skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's really something that is specific to what we do and I had/have no intention of making it generic or let alone designing the type of thing that helps people who don't have experience doing sys admin - because I want to stay focused. For those that are interested these are the main techniques I use:

First I go to slicehost and create a machine, they send me a email when it's done (about 5 mins or so).

I have one install script and a syncing script, The install scripts one calls the sync script. After the machine is live I just use the sync one to update it. $hostname is the name or IP address of the new machine.

First I copy SSH authorization over, so I can login without a password (assumes you have created SSH keys already - which is one time event):

ssh root@$hostname "mkdir /root/.ssh; echo \"`cat /root/.ssh/id_dsa.pub`\" > /root/.ssh/authorized_keys2"

Then run various commands on the new machine. I put these in a file "commands.fragment".
which contains things like

mkdir /var/www

groupadd -g600 web

chgrp web /var/www

yum -y install iptables ntp

and so on, then run it:

cat commands.fragment | ssh root@$hostname

The I run the syncing script (which I'll rerun over the life of the machine)
Then I sync my code across:

rsync -avz -e ssh /var/www/ root@$hostname:/var/www/

and programs I've complied:

rsync -avz -e ssh /usr/local/ root@$hostname:/usr/local/

and so on.

Now we have everything in place we can start the services for whatever the box does, for example to start a web server:

ssh root@$hostname "/sbin/chkconfig --add lighttpd; /etc/init.d/lighttpd start"

And that's it.

My script took me a few hours to write and I did so that I can scale up (and down) in a hurry by adding a machine rather than taking the existing machines (there are 2) down whilst slicehost resize it - which is not something I wanted do while there is a lot of traffic coming in. We don't really need multiple machines, but buying one big slice is expensive to have running the whole time.

Hope that helps.
> Quit before you get fired

That very much depends on your local laws. Getting fired can be very lucrative in some locales.
Gartner hype cycle for Emerging Technologies 2009
I doubt the App Store matters. People loved the iPhone before there were apps, remember?

Palm OS, Windows Mobile, etc., etc., died because they fucking sucked, not because there was no single app store.
You just gave me an even more interesting idea! What if you had a service which automatically found data correlations?

Create a sort of Wikipedia of timeline-based data streams. Let people have both public and private timelines. Come up with some sort of clever way to do the N^2 comparisons and find interesting correlations. Maybe even provide people a framework to conduct experiments by influencing an independent variable.

If even a few cool results sprung up out of this, you'd see loads of people pushing their data into it from all sorts of sciences. Who knows what sorts of fantastic things we can learn from the collective intelligence?
We’ll be doing another related blog post next week with a bit more information on some of the creative solutions people came up with, complete with code and stories.

.... and they never did. Two weeks out and no follow up post on the contest entries.
Facebook Goes Lite and Tests Twitter-Like Version of Itself
Or alternatively, incorporate a new shell corporation for each 99 new patents.
However to his credit the OP prefaced with "ok, here's what i like and dislike about living in argentina and starting up [...]". And his advice was obviously meant to apply for the Argentinian situation.
Crazy Stuff! TechCrunch are about the sanest voice on Facebook Lite I have read this morning.
Better go with a CD-R, they are far easier to damage than memory sticks.
Afford to be an employee: because the pay is not good enough to still save enough money for pension and health care, and other needs.

Consulting: true, but my question is more like how common is such a thing? It seems to me that it is unusual to go about it that way. Perhaps establishing some conventions for it would be beneficial.

Sorry if it is a bit unclear :-(
Team Nirvana - Technology, Reviews, Blogging
Providing the Best Solutions on Technology, Gadgets and information on how to optimize the computers running on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Network and Security Issues. Interesting and innovative thoughts on current trends in technology.
Is Your Code Worthy Of Being Improved
Actually I don't like video on my MacBooks glossy screen. The reason is that dark backgrounds make the reflection much more noticeable. While I work, I tend to have a lot of white in the background, and it is very usable. Videos tend to have a lot of dark scenes, so the reflections get very annoying.
I would argue that the SO userbase is already highly focused - on developers. Its not "general technology site", just "general developers" site. Its not as if that's an especially large and poorly defined group.

