skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article describes two NSA systems almost as something made for Google:

"The cooperative agreement and reference to a “tailored solution” strongly suggest that Google and the NSA built a device or a technique for monitoring intrusions into the company’s networks. That would give the NSA valuable information for its so-called active defense system, which uses a combination of automated sensors and algorithms to detect malware or signs of an imminent attack and take action against them. One system, called Turmoil, detects traffic that might pose a threat. Then, another automated system called Turbine decides whether to allow the traffic to pass or to block it. Turbine can also select from a number of offensive software programs and hacking techniques that a human operator can use to disable the source of the malicious traffic."

But if you followed all the news since Snowden appeared, you'd know that the TURMOIL is simply the NSA's global passive internet (and more!) monitoring system and the TURBINE one cog of the global active "attack on the internet" one.

https://robert.sesek.com/2014/9/unraveling_nsa_s_turbulence_...

"TURMOIL is a “high-speed passive collection systems intercept [for] foreign target satellite, microwave, and cable communications as they transit the globe"

"The TURBINE system “provides centralized automated command/control of a large network of active implants”"
They have 5% unemployment, and, after a quick check, it seems like a similar labour force to population ratio to the UK and US.

I'm not an economist, but in their position, what would mass immigration solve?
A country defaults when it can no longer service the interest on its debt.

Japan's interest on the public debt is around $250B/year, or around 5% of GDP.

5% is a higher percentage than most countries (U.S. is around 2.5%) but less than, say, Greece at the height of their crisis. And Greece ended up not defaulting and not devaluing their currency (obviously, being in the Eurozone).

$250B is around 25% of the annual government budget for Japan. Again, this is higher than most countries but manageable.

Additionally, 92% of Japan's sovereign debt is held domestically. This means that the interest paid on those bonds don't go to Wall Street or Beijing but rather to Japan's own banks and pensioners. As a comparison, 47% of the U.S. debt is held by foreigners.

In summary, Japan is in absolutely no danger of defaulting under current conditions, without even taking the additional step of "printing more money" to pay its future debts.
I feel like there exists a market for getting start-ups launched on the right foot. Twelve weeks (480 hours) for $1,000,000 with a bonafide rockstar to get your concept not only up and running but well designed to be carried forward.

Given that

(a) most start-ups fail,

(b) the reason for failure is very rarely due to some irreversible technical error in the early stages of development,

(c) the kind of quality a really good developer can offer is much more valuable later, when you've thrown out the initial junk implementation that got you some customers and need higher quality to start scaling up/out,

(d) you'd need serious outside investment to be able to afford even one person at that rate, and

(e) there are plenty of smart people who could and would produce a useful baseline product for a typical start-up in 12 weeks for a lot less than a million bucks,

I suspect you are being highly optimistic about the size of that market.

Do you guys think people would pay that? If no, how much do you think people would spend?

I know they wouldn't. Most bootstrapped start-ups have enough trouble keeping the power on for the first three months, and no start-up with experienced investors is going to take that kind of proposition seriously. Why do you think most start-ups are so keen to offer long-term, success-based compensation for employees who work crazy hours rather than offering real money at market rates for normal working days, and why do you think so many competent developers now insist on market rates and normal working days anyway?

If you're a freelancer/contractor/consultant type then taking on start-ups as clients is like being a small business trying to sell to students: they want the moon on a stick, but most of them have no money.
Startups, Beta Sites and Startup Ideas in Any Language
Good data point. Thanks! And I'd wager the quality of that work isn't particularly strong. So 1m for exceptionally high quality work seems plausible.

And good call on the price being for an MVP. It doesn't really matter how many people are working on it or, for the most part, how long it takes. You're paying for a product. If that happens to be done by one person or four then so be it.
I disagree because with larger companies, a stakeholder's goal doesn't necessarily align with the general principle of 'making the company more money'.
> And even ALAC is now open source and royalty-free.

Nothing stops them from supporting FLAC as well except their nasty attitude in general. FLAC is actually used by many services which sell music, unlike ALAC.

AAC is nowhere patent free.
You can teach via Udemy and earn a lot of money ;)
I too remember the wasted hours... you still can too!

http://www.linerider1.net/
How do I test these theories without wasting a huge amount of time and money?

Take buyers and sellers of technology services out to coffee and ask what they buy/sell and what they would buy/sell but for the impossibility of finding it in the market.

