skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
RAM Memory acquisition using live-BIOS modification
Besides Cold Boot Attacks, there are other techniques to extract memory content even without removing the physical chips from your machine. At OHM2013, a employee from the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) demonstrated that you can do it much easier by modifications to the BIOS instead.

Abstract: https://program.ohm2013.org/event/157.html

Video: http://bofh.nikhef.nl/events/OHM/video/d3-t3-12-20130802-2200-ram_memory_acquisition_using_live_bios_modification-ruud_schramp.m4v
Amazon do basically the same thing with their prime membership, although they do refund if you notice and complain early enough (offer a free month and then start charging unless you opt out, whilst making it far from obvious that you have to do so).
Alas you do not get the option to refuse to pay. They keep your credit card details and charge every month.

You're then stuck arguing with your card issuer. In the UK for example, you're shit out of luck unless the transaction is > £100 where the card company becomes 'jointly and severally liable' which allows you to pursue them instead.

Obviously this varies so it all depends on where you are and where your card was issued as to how much chance you have of 'refusing to pay'.
Every single person who has been misled into signing up for a recurring charge should do this one thing:

Dispute the charge with their credit card company.

You'll get your money back and it will issue a bunch of chargebacks to JustFab, which will penalize them financially. If enough people complain their penalties will escalate and their credit card processing rates will go through the roof. This is how the credit card system weeds out crappy businesses like this.

Unfortunately the very people who this model is designed to exploit are the least likely to know about their consumer protections.
> The Office of fair trading would shut this site in a heart beat. (if it were based in the UK)

They have a UK site: http://www.justfab.co.uk/
Learning about Netflix through their UI
Yeah, I don't get all the hate on cubicles. Here in Europe they're uncommon but I'd love to have them - the alternative is open plan, fuck that (when you're sitting with dozens of people in a room, 4 or so is fine if they're all devs).
The difference is that I have needed SysRq once a year or even less. As long as you have a second internet-capable device, you can look it up.
My city is named with an emoticon
> Like most redditors I was shocked when I couldn't use my karma to buy stake in imgur. After becoming depressed that imgur was not really a "gift", I quit reddit, and decided to found a startup. And now I'm here. So thank you for that imgur.

I'd be surprised if many readers know what the hell you're talking about.
I usually don't do this but I hope you'll do some time in prison for this scam.

You can do mental gymnastics all day long if you want to, but it'll be hard to find anyone that doesn't think that what you are doing is malicious fraud.

Edit: I see you are the founder of eHow (content farm) and Betfair (gambling). It doesn't surprise me at all. Maybe next time you could invest in human trafficking and brothels.
? Not sure the relevance. That post-dates the China/ISS issue by years, and anyway is about NASA doing it's own diplomacy, which it shouldn't have been. That's State Department's business - just like it was when Space Station Freedom turned into ISS and the Russians got on board.

The Chinese could have worked with the State Department, Russia, Europeans, Japanese and Canadians to join the ISS program and it would have been legal. They deliberately chose not to.
That's pretty astonishing actually.
We used to fallback to GIF in the <video> tag, but Chrome would completely load the GIF before it even started on the videos.

Albums are coming in the somewhat near future, and you'll be able to caption them. Also, the developer docs [1] document the easy-to-use embedding tool for putting them in your own websites, but maybe we should make that more visible.

[1] https://mediacru.sh/docs/
For me, it's not necessarily the frequency of random
conversation/noise/etc, but the lingering feeling that
you could be interrupted at any time. That idea keeps me
from concentrating and working to my full potential.

Yes, this! Also, I hate to admit it, but I haaaate the idea that somebody could walk up from behind me while I'm deep in concentration.

I don't know why. I am not anxious or paranoid in general. I don't fear people walking up behind me when I'm sitting and relaxing, or standing and chatting, or whatever.

It must be some primal thing. My brain must know that if I'm completely engrossed in writing code (as opposed to casually sitting around) then I'm completely defenseless as well, and thus prevents me from full concentration.
If you really believe a word you've just written, here's my suggestion. Change the page so that by default you're not joined up to the VIP program and shoppers have to specifically opt-in. If the text is as clear as you claim, you'll still get roughly the same join up rate because the deal is being made is brilliant and it's perfectly clear what's happening, right?
So, you're saying that every email provider that does scanning for spam, full text search, auto categorization and other things must stop doing them?
> Your personal feelings are no justification for trying to create laws and interfering with other peoples' voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

Meanwhile....
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/25/mori...
I am sorry, but any company that does not explicitly gets consent for paid membership but tacks it on another deal is dangerously close to a scam. I understand that asking forgiveness is much more profitable than asking for permission, but IMHO it reeks of dishonesty and trickery.