With a much smaller subset of potential users I think you'll also find a much more "focused" group of advertisers, i.e. a smaller group of interested advertisers.
The Funding Drought
Teachers Can't call kids 'stupid' - Indiameme
What is Twitter according to Google?
The Facebook Lite newsfeed screenshot:

http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/2-63...

From:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/12/facebook-lite-in-pictur...
They should have used a Truecrypt random partition in which case it cannot be proved that they have encrypted anything at all.
Ask HN: Please review my concept
Some more screenshots of the Facebook Lite newsfeed and inbox:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/12/facebook-lite-in-pictur...
Basic income money should be taken from other taxes rather than printed, otherwise, of course, no sense in it.
Revealed preference is on your site.
That's the thing, though. If he's within a reasonable range, then ok. If he's way outside that range you should take a pause and consult someone else. It's just a sanity check on the mechanic, like calling a friend or another shop.

I had a great mechanic for a while who I could trust, but at some point he retired and sold his shop to someone new. I ended up with a problem that seemed to be getting into the thousands of dollars range. Is he right? Is he lying/taking me for a ride? Is he being lazy? I'm a pretty technical guy, but I don't know everything about the ins and outs of auto mechanics.

I told him to wait, and after a few calls to car-friends and a dealership I could call him back and have him take me through the problem again. My goal wasn't to 'trap' him, but now that I knew enough I could see what he looked at, what he thought the problem/options were, etc.

I ended up taking the car to a different mechanic, not because the first was lying to me, but because it was clear that he didn't have enough knowledge about my type of car. It ended up being a cheap part and a quirk with the car's computer.

I later told the other mechanic (in a friendly manner) and he was genuinely surprised, and offered me a discount in the future if I ever needed anything else.

A customer waiving their iPhone around is probably a pretty good way to show that they don't know anything about car repair and are bad at negotiating. That's probably not going to work out so well for them...
s/Google/Google's search engine suggestions/
It's interesting to see the responses on /. compared to here.

The thing is were fogetting (or they're forgetting) is that this is, what, 2 people prosecuted out of 11 refusals over the course of 1 year. That's maybe 0.001% (this is a typo - I meant 0.01%, see below) of all the encrypted material investigated in a year (very rough figures, I only have a tiny portion of the data: it could be lower still).

I dont think it's "panties in a twist" material yet :)
InfoSec Needs to Focus on Access not Protection
I like the idea. I have a horrible signature. I'm not sure I would part with real money for a better one, but I like the idea.

What I don't like is the front page of the site. The text there basically conveys nothing. I had to re-read the first paragraph several times to make sure I hadn't mis-read it. It just doesn't give any sense of what the service is!
The Razor Blade Business Model
Inmates cost more. They have to be guarded.
If you know you are right, and you have the funds to pay someone else (a lawyer) to do most of the legwork, it can be far more damaging to just do what the other guy wants, as this gives him leverage over your future behavior.
What are you considering "provable?" You know, a judge and prosecutor don't get involved because of suspicion that you have encrypted data that might be useful for solving a crime, there are usually a long string of events and circumstances that brings you to that point. The actual encryption keys are just a formality by that point.

Whether or not you can plausibly deny the existence of encrypted data in a convincing manner probably isn't going to be that important. Everyone draws a line somewhere and that might be the stand you wish to take, I suspect you'll end up in jail regardless though.
Thanks for the suggestions. You are right we need to work on the presentation. I am glad you liked he idea though.
Speaking for Germany: Basically yes. But it's split on numerous agencies and bureaucracies. Also it's not unconditional. And among the worst things: The effective marginal tax rate can be quite high for people with low income. I.e. you don't pay much taxes per se, but for each earned Euro above a certain threshold you have to forfeit one Euro of e.g. BAföG. Not a good incentive to work gradually more.
Ha, that url was blocked by my aggressive filters. :)

"Scenario #6: Professional content dies almost immediately." is ridiculous. There was a web before advertisements and it was (and still is) full of the finest professional content. If your business model is based on ads, then you have no business model. Internet ad monetization is nothing but a gamble.

