skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Doing something innovative with privacy?
I'm trying to find panelists to speak at RSA early next year[1]. I'm the CTO at the International Association of Privacy Professionals[2] and we've done some pretty cool panels in the past at RSA including a panel with the CPOs from Microsoft, Mozilla, Google and Facebook and another one with intelligence agency representatives (post Snowden). These have been packed sessions (500+ people) and have been well received.

This year we want to put together a panel to discuss best practices (or whether it is practical) to design and architect to meet the privacy expectations of consumers -- and do so ethically. Any side of the privacy conversation is welcome. The IAPP is not an advocacy organization so among our members are Axciom, members of the US intelligence community, people from Mozilla and the EFF, regulators from European data protection authorities and everything in between.

What I'm hoping to get from reaching out here (and I've been a member here for years) are people who are passionate about privacy and are doing something innovative or revolutionary in the space. It's easy for me to find privacy professionals at large organizations (those are our members) but generally startups don't join professional associations so reaching into that community is much more difficult. I know there are great things happening in the space and I want to give them a voice.

If you are interested, or want to suggest someone else, you can reply here or reach out to me at my work email jeff at privacyassociation dot org. BTW, if you are speaking you will get a free pass to the entire conference, but there is no funding for paying for travel expenses -- sorry.

[1] http://www.rsaconference.com/events/us15
[2] https://privacyassociation.org/
Netflix Under Pressure to Close Down the VPN Loophole
Interesting how similar the number of "seconds" is: 100'000 seconds in metric versus 86'400.
Microsoft WinJS 3.0 Now Supports Multiple Platforms
I reckon you could probably use the naptha method to get the good stuff out.
What tools were used to discover and digest the data? I'd be very interested in the process behind this post.
> It looks like underscore is more popular than lodash. I think this table is flawed.

I think this way of going about data analysis is flawed... "I don't like this conclusion, so I'm going to massage the data until it supports my preference".

I do agree that it'd be nice if the npm maintainers went about clearing out all the dead projects though.
Market size = number of users * dollars per user

iOS users have historically spent significantly (4X? 10X?) more per user.
Announcing Keyless SSL
Bundaberg is nice, but my favourite rootbeer-a-like is the Malaysian Sarsi made by F&N
I guess Ronacher is truly, deeply passionate about Python while the core developers are more on the practical side.

This is one of the reasons why I like his code, I find all his projects inspiring.
I stop right at the "class". How possible can you test an OO class? Try some functional program, they are designed to be testable.
So, Germany wants to know the secret sauce that makes Google successful
The information age is airing a LOT of dirty laundry. I think faith in society, government, and the "system" is suffering a bit. Hopefully we'll move past this in a decade or so.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-24.861603,15.856...

what do you guys make of this? is this non-grass circles or did that grass just die
Getting used to it is not the point. What I find cringe-worthy is that that's a bewildering amount of noise. It actually makes it harder to figure out what a specific piece of code does.

Admittedly the error pattern is so common that I can imagine people getting very much used to it, but thats not the issue here. The problem is indicative of Go's lack of abstraction power, and its pervasive. There is no difference between `filter`, `map` and a regular foreach - every piece of code that wants to do things like that must re-implement the mechanics of creating new slices and assigning things to members which are accessed using a specific index. So many details - I can't see the forest from the trees!

I see the same kind of noise in legacy messy projects where a piece of code works on multiple abstraction levels and its impossible to think about what a it does without thinking about the mechanics of how it does it.

Given all this I really can't understand how someone can call Go code beautiful and clean. My gut reaction is "this will cause a mess couple of years down the line".

The cost of not having generics in Go is really understated, and it saddens me greatly. With them, Go would be an extremely interesting language. But apparently, the language designers believe that you (the user) are not to be trusted with writing sensible abstractions and therefore are forbidden to do it.
Wouldn't the distribution of bogus reviews be fairly consistent across competitors?
This is a better article: http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2014/09/17/richmond-res...

