skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> if your credit card is stored on their servers, which your statement implies

No, I did not intend to imply that.

The places where I do most my shopping, I have to (or prefer to, in the case of Amazon) enter credit card information on a per-purchase basis.
Okay. But how?
Apple has one due to come out this year called Gianduia ... and that's about all I know about it. People I trust who know more are absolutely raving about it, but, typically, details are scarce on the ground. Am very interested to see what arrives, though.
The damage has already been done. It is not reversible. Apologies do not mean much usually. They probably mean less than nothing coming from a government.
I don't know that I would even want coverage from Techcrunch, for either myself or you. It warps your perception of what provides value and what your goals are. For example, you might spend months worrying about getting featured by fickle tech publications when you could be providing news to Chicagoans.

It is wonderful that you've got a site which journalists are using as self-promotion engines. Now you have to figure out a way to get their core use of the site to be a you-promotion engine. The traditional way to do that in journalism is original reporting, which means they have to cite you. They probably won't appreciate that -- you'd be competing with them, after all.

On the other hand, if you had some sort of scoreboard of the most influential reporters in Chicago, I guarantee you they would fall over themselves to cite that, particularly for the ones who ended up winning.

(Note that this puts them in exactly the position you are vis-a-vis Techcrunch right now. "Dang, if they would only cover me I'd finally get the respect I deserve from my editor! Please cover me! I wonder why he won't cover me? Is it something I said? Can I call him or would that be forward?" I know which side of the unrequited obsession I'd prefer to be on.)

Tell me, Windy Citizen, who is the most influential columnist in Chicago right now? You are, after all, the paper of record for the papers of record. You can take a page out of your customers' books and give them a nice little plaque (or badge for their site, focused again on promoting them, not you) for it if you want -- is there a single hotdog stand in Chicago which does not have a "Voted Best Chicago Hot Dog 1992 by the Reader" in it?

Ideally you'd be using the highly competitive journalistic impulses to provide more, better news to Chicagoans rather than just playing inside baseball with local media.
Your description could use some figures. ;)
I look forward to the day when an option other than passwords become viable. Have you ever looked at a typical users password? Run john the ripper over you're users passwords field and prepare to be frighted. If you don't store them hashed just take a look at them.

The fact is we need a better option both for security and usability.
Well, it's two numbers that are identical ... and also happen to be winning. So, basically it's the odds of three ticket numbers being the same -- the two purchased plus the winning selection.
I have, yes. Though I've tried not to be annoying about it because I see these people fairly often and they post their stories to the site pretty frequently. I can't stand people trying to sell me stuff every time I see them. I don't want to be that guy. Again, maybe this is the problem.
"With the success of this game genre on the flash platform, the next step is to bring this awesomeness to your home desktop."

Shouldn't that be the other way around?
In 1998, a CD-ROM drive cost around $100, and ripping a CD took around twenty minutes. That was CD-ripping's nascency. We're only dipping our toes in the book-digitizing nascency, and it takes around twenty minutes to rip a book and $300 for the platen and a couple digital cameras.
not having someone look at your password over your shoulder is a requirement

What I say is that sometimes this is not a requirement even if the website offers a login feature.

I guess that for my online mail client I would prefer to have a masked password field.

Now for my account at an online rss reader I actually don't care that much because there is nothing to protect (at least in my opinion) and no value for someone to steal and remember my password. Maybe however I still want to be protected against someone on the web who happens to have the same name as I do and wants to steal my account... However the probability for this guy to be over my shoulder is quite low.

Maybe this is all a question of personal interest. Some users will prefer usability over security while others will prefer the opposite no matter the application. If this is the case then I would vote for having the option to toggle between one and the other...
Radio Lab just did a show that talked about just this: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/06/15/stochasticity/

It's not especially uncommon. Given the number of lotto draws going on in the world every day, it would be quite strange if you didn't end up with two people buying a winner at the same time eventually. (Theories about lame number generators aside.)
> This idea isn't new

In fact I would say it's a kind of a pattern: implementing REPLs for systems that weren't made with REPLs in mind.

(That doesn't say anything about the coolness of this hack though, one way or the other :)
...funding a million sterling pounds research institute in his name.
So give them a variant on this http://www.techmeme.com/lb for Chicago? This is a great idea. Thank you.
Exactly.

People will always promote themselves.