Let's see how many ad-less "professional" (as in useful and of varying quality) sites I frequently use.

wikipedia

openstreetmap

wolfram alpha

media archives of hacker conferences

lots of open-source related websites

countless other wikis

countless sites by people who love doing what they do, be it hacking, creating, analysing or whatever else

With no more ads I would anticipate more actual content created out of affection (might not be the correct word, no english native speaker here?) and less "this is where people click on most banners, so let's shove more if it down their throats".
XML is definitely not a programming language. It's not turing complete.
Schneier on Security: Lockpicking and the Intenet
s/Google's search engine suggestions/Google's automated search engine suggestions based on users' queries/

:)
As far as I can tell - having moved to Austria and acquired a tax specialist - this is backwards.

The US gets first dibs. At least they do in my situation. Then the full amount I pay to the US in tax (100%) is removed from the taxes I owe in Austria.

Simple example: Austria says I owe 20,000 euros. US says I owe $15,000. I pay the US $15,000. My tax burden in Austria is now approximately 20,000 - 10,000 euros (ballpark currency exchange) = 10,000. (This is assuming you crest theearned income waiver for expats, which is about $85,000 USD now.)

Basically, though, you have to hire a tax specialist. There's no way to manage it simply. And tax specialists with international experience are hard to find, but if you're coming from the US you'll have an easier time than if you're coming from a smaller country. Your best bet would be to contact one of the larger international firms, e.g. Deloit. I had to search for 9 mos to find one, myself.

(As an aside, I'm outraged that I have to pay US taxes at all.)
These measures are orthogonal.
Actually, the randomness coming from /dev/random and the randomness of a TrueCrypt partition are demonstrably different. See: http://16systems.com/TCHunt/faq.php
Seems like a new patent troll sues someone every week. Patent laws should be modified to behave more like trademark laws. If you wanna keep it, you better keep using it.
It's only word files with custom XML. I think that's when companies define structured documents with fields, which get entered into the xml.

For example if you were making a requisition form, and each fillable field has a corresponding xml field. This becomes interesting when you then take those word files and directly processes them, automatically extracting the info from the xml.

It doesn't apply to regular word files. (Or even files with generic fillable fields.)

The company that filed the lawsuit apparently makes some sort of plugin that does something relating to this in word. I guess they want Microsoft to remove the built in capability, and force people to buy their plugin.

Despite the title, they don't really want Microsoft to stop shipping word altogether.
Outlook on my windows laptop. Thunderbird on my linux desktoip. Managing multiple emails with these clients have never been a problem.
My personal gmail account alone is web only.
Mathematics and computer science are intertwined. And they would not be destroyed --- but merely closed (to a large extent) as a solved problem.

Algorithms and proofs have many interconnections. (You can usually abstract one out of the other with a bit of creativity. I.e. the classic proof for infinity of primes gives a basic algorithm for creating new primes.)
Even forgetting the travel, the two parts about maintaining everyday wonder and what businesses are really impressed and inspired me.

I hope you'll write more.
Getting up earlier by not eating late: anecdotal bodyhacking
http://remix.kwed.org for us c64 grandpas
The fallout on the iPhone from the Google-Apple divorce | Mobilize - InfoWorld
Not quite what you're wishing for (it doesn't provide it's own data streams), but check this out:

http://predict.i2pi.com/
time of day per visitor
Oh, you can program meaningful in less than turing complete languages. See Datalog, or even SQL.
Nice idea, maybe I'm not your target audience though :)

Questions:

1) what's the point ?

(this is probably proof that I'm not your target audience...)