For example, you could take me out to coffee. It's no secret what I would tell you there, since it is practically in 50ft tall fire letters on my blog: When I was consulting, I made systems which made software companies lots of money, most typically by applying engineering tactics to marketing/sales ends for them. The prototypical deliverable was "Your SaaS app now sends a lifecycle email campaign." My sweet-spot client is a software company with $10 million to $50 million a year in annual sales. (There exist hundreds of these, most of whom will never even be mentioned on HN, in any context.) I am not particularly a supergenius with copywriting -- I just apply a bit of formula, horse sense, and personal experience with experimentation, and it works much of the time. I picked it up with a bit of reading and a lot of doing. Do I think that the average HNer could do this 6 weeks after having announced an intention to seriously start doing this? Yes. Can my average consulting client find someone to do this full-time for them? No, not for love or money. Do I think this niche would support a consultancy full-time? Yes. This tiny little sliver of the global economy would support ten clones of my consultancy, selling 30 weeks a year, without coming close to satisfying market demand for this service.

Price is a signal that the market generates to cue potential service providers that there exists unsatisfied demand for a service. The fact that the market does not clear in e.g. marketing technology or cryptosystem verification or what have you, even at rates in the $20k+ a week region, should signal "Well, that would be a lucrative practice to be in."
As far as I know they haven't hired anyone, from personal experiences most of these leads came from emails asking them what they we're up to... 10x certainly doesn't employ a full time PR person.

M
John Oliver’s Complicated Fun Connects for HBO
I hope you guys are working with recruiters to find out compensation ranges. I had a friend who once responded to a recruiter "hey, how about you come work for me". It's a lot easier to ask for more salary, stock, or benefits when you have inside information on what each company is willing to offer for each position!
Thanks, that sounds pretty promising.
I think the issue with Spotify is that artists compare revenue to CD sales, when they should be comparing it to piracy. I listen to (estimated) one new album every day, as part of about 5-10 hours of listening to music each day depending on my work schedule. $10-$20 an album is just not a price I'd be prepared to pay on a daily basis to listen to new music, and before Spotify I wasn't spending that money; I was pirating them or streaming them on websites without a revenue share model for labels.

I still buy just as many CDs as I used to (probably about 10 a year), plus Spotify gets an additional $120 a year from me (70% of which goes to the music industry), which is a no brainer for me for the convenience of the service. In addition to the considerable sum ($2000+) which I spend annually on live music.

The best solution I feel is a two-week exclusive on all new releases for physical and digital purchases before they hit subscription services. If you really want the CD, you can buy it, or you can wait two weeks until it's free on your $10 a month subscription. Sure, piracy will go up, but it is not the music industry's business to stamp out piracy, it is their business to maximise music revenue.

This, along with the increased value-adds of physical purchases - deluxe vinyl editions, signed editions, additional goodies - the "Kickstarter" pricing model, if you will - is how the music industry will continue to make money. That and increased ticket prices for live music, and I anticipate most record deals includng a cut of live revenues for major labels in the future (if they aren't already).

For the record, I do not think major labels are inherently bad for music - if you cannot afford to record and promote your album, a major label can do it for you, at the cost of a large chunk of your profits if you're a hit, but not leaving you in the red if you aren't - a major part of record label's profitable artists must cover all the ones who are not also. If you don't want to do such a profit split, the option is always there to finance the record yourself and pay labels up front for distribution and marketing.
Apiary2postman: A tool for converting Apiary.io/Blueprint API specs to Postman
I've seen two variants of parallax - parallax scrolling (which is fine) and parallax videos that play behind text. When you're trying to read text, having a moving image behind the text makes it harder to read. It looks cool, but it's a bad design. And not just for the readability issues, but also due to the loading. For example, PayPal has it on their front page now. I used to be able to go to PayPal and immediately click the login button. Now I have to wait for the loading to finish. It's annoying.
Am I the only one who's wondering why we're reading an article that is supposed to be published/had been published 7 days from now?
Ah damned. the package hierarchy is not pythonic. That renders all the functionality of this package completely unusable.

Come on people, don't be like this. It takes 5 seconds to rephrase a comment like this into something friendlier.
Google Play Music does this, and any music missing from their catalogue can be uploaded and is seamlessly integrated with their streaming music (a big deal - spotify just creates a folder of Local Files which don't even show up in searches).

The only downsides are the web-only interface and the mobile app's excessive caching which seems to use at least double the data of Spotify.
The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

Perdido Street Station - China Mieville

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Foundation series - Asimov

among others...
Well, WYSISOROWYMG (what you see is sort of reminiscent of what you might get), provided that you don't need to use much in the way of ERT ("evil red text", the LyX derogatory term for LaTeX literals). LyX prefers WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean). The only way you can get anything approaching a layout view while typing is to carefully adjust the editor width, and even then line breaks will only be approximate (because hyphenation hasn't been computed) and there's no indication of pagination. I like LyX for straightforward documents, but it's not WYSIWYG, and it doesn't claim to be.
Many companies claim that hiring is a top priority, but do little more than put up a JD in a couple places. They then complain about shortages.

