skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a service called MaskMe that offers on-the-fly credit cards like this. It's a paid service, but what they do is you right click on a field, and generate a new card number. This card is basically prepaid - the service provider charges your real card for whatever the value you say, and the person you're buying from gets the number you just created.

Only real downside is that the generated cards are all MasterCard, and some merchants don't take anything but Visa.
Chip and PIN, at least in the US, is useless right now because virtually no merchants have the equipment. As for the browser plugin that generates a unique number for each transaction, PayPal had this in 2008 and closed it down. I'm not exactly sure why, but if they couldn't make it work, I have my doubts about newcomers being successful with it.

The one interesting thing this card can do is disable charging to the physical card number when it is seperated from the phone. Of course that will be annoying when someone wants to buy something after they have left their phone in the car or had their phone lost or stolen. It's also unclear if simply running out of battery on the phone would disable the card. If my understanding of their system is correct, it would.
Hard tokens prove hard to shake
OpenStreetMap and mathematics reveal there are only 4 unique city topologies
Probably going to get downvoted, but I am in Manhattan too, we should meet up sometime!
iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are among the best
Interesting, I analyzed myself and patio11.

any insight on the tech stack and how it was implemented?
> What about as a tool to save engineering hours, and increase conversion rates by reducing error rates and improving performance?

The problem I have with that argument is that the number of hours New Relic saves me isn't really related to the number of instances I'm running. If I've got 10 AWS medium instances and I swap them out for 30 AWS micro instances, my NR cost just tripled but its utility to me likely didn't.
Card design standards have been changing in the last year. We'll be issuing a card over the V/MC/Amex network, which requires the card to have a network logo on it. Exact branding is battle we know we will have to fight with the networks and our partner bank, but ultimately 100% acceptance at all merchants is our goal.
That something is legal does not force it to be acceptable by any business whatsoever.
Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art
Announcing the WEST (Women Entering and Staying in Tech) Mentorship Pilot
>several airlines have remained profitable

Thiel's point is that the industry as a whole in not especially profitable if at all. This has been true in most countries where there is free competition. In a competitive market you would expect the best companies to to make money and the least good to lose it or go bust.

Here's some Buffett quoteing on the matter:

>Back in ’95 in an interview with UNC TV, Buffett pointed out that the airline business in the U.S. “has made no money.”

>Thanks to Wilbur and Orville Wright and their adventures on the Outer Banks, North Carolina is known as “first in flight.” But Buffett didn’t let that history stop him from making a sarcastic remark about investors’ attitude toward the Wrights.

>“If there had been a capitalist down there, the guy would have shot down Wilbur,” Buffett said. “One small step for mankind, and one huge step for capitalism.”

He was joking or course. Interestingly Buffett has returned to aviation but with a business that is what Thiel would call a monopoly - Netjets. They have the vast majority of the fractional private jet rental business.
You're proposing that my solution wouldn't work. Maybe, but your opinion is based on just as little data as mine is, so neither is more valid. I still think my system would work fine, and this is based on helping work on systems similar to this in the past, but that's not really the point.

I want to reiterate that while I provided what I think is a relatively easy and doable approach, the burden is not on people negatively impacted by a company to come up with solutions. The simple fact is that most metropolitan areas do not allow short term rentals in residential neighborhoods as a matter of zoning, not to mention the fact that many leases prohibit subleasing of any kind. AirBnB allows a ton of illegal activity to happen on its network, and then claims it has no easy way to enforce the law. That may or may not be true, but it's like telling a bank that is laundering money that it's not responsible for fixing the money laundering problem because detecting it is expensive, and hey, they're just the platform right?
Unsolved Puzzle Since 1996
I realize I'm going against the grain a little bit here, and I realize that reversing a linked list is a pretty contrived problem. But...

One of the things I look for is people who have a decent understanding of how the implementations underlying abstractions might be implemented. I've found that that can dramatically reduce the amount of unnecessary complexity and work (either by leaning on the properties of the implementation, or by using a different abstraction that is more appropriate).

A prime example from my work history was with Google App Engine and the data store (this was in 2008ish, before they had a solid SQL abstraction). I read the documentation for the API and kind of "got it", but it wasn't until I read the BigTable paper that I really understood how it worked and how to design for it. Each query has two parts: an index look up, and a bulk read from disk. If you're trying to do something that doesn't fit into that model, it's going to be SLOOWWWW. Once you understand that, you can be more creative in designing your indices and structuring your data to fit into that underlying model. Way better than having your "simple query" explode into 1000 subqueries.
I think quality of the v0 API is not so good for the following reasons.

