skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There are two "levels" here: Centralisation to more than 51% means you have to trust the central "authority". The safeguard there is that if the central authority starts misbehaving, the technology is out there, and everyone can start using it one a new blockchain as you suggest, while agreeing on a blacklist.

The lower level is centralisation into a small-ish pool of large services where no service exceeds 51%. That's what I was mainly thinking about.

We've seen in the past how Bitcoin has adjusted to the threat of 51% with people withdrawing capacity from large pools etc. in response.

In either case the point is that the existence and open availability of the technology acts as a deterrence to coercion because the act of trying to take advantage of a 51% attack will send people running for the hills (and the existence of altcoins makes that even easier).

We've seen people willingly pull back from potentially even "accidentally" exceeding 51% of the Bitcoin network in the past for that very reason.

The point is not absolute decentralisation at all cost (though some anarchist tendencies do want to maximise decentralisation), but the ability to withdraw consent and unilaterally decentralise.
You guys really need to learn to use https://defuse.ca/b/

Even better, use makepaste.sh

Using "secret" gists is just reckless, really.
To be clear, GitHub is not being sued. GitHub is being served a subpoena. Big difference.

The third party being sued is the (as yet unidentified) person who used the key to obtain & leak the data.
Yakuake is OK to, I also used it when I was on KDE. You should give it a try to zsh ;)
Silicon Beach entrepreneurs bond over surfing
The Nexus is nice, but it fails hard at the primary thing I use it for, streaming music using Bluetooth. Takes forever to start playing after I start the car, cuts out when resources are low, stutters. Really annoying.

I'm almost to the point where I'm considering going back to iPhone. I've almost got the Android bug out of my system. For awhile I thought I might start developing personal apps, and I think I'd rather target Android than iPhone, but I think I'm over that too.
I think Stephen King's early career (specifically the use of Richard Bachmann to increase output without tarnishing his main brand) was a brilliant example of marketing. This tactic maybe doesn't apply so well to publishing today, but it sure worked!!
There are some counterexamples.

Smart phones are still driven by bling and snobbery so if you have a $900 phone you get $900 of snob value, an $1800 phone gets $1800 of snob values, etc. Same for "luxury" cars -- if you have a Cadillac it had better be your second or third car because you'll still need a ricer to get to work for the days your car is in the shop.

There is a vibrant market for cheap phones and a vibrant one for expensive phones but nothing in between because the main value expensive phones has is as a positional good.

Similarly, there is a lot of hating on tablets because tablets aren't connected with the cell phone plan boondoggle economy, but rather they are driven by economics and people just don't want to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars. It isn't such an exciting biz to be in precisely because it is competitive.
But if I don't use it commercially, but also not for research, it's not sure, whether I can pay for it.
Agree. Just as a current example, I've got a Moto X phone that cost me about $400-450 as opposed to something like $650-700 for an iPhone 6 or Galaxy (whatever the current one is). This thing is solid. Cool bamboo back, aluminum edges, and glass front gives me the totally-unnecessary-but-clearly-desirable "neato" aesthetic and the specs offer performance on par with pretty much any other high end phone. The Samsungs have neither the quality construction/aesthetics of an iPhone or the Moto but they do come with a wacky layer of skinning and apps that the OEM added on. I feel like Samsung means paying premium prices for non-premium quality. I'd take a $350 Nexus 5 if I wanted to save some money, $400-450 Moto X if I want a balance, or even a $650-700 iPhone if I really wanted iOS before buying anything from Samsung.
I wonder how the Goog will gauge the facts that Google sucks and that Google does evil.
There is a scheme just starting to be built in the Pentland Firth between Caithness and Orkney:

http://www.meygen.com/

I believe the first commercial tidal scheme of this type (effectively underwater windmills rather than a barrage) was in Northern Ireland:

http://www.marineturbines.com/3/news/article/7/seagen__the_w...
>what comes after 4k?

