skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I do agree, but historically we've been able to write software in an environment we didn't foresee being hostile. We've been too trusting and blasé when it comes to privacy and security. For example, look at the original SMTP implementation: the designers didn't take into account there might be governments or other bad actors that would snoop wholesale on such messages as they bounced around the infrastructure. If the original designers had known, the specification would have undoubtedly been different.

It's also hard to create a system that's private and secure, and it's vastly less convenient to use which increases friction and drives down adoption. PGP, for example, is very good but extremely inconvenient to use all the time.

As an outsider, I think I understand the rationale behind their design decisions. Just saying it should have been more carefully created with privacy in mind glosses over the many complexities and difficulties that design goal entails.

We, as creators of software, have problems that are more political than technical, no matter where we are in the world.
I'm in the "I want to believe" category when it comes to distributed teams, mainly because technology is far more social than technical. But so many people want to work at the beach in their pajamas, there's gotta be a way forward. So I'm rooting for this tech.

Sounds like we need at a minimum: 1) ability to get up off floor on your own, 2) ability to find an outlet and charge on your own, 3) better microphone and conversation discrimination, and 4) some way of having "eye" contact

I'dd add for bonus points: 1) some kind of peripheral vision, 2) ability to wave arms around to get attention and demonstrate crude body language, 3) ability to grasp and manipulate things in some kind of fashion resembling a hand.

So there's still a ways to go. Bummer.
Yes SciPy (although I usually end up with Mathematica).That's a generic encoding. ASN.1 is a specific and compact encoding of the data.
> ..local Councils use RIPA to obtain communication data...

It's worth noting that legislation introduced during 2012 limited the circumstances under which councils could use RIPA powers [1] and required judicial approval for the exercise of those powers [2].

[1]: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2012/1500/article/2/made

[2]: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/part/2/chapter/2/...
Spot on. I wrote to my MP about RIPA. Not a sausage back.
Would you give your bank credentials to Mark Zuckerberg?
I wish they would just re-implement the whole thing on top of a hybrid API with reference FOSS implementations of web client servers and client apps so that programmers can pick-and-choose how much PaaS they need. Please get the "apps" on the backburner by letting FOSS compete head-to-head with the little mini-ISV's and their inevitable hodge-podge. Payments and 90% of inventory schlogg can take a hike, but when it comes to that 10% of customization, working on one's own source is so much better that I would use a fully FOSS solution and self host it if I ever needed to do an e-commerce site again for anyone for any reason in any circumstances. Shopify apps and most of the backend customization options really blur the line between software consumers and software users while ignoring that true consumers never want to become users in the first place and true users want total, absolute headroom. Whole world is better off if Shopify is FOSSier.
This only happened after various scandals about privacy invasion by councils.
Again, that's the silver lining in this story. For details on how trust is split to assure no single point of failure, have a look at https://certivox.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=10420248 "Distributed Trust Authority"
Even if we just look at things that benefit society, stable is a long way from perfect. We would still need people dedicated to curing disease, improving education, etc.

Beyond that, there is creating art, raising children, forging and strengthening romantic bonds (it's very difficult to phrase the pursuit of love in way that emphasizes its potential other-centeredness), making people laugh, advancing knowledge in some field. All these things still have meaning in a stable society.
Avocarrot's plans to shake up the way apps are monetized.
Concerning videogame music being crap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_Law

> ninety percent of everything is crap.

Ninety percent of all music is crap. In that good 10 percent there is some videogame music.

I also think that, although there are some exceptions, most videogame music is environmental or helping to establish a mood. This makes it very contextual to the "game level" where it plays.
We've had a different solution to the same observation: When they start learning SQL, people struggle writing their INSERT INTO when they should start learning SELECT first.

Congrats on your idea, I've been looking for resources to learn the Postgres dialect specifically and it's great we're all in the same ecosystem. My solution was to make a Postgres front-end that would be as easy as spreadsheets [1].

I'm looking for a few customers who would help me get into the improvement/feedback loop. Please do not post me yet on the first page of HackerNews, the product is too young to be judged;) And sorry for people who think this is wrong advertising.

[1] http://www.play-sql.com
The copyright issue should be fixed. Looks like this was generated automatically by the software ;)
On top of that, other currencies have flexible supply as well. Banks create and destroy money based on demand, because bank loans are essentially newly created money (and paying back a bank loan means that the money is destroyed).

