skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So, your post can be summed up by: BSD people don't think that the GNU people should use the word "free."

Uh, yeah.
How is this one of the craziest ideas you've heard? Amazon's web services use essentially the same approach, as do countless J2EE, PHP, and Python web applications.

I think you're picking on this because it's Microsoft, and because it's written for an audience of Visual Basic programmers.
With an Austrian co-founder; employees were a European/international hodgepodge; so, not necessarily brits in a strict sense.
I think it unlikely you have a compute cluster that can generate 3.3 million, billion, billion, billion SHA1 hashes per second (edit: and that assumes not adding the random 5 characters to the end). The actual contest will have a word list of a thousand words.

Also, (a) you're allowed to permute case of letters, exploding the search space even more, which is handy because (b) I presume the target sha1 will come from words not on the word list, making an exact match unlikely (hence score based on hamming distance).
I'm pretty sure you have no idea what you're talking about. Not securing the "underlying system" is not one of Microsoft's problems. No company in the entire industry spends more per line of code shipped or per developer on security than Microsoft; it would not surprise me to find out that Minesweeper got a security architecture review, a line-by-line security code review, and a penetration test before it was last shipped.

Your comment added no information. If GUID URLs are "kludgy", explain why they're kludgy. If something about ASP.NET is fundamentally insecure, explain how it's insecure.

(I say all this as a devoted Mac user).
Hey guys,I wrote this blog for those entrepreneurs who are looking to get started developing for a mobile platform such as the BlackBerry OS. I cover initial costs, whether they are necessary or optional, and explain the purpose of each. Have fun!
This is an interesting problem and as someone who's never been much good at writing big systems, I've given it some thought.

A system like Erlang helps here, I think, not because it is functional (and I say this as a functional programming advocate), but because it has a different metaphor for partitioning programs at the medium to large scale: processes.

With a process, you have to think about where you draw the "error boundaries". When a process fails, it fails and it is either restarted, or the calling process also fails and propagates the problem, or your code might simply report that the subsystem failed.

In the OO world, the main metaphor for decomposition of a problem is the class.

There are two pitfalls here, as I see it:

* The class metaphor is uniform enough such that it becomes difficult to decide where to draw the "error boundaries". This leads me (and others too, I suspect) to blur the small, medium and large scale interactions. Think of code that tries to deal with weird exceptions and interactions form a subsystem where, if this subsystem were a failing process (as in Erlang), the subsystem would have died and your code would have had to restart the process or give up,

* It's easy to share state. I am not yet sold on the idea that all shared state is evil (since I think there are problems that are easier to deal with when using shared memory), but I do think that the sharing of object references between different subsystems, in general, makes it much harder to have decoupled code.

It is possible to write OO code such that some classes are the equivalents of processes and where interactions with instances of those classes are treated as such (i.e. any exception coming from such an instance means that the instance must be terminated).

This need not entail too much extra work and benefit here is that one doesn't need to limit communication between "processes" to simple datastructures. And since the code uses the normal calling conventions, a debugger will work fine.

I do agree with everything that's been said here about refactoring though: for my part, I can't typically at the start of a project see how things should be decomposed.
Actually, that's been changed with Windows 7. It now requires the presence of an activated installation of a prior version of Windows.
Heyzap (YC S09) Wants you as a summer/fall programming intern (paid)
Taxes go down and the deficit decreases. Those from Texas can legally buy insurance from companies in Florida or Vermont or wherever they choose. No health care is tax advantaged or disadvantaged - it just is. People can order insurance custom to their needs; a pick and choose model that serves their situation. Healthcare lobbyists flood the street seeking alternative employment. Insurance is bought and sold like cell phone or cable service. Startups become highly tuned to the needs of the market and excel in matching people up with insurance companies and health plans in innovative ways. The market is allowed to operate like it should.

And then all is good with the world.

Edit: Fixed spelling mistake
Amazon.com: Asus Eee PC T91 8.9-Inch Black Tablet Netbook
you see I don't care what license he uses.

You said that you 'lament' that you can't use his code - how could you expect anyone to interpret that as something other than caring about the license that's preventing you from doing so?

No one has been attacking him

That's not true, a lot of people have been attacking him, but if you read my comment again, you should hopefully realize I never accused you of being one of them. I accused you of ignoring his point and of needlessly whining about how he used your tweet.
I always enjoy when you come into the security threads on HN, call everyone out on their BS and set the record straight. Keep up the good work. =)
Petty squabbling over bullshit like this, and even worse doing it in such a contradictory way, is stupid. This kind of useless bickering doesn’t help promote excellent software and “freedom” to express yourself with code.

I have a kettle you can meet, Zed.
What you're saying is true, although I'd also throw in that in addition to the war effort, there was also the Depression and inflation driving this bad legislation. One might draw parallels today with the recession and the likelihood of inflation following unprecedented borrowing, but that's neither here nor there.

