skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree - there's something a tad hypocritical about companies like Google and Facebook who voraciously track and record as much online browsing behaviour as they possibly can. Where is the transparency from these companies on what they record and track? Just go and read Google's privacy policies - so vaguely worded, they tell you nothing about what they track and record.

Google, in particular has it's digital fingerprints all over the web. Its' online reach is far greater than any other company. They even have an entire OS that potentially tracks your every action. Sure, they are not using the data they collect for nefarious purposes, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be subject to much greater scrutiny.

Just look at the quote from Larry Page on the website:

"The security of users' data is critical..."

It's not just about security, but about privacy too. Privacy and security are related but separate issues. You can have the best security in the world and continue to voraciously gobble every byte of data you can possibly capture. I don't doubt Google's commitment to security matters. But can you trust them on matters of privacy?
Much of journalism is actually fiction, mainly because it shows you one detail and neglects to mention context.

Source: former journalist.
Also, if you're already signed in to Coinbase you don't have to pull out a card and copy your CC info into a form. It's basically a 2-click checkout. I bought a $1,000 plane ticket using this last week in less time than it takes to order food from most sites online.
I have to agree with that, I still own an iPod Classic Video and after 2 HD replacements and a new display (I wasn't really smart nor careful the first time I attempted to replace the HD) it still is the best Media device I ever had.

I wonder if Apple will be able to keep pushing devices of such impact out on the market.
Sure. But they should do it transparently. Come out and say "our legal team thinks your app opens us up to the risk of a lawsuit."

Not "Your app is illegal somewhere," when this claim is dubious at best.
I have zero interest in working in San Jose because I have zero interest in living anywhere within commuting distance of San Jose (no, an hour away is not within commuting distance).
kinda depressing that all the money that companies pay for these buses couldn't simply be used to offer better service in the public system.

Maybe BART could offer bus rental services for companies wanting these lines? At the very least it would help to pay for infrastructure for the rest of us.

Maybe I'm biased by the fact that I've lived in cities with usable public transportation
You're having a mental failure here:

"I'm curious: if you found another engineer who was in a messy codebase doing something something seemingly crazy, would you 1) assume they're an idiot or 2) reserve judgment until you know more?"

I might say:

"Having a messy codebase is a way to keep having bugs."

That's analogous to my original statement.
Awesome, I've been waiting for this. Now CyanogenMod should be the most secure OS out there against snooping, even compared to Google's own Android. Too bad Google isn't taking steps to offer end-to-end encrypted communication for Android devices.
>With such volatility, you need to put a huge buffer in your pricing and only idiots and criminals will spend their BTC instead of paying with fiat in such case.

Then I have to say, I don't really think you see the real value in bitcoin.

I was under the impression bitpay-type services would deal with the transactions. How would the volatility be an issue in that case?
There are a couple of assumptions built into your proposal that I would want to see some data to support:

1: Computer programming competes with foreign languages in high schools and colleges.

2: The economic value of programming languages is greater than the economic value of foreign languages.

Your last sentence also suggests you are comparing apples and oranges, a grade of a foreign language that is dropped against achieving basic computer programming abilities. These are not the same level of achievement.

I think understanding computation is a key 21st century skill that we would do well to invest in but I think foreign languages also have value.
thanks for the tip! it was worth the karma i lost for my attempt at humor...
Keeping the pirates at bay [2001]
Really? You can't find a way to scrounge up $400? I've found your first obstacle to being rich. Go talk to people. That is a problem you should easily be able to solve. Try to find the money. Can't find the money? Go talk to people at the school until it gets taken care of. You are effectively giving up a semester of your life for $400. Be persistent. There are things of enough importance that you should not simply resign yourself to the fate someone else has dictated. I'd also suggest buying a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People if you can scrounge up another $10. The lessons in that book were the main reason I had enough to eat my first 3 years of college.
How does the seller hedge against currency risk? Given that BTC is very volatile and that it can be difficult to get USD or whatever currencies the carriers are accepting for tickets the reseller ( Cheapair in this case ) has to be able to ensure that they are getting tickets for an amount in BTC greater than the cost of the ticket in the target purchase at the time they ( Cheapair ) purchase the ticket from the airline. If they guess wrong and they charge you 2 BTC for a ticket to Malaysia, but the ticket would cost 2.6 BTC by the time they confirm the transaction with you and start buying the ticket from the carrier... they'll probably just refund your BTC and tell you to try again. If on the other hand your tickets would actually cost 1.8 BTC by the time they talk to the carrier; you paid too much.

