skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> C# only works on Windows

That's not true.

> yeah, I know about Mono

And you know it :-). I agree if you want to express that C# on Linux is a niche. But there're big projects using it in production. Have a look at the Mono project page. Also, have a look at Xamarin.

> can't do mobile, can't do big data, probably won't work very well for scientific computing

There's no language that does all these things well. Java is for Android and big data suited, but not for scientific computing. Fortran, C and C++ are great at scientific computing, but certainly not for mobile (except Qt on niche plattforms). Objective C is not appropriate for big data and scientific computing. Rust and Go aren't the can-do-it-all languages / ecosystems either.

C# and the .NET ecosystem are actually second to Java in terms of reach and versality. Taking Xamarin into account C# has the top spot for mobile.

> equally I worry that it'll be used as a way to generate patents to prevent the ideas being used elsewhere

FUD
Ceol. I am Black. I am African. I live in Orange County (3% Black - At best). I am 32. I started to learn how to code at 28. I am still not comfortable walking in a room where everybody is White. I feel like a fraud sometimes, when I tell people I know how to code (in PHP).

None of the above stopped me from slinging that code for several hours today.

I understand what being a minority is, but quite frankly most of the time that shit is in our head. If you don't care, then no one will. Somebody having an advantage does not mean you have a disadvantage, this is not a zero sum game. I am writing code for a product for women (Hint: Alexander Wang, diane von furstenberg, Tory Burch, Marc Jacobs kinda stuff). Just because women knows these brands more than I (in general) does not mean I should sit back.

It's hard, I get it, but what other choice do we have but roll up our sleeves and make our own mark and tell them "You see, mine count too," instead of "Make it easy for me to get in."

But I'll admit, I am very naive, and that has cost me greatly.

At any rate, apologies.
I'm not an expert on this, but I believe that at the VM user level they would see wiped data because of the internal mapping. I think physical analysis of the drive would be required.
Obviously I agree (check out my page of teensy executables sometime), but it's much more complicated to compete on that metric. The size of a compiled executable can vary widely depending on details of your compiler and/or platform, making for a very unportable challenge. In a monoculture world, that would be more practical, but that's not how things are nowadays.

However, I will say that trying to minimize the size of the source involves much of the same kind of resourcefulness and lateral thinking that minimizing executable size does. So despite the drawbacks, it really is just as fun.
Or maybe the Motorola 68k was designed specifically so MacPaint could have a 416 pixel wide canvas.
According to them, it's either a bug they already fixed in April, or leaking data today by design?

https://www.digitalocean.com/blog_posts/resolved-lvm-data-is...

https://twitter.com/jedgar/status/417515181418479616
Not several times more capacity, it's generally about 7% (that's why you often see 120 GB or 240 GB drives that are in reality 128 GB or 256 GB.)
Also, even if they zero the primary block device, what about swap if it's provided as a separate block device?
Often when using C++ I find myself solving C++ problems, not real problems. In a domain with very difficult math and performance challenges, the C++ problems will be dwarfed by the difficultly of the real problem you are solving.

For domains outside of physics and applied math, I think the dominating factor is often the inherent trickiness of writing correct procedural code vs. the ease of writing strongly typed functional code.
Government exists to organize society. Feudalism served its lords, monarchy served its kings and nobles, empire its emperors, and democracy, occasionally, its people.

Government has served a variety of masters in the past - but rarely purely the public interest.
Ask HN: As a front-end dev should I learn Angular or Rails?
'm a front-end dev with about four years experience. I am very comfortable with html/CSS/js(jquery) and I am also really comfortable with WordPress development. I would like to start learning a new technology but I'm not sure which direction I should go. As far as my personal preference goes, I would love to learn Angular and Rails but I also only want to focus on learning one really well. My question is, what would be more attractive for an employer? A front-end developer who knows his way around rails but doesn't have the more advanced knowledge of a JS MV* framework or a front-end dev who does have that experience of working with something like Angular but doesn't have very experience with a backend language?
It doesn't as you're blocked after only 3 attempts.
> several of her circle started Gittip accounts and they are cleaning house

459usd/week*52weeks/year = 23k/year - taxes = ~10k

They will be rich soon.
Seriously? Why on earth should Joe Average be made to clean reinstall OS after buying a new hardware?
I can't see an answer either, that doesn't include some form of 'global awareness' (Julian May's Unity perhaps). That is what is depressing to me; the hegemony is complete, and the means left at our disposal to stop it, are gone.
+1, adding some money to Shanley's account
This is awesome. SimTower was one of my favorite games as child, heck its even awesome now. I spent around 6 months creating my own version of SimTower called DroidTowers and released it on Android. Working on that project was one of the most fun experiences in my career as a software engineer.

