skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Yeah, creating a safe environment for discourse is super-awesome.

You have a strange definition of discourse if all that's required to create a non-"safe environment" is to present a dissenting opinion. (Did you mean: echo chamber?)

> Filled with dishonesty, zero empathy and zero good faith.

That's a rich complaint coming from someone who called me a misogynist and awful person for the crime of mentioning an article by an actual woman in technology, with her own unconventional opinion on how to ultimately make things better for other women in technology. (Maybe she's right, maybe she's wrong, I sure as hell don't know and that's not the point—the article was censored by a mod just after I and a few other people started discussing it, so that conversation never even got to happen.)

I have every reason to believe that Susan Sons wrote her article in good faith. I sure as heck wanted to discuss it in good faith. So seriously, you should be ashamed of yourself for calling me a misogynist for caring about women in technology. People who derail respectful dialogue by going nonlinear with appeals to emotion and unfounded name-calling, like you have here, are the reason important topics like this one rarely see the light of open civil discourse.

Please carefully examine your reaction on this thread and reconsider how you have chosen to conduct yourself.
You compete with someone if you are substitutable (customers choose one of you, not both), not because you do it a different way.
This is the most disturbing part of this:

> ...he will likely spend the next two decades in prison for doing something that isn’t specifically forbidden by federal law.

He was prosecuted in a state he'd never set foot in, for doing something that wasn't against the law as contracted by people whose plans he did not know; and he was convicted, and sentenced to twice the term of the actual lawbreakers. That's not how the rule of law works.
> The game has since become such a popular perk in the Kickstarter offices that it has its own Twitter account (@ksr_killerqueen) to inform employees of an impending match.

> “I would say our biggest buyer so far has been tech companies,” Mr. DeBonis said. “Space is less of an issue for them.”

The cabinets sell for up to $15k each. Killer Queen - the new tech bubble :-)
Presumably, I could better my negotiation position on pretty much any deal by spying or sabotaging the other party. Say I am negotiating a salary offer from a company, having access to the CEO email and that of other key decision makers (even just the prospective team and the HR reps) would presumably give me information I can use to secure a higher comp package, no? Without disrupting their operations in general, if I don't make a mistake in the process.

Is the previous an ethically valid way of conducting business? Should I not expect to be scrutinized if/when I got caught doing that, because it might imperil my interests? If I do the same, not for me but for a collective (a company, a union), would that be any less unethical? If not, why would it be different if I did it for my country?

Why is it that we consider that sort of behavior pathological for individuals, criminal for organizations and "just the way things are" when talking about (advanced, inter-dependent, presumably-friendly) nations?
For Reports with lots of tables and mathematics:
generate LaTeX file -> PDFTEX to PDF using MiKTeX
What software could someone write today and finish in an evening that would be as widely known and useful as PING is?
Not a single Stanislaw Lem novel? Why is this so typical of USA sci-fi section? His 'Fiasco' is one of the most thought provoking books I have ever read.
I don't know why, but I saw parallels with the Aaron Schwartz case.
Apple’s People Problem
This!

"Don't mind me, just putting important & sensitive personal information on the internet backed by the power of an easily guessible password and hints.

Pre-Encrypt -> [OwnCloud || SpiderOak || AWS S3 || etc.]

And re leaked docs ... I still don't understand the mindset that some people have (maybe someone can help me). When people say, "oh, but the US Gov isn't worried about you" all I can do is roll my eyes.

* How can you verifiably prove that? (they can't)

* How can you verifiably prove other governments aren't?

* How can you verifiably prove chaos agents aren't?

* How can you verifiably prove someone isn't silently watching you?

* etc.

Just because it was or wasn't in a leaked document does not mean that the ability does not exist nor does it mean that such capability is only in the hands of 1 government.

In my eyes, the leaked docs showed "this is the current level" re: security/privacy/surveillance. We have to assume all other governments, corps, & individuals have equally or more powerful systems in place. Why? Because it's the only safe assumption.

That assumption has no bearing on the merits of legality with how the NSA conducts its mission, nor bearing on how others act. The documents merely give evidence and a base-level run down of additional attack vectors. This has absolutely zero to do with a "legal vs. illegal"-action debate and everything to do with technological security and infrastructure.

I encourage everyone to consider RFC 7258 [1] in their future projects. Do it for your users, whomever they may be. Consider RFC 7258 your USSINT 18 (if you're American) ... that is, fucking read it, understand it, and internalize it. Maybe the gov is good, maybe they're bad - that is irrelevant when there is more than just 1 gov in the world.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7258
I started a game, found a unicorn, flew up to a spaceship, flew up to a tiny, floating, green block. When I got out of the spaceship, it flew away! This stranded me on the block. Now I see no way to reset my character, and there is nothing to do but die.