It has the full emails back and forth between yelp and company, which are the most telling part.

Basically the company doesn't want to be on yelp, but yelp won't remove them. Now they are "buying" bad reviews, so yelp has threatened to take action and the restaurant basically says "bring it on" since that is exactly what they want.
Airbnb visitors will start paying 14% tax in SF
Inexplicable hostility towards this post. It's quite a handy library.
What quirkiness are you referring to? I tend to find python more quirky but then I've got a lot more experience with Ruby.
Yes, the bash script could be made more portable. Also there are some GNU-specific sed features used, but I'm sure that could be changed to be more portable as well. Python or openssl is used for some base64 encoding.

I like using shell scripts for projects like this because of the power of piping commands/functions and doing line-based processing with e.g. sed.
Going Agile Can Hurt Your Company
never mind, i think i found the cause:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Namibia/@-24.8680385,15.87...

its clearly will-o'-the-wisps
Well, there are a few. The main one is that Paths.js only builds a descriptor of your path (the string that goes into the "d" attribute of the SVG path tag), and leaves to you the actual rendering. This has, for me, a few benefits:

- it is easier to integrate into frameworks like React or Angular (because both these frameworks and D3 think they have control on what goes rendered in the page)

- you can use templating, which leads to a declarative approach, instead of the imperative approach of D3

- it only involves pure functions (no side effects) which makes it easier to unit test your graphics

- not doing the rendering means you can use Paths.js also on Node

Of course, D3 is more mature and complete at this point, and it is easier to find examples and documentation. I hope eventually to fill the gap, at least partially.

Another difference, although minor, is that D3 includes a lot of utilities (parsing CSV, doing Ajax requests, working with dates and much more...). This may be a benefit for you or not. I prefer to have small building blocks, and Paths.js is only concerned with generating paths.
Note to the author: when presenting numbers in a table, one should place them in a separate column and align them to the right. It makes them easier to compare.
They tried to get removed from Yelp and Yelp ignored them. That's what they really want, to be removed. See my comment elsewhere with a link for more details.
Red Hat acquires mobile application developer FeedHenry
"common sense" is just data that agrees with your priors.
One of the secret sauces, I believe, is the American capitalism culture. Seriously.
I think Lisp is a great language and every programmer should at least glance at it. It can really change the way your brain works (in a good way).

I would probably also add Rust to the list. Its slowly replacing Go in my mind for system level things. :/
I think his point was that he was unsuccessful over ten attempts. Probably not a good introduction to the world of home preservation and fermentation.
Use Packer to build a pre-configured Openvpn server ready for 2FA
I mean, that's nice and all, but like most things which have a utility tied to their network size, the quality of the app is largely irrelevant. If someone sends me an fb message to update me on where we're meeting, I want to see that right away regardless of my dislike of the UI.
There is a "self destruct" option to wipe the iPhone after 10 failed pass code attempts. It's not bulletproof against a bruit-force but it's something
Well, no. I would actually be paying Netflix and some company providing a VPN and neither of them are making the stuff I watch.
The Rise of the Data-Driven Sales Rep
If you grew up in the US, they already have it. Every elementary school kid in the US gets fingerprinted.

EDIT: It appears I was wrong, this was only in LA county.
Looking for Beta-testers for my new Ios chess training application
I am in the final steps of development of a chess training application and would like to find chess players of average chess club strength ( between 1600-2000 elo) that could be interested in beta-testing the application and providing initial feedback before distribution. The minum requirement is Ios 7.0. The application is a major evolution of Tapchess (http://www.tapchess.com) also developed by me.
The initial release will contain 5 volumes prepared by two different authors ( a FM and an IM). Three volumes contain attacking games by famous GMs and the user is asked to find the best moves at critical points .
Two volumes are about common mating patterns. The first one will be easier while the second one will build on the knoweldge provided by the first one to present more difficult quizzes.
If anybody is interested please contact me at: info@tapchess.com
> Each epoch has the propaganda that suits it. Just as it's incredibly hard to make a show where everybody got together nowadays, it was hard to create a show with corrupt leadership back then.