2) how do you expect to get people to use your product ?

in other words, are they expected to 'practice' your signatures ?

3) what are the legal issues surrounding changing your signature ?

(mine is on just about every official document I have, passport, driving license, various permits, business documents and so on)
I have a little more faith in the mathematicians of GCHQ than this. Indeed I suspect that in at least some of these cases (which according to Sir Christoper relate only to child endangerment, domestic abuse or terrorism) GCHQ could decrypt the contents themselves but wished not to reveal that fact to terrorist groups that want to blow us all [in the UK] up.
From a comment on CNET:
by dennisheadley August 12, 2009 1:25 AM PDT
The company in question is not a patent troll company. They actually were the first company to develop seamless use of XML from within word. This was before MS offered any such feature of its own in word. As a matter of fact MS at the time completely avoided XML, refused to support it and tried to do their own proprietary format version of it instead.

I4I the company had the world recognized top system out there for XML implementation and management in large scale companies and was the chosen to power such things as the, and this is ironic, the US patent system, the FDA's new streamlined submission system, which uses a open standard chiefly developed from two companies technologies, i4i being one of them.

While i do not usually condone these lawsuits. MS in this case realized that its efforts to avoid using XML were going against corporate customer demands, pretty much just took the best system available from a third party for this purpose and almost straight up incorporated it into word. I read quite a few articles on this when they talked about it earlier this year. And you have to remember that XML is common use now, but this was started years ago when it was not common in actual use and this companies solution was more than just a save to XML function, it was not an easy accomplishment like some of you would pretend it was.

This company made its fortune on servicing the majority of the fortune 500 companies, many of them software giants, as well as many government agencies.

Can anyone confirm?
Illusion of control
It is a generally good idea to try to weat something that you consider unusual for you or even unacceptable. It could be bright red or yellow or orange coat, jeans or hat. It is very useful experience - you will notice that people are looking at you - that very important experience (which couldn't be extracted from books or other way) for shy prople on the way of self-development. And you also will notice that the sky still didn't fall on earch because you're wearing this imposible (for you) hat or coat.
Was anyone else annoyed by his inconsistent capitalization or am I just being pedantic?
I'm writing this at 4AM, completely off-kilter sleep schedule, so I will definitely be giving this a try from tomorrow. Other suggestions I've heard are to turn off the computer an hour before you sleep, but it's always very difficult for me to tear myself away - but not eating, that's something I can manage easily enough.

Also, step three is, in my recent experience, deadly. You'll either miss/delay the meeting, or it will be a painful hour or so while others expect you to be thinking hard.
I love the idea. The site needs more to it though, it feels kind of "shallow". I know that is not very good feedback, but it kind of comes off like "different/odd" instead of designer.

But all of that is not what causes me to hesitate...

My current signature is basically a big stylized "B". It works, it's kind of unique and it gets the job done. It's also on my drivers license, passport, 2 mortgages, my checking account (not that I write many checks) 3 credit cards, a hundred + legal documents and probably a few places I'm forgetting. So, I pay you $30 and I get a new cool sig. Sweet. What about the last 20 years of accumulated signed cruft that my fancy new sig now no longer matches? It wouldn't even be a slight derivation from what I have now, it would be totally different, might almost look forged. How do I handle that? Some info/advice/etc on your site along those lines might help...
Surely at some price point people will just move back to old fashioned safety razors.

Mine costs me a few cents per blade and gives a very close shave.
Are you really suggesting the police investigate 200000 - 1.1M people a year who are using encryption to protect their secrets?
turn off the computer an hour before you sleep, but it's
always very difficult for me to tear myself away - but not
eating, that's something I can manage easily enough.

You know, that's a potential health issue in its own. The key is to strike a balance.
AddThis, simple way of adding social network buttons to your website
The crime of not reading the flipping article?

Under UK anti-terror measures in a case of national security failure to provide means to unlock encrypted files carries a 5 year prison sentence.

