skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Prime Minister Abbott needs to whip up hysteria and panic to try to distract people from his government's incredibly poor performance and disastrous budget.

A nice solid war along with deep fear mongering should regain control of the media message.

I simply don't believe we are under threat of attack from knife wielding beheading terrorists.

The poor kid who died the other day was probably just mentally ill but its to Abbott's great advantage to be able to point and say LOOK, BEHEADING TERRORISTS IN OUR SUBURBS COMING FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, WE NEED TO RAPIDLY REMOVE YOUR LIBERTIES AND PRIVACY!

The first Iraq cured me of any belief in what governments ask citizens to believe.

I feel deep terror at what our government will do to us.

The good news for Australians is that Tony Abbott has decided that we are no longer getting a fibre to the home national broadband network because that was too expensive, HOWEVER thankfully we are getting 86 F-35 Joint Strike fighter aeroplanes. http://www.news.com.au/national/tony-abbott-to-approve-austr...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/spigppz2hmya5ch/Screenshot_2014-09...
Beaches should be viewed like a national park, and it should be a right granted to man. It should be granted as a right because it allows man to connect to nature, and can be seen as a benefit to society.
That's a strange comment. When did I say that? I'm suggesting that curing muscular pain with psychotherapy and emotional journaling is (beyond some simple relaxation response) nonsense; and suggesting it's appropriate for desperately severe CRPS patients is deeply misguided.
This feels like a critical security or stability update.
When I was a U.S. government employee I took 34 days of paid paternity leave when my daughter was born and 28 days when my son was born two years apart.

The notion that the U.S. doesn't have paternity leave is totally unfounded. In fact, the U.S. Government as an employer has pretty damn strong maternity/paternity leave policies.[1] I know of many private companies that also have great maternity/paternity leave policies.[2]

People seem to want the government to mandate the private sector implement these policies, however the U.S. Code is not structured in a way that encourages restrictions on private companies in this way.

[1]http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/leave-adm...

[2]http://www.workingmother.com/best-companies/ibm-9
Which would instantly break any script which uses bashisms.
It might be even easier than that. A lot of newer cars have a gas-saving feature where they automatically stop the engine when the car's stopped at a red light, and automatically start it again when you take your foot off the gas pedal. If you've got a car like that, then every traffic signal could be an opportunity for your car to be disabled.
It doesn't help that (a) consumer Windows laptops have come so pre-loaded with junkware that they were just downright unpleasant (and often unreliable) to use, and (b) Microsoft dropped the ball so hard with Windows 8 that it fell through the earth's core and came out the other side.

Compare the extremely unappealing offering that is Windows 8 on a junkware-laden laptop with the convenience of a tablet for everyday consumption/casual gaming uses or a much more polished MacBook Something for more serious users, and it hasn't really been a serious contest for several years now. Plenty of people already had a laptop that was good enough for what they needed anyway, and most people looking to buy something new have dramatically more appealing options than the kind of thing Sony or Samsung were selling.
Social Integrations: A Better Way
It's hard to break this down because there are so many different problems going on here, but let's pretend for a minute that the moral issues related to privacy and dignity are irrelevant, and that the arbitrary credit score threshold of 640 that necessitates this system is reasonable and determined by transparent and fair processes (it's not, but stay with me).

Does this _actually_ solve a problem? Are cars that difficult to repossess? Is it possible this is a marketing gimmick and the securities backed by it are sold to investors who just really like the idea of being able to f*ck over a poor person the second he or she misses a payment? Is this really an economic innovation that lets riskier borrowers have cars, or is it a sales tactic appealing to veiled social darwinist sympathies?
A quick fix would be to stop using bash.

I write hundreds of shell scripts per year and I never, ever use bash. Everything can be done with a less complex /bin/sh having only POSIX-like features.

There's no reason webservers have to use bash by default.

Sysadmins might need a hefty shell will lots of features in order to do their work, but an httpd should not need access to bash-isms. It should work fine with a very minimal POSIX-like shell.

I'm glad the systems I use do not have bash installed by default. The only time I ever use it is when a software author tries to force me to use bash by writing their install scripts in it and using bash-isms so the script will not run with a simpler shell like a BSD /bin/sh.
Ughhh, white-privileged cishets opposing social justice for multiculturalists? Tan tipico...
Very impressive stuff, but looking at the models raises a question in my mind. Why do the parts look like they have about an inch of supporting, sprue-like structure beneath them? Wouldn't it be better to have them be closer to the surface so as little material is wasted in the supports as possible?
Aaahh tried and true, good strategy, First scare the shit out, and then tell them(people) we are here to protect you, look we need to come into your house now, so that we can save you.
It shines light on a troubling broader issue: As information and communication technologies (in which many of us are involved) spread, they put power in the hands of those who control them, from Google to Verizon to your electric company (via your smart meter) to car loan agencies. It gives them power over other people, including whether they can drive their own car.

