skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I wonder what financial value is placed on their database and how well secured it is.
Yeah, why can't people just use diplomatic platitudes instead of giving their real opinion. /s
Bob Dylan's interactive video for "Like a Rolling Stone" is pretty sick.
There are other types of poverty besides the simple monetary kind.
Not all prestige is equal, for one thing. Your fine institution might attract world leaders as speakers for its econ, foreign policy, and poly sci departments, but its CS department might be weak. For another thing, the academe and what it teaches is, as a general rule, not really focused on what the business world teaches. So excellence in the academe does not per se translate immediately to excellence in the business world. While an adaptable learner would be excellent potential and long-term capability, I would expect them to have a learning curve for the different pressures and knowledge needed to succeed in business.
I wonder why they're not using a secret sharing algorithm:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing

It would reduce the complexity of encrypting the data encryption key multiple times with each pair of keys, and the math behind them is pretty neat.
I'm on my third week of working remotely - Here's what I've learned so far:

1. Massive sense of freedom - you own your time, and it's yours to be productive. YesGraph (my employer) is results based, and not hours-based. This is awesome as a remote employee.

2. Exercise isn't Easy - I used to walk over 2 miles/day to work, so I have to force myself to get enough exercise during the course of the day.

3. Tendency to Overwork - I'm being very proactive about trying to balance work. It's easy to fall into the trap of working too much (especially with 2 hours saved on the commute)

4. Social Interaction is Important - this is really important internally and externally. If I want social interaction outside my job, I simply need to go to a coffee shop or co-working space. It's important to do this internally too - which means doing hangouts with fellow employees.

I've actually been keeping detailed notes on my productivity (using Rescuetime) and exercise (using Fitbit), you can track my progress here -> http://lukethomas.com/working-remotely-tracking-progress/

We actually had an onsite last week, so I have some data to benchmark remote productivity vs. onsite that I'll publish soon.
I think a better example would be high speed trading and similar.

Of course any big corporation or administration is going to have a lot of underused ressources and redundancy but it doesn't mean they burn power "for the sake of it" as bitcoin does.

Also, bitcoin is not a bank, it's supposed to be a currency. If big banks were to switch to bitcoin I don't think they would spend less energy doing all you said. So no matter what you think of bitcoin it's fair to say it's not very "green" so far.
Right. There are some areas where more due diligence is required than to wave one's hands and chant "Disrupt!" And in this case, at least from their perspective, the FDA hasn't been unwilling to work with 23-and-me.
What do you think of Qeepr?
I am the founder of Qeepr- an online memorial website that uses QR code technology to be placed on a tomb, or other memorial site.
Would love to hear your feedback.
info@qeepr.com
No one wants to hire someone that can take their job in 6 months. People don't like hiring threats to themselves.
Using genetic information to determine price of premiums was made illegal by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrimi...
My personal favorite has always been:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/02

Definitely a pissed-off period.
Is this the talk that you are referring to?
http://slideshot.epfl.ch/play/suri_stonebraker
That technical explanation sounds almost like word salad. How did a DDoS hit your SAN in the first place and how did your SAN blowing up allow a compromise?
Apparently, I'm strange in this (meaning HackerNews) group of people. I've been an avid instant messenger for several years; and, while I consistently try to have correct, or at least almost-correct punctuation in my instant messages, as well as a love for the semi-colon, I tend to finish my instant messages without a period.

I finish posts on message boards like this one with them; but, when I'm using an IM client, then period follows this article's alleged usage of meaning irritation or annoyance. Notably, this only applies to the last sentence in a message and only when the messages are between 0 and 1 paragraph. I haven't analyzed my own chat-style writing beyond a single paragraph, so I have no comment around anything beyond that.

The people I know tend to be the same, as far as I know, ending sentences without a period. We do often end them with things other than a period, though, like exclamation points, question marks or a few other group-specific symbols, such as emoticons, to make sure that it's known the message is ended and it is of a particular tone. The period is just one of those tones and that tone is almost always perceived as a sharp one, unless it is one of the group that has a rabid dedication to the period-is-end-of-sentence style.

All of that said, the people I tend to speak with also tend to have strong pet-peeves around they're/their/there, than/then and other commonly misrepresented words. They also tend to demand that people spell out whole words rather than using r for are and u for you, unless you're being ironic. Punctuation is very important to us, we have just redefined the terminating mark.

Language is interesting.
This will likely be downvoted to hell, but personally I'm a fan of the service 23andme provides. It has aggregated scientific knowledge across a large number of domains to provide an end-to-end pipeline for ancestry prediction, kinship analysis and phenotype prediction.

It's a service built on learning algorithms to correlate features (DNA SNPs) with diseases. As with any learning algorithm, results should be interpreted with care. That doesn't lessen the fact that predictions it provides can be helpful.