So the situation is exactly reversed wrt Bitcoin.
Clever, but try explaining that to these people. Most barely seem to have a high school diploma, much less understand encryption.
Last minute Tips to Optimize your Ecommerce Store for Holiday Sales
Bane, Bane. You need to get with the program. In order to appear intellectual and progressive you need to state that the USA is the worst thing ever by bringing up some anecdote about Police State USA. Anecdotes about bad treatment in Europe are just not cricket. Especially about France and Germany. Thank god you didn't say anything negative about any of the Nordic states. That's really bad.
How we’ve leveraged Twitter to find beta testers
The same thing happened to me on a train from Switzerland to Prague.
SKYNET LIVES!!!!!"
At least it's heading in the right direction. They could just as easily have decided that the EU law violated the data retention policy, and that the law had to be changed.
There are basically two hashing algorithms for cryptocurrencies: SHA-256 and scrypt. SHA-256 is the one used for Bitcoin and its derivatives. Litecoin uses the scrypt algorithm, as does its derivatives, like Worldcoin. There are a handful of other proof of work algorithms as well used by a few other currencies.

Side note, check out namecoin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin. It's based on SHA-256.

scrypt uses the SHA-256 algorithm for hashing the blocks, but the caveat is that it also uses a high number of read/writes to RAM. In fact, there is very nearly parity to the number of compute cycles to read/writes cycles. Here's the paper on it: http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt/scrypt.pdf.

In order to build an ASIC miner for Litecoin, one would have to build a circuit that had a massive number of CPUs encrusted with a fairly massive amount of fast RAM. As this more or less describes a video card, whoever designs an ASIC for Litecoin will have a nice challenge in front of them.

Edit: Working URLs
Could you expand? It seems they only handle bitcoin on their main page
> They weren't forced to close down per se...

That's the crux of the issue. They weren't forced to close down, they chose to.

End of discussion.

EDIT: Actually, why don't we see what the CEO of CertiVox has to say on the matter?

"The headline strongly infers our friends at GCHQ “forced” us to take PrivateSky down. That’s hogwash."

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6894316
Alternative is to have a very clear agreement about billing on a time and materials basis.
The UK’s National Archives in Kew
And after a Tory-led government came to power...
I've been trying an experiment for the last year or two. I have an app that collects commentary, tech and science stories from across the web. (Recently I added news, but that was a mistake)

I find I stay just as informed reading commentary, where I'm purposefully being manipulated, as I do reading news. In fact the news is better, as various authors advance various personal theories they've been working on for weeks or months, using the current events as fodder. Reading a couple of these from different viewpoints provides wonderful context -- and context is the one thing critically missing from most "breaking news" reporting. The only difference is about a 12-hour delay. Trust me, the world does not depend on whether I know something that quickly. Twitter peeps will annoy me if something truly incredible happens.

I'm also finding that branding, whether by news outlet, author, or social signaling, is a terrible indicator of quality. As I continue to flush out the app, my belief is that a better indicator is statistical clustering around personality types, but that's still a year or two away.

But one thing is for sure: I've been much happier since I gave up all forms of news consumption. News is based on emotional manipulation. It's always a crisis, there's always an argument, and there's always some terrible danger you've been unaware of. That stuff will rot your mind. It's always been bad; it's just gotten worse over the last few decades as the news cycle has shortened.
LifeLock Acquires Mobile Wallet Platform Lemon For $42.6 Million
I'm glad the title of the article isn't some sensationalist junk like, 'App Engine should be shot in the face,' or 'Why I left the barren wasteland of useless App Engine and moved onto the greener pastures of my homerolled Accumulo/Scalatra stack on Rackspace'.

I think enough people who're reading this have had a good to fair experience with GAE and, like me, are wondering what hiccups other people are finding with apps on app engine. Subsequently, I also think that we like feeling smart because we've read enough docs and articles to be able to identify ways that their app's design may not mesh with the App Engine way of doing things.

The thing I need to keep reminding myself is that there are many right ways to do it. If vpj and his cohorts are spending less time trying to figure out App Engine and more time on their app, then more power to them. At some point you have to just figure out when the effort expended outweighs the potential benefits and cut your losses, and I think this post is written in a clear and fair way.

The thing that makes me upset though is that there isn't a central place that can clearly explains the pitfalls that he fell in, what the best way to do it on App Engine, and why. Those docs are kind of a mess, amirite?
Introducing Buffer for Business: A simpler and more powerful Social Media tool
Marketing: The New Definition
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was referring to the fact that the core Bitcoin dev, basically the guy in charge of the network, joined the board of one company in Silicon Valley. If I have a competing business, what do you think his preferences are going to be? So if this continues there will be a fork, so that devs of the protocol are prevented from selling out. I think the core bitcoin devs are really going in a very wrong direction with their affiliations.
From https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/In_the_interests_of_th... -

"The House will notice that the Bill restricts the activities of the SIS and GCHQ for safeguarding the economic well-being of the country to the acts or intentions of persons outside the United Kingdom. The agencies may not and do not get involved in domestic economic, commercial or financial affairs."

