skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Are smart card readers/pinpads vulnerable to badusb?
I just read into gnupg and private key management. My plan that if I ever start to use gnupg I should start with a really securely stored master private key. Well a compromised smart card reader or pinpad can't extract the private key from the card (supposedly), however it could sign/decrypt documents silently while it has access to the card.

However I didn't find any source for the relationship between card readers and badusb. I found a product which offers a "feature" of "USB firmware upgradeability" [1]. It could be secure if you had to confirm the firmware upgrade on the pinpad.

So my questions are: Do you own a smart card reader? Is its firmware silently upgradeable from a computer?

[1] http://www.acs.com.hk/en/products/176/acr89u-a1-handheld-smart-card-reader/
I happy that they're not only working on taste, but also try to add all the healthy nutrients to the product.
I'm unfamiliar with it: what is the cliché about multiplication vs exponentiation?
I would argue airline competition focus on pricing is due to the marketing/purchasing methods presented to consumers when they go to buy a ticket. Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, etc all show a big graph listing the prices of all flights taking place on the dates you want to travel. If you list a comparison of any product to consumers with little information about the varying products other than price, most consumers are going to make their purchasing decision based on price alone.

Having said that, I'm not at all arguing that price isn't important in the airline industry. $200 is a big chunk of change for an airline ticket. However, consumers might be a little more flexible about price if they had a better idea of what other value they are getting on the trip.
Yes, it's not a good sign. I guess it's to keep licence fee payers from moaning about paying for it all.

If they could open source it then it could live post Beeb.
He needs her permission more than her interest.

I have no doubt that he would also rather invest his advanced literary skills in new fiction more than spend time with an editor on something that has already went splat.

Think safe thoughts!
Once you start paying for something many web services suddenly get worse. For instance get linkedin premium and you find yourself sandboxes and the moment stumbleupon realizes you are a mark who will pay for traffic the organic traffic stops.
Midipix is due soon and provides a system call interface for Windows and a Linux libc.http://midipix.org/
I don't think the drama is aimed at the same audience as the computers.
How is that a real patent? As far as I can tell (and I'm not a lawyer), they're patenting mixing protein, carbohydrates, fats, and water in specific ratios to make a meat substitute. Why isn't every veggie burger ever prior art in this case?
Can somebody shed some light on how maintaining one network protocol implementation and possibly improving it every couple of years could consume three million Dollars every year? We all know how easy it is to underestimate the required effort and how quickly tiny things can blow up into major issues, but it is completely beyond my imagination in the case of NTP.
Abtst.com: A/B testing service integrated with Google Analytics
It took many years before I realized and tried it, but Cygwin also very easily lets you run an OpenSSH server on Windows, which I find incredibly useful.
I was rather excited thinking this was going to be an old BBC Micro in a new tiny form factor. Sadly, looks like I am wrong. Anyone else like a BBC Micro in a credit card sized package? Do they already exist?
Although it's not explicitly stated in the article, I think Strang's remarks are actually directed at non-math programs in STEM (I assume you are at least a minor in math because of 3 analysis courses). Math majors will get plenty of algebra either way, but it's the engineers and scientists who miss out from overemphasising calc over algebra.
Cloud Cover Music: Every business has a soundtrack, play it legally
When all you have is a weapon everything looks like a target.

US are being irresponsible pricks playing with guns and technology that is obviously not well suited for this kind of threat assessment.

Also $5,000 per family? Really? Even after admitting the error? The U.S. Special Forces, Military, CIA or whatever are that low on budget (hardly) or simply do not give a flying fuck?
I have a workflow that I'd really like to automate/rewrite. A wav file is generated on a remote server. That server will rsync/scp it to a processing node. The processing node will query a database, and write out a text file with parts of that file to remove. It'll then convert it to mp3 (using sox and lame) with those parts removed. Another job will then pick up the mp3 file, query another database, and if it gets a hit it will sync that file to s3.

