skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Security is a usability nightmare. All the instinctive and usually lazy things people do are just bombs waiting to explode. I don't know why this continues to be the case. Most platforms for web development should have taint checking turned on to the highest setting by default. SQL access points should scream in your face every time you use a bare query. With a bit more you could even get developers to do the right thing in terms of salts, passwords, and hashes. I think it is clear that pointing people to OWASP and asking them to read their security articles before bedtime is not as useful as it could be. Library writers also need to be involved and use safe options by default instead of opt-in.
I think it will probably be much more complicated than that. Suppose the car is controlled by an artificial neural network that has been trained with a combination of real world experience and human-generated driving data. There is no giant switch statement that someone wrote for the outcome. Who is to blame then? Would using that data to train the model further be sufficient accountability?
Agreed.

I designed, implemented, and supported 5 regional health information exchanges. 80 hospitals, plus clinics, insurers, labs, scripts, etc.

There is no privacy. HIPAA is inadequate.

I've posted about this before. TL;DR: Until we have globally unique identifiers for all patients, their records cannot be encrypted and must be stored plaintext. Otherwise you won't be able to match patient identities (and their records) across systems.
All of that extra cost was R&D, which is currently being funded by Google's advertising. While I have no idea what Google's business model will eventually be with self-driving cars, at the end of the day it's just software and some cameras that can be mass-installed on most any car.

While the cost will initially be higher, it likely won't be much, and will eventually be negligible.
> we lose any chance at morality
Our morality is mostly learned. It can grow.

Yes, we do need the source to be available.
Just to clarify I said that low interest rates don't make loans more accessible, just more affordable. I didn't say that inaccessible loans were caused by low interests rates. That wouldn't make any sense as you mentioned.

The Mortgage Credit Availability Index[1] is at around 115. If it had been tracked in 2007 it would have been at 800.

The chart you posted in a previous comment doesn't really address the availability of credit. It just says that businesses are not as concerned about financing and interest rates as other issues. In that same link it reports that 24% of small businesses were planning capital outlays and that 48% explicitly were not looking for a loan. I don't know what to make of that except that, it's not really addressing my point one way or another.

[1] http://www.mbaa.org/ResearchandForecasts/MCAI.htm
I work in the education field, and lots of clients use them. I haven't heard any complaints about the support levels.
Who The F**ck is Marty Mendez?
Very good idea, I'll use it. just a heads up though.

Abusers will abuse, and it seems that you are only going to consider restrictions and security overall after it happens.

Set some alerts so you at least get a warning before the server goes down.
http://www.w3.org/community/ostatus/
Vator Splash helps boost Oakland's tech image
I disagree. Seeing further and predicting more moves in advance will not help you avoid a child that suddenly runs out in front of you from behind a parked car. Autonomous cars might not have blind spots in the traditional sense, but I doubt that they can see through solid obstacles.

There just won't be enough time to deal with such a situation without hitting anything, even though there's probably more than enough time to analyze a thousand possible maneuvers. The best "seeing further" that you can do is to slow down when entering roads that are statistically more likely to have children behind obstacles, but even that is not bulletproof. The only place where "seeing further" is enough is when you're in the middle of the prairie with miles of clear visiblility in all directions.
Marty Mendez: Homewrecker
It seems pretty likely that the legal tools they are using really apply to European flights, although they are incredibly vague on that point. In the US, you're really only legally entitled to compensation if you are involuntarily bumped from an overbooked flight, and that's less than 100,000 people/year compared to the millions who have delays and cancellations.

It would be far more honest to be clear at the start as to what customers can reasonably expect, how their service is different from just sending a form letter complaint to the airline, and why they need access to your email.
If you are in Australia use our service.. lawpath.com.au
If you click on the "i" next to "view and manage emails" it specifies that this app can even permanently delete emails, labels, etc. I'm not sure why it needs anything more than "read only" access. Then again, even letting a 3rd party scan my emails is a MAJOR risk.
Yeah, but who get's to decide what's "benevolent" in the first place?

One man's benevolent ruler is another's tyrannical despot.
Ask HN: Where to go as a startup visiting the silicon valley?
Hello,

We are a couple of Palestinian startups (2 partners of each startup) visiting the silicon valley for the first time, we are thrilled to be here, we came here as a part of a program called The Palestinian house of entrepreneurs, unfortunately our trip wasn't planned ahead really carefully due to some reasons out of our control, but we are here and we'll leave on the 20th of this month, can the good folks around suggest some places and maybe be kind enough to invite us to visit some established startups? we just would love to learn more about how things work here, get some advices, make some new friends overseas.

I know we are asking for a lot, but i thought i'd ask everywhere, thank you guys.

