skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Students hate paying for things. I think it will be very hard to make a paid model work on a scale that would see any kind of real revenue. The problem is only exacerbated by the fact that there are already a lot of similar free services out there.
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Although this solution and the solutions mentioned in the above threads are technically sound, I am aghast at the sincerity with which they were suggested.

It is not appropriate to interfere with such a crucial piece of infrastructure. In developing countries especially, cell phones are the only link many people have. They run their small businesses, allow people to call family to see if they have been hurt, etc.

Would you tolerate something like this in your Country? Shut down the internet for a little while to prevent a terrorist threat?
Also,

http://diy.alltop.com/

And a compilation:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tutorial_sites.php
The SVG animation looks much nicer. It works well in Chrome 3.0.193.0 in Windows XP.
any suggestions for items in a questionnaire? :)
If you're using Python (or at least not opposed), this does the trick nicely:

http://www.xhtml2pdf.com/
Ah good. I was 75% sure it was a joke, but thought I would double check. And indeed, the fact that some of us weren't sure shows that it is something that we could see the US government doing. Very sad.
It seems transparently, wishful-thinkingly illegal. If everyone can find out when a warrant was served by watching what rsync.net says, then how can rsync.net claim they kept the existence of the warrant secret?
Well the footer says it's powered by http://www.freepdfconvert.com/ so it looks like it's just a different entry point for their services.
Why the downvotes? It's absolutely true. "I heard something" is not a proper argument, and the claim that CR has no effect on lifetime is at odds with everything I've heard on the matter. One of my friends (Chemistry PhD) is crazy about the subject, has read all the studies and he's very excited about the insight CR discoveries may bring.

So .. harsh but fair. Anecdotes are worthless. Source please. And cdr should be rewarded, not punished, for calling it out.
Because this is one of my favorite online hang outs. It's like asking why shop at WalMart rather than go to the equally priced specialty store. I'm already here and I'm interested in helping others in the community.
Thanks for the info about how it works in different European countries.

You have realistic points, someone taking the pains to import me should really be interested in my skills to be worth it.

Thought i can't say i have enough savings to travel on my own, the only things i have to sell are my skills. (don't even have my passport, never flew, but that can be taken care of i suppose)

Revealing a bit more, i am a css/frontend guy (people say i am good, though no at all great/brilliant/Google/Yahoo standards). This actually might be a -ve point, as most agencies would prefer to hire solid 'programmers' from outside not a soft coder like 'css guy', what you think?
as long as its not streaming video or something, so far CloudFront/S3 from Amazon Web Services has been very fast and easy to use, and you pay for what you use. If you google for 37signals and AWS you can find their monthly bill, and it was seemly low for all the data they used.
It would be an interesting legal case to say the least, especially because they do not indicate that they will provide further information about the warrant, or how to act other than individuals should "take special notice".

Still I believe you are correct, by having a publicly stated policy about their planned inaction when served a secret warranty is effectively the same as making a public announcement. Ballsy, but kudos to them for making a statement about their privacy beliefs.
A couple issues to note off the top of my head:

"In order to login, a user will be presented with a
standard html form on a page that may or may not be
encrypted, at this point SSL is not relevant."

SSL is -quite- relevant at this point. You are specifically addressing MITM situations, and an MITM can, if you do not use SSL to send the log in form, send a modified login form which either posts to a different attacker-controlled server or simply attempts to post to your server in the clear, allowing the attacker to capture the users credentials in cleartext.

Also, it seems that after you use the SSL session to get the AES-encrypted cookies to the user, the user still has to have an AES key stored on their system (and the AES key is what allows the user to continue making requests by proving the user's knowledge thereof by encrypting randomly generated "hashes" and getting new AES keys). What would prevent an MITM attacker, once you are no longer using SSL, from sending down a modified page to the user with malicious javascript that sends the user's current AES key to the attacker, thereby allowing the attacker to hijack the user's session?

While this scheme -should- prevent offline/passive replay attacks, it does not seem to mitigate an active Man-In-The-Middle attack.

ADD: What I would suggest if you could not afford to run your site in full-SSL, is that you require SSL for any operation that is not a READ or is a read of sensitive account info. Don't allow a user to post messages, delete records, etc. over regular HTTP. If some MITM steals your users cookies, then they will at best be able to, say, read a bit more of your user's mail than they would have been able to had they just sniffed the portion that your user actually requested. (Not that I would ever recommend not using full-SSL for email. Remember "Forgot your password?") Also, do not give a "Remember this computer forever" option when not using full-SSL (or at least make the "forever" cookie a secure cookie and still expire the non-secure session cookie) and ALWAYS expire cookies on the server side.
Yeah should apply, although in your situation you can pretty much start reading mid way through. That's where he deals with management level things you should/shouldn't do in order to preserve your success.
Federal IT Dashboard
Microsoft Office to go online — for free
is it an artifact of my machine or is that video really hard to hear?
right. I'm sorry, but the microsoft version of 'free' is not so appealing to me any more. We spent considerable time and money breaking the last bits of heritage from our 'lock in', it would take a very serious reason to get back in to it.