Is this a kind of workflow that would run with pinball? Can you move files around with it, or do you use the file system and pass filepaths around? Ideally, the workflow job would hold onto the wav/mp3 and the associated database fields that are returned so I don't have to juggle weird directories around (and have to sync access to them).

I'm not familiar with any other workflow engines, so I'm unsure if this is the kind of thing that would traditionally run on one. I looked at the user guide but it's currently barren.
The sentence in question is:

"The author spends a lot of effort trying to make his functions point-free."

You can simply remove the word "his".
That's true, the guy in the video was a Spanish comedian and he's talking about one time when he was tasked with cleaning the paelleras (the pans in which paella is made) and he placed them on the beach for the seawater to slowly clean them up. He didn't account for the tide coming in later that evening and taking the paelleras away.
I got so excited just looking at the picture.

Programming really just boils down to loops, ifs and subroutines. The tricky bit isn't explaining how to construct programs, it's the individual making the leap and working out how to compose it to create new functionality, express abstract concepts etc. Everyone can get the mechanical first bit, not everyone can makes the leap, but it's a great idea to get every young person to at least try.

What's needed is the simplest possible platform that allows the expression and execution of programs, coupled with simple and compelling input and output (everyone loves LEDs). No distractions.

I started programming on a BBC Micro as a child. You got a BASIC command line by default and a simple text and graphics screen. Nothing else to distract you. Nothing to break, and zero barrier to entry, so you could experiment without fear. I think it was the ideal environment to learn on, and I honestly think that they should still make machines like that.

I think was only co-incidence that state-of-the-art was also just-right-for-children (and also sufficiently extensible to to more interesting things), and that's what made the 80s/90s a bit of a golden age (at least in the UK).

I'm not sure what I'd do if I had to teach programming to an eight-year-old child today. Probably a LISP / Clojure REPL (and have to deal with the child being teased in the playground for not having mutable state). I've heard people say "everyone has web browser with JavaScript" but that's already too many moving parts and too much to think about when you just want to talk about if statements without distractions.

This MicroBit looks absolutely ideal. It's also kind of shaped like an owl, which is a brilliant echo of the BBC Micro logo.
My First Week on Meerkat and Virtual Reality – Brandon Lipman
While it sounds compelling, such thought processes rarely drive Al Qaeda members or ISIS fighters. If you actually ask them, they say they are driven by their religion.[1] Obviously, airstrikes make it easier for them to hate us, but even if we did nothing but build schools and hospitals, they would try to kill us. This is evidenced by the fact that they behead aid workers and journalists from countries like France and Japan.

There is a huge moral difference between America and ISIS. If the US had perfectly accurate weaponry and information, they would spare every innocent life. If ISIS had the same technology, they would slaughter innocents by the millions.

Note: My comment should not be construed as endorsing the Iraq war. Armies are very blunt instruments, but knowledge of that fact is supposed to discourage going to war.

1. http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isi...
As much as I like and support the Pi, this is a much simpler device and will be potentially more understandable.
Modern OS's add too much abstraction to what is essentially quite a simple device.

I personally learned (in the 80's) on a similar microcontroller-sized machine (z80 & 6502) at a younger age than this is aimed at and reaped the benefits...

Hopefully ARM based rather than AVR, but if not, its still the right approach IMO.
That's not really fair – it's because the Raspberry Pi is a popular enough platform that people outside of the tech industry have heard about it. That makes it a useful point of comparison.
"Wonder what the unit production cost is and how it compares to a bulk order of Arduino - strikes me that they could have fit the thing in to an existing ecosystem and reduced the support cost"

Now I've read the article, I tend to agree. The article is light on information. This description of the hardware seems contradictory to the aims of the RPi.

