skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Girls on a Map - Girls and Singles Travel Tips Around the World
GirlsOnAMap, the first travel website designed for bachelors, announced its public launch today. The website allows viewers to see what real girls look like around the world, rate them, learn about their culture and habits, and recommends travel destinations based on the user’s interests and ratings.

“In the U.S. alone, more than 28% of all leisure travelers overseas are between 18 to 34 years of age,” said Kevin Leu, founder and CEO of GirlsOnAMap. “Their tastes are different from the Rick Steves, the Frommers, and the TripAdvisors. They want to see the sites, but they also are looking for a vacation fling. And why not? It’s the elixir of life! With GirlsOnAMap, we’ve built a platform for young, thrill-seeking bachelors – a demographic that other travel sites have ignored.”

In addition to offering insights on women, users from around the world are able to rate the approachability and promiscuity levels of girls around the world. GirlsOnAMap also identifies top user-rated places to meet potential dates, including bars, nightclubs, and local attractions. For travelers spending only a few days in one country before heading to the next, GirlsOnAMap even provides Monday and Tuesday suggestions – off-peak nights – which no other website does.
So basically it will become even harder for startups to disrupt the established players. Until a disruptive telco comes along and everyone switches to them, while also learning an important lesson about net neutrality. Maybe the whole thing will even cause society to re-think the way we allocate access to the internet and cellular networks.

(A man can dream!)
Are there any 'better' (knowing it's all relative) alternatives for what TrueCrypt provides?
edit: misread your comment, nvm
They are by a nuclear bloke from Texas called
Jim Aud apparently, who also does a $900 USB cable. http://www.thecableco.com/Product/Ultimate-USB

edit - I'm going to stop looking through that website, it is making me upset. They have a 1m power cable called avatarII for $16,950 from some criminally deranged outfit called pranawire - http://www.thecableco.com/Product/Avatar-II
Apple to refund at least $32.5M for kids' in-app purchases
I worry less about the startups.

If they are small, then as long as they are releasing frequently and paying attention to what's happening in the real world, they tend to converge on an Agile-ish approach. And if they aren't, they are likely to quickly crash and burn, limiting their damage.

Enterprises worry me more, because there feedback loops are often broken. Nothing is pushing people toward sanity, and organizational dynamics often push the other way. Plus, they have plenty of money to hire consultants to prop them up. Which in turn creates a marketplace of very well-paid and well-marketed consultants who only sell half-assed Agile, because their clients wouldn't even want to think that they aren't getting the good stuff. And if there are enough of those companies and consultants, then the impression is that half-assed Agile is actually the norm.
Very interested to see how this is structured and how it is going to work - it sounds like this time around it is less about the competition piece, but still leaves the opportunity for those who want to test their skills against others to do so. Any way you slice it, it will be great to see what they've put together.
I was talking about IE. As far as I know, you can't sync bookmarks between IE "desktop" and IE "Metro," even on the same Windows 8 PC.
The buyer is led to believe they are spending $695 on a device which will improve their audio quality. In fact, it will have absolutely no benefit whatsoever. They will feel ripped off for the extra $694.

The seller knows damn well their device does absolutely nothing to improve audio quality. They know they are profiting from deliberately misleading buyers. Every time this happens, they make almost $695 profit.

So, why is this not illegal?
The e-reader market is stuck where the mp3 player market was a decade(ish) ago - Amazon have everyone's business, any other platform is of negligible influence, and Amazon are doing entirely as they please with every aspect of their device ecosystem from a near unassailable position, just as it was with iPods and iTunes for a few years.

I'd love to suggest that it's going to change, that open, un-DRMed EPUBs will come to dominate, even that Amazon will add EPUB support to the Kindle platforms - but I'm not holding my breath. The publishing industry is even more luddite and change-phobic than the music industry ever was.
I hope so.

The problem with things like rubygems is so long as it's a community project with people donating their time to it, any grievances you have with the service can be trumped by "we're just doing this in our spare time, lay off".

While I respect people who contribute to software in their spare time, pip and rubygems are way, way too important for them to be taken so casually. I really appreciate that the NodeJS community is increasing their commitment to the NPM infrastructure.
STD is also an obsolete term. Epidemiology, Medicine etc. most often now refer to them as STIs, or Sexually Transmitted Infections.

The reasoning for this is that many sexually transmitted infections can be acquired, passed on to others, etc. without causing any clinical symptoms. See: HPV, among others.
Hackers used Amazon's cloud to steal LinkedIn user data
To be fair, the FFTW/CUDA thing is due to fundamentally different hardware architectures which drove design constraints for these types of libraries. FFTW was never meant to run on a dedicated, ultra-parallel processor with highly optimized floating point instructions (GPU), but it is incredibly fast considering it runs on general purpose hardware. I am sure the FFTW authors could have done something to squeeze out more performance if they controlled both the hardware and software as NVidia does. And the transfer time to/from the GPU does matter, especially for smaller/more frequent operations...