PS: our two startups are 1. Online education, and 2. Food social network.
> In the name of crash-optimization, you should program the car to crash into whatever can best survive the collision. In the last scenario, that meant smashing into the Volvo SUV. Here, it means striking the motorcyclist who’s wearing a helmet. A good algorithm would account for the much-higher statistical odds that the biker without a helmet would die, and surely killing someone is one of the worst things auto manufacturers desperately want to avoid.

This could encourage bikers to refrain from donning protective gear.

This reminds me of "Fight Club", where the central (anonymous) character describes his job in crash investigations. He has to decide whether recalling all instances of a make of car is less expensive than getting sued by the drivers in court.
But if you work 70 hours a week for the rest of your life you to might attain this status my friend! Think of all the riches and power you'd have for yourself! And because people are taught that massive amounts of wealth concentrated into single entities is a noble thing to strive for you will be respected by all!

Surely the personal happiness of a few hundred human beings who worked hard and got lucky (or were born to someone who worked hard and got lucky) weighs more than the hunger of millions in the third world. I mean if they were really that hungry they would get a job and feed their family, right my friend?
Yes, the Coastal Commission has been doing this for decades.
Mostly the VC-backed web stuff, where folks coming from the web don't seem to understand that explicitly and unnecessarily contacting a server to push analytics is very different than recording the requests that web browsers make by virtue of their operation.

Anyone polite asks, or doesn't do it at all.
That's an extreme example. Most bugs are very likely worth more the the company than anyone else. How much could you honestly see a bug in 4chan for?
The article is about product development in retail. If you're not planning on selling your product via a major retailer then this article doesn't apply to you.
Interesting; I might poke around at Ledger. Recently I just wanted to see what I was spending money on in a few simple graphs graphs, and so hacked together some python and matplotlib: https://github.com/amboar/fpos. fpos doesn't do anything complicated, but allowed me to see where my money was going without me doing too much tedious work.
It would be great for the people that cannot fly to the US if you stream online the talks
doesn't this defeat the purpose of a temporary snapchat?
https://kippt.com/extras/export
The kind of scenario Wired propose between hitting two cars based on which would absorb the impact the better or cause the least harm aren't the kind of decisions humans make during a crash. I've been in a couple of car accidents caused by other people luckily and not once during any of those crashes did I weigh up my options between which car or which direction to swerve. Maybe we will expect more from an autonomous for its ability to make these kind of decisions, but I think it's an argument with a few holes.

A lot of cars are currently at a point where they come standard with sensors that can allow a car to automatically parallel park itself between two other cars on a busy street. Smart cruise control which will know when to brake if the distance between your car and the car in-front gets smaller, cameras that follow the lines on a road. It's all there, car technology is already insanely smart.

The questions people aren't asking here about autonomous cars is not what if it has to choose between two targets to hit, but rather what happens when a bug in the software controlling the vehicle rears its head and the car gets confused and reacts to something that isn't really happening? A faulty sensor thinks you're about to hit something when you're driving on a straight road and swerves into a tree trying to avoid an accident that wasn't even about to take place, now that's a scary thought.

That would be my biggest worry. I am aware modern jetliner planes are essentially fly by wire except during takeoff and landing, but if the computer fails, another takes its place and on the rare occasion redundancy fails, the pilot and crew are there to manually guide the plane.

The arguments presented here aren't even realistic. Why should autonomous computers be expected to make such decisions based on environmental factors like if a car can handle the impact or not? For accidents where the outcome will be the same (choosing between two vehicles for example) does it matter what the thinking behind the decision is? There is going to be an accident and no matter how in-depth the analysis is, depending on the speed and location, someone is bound to get hurt to an extent or killed.

I have a much better idea and it's far cheaper and more realistic: if an accident is about to take place, the car slams on the brakes and the car slides to a stop. Technology like that already exists in some cars. Swerving in a car accident is most of the time the wrong choice as well, you're most likely to cause more harm to someone swerving in an unpredictable direction then you are straight on, unless of course you can see someone ahead, something on the road or about to have a head-on collision with another car.
We'll definitely record the talks and post them online -- but whether we'll have live-streaming is TBD.
"French Kissing" How to Suck Your Lover's Tongue
> and now he has been trying to overpower the people (represented by the govt) via his wealth and litigation.

Alternatively, he's "defending himself against a power-hungry government determined to curtail his property rights"
Did you know that Steve Blank is on the California Coastal Commission? Steve's positions on similar cases are well known.

http://steveblank.com/2013/06/28/in-defense-of-unreasonablen...

