skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>> Except the teacher on Windows by design cannot teach a huge chunk of the stack that makes a computer a computer.

Is this really necessary for most kids? My view might be skewed because I grew up in the 80s, but everything I learned back then were things like Basic, COBOL, Fortran and Pascal. One of my high school classes did some assembly language on the Apple II, but I'm not sure most of the people in my class wanted to get down to the nuts and bolts.

If a kid is really into the nuts and bolts, they'll likely discover Linux organically. I learned most of my computing skills outside of class by doing my own research. And back then, there was no such thing as Google, just magazines at the newsstand and books in bookstores and the library.

I would say the majority of kids would probably be content enough learning how to make a web app, which can be easily done on Windows without needing knowledge of the stack that makes a computer a computer.

I just switched back to Windows from OSX, and the only reason why I have Visual Studio on my machine is so that I can compile some of my node libraries. I hardly think using Windows will breed a generation of .net developers at all.
I've been attempting to talk about the general case, not your personal situation. It's not interesting or a surprise that electric cars are not for everyone.
Try http://www.photosforclass.com/
It's designed to be a school safe search with easy attribution.
If I'm reading the blog code correctly, the error is trusting user input:

// Rust
let len = buffer[0] as usize;
// C
size_t len = buffer[0];

I'm no Rust hacker, but can I expect the Rust type system to be able to encode some form of tainting? Making the leaky sequence illegal:

let len = buffer[0] as usize;
// ERROR ERROR ERROR using unscrubbed user input ERROR ERROR ERROR
buffer[0 .. len]

How exactly to encode tainting is left as an exercise to the reader :) But ideally it should be able to identify that the buffer is reused between 2 different requests, and that data tainted from second request is used to index an array tainted with data from first request. This seems eery up Rust's alley, given the concurrency / allocation disambiguation support I've read (alas superficially) elsewhere.
Yes. They understand it perfectly. You will find people right here who are so in love with the idea of sovereigns having literally unlimited power, physics and math be damned, that they will defend such denial of reality.
I don't know about that. It's hard to be effective at "nagging someone to success" unless they have a positive bond with you (friendship).

All the nagging in the world from someone you don't trust just makes you stonewall. Conversely, a push from a slightly older, more accomplished peer can be very motivating. Some sports examples might include a varsity player telling a JV player:

"Come on, just one more lap!"
"We're not leaving the field till you get a goal past me."
Etc.

My sense when I read the quote you pulled out was that nag was not the best word choice for what they described the students doing.
ES6 transpiling has been a bit of a revelation to me lately. Object destructuring is also exceedingly useful.

On a bit of a tangent from the article, I'm interested by the use of const as the default for variable declaration. My background is such that I've always considered constants as things that are class level constants (thank you Java), but reading up on Swift has made me rethink this.

Clearly const has the potential to reduce runtime errors. I'd appreciate it if anyone could recommend any further reading on the subject.
The #1 Reason Why People Leave Startups (with a potential solution to stop it)
In the US, the details vary by state but in general you don't need any kind of license to possess or use lockpicks (except in Tennessee): http://toool.us/laws.html
Nokia branded Windows phones have a custom Lumia backup app that doesnt work on anything else. M$ has _NO BACKUP API_

"Cliff Simpkins (Sr Product Manager, Windows Developer) responded:

Currently, the platform provides a number of SMS Access from a system eventing perspective (as of Windows Phone 8.1), and Windows Phone supports sms backup/restore for consumers as part of the base OS (Settings Backup). What we don’t provide is a backup API."

The only backup offered is in form of Outlook cloud, there is no way of retrieving your backup from the cloud, you can only restore into another windows phone device. If you happen to have non Lumia device and want data you need to first backup to cloud, then restore into Lumia branded phone (that you bought/borrowed for the occasion), and then backup again using Lumia proprietary backup app that lets you store locally. YAY M$
How ‘honey trap’ hackers stole Syrian rebel war plans
Just last night I watched the Tangled trailer with my daughter. A large portion of the trailer never happens in the movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCxuxrLNrsw

My guess is that it was going to be part of the movie but ended up getting cut for editing reasons. (The whole "hair as weapon" bit is probably inconsistent with character for the rest of the movie)
Back in 1991, the trailer for Star Trek VI had a clip of Captain Kirk being shot and vaporized by a phaser [1]. The actual clip of this happening in the movie looks much different [2].

1. Trailer: http://youtu.be/638S8n2_Ab8?t=1m44s

2. Spoiler: http://youtu.be/s2wBtcmE5W8?t=1m28s
> If you enforce all kinds of weird password rules to the user, he will have to write the password down somewhere, because one couldn't possible remember all passwords.