So it's not quite as broad reaching as it reads on first glance. It is generally a problem though that laws need to be written so they're broad enough to cover circumstances which might not have been considered at the time of the laws' writing so that new laws don't need to be written all the time yet they can't be so overly broad as to be unworkable - which is why the judiciary has it's role in deciding how to interpret the laws and decide whether or not they ought to apply in a given circumstance.
What's that got to do with it? (genuinely interested).
Well the Snowden revelations suggest that yes this kind of capability will become public. We exist in a space that is bounded by technological opportunities and limitations which agencies are just as subject to as everyone else.
I am really curious about how to bid against the event in the past.)
I did something similar with Ruby. I used GCC and on-the-fly linking for JIT compilation: http://www.wedesoft.de/hornetseye-api/
It looks really neat. Isn't 660 GB not that much really? I grant that the slides say they've used an optimized binary for the storage, but how does this compare to pandas?
My Reaction to Amazon Prime Air is that I live around a mile from a Amazon warehouse and I can not drive there to pick it up. Instead I need to use Free Shipping, have them "package" my purchase randomly anywhere from 2 days to 5 days so I can't cancel it on them for taking too long, then ship the item 1,000 feet or so.

They could setup a location for Amazon Locker in the warehouse location for me to pickup my items. I understand I will receive absolutely no on-site customer service. They could even use the Locker for returns. I have suggested this to their support.

Or, I could pay for Prime free shipping so they can mail it such a short distance and actually receive the item the next day like I do with Newegg, who is further away, which has been enjoying my business if they have the item.
As a Shopify customer I am very pleased to hear this - they do a great job but there are areas that need tightening up, hopefully this will allow them to grow in the offline world and improve their core offering.
This is the right answer but modified by an honest response to him when he inevitably asks your opinion on their prospects.

"I see challenges..." [and list them honestly, but don't overstate] is all you need to (and should) say. We've all looked at pre-successful businesses and thought they couldn't possibly work. Don't be so sure his will fail due to marketing requirements or any other shortcomings you perceive. Surprises surprise us all the time.
Shopify raises $100M as e-commerce provider looks offline
It sounds like a proud Bitcoin owner pitching his coin. I think that Litecoin and a few others are already in a good position: http://coinmarketcap.com/.
Laravel 4.1 released
I second this. The contract should contain every little bit of functionality the client initially wants - from user registration to where the Twitter and Facebook icons will be on the homepage.
> Kind of ironic that Tradehill's founder is giving security advice in this article.

You do not realize how silly such a statement is?
Edit: To clarify, one should not immediately discount the man's insight because of a past security incident. The experience probably adds value to his insights rather than substract from it.
I used this: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
End The NSA Nightmare
We deal with this sort of thing all the time. The best move, I think, would be to be very upfront about how competitive the particular market is and your thoughts on that. And be VERY clear about the scope and what he's getting from you. onion2k is right - when he's not getting the traffic he imagined, you're gonna be on the hook for the "fixes" necessary to make that happen.
>The culture itself is very old, so to speak.

A humble evidence based look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization#Indian_s...

No known evidence shows anything meaningful in the civilization department happened before 4000BC.
This article together with Snowden revelations, makes me think that the Guardian is probably on of the last news sources that can be trusted.
What does "Coinbase is cruising at escape velocity." mean?
Most people I've talked to don't understand the idea of an MVP and believe EVERYTHING they want in a product is an MVP.
This answer is on point for sure.
This is great. Thank you very much.
The ability to be stolen is a feature, not a bug.
Nope, the beginning of one. Life is never black and white like that.
Here's the link: http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-lawsuit-video-deposi...
Yes, lay the cards and let him make the decision. But, as others suggested, be very clear (in writing) what he is going to get for his money.
Rapid consolidation of Bitcoin mining pool operators
As I write this, blockchain.info estimates that two mining pool operators, GHash.IO and BTC Guild, currently control 57% of hashing power in the Bitcoin network. Three operators, the two just mentioned plus Eligius, control 68%. Five operators control 81%.[1]

Could two or more of these large pool operators ever take advantage of their position, for example, by secretly partnering to gain control over new block generation?

Is pool formation and consolidation an unavoidable consequence of the increase in block difficulty, as more miners opt for small, 100% certain rewards instead of large, highly unlikely ones?

Should the consolidation of pool operators be cause for concern? Could the largest pools ever find a way to impose higher transaction fees on the network?

Are we witnessing the creation of a new type of centralized or oligopolistic financial system?

--

[1] https://blockchain.info/pools

--

Edits: changed title so it better reflects what I intended to write; also, added and expanded several questions.
Guitar Hero creators breathe new life into cardio equipment with Goji Play
Lay the cards on the table, and let him make the decision. It's not your responsibility, as a developer or as a decent human being, to stop other people making bad decisions. Indeed, making bad decisions is a vital part of a full life experience.