The only reason we still have a single windows machine is because it seems canon scanners are supported on windows only, other than that it's all linux or apple now.

And this being microsoft, and for now it being vapourware I'll hold my breath to see if it is really free or if there is some catch.
So like, why are you working so many hours? I was trying to say that if your main focus is making money, maybe startup work has to wait or be seriously de-prioritized. In the last year, I worked perhaps 50-60 hour weeks at my current job at a startup and spent the rest of the time focusing on stuff like optimizing eclipse, understanding scalability in web apps, understanding the relationship between data modeling and data structures and algorithms and software engineering best practices so on. Now, I am relatively young (28) and I skimped on some of these topics in school, so I felt like it was clear that even though I was not working on my specific application, I would be more productive concentrating on putting my mind into the right state and sharpening my tools. I don't know how you are, but if I regularly work more than 70 hour weeks my emotions start to get frazzled, I get irritable and I start making mistakes. I find that making mistakes in writing software is like building a house on the sand, so they absolutely must be avoided. I think you should basically take a few days off of anything that is not absolutely NECESSARY and relax and make a plan for a routine that will maximize your long term productivity. I feel like in the function of your productivity over time, you are using some greedy algorithm to maximize productivity locally and you are not optimizing your productivity over time. It feels like you are somehow not working hard enough when you are relaxing, but this is still absolutely necessary for doing creative work. Writing some revolutionary software is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to pace yourself and keep your emotions and physical body in a positive state. Your original message shows stress and worry and this is not a productive way to live life. Just my opinion, for what it is worth...
> "and might blow up a number of terrorists in the process."

... and civilians. Hearts and minds anyone?
Do you really think your casual pondering of the matter has revealed an insight not obvious to the experienced, professional scientists who designed and are now running this large scale, multi-decade experiment?

It beggars belief they have not considered, and painstakingly controlled for, such factors.
Gmail Labs Adds Verified Accounts Key To Prevent Phishing
I used to host with johncompanies.com (started by the same group or person), and support was always excellent with them as well. I didn't have to use it often, but whenever I did it was a fantastic experience.

It seems like they've got a pretty good idea about what things cost them and can scale by charging the right price for their business. I think they'll do fine.
How long would it take the lawyer to make his case? All rsync.net needs is to skip one day and it's too late. If rsync.net can stall a bit or find a way to fight it, then it's over.
Know Thyself: Tracking Every Facet of Life, from Sleep to Mood to Pain, 24/7/365
Google in your house...
RIM thinks Social Networking is answer for slow BB app sales
The downside of the "great man" setup is that Apple was not at all impressive without Steve Jobs at the helm. Uninspiring to outright bad Mac models, Microsoft putting out a superior OS for a time, etc. To be glib, with Jobs, you get the Wired "Evil Genius" cover story on Apple - and without Jobs, you get the old "Pray" cover story on Apple.
Judging by most American's acquiescence to security demands since 2001, probably.
You are heading straight for a burnout. Now, you're obviously a smart fellow, my only question to you is why ?
The overflight followed by an explosion would even leave observers with the impression the US was dropping ordnance on civilian centers. All bad.
Good point. I'd argue that families have a larger need for a shared calendar. "Don't forget to pick up Joey at 3pm" is a real problem and using the fridge to communicate is not the best approach.
Tissue engineering, tissue engineering, tissue engineering.

Use stem cells, cancer cells use anything, stick it in a box, put in a filter, keep it external to the body, like one of those new insulin pumps.

Or shrink the dialysis machine down the size of one of those new insulin pumps, and have it on the person 25/7.

Right now I think there's 50/50 chance advancements like that will NOT happen in the US, but in less regulated places like China.
I'm not even sure you would need a skilled lawyer. Judges tend to be fairly smart. The law isn't a computer program, mindlessly followed by automatons on the bench. Intent matters, and I wouldn't be surprised if a judge considered this exactly the same as issuing a press release.
I'm not sure that the government can legally force you to lie, though. Anyway, I'm sure the authors of the law didn't consider this possibility (they are politicians after all) so it would ultimately be decided by a judge. I would bet 50/50 on the result.
Tracking moving boxes (and your friends) with "Find My iPhone"
I don't think open source is the particular answer to the problem you state, I think it's an orthogonal issue.