As an aside, 23andme has a solid API. It's opened up (with consent) a huge DNA dataset for developers to mine. I'm excited for the science that can be learned from this data.
Isn't the ancestry matching opt-in? At the very minimum, I'm pretty sure you can opt out when you give your sample.

In that case, if you do have a match, obviously both people will have to be notified of the other's identity. It sounds like you want to see whether you have relatives before the relatives get to see it. How is that fair?

Also are you sure these other people are getting your identity? How do you know it's not masking your identity to these only people which only gets unmasked if you accept/reply to the request?
Love the (metadata) buzzword thrown in. This is complete crap.
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Personally, I think the choice of AGPL is good. It enables you to give to the community and get useful community involvement, while allowing commercial companies to have proprietary forks (for a cost) as well as commercial support.

All the best!
It is concerning. I've been concussed by a baseball to the head as a teenager and these emerging long-term effects to the brain kind of freak me out. Probably shouldn't have took a few more headshots after that, but tis life I guess. Funny how our strongest asset is also the most fragile.
Yeah it sure seems like it. He went a little more in depth than the course does, but I recognized that training data right away.
I've also had some exposure to Sqwiggle. It works very well for quick interactions with other developers; the call quality is good, latency is low, etc. I just wish there was a "knocking" feature for someone starting a chat, and/or additional states between offline, busy, and normal. Introverts may not like the constant camera exposure, and developers "in the zone" may not like the sudden presence of a voice and watching eye without any sort of ringing or pre-chat announcement (in real life, interruptions are at least preceded by footsteps and visible reflections of the approaching person). If they could address those concerns, I could see myself using Sqwiggle extensively.
> I'm gonna give up on GTA IV; I just can't get into it, especially after playing V.

You know, I've always attributed the increased frequency of semicolons in the writing of coders (my own included) to their commonness in programming languages, but I wonder if period-aversion among the tech savvy is a factor as well.

There's nothing wrong with using a period in that line instead of a semicolon, yet I would probably punctuate it the same way if I were writing it. Periods feel monotonous and final, and that can't be attributed to C-style languages alone.
It is extremely generous of Google to offer to track all of my purchase history for free.
That letter was linked from the article itself, and is what prompted the fact that this discussion is happening now.
It could lead to strong demand for a "print your own high-performance ASICs" product.
The Vulnerabilities of SMS OTP Authentication
Of course we didn't buy the theme :) It's used by a lot of companies already. It's beta because it just launched.
Not to worry, the unintended consequence of the increasing need for large computational power will lead to faster and cheaper computers. The fact that someone can directly justify spending large amounts of money means that they will. We all win in the end.
Clean Code Developer
We Asked a Military Expert if All the World's Armies Could Shut Down the US
That's fine when you want to be a guy who saves kittens and fights cancer but end up leading a more mundane life. But when it comes down to not wanting to be the guy who makes a certain kind of comment, well, just don't do that. It's easy!
Maybe the first webshop in Portugal to accept Bitcoin (E-Bike Kits)
$15/m for an actual Google+ service where I'm guaranteed that I'm not being tracked, and I'd get no ads and all my personal data is completely safe and encrypted doesn't sound that bad.
Are those things your TV would know about?
Ask HN: Real estate market and selling your house
Hi,

asking for help/feedback/advices from HN community.

I am trying to sell my house in South Italy and I wanted to try an alternative way than just going through a real estate agency.

Every real estate site that I've found online did not have great web presentations of each house and I've thought that it could be nice to create a good landing page for my house.
I set up an website describing about the house, the neighbor and what it offers. There are photos and maybe a video in the near future.

Is this a good way to market your own house?
How could I get good visibility for my house?
Google Adwords? Facebook ads?

It is the first time that I needed to sell my house and I am just experimenting how to market it.

Any advices? Feedback is really appreciate it! :)

Here, you can find the site that I am creating (in multiple languages): http://thevilla.estatedock.com/
... But wouldn't that alone require the data collector (e.g. whomever you're asking for the data) to sift over their logs in the first place, segregating what they know is their own traffic from something generated by a TV or other smart appliance?

