skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The FBI said North Korea did it. Doesn't that automatically remove it from the conspiracy theory category? I don't know what more authoritative source we can go to to decide what is or isn't officially in the running for explanations.

If we say that the FBI's position is part of the conspiracy, well then good luck ever leaving the conspiracy theory bin. You'll likely never get tangible information from another credible source. It'll just be a never-ending conspiracy theory.
> technology they could copy

Like DRMs?

Jokes aside, I have no idea what's going on with this whole story.
As described in the press release id be minded to think that NK is a strong possibility.
The best way to make money on photography/forex is to start offering photography/forex coaching. I guess this works for start-ups as well.
https://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

This project hasn't received any updates in a while but so far it has never let me down when I need to do some text processing in my smartphone.
I probably feel the way I do because I have the benefit of hindsight, whereas the people of the time the Model T came out couldn't see what a future built on oil meant geopolitically and environmentally.

But for those of us alive today to look back and read that once upon a time, humanity chose oil and it's attendant conveniences when they could have taken electricity with a few limitations...

I mean, if we were the ones making the choice for 1909 people in a time travel world, I want to imagine we'd go hell for leather getting them to "vote" electric car.
CEO of Bitinstant Sentenced to Two Years in Prison
The feds are sure enough of their control of the media that they could completely discredit that sort of story. Sure, smart people could notice that a claim is accompanied by slimy purportedly-Sony emails that look just like all the other slimy Sony emails. Those smart people probably don't care to get teased off all the talking-head shows with their against-the-narrative against-the-government-experts "theories".
No it surely did not.

N Korea however has rather free movement of people/cargo with china, limited to govt official/cargo.

I'm pretty sure N Korea did it.
...the FBI? Do they not employ quite a number of infosec professionals?
"This knee arthroscopy will help your osteoarthritis of the knee"

"I don't have to count my tools before and after surgery"

"Try these antibiotics for your mild ear infection"

"Stomach ulcer cannot possibly be caused by bacteria"

There are plenty of doctors who were against the MMR jab - some of them wanted to give single immunisations while others were okay with no immunisation.

There are homeopathic hospitals.

Doctors are just human and are subject to the same biases as everyone else. That's why organisations like CDC or NOCE exist - to make sure people follow evidence based guidance. It's why we need well run trials - or preferably meta analysis of several well run trials.
Bookmarks: From Firefox to org-mode
Prior discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8768314

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8772825
UEFA also created a powerful piece
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYv6dHy5TJE
ND4J (n-dimensional arrays for Java) is a free, open-source extension written for the JVM, compatible with both Scala and Clojure. It's a scientific computing library for linear algebra and matrix manipulation in a production environment. Uses the semantics of Numpy and Matlab...

http://nd4j.org/
Or if you overprescribe mercury to treat syphilis infection.
Yes. At least it doesn't seem to mostly be the same regular posters you recognize elsewhere.

I've started to think of conspiracy theorizing as some kind of base human instinct
There's plenty of add'l howtos for cross bootstrapping Linux on the LFS site with everything step-by-step and with patches:

Here's the PPC (might be big endian-mode):

http://www.clfs.org/view/CLFS-3.0.0-SYSTEMD/ppc/
i wonder if AirBnB could suddenly find themselves in the lucrative insurance business? Or maybe this aspect would be a big turn off point for renters.
Url changed from http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/major-chicago-stu..., which points to this.
Yes Dave Aitel from Immunity Inc said it was DPRK from the very beginning when most infosec people thought otherwise. He was on a podcast talking about it yesterday:

https://threatpost.com/dave-aitel-on-the-sony-hack/109988

But he sells offensive security tools to goverments and corporations, so he is not without bias. Actually this might be more in support of the OPs comment regarding gov support rather than refuting infosec peoples stance.
Cisco is the one that came up with the "legal intercept" backdoor IETF protocol for routers. There have also been "mistakes" where Cisco had remote access to people's routers, when they upgraded them to new firmware. There were some Snowden revelations about Cisco routers being backdoors as well, although without specifically putting the same on Cisco, just on NSA putting the backdoors in Cisco's factory, with which I'm sure Cisco had no relation.
People can point to WEB's investing track record and what a great idea it was to move BH from textiles to insurance to allow him a large pool of zero (or profitable) capital to invest.

