skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> entire code base being written with substandard style rules and no static analysis or tests, which suggests to me that incompetence got here first.

That and inadequate, bordering on zero, code review. Even a beginner C programmer looking at this code could see how fishy it looks.

No code review while checking in code to libssl. That takes a lot of incompetence.
It's a decent book. The premise is good and it's very detailed. It's a really quick, fun read.
The first problem with IQ is that especially for high IQ persons, let's say 125+, it doesn't measure well what most people understand as general intelligence.

The second is that it reduces the information about one's intellect to one number. People have different strenghts in pattern recognition, high-level thinking, creativity, analytical thinking, speed etc.

BTW, my theory is that personality traits have significant influence on intelligence. For example:

1) how pleasurable is it to learn new things

2) how pleasurable is it to think about problems

3) perfectionsim
Like the X close button?
Are you saying that a "former" regulator is capable of "looking the other way"?
This is completely at odds with my memory of 1998.

Not only did people use online dictionaries, but we also used online maps (mapquest.com), movie listings (moviefone.com), greeting cards (bluemountain.com) and hundreds of other online services. Netscape had already hit its peak and was on its way down. High school textbooks spoke of the internet. I don't think I knew students who hadn't used instant messengers like Yahoo!, AIM or ICQ.

I was in a town of about 100,000 people in Colorado.
"Backdooring" would be better in the title.
Surface Pro has a digitizer and pen, Windows has math-writing recognition from pen input:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ph/windows7/use-math-input-p...

OneNote has "insert Ink Equation" (I don't know if it uses the same engine, or has its own).
New flynn.io site
Is there a good self-hosted Google Music like solution? I already have my music on my servers, and would love to be able to just point Linux/Android/iOS clients to it.
Why repost? This was submitted and discussed several days ago.
Negligence or malice.

My theory is that Apple is spread too thin. Kayak.com reproducibly crashed MobileSafari the day iOS7 shipped, and brand new iPad minis regularly kernel panic and reboot.

It wasn't always like this.
>I was looking the other day and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of VP9 content

How do you know that you recieve VP9 and not VP8, is there some download script for this?

>does it really take them a day to encode a minute of VP9?

I've done lots of encoding tests and it is indeed slow, also the encoder (vpxenc) currently only uses one core, of course you can run several encodings simultaneously to make use of all your cores, but it's certainly a limitation, particularly given how slow the encoder is.

On the brighter side the quality has been improving steadily during my testing over the last 8 or so months, it's certainly beating x264 in many of my tests, however with the huge speed difference in favour of x264, vp9 (and x265) are not yet near competitive in terms of 'practical' encoding in my opinion.

>I believe Chrome switched to ffvp8 for VP8 decode. I wonder if they'll do it again for ffvp9

As long as there aren't any compability issues I can't see why not, that said when playing some of my vp9 test encodings in VLC (which I believe uses ffvp9) I sometimes get decoding errors causing huge macro-blocks etc, when playing through Chrome or if I decode the vp9 stream to another format they play perfectly.

Oh, and I unfortunately missed and downvoted you instead of upvoting you (curse those small arrows!), I apologize and blame the crappy cold I'm currently down with which is making me drowsy.
for the sake of learning?

EDIT: Also, if you check the commit history, I'm quite sure he didn't spend way much time.
You mean developers. Programmers are not engineers.
Two reasons this is balderdash:

1. The trend is toward Android. Resistance is futile.

2. Android handles multiple screen sizes better. Fragment is the modern equivalent of a multi-window UI. This will breed better Android tablet apps.

3. The author appears to assert that only the US matters.
whatsapp replaces texts for most users. they probably wouldn't read/reply to messages from their computer even if they could
If MS drops licensing fees, then keeping the crapware means increasing your profit margin from near-zero to slightly above near-zero.
That Wikipedia article seems to be talking about goods that were stolen and then resold but the Bloomberg piece is talking about the government seizing things which they think were involved in a illegal transaction w/o claim that anything was stolen just that one of the goods exchanged might have been illegal in the eyes of the law.
Coinbase are a broker.
Who cares. Nobody. That's why this thread is falling off the front page.
Plex ?
If only they had the money to devote to quality engineers to ensure good processes surrounding their most critical, security-sensitive code.