Evidently, either I'm slow in understanding your reasoning, or you should be more verbose.
hey man - I'm putting together an unfunded product on the side by myself, and my passwords are using scrypt, and they have a salt, and the salt is per-user, and the system rejects weak passwords based on popular entries, bad entropy, and easy guessability. It honestly wasn't more than 8 hours of foolery to get all that working. Is it ready for the credit card industry? no. But it's going to stop derps who get their hands on the DB.
I've had quite a few in high school and early college. The best part is the manic and depressive episodes. After a really bad one during wrestling in high school, I had some pretty amazing highs and really bad lows. Best time of my life was sitting on the back porch and giggling at the sun for 2 hours. I was totally ecstatic about the sun. The worst was all the suicidal thoughts. Think a heart monitor. The highs were soooo good, but most of the time it was bad depression. I agree with the other posters here, it took me about 2 years after each bad hit to get over it and return to normal. I'd say it's a logarithmic curve to a new percentile. IE you never really get all the way to the new normal. I also have lasting short term memory loss, problems discerning things apart at close distances, and hearing issues in loud and chaotic environments like bars and family gatherings. My mind is just not there and will likely never be. Oh well, I guess I'm just stuck in Hard Mode. I don't play rubgy anymore, but damn I want to. I know I can't but I miss the pitch everyday I am here. I loved it all, and I still do. Again, hard mode.
There are no rules here, only conventions. In my opinion, a copyright year in the past makes it look like you don't know what you're doing. If you feel the need to tout your long history, then put the start and current year, like 2011-2013. Otherwise, follow convention and make sure it always reads the current year.
Yeah, it is. Infact my school had the same assignment during my ML course too.
We have a small team based in Seattle with people as fat away as France. I definitely agree with this post and with what others have said both about increased productivity and about the difficulty of working with a team that is mostly centrally located and missing out on casual socialization.

However we have also found that having a spread out team can lead to increased collaboration and outreach as people go to seminars/meetups etc locally. It is also nice that people who are normally in the office can easily participate in meetings when traveling or staying home for whatever reason.
Why browsers still respect that, even on custom ROMs is beyond me.

My CM7 browser can bypass this. but my cm10 can't.
How to Fail at Skipping Airport Lines
Really? How's website telling you about some condition is on par with board certified doctor's diagnosis?
These are good female tech role models - apparently
The UK's Evening Standard has an article tonight about women in tech [1], and as role models suggest Nicola Mendelsohn, Joanna Shields, Marissa Mayer, Dawn Airey and Sheryl Sandberg.

I am curious: how many of these are role-models for getting hands on with tech and working as a developer/scientist/engineer, vs being a high-ranking director in a management role? I do not know the women mentioned but they seem at odds with the thrust of the article.

It's a shame they didn't talk to female programmers...

1. http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/maggie-philbin-silicon-skirts-were-still-very-much-an-exception-8962022.html
"
>> although the data is not retained by the server.

>Well, that’s something I suppose. Although presumably it is retained for some period of time, otherwise how would the adverts and recommendations be possible?
" //

So, basically they flat-out lied about the data retention.

If the UK Information Commission doesn't apply the largest fine ever recorded it will show they're entirely toothless.

When will government stop protecting the financial interests of mega-corps and start doing something to favour the demos.
Fellow finance guy/amateur python coder here. I, too, struggle to think of startup ideas.

Have you thought about joining a startup? I know some of the larger ones need financial analysts (Uber comes to mind). It's always in the back of my mind.
What about if given enough time and access to enough resources?
His slaves worked pretty hard too though. Just saying.
I don't think this is necessarily accurate -- you really need to have context and history with a person to determine how they use punctuation to signify tone. For instance, the person I most frequently text always uses punctuation, while I rarely do. I think it also depends on how you were introduced to messaging/texting.
NO, that address is NOT Satoshi:

http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewgpg.php?nick=I}ruid
For everybody who believes their doctor, there's somebody who doesn't and will just find a new doctor to confirm their self-diagnosis. "I was right, my doctor was wrong" stories get posted to HN fairly frequently.
I'm mystified by the pro-aristocracy tone of the article:

> There are some happy parts of the book. Clark uses her fabulous wealth to indulge a taste for the world’s best dollhouses and model Japanese castles, built by craftsmen in Germany and Japan. She pays an assistant to write down transcripts of Flintstone episodes. When she wants to make a little music, she takes a Stradivarius violin out of the closet (first she needs to choose which of her Stradivariuses to play).

Yes, it's horrible that these people took advantage of her, but I find it very difficult to get that worked up over it. On the balance, she still won the cosmic lottery, inheriting a tremendous fortune she did nothing to earn, and getting to spend it on trivialities like dollhouses. Rich heiresses attract scumbags for precisely the reasons suggested in the book (they are easy to deceive), and in a way such activity is just the natural downside of inheriting a large fortune in the first place. Without justifying the behavior of any of the people involved, I can't help but feel my feelings of pity are better directed elsewhere.
Does the progress bar on the top of this page, which only shows up when you are 75%+ through the article, bug anybody else?
* However, I hope - even with these simplifications - the concepts came across clearly. *

They did, and thank you for that. Still, I would love to see a follow-up article that 'unsimplifies' things a bit, as well as covering FX.
They wait for IT to come. I became IT.
We expect our employers to triple-check everything they say in the fear that they might say something that could possibly be construed as sexist or racist or harassing. Our teachers aren't allowed to offer our children honest critiques for fear that they'll crush their poor little self-esteems.

A genetic diagnostic can completely crush a person's outlook on life. This is suicide-level stuff potentially.