At some point investing kind of poops out as the law of large numbers kicks in. However WEB is able to acquire companies that are not otherwise on the market because of his reputation as a manager and the very substantial credibility he has with his track record. Iscar is the latest that comes to mind.
Anyone have an idea how much bandwidth NK has? How easy would it be for a large botnet to DDoS the whole country?
that is indeed a very good tactic. Not only does it help you make some money, you get key insights into your clients mind. the words they use, the benefits they want etc. Which, if you would turn it into a startup, are extremely helpful, because then you want to scale it up on a large scale, so using the right words and speaking to the customer in a way he/she feels connected with your pitch is important.
Before Amazon bought them, they had about 20% of online order fulfillment in the US. It's higher now, with Amazon using them.

I don't think that's right. They only had about $100m in revenue when Amazon acquired them.

Also, it's not a given that their market share has increased since Amazon acquired them. Amazon stopped Kiva's marketing and dedicated all of Kiva's manufacturing to themselves for years. Even today, Kiva produces robots for Amazon.

All non-Amazon customers are simply being maintained. Kiva hasn't signed up a new customer since Amazon acquired them.

Here's a direct competitor to Kiva. This approach, with tiny robot cranes, is less successful. ... Another competitor. This one uses an overhead robotic crane.

That's a single company called Swisslog and they have quite a few products in this space:
http://www.swisslog.com/

They also have a product that's nearly identical to Kiva:

http://www.swisslog.com/Products/WDS/Storage-Systems/CarryPi...
Or for Saudi Arabia to forestall the re-emergence of Iran.
On the Role of Scientific Thought (1974)
Why not just blacklist local-only IP ranges?
This is quite a challenge you've set for us. You claim that there are no infosec professionals who think NK did it. Exclude, apparently, the FBI from the universe of infosec professionals. And then refuse to credit the description of the evidence provided by the FBI, literally the only organization likely to have direct access to the evidence.

I'm not saying that the FBI is totally trustworthy on this, but it's one thing to distrust them and quite another to accord no epistemic weight at all to their claims about the evidence. While they may have ulterior motives, they (and NK itself) are also the ones best positioned to tell us the truth, if they choose to do so. And while, again, one should not take it on faith that the FBI always tells the truth, I'd trust them over the NK propaganda apparatus any day of the week.
Might be similar to financing offered by car companies: is a less-known aspect of what they do, but I believe very lucrative.

For that matter GM has offered insurance deals before:
http://www.autoblog.com/2011/07/10/free-car-insurance-from-g...
Reddit Notes Are an Embarrassing Mess
>Are there any practical examples of Telegram's protocol being broken?

Telegram has a $300K reward for anyone able to break it and demostrate it.
You may also be interested to know that this database is open[1]:

> We produce daily snapshots which are available to the public. You can find these files at our FTP site at: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/ripe.db.gz

> or split by object type at: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/split

> These daily snapshots exclude the object types: person, role, organisation and mntner. For data protection reasons, personal data is not available in bulk format. [1]

To avoid confusion, that isn't just Europe (whose Regional Internet Register is RIPE NCC) but contains other continents/RIR data.

[1] https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/db/faq/faq-db/can-i-download...
Hi there, I helped put this guide together and this is totally something we have in mind pretty much all the time (when you tell people you work for an email startup, you're kind of forced to.) But this is actually the kind of email we're trying to prevent. I usually refer to it as "The Other Spam."

