skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd be very interested to see a qualified crypto expert on the "sealing" that journald uses. This is one of two indicators of a troubling level of arrogance from the developers. The crypto method used by journald to verify messages haven't been tampered with is called Forward Secure Sealing [0]. It's based on an invention of the brother of Lennart - the lead developer, and for a long time after first release even the whitepaper describing it in detail was "coming soon" The code he finally produced is [1] - but rather light on documentation.
I'm still unaware of any proper analysis of this, and using your brothers own crypto methods and ignoring all the questions this has raised does not come across well - and appears to seriously violate the "don't roll your own crypto system" rule.

The second indicator is the attitude to bugs, of which [2] is a good example - several of the developers appear to be extremely defensive towards any suggestion of defects in their software, and simply close bugs blaming the users, other software, anything else.

I'd be hopeful that RedHat manage to reign this behavior in, but that didn't seem to work for Ulrich Drepper when he was employed by RedHat to work on glibc, and I'm not sure if it's going to work here.

That said - I'm not in the "systemd is awful" camp - I do think there's a whole bunch of things it does really well, and that a lot of the hate is really quite reactionary - but the thing that frustrates me is that between the haters and the supporters, there are important questions that are getting lost in the noise.

[0]: http://lwn.net/Articles/512895/
[1]: https://github.com/mezcalero/fsprg
[2]: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76935
The Government Once Built Silicon Valley
Yeah, I agree with this. However, I could still see a lot of merit in writing the server that the mobile application talks to in an FP language.
We're using some of the vector data from there for printablegeography.com and so far have been impressed with the quality of the data when compared to other free outline datasets out there.

There's a Wikipedia article with a little more info about this dataset including a reference to the Null Island: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Earth
(obligatory)

http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/

http://xkcd.com/1337/
Thanks for pointing out the contrasts (and the original article). I have battled this for a long time - there are classroom scenarios where there is only so much you can ask, and when you get to self-study situations, it gets even harder.

Can you tell me which book the second proof is from?
Amen, brother! (Or did I just hear a great big woosh blowing past my head?)
Ask HN: Are there writing guides that use the "lexical tree trimming" concept?
In The Language Instinct, Pinker writes about how clear writing only keeps very few possibilities of interpretation alive at any given moment as the reader is interpreting it word by word, whereas poor writing remains unclear until the final arrangement of words is known. At the far (worse) end of this spectrum are garden path sentences [1] which are notable for being difficult to parse while remaining grammatically correct, and having only one correct interpretation. Good sentences keep "trimming" the possible set of interpretations as they proceed, whereas bad ones do not.

Are there any writing guides that outline how to write well that use this frame? Or algorithms that could be used to evaluate the clarity of sentences/writing using this approach?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence
FYI, the Birthday drop-down menus are funky in FF30.0 on OSX10.9.3: http://i.imgur.com/D9NF5A6.png
I guess the question is, where are the equivalent partial solutions for the web?
This is probably a decade old based on the source code.
Ford Manual (1919) For Owners and Operators of Ford Cars and Trucks
seems to be "Retrieving your reading list..." indefinitely...
Given that the OP said "other than support", I'll assume you mean they're actually nice and supportive when call to complain about your day :)
I have to thank you a lot for posting this. This is exactly what I've been saying for a while, especially the distinction between probabilities and plausibilities (degrees of belief). I wasn't sure if this is just an idiosyncrasy of mine, or if someone else uses this distinction (see a question of mine on StackExchange [1]).

Anyway, thinking this way takes the wind out of the sails of many arguments in the Bayesian/Frequentist debate. Degrees of belief are not identical with probabilities ("frequencies"), but they are very useful, and you should have both in your toolbelt. Trying to use only one and calling yourself a Bayesian or Frequentist is very limiting in the end.

[1] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/32757/probability...
New Inbox App Sync Engine available on Github
In the Australian Commonwealth Bank's implementation, this is a code that they SMS to my phone. No personal details, just MFA.
Works pretty well.

Edit: Also, it isn't a 4th party, the bank runs the service themselves.
Crunch time all year round baby!
Their goal is to make you stay on the website the longest, or click on the most ads, or whatever. It's not like facebook is normally benevolent and tuning their filter to help you. In any case, the filter is presumably for posts from distant friends and pages you've subscribed to, not manipulating your close friends.
Close, but still too graphically rich.
Show HN: A Swift implementation of selected parts of Python standard library
Replying to this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8000928

As a journalist, I don't want my information on some random website like this. I'd rather see you work for those contacts so you know I'm the right person you want to reach out to about your startup.

