a phone is the norm.
The technical and popular terms are at odds, and currently tend to
reflect whichever element the user wishes to stress:

UAV - Uninhabited Air Vehicle - no "man in the can"

UAV - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle - same

RPV - Remotely Piloted Vehicle - we still have pilots!

drone - military: target, towed or on auto-pilot

drone - media: mindless non-human automaton

From the description of Buran's flight, it sounds like a mostly
pre-programmed auto-pilot from de-orbit to landing. The technology is
impressive for the late 1980s, no matter what it is called.
How long did it take to write this once you had all the ideas? I looked at the github history but they only went back 5 months and it looks like there was already a significant amount written so I couldn't tell how far back from there it went.
Well, no password on their phone unlocks. But I thought Apple intended to replace your passwords in application services as well. Now, I didn't read the article at all (not a single damn word), so maybe the hack only applies to phone unlocks. If that is not the case however, then I think _you_ are missing the point. This would compromise all passwords replaced by finger print scans, right?
Talk about missing the point.

I dislike entering a passcode every time I pick up my phone. Yet if someone steals my phone or I leave it somewhere I don't want someone to be able to access my photographs or my data.

Fingerprint sensor sounds like a pretty good solution to me.

Do I want Fort Knox security on my phone? No.

Could someone still access all my data even if it was secured with a passcode, certainly they could with physical access to the device and a couple of debugging tools they could lay it wide open.

So put simply, fingerprint is more convenient than having to type in a passcode. +1 for Apple

Good to know how easy it is to break though so no one gets carried away and starts using it for things worth breaking into.
Perhaps they're not getting traction because they're blunt and provocative?

I haven't heard of FSFE and FSFLA starting any campaigns of the sort, and they seem to be having some kind of actual effect.
The Three Most Significant Venture Deals Of 2013: SnapChat, Uber, AngelList
> iOS assumes any physical device to which it is connected when unlocked is secure

I thought this was fixed in iOS7?
at the end of mine , all i was able to do is program a tic tac toe game, I guess kids are smarter today.
The core seems much more interesting than the Pawn language. I'd like to see more comparisons once this matures.

A few points:

1. I'd like to see the FFI implemented natively (i.e. by declaring in Solid and registering through C code/macro, instead of relying on object file parsing). Then it'll be extremely useful in a bare-metal microcontroller environment.

2. Namespacing is needed -- I don't really want `parse_xxx` or `ast_node` in my global namespace!
First, the fingerprint of the enroled user is photographed with 2400 dpi resolution. The resulting image is then cleaned up, inverted and laser printed with 1200 dpi onto transparent sheet with a thick toner setting. Finally, pink latex milk or white woodglue is smeared into the pattern created by the toner onto the transparent sheet. After it cures, the thin latex sheet is lifted from the sheet, breathed on to make it a tiny bit moist and then placed onto the sensor to unlock the phone.

Yeah, easy as pie.

Finger chopping should be added to this xkcd:

Security:

http://xkcd.com/538/
I think the verdict is still out on the iPad and iPhone.

I bought my first tablet, a Barnes and Nobles "Nook", precisely because of the price. Not that I'm cheap so much, but that I wanted to take it places where it might get broken, and I wouldn't feel so bad about breaking a $150 tablet vs. breaking a $600 tablet.

It lacks a GPS, a camera, and some other features and the touch screen isn't as good as an iPad, but I could buy four of these for what an iPad costs. (Like buy one for all the members of my immediate family including my mother-in-law)

Consumers may be seduced by pretty things, but consumers are cheap too. I've seen people underbuy PCs for years; perhaps Apple helped the tablet market get established by preventing underbuying, but Android tablets are getting better fast. (Had Android come into the market first, people would have concluded tablets were junk and there never would have been excitement over them)

For that matter, Apple faces stiff competition from the high end. Microsoft's Surface Pro points to a kind of device that is much more powerful (and expensive and heavy) than the iPad. Windows 8 has its problems, but there will be a Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.2... Even though the Metro ecosystem is weak, I think there's definitely a market for something that is a hybrid between a PC and tablet, even if it the enterprise market.

Add that up and 10 years from now, Apple could be a niche player.
Possibly, considering all the work that goes into A/B testing in general even in software (even for the most mundane of things with less money on the line than motion picture budgets), I doubt it was that simple.