Stereo, virtual reality...
I for one am just glad to see that GitHub refused to turn the data over without a subpoena.
IKEA unveils phone charging furniture at MWC
Stated goal number 3:

"Maximizing developer investments"

It's hard to think of a worse strategy. "Maximizing return on developer investments" is what Microsoft ought to be doing...
The study itself says its primary end-point was negative. For a discussion, see http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/rituximab-for-chronic-fa...
> an implementation cost of one PhD thesis per optimization pass.

This strikes me as a little much. This kind of proof requires insight, yes, but it's hardly the level of a thesis, it hardly requires innovation to demonstrate. Just exhaustiveness.
No one says "that's incredible for a 40 year old" because a 40 year old is expected to have had time enough that we don't need the qualifier of age.

In part because the world is full of examples of 40 year olds being successful, but despite the Silicon Valley bias, impressive 20-year olds or 25-year olds (or even 30-year olds) with big achievements are extreme outliers.

Even in the startup world.
How are they supposed to pay for Internet buildout when they're running 8-9 figure deficits servicing 9-10 figure debt loads, watching their municipal bonds downgraded, and scrambling to figure out how to pay down defined-benefit pension plans to firefighters, police officers, and teachers?
Nasdaq Index Reaches 5000 for First Time Since 2000
Alternately, it's clear that the so-called investment badly missed the mark.
This is a blatant and deliberate mischaracterization of what EpicEng said. Of course everyone believes that their beliefs are correct (I can't even believe I had to type that).

It's the belief that anyone with a different ideology or party registration is stupid/greedy/brainwashed/naive/etc he was referring to.
In all likelihood, they use russian weapons, chinese computers, indian clothes and local food.

Are you expressing the inaccurate belief that everything in the world is made in your country?

What Daesh does is not wrong because of the Quran. Saying it is implicitly allows what they do if they weren't religious fundamentalists.

The biggest victims of Daesh are the countless members of the local population. This ordeal is not about America, and so it does not make Daesh hypocritical; just brutal, gruesome and totalitarian.
Rvest: Simple web scraping for R
So how is the IP address of someone that has viewed or crawled said secret Gist relevant anyways? Someone crawling a website is not probable cause (even if there is a single IP address which can be traced to specific machine, which is highly unlikely).
It comes from this tweet: https://twitter.com/MarcusWohlsen/status/572229443751583744
"That’s not worth the time it takes to support."

THIS is wrong. What missing is the dialog behind what determines what is or isn't "worth the time". If you're paid to dig ditches and you don't like digging ditches... well, perhaps you should get the fuck out of the hole and get some other job.

Realize, it's all about communication and that goes both ways. That it's tedious to support something is irrelevant if the target market requires it. That YOU don't like it, well, get out of that ditch. FAR too many "developers" fail to make this point effectively. Yes, at a certain point there's a diminishing amount of return. But not without actually having that discussed in language that ALL parties involved understand. THIS is often a LOT more tedious that the software support, at least for a lot of "developers". Yet failing to do this leads them precisely into the proverbial ditch.
For those who came here later, the original title read:

> Wired merges 100k posts, 12 databases, and 17 blogs into 1 WordPress install
Does anyone else think their new design is terrible? The fonts are hard to read. I hate to be that guy, but I liked the old site better.
GoPro is probably an even better example of winning based on brand than Apple is. A good argument can be made that, while Apple does have an extremely strong brand, it's complemented by differentiated product, service, and a strong ecosystem. I'd argue the GoPro product is just OK--there's a lot I don't like about the overall UX--but it owns the category in terms of awareness and nails the whole action sport thing even if that's more aspirational than actual for most buyers.
Pip-accel: Accelerator for pip, the Python package manager
Estate agent fees – negotiating with the negotiators
The site is using a japanese(?) font which you probably don't have and it's falling back to a serif font. If you inspect element and change it to monospace it all works fine.
As someone who has just gone through this process, it consists of a number of steps:

- Whitelisting URL access in Nginx (though this can be circumvented since everything is ultimately executable through the root index.php, and there are a lot of intermediate URLs)

- Preventing writes to any portion of the WP install directory save uploads. Note - this breaks the option of automatic upgrades, but it prevents a lot of potential hacks.