I've had multiple users of ours talk about how they tried starting newsletters to resurrect dropped users but got more unsubs/spam reports than renewals. Some even got hit up by their ESPs for a spike in spam reports affecting their domain credibility. There should probably be a more prominent section on this, but we do talk about it in our blog a lot.

Here's what I usually say:

1) Always have a separate opt-in for product updates, off by default, ideally with some sense of frequency. Failing that, send product updates only to paying/active customers.

2) If you have an onboarding drip campaign, once it runs its course, if they haven't engaged, let them go.

3) From there on, all other communications should pretty much be transactional, sent to the opt-in group, or based on some pre-qualification that the user is still interested.

These are all things that we try and make really simple in our product and exercise ourselves. Part of sending better email is just not sending the shitty ones.

On the personal side, I also just add tags to my email address when I sign up for something knowing that I'm just poking around so I can easily filter their follow-ups. I also appreciate this from a lead validation angle, because I can filter email addys with a + in them from our funnel metrics.
From the paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.3773),

> Concluding, our results provide evidence that distinguishing cause from effect is indeed possible by exploiting certain statistical patterns in the observational data. However, the performance of current state-of-the-art bivariate causal methods still has to be improved further in order to enable practical applications.
Yeah, but if you object on any of these grounds you'll be labelled a racist who is trying to suppress the vote!
Of course they do.

And look, I really try not to shout conspiracy at everything.

But the FBI is relatively new to the Cybersecurity game. CNN yesterday was showing "MPAA cyberterrorism experts". The links to DPRK seem tenuous at best.

So in this context, when the organization who blackmailed Martin Luther King says something, I'm going to try to seek independent confirmation.

All the security professionals who I follow on the internet has either expressed doubts or outright disbelief that DPRK is culpable for this attack. Obviously, I'm in a bit of a bubble, so I'm trying to find independent people outside of my circle who agree with the FBI line.
Thomas Tryon’s Mystic Vegetarianism
Well, except its not as though anyone is believing NK is behind it because Sony says to. So what does it matter what Sony gains from people believing NK did it? Their credibility was never in question: when it comes to assigning blame for a cyberattack, Sony has none.

The FBI, of course, is another story. But the two reasons you give for them to claim NK involvement would work just as well if any other nation or non-state actor were behind it.

And you're just not thinking hard enough if you think NK has no reason to deny responsibility. Off the top of my head: maybe they would rather wriggle out of whatever "response" it is that the U.S. is cooking up, maybe they want to retain what credibility they can so NK can plausibly deny involvement in future attacks, maybe the fallout is also hurting their relations with China, etc.
The Cumulative Security Nightmare of the Public Cloud
Cumberbatch didn't write the screenplay.
A new aesthetic of digital decay has started to emerge
I'm getting this email:

"Below is the password for the domain you requested.
Password is
If the password is empty please contact the reseller at:
info@nameterrific.com"
> authoritative source

There was a time when I would assume good faith for most FBI/federal law enforcement statements. After Clapper and Snowden, that day has passed. I'll still believe an FBI statement with evidence. But without evidence it's just words, and very possibly with an agenda that's hostile to my Constitutional rights.
The FBI has been in cybersecurity for a couple decades now.
== Update: ==

For applicants who cannot / don't want to move to Germany:

The Software Engineer in Mobile position can also be located in our Boston, MA office.
There's one great American doctor, David Perlmutter whose advices are remarkable and in his book Brain Grain it's stated that Dr. Perlmutter serves on the Medical Advisory Board for The Dr. Oz Show and that he appeared on those shows several times. That's an important reference because Perlmutter is one of my most favourite doctors.

