skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You think running a dictionary through SHA1, generating little sparkline graphs for each hash (the same way you did in like 10 lines of JS code), and then carving the image into sectors and counting matches is "extraordinarily difficult"? Everything you need to do it is, I think, in Mochikit.

You get full props for grandma, her googles, and the palsy, although anything you could do to allow either of my grandmothers to log into the googles would qualify you for much more than HN props. I'm sorry you think I'm inflammatory, except you and I both know I'm not.
There are plenty of scenarios where someone would be watching you type your password through a camera, but doesn't control placement of the camera. The most common case would be a security guard who is paid to monitor the cameras but had no hand in the design of the surveillance system.
Of course, using Google as a seed list more than crawling only google. Not sure why I didn't think of that.
The mystery of filtering by sorting
Citizen engineer - HD video, comic book/zine & kit
Good stuff.

There is really one thing I would give up just about every other design principle to see implemented on all web pages though: don't EVER, EVER shrink the browser default font size or line height for content text... EVER. Preferably, make both bigger.
MIT Students Love iPhone-Powered Doors, Hate Actual Keys
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/10/billionaires-2009-riches...

His net worth was estimated to be $3.4 billion by Forbes on 3/11/09. At that time, Apple shares were down 50% over the previous 6 months.
What is the relationship between Makerbot and RepRap?
Slightly off the topic of the original article, but imagine an Ikea store with a "print behind the counter" making semi-custom furniture by CNC milling/routing the MDF/OSB components and using existing tech to make the camlocks, screws, pins, etc.

That doesn't require any new tech at all, just for the capital equipment to become cheap enough (or the utilization high enough) to justify doing the manufacture at the store instead of at a centralized plant.
When one of the selling point of the update is speed, and you slap a 30 seconds startup penalty for no good reason at all, yeah, its a fiasco.

I was wondering what was taking so damn long to start FF3.5 - on a SSD. I cant imagine ppl on a HD.
Well yes, it's a bug but it's hardly a fiasco. Something like this should be caught in pre-release testing. Still, most users have their browsers running all the time anyway so a slow startup is not really that critical.
I've seen far more serious bugs being taken far more lightly.
Wow, besides its functionality or not, it is a really interesting approach to solving a problem.

Kudos for imagination.

Back to the initial problem, after successive attempts you may remember the shape and colors, problem is, most business complain new users can't remember their passwords after registering, so there won't be a second time.

The only way of better remembering something is by viewing it.
I once got a piece of code where 1% of the lines of code were global variable declarations.
Sure, sure, it could be both. It could be my girlfriend looking over my shoulder too. But of course, I don't use an stupidly easy password and I don't let my girlfriend see me typing it (2-finger typing style, of course). I mean who does that, right? </sarcasm> :)

I just find it interesting to observe the discrepancies between perception of security and actual math-backed security.
Way to completely miss the point-Windows is NOT stopping him from doing anything-Firefox is. The problem lies within the NSS (security stack) inside of Firefox. NSS is integral to Firefox but is not in the main source-it is a separate project. Firefox checks the binaries when it launches to verify that NSS is a Mozilla signed build. So to build Firefox to fix the problem, you must:
Download Firefox source and NSS source
Make the fix in the NSS source
Edit the Firefox source to remove the Mozilla signed binaries check
Build everything and hope it works
There are MANY perfectly true complaints about Windows and the Windows software development world-but this is problem is all Firefox.
Tip: instead of the himalayas try using a beachball.
> Cellphones don't cost $15k per village, nor do they require training to use special computer programs, or a constant supply of raw materials.

Really? How much does a cell tower, a reliable power supply for same, etc cost? For widely spaced villages, I'd certainly think this cost would be well over $15K per village. Hell, I can't put a 50K sq ft office building size, cell phone repeater system in for $15K.

(I'd expect widely spaced villages would be the common case in areas where cell deployment is cheaper than copper lines.)
Seems to indicate the need for a search interface, which was hinted at by the article.

Maybe the tool selection could happen after the initial query? The results from the default tool guessed by WA, then choices of other possible matches. The key word "weight" could suggest the weight query, then key word match "elephant" to give choices like Indian elephant, African elephant, etc. and allow the user to click which one she had in mind. Maybe some keyword matches for elephant from other databases listed after that.

The problem, though, is they don't have the amount of data Google can use to help predict what a user most likely wants from a given query.
The average Korean's internet usage seems to be stuck in something of a walled garden - Naver/Daum/CyWorld/"Cafes"... and that's pretty much it. Most folks around here like the comfort of treading in groups, always where others have trod before. I don't think that is likely to change any time soon, probably about the same time travel agents start to see a decline in package tours in favor of individual trips. In other words: probably never.