I'm going to use the appeal to authority argument, and bring over Schneier to argue that writing your passwords down isn't bad: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/06/write_down_yo... (and others posts since, google "schneier writing passwords down" or something)

Remembering your password isn't necessarily more secure, especially since it easily leads to password re-use, which is even worse.
Art’s Biggest Wheel Turns Toward Science
It still reduces the potential brute force search space. Instead of forcing a clever brute forcer to search all of the horribly insecure passwords with no special characters and repeating characters, you're telling them up front that they can cut certain strings out of their search space.

I can see both sides of the argument, but often the password complexity rules result in users writing down their passwords on sticky notes. You could make the argument that if an attacker is at the desk, you're already compromised, but still it's probably better to just enforce a policy of reasonable password complexity no matter what it is. They have javascript password complexity indicators on many sites now, I think that should become standard.
Just like they did with Nokia what they did with Sendo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendo
Show HN: Add Navigable Human Voice to Your Web Pages
This reminds me that encryption was once classified as a munition in the US too for the purpose of exporting.
I really hope it can be undone, but it might be too late. When the general public doesn't understand what end-to-end encryption is or how important it is in their daily lives, who is really in the position to stop them? It's not the public's fault either. They never learn about this in the course of their regular studies, even in college. The EFF is working hard to educate people, but as the NSA has shown once you fall into the hole climbing out is much harder.
Location: DE, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: maybe

Technologies: Python, Perl, PHP, Obj-C, Bash, SQL, MongoDB, Node.js, html/CSS, JavaScript, AWS, Linux, OS X, Windows

Resume/CV: http://whsjr.soistmann.com/resume/

Email: hackernews@whsjr.soistmann.com
Rethinkdbdash 1.16: Node.js streams, implicit run and more
Most of these projects I've seen done by hand, visual inspection. Is there anything that helps with automatic analysis? A sort of OCR for transistors?
Fun with HN Posts
Thank you for replying.

my Int $age = 40;

$age = "old";

That will generate a compile-time error. (Because the "old" bit is a string literal which is interpreted in this case as being of nominal type Str which isn't compatible with the nominal type Int).

Do you have any tips for me on how to make it clearer on the page I linked that this is compile-time checking? Or, more simply, did you just not believe the "compile-time" comment on the page I linked or did you just miss it, perhaps because it's "commented out"? Would it make sense for me to incorporate some of what I write below?

----

Perl 6 supports more than just static nominal typing. You can add arbitrary constraints:

my Int $school-age where 5..18 = 40;

The code that comes after the 'where' (the '5..18' bit) can be arbitrary code. It is tested against any value that would be assigned to the $school-age variable.

Most folk will just like the convenience of this construct and won't care whether it results in a check at compile-time or run-time.

But some will care.

So, while nominal typing is a compile-time checking affair, what about these arbitrary constraints? Do these result in checks at compile-time or run-time? Well, it depends.

Key quotes from the relevant language design doc[1] are:

> A where clause is considered static if it can be applied to the types to the left of it at compile time to produce a known finite set of values.

The line of code we're looking at:

my Int $school-age where 5..18 = 40;

can clearly be reduced to the set of integers from 5 to 18. And the compiler code to successfully make that analysis is fairly straight-forward, so it could fairly easily be implemented in Rakudo today.

However, for 6.0.0 (by which I mean the suite of 35K+ tests that are supposedly going to reach beta status by September and the Rakudo compiler that is supposedly going to reach gold status by the end of the year) there's this:

> for 6.0.0 any structure type information inferable from the where clause will be ignored

In other words, the line we've been looking at with the `where` clause will result in a run-time check for 6.0.0.

----

[1] http://design.perl6.org/S12.html#Multiple_constraints
That's downright terrifying.
Sennheisers tend to clamp down pretty hard. Especially the 280's and 380's. Maybe another brand would work better.
>> CS fundamentals can be taught on any system

This.

I don't know why a lot of people just assume that having Windows means you'll learn using Microsoft's development tools. Nothing's preventing you from choosing Apache over IIS, or Postgresql/MySQL over SQL Server Express.

Most major web app development platforms run on Windows, and there are plenty of good, free text editors too.
What carrots does Windows have that Linux doesn't besides a larger variety of software?

Linux is used in far more circumstances than Windows and is just as capable as windows when it comes to 99% of tasks.

Buy Linux on an Ubuntu certified pc and you will have zero issues.

In reality most consumers don't use more than a web browser.
Does anyone know if this is a widespread problem across the industry? Does it affect VWs / Audis too?
Happens all the time, for lots of different reasons. The first time I noticed it was in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" The trailer had a show where Bob Hoskins was wearing a cartoon pig mask, but it wasn't in the movie. The sequence was cut to improve the pacing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJfateiaasY
Hacking a brother printer to force printing black and white
Forever 21 Hit with Lawsuit Over Pirated Software from Adobe, Corel, Autodesk
If I may add emphasis... GCC's error messages were a HUGE improvement over existing compilers. Back in 1985, C compilers might tell you what line the error was on, but they also might not. GCC went further, revealing not only the line number but added a carat pointing to the precise term in the source code that was the source of the error. This was a godsend.

