skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Requiring explicit authorization would be really nice. I recently discovered that even if you set Google Play to always require a password (which apparently isn't even necessarily the default(?)), you still don't require a password for 30 minutes after any purchase. That means that if I buy a game for my son to play with, any in-game purchases he randomly clicks on automatically get approved.

Fortunately I get them refunded when I complain, but it's still a stupid policy.
>* I have no reason to not believe you, but how is this possible, and what does it say about either those students or that university or even both? Do they also not know what a group is?*

They should know what a group is, because even us, CS students, were taught group theory for a whole semester.

As for the monoid thing, I guess they could have been taught at some point, along with being taught 20 other branches and fields of mathematics in different classes, and they were more likely to remember a) the basic stuff, b) the stuff they started to specialize on and concentrated upon writing their thesis. So, I guess if I had talked to someone who had taken a preference to type theory and such, they would have known.

>How can a mathematician (and a nearly graduated student in maths is certainly a mathematician) not know what basic algebraic structures are? I'm shocked, frankly. It's literally equivalent to saying they don't know what real numbers are, without exaggerating one bit.

Is it? I don't know. You can read whole books in Algebra and not mean the word "Monoid" once in them, including some university books.

For example (not even one mention):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keyw...

This again no mention:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keyw...

This (a "graduate level" book) only mentions Monoid once, somewhere on the first pages, and adds that it won't be emphasised:
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=C4TByeUh9A4C&printsec=fr...

And I'm pretty sure in our Algebra books (for CS students, 2 classes in the 1st and 2nd year) there was no much mention of monoids (or, possibly, the professor skipped over those chapters, maybe had some brief explanation and went on to other things).

Of course, what university gradutes of a field do not know can sometimes be even more daunting. For example, a surprising percentage of degree-ed Computer Scientists cannot even solve the fizz-buzz problem:

http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/
Virgin Media rolls out porn filtering system
It often depends on your skill level, whether you take breaks from the game, and how much of a completionist you are. In some games these factors interact in complicated ways.

From a regulatory perspective, I'm afraid the best we can do is:

* Ban tying game mechanics to time outside the game, whether it's "wait 8 hours unless you pay" or "this reward is only available for 4 hours" or an insidious combination of the two.

* Increase transparency, e.g. by asking app stores to show graphs of (time played) vs (money spent).
A blanket 'work less hours' policy across professions might actually be bad because doctors, scientists, researchers, etc work longer hours to advance medical knowledge which benefits everyone.

This is pure speculation but I don't believe anyone who is at the frontier of human knowledge will ever expand it by working less hours than usual.
Does not help against malformed USB descriptors, which were used to pwn the PlayStation 3.
> I'm constantly amazed by the perversity of 'compliant' compilers, but can this be true?

V597 - http://www.viva64.com/en/d/0208/

Zero and forget -- caveats of zeroing memory in C - http://www.eliteraspberries.com/blog/2012/10/zero-and-forget...

Overwriting memory - why? - http://www.viva64.com/en/k/0041/
> Nowhere in the near future will there be popular support, even within select states or counties, for banning birth control.

If you live in the U.S., you're out of touch with popular opinion. The majority are in favor of birth control, but there is certainly popular opposition to birth control.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...

> In arguing that people should have personal choice, you are indirectly agreeing with the very same minority you caricature.

That's absurd and a troll. Obviously anyone who speaks in favor of free speech would have to receive the same reply from you, on the ground that free speech is by definition a tolerance for unpopular views.
Insecure hipsters with BEARD ENVY spur facial hair transplant craze
Some people grin, or even laugh when uncomfortable or nervous. Using what may be a slight grin as the title of an article means this article, and journalist for that matter, aren't worth my time. I highly doubt they are worth anyone else's either.
And shaming that parent into giving in to their child's unreasonable demands just ensures that the child will throw more tantrums in the future. And they work because bystanders will shame the parent into giving in. Don't be that person; support the parent.
Motizuki explains inter-universal Teichmüller theory
It is about transparency of pricing and being able to compare the actual cost of games.

Apple has featured a game today that they have listed as free. The largest IAP is $55, but that price is hidden behind extra clicks. This means that when a consumer is comparing two apps they have extra work to do to compare true prices.

This hidden pricing has cause harm.

