skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Please ignore previous post. The new attack seems specific to larger AES keys, and doesn't affect AES-128 much, if at all.
> They would not get business if their work was unusable.

It happens. A four-man startup I worked at in 2000 tried to outsource some thick client development. Their first deliverable wasn't even close to being compiler ready. It took a couple weeks of conference calls just to get a binary that didn't crash instantly.

A larger employer later had much the same experience. The code we got from a contract shop was such a trainwreck that we opened a branch office and hired our own developers over there instead; that worked out fine.
They're in 1.8 now too:

>> [1,2,3].each
=> #<Enumerable::Enumerator:0x801820f10>
>> RUBY_VERSION
=> "1.8.7"
I wouldn't call it 'black-hat'. While there is the aforementioned illegality (breaking in), it's a bit of a stretch to call it 'hurtful' as the only reaction was a bit of hurt pride. The stadium burst out laughing, so I wouldn't call it something that only benefitted the hackers either.

In all it wasn't a malicious act nor done for profit, so I believe that associating it with the type of hackers who do behave that way is incorrect.
IIUC pirates operated with a certain amount of tolerance from the government--that is to say, from whichever government was unfriendly to the ships that were being pillaged. Legally there was a distinction between a privateer and a pirate, but in practice a lot of crews floated back and forth over the line, shall we say.

A book modelling pirates as democratic capitalists avant la lettre ought to say something about the interactions between the internal government of the ship and these external powers, but from the ToC and the review, I can't tell if Leeson actually goes into this. Can any HN readers comment on the issue?
Entertaining Code - Making Games
I actually prefer if a download links to SF because the files are always there. Like with Google Code and some other providers, you know what you're getting.
What he said is, if you dont create tests first, refactoring is just changing shit. The behavior is supposed to be invariant across refactoring. The only way you can be sure is to test the before and after.
As a programmer I don't like it because it's verbose (and the article demonstrates that clearly) and it's not powerful enough compared to procedural languages. And no, it's not entirely declarative. Like if saying SQL is a declarative language makes it better or more useful?

If you are familiar with Python, is this a declaration or a procedure?

[c.name for c in customers]

and how is this different from an equivalent SELECT in SQL?
I'm slightly disappointed that the top 5 downloaded programs are all file-sharing tools.
Of course not, that's why I send a complimentary desk calendar.

It has color pictures of me in various worldwide locales (thank you, Photoshop) and notes important days, like my birthday and when HR should schedule an interview with me.

Then there's always the inflatable sword with my name on it. Nobody can resist an inflatable sword!
So of course, I went ahead and read it.
And you're right. It was a waste of time.
That's the point, though, $15 CPM is enormous compared to the article's claim that the social network average is 40 cents.
Branding Your Business
Perhaps there isn't a way to get the others, which I suppose would be in line with Python, which doesn't supply a string method to find all occurrences at once... but how do I offset it?

Yes, there's no way to get the other matches using [] as far as I know, it's just a generalization of being able to pass various types to it; Fixnum, Range, Regexp.. I don't see the harm in doing something with String too. If you wanted to extract multiple items, you'd use something like String#scan, or if you wanted to do a global replace, String#gsub, which can also accept a code block to perform computed replacements.

I can see where standardized methods like to_a can be more convenient, but they also open up the possibility for unlimited ambiguity. What does Foo.to_a do for your Foo class?

As of 1.9, it does this:

NoMethodError: undefined method `to_a' for Foo:Class

In 1.8 it issues "warning: default `to_a' will be obsolete".

In Python, if I do `[foo]` Then foo is now a list.

You do the exact same thing in Ruby, though if you're wanting to cast your argument like the old to_a did, you use Array(), which won't turn [] into [[]]. If you want a number, Integer() or Float() will raise an exception if they can't give you one.
Thanks for the comments.

the "words you've added" section felt a little redundant.

While this is subtle, it is alphabetized to give teachers a quick way to figure out whether they've missed something. The downloadable version doesn't need it because the combo box is alphabetized automatically.