A better approach would be to create a database for journalists to enter their information in case they want to be contacted for this reason, and tagging their contact info appropriately so PR folks know they have a good match. There's actually a biggish startup that does this already. It's called MuckRack: http://muckrack.com/

Time is not just precious for entrepreneurs—it's also precious for most journalists, and they will ignore emails that are off-target. This adds to the noise of their inbox because they will have to ignore another 50 emails from someone who didn't do their homework. I write a ton of stories every day. I _am_ looking for cool stuff, but I'd rather know the person who's bugging me actually spent five minutes bothering to look at my story coverage to understand why I cover what I do.

Liked the idea initially, but when I read this reply, I got an instant red flag. Abort. Abort.
Sounds brilliant.

Basically crowdsourcing in disguise?
I was hoping this meant that they would lower the bar, but instead they think it's going to be being raised even higher, meaning that existing VCs could close their accreditation.
The Rust standard library will exist as an separate entity from the language itself, and can be versioned, updated, and deprecated just as any other library can, without being tied to any specific version of the language.
I'm guessing I'm simply not considering the target audience, but so far as I know the groups (people who communicate primarily via spreadsheets) and (people who know what an API is) have a fairly small overlap.

Maybe I'm just underestimating how widely used spreadsheets are for communicating programming information. I've never seen it, but hey, I've never seen a lot of things.
Fanaticall providing a
Is there any chance to check logged in facebook users? As far as I can see, all photos uploaded to facebook are public. Even if you restrict your page/posts using age or country - everyone can see the shared picture if he loads the url directly. So facebook is "save" for this exploit, but should restricted photos be public available?
Everybody at the Nerdery is "co-president"

http://nerdery.com/copresident

...but it comes from a good place in memorandum of the tragic loss of one of the co-founders of the company.
I enjoyed this book as well, and it was the text for my computer-architecture class. The authors do a great job explaining the underlying mechanisms of computing hardware clearly and concisely.
The Government seems to have completely forgotten about the JOBS Act[1], which was designed to create a regulatory exemption for crowdfunded investment, democratizing investment allowing everyone an opportunity. Yet instead it appears they want to raise the barrier to entry for investors and limit limit opportunities for start-ups. I mean regulation is needed, we don't want fly by night operations scamming would be investors, but if true this is disgusting.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpstart_Our_Business_Startups...
And let's hope the review process is very tight about this. If I deny you some permission, you shouldn't be able to pester me every time I run the app to turn it back on. Some apps (cough Facebook cough) are already REALLY bad about this.
Life after facebook should be distributed, decentralised and with a human application pattern. It could be a company following the ind.ie/manifesto and just presented at the indietech.org/summit. We are, as a small startup try to do something along these lines:)
>If you are wielding so much power, you need to handle it responsibly and error in favor of business owners rather than community

Could you elaborate why?
This is a very neat tool, thanks for bringing it onto the radar.
Clickable link, for lazy people like me: http://skanout.com/
Sorry to borrow a page from Reddit, but can someone explain like I'm five why I'm not allowed to invest my own money in whatever venture I see fit, just because I'm not rich?

I've already "invested" money in Pebble, Reading Rainbow, and a few other business ventures I've seen potential in, but I'm not allowed to benefit from those investments in certain ways because, why, exactly? For my own protection?
The article kind of contradicts itself. At one point it makes the following claim (which is also implied by the article title):

The foreclosed homeowners are the ultimate victims of the bid-rigging, federal investigators said. Any money earned at auction beyond the debt owed on the house is supposed to be returned to the former owner.

But then goes on to say:

As banks felt the burden of holding so many homes, they held a fire sale and began asking even less than what was owed on the properties. In 2009, the average asking price dropped 57 percent below what was owed on the homes, according to Property Radar. These heavily discounted homes flooded the auctions.

If the bank is getting less than they are owed then the foreclosed homeowners were never going to see any money anyway since there was no extra. Those homes were going to be purchased below debt level regardless of who was bidding and whether they were going to flip it right away to "the Group." Banks are not in the real-estate business. They are in the money business. Most foreclosure sales are the bank trying to cut its losses. They can write off a few grand easier than a few hundred grand.
"Customer Happiness Hacker/Intern/Person".
Thank you for the feedback! I was hesitant about doing what you said with the search/registering an account. I didn't want it to feel too bait and switch. But I'll definitely be sending this to the engineer!

How it's different:

We let you filter your inbox with the exact same criteria as the search criteria (Ethnicity, Body type, Height, etc). This is mainly for women who normally receive a lot of messages on other sites.

We also let you know if you meet a certain threshold of what someone else wants (whatever criteria they are choosing to filter their inbox with). This is mainly for men so they don't waste time sending messages to women definitely not interested in them.

When all the other dating sites brag about number of messages being sent, we want to be the exact opposite. We're all about sending LESS messages.
I like that this old school comic is put together with old school technology.
ICANN is not "in charge of DNS". IANA, part of ICANN, manages the root zone. That's it.