Developers cannot advertise a game with an honest price. An app sold at £5.99 would struggle in todays app store. So devs have to list games as free but with IAPs.
Playing With Emscripten and ASM.js
I like that you put the ticker query into the browser tab :)
They should focus their efforts on redditgifts (http://redditgifts.com/) and consider putting it on the main site instead of on a separate domain. Their users may not like to buy mainstream products but they definitely like to buy quirky, off-the-wall things as evidenced by `Shut Up And Take My Money`'s success with advertising on Reddit. They've already got the right idea with the marketplace model. They should (if they're not already) focus on trying to attract unique products through a program similar to Steam's Greenlight and stop focusing so much on advertising. Advertising and Redditors -- generally speaking -- are not a good match.
Eddy Cue (Apple SVP of Internet Ops) is on the Ferrari board of directors.
Don't know why you got voted down. You make a very decent point!
The think tank is pushing somebody's agenda, and even though the think tank as an organization isn't profiting, I'm sure the officers are doing quite well for themselves.
We could use a bit more self-reflection and a little less shooting the messenger around here.

If you only want to read happy happy joy, disruption yeah, cheerleader stories about how awesome the tech industry is, I suggest TechCrunch.

Our industry has a pervading attitude of treating anybody who is not "us" as roadkill on the highway to progress. That's going to turn against us a lot harder then these few relatively mild articles.
That's true, but it doesn't contradict my original claim. Texas was selected for political reasons, not practical ones. Had pragmatism and convenience ruled the day, the SSC would have been sited immediately adjacent to Fermilab.

There's a reason NASA programs, and big science projects, are scattered across the country, and it's not efficiency, it's politics -- congress must slice the pie into as many pieces as possible.
Ask HN: How do researchers chose between 'calculus' and 'algebra'?
As an example case, why is relational algebra not called a calculus, and why is the π-calculus not called an algebra? The principles of calculus, historically, are differentials and integrals, while those of algebra are operators and equation solving. Contemporary principles are analysis and abstract objects, respectively.
>Some, though, seem rather ineffectual. If the App Store and Google Play replace the button that says "Free" with one that says something else, and the game still doesn't cost anything up-front, is that really going to change anyone's behavior?

Yes. Customer psychology is a fascinating thing. Even changing $100 to $99.9 generates more sales. And there are tons of examples like that (from the importance of colors to the important of shelf placement on supermarket). Wording is important.

I think it's not about in-app purchases being made without consent. The real issue is that a game with in-app purchases is not a "free" game exactly, it's like what we used to call shareware or light version. It's a different experience than with totally free games.
> As an example case, why is relational algebra not called a calculus, and why is the π-calculus not called an algebra?

Because algebra and calculus are defined differently.

> The principles of calculus, historically, are differentials and integrals, while those of algebra are operators and equation solving.

Yes, and this leads me to wonder why you asked.

> Contemporary principles are analysis and abstract objects, respectively.

There are many fields that have some elements in common, but that are sufficiently distinct to merit different names and definitions.
> The theory, according to the spokesman, is that the cover is blown aside so rapidly that a vehicle parked atop it with brakes off will be left hanging in thin air--like yanking a tablecloth out from under dishes--and then drop straight down, in hopes of keeping the launching missile from going anywhere.

Feels like something Adam Savage might enjoy testing out.
As a Apple's commitment to accessibility makes automated testing much easier, believe it or not. I'm not sure if they started out with this intention, but I'd find it hard to believe that Apple hasn't noticed this and this reasoning has been a part of why they're so adamant about it.
> It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.

A bit of both. Elected officials have way too much power, and not enough ways to control them. Look for instance what it takes to revoke someone. But the way election themselves work suck too: by nature, elections will mostly select a narrow elite, which right now is mostly hereditary. And when we vote, we can hardly judge the wannabe official on his discourse: many are lying to gain the favour of the people.

If you get only one thing, get this: policy making shouldn't be in the hands of a few policy makers. The people should vote their own laws directly. The people should even write their laws directly, though I don't know how to do that technically (with computers networked together, we should find a way).
This is really pathetic. I can understand companies being ruthless in maximizing their profits but this sort of move is seriously counter productive. If the wages are not competitive it also means less incentive for bright youngsters to get into these professions. If this kind of agreements become more common, I think that will be like we killing our future.
EU doesn't care about capitalism as much as the USA and the like-minded.

It cares about setting proper expectations: you're going to have to pay to finish the game/really use the app.

I think that's not a bad idea to mark it clearly as such.
How Facebook Exploits Underage Girls in its Quest for Ad Revenue
Both parts of that statement have merits.

/r/news is one of the default subreddits, and, well, it's about news.

And reddit's official motto is "The Front Page of the Internet".

Despite that, I feel that removing the Greenwald story wasn't warranted.
The article's author is obviously unfamiliar with Japanese customs. A bow without a smile is taken as insincere.

http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/obamajap...

http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/two-young-smiling-woman-japan...
Bitcoin Kingpin Admits Everyone's Money Is Gone
Augmented reality app points way to Japan's elusive free Wi-Fi
What does trust even mean? Flash storage devices come with little cpus/controllers which run code the moment you plug in the device (note: nothing to do with mounting). If you can find a way to program them (many already have), you can exploit all kinds of OS bugs without even having a file-system on the device. There are just too many places to stash code in modern electronic devices for them to ever be considered 'trusted'.
That page says, "These numbers only include gifted gold"
Yes, I am aware of that. I am talking about things just working out of the box. It depends on which linux distro you use. I am not talking about just installing linux here.

