skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The mainstream does not care if your cryptography actually works
Just pretend you're offering strong cryptography and you can make USD 440,000 within 24 hours.

This is because the mainstream does not care if your cryptography really works. You must only make them comfortable believing it.

Following the WhatsApp acquisition deal, Swiss mobile messenger Threema [1][2] got 200,000 new users within 24 hours [3], each paying at least USD 2,20 for the app in advance.

Threema is proprietary. There is no information as to the protocols and algorithms used. But the public is fine with that.

Not only are users celebrating the app. They feel that convincing their friends to go there is the expression of a new movement, reinforced by the NSA revelations and the WhatsApp deal.

Threema got free press coverage by the most popular and trustworthy newspapers in Germany, including zeit.de, spiegel.de, focus.de, heise.de, stern.de, focus.de, handelsblatt.com and bild.de.

We had that already: Telegram, whose team "consists of six ACM champions, half of them Ph.Ds in math" [4]. Telegram decided to provide open APIs and even start a contest to inspect their cryptography.

As it turns out, this was a mistake: While Telegram has been massively criticized for its contest and rolling their own cryptography [5], closed-source Threema is winning.

After all, people just want to feel save.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.threema.app
[2] https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/threema/id578665578?mt=8
[3] http://bit.ly/1nVb8Y5 (Google Translate)
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6916860
[5] http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest
And to think these hypocritical idiots have the audacity to attack and disparage Android.

To quote Phil "The Shil" Schiller - "be safe out there"

Fix your leaky sieve first, Phil.
> specifically that it doesn't auto-update

you might want to do a double check on that
Show HN: Quickfill – Clipboard for iPhone and iPad
Venezuela has shut off Internet to its capital
Google and Apple actually update their browsers, though. I don't think there would be as much concern if IE8 on XP automatically updated to IE11.
We would happily host your footage at Viddme - http://vidd.me
Which version of Word are you using?
They do matter, right up until the moment when they immediately and forever stop mattering.
Servo is a rendering engine (think WebKit), not a browser. So maybe you'll get an uzbl based on Servo one day, just like you may get a Servo-based Firefox, or it may remain at the state of a research project, with lessons incorporated back into Gecko.
Yes. Microsoft Word killed your pappy. Best argument ever.

That is absolutely weak man. If you don't like Word, then don't use it. There are plenty of alternatives. TeX, LaTeX, Abiword, Open Office, Wordpress...

I kid you not, I submitted every single college paper manually typeset in TeX / LaTeX document, created using Vim + Makefiles I hand crafted. Graphs were generated in GnuPlot, maybe R if it were statistics related. Gnumeric was my spreadsheets program, and occasionally I'd use Abiword for times when I needed a more classic "double-spaced 500-word" homework assignment.
Inconsistent probably refers to the fact that there are subtleties that can mess you up, once it works you are fine, but you may have a blocking issue on the way.

Syntax is important, remember he is comparing it to Markdown, not C++. C++ is certainly ugly and should not be used as the basis for any comparison, certainly not for a word processor.

I think he is just pointing out that general theme amongst these tools. They work for the people using them well enough, so they stay that way forever. It isn't that features aren't added or that they stagnate, it is just that thinking outside of the box is impossible.
Ya, IE8 sucks but my Windows 7 machine auto-updated from IE9 to IE10 and just updated to IE11 just last week.
I hope it is on Satya's list. I have several other items on my wishlist too such as fixing the OOXML fiasco. I just realized that Office for Windows don't use the "Open XML" term that much inside the software.
Ya, XP doesn't update as XP is a 12 year old operating system and not supported. My Windows 7 machine just updated to IE11.
Dismissing Microsoft's anti-competetive practices and culture as "bundling a browser in the operating system" is more than somewhat disingenuous.
Ah, the great question of modern times: Should I more hate Microsoft or Google? Personally I'll go with Microsoft, because contrary to what the blog says, I feel that Google is far more open, though that still won't make me buy and Android device. At least not without instantly "flashing" it with some custom ROM that's stripped of as much Google things as possible. Would any Windows version allow me to do this? Of course not, WP doesn't even allow me to access the file system.
As for Microsoft being aware of anything, it's aware of sales and automated feedback. That's all. Considering Lumia 520 makes up a third of all Windows Phone sales, I assume there will be a lot of cheap phones in the future and little expensive innovation.
Both companies are effectively forcing things on people, so talking about "being open" is, in general, out of the question. And with the "cloud and mobile foremost" direction of Microsoft, I don't think I'll have to look for "new" reason to hate Microsoft the same as or more than Google.
You don't consider it harmful if someone is paying more for (or being effectively denied) insurance, being turned down for a mortgage, not getting a job, or being sent legal threats because they refused to pay a fine for a driving offence they never committed? You and I have very different ideas of what harm is, then.

