skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I beg to disagree. A year ago, I fished out my collection of 5 1/4" disks and transferred them to a hard drive. Most of them read okay.

On the 3 1/2" front a couple of months ago, I fished out my boxes of 3.5" floppy disks and transferred them to a hard drive, then overwrote them with zeros, effectively doing an exhaustive surface test. Only a small number (single digits) were unreadable, and less than 10% would have had any read errors. Of the 90% that read error free, they all wrote error free.

Going free: 230 x 1.44MB 3 1/2" floppy disks, all recently verified for no bad sectors. Pickup from Sydney, AU. I can also throw in a few 100MB zip disks.
Most Captivating Bike Path in Vienna
The ringing feature works as long as your phone has background data turned on (I think). But the location feature needs you to have location turned on as well.
It's a travesty!
doesnt seem to work for ed25519 keys :(
I do not think that is a trend that will perpetuate.

I fully support equality. I do no deserve more or less pay, more or less rights, more or less consideration, or more or less anything that someone of the opposite gender of myself.

N=1 anecdotal experience from friends, the feminist movement (again, I support) seems to have had the effect it had in japan [0] in that men are no longer interested in marriage, at least not at the rates they were before now.

[0]http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/increasing...
I was stopped for essentially walking with books at 12:30 p.m. I was questioned for at least 15 minutes. He asked the weirdest questions. He looked through my books, and questioned why I had a old magazine on knitting. I actually told him why because I was kind of in shock over the nature of questions. I thought maybe he thought I was stealing mail?
I told him the magazine is from the 80's, and didn't even have postage on it. Officer, "No--I was just wondering why a guy would be interested in knitting?" (The magazine was for a friend, and bought in a used book store)

I thought about pulling out my iPhone and tapeing the encounter.

I then realized the cop had his holster unbuckled, and no one was around, and he explicitly told me to keep my hands visable at all times.

I'm not anti law enforcement. I'm just tired of being pulled over for no reason. Tired of expensive, dubious tickets, and courts that always side with the Officer.

This has forced me to buy two dash cams(one in truck as backup--they are $15.00/unit from China, so I ordered two.) and I'm working on an app that turns on the smartphone video when ever the word "Officer" is mentioned.

The scenerio I envision is I am walking down the street with the smartphone in my shirt pocket/jacket pocket(near enough to pick up my command of voicing "Officer" to wake up dormant phone, and turn on the video/audio app.

If there is already an app out there, could someone point me in the right direction?
Misguided? The microservice you suggest is precisely what the post suggests. The post suggests that the code of the microservice ensures that the correct hashing is used and that the data is stored correctly.

It's puzzling that you say this is "completely misguided" and describe exactly the same thing.
Such as land line phones which still have power even in a blackout it's separate from power lines.

The phone line power must be AC I can't see such long runs being DC.
The Tullock paradox: why is there so little lobbying?
Cecilia R. Aragon
As a former government contractor...I find this quite surprising. It's hard to find decent government contractors and even then it's usually just a few teams versus a whole company.
>And then, if I pick any oracle at random, then isn't there an infinitesimal (yet non-zero) chance I could pick one which has a special structure which makes their result false?

Almost surely not
Can't answer your question, but I'm curious how you managed to include an image in your comment. I didn't think embedded HTML was possible?
I think at one point the employees of Basho knew how to write distributed DBs - Riak is the most advanced AP DB from a distributed systems theory perspective. However, in recent months, their CEO, CTO and Chief Architect have left, as well as many of their prominent engineers. Worryingly, the new CTO seems content to make inane comments about "Data Gravity" [0].

[0] - http://www.kdnuggets.com/2015/03/interview-dave-mccrory-bash...
It would be nice if there was a way to check the system audio volume via the web audio API. Then you could display a notice only if the volume is too low or too high. Alas, no such functionality currently exists without browser plugins.
As Moore’s Law turns 50, computer chips continue to get cheaper and more powerful
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Cheever
This is awesome!

Check out ./SOUR/LINUX1.ZIP for Linux 0.12, hah.
Pretty much.

I wouldn't characterize the magical detection of uncommon access patterns as a minimalist feature (it can be done, but not out of the box in a meaningful way), but other than that, all of the stuff you mentioned is there.