There are choices - Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, OpenSuse etc. and each distribution differs in user interface and the hardware support (graphic cards/wifi/bluetooth etc.). So far, Ubuntu seems to have a slight upper hand on hardware compatibility.
Kids should have a childhood like I experienced/like I wanted, or else it will be a wasted childhood.

I don't think that kids should play a lot of video games (I don't know what they should or should not do, since I'm not a child development expert). But this whole adults looking back at their "organic" childhood as the one true way to grow up ever is getting kind of old.

Lego? Damnit, take those silly toys away from him and give 'em a garn and let them make up their own games. I tell you these advanced toys destroys the natural creativity of children. Give 'em a stick and some garn and they will make up their own games; that's how kids are SUPPOSED to be.
Apple's sustainability efforts (and other things like support for blind users) can be seen as being in the interest of profits.

The NCPPR's view that Apple should do the minimum necessary to meet government environmental rules in order to maximise profits is short-sighted. A lot of people care about environmental issues - as well as things like labour concerns with the factories in China. By doing the right thing and addressing public concerns on these issues, Apple enhances its reputation, which can in turn lead to greater profits.
The people have the right to vote in whatever government they want. If that right is abridged or taken away, they can kill the people doing that until the right is restored.

That is the consent of the governed.
This was the first thing that helped my 62 year old mother understand just how secure a private key is. I agree it needs more context for those who are completely unfamiliar. It does however help those one the fringes who understand bitcoin but not encryption.
I still don't use ack, mostly because it's not installed everywhere I go on a regular basis and so my fingers still go 'grep' when I think 'text search'.

(I also rarely use curl, because my fingers are trained for wget -qO. That one is a personal quirk, though, I didn't know about curl until I'd had that one imprinted on my brain. The cool thing there, though, is that wget -qSO will send headers to stderr and content to stdout, so you can get fancy.)
A great point. Your wallet is only as secure as you make it. I would guess the vast majority thefts will be a result of other things.
No, you dont need karma to upvote. However, people often do things like get friends to upvote their content. Therefore, there are algorithms in place to detect this. When the algorithm detects that this has happened, it revokes the upvote.
Seems kind of ridiculous to me.

"Consumers and in particular children need better protection against unexpected costs from in-app purchases."

What are unexpected costs? Are users ever charged without explicitly agreeing to it?

"The use of the word 'free' (or similar unequivocal terms) as such, and without any appropriate qualifications, should only be allowed for games which are indeed free in their entirety, or in other words which contain no possibility of making in-app purchases, not even on an optional basis."

What is the cost of someone downloading a 'free' game only to realize that they need to pay to get the experience that they expected? They can just uninstall the game. I've paid for and downloaded games that didn't deliver the experience I expected.

If the goal is protecting kids from making in-app purchases, maybe parents should learn how to use parental controls, or not attach credit cards to their children's devices. Does this really 'protect' anyone, or does it just change the language that game-makers use for this model, and nothing else?
From time to time people withdraw that consent, like in the Ukraine at the moment.
* did-mount is a mapping to React's componentDidMount[0] lifecycle method (and, in Om, part of the IDidMount protocol[1])

* reify is the creation of an anonymous type instance, implementing 1..n protocols (not entirely dissimilar to an anonymous class in java). This could also have been done with a deftype (no difference in efficiency, but Om's creator seems to prefer reify):

(deftype Widget [data owner]
om/IRender
(render [this]
; render code here
)
om/IDidMount
(did-mount [this node]
; mount code here
)

* peek's a bit more complex because it requires knowledge of interesting features (?) of Clojure collections: all clojure collections are immutable, and often built with conj(oin). conj "adds an item to a collection", but where it does so depends on the collection (and its efficiency profile): (conj '(1 2 3) 0) -> '(0 1 2 3) but (conj [1 2 3] 0) -> [1 2 3 0] (lists can be efficiently extended from the head, vectors from the tail). `peek` essentially returns the last conj'd item, so on lists it's equivalent to `first`, on vectors it's equivalent to `last` (but faster)

[0] http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/component-specs.html#mo...