- Overwriting theme portions you don't want to exist - for example even if never linked to, you can frequently access the comment page and get the default one. However, if you put in a comment theme PHP file and leave it more-or-less blank, you limit the potential harm coming from there.

- Disable many things in the settings.php file, like the cron, debug output, file_mod, etc.

- Cache as much of the output as possible.

- Block a bunch of the informational headers set by WordPress (though this only helps a bit; you can still identify the exact version of a WordPress site using fingerprinting)

- Run WPScanner against your site and plug those leaks.

- Limit what plugins you install to the bare minimum

- Keep everything up to date.

This is not comprehensive, and we're probably still at risk, but it's a start.
I wouldn't say I have no clue. But I'm certainty not an expert. Can you cite a source that shows that if I randomly twiddle some of the lower bits in an image, it is detectable? If any (even random) change to an image is detectable, then it would be true that this doesn't work.
Everything you say about Wordpress is totally true in my experience. But I expect this team is in a much better position than most Wordpress hosts in terms of security potential.

For the scale of someone like Wired, I expect they have an internal network they can restrict the administrative interface to. And I would also presume they are doing some aggressive caching to a CDN or to some sort of dedicated public-facing servers that. There's no reason to even worry about letting Wordpress itself respond directly to user requests. Or if they do, they can trim out the riskiest bits of code--no reason to run a vanilla install. This sort of separation would pretty much negate the standard issues with Wordpress's security.
Yes. They didn't suffer from Not Invented Here. Good for them!
As long as it's also capable of reproducible builds (and I would think the proofs would be very hard if the output is not even predictable!), you should be able to cross-build it from a certified platform, and bootstrap it from a trusted one (or more than one), and the bootstraps should converge to an identical binary, thus giving you both claims.
That is called media echo-chamber. It is hard work to verify and validate the story and the sources, but its too easy to just refer the other guy in small font and link.
One of the main reason I am using Drupal and not WordPress is that the WordPress community seem to prefer more paid "premium" stuff over FOSS ones. Take Drupal Commerce for example, you have access to all of the plugins but you only need to pay for support. For wordpress, it's a completely different story, either pay for a full version of woocommerce with all the bells and whistles, or stick with using the half-baked "basic" version, lacking crucial features. While I understand the need for monetization, for startups and new companies this model is very pricey compared to the Drupal one.
Enough with the click-bait titles.
Nitpick: the title implies that Uber is suing Github, but that's not the case. Uber has a civil suit pending in N.D. Cal., and has issued Uber a third-party subpoena: http://regmedia.co.uk/2015/02/28/ubergithubexhibit.pdf. Such subpoenas are used when a third party might have information relevant to a pending lawsuit. They do not imply any allegations of wrongdoing against the third party.
Chipmakers NXP and Freescale to combine in $11.8B deal
Announcing Maintaining Open Source Projects
Heh :) Better to jump in and learn than stay out and never try. Also yea, the code is kind of a mess. I don't have a lot of free time. But it works and shows the basic idea.
How do we know it was a gist published by Uber, and not a third party?

I couldn't find that information in the article or the subpoena.
Good article. I am not sure the difference between modeling and coding/programming needs to be made as there is not really any significant coding without modeling.

It's a bit like saying pilots are airplane takeoff/landing operators because enroute flying is the trivial part.
This is different than someone stealing a stereo. This is you tape the security code for your front door onto the door and then your mad at the manufacturer of the door's lock. You want the manufacturer to give any information about the person who broke into your house.
What stops your apps from becoming financially successful?
> and then getting whiny when it somehow gets leaked

How did you come away with that? They're trying to subpoena GitHub to gather information on who may have been responsible for the hack.
According to this Qoura answer [1], they are using American weaponry after all, which they got from what was left behind in Iraq:

[1] http://www.quora.com/Why-are-ISIS-militants-driving-Texas-ma...
The victim here is not Uber, but the Uber drivers whose data was lost. Uber is partly guilty here, because of their negligence.