Give them a page like windycitizen.com/username to aggregate their stuff and they will start promoting that page.
Maybe because you're competition (either real or perceived)? Local media doesn't typically cover other local media in a positive light.
Dodgy keyboard is a good point; makes for a compelling case in favour of bullets.
Read their articles to get to know what they like to write about. Then look at different things that could be said about Windy Citizen and find a story that they would like to write. Then talk to them.

You want to be Jeremy Toeman. Skip ahead to the part about him at http://scobleizer.com/2009/04/07/a-private-note-to-pr-people...
Hey that's the same on my nokia!
A few ideas:

- Find a local journalist that does mainstream-tech stories (i.e. the guy that wrote the "Facebook owns your photos" story about half a year ago), and pitch your site as a sort of Facebook for Chicagoans (-ians? -ers? -aks?)

- Make yourself the story. Pitch how you put you career and your home on the line (or whatever you did, but dramatize it. Whatever it was, it wasn't a few boring sunday afternoons and evenings, it was hard) to bring relevant local news and commentary to the people of Chicago, and get a human interest story. Maybe a morning TV show?

- Swallow your pride. You colleagues make a good salary drowning you in shallow, cute stories, that's mostly copy-pasted anyway. Make them make one of them about you.
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Want a job? Hand over your Facebook password
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Thanks. You've probably heard about me on Hacker News. I post here way too often.

A few notes:

1. I've asked a few times, and sent out press releases now and then. It's an intellectual challenge though for me to pitch people I consider my friends. Frankly, I think it's unethical and it puts them in a really tough spot where I'm just another person asking them to write about them.

2. Funny you should mention those cats. I've sent a few of those guys updates on a regular basis over the last 16 months, after all, I'm trying something new and seeing some results, but I've never heard back from any of them. I've not tried Mr. Winer and will send him a note, but I've grown pretty skeptical as to whether the "death of newspaper" guys are actually interested in new ideas, or just ideas that conform to their own. Part of the reason I spend so much time on Hacker News is because the journalism community isn't so interested in startups, but in saving their existing brands in my opinion. I don't really fit into that. I've got more in common with the Bingo Card guy then with someone starting a non-profit news organization supported by rich friends of his and foundations.

3. I went to Medill and consult for them on occasion. For this reason, they've more or less said their student reporters can't write about me, though I guess I made the alumni magazine this month (LOL). The school's had me in to speak to students pretty regularly, which has been a great source of interns.
Is your story actually interesting? I know in New Orleans, local successes make the news all the time because there is an interesting story to back it up. If your pitch is just that you made a website about Chicago and not much more, it wouldn't interest me much either.
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Touching fact regarding the statue in Sackville Park: the sculptor's own personal computer, a 20-year old Amstrad CPC, was buried underneath the statue as the "sacrifice".
I have that.....but the profile pages need an overhaul to look more Twitter-ish I think. Good to hear someone else agrees. Thanks.

Example: http://www.windycitizen.com/kristenthometz
Monit, but looking closely at M/Monit - check it out, looks sweet.
Three of the top 10 most popular ideas called for legalizing marijuana, and two featured conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama's true place of birth.'"
I see the point about "government apologies", but one good way to make sure the story is never forgotten is to name public structures (roads, schools, etc.) after Turing so that his name is always in the public eye.
I like www.woozweb.com quite a lot

french language however
This isn't local media. It's a web site that lets people share and rate neat local stuff.

This was why I went the social news route. My first idea was a local blog network. I realized that would never get covered, so I went with something that would help and be useful to local news orgs so we could have partnerships like the ones I mentioned.

We're no more competition than Twitter of Facebook is.
I agree that they don't mean much, but I wouldn't say "less than nothing." Rather, I'd say they count for "something slightly more than nothing."

If the government of the UK were to apologize, the story of Turing's mistreatment at the hands of the government would fill a news cycle. It's not much, but it's not nothing.
I think people thought for a long time on how to save the story, and not only the name, from being forgotten. Apple's original logo was designed as a such tribute.
Or, more accurately, an urban legend about Apple's original logo.
And would you know if they just recorded the keys your fingers pressed?

I think Jakob is really onto something here.
Actually, password fields often display an incorrect number of bullets (maybe not while the user's typing, but after they're finished). The idea is to also mask the password length.
Barrier #1, the 'the iphone is too slow for flash' excuse, is of course an artificial barrier created by Apple. Adobe already said that they have Flash running on the iPhone. Apple claims the iPhone is too slow. Who do you believe?