[1] https://github.com/swannodette/om/wiki/Documentation#wiki-id...
It doesn't have a strong enough tie-in to Snowden to cause rioting. But seriously, some responses are more productive than others.
I agree with you but for those who understand the concept behind bitcoin but not encryption this graphic really helps to explain that the majority of problems are not encryption related.
Good. Perhaps I will sign up now. Last time I checked was almost a year ago. But yeah, that should be the default.
My favorite is Lawrenceville Plasma Physics [1] or more generally dense plasma focus fusion [2]. But really I just want someone to do it yesterday. I do have serious doubts that the billion dollar projects will ever be economical even if they work.

[1] http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus
Cryptography – a new crypto library for Python
This is often discussed in the UK, here's one such article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/10183004/Pr... but the conclusion is that a UK company at least should promote the success of the company, and that isn't all about pure profit.
Mastercoin Wallets – Windows Client Out – more coming soon
I'm not saying it would. But the point is that it should, and it's stupid that it doesn't.

It's 2014.

"Someone stole my car by using a packaged exploit that is easier to find and abuse than breaking anything on DVL"

This is just unacceptable.

I think most of us (here) care about the software our cars are running. It's also absurd that we can't access the computers and put our own software on them. It may be difficult to get legislators to realize just how bad this software is and how much important it is to get right, but it's their job to listen. An alternative is to push for openness of these computing devices. Having access to put your own software on any computer you own may enable the existence of open source implementations that are better than the defaults, and sensationalist headlines might get enough attention of the right people to make something happen. "These hackers can keep your car from being stolen, for free."

Alternatively, headlines about this kind of issue need to be more specific. 'Mysterious "black box"' seems like the headline created by someone in the pocket of the industry. Instead, how about a headline like "a black box created by low-tech criminals exploiting massive security holes that car manufacturers know about allows anyone to unlock and start any car". Maybe it's a bit wordy, but it's somewhere to start. And it shines a light on the real problem. It doesn't paint it as a mystery with only the thieves at fault.
IM has simply become a mess with isolated protocols.
Tim Cook shrugged.
still broken. following the instructions on windows, I am getting:

D:\repos\js-master\phantomjscloud-backend>npm install npm -g --ca=""

npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/npm

npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/npm

npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.4.tgz

npm ERR! fetch failed https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.4.tgz

npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.4.tgz

npm ERR! fetch failed https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.4.tgz

npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.4.tgz

npm ERR! fetch failed https://registry.npmjs.org/npm/-/npm-1.4.4.tgz

npm ERR! Error: CERT_UNTRUSTED

npm ERR! at SecurePair.<anonymous> (tls.js:1349:32)

npm ERR! at SecurePair.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:92:17)

npm ERR! at SecurePair.maybeInitFinished (tls.js:962:10)

npm ERR! at CleartextStream.read [as _read] (tls.js:463:15)

npm ERR! at CleartextStream.Readable.read (_stream_readable.js:320:10)

npm ERR! at EncryptedStream.write [as _write] (tls.js:366:25)

npm ERR! at doWrite (_stream_writable.js:219:10)

npm ERR! at writeOrBuffer (_stream_writable.js:209:5)

npm ERR! at EncryptedStream.Writable.write (_stream_writable.js:180:11)

npm ERR! at write (_stream_readable.js:573:24)

npm ERR! If you need help, you may report this log at:

npm ERR! <http://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues>

npm ERR! or email it to:

npm ERR! <npm-@googlegroups.com>
also tried on my debian 7 server. broken there also.
http://niftylettuce.com/posts/linux-mint-ubuntu-nodejs-hacke...
Add to that your new innovations and creative methods of solving business problems requires managers to reskill themselves into new modes of operation. Something they hate doing because they got this position to keep the status quo for as long as possible.
Unlike the US, the EU has strong legislation against deceptive advertising. Saying that a game is "free" when it's designed for profit is intentionally deceptive. It's really as simple as that.
So is AirBnb with one of the coowners listed on top 100 FBI cyberscammers list.

Im sorry but having a rubberstamp of PG is not the same as having blessing of Elon Musk, for example. PG seems to be drifting into the dark side. What worked for Airbnb (scamming people on craiglist to solicit airbnb) worked as charm on SocialCam when the idea was to scam as many of your Facebook friends as possible.
If you still have to use iPhones and iPads with it to work, this all seems pointless. Only hacker anticipation to hack into Ferrari and Merc.
Yes they both display only visible part of the text, which
Actually Ace was the one that first used this technique for rendering. And c9.io opens 80kloc files without a problem, and have much faster searching and scrolling.
> If the in-app purchases are "x00 Special In-Game Currency Units" then I don't install the game.

That's sensible to false-positives though, a number of games are perfectly playable (with no roadblock) without getting special currency units, e.g. jetpack joyride (a fairly standard infinite runner) or Solomon's Boneyard. The currency units are mostly there for developer support and if you can't be arsed to play the game (for some reason).