In addition GCC's error messages were human readable. Unlike Microsoft, whose compilers and interpreters had long produced only line numbers and error codes, GCC wrote their messages in English, which were sometimes tuned further to fit the syntax.

At the time, all this was a really big advancement over non-IDE compilers (which then died a thousand deaths when the cfront translator and then OOP's general lugubriousness made error messages illegible once again).
As others have pointed, it doesn't look like this a Google ad. However, as a publisher, you do have a fair bit of control. You can choose to only allow text ads, and you can also block specific advertisers, categories & the like.

https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180609?hl=en
Ben can you shed any light on the EULA terms on the Microsoft site? To get access to this program you must accept the EULA which states that you will only be allowed one single install of pre-release software and the license is only good for 60 days.

Sounds more like a standard beta/RC license than a real "free for the maker community" license as the PR announcements seem to imply.
"not more than 2 identical characters in a row"? WTF? Stop with this nonsense.

This is OT, but there's an interesting snippet in "The Secret Life of Bletchley Park" [1] about decoding Enigma messages used by the Italian Navy in the Med.

One of the female operators had a set of messages from one Italian operator who sent a message once a week on a regular basis. They had determined that the first letter was an 'L'. She looked at the keyboard, saw that 'L' was neatly placed under the right hand and guessed that he was sending a test message consisting of nothing but 'L's tapped out in quick succession. Voila! She hit the jackpot.

From this insight, all dial wirings and movements of the Italian machines could be quickly deduced.

So, repetitive plain text can be a security issue.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-Life-Bletchley-Park/dp/1845...
Windows could technically support loads of platforms, they just don't sell it.
sort of reminds me of that airtime challenge I took. http://challenge2.airtime.com:2324/instructions
The problem is that you can see a lot of kids on RPi-related forums who are used to Windows, struggle with Linux because that what they have to use, and eventually learn a ton of stuff along the way.

The whole point of the RPi is to hack, if it's just a way to get a cheap, regular computer then a good part of the appeal is gone.
> without actually explaining how it would benefit any users other than him

He seems to make it pretty clear: "You give me a place to send them, and when my students join they punch in the required credit card and then they’re done." This sounds like a more streamlined signup process than what his users currently go through, which involves signing up somewhere else, paying, and then receiving an email with a link enabling them to sign up (again) at slack.

> how it would actually benefit Slack

Again, fairly well spelled out: "I promote it, I do the hard work of being in there, and you get to skim your $6.67 or however much the plan costs off the top of the signups." So free promotion, somebody else drives user signups to your product.

Third, by my reading, the author is implying that this setup would be useful for many others who want to offer a good chat service for online learning, paid support, or a multitude of other reasons I can't think up. It sounds like a great idea to me.

Finally: you'll probably get more out of the internet by being more concerned about content than tone.
Having recently had to implement improved password security for a customer who wouldn't read XKCD #936, the internationalization thing was a pain in the ass.

They wanted at least 10 characters, and at least one uppercase, one lower, one digit, and one special character. Easy enough with .NET's built-in membership stuff by setting:

passwordStrengthRegularExpression="(?=.{10,})(?=(.\p{Lu}){1,})(?=(.\d){1,})(?=(.*\W){1,})"

The "\p{Lu}" part handles uppercase characters even in Unicode chars, but Javascript has no equivalent, so I couldn't do client-side validation of that. Should be validating on both ends anyway, but it's still a pain.

The real part I hated was having to keep track of users' last N passwords to make sure they didn't re-use them. Since everything's hashed and salted, I just kept a table of previous hashes by user. Seems simple, but MS didn't see fit to include a HashPassword(string plainTextPassword, byte[] userSalt) method in the membership provider, so I had to reverse engineer their password-hashing method to check when they change passwords if it's something that's been used before.

Then I realized that they could just change their password N+1 times in about a minute, then re-use their expired password anyway, so we wound up having to set a minimum age of N weeks before a password could be reused as well.

The whole problem is an exploding requirements nightmare that could easily be solved by saying "Must be >32 characters and don't write it down anywhere, idiot."