You can't really blame them for doing the best they can with limited resources. Startup life is hard.
QNX (which BB bought a few years ago) has a QNX Car Platform, for example here is a press release with some details on it from last year. http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_5602_1.html So they might be using the car platform, but as the article doesn't mention explicitly mention it they could just be using the QNX OS and writing their own thing on top.

Videos of recent demo cars QNX showed off at CES:
CES 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl_uVHg_SSs
CES 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MbXvyCTVV0

Disclaimer: I used to work for RIM
Red(dit) Alert at the Workplace
It seems they added docs from github repo and updated site design.
It helped us realize how easy it would be to test for this, and that Apple isn't.
Perhaps they process them sequentially as opposed to concurrently.
Maybe tell people up front what code stacks you would help with? Save some time.

How are you qualifying the startups you are going to work with?

Love the idea btw
If you accept the article as accurate, then it seems odd to consider my statement hyperbole.
Have you checked on each of them? I'm pretty sure Kraken fulfills all the requirements in the jurisdictions in which they operate. CoinSetter also has a unique model which probably precludes them from the definition of money transmission. Not sure about Coinbase but I would be surprised if they weren't on the up and up.
What about Coinsetter?
This is one of those posts were you're hesitant to upvote it because it could decrease you chance of being picked.
The `else if` is useless here, since you return anyway. It only adds noise.

I rarely use the one-line `if err := ...; err !=nil ` idiom because its quite a mouthful. However when I do, I try to make sure it's not too much to grasp at once. Here the extra `else` goes against that.

Alright, I know this is just a quick snippet on HN and all, I just thought I'd mention it anyways. Maybe next time you actually write that in code you'll think about my point. ;)
God, no kidding. It's terrible, even by the standards of car software. Infuriating to use. I don't know what these people are talking about Sync getting "positive reviews", but if that is indeed the case I must have used something different.
Used laptops can be a really good deal, but I think: 1) many people never even consider buying used computers; and 2) battery lifetime in used laptops is really hit-or-miss, and if you have to replace the battery, you lose most of the savings vs. just buying new.
Nope. 'artisan' is the command you want. Oh, you're not using Laravel? You should be.
This may qualify as fair use, and in any case it's not like this is going to jeopardize sales of the 29 year-old Super Mario Bros or any of it's derivatives.
Check out the business model of Line, the WhatsApp competitor dominant in Japan. It's almost exactly what you said.
http://www.oneskyapp.com/blog/secret-monetizing-messaging-ap...
Fixed.

To be more specific, three Andreessen companies (Dwolla, Coinbase, and Ripple) were supposed to be on a panel in San Francisco in October, 2013:

http://financialwomensf.org/virtual-currencies-are-they-the-...

Dwolla pulled out at the last minute, likely due to regulatory pressure from New York DFS, which had issued subpoenas in August, and less than two weeks later Dwolla renounced and stopped its involvement with Bitcoin. The moderator of the panel was none other than William Haraf of Promontory, the former Commissioner, but he wasn't the only one there. I met one of Promontory's former partners, who had just resigned to go work for one of the three companies. (I'm being intentionally vague.)