Typically, you use LDAP as a directory store, and a dedicated authentication protocol like Kerberos or SAML for authentication. You can also use LDAP for auth if desired.

If you want to go deep on identity management, the NIST documents are pretty much the canonical source of information. http://csrc.nist.gov/projects/iden_ac.html

In any case, don't reinvent the wheel. Just because bozos implement user auth in a MySQL table doesn't mean solutions don't exist. It just means that they are bozos. It's one of the reasons I disapprove use of SaaS apps that don't support federated identity at work.
Better not tell my 8" disks.
SSL MiTM attack in AFNetworking 2.5.1 – Do Not use it in production
Does anyone have any references on how you could write a distributed database that met all ACID properties? Surely there's an academic paper that says that if you do A then B then C, you are guaranteed a certain level of consistency.

We've developed a type of distributed database at my company, and I think it's pretty solid, but I need a broader familiarity with the available theory.
It baffles me that the country famous for high speed trains never bothered to build one between the city where 1/4 of its people live and the airport that handles most of its international flights (and used to handle all of them). Skyliner is pretty fast but it's not a Shinkansen, and Narita Express is basically just an ordinary train.

Of course, it's also baffling that they built the airport so far away in the first place, but that's another story.
> This document extends the Web platform with the ability to direct audio output to non-default devices, when authorization is given. Authorization is necessary because playing audio out of a non-default device may be unexpected behavior to the user, and may cause a nuisance. For example, suppose a user is in a library or other quiet public place where she is using a laptop with system audio directed to a USB headset. Her expectation is that the laptop’s audio is private and she will not disturb others. If any Web application can direct audio output through arbitrary output devices, a mischievous website may play loud audio out of the laptop’s external speakers without the user’s consent.

> To prevent these kinds of nuisance scenarios, the user agent must acquire the user’s consent to access non-default audio output devices. This would prevent the library example outlined earlier, because the application would not be authorized to play out audio from the system speakers.

> The default audio output device is always authorized.

:-(

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/audio-output/#privacy-consent (section 5.1)
OP called for "a specialized database". I was talking about using the same kind of database.
New Material Can Change Its Color and Texture Like a Cuttlefish
What image? The arrow and psi are characters.
Also see Sweden [1], previous discussion on HN [2]

[1] http://alicebobandmallory.com/articles/2010/09/23/did-little...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1721494
Justine Musk's answer to How can I be as great as Elon Musk?
Google is making a giant change this week
It was the original launch, and I used it for testing.

I was too lazy to change it.
I doubt pumping up children's self-esteem without developing their self-worth is going to work either.
Consensus and atomic broadcast. Paxos, raft, zab. Formal methods.
Need to find an archived version but it caused a lot of arguments in 2009/2010: e.g. http://rethinkdb.com/blog/the-benchmark-youre-reading-is-pro... references similar benchmarks

Can also link simply to the HN discussion from back then too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1496035

> Full disclosure: I work for 10gen.

> We did this to make MongoDB look good in stupid benchmarks.
Sigh, I'm all for calling people "she" if they desire, but this feels like a pointless comment. Do you know that the person being referred to (user "jordigh") would prefer to be called something other than "he"? Do you know whether or not the person you're replying to has done the research on which word to use?

If you don't know, you're wasting our time with snarky but baseless "PC" attitude. At least put in a few more keystrokes to actually tell us what you'd like to happen here; if other people agree, maybe it will happen. If you do know something, then tell us what it is, don't expect mind-reading.

Apologies if I've misread your meaning. I expect one-word posts are especially susceptible to that...
The first Artificial Intelligence powered mobile application for swimming
Work with Presentation, MS Project and Email Documents Using Cloud Ruby SDK
Calm down, dear: the dark side of ‘emotional intelligence’
Early Japanese Animations: The Origins of Anime (1917-1931)
I don't think "Keywhiz should be considered alpha at this point" really screams production ready, either. For me, the Sneaker README's detailed enumeration of which threat models had been thought over really helped inspire confidence, as did the acknowledgement that no professional cryptographers had evaluated its soundness (most people just ignore this idea and rampage onwards unencumbered by reality). I believe that both are probably better than storing plaintext keys and passwords at rest in Git or on developer machines.
Probably not... knowing how that code gets written, the correct table was probably called "tbl_cmmts"
Does OpenLDAP meet the stated need for a minimal solution that does nothing else apart from the small set of required functions?