Also nobody is going to sell you an anonymous airline ticket so, the benefit of using Bitcoin in this case is very dubious.
Google employee has a point...
Original link is correct...the Thailand protest coverage was shot entirely by drone, see http://i.imgur.com/CLoEiL6.png

Thanks anyways though.
Nobel winner declares boycott of top science journals
I regularly drive down 19th Avenue in SF. Just south of Geary, the Google bus regularly parks blocking one lane of 19th Avenue for extended periods of time (tens of minutes) apparently waiting for employees to board, and creating a traffic jam on 19th Avenue behind it.

I'm not sure why the bus has to stop on 19th Avenue, as there are numerous side streets it could stop on -- and not one of the major north-south thoroughfares in west SF.

The difference with Muni buses, of course, is that they stop, let people off/on, and then get out of the way almost immediately. I'm not sure why the rest of us are waiting on Google employees for extended periods.

EDIT: I'm not sure how some of the peanut gallery here is reading anti-public-transportation sentiment into my comment. I'm a big fan of BART and Muni and use them regularly.

What I'm marveling over is why Google employees and/or their bus driver(s) can't seem to tell time sufficiently well to not require illegally blocking a major SF thoroughfare for extended periods of time. The Google bus blocks and delays Muni and other forms of public transportation on 19th Avenue just as effectively as it blocks autos. Muni doesn't do that.
Then goodwill isn't the right word for it, because goodwill has a precise definition that isn't fudged.

Additionally, the author made a good point in that many investors are not buying straight common shares. You can't simply value those shares by doing a DCF. You need to value each component of the instrument (an option, equity, debt,etc.) to get to a final number. He's right that extrapolating out that number is incorrect, but it's also incorrect to then deduce that anything beyond DCF is 'fudged'.
The salary vs equity part is is very SV specific. On most of the planet, even in tech, there is no get-rich-quick VC fueled path to success. Most start-ups will only be successful in the long term, and "successful" in terms of being a profitable, sustainable small to mid-size company, not the next Facebook.

I.e., it will be equity that attracts mercenaries looking for a quick exit, and good salaries that will ensure long term loyalty.
> I've been offline for a bit. Has anyone made the point that Edward Snowden is today's Nelson Mandela?

Probably not, because it's a very poor comparison.
I think the author misses one important factor in employee retention - work / life balance. If a start-up hires a bunch of employees, everyone will be tempted to trade work for life in favor of "rocketship growth". In essence, they believe in the mission of the company so much that they are willing to sacrifice their mission for themselves. Companies who are empathetic to employee needs stand a much better chance of retaining employees. If I work for a company that lets me choose the most fulfilling work, compensates me fairly for that good work, and gives me enough time off to re-generate, and actually seems to care for my well being, I'm more more apt to stay.

When I talk to ex-coworkers, the reasons they often cite for leaving are: 1) weren't empowered to achieve their career goals 2) weren't compensated relative to the value they felt they brought 3) worked on too many failed products and 4) burned out.
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Most of the things you listed are untrue. You can get power out of the headphone jack, and they do. And I'm fairly certain the reader hasn't sent the audio to the servers in a long time. And the reader does directly do some encryption, which is what the new ASIC does.

Your comment would match the first generations of readers, but they've iterated on them quite a bit since then.
I feel sorry for this employee who created a PR disaster this early in the week...
How does their refund process work should you need to cancel the trip? Do you get the nominal or real value of bitcoin back, or do you get the cash equivalent back?
I went to the code.org site, looked around and tried the objective-C version. I was (positively) surprised that it did work because I am not in the USA at the moment, meaning it's not blocked for non-USA access.