Robert Venchiarutti, the Deputy Commissioner of Money Transmission for California under Haraf is the same individual who is still the Deputy Commissioner of Money Transmission now, and has been for fourteen years. Connections matter in this world.
Did you not read his second paragraph? It's right there.
Ah, yeah, here we go again. Did you mean programmers or coders?
It helps that marijuana is not addictive in most of the population.
I use a filtering proxy which uses OpenSSL and it just reports "socket error" in the log and retries the connection around a dozen times before it gives up, so it seems I'm not vulnerable; non-Apple software isn't affected by this?
Android has a flawless record, though.

http://www.androidcentral.com/samsung-lock-screen-bypassed-e...
"Spend the bare minimum time you need to pass high-school on work that you have to get done"

>> and get the grades you need to go to college to learn more

For me, the bare minimum still got me good grades in high school, but in college I worked really hard, sometimes the bare minimum isn't enough to succeed.
Administrators want to be paid a % of revenues. This model is incosistent with academic tenure. So, they will never be linked as long as college presidents are glorified funraisers.
Working in a big company is inherently "high stress". Dealing with an interviewer isn't scarier than dealing with someone way higher than you in the reporting chain.
I would have liked to see all the sound and music done with FM synthesis (or whatever the Nintendo used) in Python as well, instead of .ogg files.
It's almost certainly true.

Examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Taxation...
133 commits? And you have to violate copyright or trademark to learn? Please.
Building a Scalable News Feed Web Service in Clojure
This seems so silly to me, Jon.

The OSX/IOS SecureTransport TLS vulnerability is getting coverage because it's easy for laypeople to understand. Any geek can look at a description of the bug, or even the code itself, and say to themselves, "hey, I could exploit that!". Because more people understand this bug than they would any other bug, it paradoxically seems scarier.

The reality however is that the ease with which a bug can be exploited has little to do with its impact. What matters is the feasibility of exploitation. And in terms of feasibility, this bug is less exploitable than the kinds of bugs that are disclosed in every platform every month; it requires a specific (common, but not universal) set of circumstances to escalate it to code execution.

Matthew Green told a Reuters reporter yesterday that the TLS bug was "as bad as could be imagined". He was also drinking†, which explains how he managed to find a TLS validation bug worse than memory corruption, which is discovered routinely in all platforms, and produces attacks that directly, instantly hijack machines regardless of their configuration and the network they operate on.

Vulnerabilities in TLS code are not all that unusual. We get a new one every couple years or so. There was a vulnerability in the NSS False-Start code a year ago --- it didn't get covered because (a) few people know what NSS is (it's the TLS library for Firefox and Chrome) and (b) nobody knows or cares about False-Start. Here's another example: NSS misparsed PKCS1v15 padding, such that an e=3 RSA certificate could be forged --- anyone on the Internet could run a small Python script to generate a certificate for any site. Certificate chaining has broken within the last ~4 years ago. Again, no coverage: what's e=3 RSA? How does chaining work?

Simple thought experiment: imagine if, instead of a missing-brace bug that broke all of TLS, it was instead disclosed that NSS had a memory corruption vulnerability in its PKCS1v15 parsing. Would there be a shitstorm in the media and on Twitter? I doubt it: comparable bugs are found routinely without shitstorms.

I don't know if NSA knew about this bug or didn't. If they did, I'm confident that they exploited it; that's what they do. But ask yourself if you're sure that NSS and SecureTransport and OpenSSL and SCHANNEL are free from the kinds of memory corruption vulnerabilities that would allow NSA (and other organized criminals) to hijack machines directly. You think this is the bug they're relying on?

† No, really.
Also the palette shifting that they used to get different colors out of the same assets.
A bunch of small blue sky political donations.
If your position is "may", you're on shaky legal ground at best. Regardless, he would be forced to shutter his side project with a CnD, since I doubt he's willing to go to court.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Kik. It's a great platform, and lots of users are switching to it now because of this aquisition. I think lots of people who are privacy conscious will make a move away from WhatsApp/Facebook in the next few months.
Yes.

Kraken is Payward, Inc., and they're not on this list:

http://www.dbo.ca.gov/Licensees/money_transmitters/money_tra...

Neither is Coinbase. Neither has applied for a license, but since Coinbase and Payward have registered with FinCEN, they [know they] are required to.
Just keep in mind there are diminishing returns on most things. If you want to be the best your going to have to work harder than 99% of everyone out there. But, if you want to be better than average you don't really have to work that hard just be smart about it.