In any case, I don't see how the specific motivation is relevant. The point is that the government is bad at anticipating the consequences of its actions. The initial motivation isn't what's important -- the end never justifies the means. The point is that pandering and public choice economics will always cause side effects.
That's exactly what I'm asking.

Is the backend also in Java then? So that debugging front and backend is all integrated? My impression from what I've read is that it is strictly front end Java to Javascript conversion, not both sides.

(in my original comment I could have been a bit clearer I suppose -- I currently find the pain in web app development to be debugging the interaction between the UI and the backend. I see how GWT can make UI development easier, but not the full stack)
The Genetically Modified Food You Eat
It's not in North America like these suggestions, but I would recommend visiting CERN in Geneva. I visited there a few weeks ago, and I was impressed by their public exhibit about particle physics. It would probably to children around 8 and up, I figure.

Edit: Oh, and while you're in Switzerland, go to Berne and visit Einstein-Haus, where Albert Einstein lived when he developed his Special Theory of Relativity. It's not quite as accessible to children, but still interesting.
Which is the source of the double standard Zed is experiencing. Corporations are expected to exploit advantages, while individuals are expected to reciprocate gifts.

It's not a GPL vs. BSD double standard, it's a social one.
Keep in mind also, the legal drug pushers spend incredible amounts of money in order to get people to self-associate with these disorders. They define them, market them, and sell the antidote.
I think it's an overly complicated solution for the stated problem. He shows insecure code that no one should use (unvalidated input through Request[]) and then solves it with an extremely kludgey solution. Same with the redirect problem he states. If you validate that the redirect is valid before making it, that problem is solved. The point being, as always, validate all input. Adding layers of complexity as a security "solution" compared to simple validation is a pretty crazy idea and a lot of unneeded complexity.
You're contradicting yourself then. If it doesn't implement the backend then it isn't both.
Git user survey 2009
How accurate are the future predictions?

The snowball theory of earth claims that volcanoes and land close to the equator (but not close to the poles) leads to oscillation between a tropical earth and an earth covered in ice.

Our present state of lots of land close to the poles leads to a more stable long term climate.

So if in the future the continents again bunch up around the equator we could see the earth covered in ice once more and another mass extinction.

Is this yet another reason why we have not made contact with aliens?

Yet another reason in addition to, just off the top of my head:

A stable star

Being a good distance from that star.

Asteroid sweeper like Jupiter and Saturn.

A magnetosphere.

A large close moon which will keep the core hot so you can have a magnetosphere.

No X-ray exploding super novas near by.

Life

Intelligent life

Intelligent life that doesn't destroy itself.

Space faring life

And all of this has to happen at the same time, at least until space flight takes them far from the home planet.

Also space is BIG.
good point, it seems like this would take out all of those landing page type sites
I've been pondering what about this whole mess it is that keeps mentally poking me. And the problem I have is the blatant hypocrisy of Arrington et al in the handling of this story.

The first post he made about this attempted to make the case that this was standard operating procedure, and really isn't anything out of line with the way things are normally handled. If that's the case, then why write a story talking about the fact that you've been given stolen documents containing large amounts of previously secret information. Then go on to say you won't post the personal information, and you're only posting the parts you find newsworthy.

If it's so normal, wouldn't you just post the stories, and mention that your source was some leaked documents you'd been given? You only do that if you feel you have something to justify, something to explain. In otherwords, you think you might be wrong.

So instead of handling this like they would any other source, for any other article, they've justified the source well in advance of actually using it. It's hypocritical and proves that all of this was just another stunt to drum up traffic.

Personally I'm done with TechCrunch. I won't follow links there, if I end up there by mistake, I'm closing quickly. I won't support this sort of blatant hypocrisy and grandstanding. It's not professional. It's not needed.
Yeah, to me this article basically sounds like some guy heard you shouldn't tightly couple your software, and wrote a blog post about it to sound smart. That may not be the case, but giving an example of how not to do it, and then NOT giving an example of how to do it just seems silly to me.
communication and wealth.

communication, because we can talk and interact with those who might be demonized as 'the other'.

wealth, because fewer of us are choosing between violence or wasting away.

the places where we still see pre-civilization-scale violence perpetrated are precisely those where communication can be controlled and the desperate taken advantage of.
Hmmm... I have! I admit.
Well no v1agra :-)
Just that VistaPrints spams like crazy with their 500 bizcards for $9.99 deal, and I have bought clicking on that ...
If you haven't, you might want to as well...
sigh fine
The Future of Computing?
Are data centers going to be the junkyards of the information age?
> blunt-force-trauma to the cranial region

All you'd get is a stupider NS sufferer.
Excellent article. I have bookmarked it and will try and do a self-study course on these lines.
MacBook Pro, Thousands of Colors
You won't really blow time fiddling with it until you get the hang of elisp. :) Then every little thing that bugs you makes you think, "Oh, I could just override this..."