I open sourced[1] the entire game shortly after securing funding for my current startup. Maybe I could donate the art to OpenSkyscraper. I really want this project to succeed :D

[1] https://github.com/pplante/droidtowers
NSA’s top secret hacking unit ‘TAO’ in Texas targets companies
>It is unethical to disclose security-related issue of some PaaS publicly without first going through the responsible party first.

Says who? You?

DO has a history of not responding to issues UNTIL they are publicly disclosed. And in any case, your iron-clad "argument" is a matter of opinion and nothing else. Many people prefer full disclosure.
no one said 'be made'. He said the average joe should acknowledge that it is a good idea. Previously I have suggested other people reinstall to get rid of bloatware installed by the vendor.
> Similarly, if a user does not correctly delete data on a budget host, is it the hosts fault?

What does the verb "destroy" mean?

Screenshot taken today (30DEC13) from a fresh blank Digital Ocean server I just provisioned:

http://i.imgur.com/fJOxRN9.png
You're right. Encryption is the right answer. What does Amazon do with their SSDs? Anyone know?
About self driving cars, drones and imagination.
Technology for Social Good.
DO provide a single block device (so swap is on the same block device), that gets zeroed if you set the scrub data option.
I know 68k from the Atari ST, and the MOVEM.L trick was well known. The ST had a similar M68K to the Mac 128K, but the screen buffer was 32k (640x400) instead of the Mac's 21.9k (512x342). The ST's CPU was more than capable of copying 32k from location to location within a single screen redraw, so I imagine the same was true for the Mac, especially since it had to shift less data.

In addition, there's no reason why one MOVEM can't contain data from multiple rows. For a 640x400 buffer like you find in the ST, each row requires approximately 1.5 MOVEM commands. No problem, since your buffer will have access to contiguous memory. Your second MOVEM call will copy the last half of the 1st row and the first half of the 2nd. Your buffer has to have a horizontal size that is a multiple of 32 pixels, but not 416.

I suspect the real reason for this weird resolution is boring memory constraints. If I'm reading the 68K code correctly, a MacPaint buffer was 416x200 - 10.4k. According to Wikipedia[1] MacPaint used 2 off-screen buffers = 20.8k. The ROM is 68k, then there's probably at least 1 system-reserved screen buffer of 10.4k. The OS has to fit in somewhere. That's quite a lot for a 128K machine.

Find the most comfortable painting layout where the horizontal canvas size is a multiple of 32 pixels and 2 buffers fit within 21k.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macpaint
Show HN: CoinSpy - Get alerts on bitcoin transactions on any number of addresses
I don't really see how this is leaking data. I can use the dropbox API to make a bunch of files with private data shared with the world. But dropbox isn't "leaking" my data, I'm using the API in such a way that makes my data accessible. Not an exact analogy, and I would agree that the option should be on by default so people who know what they're doing can opt-out and everyone else gets a safer default, but this isn't a "data leak."
I - for one - think that libertarianism is just as bad a problem as "the security state" (or whatever label you want to apply to a state-run security apparatus which appear to be beyond the rule of law).
This is probably one of the most important problems of our generation to solve (as hackers, not philanthropists) and it's sort of amazing that it's hardly known, let alone discussed. I've brought it up before and it seems like everyone's reaction is that it's not worth worrying about. But there are adversaries besides the NSA, such as malware. And since userspace programs can upgrade your BIOS, then therefore it's possible to write a viruses to infect your BIOS exactly as described here. If the BIOS security model is even slightly broken, then malware will find a way into it, and security is hard to do perfectly. Why are we trusting proprietary motherboard manufacturers not to have backdoors in their closed-source systems? The answer is probably because we have little choice in the matter. Thus we're giving up a basic right: for us to have faith in our security practices. If, say, Colin Percival's careful security habits can simply be circumvented by his motherboard, then none of us are safe.

We need an open source motherboard for people who care about protecting themselves from this kind of thing. Or at least an open source BIOS. But it's an insidious problem, because once a BIOS is infected, it controls everything that may ever replace the BIOS. Therefore it's almost impossible to detect if your BIOS has been "man in the middle'd," and hence even an open source BIOS may not be enough.

I don't have a good solution, but this is a terribly important problem to solve.
People in the streets... would be met with brutality and force I would think. The Occupy Wall Street folks didn't fare so well. That is my issue; there's a large body of people getting fed information, that preclude what you suggest.
Startup: The Innovation Puzzle
With the holidays, I had some free time for a weekend project. Let me know if you think this is useful or if you have any ideas for improvement. Thanks for looking!
The best way we can get the attention of the companies is by causing them to lose profits. This is best done by an organized boycott of their goods and services. It will get their attention very quickly. But currently we don't have a central website to browse and search boycotts and other forms of protest.