Those of the 15 cases (since the legislation passed in 2007) that have not been terror related have concerned child abuse (probably pornography) or domestic abuse (I'm thinking that possibly means "honour killings", but that's speculation).

Personally I have no problems with coercing people to reveal details of the children they've abused, family members they've had killed, or of their plans to blow up my fellow countrymen.

<sarcasm>But I can see how, if it's just your porn collection that you're hiding from your wife, that when you get collared for terrorism that having some mathematician at GCHQ know you've got a rubber fetish is really going to ruin your day.
It's definitely worth moving forward with, and really, I didn't mean to diminish what you've already done at all.

I'll probably give it a shot this weekend, if nothing else than to test how quickly this tool enables me to migrate to a new slice.
Y Combinator / Seed Accelerator Dissertation Survey
If you throw in 30 sets of numbers, you are bound to find some interesting and statistically significant correlations.

It is similar to the data mining legend that beer and diapers get bought together. They never told you how many products they analyzed. If it was 5 and they found that correlation, I'd be interested. But it was 500, then the result is pretty useless
The guy doesn't have a leg to stand on. Simple trademark infringement. Ironic that he reaches out to the Digg community considering Digg has always done the same thing to protect their brand.

With that said, I wish Twitter's engineers were as good at keeping their servers up as their lawyers apparently are at ensuring other developers' servers are down.
Yeah I do that too. Even then I shave as rarely as I can bare to, both to save blades and time. The old safety razors take some getting use to and practise but I consider that part of the fun.
This sort of reminds me of the HP printer cartridges (cheap printer, expensive cartridges). I saw a TV interview with a HP executive who was asked to justify why the cartridges were so expensive. He said that it was because the most sophisticated technology was in the cartridge.

Of course this business model is quite immoral in a world where disposable, non-recycleable things are known to be unsustainable.
And so now, thanks to this, we have the answer... it sounds like an old NES RPG.
True, but it is quite funny.

For additional time wasting try:

google is
bill gates is
facebook is
apple is

and many others...

Reminiscent of the ebay ads that would come back with 'find $query on ebay now' where $query would be anything you typed into the google search box (the early days of the adsense API).

It didn't take very long before some very embarrassing screenshots surfaced.
You can use the "custom" section to add subheadings -- which could be projects
How about the password for what ever is currently the most important thing in your life? Or not even most important, do you remember your cash-card PIN?

Terrorists planning the London bombings, for example, are unlikely to have forgotten their password. They've memorised the whole Koran (on the whole) remembering the access code to the details of the single most important defining action in their entire lives is unlikely.

Still possible, but I don't think your story is relevant.
Took 2.5 hours of my Ironman triathlon time. Went from a 15 hour race to a 12.5 hour race, which I managed to repeat last year.
Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth, Seen From Space
On a distributed microblogging network
I agree, mostly; there are a lot of other business models for sites: donations (Wikipedia), complementary to a pay product (Wolfram Alpha), scratching an itch (many wiki sites), subscriptions, etc. However, on this point:

> There was a web before advertisements

Was there? How many people used it? What for? What were the business models? I find it hard to believe that people were putting their credit cards out over the web in great numbers back in 1995, so were these sites just operating under the assumption that they were generating brand-awareness, or something like that?
Well, of course, I didn't mean to stop eating entirely. Just after 8PM, as suggested in the article. That seems easy enough.

I agree with you regarding the health issues of spending too much time on a computer deeply absorbed in a problem. Ignoring one's basic needs becomes almost the default.
or, more simply,

s/Google's automated search engine suggestions based on users' queries/Google's users/
anecdotal counterpoint: Last night was a session of midnight gluttony. I ate a 12" pizza, an order of fried calamari, lots of miscellaneous finger food, four beers and two mojitos. I was asleep about 2:30 am and awoke about 6 am. I drank lots of water so alcohol dehydration was not likely the cause. Usually I go to sleep around around 2 am and wake up at 7-8 am. Make of this what you will.
Swine flu hysteria (India)