In fact, I've opened the homepage of justfab and it does not mention subscription anywhere on the homepage, just the 39.95 price which any reasonable person would conclude is one-time deal and not a recurring subscription. It is mentioned only once on the very end of "how it works" page, as if it were an insignificant detail. Such detail like recurrent charge I think should be prominently mentioned. If you buy a loaf of bread in the store, you don't expect to be automatically enrolled into "bread appreciation club" that would charge you each month, do you?

The companies that behave in such a manner and try to trick customers into something that is not at all clear for them what they are agreeing to not only hurt the consumers, they hurt the whole internet sales ecosystem. Now what I would say to a relative or friend who is not adept in recognizing all tricks and fine prints? I would say "never buy anything at all from a store you don't know and that somebody who knows all the tricks have vetted". Which hurts the whole system, now every newcomer has to work harder to prove he's not one of those scam ones and it not going to trick you into something you don't want to do.
A friend of mine is working on http://www.giflike.com/

It's "like animated gifs", but implemented with JPEGs + javascript. JPEG encoding is much more efficient for photos, and doing the animation in javascript enables fun features such as reversing and scrolling through frames in the browser.
Ask HN: How would one go about writing his own database?
I was thinking that writing a DB would be a good project to start getting comfortable with a language I've been learning. However I have no idea about design, strategies or best practices for creating a DB.
I looked at the image you provided.

This is fraud, pure and simple - if this is somehow legal and within USA consumer rights laws, then it's not a sign that the company is right, it's a sign that the consumer rights laws there are broken and need to be changed.
Yes! Immutability and a lack of side effects has changed my mindset for the better. It really helps keep things understandable.
The spin of the whole "disrupt everything" kind of cons the young and energetic in to do the hard yards before the flip.

You don't often hear about individuals making any kind of real difference in social areas of society that are hurting, yet if you build some kind of online service that provides some kind of marginal benefit you're cast as a hero as long as some cashed-up multinational buys you out?

I'm all for fun and profit, but I'll call a spade a spade, and all this flipping at the expensive of multibillionare corporations ain't really disrupting anything. Especially if the service is bought out and shut down, which appears to happen often.

It seems a nice safe bet is to iterate quickly on a niche that big-co is trying to break in to. They see you as a threat and their strategy is to buy you out and either a) integrate you, or b) shut you down completely.

Hooray for progress! Or is this the bad side of capitalism?
I have to agree. I almost certainly live in the same part of SOMA as OP, and it is quite depressing to see so many people living in squalor. It makes me very angry when people talk about "cleaning this area up" by forcing the destitute to find a new patch of concrete to sleep on, far from where those people can see them. A stunning lack of empathy really!
Popular but wrong
Someone should put together a Wiki containing links to all current tax regulations for Bitcoin in each country. I'm very interested in what the Netherlands is going to do / has done with Bitcoin tax declarations, for example...
You should be hiring for a "culture fit." But that doesn't mean every person has to fit the same mold. Many different types of people can fit the culture. And you are right, you don't want to be hiring "rockstars." Rockstars typically have ego problems, and won't fit the culture. Culture fit doesn't mean "you hire only people who are like you"
Stubbing HTTP calls in AngularJS tests the right way
Just checked out their UK fan page for Facebook, 20k likes.

Of the most recent 15 "posts by others", all in the past week, 5 of them are people that appear to be furious about being tricked into subscribing.

http://i.imgur.com/NDVZbHM.png
> Reddit's biggest problem is that the big subreddits are incredibly homogenous, and the small ones incredibly slow.

There's definitely middle ground though. /r/DepthHub is pretty good at aggregating solid comments. And there's good debate on subs like /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics. Admittedly, these subs don't refresh as fast as /r/worldnews, but there's usually new content every day.
It's total karma, but the line keeps rising as HN grows. I've only gained them when my karma reached 500.
What happens when a trusted reviewer gets recognised as such, and starts getting offers to do faked reviews for cash? This is a classic example in other mediums, eg. radio. Trust is a double-edged sword.
Wow, to start getting comfortable with a language, a DB won't be my choice. You should really start with something easier.
Are you Ready to Launch your Start-Up?
Hahaha! It's definitely evil, but a funny evil.
How iOS7 Stacks Up : Smartphone OS User Experience Shootout [pdf]
> file formats not starting at offset 0 are a bad idea.

Meanwhile, we realy need to develop network protocols with obfuscated handshake to counter monitor and censorship.
What it changes is that it requires (non-US) banks to keep track of which of their accounts are owned or co-owned by someone who may have a (dual) US citizenship, and may have made an error in their tax returns, or risk having some of their US assets seized. Some banks just prefer not to take the risk.