The top level domains are delegated to their respective organization. IANA could, in theory, re-delegate an entire top level domain, but everyone would notice and route around the problem.
Yup. Some of the smartest people I've ever met went into finance, because the money is crazy - these are the kids who were building stuff for fun in college, or first gen immigrants who were on full rides and knew that college was about getting skills and getting a job, not just about 3AM drunk discussions about Sartre. The idea that these people are not as intelligent as "tech people" is silly.
Also, maybe the paper itself was foolish, and then he amended the business plan? Hard to say without reading exactly what was written.
It's silly, but one of the first things I thought about when I saw you've studied philosophy was (my emphasis):

"Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures

Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in Information and Computer Science by Roy Thomas Fielding (2000)

Dissertation Committee:

Professor Richard N. Taylor, Chair

Professor Mark S. Ackerman

Professor David S. Rosenblum"

Any formal logic in that philosophy degree you have? (Also, every time I look up that dissertation: Wow, look at that dissertation committee!)
it was still serving lion, horse, kangaroo... Good riddance. Time has changed and the owner just didn't notice it. He blames it on Google while his business simply fell out of fashion.
I'm not clear on what you think I made up or what viewpoint you think I'm standing by.
My gosh. There are so many buzzwords and acronyms it is impossible to tell what you actually do, much less determine why I should care.
Make more mischief - event at Google Campus London on July 22nd
One suggestion:

Instead of "Desired Price" could there be an option like "Email whenever the price drops"? My "Desired Price" might be $50 under current - but if it drops by $25 instead I'd still like to know.
I never got all the way through this book. Started reading it and loved it. The narrative and conversational style is very welcoming. At the time I had a friend who was starting to learn programming so I loaned it to him hoping it would help/inspire him.

I had completely forgot I owned this book, thanks for reminding me! My friend has since given up on programming so I'll definitely get it back :)
On text editors
And now I know when faking product reviews to throw a few bad ones in there ;)
Sorry I unintentionally downvoted you when I wanted to upvote. But yeah that book is great.
The time-slicing in particular is very clever. I've never seen anything like it before. (For example, when the knight moves at same rate, while protagonist wiggles faster and faster. Or when you click forward three turns and nothing happens to indicate the protagonist being stuck. The animations frequently represent the state of the world during each step rather than showing the literal passage of time, except for when doors open and stuff.)
When an attack on another company's offering becomes your selling point you're bound to reap some negativity in return.
Does anyone know how this works with the paywall?
I'm nearly 31 now. So one year into training. The biggest difference is your recovery time. Other big factor is your flexibility after 10 years of sitting in an office chair.
I'm not quite sure how this is offensive to journalists? According to the author, these aren't private email addresses. He basically just did the footwork of finding all these email addresses and put them in a list. Sure $9/month seems expensive and I'm not quite sure what I get for that but that's far from offensive. How is this different than what Crunchbase is for entrepreneurs?

edit
Who adds the info to Crunchbase? The person themself or anyone? Or the proprietors of the site? Or...aliens?
Which is worse, the company name or their domain name?
Speed up Computational Processes and Builds by up to x20
Presumably you need to sign the CLA only to contribute back to the master branch.
Asian-American Leadership Programs Tackle The 'Bamboo Ceiling'
How we successfully launched our marketplace in 30 days
Because in the past, people would dupe grandmas with bad investments and "fly by night" companies. At least with Pebble, Reading Rainbow, etc. you know upfront you're not going to get anything personally beyond, possibly, a product worth 50 bucks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_sky_law
I think the point is that claiming speed is a property of languages is simply a category error, like saying programming languages are green or noisy. These can be properties of programs (well, properties of a given execution of a program) but have nothing to do with languages.
I worked at a startup with a star-themed name that made an internal CRM called Astronomy. Then, they hired someone to manage it and their title was Astronomer, when it should have been something like Sales Associate.
Here's the previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7967177

My tl;dr - these folks aren't your lawyer or accountant, so take it with a grain of salt.
One example: I used to work for a company offering a security-related product with crippling, fundamental security problems. The flaws covered everything from improper use of cryptography to failure to validate external input, lack of proper authorization handling, and even "features" fundamentally at odds with any widely expected definition of security.

This company continues to survive, and has several large clients. But the liabilities of the current code base are massive. Worse is that the clients aren't aware of the deep technical problems, nor is there any easy way for then to be. In a very real sense, this company is making some money in the short term (I don't believe they are profitable yet) by risking their clients' valuable data.