As you iterate you might try to get the "a picture is worth a thousand words" screenshots higher in the flow.

I have A/B tested this one extensively. Having it is better than not but the other text is more important. However, I'll be taking the occasion to do some major copy rewrites, so I might be in a testing mood again soon.

As I understand you, the sole reason for purchasing a license is to remove the watermark and footnote.

You may not have noticed the 15 card print limit in the trial version. That is the overwhelming reason people purchase. The watermark and footnote are actually unique to the web version (implementing them in Java was hellacious so I stopped trying). 15 cards was chosen to segment the market such that parents with blogs would spread the software for free but teachers with classes couldn't get a lesson out of it without paying.
The way I work, Matt Mullenweg, annotated
Humor me for a moment, because I've been asking this question of many people for a long time and have never yet gotten a straight answer.

Why is len() always the thing people pick on? Why is it always "Python uses len(obj) instead of obj.len()", and never "Python uses str(obj) instead of obj.str()", or any of the various polymorphic built-ins like sum()? I've seen this so many times now that I'm honestly quite curious about it.

Also:

"More consistent commitment to object paradigm, e.g. all function calls are actually method calls on an object."

Every function call in Python is always an invocation of a method on an object, even if it doesn't look like it. len(), of course, delegates to a method on the object. But even standalone functions are method calls. Try this:

>>> def add(x, y):

... return x + y

...

>>> add(3, 5)

8

>>> import types

>>> types.FunctionType.__call__(add, 3, 5)

8

The last couple lines there are what's really going on when you call the function.

(also, just as Ruby's "built-in" functions are really methods on Kernel which is made available globally, Python's "built-in" functions really exist in a module that's made available globally (and __builtins__ is its name)
As I recall, in the early days, Steve Jobs paid the trademark holders of the MacIntosh red apples $100K to assure that Apple Computer got clear rights to the Mac name.

I guess it falls within that tradition for Twitter to buy rights to a site featuring birds that tweet.

The parallels end there, however, as Apple was not trying to corner naming rights relating to key parts of an ecosystem that had already grown up around its products on the assumption that the name could be freely used.
This almost feels "desparate" by Microsoft. Keep throwing stuff at Bing until it ... what, hits some magic "we love it!" threshold?
the transition from 24 to 25 is tricky.
PostgreSQL 8.3 (maybe earlier versions too, I haven't checked) has an xml data type. I haven't used it personally, but if I read the documentation correctly, you can do something like this:

SELECT id, xpath('//node[@type=''title'']', doc) AS title,
xpath('/@version', doc) AS version
FROM documents WHERE version=2;

(assuming your "documents" table has a "doc" field of type "xml")

Documentation here: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/functions-xml...
Relying on Javascript to apply CSS kind of sucks.

It would also suck to maintain RGBA definitions and HEX definitions in one stylesheet:

body.no-rgba {
background-color: #FFFFC0;
}

body.rgba {
background-color: rgba(255, 255, 192, 255);
}

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know, you can use all of the CSS3 additions (even things like font-faces and multiple backgrounds) and browsers will ignore them if the don't support them.

I can see the HTML5 support for old browsers being useful though.
If the candidate tells you point blank he'd rather be working for himself than working for you, there are any number of problems at hand.

Possibilities:
a. He doesn't respect you enough to lie about it.
b. He doesn't really want the job, or else he would have lied about it.
c. He's pathologically honest.
d. He thinks pretending to be "the entrepreneurial type" will impress you, so he tells you an entirely different lie.

I'm hard-pressed to think of an innocent explanation for telling a potential employer you would rather not be working for'em.
It looks like you'd use this if you wanted to take advantage of newer features in some browsers today, while still maintaining separate code for browsers like IE.
Bing adds Twitter posts to search results
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Because he doesn't take himself seriously, no one is harping...

I watched his talk at ART && CODE (http://www.vimeo.com/5047563) and it was full of some awesome jokes at his expense. I think self-deprecation is the best of character traits.