All that aside, the psychology of pure functional vs. pure OOP vs. some hybrid methodology is really interesting, and even the view of what a "clean solution" is becomes tainted based on past experiences with other code written in that style.
Sales pitch: What Nest said to get its original investment
Because better educated children are less likely to stab you and take your cell phone while you're walking your dog.

Seriously, though, why are real estate prices higher in areas with better schools? It's not because every person who lives there or might live there has kids, it's because better public infrastructure creates better quality of life for everyone. Good public schools might not impact you directly if you don't have children, but they do attract better neighbors, create more cultural and social opportunities (even for the childless), and generally produce better quality of life for the communities they serve.

I really, really wish all the libertarians would get off HN and move to Somalia or some other place with no functioning government where they could finally be happy. I'm sure it would work out well for them, because good governance clearly has no positive externalities.
I think that team viewer works really well. But then again my company is MS centric so we use Lync and/or WebEx.
CSNOBOL4 Release 1.5
Twenty years ago, those major ISPs were using the telephone system (via dial-up), which was designated a common carrier. If ISPs had to convince everyone to buy into a new cable or dish transmission system because the tel-cos could block their traffic over the phone lines or charge inflated fees for it, where would we be now?
That hardware and software are being selected by users. Unless you become the government, your "solutions" will be less preferred and will die. At best you can sell luxury products to paranoid, Howard Hughes types.
Will someone please tell them to remove the clips in their video of testing a white phone in the interest of brand consistency? Also this idea seems like a solid game plan for Blackberry? They could rename their company "Black" ala P-Diddy v just Diddy. :)
Among other things, I've seen way more appalling applications of statistics in finance and economics than I have in social science.

Also, the assertion in your post that the misapplication of statistical models in social science is "disastrous" but somehow giving finance a pass? You've got to be kidding me.
The addition you're recommending is somewhat orthogonal to the article. The update at the end of the article clarifies that all one must do, strictly speaking, to protect against the weakness they describe is to power the computer down. If an adversary is knocking down your door, it's seems more important to get the keys out of RAM than to first ensure filesystem and OS integrity by saving/dismounting and cleanly shutting down.
You can also use "cd -" to go back to the previous path:

$ cd /
$ pwd
/
$ cd /tmp
$ pwd
/tmp
$ cd -
$ pwd
/

Not the same, of course, but still useful, I think.
I remember looking back on my 2012 and including Stripe's CTF on the list of highlights. It was that fun.
>He specifies that SD is reasonable as a mathematical tool, but not for inference about society, finance, etc.

Yes, and as SD is widely used in those so this is quite a bold statement to make an Taleb doesn't give one example of things going wrong with it and his proposal working better.
This observation is also wrong and I pointed out some areas where standard deviation is useful.

>Your comment appears to have an agenda or ideology underlying it.

Yes it's ideology of calling people out when they assert incorrect things in condescending tone without any arguments while insulting whole groups of scientists and statisticians.

>That is pretty much what his entire article is about: taking squares may not be the best idea universally.

No, article isn't about it. It was in my comment. Taleb doesn't mention how MAD works better than SD in some situations and why or why it should be substituted. Taleb doesn't point one situation when MAD works better than SD (I pointed out some where SD works better than MAD) he also doesn't address obvious problems which such substitutions create.
Heck, he doesn't even discuss how nature of SD is different than MAD, he just says they are different and the latter is more applicable for "real life".
Also he doesn't argue that MAD is sometimes more useful than SD. He argues that the latter should be disposed of outside some very narrow theoretical applications.
Unless your cable is broken, there will be no retrying or high level error correction going on. And buffering will be independent of the cable chosen.

A passive cable can't change timing. The only question is whether the signal gets through in an intact form and can be locked onto. Any kind of difference you can have from working-cable construction is completely overshadowed by things like cable length.
Super successful companies (founder habits)
http://blog.samaltman.com/super-successful-companies
The last I checked Canada didn't have near the problem with MRSA that the US has:

"Similarly the United States has major problems with methicillin-resistant S aureus, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, multidrug-resistant M tuberculosis and penicillin-resistant pneumococci, whereas in Canada there is very little resistance to any of these organisms." (1)

That being said, it's a very multifactorial issue so it's hard to know exactly why that is. Canada's health care is more available and more regulated. Is it that people have an easier way of getting checked, is it that not-for-profit systems have less pressure to over-prescribe antibiotics, or something else?

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3327906/
Ask HN: Do you try to practice both web and mobile  development?
Bandwidth isn't free. The universal all-you-can-eat model is very unfair to the bandwidth supplier.