Not everyone wants to give others this power, but do we and will we have a choice? Perhaps legislators will pass laws protecting the interests of people like those reading HN, or vendors will appease us because of our economic and political power.

It is the poor, powerless, and disenfranchised who will be abused, with little recourse (other than not owning a car, a phone, etc.). If something like what the article described happened to HN readers, there would be an uproar. But these things will and probably already do happen off our radar to marginalized groups.

Perhaps that's why the Internet protocols put control in the hands of the end users.
My logs show 3 scans of this so far.
Low energy bluetooth is neat technology and I'm impressed with Estimote too.

My question is what happens when the batteries die in these beacons if you have set many of them them up in a constellation like this for intra-room location? Do you have to replace all together and reconfigure or is there some easier way to replace individual beacons that have gone flat and reconfigure them to act exactly like the one they are replacing?
Down here in Los Angeles we have many rich homeowners who use fences, fake/unlawful signs to keep the public out of local beaches. Many of these beaches are in Malibu he seem to think they are above the law. There are now mobile apps that tell you where these secret beaches are and how to access them (some access routes are very hidden).
That car will be one that could break down at any moment. Most people in the income bracket where this might be an attractive option are unfortunately also working for employers who won't graciously accept "my car broke down" as a reason for showing up late to work.
I love it. "You can't afford to make payments, so we will make you less able to make payments."
I think you've got it half-right: because of Cash for Clunkers, tightened lending standards, etc., used supply is down, while demand is slightly up, and the market is now much firmer than it used to be, with less of a discount compared to buying or leasing new. At least that seems to be the case for cars in the "basic utilitarian transportation" and "entry luxury" categories.
Could anyone provide a simplified explanation for what this is and what it means?
I think that the Government is manipulating the people and that these new laws will certainly be abused. I think that it is up to the entrepreneurial community to come up with solutions to help mitigate the situation. This can be achieved on several levels.

1. Help whistle blowers deliver material to overseas journalists
2. Create stronger security for journalists and whistle blowers to communicate
3. Find ways to better engage the public in the politics of today so that better political parties can thrive in the future and strengthen our constitution
The killer features ended up being battery life and connectivity, exactly the areas where a traditional wintel laptop struggled. In contrast its primary strength was the enormous windows app catalog and that's been heavily mitigated.
It's been going on for a few years. If you look at the level of performance improvements (intel chips have single to barely double digit percentage gains in performance per generation upgrade now, whereas they used to almost double in speed every two years) and at the installed base (good enough screens with good enough resolution, good enough SSDs or HDs with enough space) it just shows that the replacement rate obviously will go down. Back a few years ago you HAD to upgrade to keep up with innovation (audio files won't fit on a 40MB HDD, videos won't fit on a 1GB HDD, HD won't fit on a 32GB HDD etc, XP won't run on 512MB RAM, video compression/decompression will be better on a Pentium II than a 486 etc etc), but honestly what's the difference (to a non-developer casual end user) between say a gen 2 Core i Chip with 4GB of RAM and a 256GB HDD on a 14" 1400 px Screen compared to say a Haswell i5 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, 15" 1920 px Screen machine. Nothing.

Tablets are facing similar issues. What'll be the big difference between an iPad Air and this year's iPad Air 2?
Bacteria within us may be affecting our cravings and moods
e:\ ? Windoze, is that you?
related tidbit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Evaporation

"A stellar black hole of one solar mass has a Hawking temperature of about 100 nanokelvins. This is far less than the 2.7 K temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Stellar-mass or larger black holes receive more mass from the cosmic microwave background than they emit through Hawking radiation and thus will grow instead of shrink. "
I agree with mandates. However, I do not believe that a vehicle lease agreement should be treated like a cell phone contract. It should be treated more like a home loan. I would be concerned if people could sign home loans that the penalty for default is that you can only come inside when its cold.

In an emergency, declaring the emergency to the car could be problematic, especially if its not the usual driver.
I think you need that + the ability to add anything to an environment variable. Not sure how easy that is.

edit: reading this looks like its exploiting CGI scripts, presumeably through the host header
Nice! Reminds me of this very relaxing video:

http://vimeo.com/9498805
In order to make a map of which wireless LANs are available, you switch the radio in receive mode and then cycle through the channels, capturing all packets. Then, you filter the packets for beacons. I believe when you "scan" for wireless networks, your wireless device is going to be doing something similar under the hood.