Maybe. But as propaganda is always in a feedback loop with the audience, influencing people and being influenced itself by society, I do miss the propaganda of Star Trek era. I feel that the one we have now is destructive to the fabric of society.

You made me think about a similar type of propaganda and a similar feeling my mother has. She lived through period when our country was a Soviet satellite state. Back in those times when you went to a cinema, instead of advertisements you were presented with video clips that elaborated on how much progress the country is making, how the productivity rises, how the working class successfully labours to make our country a better place, etc.

Everybody knew - my mother tells me - that this was all bunch of lies and exaggerations. But she also says that the overall climate was hopeful; people hearing good news everywhere actually felt like things are improving, changing for the better, that future will be brighter.

Contrast this with today's proliferation of bad news. Everything is bad, everyone is corrupt, and who is not dead tries to kill you or take away your freedom. World sucks and is going to fall apart. We hear this all day, every day.

I guess what I miss about Star Trek and what my mother misses about socialist times is the same thing - hope for a brighter future.
Show HN: Bait Travel
This won't work on people like me who may look at the star rating but have no desire to read user reviews. You'll just be a one-star place and I'll dismiss you out of hand..
You already know Unix sockets? [Ruby]
Your brain makes decisions while you sleep
Tatort also seams to get worse every year. I like that we at least also have a german version of Shark Tank now. Although it is not as good at least for now.
>they seem to be much more similar to one-another than any other language is to either of them.
It really isn't. They mentioned Rails because it will be the biggest winner from their new GC that also collects symbols (Rails is a heavy user of symbols). No harm in mentioning some of the beneficiaries of the change, as long as that change is not unfairly impacting other projects. Good move from Matz and co.
Show HN: SeaLion 2 – Linux Server Monitoring, Alerting and Debugging Tool
"Compare a full-color calculus textbook or news magazine in PDF format vs. ebook format, and which would you rather have?"

The ebook format, because it doesn't make archaic assumptions about "paper size", and I can therefore read it on anything from a phone to a wall-sized projector screen.
I've used yelp reviews with great success when traveling. The signal noise ratio in urban areas is good enough to weed out the occasional bad review. I look out for the really low rated ones and avoid. People aren't stupid, and read online reviews with a certain amount of skepticism.

If they can survive with regulars thats fine for them.

I would avoid any place thats fighting any kind of reviews.
2015: The Battle for Our Body Begins
Very impressive results with the new GC for symbols. Of 100,000 created, a `GC.start` got them down to about 2000.
not quite, on the platform I am on you cannot extract passwords at all, they simply are not stored. encryption at the hardware level may have a backdoor but os level is similar.

lets be honest, if they want your data your the weakest link. if you want to be paranoid enough to go the route your thinking its far cheaper for them to take you to a back room and employ a hammer to you.
Show HN: Beyond Tabletop – An RPG Tool Built on Google Drive
isn't the solution to that metamoderation a-la amazon?

i.e. "was this review useful?" gets "no" for both the above reviews.

Seems to work IMO.
Amazon's $200 Kindle Voyage is the Rolls-Royce of e-readers
12 Brilliant Growth Articles You Should Read
I have an older Kindle, and didn't want to get a Kindle Touch because I don't want touch screens for page turning.

I'm glad to see the return of page turn buttons.
Seems to be back up now (at least for me in Ireland).
The screen isn't glossy like a phone. It's matte, so you don't get noticeable fingerprints on it. The touchscreen is good because it saves putting buttons on the case, meaning the screen can be bigger. However the Paperwhite isn't all that responsive so the touchscreen can be a little frustrating.
Never said it's a bad move, i love Rails and i love Ruby as well, it was just the first time i see a framework directly mentioned in a language changelog.
There is colon hydrotherapy when the doctors fill your intestines with water. They use it for several reasons including candida elimination. So humans can survive "wiping".
Although you don't get the high res screen, there are incremental improvements in the base $79 model. More storage, faster processor, touch screen...