Apple simply wants you to get your apps and games through their store. Having Flash in the iPhone browser of course gives users a great way to go around the store.

It is the ultimate vendor lock-in.
A weekend with the iPhone 3G S
Just googling around, there's a lot of stuff that the British government has to apologize for, but hasn't. Specifically

* Irish Potato Famine

* Acadian Expulsion

I'm sure there's more.
I assume this is getting mentioned because of this story I submitted to HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670065
Good question.

So back in April, I was running out of cash after an advertiser bailed on a payment. I appealed to our members to chip in and become Micropatrons a la Kottke.org, and they sent me $1200 in 10s and 20s in about 48 hours. I was stunned. That's also when I realized that I had something that some people were really jazzed about.

I wrote my "story" out here for that effort: http://www.windycitizen.com/sponsors/micropatron If you're bored at work, give it a look and tell me if you think it's interesting or not.
I'd argue even that your keyboard and mouse can become a tool for your body.
Yeah, I hadn't seen this since college until reading your request, thanks. :)
Whether it's Alan Turing, slavery, war crimes, or anything else, the best apology to someone who is dead would be to stop doing the same things to those who are living.
Of course, but if I let my friend use my computer to check gmail, he or she could go to Firefox -> Preferences -> Security -> Saved Passwords and see all of my passwords anyway. By letting somebody use my computer, I'm implicitly trusting them to not misuse anything they might find.
Security cameras can just record the keys that you type the password in.

If you cover your hand, the problem space is still small enough to guess just based on where you are covering and how long for.

Only systems that do not use passwords are viable if you are being closely scrutinized. e.g. entering only selected characters from your passphrase.
It obviously doesn't work with ladders you're carrying otherwise the slapstick genre would be 50% smaller.
My gut (which includes reading the article and analysing the way he says things) tells me that he's providing this "advice" out of mid-air. He does not provide proof of concept, and does not provide research.

It is bollocks until proven otherwise ;)
The British Government should apologize to a lot of people..
I heard the same thing in the past about Nintendo and Apple... They are dying, will never come back, etc.

Not saying that Yahoo will recover, but you never know.
Saving time, surely a good result. Pre-clearing passengers, not so much of a good idea to achieve that result.
It's not just the government though. If you asked people at the time if what had been done was correct, how many would have said yes?

Attitudes change (for the better in this case). An apology from a government doesn't change history.
I'd use right for agree. The mnemonic is easier. And up for a good contribution, because it ups the level of discussion.
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I am working on a startup that will be able to do what you are asking. Feel free to mail me if you want to discuss this topic. my yc name @ gmail.
"Presuming you could train yourself to sleep sufficiently better to work 5% better (in whatever units better is)"

That's the thing, I know I wouldn't be able to presume that - trying something like this out would be an experiment for me, and I couldn't justify spending that amount of money on an experiment. Still, it's a very cool concept, and if a had a testimonial from a friend I would be more tempted.
Nagios and I'm hating each bit of it. While it works OK but a complex configuration could be a nightmare. In our case it's a legacy from the early days and grown up organically, over a hundred machines that could be a real pain. To clean it I ended up writing a custom configuration tool in Python using templates where configuration information is stored in a database.
Homosexuality was illegal in many parts of the world at the time, and it was believed to be morally incorrect by citizens (in most cases), just like how the majority of people see cannabis as a very harmful drug today. So if anything, it should be the world apologising, not the British government alone (whos apology would likely be meaningless anyway, due to the change of power since that time.) The same goes for discrimination against women and blacks.

What's done is done, and thankfully we are now open to the thought that we were wrong in our moral standards. And in a lot of cases, we now fight strongly for the rights of people who were once discriminated against.

To me, an apology is only worth something if the person/people apologising had an opinion which conflicted with the general opinion of the population, otherwise who's to say the victim wouldn't have thought the same if he/she was in the same situation? (i.e. not gay.) That's not to say the general populations' opinion was right, but that it can be massively rub off on your own.
I use quite a few monitoring tools, one for each "kind" of monitoring...

-For server uptime, stats, etc I use nagios

-For security monitoring, I mix the open source OSSEC + Snort: http://www.ossec.net

-For availability+integrity remote monitoring of my sites/domains I use sucuri: http://sucuri.net
The British Government has been doing terrible things to many, many people all around the world, for many, many years.