The Raspberry Pi is a low cost, credit-card sized
computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV,
and uses a standard keyboard and mouse. It is a
capable little device that enables people of all
ages to explore computing, and to learn how to
program in languages like Scratch and Python.
It’s capable of doing everything you’d expect a
desktop computer to do, from browsing the Internet
and playing high-definition video, to making
spreadsheets, word-processing, and playing
games. [0]

[0] http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/what-is-a-raspberry-pi/
Wow. Surprised at the negativity here :( The BBC is giving every kid in the UK a free hackable computer. And we're moaning about the unit production cost or its comparison to Raspberry Pi? Perhaps the backstory of the BBC and its previous role in computing isn't captured here...

Like many other now 30 year olds in the UK, I grew up hacking games on a BBC Micro my school had, my family couldn't afford a decent machine at home so it was my only introduction to computers. And before the BBC Micro, most schools couldn't afford a set of computers either. It allowed us to learn to code in the lunch breaks, after school. It seriously drove many UK kids to code and now having a happy career in computing.

Now kids will get a similar, even more personal introduction to computing in an age of tap-and-swipe computing.

I for one applaud the decision!
That comment sort of illustrates my point:

> You should note that Rust does not allow unintialized value by design and thus it does prevent heartbleed from happening. But indeed no programming language will ever prevent logic bugs from happening.

Under OpenBSD, that values would not have been uninitialized, were it not for OpenSSL's silly malloc wrapper -- a contraption of the sort that, if they really wanted, they could probably implement on top of Rust as well. What is arguably a logic mistake compromised the protection of a runtime that, just like Rust, claimed that it would not allow uninitialized values, "by design".

Of course, idiomatic Rust code would not fall into that trap -- but then arguably neither would idiomatic C code. It's true that Rust also enforces some of the traits of its idioms (unlike C), but as soon as -- like the OpenSSL developers did in C, or like Unangst did in that trivial example -- you start making up your own, there's only that much the compiler can do.

At the end of the day, the only thing that is 100% efficient is writing correct code. Better languages help, but it's naive to hope they'll put an end to bugs like these when they haven't put an end to many other trivial bugs that we keep on making since the days of EDSAC and Z3.
Does anyone know how this compares to full Business process modeling platforms, such as Activiti, jBPM, or Bonita?
The man in the video is called "El Risitas", he is a popular character here in Spain. He's telling the host an absurd story about how he almost lost a "paellera" (a type of pan) because of the tide while working as a waiter in a coastal restaurant. Even if you speak Spanish it's hard to understand him.
The Role of the User Buyer in B2B Customer Development
Groovy Moving to Apache
On desktops a new "feature" is to continually spam "pop ups" whenever I highlight text. I am aware that not everyone repeatedly clicks/selects/de-selects as they read (I used to think I was the only one...) but with no way to turn that shit off I'm stuck. And on any new site where it is encountered I end up spend more time undoing accidental clicks on suddenly appearing windows than I do reading.

The FT is a good example, the site is unreadable for me. So I no longer visit it.
... for this one particular person.
From the paper - they don't use ultrasound itself to generate the effect, they use ultrasound to activate injected 'micro-bubbles' in the brain which disrupt the blood-brain barrier.
I never considered Meerkat to be comparable or applicable to Virtual Reality. Technically speaking it does not fit but it is similar.
Copy keys online using your phone
BLODA: Big List Of Dodgy Apps
The question is, do you have a better plan?

The better plan will take three or perhaps four generations. The Western world simply does not have the ability to do it, for various reasons.

all it takes is one drone strike to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

And also create a bunch more angry, humilated people with no recourse other than terror tactics. Hey look, we're creating terrorists! We are so fucking stupid it hurts my head.
"Often a 50$ watch is more useful than a 50,000$ watch."

Another factor that comes into play is your mental balance. A man with a $50k watch is a lot more worried about what his wrist bumps into than a man with a $50 one.
The gist of the Reagan revolution is that it is cheaper to buy off 1% of the population than it is to buy off 99%.
Is it better than using virtualbox?
>In the end I stopped because the hardware had reliability issues and the screen wasn't all that great.