(defalias 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p)	;don't bug me
A new compression algorithm to make Google Chrome updates small
Twitter, Even More Open Than We Wanted
What sank Veoh and Joost? Too much cash too soon.
Apple has secretly released a Tablet Computer: It's called iPod touch
I think you forgot linking - you know, that things that makes it a world wide web, not a world wide bunch of pages...
HOWTO: start using lisp in your work environment
The person who taught my abnormal psych course (not quite professor at the time, but very nearly at that point) said that in order to qualify to be diagnosed with any mental disorder, one must meet the qualifications laid out in the DSM and it must materially and negatively impact your life.

We're all paranoid, narcissistic, phobic, etc. to one extent or another, but it's only if it's a problem that you should be diagnosed.

News reports, being written as they are by non-psychologists and people who have not taken this class, tend to miss this.

(I'm not a psychologist either, but I feel pretty comfortable with sharing this information; it's pretty basic stuff.)
??? Doesn't every secure programming book start out with insecure code and then demonstrate how to properly fix it?
Zed is a master of the stupid publicity stunt... It's annoying but mildly entertaining.
'Free Cooling' works well in colder climates such as those found in Belgium. A larger fan on the server might be a cheaper solution. Direct air in the racks rather than the room can also be more effective. Since in the evenings air is normally cooler, this can also be used effectively by adding more 'mass' in the room. Anyone thought of having these datacenters on mountains?
No, it's been like this since near the beginning. Back when I was in the online gold sales industry (2000-2005), it was well understood that Paypal would put you out of business with their shady business practices. The gold industry has really small margins to begin with, so a single account freezing could (and often did) wipe out an exchanger.
Zed is good at creating silly controversy and buzz. Nobody I know has used mongrel for several years... though it was influential at the time.
.webfont Proposal 2
This is funny. There's going to be a huge applause for this post but whenever there's an article about an individual being prosecuted for piracy... it's the evil RIAA.

Edit: I'm not trying to turn this into a a piracy argument but I do think there's a double standard there.
That's part of what I mean; "I don't want to pay for it" is simply one facet of the limited resource side, just phrased oddly. Moreover, you call it "selfish" but that is leaping to conclusions. Some people really can't pay for others, and the fact is that all of us have limits on how much more we can pay for. I'm not entirely averse to some contribution, but I do have my limits, both to what I'm comfortable with and what to what I can sustain even in theory, and in light of the creation of a system disconnected from price signals and with no particular incentive to stop consuming it's not "selfish" to become concerned; it's just rational.

I think a lot of these people, though by no means all, have far more complicated motivations and opinions than you think, and only a handful are really, truly saying "screw you all". (I think it's nonzero, but that gets into the "not worth listening to" class of people. These marginal people exist for all topics, though it's important to not classify large numbers of people that way.) Most people are not going to eloquently describe their full belief system, anymore than I have my own here, and even if they did, you probably wouldn't listen. (Any more than I would; this is not a criticism.)
I love the "follow the moon" idea; I picture the globe spinning and sparks of data processing jumping from node to node to stay out of the sun.

It's pretty. Uh, in my head.
For apple I think the theme is engine / skin not what the license requires.

osx : darwin :: safari : webkit

Notice how the relationships revolve around the engine vs skin, not what the GPL requires. In other words, apple protects what makes them apple, not the underpinnings, at least in these examples.
A novice developer doesn't really need PHP-specific performance tips.
Detecting User Automation
The part that incites anger isn't prosecuting someone for behavior on the internet, it's the actual behavior. Astro-turfing reviews hurts consumers and thus this prosecution is applauded by consumers. Consumers downloading music hurts the producers and thus is applauded by the producers (well, some of them).

It's really not hard to understand why seeing the "little" guy be attacked incites more popular anger than the reverse.
I don't love this article, and I really don't want to pigeonhole myself into defending it. But one thing to keep in mind before commenting about how psycho it is to obscure URLs to prevent automated attacks is the audience for this article.

This is an article aimed at internal enterprise application developers. The people using ASP.NET to build applications that need to retrofit XSS protections are not YC startups or the next Wikipedia; they're commercial banking applications that normal people are never going to use.
I agree. To say loosely coupled software is better is just restating the Law of Demeter. The tricky part is figuring out where the interfaces should actually go. Every abstraction comes with overhead, so it only makes sense if it eliminates some emergent complexity from the whole system. Now I guess given the choice between the copy and paste code monkey and the architecture astronaut I'd choose the latter, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather work with someone who is smart and gets things done.