Of course, in reality it's often difficult to prove that a specific outcome was the result of a privacy invasion. It's not like insurers or employers are going to document that they discriminated unfairly, whether illegally or otherwise, in making their decisions. But we know all the things I mentioned can happen, partly because too many times there have been cases where real evidence was seen, and partly because in some cases incentives are aligned with poor behaviour and it's just plain naive to think it won't then happen if there's nothing to balance those incentives.

Privacy is important because it removes the ability to make those unfair decisions in the first place.
It's been a while since I've acted the angry young man, but it hasn't been all that long since Microsoft found itself happily embroiled in controversies regarding the OOXML ISO vote, notably the Sweden situation.

It isn't enough to fail at being evil. Trying to do so loses you points.

I'm ambivalent towards MS today. I'd like to see good stuff from them, but I treat their stuff with caution.
Unfortunately, that part of the company is still part of your company. And it's a big, visible part. Because of MS's transgressions in the past, you don't get the benefit of the doubt from younger devs. Because you're still behaving like jerks with patents, younger devs know that the company hasn't changed.

Microsoft is still extracting software patent royalties from android OEMs this very minute - that's not anyone's pappy, and it's not a vendor overreaching. It's a calculated, evil decision by the highest levels of management.
both myself and my fiance got a fitbit force, i haven't had any problems, but she developed a small rash on her wrist

she stopped wearing the device a few weeks ago, but the rash is still around (is getting better, and has sought treatment), but given the damage, i'm very surprised the company didn't pull bands earlier
LocalAssets (fix broken images in your local dev environment)
It could be quite feasible if the symbol has a similar meaning to an article in English.
That's the minimum legal age to run for senate :)
> I said, find a new reason to hate Microsoft.

OK. I'm pissed that they dropped the deployment tools from Visual Studio. [1]

People keep saying that the desktop is dying, but PC makers still managed to sell over 300M units last year. But if the desktop market ever does truly die, I think Microsoft can be said to have had a part in that.

[1] I'm not actually pissed. I moved on to WiX, but since you asked I felt pressured to come up with something.
Less last mile competition doesn't guarantee more ISP investment
Physics is reversible only at microscopic level. The arrow of time is defined by statistical mechanics, and second law pretty much means that processes tend to go only in one direction.
apply is the function called when you use brackets and nothing else e.g. val x = myMap("myKey")
I edited an existing SVG with emacs.
Which development tools?
The Dr. DooLittle of Snakes
Pixar also hands out a Renderman Teapot every year during the Renderman Users' Group at SIGGRAPH.
Should we switch over to from whatsapp to telegram.org?
Telegram app (telegram.org) is apparently is safer and more open than WhatsApp. If we really care about open communication such important infrastructure should really not be a service but more of a protocol. It should never be worth as much as Facebook paid for it.
"this guy" is David Winer, not some random guy. Go look him up.
In which someone doesn't understand the difference between doing a thing when you do have a monopoly, and doing it when you don't. I say this as a pretty heavy windows user, but chrome on chromeos and safari on iOS are simply not comparable to ie on windows in the early-mid 2000s.
One thing I have learned though is that large companies almost never deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their interests or motivations.

Is Microsoft any more evil than Google? No, and they are probably less so these days. Google strikes me as more deeply invested in defence informatics and surveillance than Microsoft, for example. But am I going to run out and use Windows Phone because it is the lesser of evils? Definitely not.

Lesser of evils unfortunately has proven very successful in American politics. But it has very little place in business.
I'd like to see a PPC iMac update to Safari.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G5

I mean, dear god. WindowsXP is OLDER than PowerPC iMacs. And people expect Microsoft to support it for free? Where the hell is my iMac G5 support?

Oh yeah, thats right. Its in the trash. When Apple declared the PowerPC (or was it Mortorola?) dead, and switched over to x86 Machines.
You have to admit, compared to most any tool out there, vim has one of the worst newbie experiences, given its popularity.

Even a terminal window allows you to type help to get something to work with. VIM replies with "Left, end of word, Right, paste after" which in most cases is nearly a NOP.

I believe what he is trying to say is that it would make sense to figure out how to make the initial experience less daunting without giving up the power it provides.
For pretty much all real smaller languages the alphabet and writing concepts was a mishmash of other, more developed languages that their educated people happened to know. And usually the early versions were horrible, horrible mismatches trying to fit a square peg into a round hole; multiple sounds mapping to a single 'proper' letter, making up new symbols, making up new writing concepts to represent peculiarities of grammar (and then finding out that these concepts don't really work).