In addition to protesting, we should also consider building a free open source network thats protected and run by the community. (It could be run by the government, but until the government is 'for and by the people', we'll crowdsource the maintainance and seek to rapidly automate the work that nobody would volunteer for) We can give ourselves the best, but lets start with free gigabit internet wired and wireless for all of America! What would this 'cost' in terms of money? millions or billions? But the resources are here; just being hoarded until money is traded. Would AT&T build a free network for us? Not if it meant losing money to Verizon. But what if it wasnt about money? The value in having a fully connected country is priceless.

Thankfully we have the government to protect us against trusts and monopoly's. But what if the trust or monopoly was a community one? If AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile colluded to give free gigabit internet to America, they could combine their separately walled gardens and use those resources to further the human race. But this would have to be a guaranttee so that once everyone put all their time and resources into this, some CEO cant just flip a switch and start charging. Once free, always free. So if they did this it would probably mean giving up their pride and names. I mean, would this free network be called Verizon? Why do they get their name on it? So we could crowdsource a new name for our free network so no one can boast. US Telecom, US Net, Free Net, the name can be anything, something we would all be proud to get behind. the most important part is the 'us' and 'US'. All of us in the US have the resources to take care of all of US(just focusing on America now, but eventually we could help the world). These telecom companies will either become part of the solution or they will precipitate out.

Again though, this would be a huge project and there's currently no website we can go to in order to find and take part in these country and perhaps global initiatives. Imagine a mix of Kickstarter and Change.org. First a project or idea is petitioned to the community and if enough people like it and think it would be the best solution, then its opened up to a crowdsourcing page to collect funds and not just money but people can also donate the final resources that are ultimately needed, which is what the money would eventually be traded for anyways....more to come, working on this website...
Just a random idea from an ignorant individual..

What if DO actually encrypted the SSD space with a key that they only have, and a new key is created for each droplet?

Then any droplets that are created later in a deleted space will just see effectively random data, no?
Sure. But you can come up with equally plausible standards that cut the other way: for instance, Germany had achieved universal male suffrage while Britain still had property requirements and was much more vigorously fighting women's suffrage with state repression. The German High Command could mobilize troops and declare war without parliamentary approval, but, hell, we effectively allow that in the USA today. And it's not like the German populace were snookered into the war: the Reichstag was not only willing but ecstatic to vote to support and fund the war. It's not the case that every German was happy about the war, but response was akin to the American national rallying that happened after 9/11.

I wouldn't want this to become a tit for tat about who was the real democracy in the war: I'm perfectly happy to say that every participant fell far short of democracy. But the democratic peace folks are making a seemingly predictive, scientific claim using a really fuzzy and emotionally laden term like democracy that's easy to bend to mean whatever you like.

If there's something that's meant beyond my "US/UK and their allies don't fight each other" idea, I'm all for hearing it out. What are some of the countries considered democracies by the democratic peace proponents that aren't in that alliance and seem not to have been in a war with that alliance due to the fact that they're democratic and not autocratic?

I do concede that there it isn't inherently an error to say one country is more democratic than another, and that the Ottomans and Austria Hungary clearly end up on the losing side of that comparison.
//He said the average joe should acknowledge that it is a good idea

I'd rather have average Joe ignore and boycott vendors that install bloatware and make the vendors realize that's a bad idea..
> Even if you adore the principle of Net neutrality, it's reasonable to demand that federal regulatory agencies stick to what Congress authorized them to do.

Congress has already authorized it, the FCC is just trying to have its cake and eat it too. The FCC decides whether to classify last mile internet service as a "telecommunications service" that they have significant statutory authority over or an "information service" that they don't, and they picked the second one but are trying to impose regulations anyway, which is why they keep getting slapped down.

Choosing that classification was so controversial at the time that they got sued over it, and the Supreme Court ultimately said that the FCC was allowed to make that classification, not that they were required to. Now that everything that was once classified as a "telecommunications service" is being offered instead over the top using "internet service" it seems reasonable for them to revisit the classification.
Heh, was talking about this today. A big MRI manufacturer's manager has been widely quotes in my little world as comparing their crashing/non functional MRI scanner software update to the Maps drama. Not sure how the two situations are related, but a crashing and non functional MRI scanner is kind of a big deal when you are sick. Mapping software not so much.
I think the issue of defaults is orthogonal to the issue of billing. For example, they could make scrubbing on by default (or even mandatory) and still bill customers for it. Of course they would have to disclose this.
Oh so that's why my Lenovo was held for "customs". Hope they at least removed the Chinese backdoors while they were installing the American ones.