1. Major functions are dropped (best, new, job, ask,...)

2. Useless response schema of the top stories API (should learn from Netflix's internal/public API design)

3. A short transition period

It's very hard to provide same responses to apps.
Novel approach to login without passwords or social sign-on.
We're partnering with a banking institution to issue a new line of credit to consumers.
An alternative view on this, which may seem cynical but which I find empowering:

In their best form, these types of questions are a litmus test for whether you have a certain type of background. When they fail it's because they test for skills not required by the job. It's fashionable to complain about this, but it seems to me to be more practical and useful to just get better at answering these sorts of questions. Leveling up from "terrible" to "adequate" at this will take less time than you think, and due to the craigslist penis effect[1] will put you way ahead of the game.

Easy resource to get started: https://www.interviewcake.com/

This book is pretty well regarded: http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-...

Btw, anyone with better starting places for this, please jump in.

[1] http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/the-craigslist-pen...

EDIT: formatting
Long run return of the US stock market is a tad under 7%, accounting for inflation and dividends. Expecting 8% is unrealistic, although I suppose you could be invested in real estate directly.
Ugh... I'm not doing the "There are X people ahead of you. Get access sooner by inviting your friends!" thing again. I got tricked into doing it for RobinHood.io over a year ago, convinced a bunch of friends to sign up, but there's still no product in sight.
It's unusual, but it's not a problem. The article implied this was a growing problem. It's not, except for some baseload plants with slow ramp rates.
I've suffered so much wage theft in southern california tech scene that despite all my skills I wind up with employers telling me to pay myself off a credit card, well after being an engineer in la for 18 years I'm so impoverished I can't get a credit card, in 2012 I literally nearly died from starvation due to severe wage theft. Unlike the bay area engineers in Los Angeles are essentially treated as slaves and disposable labor, as much as the dude standing in front of Home Depot.
Nice analogy! I think this essay is very relevant here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/58g/levels_of_action/. It explores the concept of there being multiple levels of stackable improvements.
Is the Uber pricing working? Sorry if I missed something but it seems stuck at $7–$9 no matter what start and end destination I use in San Francisco. Screenshot http://cl.ly/image/312i1H3g3b2L
It would be interesting to see the code.
Collaborative list of hackers around you
Nice mechanics. However, it seems that you only take the drift into account where the physics behind sailing in these situation is the lift apply to the sail (which behaves like a wind)
A scientist / photographer I follow on Twitter (Bryan William Jones - @BWJones) took some pretty terrific shots of Janelia last spring, it's an amazing facility:

http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2014/04/janelia-farm...

And the on-campus 'housing':

http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2014/03/room-at-jane...
> I also want to add on that I do not view this as a security issue

This is absolutely a security issue. What companies I do business with is protected under NDA.
How could they prove that they're the first? That implies they could prove the non-existence of something.
ARM mbed – An operating system for IoT devices
I'm sorry to hear your interview didn't go well. I know it's a crushing blow to have weeks of build-up undone by a temporary brain fart.

Here is how employers rationalize this: resumes are not reliable. Resumes can include exaggerations, or even outright lies. When looking at your work experience, however great, it's hard for the prospective employer to know if you made any real contribution, or if you were just nominally attached to the project. Your past employers certainly won't say.

So they need to put you on the spot, to make sure you're the real deal. It would admittedly be nice if the questions were targeted towards your experience, but frankly, reversing a linked list is not an unreasonable problem. You should be able to do it.

If you performed well in the other interviews, the linked list may not have sunk you. Finding good engineers is hard, and if you demonstrated mastery exceeding basic CS problems, they may be able to explain away your mistakes as nervousness, tiredness, or just getting befuddled.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that DRM is useless. People who like to pirate will pirate, no matter what safeguards you put in place, it's been proven over and over. It's just a nuisance for people who want to obtain media legally. If I paid for something, why can't I use it on any device I own with any software? It makes the purchase so much more valuable.
Rebranding Case Study: Technology Company
Awesome! I'm a huge fan of Segment: http://playbook.thoughtbot.com/#instrumentation

We're using this code-level approach in basically every one of our Rails apps these days: http://robots.thoughtbot.com/segment-io-and-ruby

Most common integrations: Intercom, Mixpanel, HubSpot, AdWords, Twitter Ads, Google Analytics.

Good interview with Peter (Segment founder) from February this year: http://podcasts.thoughtbot.com/giantrobots/86
Well, if you wanted to retire earlier you could do a roth conversion ladder or Rule 72t.
Yes, it's an American thing. In the US every retail entity that you interact with will offer you discounts to scan a plastic card in addition to your credit card (it allows them to trend you as a consistent customer for their data modeling, send you targeted advertising, and so on).