I get the impression that OpenLDAP is a big beast that does much, much more.

I'm wanting a fast motorbike and you're pointing at a 16 wheel heavy hauler saying "see, same thing, the hauler has at least two wheels and an engine".
It's really spread out, and broke. Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor both tried to get Fiber when they were having their contest.
I was at this presentation at FluentConf today and I found it very interesting. If you can get a hold of the video I highly recommend it.
Save compatibility in DCSS
This entry really boils down to separating user data from other data. But some of the items I don't think work in real usage (or at least I would like some clarification if possible).

> It should be accessible only via its specialised API which is designed to constrain the ways that it is accessed.

Constrained in what ways? Especially in management / support roles you may need to do bulk actions against users (full listing, bulk changes, etc) so I'm not sure what constraints would be compared to a normal database.

> Its API should have password salting and hashing built in.

I disagree; I think password hashing should happen before the data hits the database.

> Its API should throttle access with some sort of algorithm designed to prevent downloads of large quantities of user data.

Does someone have an implementation idea for this? Depending on the type of user data we're talking the data could be very small. So the throttling may have to be quite significant but even then what's to prevent the attacker from bypassing it by using multiple connections? Multiple threads that each request a subset? I don't think you can get around those and still have a performant system.

> It should encrypt data internally.

How? Does it encrypt using a passcode specified by the system administrator (which means it exists somewhere on the system or nearby system making it decrypt-able anyway)? Or does this mean encryption using the user's password thus separating the data? If so how do you handle the cases when administrators need to modify the user's information for support or other reasons?
A high-tech quest to unlock the secrets of ancient Israelite letters
I went traveling around Europe in the early 2000's for 2 months on a few thousand bucks. It did take a while to save as a student which took some lifestyle sacrifice. I managed to stay abroad so long on so little by not partying, hitch-hiking, traveling overnight on trains when possible to avoid accommodation costs (helped by occasional travelling without marking it in my euro-train ticket - sorry rail people), spent a couple weeks in friends/family accommodation, largely lived on bread rolls you often get complimentary at hostels and taking a few extra and buying some deli meat/cheese to make sandwiches for lunch/dinner.

And more locally at that age I did hitch-hiking trips when on uni holidays, sleeping rough often. It adds challenge but sometimes it leads to the best adventures and you get around. I wont deny there is some increased risk, personally having one rather scary encounter with a crazy person but that's also part of the adventure of travel anywhere you want to go off-track. And it's amazing how much help people will offer if they see a young person trying to see the world on the cheap.

I feel it's very doable if you have the right expectations. To me the biggest barriers seem to be believing its possible, sacrificing lifestyle for the saving period and then not partying your cash away on the trip.
The Log: the lifeblood of your data pipeline
Exact same story here. I wonder if it was this.
I wish it would work. I can't believe just two people are going to drop $900M on a single election through PACs.
Wikipedia has some good references, but you have to go to the pages for the specific formats to get the best diagrams.

Examples:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-precision_floating-point_...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-precision_floating-poin...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_754-1985#Representation_o...

Pages with loads of information but no bitwise diagrams:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#IEEE_754:_float...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_floating_point
I read your post as FUD regarding Postgres.

That article has various issues, for example, calling Postgres commit protocol as a special case of two phase commit is not really correct. Postgres has 2pc: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/sql-prepare-transa... but that was not tested.

The described behavior is "expected" and "understood". Saying that "you should assume worst from your database" is not something I would ever use for describing DB with ACID semantics.
From Scott Aaronson's blog post on the paper:

> Basically, they need to show that, for every k, there are problems that can be solved by small circuits with k layers of AND, OR, and NOT gates, but for which the answer can’t even be guessed, noticeably better than chance, by any small circuit with only k-1 layers of AND, OR, and NOT gates.
So then, their result isn't certainly true, only almost surely true?
stitchbites.com - Was writing knitting chart software, but ultimately decided I hated doing web dev/javascript.