I'm sure this is a fun game, but I only got 4 minutes in before it became totally unplayable. :(
The only way you can resolve this is by talking to your cofounder and figuring out what he or she wants. Do you have any paper in place to describe what happens in these types of situations?
Because they don't want you to know, clearly.
Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct
Hmm, might be a decent reason to train your cat how to use a toilet.
In http://forums.gradle.org/gradle/topics/revolutionary_new_gra... , the Gradle founder writes "what is ultimately needed is a fundamental solution within Gradle that eliminates the overhead in the IDE-to-Gradle communication". That solution would be to enable any JVM language to be used with Gradle, not just Groovy. Then you wouldn't be tied to SBT as you then could use Scala to configure Gradle.
This is the actual legal definition of collected per DoDD 5240.1-R[1]:

"C2.2.1. Collection. Information shall be considered as "collected" only when it has been received for use by an employee of a DoD intelligence component in the course of his official duties. Thus, information volunteered to a DoD intelligence component by a cooperating source would be "collected" under this procedure when an employee of such component officially accepts, in some manner, such information for use within that component. Data acquired by electronic means is "collected" only when it has been processed into intelligible form."

That would include sent to the NSA, processed by algorithms and stored. The "read by a human definition" as far as I can tell comes from the EFF selectively quoting that definition[2] and drawing their own conclusions from their selective quotation, not the regulation itself. As the regulation itself states, as soon as any DoD intelligence components receives it and processes it, it is considered collected.

The misunderstanding is compounded by Clapper's June 9th 2013 interview with Andrea Mitchell, where he tries to explain that there's a legal difference between collecting content and metadata and fails miserably[3]. Mind you, Clapper is not part of the NSA. That's not an excuse, since as DNI he should know better, but it does explain it somewhat...

Regarding issues with Greenwald's reporting, here's a few:

- Misinterpretation of the BOUNDLESS INFORMANT slides that led to the series of "NSA is collecting millions of a communications inside (insert country here)": http://www.matthewaid.com/post/67998278561/greenwalds-interp...

- Innacuracies in the early PRISM reporting: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/prism-is...

- Innaccuracies in the early XKeyscore reporting: https://medium.com/state-of-play/f49beeaf6a9c

- Stewart Baker, quoted extensively in the "NSA spies on porn" article, claims the authors omitted key parts of his quotes because it would make them look hypocritical: http://www.volokh.com/2013/11/27/understanding-enemy/

- A long list of early mistakes in NSA reporting: https://medium.com/state-of-play/bb27db32ae38

For a good rundown of various NSA programs, I'd recommend reading the Electrospaces analysis[4]. In particular, his analysis of PRISM[5] and BOUNDLESSINFORMANT[6] are really good, as is his recent Strategic Missions List post[7].

[1] http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/524001r.pdf (see page 15)

[2] https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect

[3] http://www.nbcuni.com/corporate/newsroom/nbc-news-exclusive-...

[4] http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/

[5] http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/04/what-is-known-abou...

[6] http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/search/label/BoundlessInfo...

[7] http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2014/09/nsas-strategic-mis...
They're measuring all of the head issues at Stanford: http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8311371/significant-a...
Second that. I would have no problem taking it.
The point is that there is no happily ever after because "Happily ever after" is how the story ends, and this story hasn't ended.
'Kill the Messenger' Puts Integrity of US Media in Question
All good points, thanks! Many of the details I failed to convey because I targeted my past audience (people who already saw my old updates) instead of current audience (people who have no idea what Voxel Quest is). But even with that in mind many of your points still hold. Thanks for the detailed, thoughtful feedback :)
Bacteria evolve faster than we can isolate and sequence them.

Even brewer's yeast is discarded after a few generations, usually, since it mutates enough to change the flavor of the resulting beer, and that's in an extremely well controlled environment.

Imagine that happening every six weeks in your gastrointestinal tract. Multiply by 6 billion people. I'd guess it's extremely unlikely we're going to thoroughly investigate all of those different variations on the theme.
I'll give him this much. Have you seen /r/rateme? People there are way too supportive. Doesn't seem to matter that every post starts with "give me the brutal truth". That or there's always survivorship bias in those who think she's hot and choose to reply.
Mou Markdown editor
Did you read the article? They talk about an alternative at length.
"Those who like to show off their houses to others (the granite-countertop crowd.)"

These things are are not at all equal.

I rarely have people over; when it comes to socializing I would always rather go to the other person's house. This is less effort on my part (prep, cleanup, etc...). When people do come around I don't care what they think beyond hoping it's not, "Wow what a filthy pig."