There are languages that have tried multiple very different scripts - depending on time period, latin, cyrillic and arabic-style; with different writing styles of the exact same spoken language having almost nothing in common if they were developed in isolation because of differences in location&country.
Take a look at http://opensource.apple.com/source/Security/Security-55471/l...

specifically check the function SSLVerifySignedServerKeyExchange

I leave the joy of spotting it to you. It is obvious and if you know c you'll see it(You don't need any knowledge of crypto).
In what way has the "secure boot fiasco" actually impacted you? I read a lot about it a few years ago, but in my experience that was nothing but FUD.
Of course, this still don't excuse the execution flaws. I wonder how Vic Gundotra was chosen. There is these articles which may give a clue:

http://www.businessinsider.com/i-interviewed-to-be-googles-h...

http://piaw.blogspot.ca/2010/05/organizational-thinking.html
I'm looking for arguments about whether we should switch over to a platform that is open.
No it really isn't. They need to pay for a license or not infringe on the patents.
I usually think of a business model whereby a company goes around and tells others "pay me for patent X or I'll sue you" as extortion. And shockingly enough, that's part of the modern, saintly Microsoft business model. Not to mention the suspicious fast-tracking of the word document standard.

Another thing is trust. Why would you trust an organization which still had at least a famous C-level executive which executed a number of business strategies you have a problem with? Why would you trust an organization run by Steve Ballmer? Now, maybe new management will turn Microsoft around, but it has done enough dodgy things over the years that yes, it will have to "bend over backwards" for a long time before I trust it again.
Nope! Being a hatchet-burier weakens my current hatchets.

I'm still boycotting GoDaddy, for example, even though I forgot why. Presumably I had a good reason. And when I've forgotten why I was mad at the companies who wrong me today, I'll still avoid them. This is an incentive for them to be nice now instead of later.
Microsoft on putting a backdoor on encryption in Hotmail/Outlook.com: "When we upgrade or update products we aren't absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
I've been frustrated with the lack of Konsole in any other term emulator.
Google, Apple etc. make sweet products and contribute a lot of FOSS tech back to the community. I'm not a fan of MS products, and they contribute back very little.
Unlike perhaps a decade ago I don't really care about Microsoft today. They're irrelevant to my life, and I don't use any of their software. If anyone recommended using a proprietary Microsoft system I'd respect their choice but strongly advise against it.

You might say that stuff that happened a decade ago is done and gone, but the thing to really consider is whether the people running Microsoft has changed significantly and whether their overall approach/philosophy has changed. I think the answer to that is not much.
Exactly. I use LaTeX for almost everything that most people use Word or Powerpoint for. Yes, with vim and makefiles. There is no matching my productivity there in a word processor.

And I use Gnumeric (and assume you do too) because of the latex export function.

If Microsoft wants my business back, having really good LaTeX export from every MS Office program would be the place to start, along with native Linux clients.

What? They won't do that?
as long as bash doesn't get the terminal sizing 100% right all the time (and thus display proper entry line/prompt all the time), I'm not going to use it. It always happens eventually, if you spend along time in the shell. There used to be a myriad of little bugs causing this.
Not sure how many are left now.
Yes, you used LaTeX in school. Best argument ever.

That is absolutely weak man. If you live out in the real world, there aren't plenty of alternatives.

I kid you not, I keep buying MS Word, despite hating it passionately, because it's the only word processing document format that we can share in common with business partners, our legal counsel, accounting, etc.
SSLVerifySignedServerKeyExchange in http://opensource.apple.com/source/Security/Security-55471/l...

If you want to see my favorite SSL bug ever.
Ambivalent is the keyword here.
It has to be said, though, that Microsoft's evil methods have usually been administered in foreign, often developing, countries. [The telegraph's article](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financial-crime/10260730/...)

I always thought that Windows kinda spoiled the digital culture of a generation And therefore I always supported Linux for professional usage and Apple for personal usage.
But that's an opinion based on a range of products; sticking a sentiment like hate to a company that makes tools you still can decide to buy or not to buy, is always pretty stupid.

Unless they're Nestlé or Monsanto, of course.
> That is absolutely weak man. If you don't like Word, then don't use it. There are plenty of alternatives. TeX, LaTeX, Abiword, Open Office, Wordpress...

I'm not sure what Wordpress is doing in the list, but the fact is that dealing with Word documents can be pretty much unavoidable (depending on where you work), and they don't always open correctly in Open Office.
Am I alone in thinking that Android needs some real, community developed competition that isn't primarily sponsored by an adware company?
Except that Microsoft pioneered the flat design thing, which both Google and Apple have recently followed. So how is this still a valid criticism?
Ahem. You mean Opera and Netscape Communicator were not comparable to IE5 and IE6.