On the other hand, Koreans are never behind the state of the art - they do relish having the latest and greatest things to show off. You can count on one hand the number of second-hand stores in Seoul, mostly because new=good.

They simply have no problem conforming to the flock, which, in the case of internet security, is rarely a smart move. When eventually some high-level government official or TV channel will point this out, suddenly everyone will take notice, and they'll all move on, as a flock, to the next thing, and the next, and next.
Because the JavaScript engine in 3.0 is lightning fast compared to the 2.x engine and the 3.5 is ummm, faster than lightning. By a heck of a lot.

For me personally, the only reason I downgraded back to 3.0 from 3.5 is because Firebug 1.4 is bloody awful at the moment (in beta). Other than that, Firefox 3.5 is great.
Oh you rock, this is awesome. As soon as I opened the link for this news item I closed it immediately due to the complete lack of readability. Someone buy the man a book on typography, please!
Apostrophe fail.
It wouldn't need that much $ at all, a fair sized CNC rig that could do this would run you about $20,000 including software and tooling. I built my own once (for plasmacutting sheetmetal) for about 2/3 of that, and that's already quite a while ago, I'd expect it to be cheaper today.

This is actually a really good idea you've got there, you should do something with that!
Don't plants and areas have "climate zones"? You should be able to search for that.

http://www.garden.org/zipzone/
The interests of people on this board are exceptionally low beta to general business conditions. People here aren't looking at corporate tax rates and support costs (which is pretty much the entirety of that list).
Steve Jobs also was not responsible for the Newton, it should be noted, but the direct control iPhone interface came out on his watch. The Mac offered far more direct control than the IBM PC. So I would suggest Jobs also has better instincts for interface design than Wolfram.
I'd more alarmed by the fact that they've thrown something new into the mix security-wise than the effect on startup time.

If the system pseudo-random number generator has no problem, what's the use case for not using it? And if it does have a problem I'm sure they would have told someone :)

I just don't know why you add another moving part to the security system if you could avoid it, especially since it seems like a reasonably safe bet that people have had more eyes move over / experience with the alternative.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm saying that tptacek is overstating the risk compared to the far easier option of just spying on the keyboard.

And c'mon, no common security camera could pick up a usable copy of that little graph thing. Half the time they're not even colour. It would take specialised equipment. I was thinking more like thieves going to some rich person's house, finding a computer screen near a window, attaching a high-res camera and waiting for them to log on to internet banking, or something. Sure, in that situation, very bad risk. But geeze, if you're sitting in the Chinese embassy and logging on to the CIA web site using your fingers on a keyboard, tiny coloured graphs of your password hash are the least of your problems.

It is an interesting idea though. I don't like how much information is in the graph, but if it was reduced to just, say, a block of 16-bit colour, that might still be a useful hint to users. Probably more useful actually; the detailed graph is just confusing. And I don't think even tptacek would claim 16 bits of colour is much of a hint brute-forcing a 256 bit hash.

Taking that idea and running with it a little - you could even "salt" the colour randomly for each user, feeding the salt value into the JS. In fact, implementing a per-user salt for the system as proposed would eliminate all of tptacek's concerns. It wouldn't be the same across sites, but it would be consistent per site. I might suggest this as an improvement.

update: duh, the system wouldn't know which salt to load before the user logged in .. forget that idea. Unless it was stored in a cookie of course. Or could be loaded via AJAX when focus shifted out of the username field.
It's sampling something pretty different. Silicon Valley would almost certainly be a horrible location for a steel factory.
Ask HN: Hows MediaTemple for RoR?
Hey everyone,

I've recently start learning rails, and I was wondering whats the best host for the job when I start creating apps? I currently use mediatemple for my current sites and I know they support rails, but are they the best solution?
"Crescent wrench": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjustable_spanner

I can see how "soluble supports" enable the moving parts to be printed - but how can a scanner see which parts are connected/unconnected, when viewing from one direction? How could a scanner see that an axle is a freely moving rod snug within a cylinder, when that is hidden? An extreme eg: put the part inside a blackbox, and scan the box.

This looks impossible to me (that you'd need to touch up the model manually), but the article said that's just what "old school" guys think...
That sounds like I was bashing it too much...don't get me wrong, I respect C++...its obviously very powerful and popular. But the fake interview was spot on in some points. There's just way too damn much stuff in it for one language, and on many projects, some of its features are used when they were completely unnecessary, only adding complexity and tangled mess. It takes a lot of time and effort to master all of its features, and in many cases is bad for productivity. Also, it is a nightmare reading through a large codebase, unless the project is very well designed and heavily commented.
This is funny, in a painful-yes-that-is-true kind of way. I am glad to be out of the C++ business.
It was interesting reading the article thinking "yeah, like the Newton" before the author mentioned the Newton and then "yeah, like the way Google routes to different applications based on the kind of query" before the author mentioned how Google routes to different applications based on the kind of query. Great minds, I guess. :)
Did anybody know that big o notation is more general than either of these articles lets on? These two articles are explaining the use of big-O notation in algorithms, which is just one possible use. The article by Knuth gives a better insight:
http://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/donald-knuth-calcu...