It'd be easy to accidentally leave debug logging turned on for the parsing code. Alternatively, if you use something off-the-shelf like kismet, the packet logs are saved in /var/log/kismet automatically.
I wrote that comment, however I'm not sure if the tour guide who showed us around was telling the truth- He might be lying, I don't know. You are right in the part that clean room practices are very important for missions like these.

In the meanwhile I came across one more article : http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-10-31/news...

This article highlights some points as to why the cost would be so less.

>>Some of them were puzzled by ISRO's style of working. They were just 18 months away from the launch date, and ISRO was only beginning to cut metal. One of the foreign partners had then asked ISRO managers: "Are you serious?"

If I'm not wrong NASA tests and validates the equipment they send into space for years. They also take a lot of time and observe very strict quality practices to ensure the equipment doesn't fail or malfunction in space. This leads to them frequently missing deadlines and over shooting budgets by large amounts.

Something that ISRO doesn't. Of course then they have a larger chance of running into failures. But then one wouldn't consider it a big loss to spend just $75 million and fail compared to similar projects in other countries that cost almost 7 times more.

>>tacitly acknowledged the value of the organisation's minimalist approach. "The told us after the launch," says M Annadurai, project manager of Chandrayaan, "that this was the Indian style of working".

India has a lot of talent and lot of young people wanting to succeed and prove their worth to the world. Given the mere population scale and level of desperateness to succeed. You will always run into ingenious people very often. Most of them come from small towns and lower middle class families who need a job at any cost, even if they have to work 16 hours a day, at whatever salary they are offered.

I was one such guy myself at one point of time. I've worked at a assembly line, call center, installed BSNL modems and now as a programmer. I know many of many friends from the villages who aspire to do anything thing can, with whatever means they have.

So I won't be surprised if they are succeeding in hiring some very brilliant people at the salaries they pay.

>>"Frugal engineering comes naturally to Indians," says National Research Professor RA Mashelkar, "which is why India delivers more than any other country per dollar of R&D investment." Mashelkar, along with management theorist CK Prahlad

I don't believe this is unique to Indians, but in general when you have fewer resources you tend to optimize you work to squeeze the most of whatever you have.

And then finally some budget and schedule discipline.

>>"Testing is expensive," says Radhakrishnan, "and we try to get the maximum information from each test." ISRO engineers worked round the clock, often in shifts, when the satellite was being made.

and

>>"ISRO is one of the few organisations in India that is driven by schedules," says Rajan.

So in short, work with passionate, hardworking people, save money by sticking to strict schedules, do not build anything unless you need, once you build test minimally but sufficient enough and quickly.
They are not rotating capacity for updates. They are patching a Xen security issue that will be announced on Oct 1. That is why they are rebooting machines and not forcing moves off of those machines. Otherwise, I agree with the advice.
Bicycles, buses, walking, bumming a ride, jitneys, trains, motorcycles, scooters, and so many other ways of getting there.

But that'd require some initiative.
(which is already a pretty stupid reason to downvote, FYI).

>>
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." ---pg

_You_ might not like it, but there it is.
As someone who just runs an Ubuntu 14.04 desktop machine without any web server should I be concerned? I don't really see how anyone could remotely execute bash on my system.
Obviously these individuals have never visited the EC2 forums: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/search.jspa?objID=f30&q=unresp...

If you are relying on a single instance and depending on Amazon's track record, you're doing it wrong.
The 6 year figure is an upper bound, and even if a device failed after 5 years the laws here in the UK wouldn't normally require a full refund of the original purchase price or anything so disproportionate.

However, there is a principle that essentially says something has to last for a reasonable length of time given what it was bought for. I think few would claim that a laptop costing hundreds of pounds and failing just over a year after purchase met that criterion, and that's what triggers the repair/replace/refund rules in the kind of situation you described.
Thanks for the heads up - I'll take a look!
You never wrote a piece of code that dumps to a logfile more data than it really needs, as part of learning and design?
The UI for defining the scraper targeting rules is an A+ in my book. I've used a number of visual tools for this over the years but most try to do to much and the usefulness suffers. Yours doesn't.

Your price however feels off by about a factor of somewhere between 4 and 8. I haven't really got your system usage data to fully analyse but it feels too high a price. If your using full desktops and chrome browsers and the overhead is higher than I'm expecting based on past experience then perhaps the pricing is off by a factor of only 2

That also doesn't even account for the ability to take the scrape rules, reformat them to run with a headless scraper like scrapy when the website is suitable and is able to be scraped by scrapy, offering a reduced cost scraping option powered this way, throttled back to "human speed" is probably best priced around $1 or $2 a month per crawl thread.