Microsoft IE stagnated at that point, as Netscape morphed into Mozilla Communicator, and then was rewritten into Mozilla Firefox. But IE reigned supreme only after it defeated Netscape Communicator (which was supported by the internet monopoly AOL)
I had to [0]. Thanks for the suggestion.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer
90% of them have retired or been fired, just like at any tech company after 10 years.
They dropped the setup project (deployment). If they had dropped the development tools from VS, I'm not not sure what would be left. [edited (twice) for clarity]
Many companies are using Wordpress where MS Word documents were once used before. Giant word documents with cross references that documented procedures are instead replaced by Blogs and Wikis.

Best part about Wordpress / Wikis, is that you get open collaboration, instant publishing, RSS, Emails, and everything. Its the perfect publishing platform.

On the other hand, a number of businesses still pass around Word Documents like the internet hasn't been invented yet. Tell me this, which is easier to collaborate on. A Group-Blog hosted on Wordpress? Or the 20 copies of a Word document that your office is passing around by email?
That video is trying to convert me to a religion, or change my life philosophy, or something. It's telling me what life is about, what happiness is, and frankly I resent that. Not to be a grouch, but you are a company making a ticketing system that uses people's photos. You aren't the Buddha, or Jesus, or Socrates.

Since you brought up the subject, though, happiness is equanimity. It is the freedom from distress that agitation and unmet desire and unwanted pain causes. And that has absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with your product.

Build stuff, get excited about it, try to sell it. That's good and right when you're in business. But don't overstep your bounds and start preaching.

FWIW, the biggest problem in ticketing is Ticketmaster's de facto monopoly - if you want to get people excited about ticketing, tell them that you have a plan to compete with Ticketmaster and won't be charging $15/ticket "service fees". (I mean, come on, $15/ticket? That might be acceptable if the tickets were calligraphy on parchment.)
I'll add that on the other hand, I have the utmost respect for Microsoft Research, which keeps churning out amazing results. I just wish it was called something else. I think I'd like the idea of a chartered research establishment, like the BBC, with a secure amount of public EU money, focusing on the future of computing, and not scrounging for grants.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.. more personal data than NSA
Ha Whiner, I see what you did there.

No actual argument, just making fun of some guy's name.

Very nice.
Sorry, misread. Which deployment tools are you missing?
All the essential topics? I miss eigenvalues (and probably determinants as a stepping stone to that). Dunno if the most pedagogical approach would be before or after SVD though.
Ms has not changed a lot, the OOXML standardisation process showed this. And putting the actions of 20 years ago in today s context is irrelevant as ms doesn t have the power anymore it enjoyed at that time.

A lot of devs are also still pissed because of the countless hours , ie lost evenings and nights, they had to spend to make their app compatible with IE.

This isnt a defense of apple or google btw, any market controlling company is harming progress imo.
There is a big difference between "We stopped being evil at some point" and "we stopped being successful enough to pull off the evil shit that we really, really wanted to do". The DRM[0] that Microsoft were trying to bundle with the Xbox One just scant months ago is the same Microsoft I remember - and they thought that they could pull it off because they were the market leader last console generation. If Microsoft gets any headway with any other of their products, I know exactly what they're going to use it for, whether good-hearted programmers working there support it or not.

For me, it's really not a matter of hatred, I've gotten over it. It's just straightforward ROI. I'd need a really compelling reason to consider Microsoft technology, to offset the expected amount of integration pain, license cajoling, oh-but-it-really-only-works-if-you're-using-a-full-MS-stack bait and switchery that I've experienced in the past. There's more than enough fantastic tech out there to keep me busy that doesn't have that baggage attached. Sorry, guys.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_one#Initial_used_games_and...
The templates for building setup projects.

Even though it was limited, it was very useful. I lost a fair number of days trying to rebuild setups from scratch using other solutions.
I miss his old blog, with ¶s next to every paragraph for purposes of linking.
Could you expound on what this means? Because Apple was the first to bring out a consumer-grade multi-touch screen, and I believe everyone was blown away by how thin their Mac Book Airs were compared to everyone else's efforts?

edit: So I'm not sure what flat here is exactly referring to. Surface? What about all the tablets that preceded it, all the way back to the 90s with GO, Newton, and the like?
I don't hate Microsoft for 20 year old reasons. I hate them for 2.5 year old reasons

http://games.greggman.com/game/webgl-security-and-microsoft-...

I'm sure others can list more recent FUD and lies put out by Microsoft.

If in another 5-10 years there's no more incidents of that kind of stuff maybe I'll like them again?

...

Actually I can't really say I hate them now. But I think it's important to point out they are still a pretty shitty company in many ways. I hope they stop that crap.

An x-coworker at my last job had previous worked at Microsoft. His parting message to everyone was how happy he was that at this job the company always tried to do the right thing whereas at his previous job at MS the company always tried to see how much they could get away with.

Of course that's just one anecdote but if true I hope MS can change that attitude to something positive and that we'll see the results for the next few years.