You need to actively recruit talent, which means understanding what you're looking for. Building nginx modules? Go through github and see who's built an nginx module before. Do a google search for "nginx module development" and see where that leads. Then send out brief but targeted emails to people you sincerely want to join your team.

There's a ton of developers who aren't actively looking, but presented with the opportunity, they'll jump. I don't know a single developer who isn't flattered and intrigued by a sincere cold call for employment from an actual company (they're pretty easy to filter from agencies)

Second, money and location are a big deal. "We can't find developers" really means "We can't find developers who want to work for this salary and/or at this location." I remember not too long ago, our startup had a budget for 10 new developers, which we just couldn't fill. Our CTO and CEO 100% refused to get 5 developers and pay them 2x. So instead we stayed 10 people short, for over a year, while "hiring remains a top priority."

TL;DR - If hiring is important, spend the necessary time on it, don't just pay it lip service.
We're working on some video tutorials. How can we make the content easier to understand?
> there's no such programming language as "THP" - that should be "PHP."

I wondered what sort of esoteric programming language THP must be for me to have never heard of it...

It does seem very odd that they don't seem to have much of a sales focus. As a developer who occasionally contracts, that's my #1 problem. I don't need help negotiating or "invoicing" (software's great at that). I just need a steady flow of high quality clients. I'd happily give up 15% of my earnings if it meant I could stop playing extrovert by going to meetups and conferences.

Bottom line: find out who their PR firm is. They're worth every penny.
It would be ironic if the original attack was actually the NSA pretending to be China as a false flag.

Google then willingly accepts the NSA's 'tailored solution', which was simply a trojan horse to monitor Google assets (I.e. users) from inside the network.

Unlikely but would make a good fictional story nevertheless!
We have a range of methods for gathering compensation range information. The more interesting question is: How can you actually execute on a good negotiation plan?

There is an enormous psychological component to this, and just knowing market rates and ranges for various companies is enormously important, but is only part of the problem (otherwise WealthFront and Glassdoor would have solved this problem already). Getting the right counteroffers and navigating the personal psychology here are enormously important too. That's where we differentiate ourselves with our expertise and guidance :-)
It's from the physical issue. The publication date on magazines is usually between one week and one month behind the actual release date. I'm not really sure why, but most magazines do this.
"It's not about the technology. It never has been." exactly, best answer here.
Just yesterday, I was reading about the theory of "Peak App", which is based on surveys of leading app publishers showing that being #N in Apple's App Store (for very high-ranking N) means significantly less money than being #N in the App Store just two years ago.

Though the overall sales in the app stores (Apple and Google) are still increasing, they are increasing much more slowly than the number of available apps, and developers are able to charge less today than in the past for each app, resulting in a situation where the vast majority of apps just aren't worth building as products in themselves. Fewer and fewer people are buying their first phone, and first phone buyers are the main buyers of apps. People on their third phone don't do much shopping for new and interesting apps. They just use what they've been using--the apps that came with the phone plus a handful of other standards from, say, Google, Facebook, and Twitter--and beyond that they don't care.

It's getting to the point where the only reason to develop a new commercial app (as opposed to a personal project) will be as a component in a business that sells things other than apps. If you are trying to build a business selling apps (including in-app purchases of upgrades and add-ons), your chances of success are falling fast.

So, apps are not only "killing the Web", they are in that same sense killing themselves.

What's really dying here is just the potential for most people to make a fortune building websites or phone apps as competition drives it toward ordinary compensation for ordinary work.
It's the Politicians who have not considered it.
OnePlus One Pre-order during 1 hour
Hey, very cool. I'm working on a hobby project using Unity that also deals with rendering equations, and I'm curious, did you use LineRenderer to render the line?
Been at it for 4 years already and SaaS wasn't always this hot.

Edit: what exactly are you wagering on?
Most of your links are truncated :(
Unraveling NSA's TURBULENCE Programs
My only issue with Spotify is that it tricks listeners into thinking they're supporting artists when they so totally aren't. I equate Spotify to piracy. Yeah I give them $10 a month but so little reaches artists I might as well have stolen the music.

And I'm fine with that. If people want to support an artist then they should buy their album, go to liveshows, whatever. As long as we don't incorrectly assume that Spotify is supporting the artists we enjoy then everything is fine.
PHP 5.4.35 released with four security fixes including CVE-2014-3710
Analyze css in a new way
No serious economist believes the old wives tale about deflation keeping consumers on the sidelines while they wait to save 1 cent (or yen) on a can of soda next year. But it's got "truthiness" so it keeps getting brought up in these HN discussions.
Why would you wager the quality of work from Pivotal wouldn't be particularly strong?
Evidence that it's trying to improve LaTeX macro programming? It's in the documentation. Evidence that it will be released any time this century? I have none of that. It looks like the last commit to the SVN was in January.
Apple now more valuable than entire Russian stock market
Australian government to push for online piracy sites to be blocked: sources
The problem is the minimum level for WebRTC is so low, it makes H.264 useless for regular video decoding (like what you'd find on youtube).

