skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: how do blackhats meet?
to defend attacks one has to understand the mentality of an attacker. hence white and black hats are indistinguishable. I assume black hats have a certain circle of trust the way they spread information. how do white hats learn about black hat activity? Kevin Poulsen wrote a story about Max Butler's CC forums, which got infiltrated by the CIA. I assume in the last 10 years the underground economy has grown considerably.

the reason I ask is I need a very high secured linux server with some inbound connections, but there is not much structured information out there.
Well, about 80% of water use (in the west) is for irrigation purposes. Ideally, making farmers pay market (and externality adjusted) rates for their water would discourage them from growing plants which need a lot of water per unit food (like alfalfa). We could get a LOT further with water-aware legislation for what farmers can grow (or if you prefer a libertarian viewpoint, have the government stop subsidizing water for farmers in drought prone areas).

Whether that would be enough to survive off the precipitation alone with our current population I kinda doubt (especially in Southern California), but you never know.
Modernizing legacy PHP applications
How did you first come to get interested in JavaScript?
Very interesting to see the dataset being made available. Whenever I want to do this kind of analysis, I always stumble at 'how to get the data?'. In their paper, it is mentioned that "We created a dedicated computer program to carry out the navigation and data collection tasks required to gather the metadata for all available videos...". I would love to see this program. More broadly, can anyone help me with best resources (pref python) where one can learn to crawl/scrape this type of information?
I argue with that point too :) My biggest problem now is getting money. After that another and another, but not he mentioned.
I've personally run into problems when I don't do exact comparisons with True and False. For example, I've forgotten to return a value in one path of a function/method, and then tried to use the result in an if statement in the style recommended by the OP (e.g. if fcall(): do something). After being bitten several times by this, I always do explicit comparisons.
Mobile Gaming Company Pocket Gems Says Its Reached $82M In Revenue Last Year
You would be amazed what's possible.

I remember being dumbfounded upon learning that a guy wrote an algorithm that could mimic the style of Johannes Sebastian Bach so well, that classical music experts praised the musical output, until they learned it was generated by a computer. Suddenly, the music had no "soul", a wispy, intangible adjective. Further reading : http://www.computermusicjournal.org/reviews/29-1/handelman-c...
BREAKING NEWS, HN USER TZS CAUGHT URINATING IN PUBLIC RESTROOM URINAL, SHOCKING FILM OF HIS CLOTHED BACK!

Are you expecting Glass wearers to suddenly start leaning over urinal partitions to film you pissing? Or poking their heads over stalls? Both of these are pretty goddamn unacceptable where I'm from, Glass or not. If someone is so weird that they want video evidence of themselves going to the bathroom, and they happen to capture me standing at a urinal, who gives a fuck?
At the expense of not Googling it on my own, can someone provide a quick rundown of why this is a big deal? What's the difference between Sass and LESS?
SnippetRepo: Code Snippet Repository
This might help then....

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2012/04/18/the-real-tax-rates-of...
I used to work with a guy who once worked as a dev at an adult company. He said it was the most soul-sucking experience of his career, and that the owners knew absolutely nothing about technology and treated their tech staff terribly.

Based on the fact that you had to spend your first two weeks doing data entry, it sounds like his experience wasn't unique.
In that time frame, the interpreter has been entirely re-written, and we've gone through three or four different garbage collectors.

So yeah, it should be quite different.
Yeah there is an assumption in the article that technology is the leading cause of wealth inequality.

What about regressive government policies? The rich have more of an ability to influence policy in this country. Therefore they can get laws passed that are favorable to themselves, e.g. regressive policies.

It would be very surprising if you didn't see this, and if it were not a cause of huge income disparity.

But we don't have to look very hard to see it. For one, actually working for a living is taxed at a greater rate than letting your money sit around in various accounts. I'm glad Warren Buffett spoke out about this. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have done much.

Another example of a de facto regressive policy is the employer-provided health insurance system. People in the middle class who work for corporations generally get health insurance for free and don't have to worry about it, while poor people went insured (hopefully this will be resolved by Obamacare; it's not clear to me how it will play out).

There is a vicious cycle between being sick and poor. People are poor because they're sick, not necessarily because they are lazy. And they are sick because they're poor and don't go to the doctor.

Also, I decided awhile ago that I think the minimum income idea is stupid. Being fed and healthy are basic human rights. Having $15,000 of cash every year isn't. We should get the former right first before even thinking about the latter.