If you have millions of users who want to ask questions (think of supporting Microsoft Office), then direct access to developers is a non-starter.

What I have seen work are rotation programs where developers spend some time as first-line support (maybe 1 week per year). When doing so, they help educate the rest of the support staff, and they get great exposure to real users facing real problems.
I keep wondering how sophisticated the insurgents are. If they have some savvy equipment and know-how they can easily modify the software to reject calls from anyone but a hardcoded number.
Heh. This is likely based on similar technically legal signs: http://www.librarian.net/technicality.html

This has been around around a year:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2ygi6/warrant_c...

Edit: HTML.
Another edit: reddit.
Knowing the way bureaucracies work, they wouldn't manage to get the order to force them to update the canary until a few days later, at which point it would be too late.

All they need to do is buy themselves one day, and have a track record of not being late with the updates.
'Rosetta Stone' Of Bacterial Communication Discovered
This would be a much more interesting article if the author had at least tried to get answers to his questions (perhaps from the GNU foundation or the Software Freedom Law Center, etc) and included that with his questions. That would have been an interesting article, and possibly useful to hackers and software entrepreneurs.

As it is, I'm surprised and disappointed that an article with so little substance has made it so high on the HN front page.
Large Extra Dimensions At Reach Next Year
I've been looking at the photo, and I think the description is incorrect. I don't think it's a cellphone. It looks to me like a 2-way radio.

I can't see any keypad, and it has what looks like a very small display, stubby antenna, and PTT switch on the side. It looks very much like the cheap Chinese FRS or GPRS radios you see in some import stores here in the 'States.

Some of those radios can be set up with squelch codes (similar to PL tones or CTCSS) so that a receiver won't break squelch unless a transmitter set to the same code uses the channel. That would be a fairly reliable short-range detonation mechanism, and it would explain why the Coalition jammers work without setting them off.

At any rate, it sure doesn't look like a cell phone to me.
Nice list of questions...I've used GPL'd software extensively, read numerous discussions about the license, and read the GPL several times through, and am still uncertain (or at least uncomfortable) about the answer to most of these questions.
> What I have seen work are rotation programs where developers spend some time as first-line support (maybe 1 week per year). When doing so, they help educate the rest of the support staff, and they get great exposure to real users facing real problems.

This skirts the real issue, though, which is that the person you get on the line should have the power to fix your problem. Putting developers on first-line support would only help if they were still developers while they worked there, with all the same access privileges and tools available to them.
The NY Times on Internet video - seeing the forest for the trees
This rumor has been going around for years. Is anything different this time?

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=5302
Let me see... how about not supporting HTML5? That would pretty much kill all of the new Google products for 70% of the PC market... And it's not immediately grounds for an anti-trust lawsuit.
You realize that unless you have a trust path via keys that you've signed (preferably by meeting the people holding them) that that verification isn't verifying much, right?

It's pretty easy to create a key that has that key id (since it's only the last few hex digits of the full 40 digit fingerprint) and the user id is freeform.

If you don't believe it's easy to pick your own key id, check the keyservers for the number of keys with DEADBEEF as their key id ;)
In many cities, specialized police units either already have or are in the process of being issued cell phone jamming units.

They are being issued with these sorts of scenarios specifically in mind. If the police think there's a bomb somewhere, set to be triggered via cell phone, damn right I'd want them to block the cell phones in the local area to keep it from going off.

The problem with cell jamming technology isn't when it's being used to stop bombs from going off, the risk is that it'll be used for more trivial purposes.
I really don't think when I was a student I could have justified paying for a service like this.

That being said, I think it's a neat idea.
Jacob brings up a point I haven't seen clearly expressed before -- the GPL's design directly leads to questions like these (now more than ever with Python/Ruby and Javascript), but the FSF not only does not provide clear or useful answers, there is no mechanism for arriving at decent answers.

The problem with the GPL is not really the evangelical copyleft (as annoying as those people can be), the problem is that it's too fucking complicated to deal with in real-world situations.
If it's for a product you love (and it should be if you're doing a start up), it's not tech support. It doesn't even feel remotley close to tech support. It's just fixing or explaining something that matters a lot to you. Hackers always want to talk about their pet projects... why not make the customer happy while doing it. :-)
The law takes the idea of forcing a person to speak much more seriously than the idea of forcing him to remain silent, particularly if you would be forcing him to make a knowingly false declaration. I can't think of an instance off-hand where a US judge has forced a civilian by injunction to make a known-false public statement.
One of the reasons often cited for the structure that existed was 'it would distract developers working on the product from meeting the deliverables'.
There is a role for support on a complex product where user errors often are the reason for tech support calls.