So hopefully browsers implement more than the minimum.
Given that it is less than $5 compared to $20 there is a world of difference in price.
Mozart was an early prodigy for sure, but from what I recall, he didn't put out any really good music until his 20s, and didn't write a masterpiece until his 30s.
Well, it seems like GNU Global while can only do #1, but does it better: http://www.farseer.cn/config/2013/11/26/ctags-cscope-gtags/
After 15 Years, FastMail Finally Acquires Their .Com – With Rob Mueller
I think the title of this article hints of a great misconception of what Spotify is. They (as well as other digital music providers streaming or not) are part of the music industry now.

The olgopoly has changed, get over it.
Worm AI in a Lego Mindstorm Robot
I listed several methods for navigating C/C++ source code here in my guide: http://tuhdo.github.io/c-ide.html

Hope it help.
Show HN: Aggregate your bills and expenses – BillerHub
Yes, the scheduler, fetcher, processor is stand alone here, they are running in different process. But they are sharing some common libs.
I haven't made a decision how to put them into a single package, and running together.

Any advice or project that I can refer to?
Bitcoin Accurate Price-Discovery
Facebook at Work to Take on LinkedIn and Google Drive
A country defaults when it either can no longer make the payments, or when it can't pay back the real value rather than just the nominal value.

eg If I devalue my currency by 99%, and then attempt to pay off debts in that currency, that is a default, regardless of if a country were to try to pretend otherwise. The alternative to that context, would be that any nation can just freely debase their currency, pay back debts in worthless paper, and nobody cares because it's not a default - that's false.

Japan has to debase the Yen to pay its bills. Their government is insolvent due to the extreme debt. They have already defaulted.
The closest thing to Spotify is Radio. With that in mind, 500k "listens" is a drop in the ocean. Radio 1 has shows which attract 5 million listeners a WEEK [1].

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-24650892
Sounds like you're on the right track. I think the philosophy that will get you there is "Solve Everything Twice". I've done that from day one with my revenue generating products, and I can go weeks at a time without even needing to answer customer support mail these days.

The idea is that if anything ever goes wrong, you fix it immediately. But then you figure out what you can change in the software so that that particular thing (or class of things) never happens again.

This isn't just for software errors. It works for customer support as well. If you keep getting mail asking the same question, it's a sign that something's not clear enough in your onboarding or documentation. If people keep asking for an account tweak, you need to either make that into something they can do themselves or, if they already can, do a better job of surfacing the feature so that the next guy will find it.

Over time, your inbox will shift away from panicked customers in need of an immediate response, and towards "thank you" type mails and feature requests, with the occasional oddball request that actually takes a bit of your time.

Sprinkle all the above with a bit of "setting customer expectations" so that your users know ahead of time that two days is a reasonable amount of time to wait for a response for an email.

That won't necessarily get you decades off, but it will let you crew a sailboat across the Atlantic with a reasonable expectation that your business will still exist when you pop back onto the grid a month later.
A thing along these lines that I have come across before is http://pathod.net/. How do they compare?
(Twenty-five minutes too late...)

No discussion of Japan's economy (whether it's government debt, inflation rates, recession, etc.) is complete without mentioning that the unemployment rate is 3.6%, the 2nd-lowest (behind South Korea) in the OECD.[0]

So all the doom-and-gloom about Japan's future prospects and what they're doing and should be doing has to be balanced by the continued commitment by the successive Japanese governments to maintaining full employment.

[0]http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=36324
At least Google has been good (so far) about providing plenty of warning when shutting down existing services. Can't say the same about $RANDOM_STARTUP, where the notice period is often "end of the current month".
Emacs auto adjusts lines. Command M-q in Tex or Latex mode.

Check "Filling Text" here - https://www.cs.utah.edu/dept/old/texinfo/emacs18/emacs_24.ht...
New product-solvent red 89
Well they are supporting the artist. $500,000 paid to Taylor Swift is better than what she would have received if people listend to her albums on Grooveshark, or torrented the album, or whatever. Sure, half a cent per stream is not much, but it is something. It's not on the same level as buying a CD, but it's better than piracy, where revenue for the artist is zero.

The other thing is, it's not like Spotify is making bank off their service either - last I checked they still haven't posted a profit. They can only charge so much because people will only pay so much for a monthly music subscription, and 70% of revenue paid directly to artists/labels doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

I guess fundamentally the problem is "people don't want to pay much for music" not "Spotify is allowing people to not pay much for music". Artists seem to be placing the blame at Spotify's feet, when it is less people being willing to pay for music any more.