In general, the concern by the grandparent is that there are projects out there that are producing some revenue, but are essentially zombies. Every incremental feature adds more and more cost, but there's no cost-effective way to remove sprawling complexity. The project will die, taking along with it significant investor money.
No, the girlfriend and family say it was suicide.
RHEL 7 is for developers
I asked elsewhere but perhaps I asked the wrong person. Which episodes would recommend in particular for the highest bang-for-my-buck?
Mosquito repellant newspaper!
You know, there was a time when Silicon Valley made real, actual things - electronics, aircraft, etc. The engineers that worked there, were normal middle class folks making normal middle class salaries. It would be better all round, yes, if all the web companies making nothing for billions, were forced out.
Show HN: Phonetic Alphabet Conversion Utility
It costs society a lot to deal with unsophisticated investors (illegal securities, debt, bankruptcy, family issues, lawsuits, etc), so this regulation, like most laws, are to protect society and driven by historical experience.
True, true. Hyperlinks are pretty big. Defining links with a new language is certainly one way to do it. But look here on HN, what do I do? I write plaintext. I certainly don't write <a href>. I write like this [1], and the hyperlink becomes an implementation detail. An HTML implementation detail, haha, sure, but nowadays it's not hard for hyperlinks to be emulated. Anyhow I honestly do think html5 is a great language. (but so is text! :)

[1] http://google.com/
I remember reading that reddit started out with the founders posting tons of stories under fake usernames to make the site look more popular than it really was.
I gotta shameless plug this but I built a CMS that takes *.md files and a folder structure and spits it out as an API.

As a sidenote, I love these creatively easier ways to supply data to an API in order to use it quickly and update it quickly (just by re-uploading).

https://github.com/AntJanus/popstar-cms
You might be getting downvoted for the snarky tone of the first paragraph, but I think you have a point. If you're a restaurant in business for 40 years, and you don't have enough regulars who would question Google Maps telling them that you're closed on the busiest nights of the week for the restaurant industry, then I think you have problems much deeper than anything that might be happening on Google Maps.
How do we let you invest in a business venture without preventing hucksters from getting Grandpa's investment in their sure-fire investment?

Preventing you from investing is the unintended consequence of preventing con-men from stealing retirement savings. In this case, I think the regulation is well-worth the cost.
Just read The Submarine for the first time. For those who haven't, it's well worth it. Very enlightening. Still very relevant today seeing how it was written in 2006
Show HN: Bitcoin betting site for the Tour de France
Opportunity cost. I could hire a different MBA and potentially make a lot more - and hiring additional MBAs doesn't give me linear returns (and sometimes gives you negative returns regardless of skill level via the Mythical Man Month problem).
online scamsters are more focused on trying to pretend they got you to click an ad and buy something, but as soon as they turn their heads towards using 'crowdsourcing' for financial gain then the value of what crowdsourcing provides becomes extremely diminished. not only is its value diminished, but it becomes a weapon to use against people you do not like or competition.

imagine running bobs pizza just paying 100$ to some russian or chinese group to put negative yelp reviews for the near tom's pizza as well as change their opening and closing hours on places like google, etc costing them 10s of thousands of dollars.
I love this book. It's a good introduction to design patterns. Very well-written and entertaining, and filled with real code examples. It's certainly not boring, I was able to read it in about a weekend (and I read slowly). For a free book, that's such a quick read, it has a surprising amount of knowledge in it.
Excel 2010 and up have the ability to read from web services that support Microsoft's OData protocol, and Microsoft is pushing some add-ons they built for Excel to turn it into a more robust front-end for business intelligence things.

So I don't think it's about knowing Excel and knowing what an API is as much as that you can train someone to paste a URL in and then they can build their own reports/worksheets that join in your data.
This sounds like a good idea, but won't really change anything since everyone will have to pay the new fees, and it's just an arms race.

It does not fix this problem:

"and if there are more transactions than will fit they take the highest-fee transactions first."

So what he's saying is that the bitcoin network can not handle the typical volume of transactions? So you have to prioritize things?

If it can't do it now, today, when it's small, there is simply no way bitcoin is going to grow, which is troubling for the future of bitcoin.

The requirement that every transaction is recorded forever is already causing problem (the block chain is HUGE). And the fees are just a method to try to reduce the side of the data.

Instead a completely different method should be used: A cleanup cycle where old blocks are consolidated and discarded. (The miners agree that the new block is valid, then the old block is no longer needed.)

(Also as a side note bitcoin will never survive past the last mined block. Miners will not continue to mine just for fees, but the amount of entrenched hashing power in place by then means that destroying the network will be trivial for people.)
Building an automated postcard mailing system with Lob and Zapier
There is also APISpark, a full stack PaaS for web APIs, that provides a "spreadsheet-to-web API" feature.

It works both in read and write mode. See tutorial:
https://apispark.com/docs/tutorials/google-spreadsheet