This philosophy also doesn't have the motivation problem. You should be guaranteed the option to make money (i.e. by being healthy; sick people don't have the option to make money). But the first dollar you make should come from work.
Well, it's not really Python's behaviour, just the behaviour of that type. You can always use your own type:

class I(int):
def __nonzero__(self):
return True

def is_digit_char(s):
try:
return I(s)
except (ValueError, TypeError):
return None

>>> if is_digit_char('0'): print "True"
True
Godaddy now refuses to confirm domain registration
Godaddy have recently as of Jan 1, 2014 stopped sending out system generated emails confirming domain registration. There answer to my enquiry as how one can proove that they are legit owners of a domain in the evnt of a domain dispute were time and time again fobbed off. They have suggested I be content with the receipt available for download by logging into my account but that is nothing but acknowledgemnet of receiving payment for an order placed with them to register a certain domain but is definitely not a certificate of regsitration or another similar.They just point blank refuse to answer my emails despite numerous phone calls all lasting over 45 mins a pop. SO BEWARE ! - shall i transfer all my domains pronto ? - this is INSANE
I think that is usually said the other way about anyway.
> object->getInstance makes no sense?

If getInstance returns an instance of object class, and object is an instance itself, then it doesn't make sense or it is not a singleton.

You can think it like this: if object class has one unique instance, then object == object->getInstance(), so in your case either object != object->getInstance and they are from the same class (hence it is not a singleton) or they are from different classes (once again then, it is not a singleton).
That's a different question altogether. Banks are required to keep meticulous and auditable transaction records -- nobody is disputing that or even questioning if PayPal does so. Banks are not required to show extend themselves to whatever demands made to them, in order to show that the claims of a random internet person are false.
My Skeptical Journey
I like bootstrap but padding and margins are way too big, I always reduce them via .less they provide. Not everyone has retina display. Or it looks very big still in 1680x1050
Any asset is worth what someone will pay for it. FB were willing to pay that (not sure if they would be still?), so that's what it was worth.
I would add generator expressions:

(f(x) for x in list_of_inputs)

Just like a list comprehension, but with (...) rather than [...] and with lazy evaluation.

These are useful when you don't need to evaluate all of the inputs at once but still want to iterate over them at some point later on.
The SASS port might be the thing that gets me to upgrade from 2.3 to 3 finally.
I'm confused. You think that by showing your address... money is just going to fall from the sky? or are you trying to sell your seats?

What's the point here?
They reserve the right not to record the call, in case the stuff hits the fan and a customer insists on getting a recording of the call where everything went wrong.
FSF seeks to expand GPL and licensing education programs
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/yuma/facilities/ydp/yao_ydp.html

That says the plant is not currently operating. It also says that it's only "included" in the water sent to Mexico. I don't see any indication that it's used for anything close to the full volume of the Colorado River.
Checking for empty strings can be done with len(mystring)==0 for this reason. In many other languages this method is standard and recommended practice.

Relying on implicit conversions is just sloppy. What if that variable was never supposed to be None in the first place. Better with an exception than continuing with corrupt data.

Remember another python motto: Explicit is better than implicit.
Thanks! I must have missed that one last year, but I've thought a project like this should exist for years. I'd be willing to contribute to an indiegogo campaign to support this.
Easy. The founder/founders have to be from the right social circle. Then you're worth Billions with a B. Profit? Revenue? Who cares!!
I did not know that they made disks that are certified for long term storage like that.
That photo was on reddit months ago.
For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that
it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water
well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That,
plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers
below it could only contain poor-quality water, led
regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than
200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day
into the underground reservoirs.

WHAT THE FUCK
How is this different from Whisper?
Apple makes it notoriously hard to do any kind of testing for ObjC/Cocoa apps, especially testing the GUI [1]. My solution is to only write really tiny apps, and manually test them. I still use TDD, I just make sure the app is small enough that the regression suite can be done manually in a minute or two.

[1]: I'm aware of third party solutions like Kiwi and Cedar, but I haven't found them to make this process much more pleasant than the built-in tools. Apple is really just an overbearing mom in this case, forcing you to use the sweater she chooses, and making life difficult if you don't.
I completely agree: it's the rare events that can bankrupt you, so it makes no sense to look at the average from the individual POV.
Using the coveredca/ACA terminology the Google's healthcare would be classified as "platinum" - covers 90%+ of the costs.

It's really great coverage, and good for people with, or planning on starting families. Despite what people rumor mill about, Google has plenty of non-23 employees and employees with children. Especially in farther-away offices like Seattle/Kirkland.

In fact, the Google healthplan is not fully competitive in Kirkland - the MSFT health plan has 0 monthly contributions and 0 co-pay. For those microsofters with children, copays add up really quick.

Also this article is spam bait of the worst kind.
I think we're saying basically the same thing.

My point was more that a given person is not poor because they are lazy (necessarily), because even if they are not lazy, if the system is totally stacked against them, they are screwed. The cycle continues forever and in that sense yes the system being stacked against them made them poor.
Why jQuery is the Most Popular JavaScript Library
> Actually Mexico threatened to take the US to international court during Nixon's presidency because the water coming out of the Colorado River into Mexico was so salty it was killing crops and un-drinkable.