10 hours of real effort a week will get you into most collages. 10 hours of real effort a week can keep you in great shape. And 10 hours of real effort is more than most people put into there jobs. The secret is to not slack off and to keep at it for years.

PS: Some of the best advice I have ever gotten was simply showing up is worth a lot.
Yes, everything about the cult LW is the reason.
Getting Protein-Protein Interaction Data Into Neo4j With Python
This is a blog of a recent learning project where I constructed a news feed web service using clojure, postgresql, cassandra, solr, redis, and kafka. Then I set that up on AWS, ran a load test on it, then analyzed the results.
there is somehting similar that I have been using on windows for a while. I really love being able to use media keys http://vhanla.deviantart.com/art/Google-Music-Desktop-Player...
What matters is that they are a money transmitter under U.S. law.
Have you heard the story of how Commander Keen came about?
They must've expected usernames to not contain anything other than alphanumeric characters... this is yet another example of the fact that if you write code that consumes external, untrusted input, always expect every single byte value from 0 to 0xFF could be present, and deal with them accordingly.
Ask HN: What college programs would you recommend for a design/coding combo?
I'm currently researching undergraduate programs (Probably in the US or Canada). I want to get a Bachelors in CS, but I'm not sure where I should be focusing or what else to study. I'm strongly considering a double major or accelerated Masters, but I do not wish to stay in academia for too long.

I would also like to integrate design (UI/UX or game design) into my education, either through a double major as mentioned above or through some special CS concentration.

Some programs I've heard about / considered include U Waterloo's Velocity residence and the Parsons New School for Design. If anyone has experience or feedback on these programs, or other recommendations, please let me know.
Can't stop but think that title of this video sounds like some super-cheesy self-improvement BS.

"The Power of Belief"
In essence Zizek's trick is to make some notes to himself and to then edit them later. The result of this is writing.

Here's the quote (IMDB):

Slavoj Zizek: I have a very complicated ritual about writing. It's psychologically impossible for me to sit down [and just write] so I have to trick myself. I operate a very simple strategy which, at least with me, it works.

I put down ideas. But I put them down usually in a very elaborate way. A line of thought and then in full sentences and so on. So up to a certain point I am telling myself: "No, I'm not yet writing. I'm just putting down ideas". Then at a certain point I tell myself: "Everything is already there, now I just have to edit".

This is from the biopic Zizek! (2005) which I thought was great. I'd recommend it.

Another quote from Zizek!:

I'm a total enlightenment person. I believe in clear statements and so on.

:)
Reminds you of Ceausescu's downfall in 1998 ...
https://github.com/Diogenesthecynic/FullScreenMario is still there, even after a legal complaint from Nintendo.
More likely Pacific
I said "basically". The only point I was trying to make is that the guy who misspelled his name might not have been making fun of Winer's name.
If they are still finding big UI bugs in production, then I suspect we're talking about different kinds of testing. I'm glad they've made a start, though.
this is a bit weird. it should be unrealted and way too soon for microsoft to get their hands on it and two data points a pattern does not make, however:
fairly reliable skype had a big outage the WEEK microsoft bought them and now WhatsApp is having a big outage days after Microsoft bought them.
Best case it's a poor omen.
Hold up. "Big Beer" certainly does exist, and they are god-damn evil, at least here in Australia.
Let's not ascribe all deviousness to the NSA!

Sneaking this in, and being the 1st (or only) group to know about it, would be valuable to lots of amoral entities, from solo criminals up through state actors. Simply being bold enough to use a bogus signing-key (different than the one in the certificate you just showed) was enough to fool every iOS6/7 device for more than a year!

I'd personally hope that the NSA would be more subtle, and has a longer-term interest in ensuring Apple products seem secure. Other state actors or criminal gangs would be more interested in a short-term benefit, and then wouldn't mind that afterward Apple (and US tech in general) gets egg-on-their face. That could be icing on the cake.