I do however have granite counter tops. The up front cost is more, but I'm a stayer, not a mover. My long term cost is less. The counter tops were installed 7 years ago and they look exactly the same today as they did when I moved in. When I die or get sent to the old folks home (hopefully not for another 50+ years) those counters will still be there and look just as good as they do today.

In the long run this is less money and less time and effort since I don't need someone replacing my laminate counter tops every 10 years. They also withstand high temperatures and are more sanitary since they are sealed and don't break down over time (dents, dings, scratches like laminate).

If you were to see my house, what you would find is that it is very plain, but that things inside of it are meant to last.

When I moved in the upstairs flooring was carpet; it was in bad shape; stains, discolored, but I waited 5 years to replace it because I'm cheap. When I did replace it I bought solid wood; I got a finish that was on clearance because it was discontinued. Like the counters, the floor will last the rest of my lifetime, worst case scenario I will have to pay to have it resurfaced once in my entire life span. This is much cheaper than carpet over the long run.

My basement is still carpeting; when I purchased the home the basement carpet was stained so badly and stank so badly of dog urine that it had to be replaced immediately. I was broke from all of the cost of purchasing the home so I had the absolute cheapest carpet installed and it is still there more than 10 years later in bad need of replacement again. When I do replace it, probably next year, I will put in a life time durable tile and be done with it FOREVER.
JavaScript Spessore is Free
Played this at the XOXO festival. Very fun.

The path to victory mentioned in the article is the 'Snail' approach, a sort of tug-of-war at the bottom of the screen. The other two are 'Economic' (bring 10 power-ups back to home 1st) and 'Military' (kill the other queen in Joust-style flying-combat 3 times).

Lots of surprises and shifts because of those varying paths. Lots of frantic team communication as you both adapt to the other team, and bring new players up to speed.

You might be able to bootstrap similar games, in public places, with a giant projection screen and the 10 (or more) players using their handheld devices as controls.
How Do You Unit Test Your JavaScript Code?
Good point and article.

I wish there was a de facto standard password manager/data format (open source, free, works everywhere).

As it stands, there are many good ones, and it's hard to choose one, even though any choice is better than no choice.
This reads like something from someone with a product to sell.
I liked this article and largely agree with what it has to say, but I have a question related to a bit at the end.

The article recommends using multifactor authentication everywhere, which sounds great for keeping things extra secure. Recently, though, I got a new phone and I'm thankful that I only had two services for which I was using multifactor authentication because otherwise I would have had to remember to set up even more than those two services on my new phone.

Is there any good solution to that problem?
I've used both LastPass and 1Password and while they're not open source or free, I have enjoyed using them both. I currently use 1Password and find it to be a great experience.
Jasper works pretty well and gives you a designer, but you could also roll your own like Aheinemann says. I've done the wkhtmltopdf road before and it was tough to deal with paging.

I'm working on a related problem right now (end-user report design in the browser) so I'll be interested to see what other people say.
Game developer Brianna Wu leaves home after death threats for supporting women
I generate the report as a normal HTML page and then render/export it using PhantomJS. Easiest solution I've found so far and I've done quite a bit of exploring.

https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/blob/master/examples/rast...
>>tech companies choose whether or not they'll store user data centrally

...until the USgov/NSA chooses for them. Also, while it's all great the Syncthing tool is open source I see that they have precompiled binaries. Now I ask you, what percentage of people will compile themselves instead of downloading the readily available binary? Especially Windows users? In short, syncthing isn't immune to the USgov/NSA. We're talking about the general public; not just hardcore techies who can download & compile source code. I can just get GPG & rsync if I wanted... but that's not the point. Me and the person I replied were talking about "services"(tech companies), not stand-alone tools.

Anyways, Syncthing doesn't even replace Dropbox. Syncing files is just one of Dropbox's several features. And without a 3rd-party central server, Syncthing won't be able to deal with the person who wants their work computer to sync with their home computer. That central server is how you get around corporate firewalls, NAT and port-forwarding. If there's another way to deal with this, I'd love to hear it.
Giant leap against Diabetes
The product appears to be his research. Presumably as a PhD candidate.
Not sure where I was reading this the other day, but types have two advantages: abstraction and checking.

You can add a third one to that list: safety.

C has types in the sense that it allows you to do abstraction, and type checking, but it doesn't enforce safety.

2/3 doesn't seem bad to me, especially for a systems language.

I'd say that Typescript is in a similar position, you can cast anything to any type you want and there is no runtime check to stop you, but it helps you add structure to your code.

Types do very much matter in these languages in practice, since you want to very much want to avoid writing a giant mess.
Sorry man, no product.
AFAIK they're mostly talking about money making being the main focus of the founder/s (especially on a personal level). It might make them over-optimize short-term outcomes, effectively building a profitable lifestyle business. It's rare to have both early profitability and high growth.
Or anyone who can use adb backup. If you view the physical possessor of a device as your adversary, you're bound to lose.
I save the QR codes on an encrypted disk image which I keep in "a safe place". There is also Authy[0] which supports backups.