I am curious what he does for money, though. My ultimate goal is to have enough in the bank to solely hack on open source stuff for the remainder of my career.
It would also be easier to have conversations about. Instead of forcing everyone who wants to talk about a particular article to download the whole PDF, you can link them directly to the article (and with a better Web, you could link them to the exact sentence and paragraph you want to draw their attention to).
How much will Windows 7 cost you?
It happens all the time. People apply for jobs because they need the money, full stop. If that's the kind of shop it is, then the hiring manager should just embrace it.
The still persist with the stupidest naming of download URLs I've ever seen.

If I see a link that ends with "/SomeFile.tgz", with text that says "download", I damn well expect that there is a .tgz file at the other end. I damn well expect I can copy that link and use it with wget.

But not on SourceForge; oh no, that would be too simple, direct, and user-friendly. Instead, that .tgz link goes to some "now we'll see about getting you a REAL download link" page.

Seriously, WTF is with that?
"Karma police, arrest this man..."
There is a small but growing number of open access journals that do not require the author(s) to assign copyright. The PLoS family and the Frontiers In family both come immediately to mind, and I am sure there are others.
FYI, this is a rewrite of an Inc. magazine article we discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=652412
I disagree. Normally, yes, MS seems desperate, however, I think realtime search is really needed, and this is going to be seen as an important development looking back 24 months from now.
Officially stuck at trying to get from 24 to 25. They tell you to go a url for 25 but it doesn't exist.... This is mind boggling.
It's more like a video game with lots of mini-games to keep me pleasantly distracted.
This would be lots of fun on a multitouch display.
i do think cover letters are important, but would emphasize they should employ a less is more approach. just enough to show a "voice", a persona -- humanizing the interaction. perhaps pointing out 1 or 2 key things that might show in an understated way that you "get" something that might be of value to the employer, or highlights something about your unique value. but don't overdo it. too much about why you want to work at this company is gonna start to smell a bit.
I am salivating over the new WITH RECURSIVE ... SELECT ... syntax (http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/sql-select.html). There's a very hairy piece of C++ code in my group's codebase that grinds over a certain schema to perform a certain transitive closure, and if I can redo that operation in SQL, we might be able to change its status from "only godlike programmers may dare touch this code" to "only demigodlike programmers may dare touch this code".
I like how most of the comments aren't about the article, but instead about what "Hello" + 4 equals.
Brilliant. Whenever you're willing to do something your competitors won't there's a huge opportunity.

Maybe I just read too much Seth Godin, but I think this is huge.
I'm stuck on the last one (which I think is the hardest), but 24-25 is a tricky one as well. The answer is in there though ;)

EDIT: I think I may actually have figured it out just now...turns out my original method was just a little off. Now to wait and see if I won!
This is a cool look, but not particularly useful to me so far. What's the killer query for this engine?
bad article. talks about 7 criteria, and has lots of numbers, but doesn't tell us what they are. lacking meat.
Firefox 3.5 Under The Hood | TechJaws: Internet Security and SEO
This is the first of the "new search engines" I've seen that I will probably go back to.

On several queries I tried, the results were better than google's for me. I'm not saying that spezify is better, just that there is value in good but different.
Define success.

Or: What kind of movie is it?
Just to be clear, since there is some confusion: I have never worked, am not now working, and do not anticipate working, on StackOverflow. I do have access to the StackOverflow source code, since I work at Fog Creek, and, for the same reason, I have a bit of an a semi-inside perspective on what went into it. That, however, is it. Jeff and his team do their own thing quite independently of the rest of Fog Creek, and I definitely do not speak for them.
Inevitable success? Death is an inevitable end to life. I see it more like fighting against something that you know you will lose to. Just winning some time before your ultimate loss.
What number is the last one - I'm now down to level 27.
As I understand it, he's trying to say:

1. Developers who use C# or Java or other high-level languages aren't "real programmers" (who obviously revel in low-level guts).