The simulator didn't work unfortunately but they did warn about this on the site when I started. After I had done the tutorial I landed on the Summer Academy page where you can do a 8-9 week course in programming. Very nice!

Then I discovered that this was certainly not for free: $5000 it will cost you. I must admit I was a little shocked. That is not a price every one can pay for this learning to code adventure. That was a part Obama did not mention. It feels like a standard marketing trap, luring in people to do your course, buy your software, etc. Only difference is the frontman of the show ;)

It's proved again: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Now walk on please, nothing to see here.
If you don't think your equity stake is going to be worth enough (company isn't growing fast) then it makes sense to jump to another company after your first vesting. You are collecting lottery tickets from a bunch of startups. And I find it ironic that everyone on the board is obsessed with money, but somehow it's bad form for employees!

Honestly, which company has a mission that motivates employees to stay despite lower pay and negligible equity? Khan Academy has a mission, the rest of SV is nonsense hoping to get lucky.
I am really looking forward to TextSecure for iOS. I hope I am wrong on this one, but from the text on their Website Heml.is doesn't seem to be too eager to open source their code after release.

I don't know any details about whispersystems (except that moxie marlinspike is with them) but I sure do hope they can provide a well designed cross platform messaging app completely open source (which I don't think exists yet)
Isn't that a rather ... subversive concept when a good fraction of those learning it will then apply it to the Federal budget, their state's budget and on down?
There are many tools that will save your credit card information and fill out payment forms automatically. I'm not so sure this is a great benefit of Bitcoin.
Make Effortless the Creation of Great Things
The overall cost of all the fraud-protection that credit cards have is quite large, and ultimately gets passed on to the consumer.
If Bitcoin is going to succeed, it will do so in a series of incremental improvements.

There is no way for a complex technology like this to pop up fully formed - decentralized, cryptographically secure, stable in price, with a smooth user experience and universal adoption and acceptance. You are witnessing the initial stages.
The prompting email is: "What it the proper citation for the lme4 package and the Bates' book?
Also, can lme4 datasets (e.g., Pastes, ScotsSec, InstEval etc.) be
used for illustration in publications? Can the authors grant
permission or is the permission from the source needed?

Many thanks for the package and the book. When can I hold a
non-digital copy in my hands?

Thanks,

Russ"

Sadly, I don't think that adds much to the context. But yeah, Julia benefits greatly from this. It's still not at the point where I'd move (I'm more of an end-user than a developer) but it's got my curiosity.
Big Oil Anticipates 10-Fold Surge in Carbon Emission Cost
The first time you send an encrypted message keys are exchanged automatically. Thereafter it tells you if the second party's identity changes from the first message.

If you're thinking "But MitM!!!" then don't. The main weakness of this is actually the plausibility of losing your phone, and hence encryption keys. Unless perhaps they are stored on Google/WhisperSystems' servers. If not it would open you up to this weakness: "Hey, ignore the security warning for this text - I got a new phone so the keys changed. Remind me again what our secret terrorist plan is?"
Buying a Tesla with bitcoin? Not so fast
Is it really that bad? From what I remember of it, it is still one of the more interesting frameworks I have ever seen. I certainly like it more than I did Play.
The big mistake everybody makes is thinking the issue is about hiring and retaining individual employees.

You don't want to "hire good employees" but you want to "create a great team". If an employee feels like he's part of a team where he can create more value than he could someplace else, it makes sense for him to stay. If he feel s like the team is holding him back, he ought to leave in a heartbeat.

It's said that "employees don't leave a company, they leave managers", and this is definitely true. One bad manager can cause employee retention problems that go on for years.
A conundrum for a sed wizard
Proper grammar, for practical purposes, should be defined as "is capable of talking in a way that will not put them at a disadvantage in job interviews". Use of the the word "ain't" probably isn't worth worrying about; stunted vocabulary and inability to match tenses probably is.
Another very important factor in retention not mentioned here is better understanding the aspirations of those people you're considering bringing on to your team.

A person's response to questions like, "What are you most interested in professionally?" and, "How do you see yourself developing career wise?" becomes a blueprint for what to do organizationally to retain them.