I'm reminded of the words of Daniel Kish, a blind man who has struggled against the wrap-them-in-cotton-wool approach generally taken in the raising of blind children:

> Running into a pole is a drag, but never being allowed to run into a pole is a disaster. [1]

Tell him about the pole, and about the pain of running into poles, but if he choses to run, don't try to stop him.

[1] http://www.mensjournal.com/article/print-view/the-blind-man-...
http://xkcd.com/1299/

I grew up without a television - deliberate choice. My friends couldn't believe how much cool stuff I could get done because of this.
End of discussion? No, sir, it is not!

Your interpretation is extremely naïve. I could hold a gun to your head, for example. You wouldn't be forced per se to meet my demands, but you probably would because it would be extremely unreasonable not to. In the same way, the consequences for not complying are: an extremely expensive and possibly unaffordable rewrite, going to jail for a few years, or giving up their customers data in violation of their principles. The GHCQ order effectively put a gun to their head.
You need a wide range of disciplines to understand how it works and grok how it also changes the financial markets. i.e. it's complicated.
Found some detail of "splitting in two" to assure no single point of failure here https://certivox.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=10420248 "Distributed Trust Authority"
That is a serious flaw. I was thinking they had evil intentions.
Can somebody tell me the difference between using this and, say, a normal http-server+virtualenv+database set up?
This.

Don't ever go agile with a client you know up front has unrealistic expectations. Screw "customer collaboration over contract negotiation", you cannot collaborate with a client that isn't operating on the same level of reality.

This kind of client will screw you over the first chance they get, and the worst part is that half the time they won't even be aware of it.

If you can afford to say no, say no. If you can't, make sure you have a bullet proof contract, fulfill the contract diligently and then run.

Oh, and add a considerable percentage of overhead costs to your offer. Because even during the process you're going to be spending an awful lot of time explaining, negotiating and documenting everything.

Finally, check this client's network. If he has a lot of contacts and influence, and he can't manipulate you into doing lots of free extra work to salvage his project, he's likely to publicly blame you for his failure. One thing people with unrealistic expectations have in common is that failure is never their fault.
So if I put a gun to your head, and you give me money, you haven't been forced to, right?

Are you PG? No? Then who are you to decide when a discussion ends round here?
I've been wanting to do something like this for a while. I'd quite like something that collects commentary about the state of countries around the word, but I'm lacking decent sources, especially for outside of the west. Have you found any particularly enlightening sources of such things you'd care to share?
Eh, if you're trying to be anonymous your ISP is still tracking what you are watching. If you run a proxy on a server somewhere that provider is tracking it. If you're using anonymizing software your connection will be slow, but that might work.

Also the websites that provide the type of content you're referring to like to gauge people with expensive subscription costs and I'm not sure how you can set up a subscription service with bitcoin.
What does 'rot your mind' mean in this context? I agree, and intuitively feel there's value in avoiding short term distractions, but what's going on there? Is it just opportunity cost, spending time watching TV instead of thinking and learning so you miss out on the mental benefits? Or do certain types/durations of distraction make you less able to do complex mental tasks when you go back to them?
do you really think that in the hypothetical situation of a major bitcoin crash litecoin will still stand?
i think this highly unlikely. imho all the altcoins derive their value from the faith of people in bitcoin and by association in crypto currencies. the big one fails, all of them fail.
This is not serious analysis. It is The Economist.

Let's say I have changed my opinion on that particular publication since subscribing a few years ago.
Still Comparing "this" Pointer to Null?
YogaGlo's own website predates its original filing on Aug. 27, 2010

I was filmed in a Yoga class in 2007 using this technique. I don't have access to the video and am no longer in contact with the instructor, but I remember it happening and then saw the footage with my own eyes. I hope she reads this article and sends in the video as prior art!
Oh great, another browser we need to test on! Thanks A LOT!
> secretly

no, http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1061/can-a-51-att...
I think this is a great observation that has really only become possible from the internet: the ability to consume viewpoints from others outside of your small social circle has been increased massively. Sites like HN, reddit, dig, slashdot, etc have enabled that dialog on top of the usual one sided article.

Think back to when news was mostly distributed via TV or newspapers. Where could you get alternative views? Neighbors, churches? These folks won't likely come from as diverse backgrounds as folks you might find in an online forum. They will have grown up most likely in the same town you are in, raised in a similar fashion.
These days, I might read twenty different viewpoints of NSA wiretapping, from twenty different countries perspectives. It definitely provides the reader with a much richer experience, making the original article less valuable (except as a catalyst for the discussion obviously).