2. The only reason anyone likes Mono is that GTK is a terrible, terrible toolkit and can only be made palatable by escaping into bindings from another language.

3. Qt and C++ are the greatest things ever, and he can't imagine anyone wanting to use anything else after encountering them.
Ask HN: Rewarding Loyalty
Rewarding loyalty

Every morning I get a coffee on the way to work. I pass up to 6 coffee shops before I get to my regular barista

Event though I have tried other places I go to the same shop everyday

Today I was wondering why, the obvious is the coffee is consistently good and the staff always friendly

I also believe one of the big reasons is their loyalty program, nothing special, just a simple card they stamp every time I get a coffee. Once I purchase 7 coffees they give me a free one

I was thinking how the concept of rewarding loyalty can be used by websites to drive revenue and reward visitors

Because at the end of the day the aim of any commercial website should be to convert a visitor into a customer

Here are some ideas I was throwing around

- Send this link to X friends and receive Y
- Purchase X and we will give you Y

What are some of your ideas for rewarding loyalty?
Why You Will Fail When Raising Money
The Linguistics of ReTweets
I think this impression comes from the culture of experimentation in Ruby and more widespread willingness to adopt new tools and libs very quickly. Python definitely has a diverse web development community and more options in some areas (like templates), but it's more conservative, not necessarily evolving as rapidly and, like Python overall, resists influence from other languages.

For instance, Haml and Saas are pretty widely accepted by Ruby web developers, whereas Django templates are very popular with Python web developers precisely because because they are close to straight HTML. Ruby developers (like Ruby itself) readily adopt good ideas from other languages, including Python (rack from wsgi, rip from pip, merb slices and rails engines from django apps), while anything that resembles anything from ruby or rails, like some Pylons components, gets criticized by many python developers. It's noticeable with version control, too, as svn is still very widely used by Python developers whereas Ruby and Ruby/Py developers moved completely to git and hg over a year ago.
There are 30 levels.
Hoopla, and Disappointment, in Schizophrenia Research
"With most common diseases, it turns out, the disease is caused not by ten very common variant genes but by 10,000 relatively rare ones."
Computer people hate cover letters because they're redundant, and so they annoy people like us. But this can't be stressed enough: HR people aren't computer people, even at software companies.

Anecdotal evidence: just last week a friend in HR at RedHat told me very matter-of-factly, "our intranet is a wiki!" She's a sweet girl, and very smart in her own field, but is nothing like your potential co-workers.
I'm on ping pong, which appears to be level 29... So you're on the one after that?
This is from the book:

"Chapter 5 applies the economics of reputation building to pirates’ famous fondness for torture. Pirate victims were understandably reluctant to reveal booty to their attackers. Some victims even hid or destroyed their valuables. Such behavior threatened to reduce pirates’ revenue. To prevent this, pirates invested in reputations of barbarity and insanity, creating a fearsome “brand name.” Brutally torturing resistors was one important way they did this. But pirates used torture for other reasons too. One was to deter authorities from harassing them. The other was to bring justice to predatory merchant ship captains when government couldn’t or wouldn’t do so. In this last capacity, pirate torture may have contributed to the provision of an important public benefit for merchant sailors-the punishment of dishonest merchant captains, which stood to reduce merchant captain abuse.

Chapter 6 considers the economics of pirate conscription. According to popular depiction, pirates swelled their ranks by drafting innocent and unwilling sailors from the vessels they overtook. This chapter shows that in many cases the supposed “pirate press” was nothing more than a clever pirate ruse. In response to eighteenth-century legal changes that made pirating riskier, pirates pretended to conscript sailors to exploit a loophole in antipiracy law. Like all good businessmen, pirates developed solutions, such as this one, to advance their interests when rising costs threatened to cut against them."
Tag Cloud with Every App in iTunes App Store
Most people here are thinking about financial success arising from a startup.
Rasterization on Larrabee
Okay now I just got to figure out the email thing and I'll win.
This one annoyed me so here's a hint to what I was doing "wrong".