Sometimes the simplest approach is the best: Ask, "What do we need to do to retain you?" and then do that thing!
I wrote an article on this subject (http://krrishd.github.io/blog/post/to-code-or-not-to-code), but I think it isn't necessary to learn all of computer science, but only relevant scripting and design skills.
Yelling "this is the right city for the people who can afford it" is definitely not going to help. Maybe the recent real estate buys from Google aren't for office space but for private residences designed to house Google employees instead? Given the price for housing and the lack of decent modern housing in the South Bay (all the new condos for rent are priced as high as SF places), wouldn't having private below-market housing available to employees be a major perk that will also yield more work output in off hours?
If anyone's wondering, the bus is more of a symbol than a real problem to the protesters. The issues caused by rich tech employees changing the city and ignoring poorer people have been discussed here before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5189580 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5665437
You generate a keypair. They generate a keypair. You swap public keys. Then you encrypt messages to each other using the other persons public key.

Of course, that is still vulnerable to an active MITM attack where somebody intercepts the initial key exchange and inserts their own keys. The app has a built in option to display your fingerprints so you can compare them if you meet the other person.

Even with this vulnerability, imagine if everyone started using it overnight... All of a sudden there wouldn't be millions (billions?) of new private messages stored in a bunch of databases every day. The telcos aren't going to perform an active MITM attack to decrypt peoples SMS.
Any Moment Now, Judge Alsup
>far more money that he could give away

Especially when it came to his illegitimate children. As much as I dislike Microsoft, Gates has done a billion times more for the poverty-stricken than Jobs ever did. Please do not hold Jobs up as some epitome of philanthropy. He was absolutely not, at least publicly.
This is the main reason I switched from iOS to Android. Google began deprecating features in their iOS apps and location service was one of the first to go.

I find this tracking fascinating, useful and fun. There are a number of apps that attempt to use similar data to pull together statistics and metrics about time periods.

It is opt in now and on a Galaxy S4 with the latest Android update doesn't use the battery excessively.
I hope whatever comes out of this mess, is some positive change for everyone.

I'm annoyed at shuttles (not sure which company) at the Caltrain station which park in the townsend st. bike lane every single evening, making it dangerous for cyclists. This intersection is sufficiently messy as it is.
There may be a bureaucracy problem rather than a funding problem. When Google pays a shuttle company directly, everybody is incentivized to make everything move smoothly: Google benefits from having its employees get to work on time, the employees benefit from having free wifi and not having to drive in rush-hour traffic, and the private companies that provide the buses get Google's money and have a strong incentive to keep their business. In the public system, the people who run the program are often very different from the people who use the program, and so if it's a mess, they're like "Eh, I get to keep my government job."

It's interesting that the cities with decent public transportation - Boston, NYC, DC - all have strong cultures of public transportation and large percentages of people that don't have a car. It's very likely that the transportation commissioner in NYC takes the subway to work; it's somewhat less likely that whoever runs the buses in SF takes them to work.
Upon reading the headline I too immediately wondered, if the fresh water is sucked out, wouldn't the ocean collapse the roof of the space?

Other posters here are saying, replace it with salt water or CO2. The CO2 idea was answered. As for the "swap seawater for fresh" idea, as soon as you put a significant amount of sea water in there, you no longer have fresh water coming out! The only way to get a freshwater supply from this would be to take all it out before replacing, but then you have the "supporting the ocean bottom" problem in the interim.
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The Sage app attempts to do this for you.
He'll probably become a meme soon. I can already see a t-shirt with his face and "Let them eat cake" emblazoned over it.
If this kind of 'mundane' computer tasks is really an issue for helping organizations then I'm gonna give a try, I've always been afraid of too had problems.
I'm currently working on an application similar to this, but with a small physical device you plug into the bottom of your phone where all the encryption is done, so there is no central software you can break into, it's all done physically, disconnected. You communicate the decryption keys to the parties in person. We want to make this a little device you can attach to a key chain and plug into the bottom of your phone whenever you need encryption. Our app interfaces with the dongle and you can use it to encrypt/decrypt any files really.

Is this a retarded idea or is there a use for this?