[0]: https://www.authy.com/users
"just give false hope to people who don't understand science and the placebo effect"

You understand how the placebo effect works then? You'd be the first person in the world that did.

As kevinalexbrown said, this trial can be seen as a first step, nobody who read the article could reasonably expect the FDA to approve this tomorrow.
For what it's worth, the horse battery staple is completely correct for the problem it's trying to solve. This article is about another (arguably more important) problem.
According to a recent microbiology lecture I had, you are not at risk unless your cats go outdoors.
Good point, it is a problem.

I'm aware of two options:

- either you spend the time manually trying to going to all places where you use multi factor auth and perform "transfer device" process, which is hard and painful the more services you have,

- or you save backups of the original source elsewhere, basically invalidating the security advantage multi factor offers you.
Such is the nature of the war on drugs. It starts with outlawing drugs, and as the tentacles spread, you have laws on drug paraphernalia (basically, laws against whatever we deem illegal, subject to change without notice), millions of wiretaps and cases like United States versus a bucket load of cash. All in the name of the cause.
2-fac with Google Voice number. 2-fac Google account with normal number. Does that work? You'd have to compromise the Google account and for that you'd have to best the actual phone.

I don't actually use this but is there a good reason not to do this?
If you open the map, you can teleport anywhere and get back to playing.
I think the answer is not yet.

Apple's TouchID is a great example of a frictionless authentication mechanism that can be easily augmented with a password to achieve two different factors, but the reality is that isn't a lot of that out there yet.
The password safe format is quite close, it is open source, free, and works most everywhere. PasswordGorilla (https://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki) provides support for the format on the three major OS'es (Linux, MacOS, Windows) with the same tool, and there are several Android phone apps. that inter-operate with the format, so you could also have your passwords available on your phone as well.

Lastly, the file storage format was designed by Bruce Shiner, so there is some reasonable assurance that the design was done right due to that heritage.
> Android lacks mechanisms for apps to tell they're running as root too (as the root user could disable this) so [apps] can't disable functioning on rooted devices

As the owner of the device (ie the one who should have ultimate control over it), this is precisely what I want. It would be horribly broken for an operating system to do anything else!

That we're not only still fighting the battle for personal computing but additionally having to defend against misguided ideas from people in supposedly technical communities is ridiculous.
Alfred Anaya is yet another example of magical thinking about how the law works. Just avoiding certain words doesn't prevent rational people (in this case, a judge) from concluding that he did, in fact, know what he was doing when he built hidden compartments for drug dealers.

This isn't a guy who built one thing for the wrong person, but many over the course of multiple years. It blew up in his face, but that is the risk of working with very dangerous people at the edge of the law.
I'm sure this varies between states but at my school in New York we had nine periods per day rather than nine classes. One of these was taken up by lunch and then science classes would often take up two adjacent periods. Most people also had at least one study hall period which could be used for homework or socializing. In the end, most people were taking six classes or so. You also had the option to take classes at the local college or do independent studies for AP courses that weren't offered if you weren't challenged enough. Nine subjects at once is certainly pushing it for most students but that definitely isn't universal in the US.
At your stage investors generally want their money to stay in the company and be used to help it grow, not be immediately taken off the table.

How big is the share? People with minority stakes are asked to leave all of the time. He can keep his shares, he just can't be part of the company any more (talk to a lawyer).
As a counterpoint, I have a hard time keeping my focus for more than 45 min. 90-min classes, which I've been having for a good five years now, can be killers.

This is even more true when I'm working on my own: it requires a substantial amount of effort to make it through one 25 min. pomodoro period.
I think the problem isn't entirely the badness, but that the author seems so oblivious to it despite its pervasiveness in the piece.

If the guy had said early on, "Ok, now I realize that part of my problem is that my business was essentially parasitical, and I'm trying to learn from that" I would have been able to read the rest of the article with more equanimity.

I really do admire his pluck, and for his age he is learning a lot of hard lessons. But reading this reminded me of watching a horror movie where some goof obliviously walks along with the serial killer right behind them. You just want to shout, "TURN AROUND! LOOK BEHIND YOU!" So I'm not shocked that commenters have to get that off their chests before they can process the rest of it.

It also reminds me of the conversations I had in the mid-1990s with spammers, because back then you could actually track 'em down and get 'em on the phone. They had this same inability to see that they were their own worst enemy. They saw problems on all sides and thought the world was against them. But really, the common factor in the problems was them.

It is for all of us, of course. But it can be hard to watch others struggle with that.
What a waste. Such talent and skill destroyed in an instant, forever.