I think it's all too easy to look at old code with today's perspective, and assume the original programmers were idiots without considering what the code base looked like at the time or what were the requirements and time constraints given to them.
Ira Glass on Good Taste [video]
Not everything that uses HTTP needs to be part of a "world wide web"; sometimes, a form-based app is just a form-based app, and better that it use HTML and work in Firefox than a Win32-only WPF app.
Oh, I see. I guess my interpretation of "stolen property" is different from yours. Sorry.
This is a little different, though, isn't it? The RIAA does things like sue an individual for $300,000, well beyond what most individuals even have, much less are able to pay. This company was paying their staff to be fraudulent, and are likely in a better position to take the $300,000 fine as a slap on the wrist than individuals are.

I might even applaud the RIAA for helping to stop copyright violations (which, right or wrong, are indeed illegal) if they fined individuals for the price of a few albums rather than for a decade's worth of their salary.
Google Maps Markers Are Making Real World Appearances
Dr. Pinker has some good points, but I think he missed one. To quote Paul Graham: "Technology had made it possible to create wealth faster than you could steal it."

This fact has made it increasingly less profitable to steal from others directly, to invade other countries for financial reasons, and to do so many other things that either are violent or lead to violence. As that statement becomes increasingly true, there will be increasing little reason to commit violence for economic reasons, which accounts for a very large portion of it historically.

That alone certainly does not explain all of the decline Dr. Pinker cites, but I am confident it is a significant contributing factor.
Except that the latency for those following the sun would suck pretty much all the time.
PITA dealing with Apple on this, and the screens should indeed do what they advertise.

Still, since you already knew about 6-bit vs 8-bit issues, why did you not look in the store before buying? The dithering is visible to the careful eye just by looking for it on my 13" Macbook (white, plastic, relatively cheap).
Great article, but compiler theory is a huge omission. I can almost hear Yegge screaming in the background.
Announcing:  The Zed Shaw Celebutante License
Preamble:

The Zed Shaw Celebutante License (ZSCL) is designed to meet the objective of some open source contributors, which is to gain fame and notoriety in the open source community as a result of widespread adoption of open source software they have written.

The ZSCL is a "viral" license like the GPL, but instead of requiring derivative code to share the same license, the ZSCL simply requires a weekly tweet or blog post that meets the ZSCL Terms and Conditions (described below).

Terms and Conditions:

0. Virality. Anyone using ZSCL licensed code must write a blog post mentioning Zed. The post need not present Zed in a favorable light, but it must mention that Zed is the author of the Mongrel web server and the Lamson email system.

1. Qualifying posts. In order to meet the ZSCL community guidelines, a "Blog Post" must consist of at least 500 words and three hyperlinks. "Microblogging" posts such as Tweets are allowed, but multiple tweets are required to reach the 500 word minimum. Use of URL-shortening services is discouraged.

2. Attribution. Uses of ZSCL licensed code must mention in their post how invaluable the code was and how they plan to attempt to hire Zed to perform some consulting on a vital aspect of their project.

3. Fights. Users may also publicly threaten to start a fight with Zed, so long as Zed is granted full permission to disclose the threat on his own blog, as well as any relevant IRC snippets.

4. Reality Television. Zed Shaw reserves the right to discuss your blog post and code in any future reality television series that he may star in. This includes any sponsorship and in particular extends to action figure royalties.

How to Apply these terms to your new programs:

If you develop a program and want to license it under the ZSCL, you must create a blog post on your own personal blog that meets the above terms and conditions, and also makes some particularly brash and bold claims about the software. It is recommended that you predict that your code will mostly be used by black hats, spammers, or Fortune 10 companies.
Ask HN:  Is there a need for an E-Signature?
I've been stuck on #30 for days... any good hints? I found an email following the hints I had already posted before, but it's not complete.
Nice article, and I agree.

I think I could summarize it this way though: if you're spending time thinking about how to become an "entrepreneur", then you probably aren't one.
Contributing to a project doesn't mean you get to ignore the license; if you submit a patch for readline, you still have to GPL your app that links to it.

The LLVM project isn't controlled by a single entity, but it does get a lot of code from "commercial" users, so those users chose a license that works well for them. (It ensures that any future contributions will be usable under an acceptable license.) Admittedly the LGPL would also be fine, but ... that's not what they picked.
I'm not sure what this guy is looking for. Regardless of whether the display is 6-bit, or just 8-bit that looks crap, you're still going to have a problem. Unless you're harboring a fantasy that Apple will give you a MacBook with a custom screen as way of an apology.

They've offered you a refund. Take the money and use it to buy the 15" MacBook with a better screen. And this time try checking out the product to make sure it meets your needs before splashing down thousands of dollars.
Biz (who wrote this post) is a smart cookie. The best verbal defense they could have come up with for the situation they are in, IMO.
eeww, AGPL is a big fail here if you want folks to actually use this thing.