The non resident citizen tax returns can become very complicated in the situation where the non resident US citizen is married to a non resident foreigner. The tax forms don't even support this configuration - the spouse must have a social security number. The foreign spouse must then apply for a special "non resident alien" social security number, for the special purpose of being able to file taxes in a country they are not even allowed to enter without a visa.

And how exactly do you determine the value of your shared assets in dollars? Have you made capital gain every time the dollar fluctuates against the local currency? Since we bought our home, our property has dropped significantly in value in the currency we earn our wages in, but theoretically gained a bit in dollars, so how can we be sure this doesn't add up to exceed $50,000? The only way to be sure is to hire an expert figure it out for you, for several thousand $. They are now charging more for their services because of the higher risks and responsibilities involved.

The net amount we have to pay in that country one of us isn't allowed to enter without a visa has always added up to $0 because the extremely high taxes we already pay locally (50+ percent income tax, 20+ percent sales tax, 80+ percent excise tax on fuel etc) can be deducted.
Except for there is a time window for these sorts of things.

His girlfriend isn't going to be able to dispute charges that are 8-months old.
and I'll take the closet, so long as I can have my lamp.

Absolutely! Spending $50 (total) on some lamps and warm CFL/LED bulbs and turning off the soul-crushing fluorescent lights was huuuuge for me.

I got a lot of slightly puzzled (but mostly complimentary) comments for it but whatever, programmers are already seen as a little weird.

Also, it's not like I turned my office into some kind of stereotypical hacker's cave, with nothing but pale and sickly monitor light. I now have one of the few offices in the building that looks like a nice, warm, inviting place.
Sure, someone public who was given lots of money by big institutions voted for it with their money. There are a lot of fly by night operations doing this kind of thing, not many VC funded ones that I'm aware of.
In DK (possibly EU) we have laws that mandate the actual total minimum cost to be prominently shown when you buy something and companies are regularly fined by the marketing board for misleading information there.

So if you buy a $1 cell phone, but it requires you to sign up for a 12-month $50/plan and oh, there's also several $5/month fees in small print -- then that's the total minimum cost you pay must be shown

For loan type products, the effective yearly percentage cost for the loan must be shown. So if you look at one of those typical "quick loans" like https://folkia.dk/ where everybody can get a loan..., well you an see that borrowing 3000 DKK for 30 days is going to cost you a yearly effective interest of 987% if you asked a bank for it.
It's not just prestige though, it's also legitimacy. Scientific journals have formal peer review and it is this process that is supposed to ensure that papers that get published aren't totally spurious. One might argue that NASA could be exempt from this process given its own reputation and level of accountability, but submitting articles to journals for peer review and publication is standard scientific practice.

The paywall is arguably just for business though, a lot of papers get put up on sites like arxiv pre-publication anyway.

I don't see much in the argument from the view of the taxpayer though. In the UK a lot of public funding goes in to research and the papers are largely behind paywalls - Graphene research for example. Now, if we had government subsidized peer review journals - I could definitely get behind that.
Analyzing emails is what email service providers do. If you can classify a message as spam, you can also classify it as being about shoes and target ads against it.
Is there a one sentence TLDR in English to summarize?
Lots of speculation about how hard this is for people to navigate, here's some examples of people bitten by this

http://www.elkgroveonline.com/forums/topic/105057/beware-onl...

and the text of the class action filed in 2011

http://www.scambook.com/blog/2011/10/justfab-com-justfabulou...
Pebble Smartwatch, Now At AT&T And Best Buy, Needs To Get Aggressive
"work the system" employees will break whatever system you give them. I still think a separate sick day pool is better because sick people don't have a good reason to come to work other than having exhausted their sick days.

Solve the problem by weeding out the employees who work the system, not by moving to PTO-only and making your entire office sick more often to save a little money.
Do you think this was a wise decision?
The point is 'tough luck' gets the entire office sick by making sick employees come in to work. You almost never want this. It has a tremendous negative effect on productivity.

You also can't ignore the psychological effect of having to 'give up' time off (for a vacation with your kids, or a visit to your parents on their deathbed) in order to avoid going to work sick. It causes people to go to work sick a lot more often, because they can't anticipate when they will need time off. It also diminishes the rate at which they will use vacation time because they can't accurately estimate how often they'll get sick.
The language is plain english, but the most important and un-obvious fact about it - that it is a subscription deal and not an one-time sale deal - is mentioned only at the end of the wall of text and is not clearly and prominently featured. It's like advertising a car for $100 and then at the end of 10 page small-print document (in plain english) adding "plus 36 payments of $500".