That's not exactly a glowing endorsement, considering the price, why would you want to work on it full-time then?
This will be down voted, but it does accurately reflect the reality of the situation as perceived by those in power.
Got to do something to win public appeal I guess (as for those reading outside the UK the BBC is publicly funded and it is a criminal not civil offence not to pay TV license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Uni...), this isn't an area the BBC should be spending.

How about we skip the BBC, let schools purchase Raspberry Pi's as they desire and claim directly from a government fund (this I would certainly support)

If its anything like their contract IT spending they probably paid more than market rate too...
Even faster on a nice engineer salary.
This is slightly unsettling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUSMpCckEbY
Why is it that binary, though? Surely somewhere between "incompetent" and "world-class" there's space for execs who are "good enough to earn their reports' respect but with room to grow in a few areas"?
I was more thinking about it like Peter Thiel's monopoly: http://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-l...

Interestingly he is also a Lyft investor.
Just stick this on your Pi

http://jaguar.orpheusweb.co.uk/branpage.html
> I realise that in those situations I just have to click fast twice, so that the second click takes place before scripts have been loaded.

Oh, that's why rapid clicking works! Funny how for some problems I only want a solution and don't bother at all thinking about how it works.
It's a drama based on the production of GTA, not the game. Likely because it's made by Rockstar North who are based in the UK. It's either them or Codemasters who have become a bit of a sweatshop from what I've heard from ex-employees.
Class LTD Computer System Upgrades – Webscale Wish
When designing any system that involves people, it's vital to see what behaviours optimise your rewards. Usually there is some general process / overall plan you're supposed to follow:

Follow the plan | Don't follow the plan
Things go well | reward | unknown
Things go badly | no punishment | punishment

That is a setup which encourages people to follow the plan even if they think it's not the best one.

Something else which makes this quite difficult is that you never know what would have happened if you'd jumped columns.
As you observe. rewriting Windows Phone in Go would not implicitly make money. My observation is that rewriting a vast field deployed code base [even one smaller and less widely dispersed than Windows] in the language of the month is frequently a bad idea because it introduces regressive bugs.

Beholden to Wall Street since the recent divestments of Gates and Ballmer, a shift such as that suggested would trigger action by investors as shareholders in response to the utter management incompetence it suggests.
Don't feel bad. HN has turned into a political, anti-government step up from Reddit. But a step up from Reddit is no compliment.
Do you have a link to this lecture? I would be interested in reading it.
> The question is, do you have a better plan? Because the guys at the Pentagon would really like to hear it.

Stop invading other nations for oil then complain the locals dislike you and kill your troops.
I remember reading a quite different account, where due to heavy weather the locals didn't get to approach the dummy before the officials arrived. No mention was made of the locals actually opening the visor of the helmet.

It just seems too perfect, too movie script. There's plenty of references to how the 'Maket' sign was placed in the helmet for just this occurence: in case peasants would get to it before the rescue crew. In my opinion this writer has taken this as an account of what _actually_ happened, but it didn't.

Perhaps circumstantial to this issue, but note that the top Amazon review of the book gives it 2 stars and mentions 'fundamental and gross errors':

http://www.amazon.com/Space-Race-Between-America-Dominion/dp...

A review further down says 'many details of the Korolev story seem merely speculative - but it makes for a racy read.'
For me, Cygwin makes Windows bearable. It's still Windows, but, at least, it has a proper shell, interpreters, compilers, compressors (no need for WinZip or WinRAR - think about it!) and so on. For the same reason you need MacPorts or Brew on a Mac, you need Cygwin on Windows.

Unless you are happy to spend your day in Visual Studio, in which case Cygwin will not be that useful.
yep, check out Spotify's Luigi project. Probably the most widely adopted OSS one
https://github.com/spotify/luigi
Startup L. Jackson is so awesome.
Yeah. I find the jarring shout-outs the most annoying thing about HPMOR, and indeed about fanfiction in general.
Unfortunately seems to crash immediately on Windows 10 Tech Preview (build 9926). It's what I can expect for using a prerelease OS though.