An example of alternative uses for big-O is the description of the "order of error" introduced by taking the Taylor-series truncation of a math function. This is useful in evaluating the accuracy of numerical techniques.
Maybe it's just me, but I consider this a (serious) security issue as well. The contents of temp files, which Firefox shouldn't even have access to, will now float around in the process memory of Firefox, even after the memory has been deallocated.

Firefox should never, ever, ever, open any file outside its own app directory, user preferences directory, or cache directory.

And a reasonably secure OS shouldn't even allow Firefox to open any of those files.
For Best Results, Forget the Bonus
Also, "The Folly of Merit Pay" http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/meritpay.htm

Home: http://www.alfiekohn.org/index.html

Basically, incentive pay has never worked, anywhere, at any time. Go figure. (And it has been hugely studied.)
I think it's nothing more than an updated gif. Google Notebook was out of beta for a few years before they pulled the plug. Albeit the circumstances were different but Google has the power to uproot any of their products as they see fit without any real "commitment."
'you might have one voluntary "enforcement agency" trying to enforce anarcho-capitalist property rights, but an entirely separate voluntary "enforcement agency" enforce a socialist conception of property rights, and various other gangs just mucking shit up'

I think one anarcho-capitalist belief is that the equilibrium reached by these competing interests is one remarkably close to what they want. Or in other words, the radical capitalism they desire spills out from the economic incentives present in a system without government.

Another is that these competing interests would result in a world that is fractured into different legal codes and styles of living and that is a good thing: they have no problem with socialists, only with being forced into living as socialists.

Whether any of this is true or not I do not know. The key would seem to be if these competing interests would wage war or peacefully negotiate.
Well, you have to compile the whole thing, not just replace one library. If you are writing the software, you can remove the signature check, obviously.
Whether this works out or not I love the concept. Attempting to hack the nature of government by changing the incentives it faces.
It's a bug. Bugs happen. You encounter one, fix it, and then it isn't a bug anymore.

Have you ever written a computer program before?
It's completely an issue of bad governance. Per capita income 2008: (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/290.html#income_b...)

California: 47,706
USA: 44,254
Texas: 42,796

PS: A 26billion deficit = ~700$ per person.
I think it's a bit funny that so many here seem to just naturally assume that by creating their own library the BBC have therefore denied JQUERY another badge for their homepage. @adradesign, have you ever considered the possibility that they actually would have gone with moo, or prototype or yui or one of the many other alternatives instead?
It's not like Steve can sell anything under the sun. Look at Apple TV or NeXT (though, he did get apple to buy that). MobileMe isn't particularly popular either though it hasn't fallen flat.

The only way to save wolfram alpha is to improve it. It is currently not a marketable product to the massive audience it is intended.
I use it just for short bursts of web 2.0 and javascript intensive browsing. It slows down my computer a lot, GoogleUpdate all the time touching some files, chrome itself maintaining its database. I don't like my harddisk led to be blinking constantly.
Ah well that nesting in Clojure is very cool! Python can unpack nested tuples, but my "unpack" function would be very unwieldy there.
Thanks for that link, that's a lot closer to the real thing than the machine the article talks about. Fully dense metal and a reasonable range of materials (including tool steel, which is a must).

I wonder what the cost per part would be compared to 'traditional' methods (abrasive / subtractive), if they manage to get that down far enough it will be quit the miracle. Metal powder + energy in -> parts out.

If you make the machines mobile you could have them extrude your steel beam construction in one go :)

The self growing sky scraper.
This comment was more valuable than the article. Thanks!
Apparently the 10,000 eyes of open source missed this huge mistake =( This is exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't except to see in open source software.
Ouch. And not fired by crappy VCs, but by Sequoia and Mitt Romney. That's gotta be bad for their self-esteem.
You just made my day. Thank you, sir.
Sometimes when you have too many employees some will show up, start their computer, sip on some coffee and pretend to work for the entire day. Then one magical day someone with a decision power realizes that this guys are just trading "showing up for 8 hours" for fat checks. On that day the collector gets fired.

This does not necessarily mean that the company is having trouble. It just means they can hire people who can actually do some work or be more productive than the ones who were fired.