Either customers will need to be charged by meter.

Or producers will need to pay by meter.

It's only capitalism.

By the way, why can't the VC say, "we love your idea, and we'll front the money you need to pay the telcos."?
It's probably some combination of people downloading the app and signing up for the free service. It is most likely not a reflection of how people use the app on a regular basis or pay for the service.

Good luck, guys. It's a tough row to hoe considering all of the major agricultural machine manufacturers (Case, Deere, etc.) have some variation of this service coupled with world-wide dealer networks to sell it. If you think you're going to be able to wedge yourself between farmers and the dealers that they have been dealing with for years and in some cases generations, best of luck with that.

Interesting idea, but the best they can hope for is a talent acquisition buy-out.
Public ISP would be a great idea. After all it is just a utility.
The wrong words: how the FCC lost net neutrality and could kill the internet
Isn't the tax that's added into the price of a gallon of gas suppose to pay for roads?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax
Ask HN: Readings on building a language?
Hello,

I am playing around with trying to build a custom simple language. I am wondering what are some recommended readings people would suggest for things like lexer, abstract syntax, tree's etc ?
Sounds like he needs a career gap year. But then ive been saying that about jeff for years. So whiny.

Some of us still enjoy toys and the shiny. Its not like we go out of our way to use this shit in production before its out of beta. We use it on pet projects in our own time because its fun, its thought provoking, it leads to new ways of doing things elsewhere, its learning - and thats why i love it, thats why i do what i do.

Edit, nothing like a whinge from jeff to get me riled and ranting to the point I just realised how pationate i am about learning and tech. Doubleplusgood day made.
Investors Buy Nestor Not Nest
Yes. Multidrug resistance in TB is frequently related to the availability of antibiotics.
What's the process to becoming a licensed MSB? Is it possible to test this method out, w/out becoming licensed to make sure that it can in effect bring in revenue?
PlayMe: A collaborative office jukebox
Sure, maybe private companies have a small supporting role in piggybacking on one of the biggest (and highest ROI) government infrastructure projects ever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

The real problem here is that many advocates of net neutrality frame their support of neutrality strictly in terms of enabling free-market innovation. Perhaps because they're afraid to lose the support of the many libertarians who still walk among us, net neutrality supporters are afraid to give a fully fleshed-out narrative of what should happen: the government either makes a massive direct investment in increasing information bandwidth (as it has done with transportation bandwidth), or it assimilates the telcos and makes them do so. Finally, the current wave of market-based innovation can continue, supported (as markets always are) by a robust public infrastructure. There is a properly dialectical relationship here: you can't have one of these moments without the other, even though they are contradictory.

Is this plan perfect? No, but it sounds a million times more preferable than Comcast and Verizon picking which startups live or die.
Comcast Seeks to Redefine Philadelphia and Itself
The Internet's Most Mysterious Secret Game Has Begun
Wow this is awesome. Thanks for sharing!
Number one reason you didn't mention - they are lucky.
The "dual natures" theory of artifacts
Quick update - when I was writing this, I didn't realize the ambiguity of my wording. This isn't stuff I'm doing right now, this is just what I heard could be done. Although I do claim legitimate business expenses, I don't have the audacity to claim things like my rent and car lease. However, the people I heard this from have been doing the management game for quite some time and did bring up the possibility of an audit, but as long as you can provide a reasonable explanation for everything, there shouldn't be any issue. Obviously if anyone is reading this and considering taking their advice, do it at your own risk, because a wrong move could cost you a lot of money to the IRS.
remember: as long as you are outside the US, you are safe from espionage
About the immaturity thing, so... should Node.js vanish because it is currently in a natural phase that every fucking project need to pass through... or can we just keep with the development?
CON: The more money I think I can make by owning network infrastructure, the more I will invest to build it now.

That's not to say that net neutrality is bad or wrong on balance, but no cons at all?
Isn't that the architect who inspired software design patterns? Is that the same book that inspired it?
So let's say you read a full RAID-5 stripe including parity and the parity does not match because of a silent error. How do you know which block contains the error? Classic RAID does not have any checksums. AFAICT classic RAIDs are screwed in the face of silent errors, so they might as well implement as many optimizations as they can within the bounds of their (unrealistic) failure model.
So, you are saying that people went to Megaupload, not because it was free, but because it was DRM free?
I'm planning on doing a proof of concept - less than $100 a day.
That may be true, but this is a USB cable and (IIRC) USB is packet-based. There is no way that clock jitter can influence the final result.