http://pastie.org/531585
The author appears to confuse a democratically-run government with a democratic form of anarchy. Maybe this is for marketing reasons, because he ought to know the difference between the two. In any case, the press reviews completely fail to notice this, as you'd expect. It's important for us to remember which of the two is being described here, because they are diametrically opposed in many ways.
Out of curiosity, I've been trying Bing out for a few weeks. It doesn't feel desperate at all; incredibly, it's actually good. And I've been surprised at how much I enjoy its well-chosen and often beautiful pictures of the day---as with (restricted) Twitter results, a tiny differentiator vs. Google, but I suspect an important one.

MSFT might, just might, not be quite as dead as we thought.
Makes it apparent that the app store is dominated by travel guides and audiobooks
wtf is a Travelto?
Note only do I agree with your first sentiment about memory management, I figured agreeing with it is a given for this community.
Morristown Lawyer
Robert Smith and Jane Doran are attorneys practicing criminal law, family law, estate planning, business and corporate law, medical malpractice, and personal injury law in New Jersey.
Seems releasing a free, limited app, is quite popular. Perhaps Apple should add a demo feature?
What a cop out. This wasn't just a "source" who gave you a tip. The source was the story.

Without identifying the source, you end up with a crappy one-sided post. And without even bothering to critically examine the source's claim (that they were being hassled specifically for using the word "tweet") you end up with a post that isn't even accurate and that you've now had to add two update update to bring it back in line with reality. End of story.

Having seen the site, I think it's obvious to everyone that using the word "tweet" was the least of its IP transgressions.

I'm no big defended of "old media," but there's a reason you don't see newspaper stories mysteriously missing the "Who?" of the story.
Design for a universal plug
What "Hello" + 4 yields is entertaining, and no one wants to stop changing crap.
What makes you think Stack Overflow has any technical advantage over Experts Exchange? And, what makes you think their growth rates are at all correlated?

As far as I can tell Stack Overflow is a perfect example of a site where technical talent is almost irrelevant. Just like this site. We're not here because this site is written in Arc. We're here because of the community.
If I incorrectly assumed that you were just trying to differentiate from 'Sugar', then I apologize. It just seemed coincidental given the relatively few players in web-based CRM products (that I know of at least.)
It can never hurt. If there's a company where the opinion and feelings of the person reading the resumes doesn't count for anything then I don't want to work there anyway.
From your comments it sounds like the business involves manufacturing of some kind and I did go to school for that. Your email isn't in your profile and I would be interested in talking at least. Send me an email.
Counterpoint: In my experience as an interviewer (for peer positions) there's no benefit. It's vaguely amusing to read people imagine what the position might be like and try to spin it to sound like what they want to do, or to hear them talk about changing the world or getting all excited about our industry.

It seems like if you're not a principal in a business (i.e. a YC hacker) you're a cog in a business: your primary task is to do what your boss wants you to do. I'd rather see professionalism that results in being good at your job (and going home at the end of the day) than hell bent on some quest to find life satisfaction at work.

This topic has blown through a couple times in the past few weeks and there's definitely been a lot of "YOU MUST DO THIS", "it doesn't matter", but I still don't have a feel for how as an candidate it might help me, and I find rationalizing my desire to do geek stuff as a passion for working at a specific company very disingenuous. If I'm finding positions on monster.com, I'm looking because I want a different job, not because I'm passionate about improving peoples lives with $company_brand widgets. Maybe employers that are expecting these are getting their resumes from elsewhere?
A cover letter can be more than just why you want the job.

Really, just demonstrating that you've taken the time to read our website and try to understand what we do scores you a few points in my book. It's one thing to say you're "detail oriented," but quite another to actually demonstrate it by paying attenting to details.
I find it somewhat amusing that "Offline" appears so much, given that it's an always connected device... coverage pending, of course.
Resumes are pretty useless, half the stuff people write is made up on the spot, the other half is exaggerated beyond belief.
Google's Values at Work in Africa