That doesn't really answer how it would enforce anything; sure, in that case, the US may have chosen to do something, but if it hadn't, its not like winning a case at the ICJ would have forced the US to do anything.

Consider, e.g., Nigaragua v. United States. [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States
> Added a new formula interpreter to enable massive parallel calculations of formula cells using GPU via OpenCL.

I'm genuinely interested in what kind of spreadsheets have a noticeably faster response when getting processed on a GPU instead of CPU. ... actually it's the same kind of interest as "what does a train wreck in slow motion look like".
I think the headline reads a bit differently. Mexico, in tapping its own deep aquifers is proving it's possible and desirable, is now saying to the US "watch it, that water of yours you are polluting? you might actually want/need to drink from it, and sooner than you'd think"
Short answer; preference.
Related question: Can anyone find a program that just lets me view EXIF data for a file that isn't some shady freeware? Preferably open source?
Somehow I think the government in South Sudan would just rip these off people's faces.
Do we know it was just the founder who made the decision, or could it have also been VCs trying to stretch a double into an inside-the-park four-bagger?
…or switch away from insanely inefficient (90% evaporation) center-pivot irrigation.

Not to mention our practice of shunting rainwater off fields as fast as possible. This high-speed, high-runoff condition leads to soil erosion, failure to recharge aquifers, and really gives rise to the need for irrigation.

Dynamically unstable monocultures are neither sustainable nor efficient. They're not even cost-optimal or land-optimal, merely labor-minimizing (most of the arable land in the US is controlled either directly or indirectly by conglomerates, who generally view labor as messy and undesirable).

Again, dynamically unstable monocultures are neither sustainable nor efficient. Fortunately this means that when they inevitably collapse, we get wealthier as more efficient systems replace them.
Is that a fact? Arabs often have the same kind of toilet but I've never heard someone say that squatting in general is rude.
Looking to try out Hello Wallet as well. Signed up using the link, but not sure if it had hit the limit or not. There's nowhere inside the website to hit "upgrade" or see my account status.
I would say exactly the same things about Google Glass.
Ka-Pow Marvel Opens Comic Book Archives and API to Developers
Maybe someday I'll be able to use my iMessage-to-XMPP scripts to communicate with several devices instead of just my Android phone.

And maybe someday I can build a bridge between FaceTime and XMPP once all the media protocols get sorted out.

It may currently be a sad state, but it's exciting to see the direction things are/can be going.
You don't need to give it, it's just an easy way to deliver it to your phone.
This sounds like a marketing message from the company that created the app.
I absolutely adore Bootstrap (and v3 was a big upgrade).

As a primarily backend developer with mediocre at best front end knowledge (and terrible design sense) it is an absolute joy to work with.

EDIT: Also reading the blog post they moved license to MIT, this makes me a happy bunny as well.
looks really cool, hope that it doesnt turn into the "anonymous confessions fb pages" where people submit posts through a google survey thing, and the get reposted by the admin. those are all fake...
Ask HN: GoDaddy phase-based TLD pre-registration legit?
As new TLDs (i.e. ".bike") become available GoDaddy is offering a 'phase-base' pre-registration with prices that diminish as the domain approaches general availability.

Can GoDaddy actually do this? If so, why do they have a corner on it? Having a hard time finding reliable information.
It's only secret-from-your-friends. Actually, secret from your friends if they can't identify your writing style and personal idiosincrasies, and if your friends don't happen to include people in the SF startup scene that are friends with anyone at Secret Inc.
>"This requires the assumption that the distribution of wealth that is being address is not a real problem."

My point was that voting is 'not actually doing very much', as it is easy to do, and unlikely to have any real impact.

>"but voting is equally so a method to "demonstrate personal responsibility"."

Voting is cheap, easy, and free from repercussions; I struggle to see how it involves any measure of responsibility.

>"people have been known to cite drawing attention to an issue and raising awareness to be motivations for voting behavior on issues and candidates), but even where it is not it is often not an isolated behavior, people who based on a preference for a particular policy very often engage in advocacy around the policy, including advocacy based on the premise that it enforces a moral obligation."

You may be correct, and I may be too cynical, but I see 'raising awareness' as the last refuge of the ineffective activist.
>actually generating revenue while preventing their users from fleeing to the next new thing.

This is a huge question for even most of the big players. Facebook didn't exist till 2004, and they are already seen as nearly completely irrelevant by High Schoolers. I think we will only see an increase in the speed at which social apps get dropped for the next fad.
Not to counter your point, but I would like to quote from PEP8 here:

Additionally, for all try/except clauses, limit the try clause to the absolute minimum amount of code necessary. Again, this avoids masking bugs.