Besides there's a basic premise behind statements like "You know what Chinese people want to see? Other Chinese people!" that is often overlooked, especially when its used to justify an action meant to display an image or viewpoint of some kind that is usually to the benefit of nobody but the person/company who wants to shape that viewpoint and related parties interests who are aligned with it, no matter how misguided it may appear…

Interestingly enough, they talk about how the technique of 'giving people what they want' as way of control in Adam Curtis' Century of Self in the second half [0; 1h57min]…

[0]http://vimeo.com/61857758
Does that superior education involve a computer? There's your $500.
This has been tried multiple times before (a startup funding marketplace) but all have failed because they couldn't build out the two-sided network.

AL is the first to solve this. They have quality investors and startups (the 2 critical sides of this network) which is what gets the flywheel turning on these marketplaces.

We see lots of Crowdfunding platforms getting funded and all focus on competing on features and fees but fail to build out credible network participants on both sides and getting liquidity on the platform. AL is doing this well.

Given that Naval also seems smart as heck, this is going to be big and I suspect quite disruptive to the broken VC model.
Show HN:Music Popcorn - a d3-based music explorer
I love the psuedo lawyer speak in this thread
I used to do distance running. I figured out that both apple and grape juice have approximately double the calcium, potassium, magnesium (electrolytes), and calories as Gatorade.

So I started drinking juice diluted with 50% water. Way more natural, and fructose is much healthier than sucrose. It worked pretty well for me; YMMV.
Built this weekend at Music Hack Day Chicago
Sexbots.
No, I know that's what's going on, it's just that I'm trying to unwind the tortured syntax you use to say it:

There is also a huge desire among highly skilled professionals to immigrate to the US, so much so that there's pressure in Washington...

You ascribe pressure in Washington to those prospective unemployed and unemigrated employees. That doesn't sound a little inverted from the state of affairs described from the perspective of the employers?
When is the best time to create?
This article makes me sick to my stomach
The Autodidact's Bookshelf
I wonder how long this effect lasts. I suspect that over time people feel less that the product makes them feel cool and move on to a different type of product to get the emotional positive feeling from.
Yes, that's true, I wasn't extrapolating from present conditions, in which people really do work long hours, in many cases much longer than they need to. I was just imagining that people might suddenly realize they could have a lot more free time than they do now, without a serious decline in standard of living.

But current events certainly argue against this idea -- if anything, on average people are working more hours now that they did in the past.
Ugh, I wish people would stop using the FTDI chips for USB. They are unsuitable for multi-channel, high bandwidth, low latency data acquisition.
He has an opinion, like many famous people. If his character/background doesn't matter, then we could just drop in any famous celebrity that people could use to confirm their own biases and justify their parenting decisions.

If you're planning on using Louis C.K. as an example of a parent who is choosing to not give their kids cellphones, just be prepared for people to go "oh isn't he the one who jokes about [xyz inappropriate for children topic]".
I hate to say it, but if he's having trouble finding customers eager to pay for it, he should rethink the project altogether.
Thanks! Did not know that.
> ...to the broken VC model.

I'm always curious when I see comments like this. What is broken about the VC model?
Clinical psychiatry and psychology are areas of neuroscience these days, so I don't quite understand the "historic meltdown" point, any references on that?
That's one of the main (first world, admittedly) problems of our time caused by stupid, backward work ethics (long hours == good; work efficiently so you can go home early == bad) and increasing life style expenses accompanying increasing income.

These two aspects make sure the majority of people stays unfree and hence doesn't have enough time at their hands for useful work or projects.

I'd say if we can manage to solve this problem we unleash tremendous potential for improving the human condition and life for everyone.
Sugar's a drug and here's how we're hooked
Assange is not blameless in the leak of the unredacted cables. The procedure he picked for handing a copy of the data to Leigh was terrible. Proper use of public key cryptography could have made it much safer.
Both this and the Mathematica solution linked below [1] are brute force, which strikes me as far less interesting than using linear programming. Of course, at this size of problem brute force works fine. You can write a brute force version easily in any language, including, of course, Julia:

julia> function brute_force(P,t)
for x1=P[1,:], x2=P[2,:], x3=P[3,:], x4=P[4,:], x5=P[5,:], x6=P[6,:]
x1 + x2 + x3 + x4 + x5 + x6 == t || continue
println("solution: $x1 $x2 $x3 $x4 $x5 $x6")
end
end
brute_force (generic function with 1 method)

julia> brute_force(P,419)
solution: 90 68 91 66 41 63
solution: 90 48 91 66 41 83
solution: 90 64 67 66 49 83
solution: 88 68 91 40 49 83

The interesting thing about Iain's linear programming approach is that you can write the problem down the way it is defined and get a solution efficiently.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6425633
I also was a distance runner. After a long, hot run, Gatorade tasted good so I drank it. As far as I can tell, it's not killing me in a very obvious way, so I'll continue to drink it as long as it keeps tasting the same.
Girls Giving Dating Advice #1
> You can't make driver X in the kernel GPL without making the whole kernel code GPL.