As for your doctor, do you still happily use that doctor and recommend them? The scan wasn't the problem; the service provider was. Ditto for 23AndMe. They don't get a free pass because they're a "tech" company.
The lesson here is don't use shoddy diagnostics. CT is a proven technology, which gets things right the vast majority of the time, and also has a false positive rate. 23andMe is relying on technologies or algorithms that have not undergone the requisite scrutiny to lose the label (in the FDA's opinion) of "shoddy diagnostics", and are thus far more likely to have a higher false positive or false negative rate.
If the banning of CT scans would save just one innocent life, it would be worth it.
Yes well done, seeing that article actually made me order scans for entire family.

Why? Because at this point technology seems fairly stable if public outcry is directed at easily correctable and easy to miss during implementation bug. This is `future` tech right here - you get a glimpse into your own DNA. What kind of Engineer would I be if I was not a little bit curious about it?

Note: I am firm believer in Eugenics, so I might be a bit biased.

Edit: there seems to be a confusion about Eugenics, so to clarify I do not believe in Negative Eugenics/Positive Eugenics (which is not letting people breed/letting only fittest breed). What I believe in that if given a choice of 2 partners (Does not matter who, your choice), if you pick the one who will minimize risk of the offspring inheriting genetic diseases, that is enough to make positive progress in Humanity's gene pool. If at least fraction of people follows that logic, it should be possible to measurable reduce inheritable diseases within few generations.
I completely agree that Peercoin had the opportunity to become a much more efficient virtual currency, but it seems that ship has sailed. However, Peercoin as it exists now is not a fully decentralized currency and so is and was vulnerable to government intervention (during the SR era, for example).

Primecoin is not calculating anything particularly useful from a scientific or medical point of view (Cunningham chains).
Enjoy some of the most recent demos released for the amiga platform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE7vbzMYYRc - Hot Dots by Focus Design (Revision 2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmqiR-zT5OQ - LEMON. 2013 RINK A DINK REDUX (A500)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKiftizQoNY - Amiga Scenedemo - Smoke & Mirrors by Ghostown and Loonies (Revision 2013)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcBX-TRkkx0 - Traction - Past is Prologue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6dfLG7wowQ - Boogietown by Ghostown & RNO

And if this makes you curious, dig a bit through this: http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B0%5D=Amiga+AGA&...

Or even better, come to a demoparty near you ( http://www.demoparty.net/ ), meet amiga coders of the current age and get to poke at the actual machines. :)
Why shouldn't pre-existing conditions be used to determine the price of your premiums? It directly impacts the amount of the insurance you're going to consume.

Doesn't seem any different that how a poor driving record impacts the price of your auto-insurance.
From the sounds of the article everything they did was legal...

Just as her father buying his senate seat was... Just as the various ways in which Montana copper mine strikes were dealt with, just as the way Montana came to become a state.

I suspect you may be uncomfortable with the moral foundations of US law and how that country and its wealth came to be as well as the legal means by which one may acquire wealth in the United States.
Coordination and Consistency in Distributed Databases [video]
Not really sure if I had to put ASK HN or SHOW HN :P
So much more evil than what CC companies already do today, amirite?
So are you saying that someone could mine bitcoins from their day-to-day MacBook Pro and actually see a return on that?

Edit: I get that I would need a USB miner. I could pick up a 12 port USB HUB from Amazon and 12 USB Miners for a few hundred dollars of an investment.
Uber threatened in New Orleans with C&D before even operating
I guess because, as the article describes, IBM was all for protecting its workstation business as well as the lucrative mainframe business.

A workstation back then was defined as an expensive high-end computer that was designed to be used by only one user at a time (i.e. not a multi-user mainframe), yet was suitable for high-performance applications. They were intended mostly for corporations and academia where extra juice was needed and that could afford to buy workstations (think scientific computing, CAD and graphic design in the 1980s). IBM did at this time already manufacture workstations with UNIX as the operating system (see e.g. http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=867&st=1 ) But they were way too expensive for the home user. PC (personal computer) was the low-end product that you could afford with a normal salary.

I understand UNIX back then was a mainframe and workstation operating system. Licensing was expensive and the hardware requirements beyond that of a PC. Few people had access to UNIX, mostly at universities and at big corporations. These were the very reasons why GNU and Linux were born - to provide a mostly-compatible UNIX clone for the home users with an affordable IBM PC compatible.

So my theory is that IBM was protecting its mainframe business - it did not want to put the powerful UNIX to the PC because it wanted to sell more expensive special hardware to those who wanted UNIX. So it hired a maverick company (Microsoft) to write a low-end, feature-poor operating system for PC (DOS). It was (and continues to be) a business strategy to bundle better software with better hardware so that you can ask customers that want only the superior software for a higher price (still essentially the business model of a certain Cupertino, California based manufacturer)