Do your job. Do it damn well or at least show everyone that you are trying hard enough and if they bear with you a little bit more you will succeed at it. Otherwise enjoy the checks and know that sooner or later your circus will end.
Instead of selling tld's, why not allow registering any combination of two names? e.g. foo.bar

So you could have person.slate, microsoft.slate and roof.slate all by different people.
There's also always View -> Page Style ->No Style
Wow - thanks for the summary. Certainly didn't need wads of text to say that.

Its one of those things "seemed like a good idea at the time, worked well, I feel clever" and then you move on. Then it bites you (or one of your users).
"California and Texas, the nation’s two biggest states, ..."

Alaska? cough

The two most populous states, sure, but who uses that adjective to describe population instead of area?
Check Rails Hosting Info: http://www.railshostinginfo.com/

I found OCS Solutions through them, and am totally satisfied: http://www.ocssolutions.com/

I am a customer of OCS and do not benefit from their business in any way.

I had a really bad experience with another company whose name is like S*5.
This is the 10,000 eyes of open source catching the mistake. It happens in public because there is very little "private". Working As Designed.

How often do you see a forensic analysis of this type on commercial software? Not zero, but less often.
That all depends on the speed of the machine, the price of the 'input' material and the versatility with which you can apply it (and the cost of the energy required to run it).

If it is done 'right' (price point at or below casting, fast to the point where making a complex part would take a couple of minutes at the most and create any solid shape, even multiple parts in one go assembled and ready to go) then it would change the world as we know it in ways that I can only describe as science fiction.

Drive the price down even further (to say below what it costs to mass produce castings) and you're looking at something where even the imagination will fail.

Make it precise enough that you can create nano machinery and you get yet another level of technology that gets unlocked. It's hard to predict what any of that would be like, but I can see all kinds of good and bad stuff happening.

Suddenly the blueprint is the machine, if you can think of it you can make it.

Right now the barrier to entry to manufacturing is comparable to lets say big iron computing in the 70's.

Think of this thing as the PC of manufacturing, suddenly everybody can quickly and easily make just about anything.

Mold making is an art and terribly expensive, so for now prototyping is handwork or at best one-off CNC runs. To replace that by a process that would cost a very small fraction would upset quite a few applecarts.

If it stays slow and expensive then it will be a niche technology, but the speed at which the prices are coming down and process speed goes up is very impressive.
http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ comes to mind.
I just upgraded to their $50/mth dv server from the grid and it's night and day different in terms of speed. Was hosting a drupal site and sat for over 20 seconds per page load now down to super speedy.

Best solution is whatever works. As a former landscaper paying over $500 a month for a leased truck and insurance, I'll pay anything for a server that does the job right.
Speed isn't everything. For the love of all web developers everywhere, pick any browser (Safari, Chrome, Opera, or Firefox) and dump IE. We would greatly appreciate it.
This definitely happens to me. I have an hour around 9pm where I am very sharp mentally and physically. It can fluctuate drastically throughout the rest of the day.
I quite like the awesome bar now (was that in 2.0?); some CSS3 support too. Bookmarking tagging, update checking are good as well. Improved SVG support I use occassionally for viewing.

Other than that I suppose faster javascript and optimisations through use of sqlite for history/bookmarks is good.

Probably a few other things if I thought about it.

Main features are in add-ons for me, firebug, yslow, noscript, adblock, seoquake,download toolbar, greasemonkey.

I keep a separate clean profile, without all the footer-bar ("clutter bar") icons for the wife to use whilst surfing
Those clowns will be crying for a Coast Guard rescue as soon as one of their boats springs a leak.
Random variation.
A tool as brilliant as this, combined with an audience that reads tons of articles spread all over the internet every day, surely it deserves its own thread?

I can see myself using Readability to format most of the articles I read online now.

Thanks for the link!
This is exactly the reason, as a general rule of thumb, why I don't like end-user software packages that are designed to be cross-platform. While I find Firefox 3.5 on OS X to be way faster than Firefox 3.0, it still doesn't hold a candle to Safari. It may as well be written in Java. For something as fundamental as a web browser, which I'm using all day long, it can't take 30 seconds to open a new window, freeze up and start thrashing halfway through rendering a page, or crash twice a day. (All of which Firefox 3.0 did, and which made me decide to move to Safari.) On top of the performance, the fact that Firefox uses a fake skinned XUL look-alike interface on each platform is the straw that breaks the camel's back, at least for me.

Port the renderer cross-platform, and write separate native apps for each target platform. The amount of complication and cruft that must be in the codebase for making a massively complex software package like Firefox work cross-platform, and the amount of basic OS-level functionality that must have to be reimplemented from scratch because it isn't available on some particular target platform, is probably no small contributor to its performance woes.
Even for people who are humor-deficient, there's at least one dead giveaway:

"Whoever heard of memory leaks in a 'C' program?"