However, If you have a problem that requires code fixes, I cannot imagine having to deal with a long line of people who have no power to make those changes.
There's nothing really novel here, though, except a little bit of cryptography to prevent the government from faking the messages, and the authors of the law were almost certainly not politicians. As far as I'm aware, laws are normally drafted by the people who want them passed -- lobbyists, usually, but in this case I would guess the law was written by DOJ or FBI lawyers.
I know it would take away from the "liveness" of it but it would be neat if you could wait for an entire rows worth of images to appear and have a smooth animation that pushed everything down to make room for that new row.

The way each image is added currently is a little "jarring" visually...

Cool though :-)
OMG U FAIL SO HARD
Most of his questions deal with GPLv3 it seems.
Note that the posts above are not advocating disabling the cell network, but they are instead advocating autodialing -- something that is regularly tolerated (although despised) in the U.S.

According to the article, the military is already jamming cell signals along caravan routes, but one has to wonder if it's even noticeable to the locals, given that cell phones are inherently unreliable, especially in mountainous regions. Cell phone jammers are in regular use in other countries, purely for the convenience of their owners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_jammer
Streaming music trades off with filesharing
I may be speaking out of turn, since I have no special expertise with either club owners or club lighting, but you might try taking it to the channel to market. If you can find club lighting supply houses (which I am only guessing exist) -- and allow them to make hearty margins, they'll push your software for you as part of their new installs / sales.

Again though, I don't know the market or niche, so take this suggestion with LOTS of salt.
Well, sorry, but apparently I'm not as smart as you; even reading carefully I can't see the answer to whether a dynamic language import/require/load/whatever counts as a derivative work.

> Total FUD. If you don't like the license, don't use it.

See, that's my point exactly. I'd like to use GPL'd code, and I'd like to help my clients do the same. But since I can't get good answers to questions like these, I have to simply avoid GPL'd code like the plague. And that leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.
This is no different than libraries having a sign up that says "The FBI has not been here" and taking it down after they have (second sign): http://www.librarian.net/technicality.html

My understanding is that most observers believe that the sign is legal.
Well, let me give you an idea how sophisticated they could easily be: Where I live (netherlands) we have a whole bunch of cell phone operators and they all cell their phones together with subscriptions based on sim-lock. These sim-locked phones are usually pretty expensive models sold at a great discount, so there is now a cottage industry of sim-locked phone unlockers.

These people are all at about the same level of tech as the satellite code crackers a couple of years ago, and it isn't rare to see top of the line scopes, all kinds of specialized soldering equipment (including vacuum smd soldering stations) and laptops full of software geared towards getting a cell phone to do something it really doesn't want to do.

This involves forced firmware upgrades, replacing chips on the board (usually eeproms or flashed chips with blank ones to be able to trick the firmware into thinking it is on a new, unused phone).

If any one of these guys gave a seminar for a week or so the 'bad guys' would be in the possession of all the knowledge and gear they would need to do just about anything they wanted, short of rewriting the phones OS completely. And they wouldn't need that because in their world simpler is better, and writing software is a complicated business.
Every reference to the GPL in the article is to version 3 of the license, which does not contain the language you reference.

Care to try again?
The text of the license is smaller than that blog post. And, yes, it contains answers to all the posted questions

The author is pointing out that the text is ambiguous. So yes, although it's shorter, it may not indeed contain all the answers. We can argue whether the poster is correct and whether there are ambiguities in the GPL, but your argument doesn't address the question.

I don't know the answers to those questions and I'd be surprised if anyone could answer all of them with certainty.
Unless it's a suicide mission.
Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter: It Doesn’t Feel Safe
Scanty on Redis
Incredibly, I heard similar words when a tech support rep called me with an irate customer on the line. The customer's words: "I've called 3 times and tried 3 different approaches. There's clearly something wrong with this f*ing piece of shit. Now, I've figured I might as well talk to the developers since you guys can make what I want happen, right?".

In the end, the infuriated customer only wanted a different set of options for a report (nothing fancy). The guy stopped calling tech support after that. He used to email the developers whenever he found an issue. He was happy with this approach. So were we. We got to understand our customers a bit better.
I don't see this catching more than a tiny percentage of them. What would be the point in leaving a cellphone connected to the explosives while you were working on it? Even without specific safety precautions, it seems unlikely that most would do this -- it would take extra effort to be vulnerable to this tactic.
The thing is they don't. I think most people at HN have been introduced to Swoopo based on articles analyzing just how much of a ripoff it is by running some numbers.

To the first-time visitor it is not clear at all that they are basically playing a lottery with a very low payout. Calling it an auction is misleading because in an auction you only pay if you place the winning bid. This is more like a raffle, but it's not labeled as such.