(edit: upvoted for the informative link, in any case)
It seems thunderbolt in fact DOES provide raw DMA: http://www.breaknenter.org/projects/inception/

But at least on Macs, the attack is somewhat mitigated by the OS shutting off thunderbolt/firewire DMA if the screen is locked.
All About Computational Logic
This initial manuscript deals with many concepts within Computational Logic and how they relate to modern computational innovations. In some ways, it answers the question, "Where does Computer Science come from?"
How often do "six sigma" events occur in financial markets? A hell of a lot more often then the 0.0000001973% that they would in a normally distributed system.
"And that is because the designers assumed that the disk would be fine or just fail, and not be in some state in-between."

Interesting, if you make that assumption you will get burned. I have personally experienced disks that through firmware errors returned what was essentially a freed memory block from their cache as the sector data, returned success status on a write that never actually happened, and flipped bits in the data they actually returned (without error). The whole point of RAID for data reliability is to catch these things. (RAID for performance is difference and people tolerate errors in exchange for faster performance).

We used to start new hire training at NetApp with the question, "How many people here think a disk drive is a storage system?" and then proceed to demolish that idea with real world data that showed just how crappy disks actually were. You don't see these things when you look at one drive, but when you have a few thousand to a couple of million out there spinning and reporting on their situation you see these things happen every day.

The issue of course is that margins in drives are razor thin and they are always trying to find ways to squeeze another penny out here and there. Generally the expresses itself as dips in drive reliability on a manufacturing cohort basis by a few basis points. You can make a more reliable drive, you just have a hard time justifying it to someone who is essentially going to get only one in a million 'incorrect' operations.

This is the same reason ECC RAM is so hard to find on 'regular' PCs, the chance of you being screwed is low enough that you'll assume it was something else or not be willing to pay a premium for the extra chip you need on your DIMMs for ECC.
> Apple basically made everyone rewrite their apps instead of doing something sane - though admittedly they never had real support for multi-dpi, so perhaps that's an at least understandable solution.

They did not make everyone rewrite their apps. The only apps that actually needed to change were the ones that were rendering text without using the Text rendering APIs of the OS (a small minority of apps).

Everything else just worked totally fine.

Yes, some icons might have been blurry, but functionality-wise everything was fine.

This is in contrast to Windows where switching to HiDPI mode usually means cut-off texts, invisible buttons (pushed out of the dialogs they are in) and, as noted by the OP, sometimes a mish-mash of correct and incorrect rendering within the same window.

You tell us you were shocked by how it was handled by Apple, so what would you have done differently? How would you have solved the issue in a way that requires even less work by app developers?

Honest question. I really can't imagine a better solution than what Apple has done, but then again, the bulk of my knowledge is in databases, web servers, web applications and devops, so I'm sure I miss something that you can see. Hence I'm asking.
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> - The founders are nice. I'm sure this doesn't always apply, but the most successful founders I know are nicer than average. They're tough, they're very competitive, and they are ruthless, but they are fundamentally nice people.

ruth·less, ˈro͞oTHləs/, adjective

1. having or showing no pity or compassion for others.

what does "ruthless" mean nowadays in valley newspeak? or did i miss a memo about "nice"..?
The half-life is statistical, not mechanistic, so there would be an inherent variability in that definition. The larger the radioactive mass and the longer the time period, the less variability, but it's still variable.
5 Predictions for 2024
The last CTF was super fun. I have been waiting for this announcement, and am happy to see it will be a whole new kind of game. I am sure it will be great given the high production values of the last one.
"Barely done that for the last decade or so"? I don't think you remember what broadband connectivity options were available in your typical American suburb in 2004 or 1994. As rayiner pointer out in a thread a day or so ago, telecom providers are some of the largest capital spenders in the nation:

http://news.investors.com/technology/091913-671712-institute...
That just covers the maintenance costs (and only about half of those), not capital construction costs.
Amon 2.0 ready for public beta
Luck is necessary but not sufficient. But I left it off the list because telling people to "be lucky" is difficult to act on.
As commented already, this is actually incorrect. RAID cannot and will not detect data errors unless the drive itself report the errors and issues the "I can't retrieve this data" call back to the raid controller. If it lies, RAID is fat dumb and happy. Sadly, drives lie all the time.

Now in reality in big enterprise SAN arrays, the vendors usually add checksum blocks onto the underlying disk (aka larger sectors in the Clariion, or checksums into the filesystem on NetApp) OR use special certified firmware on the drives that make sure the drives never lie themselves! So largely if you are on a big enterprise SAN, you probably don't seriously need to worry about bit rot.

But outside of that space, most PCI card RAID controllers, and I suspect at least a few "enterprise lite" arrays, probably don't do checksum calculations. So BTRFS and ZFS provide notable value. (and definitely on raw drives)
Just a side note: Java used to be slow, but is actually a lot lot faster now. So while javascript is certainly impressively fast, Java is actually even faster still.