The worst part is as much as I hate these types of requirements, I now perfectly understand why these systems are the way that they are.
Even if it was perfect, nothing can help you if you choose to specifically choose to share data. It was my fault for having only skimmed the original Heartbleed explanation and just made the assumption it was a memory safety issue. Sorry for making Rust look bad, especially right when y'all are working so hard on 1.0.
Also consider blocking Flash, which is probably more effective than ad blocking against exploits these days.
Instead of "apps from people you hassled with social network bullshit" i'd rather see "apps from people who have a similar set of apps you do".
For representing a number, it makes no difference at all. For binary you can use on/off, up/down, positive/negative etc. For trinary you can have on-mid-off, up-mid-down, positive-neutral-negative, and so on. Any symbols will do as long as you define the math in terms of the symbols you pick.
Better Bitcoin: Getting Local Merchants on Board
This is actually explained in the article.
http://www.degate.org/

There is also numerous proprietary/non-public tools. For example ChipWorks has some advanced software.
Anglia.js – I spat out my coffee
Probably. Just like there are movies where their funniest line is only in the trailer.
Writing a DOS Game in 16-bit Assembly Language
Depending on the type of user you are, but Linux is miles ahead of Windows for research.
> I don't know why people would suggest that Microsoft fork Android.

I think the most obvious reason is lack of adoption, both by users & developers. There are lots of apps out there for Android & iOS. Microsoft has such a small market share and, in the eyes of many outside the Microsoft ecosystem, have little change of growing it. Meaning the cost-benefit for developing Windows versions of your apps just isn't there.
I'm not familiar with Tangled, but by the time Disney got to Frozen, there was a trailer with Olaf & Sven that is basically a stand-alone scene not in the movie at all (intentionally). It's impressionistic more than trying to represent the film literally.
It's worth mentioning that there are ATA commands for secure erase these days.

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

If you have a linux box handy, you can probe your ATA-compatible drives with:

root# hdparm -I /dev/X

look for:

Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
supported: enhanced erase
Security level high
2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.

"Enhanced Security Erase Unit" should get all of the sectors that have been previously used even on a SSD with wear leveling.

Of course, you still have to trust that the vendor has correctly implemented it. I have no idea what best practices are in that regard. If anybody here has a better idea, I'd love to hear (Is FIPS certification a good sign? If the drive implements encryption and can therefore do a secure erase by dropping the keys can it be trusted? Can drive vendors generally trusted to not use ECB mode? etc.)
Ask HN: Is youtube losing its good?
I am a huge youtube fan. I probably spend more time on youtube than any social networking app.
But lately I have found things that bother me.

Things like
- Content creators trying too hard to earn money.
- Too many or too long ads.
- It is a huge effort to find some video from my history.
- Recommendation is hardly useful.
- Too many videos end up being completely seperate from their topics. Again, quality control.
- I know a lot of content creators who can't make any decent money of it.

I understand that the scale of youtube is probably cause of most of these issues. But does anyone else happen to have similar experience?
Yes. This is fun, but FAR too clever. I can only speculate at the baffling compile errors... it doesn't bear thinking about. shudder
Growing iCracked (YC W12) to 200 people this year – join us
Mostly the fact that people already know it and are too lazy to learn anything else.

To take an example: building a Mame box. On Windows it's a major PITA because replacing the windows shell to start directly Mame is a big hack, because you need to configure Mame in command line / editing text file which is a pain on Windows, because you can't just ssh to edit config files from a regular laptop, etc. On Linux it's much easier, and you end up with a clean configuration that does just what you need.

But you know what? People still use Windows on their Mame cabs because it's their confort zone.
Taxes really are quite high - not sure how good of an indicator for this is tax to GDP ratio though.

A lot of the people frequenting HN are (usually) well off IT workers - so I find the following list quite telling - it shows an effective income tax and social security rates on USD $100,000 of gross income (based on KPMG 2012 global tax rate survey): http://imgur.com/MUZlz
Has Cameron or the UK gov't actually taken actual steps to ban encryption, or is this entire article extrapolating that from the 'no safe space to communicate' quote?
The 7th Principle of Redis: We Optimize for Joy
I see your point, but given the number of 'test', 'password' and '12345' passwords we see whenever there's a leak, that could be an issue.

Maybe just a minimum length? I too get annoyed when there are specific complexity requirements, like 'must include an uppercase letter' even though I've used a 20-character long password including numbers and punctuation.
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If you join our 5-person team, you will gain experience in every part of planning, building, and operating a high-volume Rails app. Heroku, Twilio, and machine-learning experience a plus.

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Ask HN: What is unique about your company's interview process?
Same. I like to support sites, but the ads that come through are so exceedingly stupid that it's actually insulting.

This sort of ad is all too typical. They mash up some creative, add some annoying animation, and carpet-bomb the ad channels with it.

Sorry, if you can't screen your ads more effectively (The Deck, for example) I'm blocking you.
> Finally, what I've found most frustrating is the feeling that despite years of complaints about open offices, nothing has changed and nobody seems to care.

Perhaps that's because the extroverts are the ones at the top of the org chart? The best counter-example I can think of is Microsoft during the Bill Gates era.