I'm not saying the chrome browser powered crawling part couldn't be so inefficient you need to charge $20 to make 1 crawler pay for itself, but if that's the case, it's a growth limiter you should consider ways to optimise.

Right now your UI is about 10 times better than the open source Portia UI from scrapinghub, but your also 10x the cost of operating a Portia crawler. It's just something to keep in mind.

TL;DR?
Nice product, but a bit expensive.
Also, we should strip citizenship from anyone who is not a Christian, and punish participation in pagan rituals as severely as murder. This is an ancient idea - Institutes of (Emperor) Justinian in the 6th century are often cited.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis

If you want to appeal to authority rather than answer the question, pretty much any Roman emperor makes an odd choice.
Block H and Colossus Revisited in Virtual Reality
Hello Ello, Goodbye Facebook
One thing I'd add: best practices (IMO) dictate HA clusters as you describe, but you get a big boost to survivability by deciding on only using instance stores. Network issues have screwed EBS in the past; EBS is technically neat but very network-sensitive and it's possible to "lose" part of your EBS volume because part of the network goes away (and then your instance faceplants). Instance stores are your friend, and acutely knowing they can disappear in an eyeblink will make you design a better system. One that can survive you having your instances forcibly retired by AWS. :-)
I typically use the CVE RSS feeds http://nvd.nist.gov/download/nvd-rss.xml and plug them into an IRC bot.
The crux of your argument is that "consumers often have no choice but to take whatever deal" and that lack of choice makes this issue important enough for the government to step in. Is that right?

I strongly disagree, because there are options to:
* Own a less expensive car
* Take transit
* Ride a bike
* Find a closer job
* Find a closer house
* Ride share

Now, you can probably craft a specific story where none of those are an option. Let's say a single mother living in section-8 housing with limited job prospects who is already driving a really old car and who found one job 20 miles away in an area with no transit. That's pretty bad, and it represents failures of our system at multiple levels. First I would propose spending government time to address those core issues before burning time on this symptom. Second, all these rules will make the car more expensive; it's a slight tax on the responsible paid by those who might miss payments. Third, this case is rare and it's unclear its worth the cost and unexpected consequence of regulation.
there are also thorium lantern mantles.
This helps services, but as some point you have to run a database layer too ;) Cassandra helps, but it's not the whole story during large-scale close together reboots like these.

It ends up being a decent bit of manual operator time spent when security patches force AWS to reboot. You have to be pretty careful about any service that can't lose members as quickly due to bootstrap times or technology limitations, e.g. RDBMSes.

For things running in an ASG, it's trivial to let it die or just kill it.
It's hard, but not impossible. Apparently your DHCP client passes responses from the DHCP server to bash.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that your ISP's DHCP server is compromised. A worm could then spread to your system from it.

This is entirely hypothetical, but not impossible.
I believe you can get around a kilowatt per square meter, obviously depending on latitude, weather, and other factors. That lens looks about like a square meter.
Ouch, what a mess. Thanks for the warning.
This is a completely bonkers, Slammer-level hair-on-fire vulnerability. Remember Heartbleed? This is much worse. If you have a computer with an OS other than Windows or Android, your safest bet is to unplug it from the Internet until the bash developers figure this all out.
Indeed; I've been thinking the same for a lot of time. The way the economy is treated in most media and political speech, even here in Europe, is almost machiavellian: everything is about the economy, nothing actually matters except it, whichever additional benefit is only collateral to the real thing; and of course, whichever damage caused is justified by the supposed greater good, so suck it up. Somehow we have forgotten that economy is the means and life (both as individuals and as a society) is the end, not the other way round.
According to https://access.redhat.com/articles/1200223, mod_php is not vulnerable.
Is it connected to the internet? Then patch it. While you can't think of anything that could remotely execute it, you'd be damn surprised how large the attack surface is for this exploit, and how flexible it is. It's a Big Deal(TM). Everything in a Linux system uses bash (hyperbole, but not too far from the truth), and all it takes is one of those not sanitizing input and it's game over :(

Basically, it may not be as immediately exploitable for desktop systems without a web-server as other bugs have been, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something pop-up in the near future.
RightScale's single-cloud offering doesn't seem that great, I'd be really worried about them having multi-cloud support.

I have some ideas around a project for "cloud abstraction" - kind of PaaS-as-a-service (we have to go deeeeeper) - but only some early thoughts right now.
Why should the federal government legislate this, and not the states? What could possibly grant Congress the authority to force such a thing upon all private enterprises in the land, and wouldn't it open the door to federal laws for virtually everything argued to be for the general good?