If they start apologizing to people one by one... that'll take a while.
This might or might not help you, but I think Chris Brogan might appreciate your thoughts on his latest post, http://www.chrisbrogan.com/wiring-a-city-and-the-internet-of...
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There are pathological cases where it can be mathematically rational to play. There just needs to be a sufficiently long streak of no winners (assuming pots accumulate).
http://serverdensity.com/ is another interesting newcomer.
How to detect propaganda:

- Powerful words for those who just skim front page headlines

- Referencing stocks at lowest $9 when right now they are in a healthy $15.

- Words like mistakes, doomed, failure, layoffs

I know I will lose some karma here, but this kind of FUD shouldn't be tolerated here in HN.

We should know better how to detect it and how to eradicate this pest from news sites.
To a certain extent, yes, I did. Thanks.
Two links that explain:
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.birthdayprob.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox
He might well be an expert in UI but certainly is no expert in security - so I think he is broaching fields he is not qualified in :)

Regardless just because he is a well respected individual does not make all his ideas "the right way".

I think people are misreading what he said and making knee jerk reactions. But, for exampl...:

> password masking doesn't even protect fully against snoopers.

Seems an irrelevant point - he doesnt weigh the security tradeoff against the supposedly improved usability. I would argue that password masking is the #1 deterrent for casual password stealers. Plus reading fast typed keys is a skill needing to be acquired. A determined thief will always find a way to get your password. The masking is deter the casual criminals (or just your co-workers etc!!)

> It's just you, sitting all alone in your office, suffering reduced usability to protect against a non-issue

For a UI designer/engineer I think this shows a whole lot of ignorance about how people use computers... does he really imagine most people use their computer this way? really?

One important point he misses is that password boxes leap out at you BY being masked. This is an important UI concept because the user knows they are logging into something "secure". It is also the expected behaviour (for better or for worse); not just a convention but an ingrained expectation! UI designers hardly ever break expectations like that in my experience ;)

In terms of not seeing what your typing: he should know a vast majority of people watch their fingers as they type. Knowing you made a mistake is a fairly natural process (yes, we have tested this).

He DOES have a very very good point about mobiles - this is a perfect example of where masking shouldnt be employed. And I suspect this is the main point he is making. But extending it to every format? No, that IS silly.

:)
So an industry of middlemen, is being disintermediated by a new technology - the internet.

That's a problem for them, no one likes to go out of business, so what to do?

Their thinking goes: The internet is full of nerds right? It's like made up of nerds, and like nerds made it, so... internet = nerds.

Now if we can get some nerds on our side they could maybe save our industry. Imagine if you will that the internet is superman, and the newspaper industry is Lex Luthor, well a nerd into journalism would be like kryptonite!

Clearly we must offer full journalism scholarships to computer nerds and at the same time search for nerd investors. That'll save us, hooray!
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I'd also recommend http://gitready.com/ which is a kick-ass Git focused blog with tutorials and the like. It's by HN user qrush.
I think being able to mask and unmask your password with a checkbox is certainly viable(as long as the masking is the default). The problem lies not with users like you who have different passwords for different applications, the problem lies with users who have the same password for all applications.

That being said, that is probably beyond the scope of what the author is trying to address but is still always something to consider.
Somewhat valid points... but for the most part not.

And although I'll probably be shot down for this:

The iPhone OS's method of displaying the last masked character briefly before masking it is probably the best way to handle masking.
I use Fiveruns for rails app monitoring, which doesn't seem to be on your list. That gives me an idea of how fast my app is running, where the bottlenecks are etc.

Then I have monit setup to keep an eye on server load, hd's, nginx, postfix + dovecot etc, and if monit fails to restart services for whatever reason, I have pingdom as my last line of defence, at which point I look into it manually.
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Hmm. They're supposed to dose you with diazepam first.
That doesnt seem a sensible move to me. Clear text pass boxes with NO password confirmation removes the error checking from the machine to the user. We all know users are extremely error prone and bug ridden.

Why take the risk? :)
I would guess it does go as far as any whehicle you're driving and can "sense" its location in 3D space, i.e. know when it's about to bump something. That would make you very good at parallel parking.

Not me though, I suck at sensing where exactly the car ends, either that or my car randomly changes size throughout the week.
I considered for a moment the possibility that you were referring to entering your credit card numbers without masking, and probably should have deduced that given the context.
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