If I were betting, I'd bet that the high res screen component isn't yet available in large enough quantities and/or cheaply enough to make it feasible to use in the low-end model. That will no doubt change.
The original, ancient, meaning of the word "idiot" was "private person", i.e. a selfish, narrow-minded, ignoramus unconcerned with (and unsuited for) public life. Not "stupid person".

We tend to conflate this first type of "idiot" (selfish person, unsuited to hold power) with "constitutionally stupid" and it gets us into all kinds of trouble. The people in power are idiots in the first sense of the word (unsuited to hold power, narrow-minded, provincial, etc.) but they are not unintelligent. In fact, they're quite cunning and adept when it comes to holding power (those who aren't, don't last) and taking it from them is much harder than we expect it to be. They turn out to be just as smart as we are, but their intelligence is applied to getting and keeping power rather than whatever we claim to value (e.g. making the world better). This makes them formidable opponents, and we underestimate them at our peril. To crib from Paul Graham's "Why Nerds Are Unpopular", they spent all their energies on becoming popular while we spent ours on being smart and getting right answers. (Where Graham is wrong: "the adult world" is far more like high school than he admits. You have to be rich to get out of high-school-esque drama and into the utopia he mistakes for the whole adult world.)

All that said, we're right (in technology, and in the arts) when we point out that society is corrupt and run by people who are generally out of their depth and unconcerned with general social advancement, aesthetics, or doing the right thing. It's not that they lack the genetic ability or "IQ"-- they're plenty bright enough, hardware-wise-- but that they're lazy and self-interested. We're wrong when we (as technologists) assert some tribal superiority, like we wouldn't make the same mistakes, just because we have higher IQs. History doesn't support this claim; it refutes it. Venture capital is a feudalistic, relationship-based business. Most of the companies we've built in the past 20 years have god-awful cultures. Silicon Valley (the physical place) is an overpriced lack-of-taste writ large. We mock "the paper belt" while failing to realize that we've created a worse one. We've mindlessly chased "efficiency" while failing to answer the most important question: what should we do with the value thus created? Hence, instead of curing cancer or coming up with an environmentally sound energy alternative, we're stuck helping businessmen unemploy people.
United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin Partner to Develop Rocket Engine
Keyless SSL
Until someone starts to take advantage, and fills it with false reviews faster than the system can cope...
Hmmm.. Isn't it way easier for the feds to peek into the cloud for my data without even me knowing so that I'll keep giving them the data then to confiscate my phone and investigate it?

To me, it seems like this passcode thing is a good way to keep my data safe from thieves but from the govt.? don't think so.
Scotland's Historic Decision: Should It Stay or Should It Go?
Each store is performing better: the successful store lost its weakest sales person, the unsuccessful store gained a (comparatively) excellent sales person.
I guess the idea is to make the duration of "second" - of the order of blink, snapping fingers, ... basically to provide a granularity which is neither too fast nor painfully slow compared to what we are used to.

This makes me wonder if instead of splitting in 3 (10:100:100), if it were split equally but in 5 parts (10:10:10:10:10) would it make tracking 5 needles tough.
What kills me is that generics (or any other programming language abstraction) are not problems, but problem-solving tools. Technically speaking, they are never needed, if your definition of "not needed" is "I can work without them".

You don't need anything beyond assembly language, really.

The thing with most tools and abstractions is that you don't appreciate them until you use them -- when you truly use them, not merely when you learn about them. Then you wonder how you ever lived without them. You don't know if failing to use an abstraction hasn't cost you a significant amount of time until you've embraced their use.