I personally don't watch Oz's TV programs often, but in Washington Post's article, it's underlined that "OZ's advices are not backed up by medical science" But wait, is the medical science itself 100% reliable? Oz at least presents the medicine in an entertaining manner and many of his viewers take his advices with that in mind, for instance me I take his shows lightly just as I take the unshowy doctors advices lightly. Just one video by an undoctor called "Lemon Juice & Apple Cider Vinegar - YouTube" is more beneficial than "medical science" to me and the quick scientific proof included.
Steam power has ridiculous torque. It's like electrical in that the maximum power is available at 0 rpm.
It’s just an arbitrary number that’s hopefully large enough that everyone sees approximately the same result. It would be nice to calculate the exact variance of our estimate, though. (An earlier version continued simulating indefinitely but we thought it was better to stop at a certain point.)
is there a way to convert this sqlite database file to an API?

It would be really cool if you could just have a standalone, cross platform HTTP server that you could use locally deploy which would allow you to have an API directly to the data stored in sqlite3 and be able to run queries on it.
Thank you!

I've been asking this question for 3 days and haven't been able to get any response.

As you said, there's a bit of a conflict of interest here, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who isn't biased.

I do think this supports OPs comment.
It's often burnt off because the quality / quantity / opportunity costs for capture and resale are often insufficiently compared to other extracted products.
GM is a perfect example, at one point as I've read, they were making more money from insurance and financing than from an average car sale.
Remote Live Podcasting – Without Skype
Not very likely. Insurance is a highly regulated business (at the state level, in the U.S.), and insurers need to satisfy regulators that they have the capital reserves to cover their customers' claims. It's not something that a small company can easily do.
I moved to San Francisco with a car, but it wasn't very useful most of the time, since everything I needed was in walking distance. Also, parking and street cleaning were a giant pain in the ass.
You're right. The bit about 'absolute certainty' was hyperbolic on my part. How about this though;

You think it's too much to ask for the FBI to be able to stand up and say that this particular threat of violence, which feels like little more than chest-pounding script kiddies, is not credible?

My initial reaction was the physical threat was little more than a joke. The FBI and Homeland Security do need to be able to give proper guidance on credible and non-credible threats, and I think in this case in particular, it's a good example of something which I really would have hoped they could have explicitly labeled as non-credible.

Or to state it another way, if the accepted reaction is that we actually have to treat threats like this as credible, if attackers start spamming these threats are we just supposed to shut it all down?

What companies are looking for is a liability shield, and a public reassurance that they can use as a backstop for disregarding the threat. Otherwise they have no choice but to cave-in. So I think we depend on the FBI in specifically these cases to provide that level of assurance.
> the torture report seemed to only be gaining steam up until this.

This isn't remotely true. There was no 'gaining steam'. It was a topic for a week, and then it was always going to fall off the table. There was no need to distract from something that was already fading from the spotlight.
A New YouTube Rival Wants to Snag Stars with Promise of More Profit
Thank to everybody for the feedback. Standalone executable scripts that are both OSX and Linux compatible are now available.
Saving Applecore
The new URL seems paywalled. Possibly one could use some user-agent setting to see it, but I just read the the original article instead.
darn it I cannot get a google voice as I'm in Canada.
> I am interested in how the databases that 'whois' queries are populated

As rid mentioned in his comment, this information comes from RIRs, who assign IP ranges to companies and other groups that request them. The WHOIS database is simply updated when an IP prefix is created or updated. When you make a WHOIS query, the RIR server is automatically contacted and the server simply returns a plaintext reply containing all the relevant information.

For example, ARIN (the North American registry) has a whois server for looking up data on IP addresses set up here: http://whois.arin.net
There are several pipeline projects in the US and Middle East that are in flux, and this would be an opportune time to kill them.
You seem to know what you're talking about. I've read up a few sources in Russian, and all of them say there were breaches of law related to commerce and the company was warned, but none of the articles actually mentions the actual cause. One article (http://euroradio.fm/ru/sayt-onlinerby-isklyuchayut-iz-beloru...) mentions showing prices on the site. Was the site conducting ecommerce illegally, and are you not allowed to open up an ecommerce site without prior registration with the government? I certainly don't see anything about a 'new law' as the HN title suggests.
I think that if you submit the site with the original title "Laptop skins and stickers for freelancers | Coffee Shop Decals" it will get a few upvotes. The title of this submission is too confusing / misleading / linkbaiting.