If you want to take advantage of these discounts, you build a significant stack of plastic.
This is a fantasticly instructive comment. thanks.
I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think the narrative here is that anyone can make it big... it's that if you have connections in Silicon Valley, it's fairly easy to raise money.

This shouldn't diminish the creativity and good-heartedness of the 10-year old, but if her dad were a fast food worker, I don't think we would be reading about her in the Times.
Does it still require Flash? I always found that incredibly annoying.
Seems to be down for me: 404 Not Found: Requested route ('hn.mybluemix.net') does not exist.
Debt isn't a moral obligation, and to somehow frame it as such is dubious at best. If you as a debt owner or servicer can't keep your books straight, you have absolutely no business attempting to collect on a debt. If you're taking someone to court or attempting to take their wages, you better be damn sure you're in the right.
The industry goes much deeper than that, and there are many vendors that also issue virtual cards via other methods. Checkout Wex & Conferma for a few.

A few big changes are happening on the backend of payments that we also plan on leveraging. See this spec if you want to learn more about them: http://www.emvco.com/specifications.aspx?id=263
> Though I haven't followed any of this person's journey that she's recounting and can't simply trust her retelling of what happened (based on the fact that I really don't know anything about weev or Kathy or their online presences),

saying this is so unnecessary. The harassment Kathy has received is widely documented, for years. Do a little googling up front instead of unnecessarily dishing out assorted seeds of doubt.
Thanks, editing the live code repo of our marketing site to make the CTA clearer
LED Inventor Insulted, Feels Work Bypassed by Nobel
>In Rosen v. United States (1896), the Supreme Court adopted the same obscenity standard as had been articulated in a famous British case, Regina v. Hicklin (1868). The Hicklin test defined material as obscene if it tended "to deprave or corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall."

They weren't trying to constitutionally base it. Does that help?
Is credit card fraud really a big problem (for consumers I'm asking, not banks or merchants)? In my experience, chargebacks are pretty easy, debit or credit. Same with reporting a lost or stolen card and voiding any purchase made on it. And every credit card I've ever had has been remarkably proactive about alerting me to possible fraudulent activity.
Why Running Will Make You a Better Entrepreneur
...Finally! Some innovation in the credit card industry just as people are starting to replace them with mobile phones.
Against water, or against wind? Sailing against the wind feels fastest, because your SoG adds to the relative wind; but sailing downwind is much faster.

The more interesting part is that boats can actually sail faster than the wind that powers them! Depending on the surface, from 1.6 times the true wind speed in a catamaran on water, to 5 or more times the wind speed in an iceboat.
I guess I was wrong... [1]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416798
This would be more compelling and educational if the controls mapped closer to how the controls you have available on a traditional sailboat work:
* Rudder position controls rate of rotation, not absolute heading, and doesn't work if you're not making way
* Main sheet (sail control) just controls the maximum amount the sail can deviate from the center of the boat, not its absolute angle relative to the boat (and not which side of the centerline it is on.)
Using Java 8’s Date and Time API for delaying failed tests after a refactoring
He feels anti-corporate, quirky but not annoyingly so. He absolutely has his own brand so where it once felt refreshing now it just feels sandwich, but it's not to a point where that's a bad thing.
it is going up and down, it seems. I am getting results though
Implementing Deferred Deep Linking
It’s been way too long since Apple updated these products
Actually pessimizer is drawing a parallel between the two situations. Both involve going into fairly substantial debt to get from China to the US under the promise of more money than could be made at home. Both involve years of difficult labor and living conditions. Both have limited options for leaving the lifestyle once committed. Yet the article about kitchen workers reads more like a hard path to the American dream, while the (hypothetical) one about sex workers reads more like a terrible, inhumane path to sexual slavery.

I think it's a noteworthy comparison and not a non-sequitur/trueism. Can't say I've seen much evidence of thought yet.
Thank you! Adam is a creative genius who knows the right way to convey complex messages. It took many iterations to get it just right, but he's the real star here.
"A credit card built for the 21st century" is an oxymoron. It's like saying a car phone built for the 21st century.

For the love of all that is holy and sacred, please eliminate the need to carry cards at all. Just let me pay with my phone. Put my drivers license, health insurance card, membership cards, gift cards, car keys, and payment methods into my phone. All of this already exists in some form or another, but Apple and Google have utterly failed to make it work in the real world outside of a few outliers like Starbucks.