To me, this is a variant of the Blub paradox at work.
2014 – my (partial) year without a smartphone
Using my German account works just fine when accessing netflix.com through a US proxy. I'm logged in just the same and get the US catalog instead of the German one.
but with all the publicity surrounding their actions, will they become more well known which will in fact counteract their star rating on Yelp? My guess is yes.
Inside Baidu's Plan to Beat Google by Taking Search Out of the Text Era
Further Dispelling the Myths of the Lambda Architecture
A lot of these aren't C or C++ specific. Many of them were typos, for example.

There are also some ambiguities. At least two questions I encountered contained more than one bug, or at least one explicit bug and one "occasional" bug due to a lack of testing in the code (say, for division by zero).

Also, it'd be a a good idea to put a disclaimer for the quiz taker to assume types, variables and other tokens are declared properly. It's easy to make the deduction after getting the first question which you get incorrect because you chose the "wrong" bug.
My family just shared an Amazon account.
Are you ready for iOS 8?
Elon Musk: A thermostat-sized box may one day power your house
Canvas: A media innovation hackathon from Al Jazeera
Programming without objects
So the communication between Cloudflare and the actual SSL key holder is secured by… what? Another key? In that case, any compromise of Cloudflare’s key is the same as a compromise of the original SSL key (at least in the short term).
Interesting, but what about the latency issues of having to always contact the key server?
"GNU sed" has "features" not always found in all other sed's elsewhere, outside of GNU/Linux.

You can substitute other tcp clients for curl.

And the openssl binary is ubiquitous, so he is smart to use it for generating base64 versus other userland utilities for generating base64 that are not always found outside of GNU/Linux.
Like how when you use a password to open an encrypted zip file it's all gobbledygook inside?
This isn't a problem just on yelp, I've found useless reviews on other sites like Amazon too. Customer buys wrong product (even though the product description is crystal clear) and writes bad/stupid reviews (instead of simply returning the product). Another really annoying type review is "product was amazing, but it came 15 days late - I know it is not a problem of the company, but I'm still giving one star review". If they knew it was a problem from USPS (or whatever shipping company) why leave a bad rating for the product/company?

Also, in all these review sites - how do we know if the reviewer actually used the product/service? Amazon seems to differentiate, but what about others?

It would be awesome to have a review site where
1. All reviews older than 6 months (or 1 year or whatever timeframe makes sense) are not shown by default
2. Only confirmed users of the product/service are able to review
I feel like science fiction is somehow singled out in society as a special kind of crap.

Yeah, I think this is quite a common battle that many mediums/subjects have to fight. For this case, it seems like a combination a lack of interest in the themes explored in serious science fiction (the ones that get me and you excited), meaning that it does not get as much air-time in "serious" discussions; and the baseline exposure to the genre which does not grow into anything for most . For example, this is the case for me and high fantasy: I know nothing about what the genre has to offer.

I mean, I'm guessing that if I never transitioned into things like Gundam, Xenogears, Ghost in the Shell (can you tell I liked Japanese thigns as a teenager?) and onwards I would still think of sci-fi as cars with guns.
iOS 8 causes bandwidth spikes in the UK, despite slow uptake
The place has to have enough reviews for the bad ones to be rendered insignificant. If a restaurant has only 10 reviews and three of them are one-star "they only had one gluten free option" or type of reviews, the rating will be skewed over bullshit reviews.
Underwater Life: A Low-Poly Illustration Research
You can use Duokan or Libreator.
After reading the beginning of the piece, I was expected something more...profound. Some deep mathematical breakthrough or something.

Instead they separate the actual key signing, delegating it to the customer's device. That's nice and useful, but isn't quite what I was expecting.
I just got the notice "this item will be released on November 4, 2014" for the WiFi-only Voyage.
Same thought here. And what if that connection breaks? Another single point of failure?
Yes - and it's nowhere near "keyless" - it's just that the key is somewhere elseTM.
isn't this completely missing the point, i.e. banks being able to say 'no third parties can see our clients identifying information/balances/etc?'

yes, the SSL key doesn't leave the bank, but everything it is protecting is..
Bioreactive food expiry label wins UK James Dyson Award