Also, submit the site directly, the information is in the site (with photos and graphics!) and the posts without URLs get penalized.
If it helps, Sony Pictures Entertainment is just the new name for Columbia Pictures after Sony bought it.
Ah, that's absolutely true, and I should clarify:

My understanding of FBI cybersecurity is that until very recently, they were primarily responsible for domestic cybercrime.

Responding to "Cyberterrorism", to my knowledge, is something that has happened much more recently.

I, of course, am no expert in this regard, which is why I'm seeking out expert opinons! If you have more info I'd really appreciate having some more stuff I can take a look at.
NYPD are the people
>>However, Seattle Police officials also admitted that about 90 percent of the video officers create probably needs no redaction at all. That’s because members of the public have no right to expect privacy in their interactions with police, unless they are juveniles or a witness or victim whose safety might be at risk if their identity is known.

Even assuming this hackathon(first-ever apparently) meant well, in the context of recent events and the main purpose of these cameras being introduced, this hackathon has horrible optics. Also, this quote implies a separation of "members of the public" and "police" which is a very big part of the problems we see today. The police are(or at least should be) considered part of the public(more specifically, the community they work in) and they themselves should not expect any privacy while on duty. This separation is a catalyst to apathy.
Local Search Price Tag: $2B,000
The Impatient Economy, Monica Pal
Bill Lear tried to build a steam engine to win the Indy 500 in the late sixties but failed. It was called the Vapordyne and I can remember it excited a lot of peoples imagination at the time.

http://modernsteampower.wordpress.com/2012/08/24/lear-vapord...

Really curious why someone hasn't used today's tech to reinvent the steam powered car. Or a small steam engine to power an electric hybrid, it would use a tiny fraction of the fuel of a Prius.
I agree, I went too far with 'absolute certainty'. I think a better way to reason about what are we paying them for is my response to @sokoloff above.
And, toward the idea of film as propaganda of what are actually terrible behaviors: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/11306...
I met Santa Claus today
Show HN: This might be the best Google Chrome extension ever
TOCC: A Tool for Obsessive Compulsive Classifiers
Here's something you might want to consider. Bruce Schneier has said that North Korea probably isn't behind the hack (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/12/comments_on_t...), but follow his link. He thought North Korea wasn't behind it, because the FBI said so.

His latest post simply points out that the FBI has said North Korea is responsible, without elaboration or contradiction. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/12/lessons_from_... So while it does not appear that Schneier has reviewed any evidence (what evidence could he review?) and reached his own conclusion, he seems perfectly content to credit the FBI's conclusions.
Both IronPython and IronRuby got dropped. It was I believe due to lack of interest in these on the CLR and alternatives like Powershell.
Many of the young people who can afford cars live in cities where cars are not necessarily required. (See car ownership patterns in Europe as compared to the US for a more extreme example.)

There are two separate divides: can afford car vs can't, and do want car vs don't.
I bet the reason is that most airbnb hosts haven't been checking or asking for riders, since they're violating local ordinances anyway, and riding in a rather grey area. The risk is small, so most have just been eating it. So who has been checking?

People who have had repeated problems that have some specific ongoing source or reason due to something about their property or the way they conduct themselves. If so, these people are certainly about to file a claim. This means this is a terribly toxic pool of people, i.e. not the whole airbnb community. if this is true, airbnb has a really easy solution: just offer its entire customer base to an insurer, which solves the problem that most of its customers haven't been signing up for special coverage.

This is actually close to what it's doing, though with the difference is that it sounds like it's being white-labelled. Maybe there is no national insurance company that can accept every airbnb in every market, which is why airbnb doesn't use the name of one for its own program.