This shapes up to be an epic battle among the two men, the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur. My money is on Steve.
turn off the joins/parts/quits in your irc client(we use irc at work, and its the first thing i suggest to new employees)
Author misunderstands Google. It is not an Oracle we should expect to answer questions like "Does God exist?" We need to realise that it will find us pages that are popular using that term - hence, we'll find pages by people who think that it's a useful question to ask. People who think otherwise wouldn't even ask the question or post a site that asks it.

In other words, the fault is not Google's, it's the user's fault for not knowing what Google is doing.
This is an interesting experiment, especially juxtaposed with NASA's meticulous sterilization of probes.
I've met a lot of the Ninefold crew through the Sydney rails community. Great group who contribute a lot to the local ruby scene, glad to see them doing well.
Why the rich stay rich: they don’t invest like the rest
The original CVE has been amended[1] since having *action in the route is not the only attack vector.

[1]https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rubyonrails-security...
You can try another registrar like namecheap for example, I think they sell .es domains...
Well, yea, actually it would. Because the vehicle would detect the movement long before I do. And even in that situation, hit the brakes is the right answer.
Good example, but what the autonomous car would likely do then is brake gently as soon as it starts to be tailgated so the speed is safe for the distance to the car behind. This would no doubt seriously discourage tailgating, and mostly prevent the scenario you describe from developing.
But I agree, you can't completely avoid all crashes, especially if someone is determined to crash into you.
I'm not an expert but I think he is misinterpreting what is meant by 'change' entirely. My reading of it is as in the class only has one reason to change (state). Correct me if I'm wrong.
im pretty sure the point of posting on an anonymous imageboard is to post anonymously
http://youtu.be/yJqZIH_0Ars
I find "Check your privilege" to be an ad hominem dressed up in fancy language, and I've only ever seen it used as a silencing technique.

Good job questioning people's humanity, it's cool of you to include another good silencing technique.
5: While there may not be that much use for memorising and recognising powers of 2, it's still something that, oddly enough, a lot of CS students seem to struggle with. 2048 could be perfect for that purpose.

Now if there was only a game, similarly simple and addictive, that implicitly taught how logic gates work, maybe we wouldn't be so far from having everyone have a basic idea of how computers work... I believe that the best type of learning is implicit, so there's certainly a lot of potential here. Your observation also shows this characteristic that some people just hate being explicitly taught and can't seem to learn that way, but get them to do something they enjoy and is also designed to teach, and they learn surprisingly quickly without realising it.
Interesting article, nice idea!
Show HN: reimagined digital magazine, using Backbone and GSAP
My team was granted a couple of months to explore creating a new magazine-like medium for our home decor website, Lonny. A major goal of the project was to preserve ideas that make magazines what they are (rich layouts, big imagery, editorial driven pacing) and to accent them with technology.

This is our v1. We have a lot of updates planned and are excited about the upcoming months.

We would mostly classify ourselves as backend engineers, so for us the majority of the technical difficulty came from developing the front end. We used Backbone as our MVC framework and GSAP as our animation platform. It was our first large project with either library and we really enjoyed both of them.

All in all, it was a great project to work on and we thought you guys might enjoy seeing it, even if you don’t have any interest in home decor. We’d love to hear any feedback you have to offer!
Coaster demo on Oculus shows a glimpse of how immersive even current VR tech is.
This video caught my eye, the feeling of immersion on these demos really captivates you. I've tried a few myself but haven't tried this one in particular. Seeing people have such strong reactions just seconds into gameplay really shows you how immersive this tech is. I'm excited to see it develop.
I guess in this sense (quoting Wikipedia):

> The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the 1987 case of Nollan v. California Coastal Commission that if the state of California through its regulatory agency, the California Coastal Commission, thinks an easement on private land is a good idea and a valuable public purpose, they should use eminent domain and pay for it, as opposed to demanding concessions from a land owner in exchange for a building permit. The court considered that "an out and out plan of extortion" of property. In the case, the owners of beachfront property were required to grant an easement for public access to facilitate pedestrian access to public beaches as a condition of permit approval to enlarge their home. The court, in a narrow decision, ruled that an "essential nexus" must exist between the asserted "legitimate state interest” and the permit condition imposed by government.
But he is playing by the rules, the courts agreed with him.

At any rate, nothing pisses me off more than some petty bureaucrat who uses his limited power to bully someone for an entirely different reason.