That is factually wrong. You are perfectly fine in keeping the rest of the kernel under BSD. GPL only prevents added restrictions from being added to the GPL code itself, or the combined work. If users downstream remove said code, then it would not be a combined work anymore.

See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4854519/gpl-component-in-...

Or this almost 2 year old answer on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359524

> Linuxemu is a compatibility layer for Linux user-mode binaries. It emulates the Linux system call interface. It cannot be used with Linux drivers.

Quoting Luigi Rizzo:

I decided to start working on an emulation layer that would let
us recompile the linux source code on FreeBSD, and provide a
sufficiently complete emulation of the kernel APIs so that
device drivers (or at least certain classes) could be used
without modifications to their source code.

-> http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/freebsd/linux_bsd_kld.html
The amusing thing about sending ciphertexts over twitter compared to english text is that you can actually fit in more information, assuming you do the encryption and ciphertext encoding right. That's because twitter transports 140 unicode code points.

(This has nothing to do with steganography, but seems relevant nonetheless. )
There's plenty of sucrose in fruit[1] (juice). Sucrose is the sweet tasting element of fruit.

Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a simple monosaccharide found in many plants, where it is often bonded to glucose to form the disaccharide sucrose[2].

[1] http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-009009000000000000000.ht...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose
I'd be very interested to hear how you think brute forcing my 22 character password is easier than stealing my laptop and fooling the fingerprint sensor.
It's not clear if the framework is open. That can help in building community-building interest, and give assurance that you're not going away. More than a few frameworks are public because the founders realized it is a big deal to maintain a framework. Remember that a lot of people have seen a service provider disappear when some Big-Company likes the team that created some great application framework or web application.

It's hard to find an audience for a product. Stuff that has been written on the topic:

"Do Things That Don't Scale" - Paul Graham (July 2013)
http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Steve Blank in his startup & venture blog and book has a fair amount to say about discovering who your audience is for your product, and about changing the product based on what you discover. Minimum Viable Product is about trying many different things with many potential populations. Nobody initially knows who their initial or eventual customers are, or how to find them.

Asking people to pay, right now, is a very instructive process toward discovery of your business model. You might have a perfect product, but no buyers. Find the buyers, one at a time to start out. Your project has a lot to learn about, towards figuring out who would want to use it. Ask people why they're not a buyer.

"An MVP is not a Cheaper Product, It’s about Smart Learning" - Steve Blank (July 22, 2013)

http://steveblank.com/2013/07/22/an-mvp-is-not-a-cheaper-pro...

"Who’s Doing the Learning?" - Steve Blank (June 3, 2013)

http://steveblank.com/2013/06/03/whos-doing-the-learning/
In some sense you're right, but you shouldn't underestimate either the innovation that is going on or the intelligence of farmers.

There's a word for a stupid or wasteful farmer, and that word is "broke". You can't make it in agriculture unless you can make it against fierce global competition.

Ten years ago there was a lot of apocalyptic talk about the opposition of organic vs. GMO crops but the truth is that organic and GMO crops have both thrived. GMO crops are getting better, yet organic methods are advancing too and are being cherry-picked by conventional farmers when they are competitive. Robotic tractors are a reality today.
The returns are abysmal primarily. They lag Wall Street (while taking much more risk)

http://www.geekwire.com/2013/vc-returns-improve-10year-horiz...

This may sort itself out on its own, however, as LPs are investing less and less in the VC asset class.
>Stallman has always believed that software should not be sold, either directly or indirectly

I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion from that statement. Nothing in there says that.
Reportedly when making purchases it "will still prompt you for your password every so often to 'renew Touch ID purchases.'"

Source: http://www.cultofmac.com/246572/iphone-5s-first-impressions-....
Perhaps the most astute observation in here. Lost count the number of times I've missed the 'the next big thing' when it was right in my face. Each time I tell myself that I'll pay more attention next time. But we all know the definition of crazy.