Your analogy is wrong. It's more like asking someone to protect the key of your locked door. And they make copies and leave them in random places with the address attached.
http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-ebook/dp/B006XJR5ZA/

(that link is taken from the Starting Strength website, so if that is an affiliate ID on the end it's not mine)
Atlassian’s Stash Data Center Comes Out of Beta, Brings Git to the Enterprise
The difference is you'd have to transmit the one time pad; which is a big secret. In this case, it's like everyone is using the same pad but you have to do a bunch of work to find out where to start.
It's an old name. I was single back then.
We @ Lovely, http://livelovely.com, are looking for smart, relatively senior devs and designers to add immediate value by shaping our awesome growth story. We are located in SF, no remote, but we'll pay relocation expenses if you're not local and we've sponsored two H1Bs so far. You will help design and build the most beautiful Rental user/landlord portal in the US. We are a Python/Angularjs shop and we hire full stack polyglots who are savvy in a blended web/mobile environment.

I run engineering -- ex-YC, Django dev, been in the real estate space most of my life. I'd be happy to answer any of your questions: zain@livelovely.com.
Exactly the kind of thing I'm trying to solve.

EDIT: Ok, not exactly. But it was one inspiration.
Honest question: they don't teach philosophy in the U.S. in high school? Is that in the entire U.S. or does it vary by state or something? (Edit: I found that Wikipedia says "In the United States of America philosophy is not generally taught at pre-college level")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_education

Philosophy IS taught in high school here in Uruguay (though it's very watered down, but it does include logic in the curriculum).

Apparently it's also taught in Europe, Asia, most of Arabia, South America and even Africa, so I guess the U.S. is the exception.
I'm not well regarded, but my undergrad degree is in Philosophy :D
The actual story also repeatedly talks about how one of the "problems" with the device is that contrary to current surgeries they expect it might be used by a lot more people. Millions is mentioned:

> Baker’s concern, though, is that the Full Sense Device might work too well. If it’s effective, easy, and cheap, what’s to stop people from abusing it?

>“When this hits the market, there’s not going to be just 10,000 to 15,000 people having it,” says Fred Walburn, president and sole employee of Full Sense Device’s parent company, BFKW. “There’s going to be hundreds of thousands. Millions per year.”

And while a journalist has a valid reason to complain if we criticise the journalist for the title, they don't have a valid reason to complain if we criticise the headline. The headline is there. It is part of the presentation. It's not (likely) the journalists fault, but it's still an important part of the overall product.
@amelius, I haven't though of software from that perspective. App servers, Web servers, databases and a lot of middleware have gone down that path.

Have you written it up? I would like to see a write-up on that.
This is exactly the point of having such a system. They should be so proud it's working so well. When we were told the aim was to silence the dissatisfied citizens, we had doubts.

But just think about it now, you're a dissatisfied citizen, and a silent one.
Thorough. As a city dweller for many years, you do get jaded. Although I give financially to charities and try to be compassionate I do get annoyed at the constant pan handling.

Interesting that the article is coming from a fairly upscale magazine chain

http://www.modernluxury.com/
These may help:

http://wartard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-idea-of-isis-histo...

http://wartard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-west-v-isis-air-st...

You will also find the new adam curtis film, Bitter Lake, informative.

TL;DR its not just to do with religion, its to do with history, and a lot of stuff.
Oh god, not again
With my understanding of "the dual nature of light", a better headline would be "The first ever photograph of light as neither a particle or wave", i.e. if it was a wave it wouldn't do this (hold a standing wave) and that (exchange quanta with electrons) at the same time.

Why do I say "neither" is better than "both"? It makes light seem like something different, rather than something that spookily is two things depending on what you're doing.

Feynman seemed to me to argue for just accepting that you're working with models of things that might not have human-scale analogues, and not to get caught up with what they "really" are.
Looking back at the history of mobile
Unless you implement the proved compiler from scratch yourself, no.