I hope Apple does a deep-dive on how this happened – not just "5 whys" but "50 paranoid whys" – including looking at the employee who made the change's background and personal security practices.

What if the person it's traced to does not recall making that change? What if they find evidence that systems designed to catch such a thing were themselves subverted, such as different code shown to a reviewer, or build tools set to suppress certain warnings? It might be a simple slip up... or a very, very deep compromise that takes weeks or months to unwind.

Letting my paranoid imagination roam wild, recall a few years ago when Google suddenly became very, very chilly towards China, after reports of some deep compromises. My hunch is that Google perceived a threat so extreme – like an attempt to hijack their auto-update mechanisms – that it resulted in an all-new level of lockdown and resentful cold war. What if this is a similar existentially-revelatory moment for Apple, with regard to some state actor?
I also would go at least as far as #3 (The NSA knew about it, and exploited it.). And it does seem a reasonable explanation for the prism slide update.

I only just heard about this bug a couple of hours ago. I can not for the life of me fathom how this code was not tested. Surely this is a basic function of the security code. You can test for it with a simple bit of js. If something as important and easily testable as this is broken, what other subtle issues are down there?

I, for one, no longer trust the Apple's software (I know that seems a bit dramatic but I just don't enjoy using it anymore, on any level). Intentional or not, this has all been handled very badly. Massive security hole, quietly releases iOS update, doesn't offer update for their freaking desktop os.
One potential issue is that it appears the coding is the only criterion listed that can be fairly assessed before meeting someone and having a dialogue or giving some test. If they truly don't care about your past traditional leadership, grades, and are most concerned with being good on the fly, what criteria are used to make a decision on bringing someone in for an interview? One's list of accomplishments, transcripts, and past job titles won't typically provide the answers. If these are the hiring criteria that is one thing, but it's a bit of a reach to say that those are the interview selection criteria. I feel that is a key factor here (perspective - I'm a recruiter of developers).
If you want to be professional programmer you don't really need university. In this profession recruitment doesn't lie when tell things like "BS in CS or similar experience.".

Just go and work, then pick up and study something else, like Mathematics or Physics.
> I see five levels of paranoia: ... 5. Apple, complicit with the NSA, added it.

While it seems possible that Apple conspired with the NSA to add a security hole in SecureTransport, I doubt it. According to sources in the article, this bug was introduced in iOS6; and I haven't heard a mention of it until yesterday, despite it being open-sourced (http://opensource.apple.com/source/Security/Security-55471/l...).

Since nobody was raging on the internet about this bug, I see it as a good-faith effort by Apple to fix a bug that they've just discovered.
Why not? By virtue of my profession, I spend many hours in front of a computer during the day. Every time I receive a text -- which is pretty often, I'm wishing I could read respond on the device I'm currently using, instead of switching screens/keyboards.

What would make someone prefer using the other device?
Mind letting us learn more about what you did specifically yourself that that ended up in your recommendation and how it turned out?

The story often brings out more of a perspective.
@elwell if it helps, I will be responding to every startup that reaches out, regardless of whether there's enough time slots for us to formally meet. And I'll do my best to be helpful in those responses.
This does not match my experience.

Interviews can sometimes make me nervous, but I have a history of having zero problem defending an opinion against someone 7 or 8 layers above me.
Because he can? I know the word "hack" is meant very lightly on this site but creating for the sake of creating falls under that nomer
> The Prism program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies such as Google Inc. and Apple Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

"Demands made to the companies". It looks to me like PRISM was a voluntary thing, even if the companies didn't know it was named PRISM.

If that's the case, and Apple's "bug" happened at the same time with their voluntary addition to PRISM, then the bug was actually a backdoor, and Apple knew about it.
No way. This is awesome. Any plans to do other Mario levels or other classic games?
Thank you this is illuminating.