If you don't like that fact he is refusing beach access, then petition the gov't to change the rules. Don't start abusing your power. What's next? They'll "accidentally" disconnect his municipal water?
Why? Why do politics need to play a part in where code is hosted? This is just asinine.
Do you? Where's the source for the programs flying commercial jets? Do you still fly?
I feel like the general population in Norway and Switzerland are more educated and tend to respect each other more. In the US, you always have riff-raff that ruin it for the rest of us.
Unfortunately, it looks like Steve resigned from the commission as mentioned in that post and from the roster:http://www.coastal.ca.gov/roster.html

Perhaps Steve will join the fray?
This is why I find the concept of Privilege so laughable, it's become so divorced from the concept of freeing the oppressed.
PostgreSQL Devs: Add a web API to your cluster
We're looking for feedback on our product named "Envelope". Its a simple way to create web database apps out of a PostgreSQL database.

There's an overview and an introductory demo. We've deployed it to several SMBs, they use it for CRM, inventory, receiving, etc...

We want to know who is interested in the concept, how you would use it and how you want us to distribute it. Please don't hold back negative feedback, we want to know.

We have a lot of great features. There's a simple address book, calendar, bug reporter and wiki. All the included apps are able to be altered using the developer tools.

The developer tools include a permission inspector and a web based PostgreSQL Administration application called Postage.

Thank you! http://www.3comets.com/
Design news looks like hn if a designer made it
sometimes it's fucking _all marketing_, i worked at a place who burned through user acquisition and just spent that money on more user acquisition, but that's the exception, i think. ;)
International Space Station HD Livestream
here's the link: http://www.3comets.com/
How was your experience teaching yourself how to code?
I agree. He should have just left the road open. I go to HMB all the time and had never heard of this beach. Now I want to go check it out with my dogs.

If he wins and gets to keep the public out, I guarantee the locals will figure out someway to really annoy him. Maybe do a special daily boat trip, bringing homeless people from SF on a field trip to the beach.
"Well, I'm assuming we're comparing code that works."

That is an interesting assumption given that in many problem domains proving that the code works as specified is the hardest problem.

"Maintenance is generally a red herring, it's best to use statistical methods to determine the likelihood of maintenance."

I really dislike anyone who makes general claims about the entirety of software development. I for one spend way more time changing existing code than writing new code. I know that there are problem domains where that is not the case so I don't recommend my methods for those spaces.

What are these statistical methods you are referring to?

"Usually if you're doing lots of maintenance you have other problems in your code / workflow, such as mistaking your codebase for your database."

Or you are working in a problem domain that shifts a lot, or where requirements specification is more expensive than deployment opportunity costs, or in a legacy system.
Google Names Capital Factory As Its Latest Google Tech Hub
Do you know that the Koch brothers are actually pretty big philanthropists? The way you and I are going at this, we're getting nowhere. Of course extreme inequality and oil barons are bad (I'm all for highly progressive taxing schemes to rectify that problem), but tech and tech giants are not without some serious stains -- tactlessly spending millions on weddings (destroying ecologically sensitive areas, cutting down trees without permits), being a culturally homogeneous monolith that keeps "others" away, etc. etc. Clearly both tech and extreme wealth disparities are problems. We can do something about the tech part though -- don't work for them, denounce them for their immoral behavior, try to convince the regular folks that we're just working 9 to 5 to put food on our kids' plates, etc.
In 2012 Sergey said it would be about 5 years away. This gives another 3 years so doesn't sound unreasonable for some initial urban deployment.
Why does it make me go through the whole process (entering in booking numbers, dates, etc.) to at the end only tell me:

"Unfortunately! For domestic U.S. flights, we can help you claim for compensation only when the airlines have overbooked your flight."

When it already had enough information to do that AT STEP 2.

Thanks for wasting my time.
There's a difference between the State of California and the California Coastal Commission. The Commission is a public agency (i.e. a group of people representing the best interests of the public) which happens to be funded by the legislature. Specifically, a legislature which is underfunding them.
Microsoft was declared a monopoly in large part because there were huge barriers to their users switching to another platform. They were totally locked in.

In the maps world, there's no such lock-in. It's trivial to switch from Google Maps to some other mapping service.
Using Bitcoins to detect intruders
"As an example, creating a function and calling it twice from two similar classes is much easier to read than inventing an intermediate class that is an ancestor of the two (something I see very often from the hardcore OO folks)."

You really see this a lot? As far as I can remember using inheritance over composition for de-duplicating code has been considered bad practice in OO circles for at least 15 years.
Likewise with many here, I agree with most of the author's points, especially that one should think for one's self, which sklivvz did very well.

However, the fear of many little objects smells strikes me as backwards. Unix systems are built with and used by many little utilities. As a result, a few simple commands can be strung together to make quick work of interacting with the system. Often, I find that the hardest utilities to master are the ones with the broadest scope. My experiences with large objects are similar.
How is this helpful to the Google Maps user? If I'm looking for an Uber ride, I couldn't care less about opening Google Maps. I just open Uber and request a car.
If only they can show that to the actual users :(