Edit: It looks like this might have been something on my end. Re-downloaded and extracted and it seems to be working now.
Dont worry the chineses will reverse engineer and clone it in about 20 seconds, and cheap copies will be everywhere.
His lectures are wonderful! In college I skipped my regular Linear Algebra lectures, and used the time slot in my schedule to watch his MIT lectures instead.

I ended up scoring one of the highest grades in the class.
Did you perhaps mean JetBlue? Southwest isn't well-liked.
FWIW, my current setup is Win 8.1 Pro with Hyper-V configured to startup a Linux VM on boot. My dev environment consists of cmder with an alias "dev" that ssh into the Linux VM where I have my full set of dev tools available. It's almost completely seamless since vim is my editor and I can just run that over ssh.
Well, yeah, and since that one person is me, I'm very, very unhappy with it.
"How about we skip the BBC"

But that would imply the funds come from the Treasury from general taxation/borrowing - which seems unlikely in this age of austerity.

The BBC arguably has a lot more freedom to do this kind of thing given its main revenue source is its own hypothecated tax in the form of the license fee.

Good on them I say - at least they are doing something interesting rather than the usual nonsense we hear about education directly from politicians.
At least over here in Europe, you can attach a bog-standard 240V cord to the Apple power brick so it sits in the middle of the cord. However, this does not help if the computer-side plug does not disengage if your lovely child barrels down your living room.

Magsafe has prevented a costly fall or other here.
It applies a Linux-like polish to a Windows machine. You can manipulate the whole Windows filesystem from within a Linux-like environment. With a VM you get a full Linux environment that cannot simply get to your Windows environment - you get a clear separation between the two.

I like to say Cygwin "civilizes" Windows.
grew up with ZX80, daily user of RPi. The RPi original requirement specs [0] though toy-like, hit the mark. The bit I don't get is will this be as good or better than say the RPi (A+ at AUD20)?

Hard to compete against pre-packaged products if it's less usable than the Rpi even if it's free.

[0] http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/what-is-a-raspberry-pi/
and http://www.raspberrypi.org/about/
Scoring the Impostor Test [pdf]
This 'Killer USB' can make your Computer explode
Voice Indias daughter
Its happened with me too, and a friend of mine as well. Funny story with that friend- he missed summer job emails because of Google, and cursed them a lot :-). But later ended up visiting Google for his summers.
The point is that that vs doesn't even make sense. It's like saying what wheel is your favorite in your car, the front left or the rear left. Arguing for calculus vs linear algebra is equally stupid. They are different branches of mathematics with different domains of application.
I had it by itself. I'll check out reflux and the react developer tools (also didn't have those).
If you were looking to become a programmer, maybe you shouldn't have majored in chemstry, where strong Calculus foundations make perfect sense :)
Reith summarised the BBC's purpose in three words: educate, inform, entertain
You Don’t Need to Worry About This in Panama
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I may be wrong, but this looks more like an Arduino than a Pi.

Plug it into your computer, write your code on your computer and then push it out to the micro bit, to control the onboard LEDs.

Still, I'll look forward to having a play around with these with my Year 7s in September.
Wow, I didn't expect to find such shameless propaganda on HN. Every single sentence is factually wrong and insulting to readers' intelligence here.

If it's not obvious to someone: just read some actual interviews with radical muslims, purported reasoning by Bin Laden etc. - their reasons are always political, the US is targeted specifically because of all the death and destruction it has brought to the Middle East. Japanese "aid workers and journalists" (actually: a military contractor and a journalist) were targeted because Japan donated $100 mil. to the fight against IS (as said in the videos: http://www.newsnation.in/article/67223-is-threatens-kill-jap...), the ransom asked was $100 mil. for each hostage.

Don't believe the crappy propaganda: look for facts and then ask yourselves why the US supporters need these lies.
Kids come first. If your kids needs and future are taken care of and reasonably secure, then do what you want. If not, do what you must.
had to lol at this: "Sason came up with a plan to import sand from Israel and sell it as a collectible called 'Sand from the Holy Land.'"