If you're not doing massive amounts of implementation yourself, you have not escaped from Ken Thompson's hack. All this does is rephrase how they promise to not hack you... it doesn't change the fact that what they say they do and what they actually do have nothing in particular connecting them.

I wouldn't worry about it until strong AI comes along though. Humans are barely capable of making compilers that work, let alone shipping compromised compilers. (I know Ken demonstrated his hack, but to make something that does that under controlled conditions is one thing, to make one that could be shipped and robustly implement the hack quite another.)
I was hoping the next generation of wikis (especially as used by wikipedia) would introduce an underlying 'fact unit' [1] layer on which articles are built, effectively separating edit wars from verification wars.

[1] Not the same as a 'knol', which as defined by Google was not a unit. A real knol would be a single atomic fact.
Y Combinator and Imagine K12 at Princeton, Harvard, MIT and Dartmouth This Week
I don't understand the point of this site. Whilst Linkedin is obviously the wrong platform, these people aren't using vulgar or offensive language, they're simply using Linkedin's vast data and profiling information to their advantage - for a community that supports entrepenerialism and innovation I'm surprised to see a site like this on the homepage. labelling them as 'creeps' and calling them out on the internet/Hacker News seems a little harsh. I don't condone using Linkedin as a dating service (even though it does, arguably, hold very relevant data), but you do have to admire the spirit!
Putting Big Pharma spending in perspective
Ex. Pitch for a Dream On-Demand Marketplace
XKCD: Meeting
It’s official: Google says it wants to offer cellular service
So wait, Wired's website isn't called hotwired.com anymore? Huh. I guess it's been like 15 years, but I just never noticed.
> getting whiny

Actually, they're subpoenaing. This is necessary to identify who may have accessed it; i don't think this is a suit over the privacy of gists.
Read through a few. Most are just very normal people saying hi to strangers. When did that get creepy? Everyone is a stranger the first time they meet. I've met more than one girlfriend online without knowing anything about them, and our first contact was pretty much exactly like those messages. If it's unwelcome, then just don't respond, or say "no thanks". Don't be an asshole and publicly humiliate people for reaching out and asking for a date.

Shame on whoever created that bullshit site.
AWS live-updates majority of instances affected by Xen updates without reboot
Received this email from AWS earlier today (echoed on the updated maintenance notice page: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/maintenance-2015-03/).

----

Dear Amazon EC2 Customer,

In the past few days, you received notice that one or more of your Amazon EC2 instances were scheduled to be rebooted ‎in the coming days to address a Xen Security Advisory (XSA) that becomes public on March 10. We mentioned that even though the vast majority of our total EC2 instances could be updated via a live-update capability we'd developed, we didn't have this live-update capability for our older hardware (which constitutes fewer than 10% of our total EC2 instances).

Since then, the team has been working around the clock to find ways to minimize the impact for those requiring a reboot. We're happy to share that we'll now be able to live-update ‎the vast majority of our older hardware for this Xen Security Advisory. This means that over 99.9% of our total EC2 instances will receive the live-update and avoid a reboot. We can also now assure you that all newly launched instances will land on updated capacity, which means for the less than 0.1% of total EC2 instances that require a reboot, you can proactively re-launch these instances in order to avoid the assigned reboot timing (if you prefer).

The ‘Events’ page on the EC2 console (https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2) has been updated to mark all events corresponding to the previously scheduled reboots as completed. For those few customers that still have instances that require a reboot, those instances will still appear on the Events page.

If you have any questions, you can contact the AWS Support Team on the community forums and via AWS Premium Support at: https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/ or https://console.amazonaws.cn/support/home#/.

Sincerely,

Amazon Web Services

This message was produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services LLC, 410 Terry Avenue North, Seattle, Washington 98109-5210.
HP to buy Aruba Wireless for $3B
MySociety’s Director Tom Steinberg to Step Down
Google Confirms Plan to Offer Wireless Service