Yes:

try:
value = collection[key]
except KeyError:
return key_not_found(key)
else:
return handle_value(value)

No:

try:
# Too broad!
return handle_value(collection[key])
except KeyError:
# Will also catch KeyError raised by handle_value()
return key_not_found(key)
Doing x=C.get(x) is bad because there's no way of mocking C, thereby making unit testing a component that uses C impossible (the unit test will need to use the concrete implementation of C). Using dependency injection as described in the accepted answer, and particularly separating the concerns of C by using several different interfaces allows you to not only mock C, but actually create mock classes each of which is mocking one particular logical subset of C's functionalities.

It's easy to dismiss all this as "bloated" and "enterprisey" and people that use this as "architecture astronauts" but in reality, this pattern really does help. Well, at least if you want to be able to unit test your code properly. Otherwise, you might as well just use a singleton object.
I'm giving up singletons because hidden dependencies are a source of bugs. Let me make it more concrete:

Suppose classes A, B, and C use singleton class S, and S has state. Via the hidden dependency on S, it's possible for A, B, and C to affect each other without explicitly calling each other's methods.

As a programmer, you can take those hidden interactions into account and still have a relatively bug-free program. But it's one more thing you have to hold in your head. When you return to the project six months later, you have to read through the internal code of A, B, and C to see these interactions; the public APIs don't reveal them. You spend more time figuring out how the objects interact, and there's a greater chance you'll fail to notice an interaction.
That looks like perl.
Not available on the Belgian iTunes store. That's stupid as there is no good reason for the omission.
Bolts: collection of low-level libraries for mobile apps from Parse and Facebook
It's a squat where the heels are flat on the ground and you're sitting back more.

In contrast to the western "catcher's squat" (from baseball) where the heels are off the ground and the weight is on the balls of your feet.
That was caused by a bad link in the recode article. The journalist fixed it.
How much of that 80% of water used for irrigation is lost to evaporation and such. As the water is essentially 'free' to the farmers, they have little incentive to use it efficiently, so it would probably be cheaper to use sprinklers than more water efficient methods like drip irrigation.

Also, is the problem really that the government subsidizes water. As I understand it, there is a naturally occurring aquifer that is currently being used at free market rates. We would need the government to tax this to reduce usage.
This is a good point - but the benefits aren't "reduced", only offered in a different way that creates more tangible value for most employees.

Health insurance isn't a "one plan fits all" benefit. For many employees, a high deductible + HSA plan is the best value. For others, an expensive plan with low copays and deductible is the best value.
a source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California

A bunch of water also goes back to the environment, but I don't think we want to take that.
>> It seems to be more of a philosophical difference, not right/wrong.

Exactly. It's philosophically different from other languages, but it's standard in Python.
Is Google+ Worth The Effort?
lots of people, surprisingly...
In the documentation pages they have inexplicably moved the navigation links to the right side.
Target's Strange New Data Security Team – Imgur
How is this better than local rainwater collection? Rainwater is desalination, you just cheated and let nature do the expensive part. Heck, lots of rainwater is already collected in gutters/roof drains, but is contaminated when it falls on the ground instead of into a tank.

For irrigation all that is necessary is to soak the rainwater in as soon as possible to prevent evaporation and runoff, since potability is not a requirement. This is even cheaper than rooftop catchment.

Of course you may need to re-green the upwind deserts first (since ~80% of terrestrial rainfall comes from plants, not evaporation), but we already have that technology. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1rKDXuZ8C0

This is hardly unprecedented. The CCC installed thousands of miles of swales during the Depression (that function to this day), but nowadays most people don't even know what a swale is.
> it's about sharing, free of judgment.

And i'll bet you most of the things shared are judgmental.
Has anyone tried desalination with geothermal sources?
I think this is more for:

while True:
result = do_something()
if not result:
break

rather than:

result = True
while result:
result = do_something()

[[edit apparently tab ret submits, not whatever I was trying to do with the actual editing]]
The discussion about Google Glass and wearables that we hear has zero input from young people. It's the middle aged white guy telling the world what he thinks from his blog.
Privacy is a major driver behind the slowing teen use of Facebook. All these kids friended anyone and everyone, and now Facebook feels more public than private to them--so they use it less.

My younger siblings and their friends each have around 1500 to 2000 friends on Facebook. They hardly use their accounts anymore for that reason.
FAA stops beer drone delivery
3 Tips for Being a Helpful, Gracious Code Reviewer
Makes me think of: http://vanilla-js.com/
I read your post as saying -- or at least, suggesting -- that the system maintained but did not originally produce poverty for particular individuals, I was pointing out that maintaining poverty for particular individuals in one generation implies causing poverty for particular individuals in the next generation.

I didn't see it as a fundamental disagreement so much as highlighting an implication which seemed to be downplayed in your post.
Considering the popularity of traditional anti-birth-control ideas, the hypothesis has some merit.
I have, so don't make such sweeping assumptions. I've also been around people who are using them. I find their use in my presence to be an invasion of my personal space.