Look at me, I'm so clever using HTTPS and GnuPG and FOSS linux when my hardware RNG is key escrowed, my USB cable is transmitting, my factory BIOS has at least two nationalities of spyware, and Big Brother is watching me naked in 720p. So glad I'm not a journalist and have an adequate physique.
I think the electric car as dispatchable load holds the most promise. I don't know the physics of the batteries but I imagine that reducing the rate of charge of many car batteries would temporarily reduce demand without causing a charge / discharge cycle of the battery and would benefit the stability of the system in the short term if required

Edit:
Also using car batteries as dispatchable load and not dispatchable generation simplifies the problem for utilities. They still have to deal with increased load but not drastic changes in power flows.
Heh, I'm only now taking the time to buy last generation (Xbox 360 and PS3) now that they're so cheap on Craigslist (sub-$110).

If I want cutting edge features I use a computer, if I want the content library I use a console.
I would expect any sane large provider to zero the disks simply to make it easier to overcommit on the storage layer.
At my office, everyone uses the same model laptop. Thus, everyone has the same ip, os and screen size.
I take your point, but if you earn $23k/year you aren't paying over 50% in tax. Particularly post eitc.
You are a front end developer.. so learn a front end framework.
What makes a city approachable?
I take back what I said about the definitional problem.

But I don't see where you've established that Bitcoin has such a floor, as I said above. I don't think we're getting anywhere, though, so I'm going to break off.
It absolutely is a data leak.

I spun up a vm and ran "strings" on the blockdev and got this:

http://i.imgur.com/fJOxRN9.png

Some poor iPhone users in Portugal have no idea that the app they're using is backed by a webservice on a VM that gives its block storage contents to anyone who gives Digital Ocean a $5 PayPal payment.

If that isn't a data leak, I don't know what is.
The bug in April was about the option not working.

The feature now works if you use it. By design if you don't use it you don't wipe the disk (saving you money).
Wait a second. Why does this option exist at all? Are you saying there are people who DO NOT WANT their data destroyed when they destroy a VM? Who are these people?
You don't need any dirt. There are enough people that think honest people don't need to fear surveillance, and even more people thinking there's nothing wrong with losing a little privacy and a little dignity if somebody says it is because of terrorists and person saying it wears some kind of uniform. That's why TSA agents are universally tolerated. That's why nobody in Congress with powers to look into everything NSA is doing was actually interested in raising any objections about what is going on before Snowden. People value freedom much less than one'd hope, especially when they're properly scared by somebody in uniform.
In this case you'd probably be better off with a computer.
it works of course, but to be compatible with many environments we need something more reliable than Referrer.
Oh, hey guys, they've responded. It's no big deal, they just disabled the security because because _users were complaining_.

Turns out it "add[s] a very large time to delete events" when you actually delete things when a user makes an api call to DESTROY. Who knew?

http://i.imgur.com/MFW8ng6.png
Wow. Yours looks a lot better than mine did.

It's like magic, really - I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it for myself.
I completely agree for the UI. For the API I think it is completely fine to have it not as default (In fact I would argue having a boolean controlling an optional action default to false for an API is the most correct action).
Because software is eating the world.

Because entrepreneurship creates jobs.

Because software is the new means of production.

Because people different than you have problems which are different than yours.

Because dog-fooding is a great way to make something people want.

Lots more reasons, but chew on those.
I think its more about filling pockets by charging registration fees. One should try out for only IEEE conferences although it is not necessary but "International" in the title really does not make a conference "International"
This is the equivalent of complaining very loudly and publicly that someone broke into your house after the police warned you, "Hey, you shouldn't leave your door standing open -- someone might break in."
A natural monopoly is a well defined term in economics. A natural monopoly occurres when there are massive fixed costs but insignificant variable costs in delivering a service.

The economics of the industry naturally lead to one firm providing the service, a monopoly.
Desolation of Smaug - "Happy" Ending...(Evangeline Lilly)
Damn straight.

If I have something important on a VM it is purged before issuing a destroy. I will overwrite the block device myself so I know it is empty.

Why should I have to pay for DO to do the same again just because someone can't be bothered to read the manual.
You haven't received a bill? Fascinating — do you not pay taxes? Because if you are, then you most certainly have been paying for medical treatments for veterans and their families, as well as various US government cleanup projects.

Civil lawsuit: http://www.benefits.va.gov/compensation/claims-postservice-a...
Rise in Twitter's Stock Reflects Exuberance in Silicon Valley
Don't say "Would You Rather"
Doesn't this seem a little moustache-twirly, even for the NSA? I imagine the only way they'd actually expend the necessary man-hours on this is if they were intercepting hardware ordered by people who were already targets of interest. Now, that probably means Merkel should buy her laptops in-store, with cash, but this really doesn't seem like the sort of panopticon story we've been reading elsewhere. Unless, of course, they've managed to convince a judge to give them a warrant to compromise the Dell/etc factory image.
Traffic magistrates don't usually have the power to establish precedent.