I am still giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you are sincerely believe that it is a legitimate business that does not use any blackhat techniques to trick their users. But with each your comment it becomes harder and harder. It is very hard to believe that a smart man - like without a doubt you are - would not understand what is going on here. Pecunia non olet?
It could be made even clearer:

"To become a JustFab VIP Member, simply purchase any JustFab item on this Site. Doing so will automatically enroll you in the JustFab VIP Membership Program. This program will charge your method of payment at the rate of $39.99 USD monthly, and in return, our experts will send you a customized selection of JustFab items on the 1st day of every month that you may choose from and pay for using this credit. Any remaining credit at the end of each month is rolled over into the next month. You will also receive emails, newsletters, special offers and other updates to maximize your shopping experience. Save up for a few months to get that pair of shoes you just can't live without! Any accrued credit is non-transferable and redeemable only through JustFab.com."

However, something tells me this version wouldn't fly during the board meeting.
Or a 50" TV screen.

For that to be of any practical benefit, it'd have to be 4K resolution, right?

If you're just feeding that 50" TV a standard 1080p signal, you're not going to be able to display significantly more code than you'd be able to display on a 23" screen that's also running at 1080p.

Heck, cover the side of a building with a 1080p projector image, and a 27" monitor running at 2560x1400 will still show more code. :)
> Only the things you like should be there on your phone.

Moral of the story: don't live in the USA.
Nice to see they pick Samsungs version of android, the worst one going.
Yeah, I have frequently uploaded screenshots to Imgur and copy/pasted the embedding sample to a web-forum or whatever, so it would be handy to have that in the human-reachable portion of the site, rather than only in the API.

Also, I was talking about MediaCrush with a friend just now, and he pointed out that nowhere in MediaCrush's ToS does it mention anything about deleting images other than by legal pressure. Imgur says they'll delete images after three months without a hit; MediaCrush doesn't say that, but it doesn't not say it either.
Then also file a complaint with the attorney general of a state in the US and the Better Business Bureau. Also write an honest Yelp review (make it fair and truthful but not slanted as you don't want to be sued over libel). All of those things matter a lot to businesses, in addition to their standing with credit card companies and banks.
I hope this ends up as the most upvoted post in HN history.
You are correct, I overlooked that detail. You can cross Nepal from that list, and my point still stands though.
I personally feel most government scientific data(non-
defense) should be released immediately.

I have a feeling there's more than a few Einstein's out
there delivering pizzas. Go ahead and laugh, but I feel
some big mysteries will be solved by dropouts, and the
self taught.
If the goods being sold (subscription) is not what the reasonable consumer thinks is being sold (one-time purchase), it is a scam, regardless of points and credits. Just like if you stay once in a hotel and they subscribe you to a timeshare without your knowledge, it'd be a scam regardless of the fact that you could use your timeshare for a week every January.
First I want to thank you for bothering to defend yourself here in public. When a conflict exists between two parties, the best chance for resolving it is when both parties are able to present their respective cases.

I am about to get philosophical.

If we look immediately at what it means to invest, what we come up with is a profit equation. One tries to maximize the expected profit of an investment, taking into account risk.

But let's try a thought experiment. What if you had 1,000 times more money than you do right now? So if you're a millionare, you're now a billionare. Would that change what you invest in? In what ways would it do so?

Would you start making even larger investments, with even larger returns? If so, what if you had 1,000,000 times more money than you do right now? At what point does profit for profit's sake become pointless?

I think that deep within yourself, you know that investing is not merely about profit for profit's sake. Somewhere in there I think you recognize that by choosing what to invest in, you have an awesome power to change the world. You have power that extremely few people have. You are, in essence, the real life equivalent of a super hero.

Based on that, let me ask you this question:

Is this really how you want to change the world?

Is this truly how you want to spend the vast power you have at your disposal?
Not to pile on, but after looking at that screenshot, I thought your point was going to be that the VIP program was NOT necessary for buying. I had to go back and forth between your comment and the screenshot to figure out the VIP membership was automatically included instead of being an upsell.

Wow. Absolutely appalling. You really should be ashamed of yourself as should anyone working for Justfab.
from your HN profile

> founder of Betfair (UK based, IPO) and eHow

"betfair" is an oxymoron, a fair betting company is a betting company that does not stay in business long

"eHow" is the pioneer of the "content farm" business

"justfab" fits quite nice into this portfolio
JustFab.com JustFabulous Class Action Lawsuit (2011)
physibles
IPCC releasing climate report online
Bollocks. Even knowing there was content on the page informing me of the VIP membership it took me a minute to indentify. It's a wall of text to process, on the RHS, in text considerably smaller than the big pink checkout button which focuses the attention.

This page is absolutely designed to catch people unawares. You long term subscribers becuase people a) don't realise theya re being repeat charged, b) they don't know how to cancel.

The business model is based on tricking people. As a VC you are not stupid, you know how this business works. To pretend otherwise is just a lie.
I love the fact that they generate the mesh for users that have their own 3d printers for free.