It's 2014: there is no reason I should have to carry keys and a wallet when I have a modern cell phone. Eliminate paper receipts while you're at it; email them or aggregate in some other way digitally. Save 10 million trees.
How Mainstreaming Bitcoin makes it more like Wallstreet
http://qz.com/278180/how-mainstreaming-bitcoin-makes-it-more-like-wall-street/

IT looks like the link changed. I will post it again.
As an european I'd like to know which are the best product (until you open your business) :-P
Urgency is not the same as importance.
Passbook only supports 2d codes, not 1d codes (UPC-style codes) or mag stripes that you typically find on loyalty cards.
It's usually not the immigrants not paying taxes, it is their employers not paying taxes.

Under the table work is not because they don't want to pay taxes, they'd be happy to. It is because they get paid by employers that prefer to hire cheap immigrants rather than to pay wage taxes and other withholdings.

One mans freeloading is anothers profiteering.

They are also quite limited in what government provided benefits they can partake in. Mostly the stuff that is already there for everybody else (infrastructure) as soon as they need more than that they are usually discovered and deported. Cheap labour is only good as long as it is cheap.
PS. I made a HN with Tags and custom input fields (it's not completely finished yet)... I thought about selling it for 8 K. (already have a client)

But if anyone want's to give a million, i can get arround the NDA.

Fyi, it's made with Asp.Net MVC, a JS View Engine and i'm not kidding either. Lower bids are also welcome.
Nope, China's economy hasn't yet surpassed USA
How I became an e-watchmaker
My personal view is cracking the coding interview is not a good quality book. I would prefer to read jon bentely book instead. or formally eva tardos or cormen algorithm book.

These companies has made computer science students simply dev ops who never use algorithm (except during interviews). So many computer science students don't go beyond cracking the coding interview. This is really sad.
> The compiler gives an opinion "x has an inconsistent type".

> You can still run the program if you like; then that opinion becomes an exception if an input case exercises the code, proving the compiler's opinion right.

In this example, the compiler cannot give "x" the static type of "string" and also allow the program to handle errors when "x" is used in places where strings aren't allowed. If the static types don't match, the result is undefined; that's what static typing means.

If the compiler causes an exception to be thrown, then either:

- That's just an implementation-specific quirk, which just-so-happens to be the way this compiler behaves when it hits this undefined case; it's not part of any spec/documentation and useful only to hackers trying to exploit the system.

- We accept that the compiler didn't assign "x" the static type of "string" after all; it actually assigned it "string + exception + ..." (which may be the "any" type of the dynamic language, or some sub-set of it)
We started working on all the sites but ran out of time...my favorite is http://deluxesweaters.biz
If you believe China is a democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
What do you mean by wage theft?
This looks great, I would like to try it. Can I import graphics I have already created, for example in Inkscape? I would like to use existing assets I already have.
> I've suffered so much wage theft...

> ...employers telling me to pay myself off a credit card

That sounds terrible and I've certainly heard the last part of your comment echoed many times before (about the slave labour in tech positions in California) but I'm not understanding the first part about wage theft and paying yourself with a credit card.

I've been in a bad spot where my employer used her credit card to cover payroll and then did immediate layoffs (and I think she put her house against the debt too in case she didn't pay up). Are you talking about that, or a situation where your boss refuses to pay you for labour completed and so you dip into debt on your own with the promise of a (soon) coming payday?

Either way it sounds to me like if you've got a trade (you mention engineers) you should be able to find work online from around the world and not have to work for the employers in LA. Is your job something you can freelance or contract?
You can use Hopper on OS X:
http://www.hopperapp.com

Or try and fix up Boomerang on other OSes, I suppose.
Private Key Import and Watch-only Address Accounts
dstaley nice work. Would be nicer still if firebase had SPDY and QUIC lit up. I don't think it would be a problem with Apache already in front of Varnish.

But more importantly, why no favicon? ;)
WalkSource (YC S14) Is Hiring a Product Designer
This is very cool. Although I don't know how accurate this is, if calibrated and tuned to yield a certain degree of accuracy it will have a variety of use cases.

For example -- When interviewing someone, being able to run their github username (if known of course) to analyze their commit messages, comments, discussions. Or even their hn, reddit, twitter user names (if the usernames are linked with their first names, nothing creepy). It will potentially help to identify candidates that are downright rude, arrogant etc.

Or analyze internal mailing lists, hipchat/slack channels for co workers who are potentially burnt out.
Sure, you can import jpeg / png images as well as SVGs.
First off, congratulations, that's a pretty deep hole you've dug yourself out of. Where are you located?