freshhobby.com - A hobby picker, that would give you a list of items (and amazon referral links) that could kickstart a new hobby for <$100

athreadedmultiverse.com - A fancy view of amultiverse.com (loaded in iframe) that let you skip around storylines by tag instead of strictly chronologically. Most of the spam I receive is to the @athreadedmultiverse.com emails despite only showing it via the contact form on the Scenes From A Multiverse website :\

knitwithlogic.com - Potential company name, haven't done anything with it though.
Actually, look at some of the things that @aphyr has tweeted about FoundationDB:

https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/542792308492484608

https://twitter.com/obfuscurity/status/405016890306985984
It would be very useful if we had access to not only the papers but the actual data behind what is presented in the paper. Like have everybody store their research in the cloud and allow everyone else access to it. Right now much data sits on hard drives in labs at universities and are never seen by anyone but the researchers who write the papers. Eventually the data gets deleted and all that data is lost and all you are left with is the paper. That is a lot of money/effort/information lost. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.11.014

‘We are nonchalantly throwing all of our data into what could become an information black hole.’ -Google's Vincent Cerf
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-bos...

Open access to the data would allow others to corroborate it, determine the correctness of the analysis in the paper, perform meta analysis, aggregate it with other similar data. Though there are bound to be privacy concerns, especially with medical research.

Science itself has still not undergone the digital revolution and it desperately needs it.
Unemployment rate >0
Actually it's probably Fraa Jad or some other Millenarian signing.
The viewers are better off without watching House of Cards season 3 - the show deteriorated quite significantly by now.
Did Neanderthals Die Off Because They Couldn't Harness Fire?
"with probability 1" is a fairly standard phrasing that is equivalent to infinitesimally-small probability (e.g., a more precise statement might be: the set of oracles where the result is not true has "zero Lebesgue measure" -- I haven't checked to see exactly what formal statement they use).
Hmm, I can't think of any reason why it would make a difference in this case.
How to Produce Your Own Blu-Ray Video Disc
I had a bunch of IBM Big Blue Disks, and now I can only find a couple on shady sites. Someone must have more because all of the Alfredo animation demos are on YouTube. Perhaps I should send them a message. I got ahold of the current owners of Softdisk but they didn't have an archive. Oh well... Perhaps some things are just meant to be lost. Maybe any IBM people can nose around corporate archives?
Former BBS sysop here. No idea where any of my old backups are. It has been almost 20 years.

When BBS's died it was both quick and quiet. It is hard to describe. It wasnt like a retirement party where we all sat around toasting the years of door games and shareware. Then hit the power button while saying tearful goodbyes. No. It was more like you left for lunch one day and never returned. Not only you, but so did everyone else too. At the time we thought we would come back but we just didn't. No one even knew who was the last person.
But if you're truly a talented artist or musician, you can always make a living. It doesn't need to be easy and it doesn't need to be possible for everyone to "create content."
oooh, that is scary.
He has said [1] that each test takes literally months to do. I am not surprised that he picks the most popular databases, given the amount of work.

[1] https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/1493#issuecomm...
Welcome to the world of IAM (identity and access management). There are many solutions to the above stated problem. If you don't absolutely need to store it don't. That includes passwords, ssn, dob, or anything of the sort.

There are a ton of services you can federate with, it's easier for the user less passwords to remember.

If you really want users to authenticate natively. Take a look at one of the new-er players out there Storm Path. It's basically your IAM backend to-go. Don't write your own security if you don't have to :)
Detroit fascinates me for some reason. That a major city could disintegrate so thoroughly is sobering. But we should not lose sight of the fact that this nacent, yet-to-be-proven-viable recovery is only happening because $18 billion of incompetence, negligence, misdeeds and corruption by at least five decades of municipal governance is just being wiped out. And if they continue to run the city the way they have, it will happen again.
Google could launch its wireless service tomorrow
Note I didn't endorse OpenLDAP at all. Not sure if that's the best solution -- I'd probably steer towards 389 server or something similar with Netscape heritage.

You also said:

"Another problem is that developers roll their own user and password management systems and get things like salting and hashing wrong, making the data vulnerable."

You're asking for a distributed, secure system for processing user data and credentials. The most common systems in production globally for doing this (Microsoft Active Directory) are based on technologies developed in the 80's and only being supplanted in recent years. There's a reason for that, and if it were a trivial problem, we wouldn't have pervasive solutions using 1980s RPC in 2015 still running most businesses!
There is sometimes a reason for a piece of software being large. Security is one of those reasons.

If you want a secure system you shouldn't be prioritising a "minimal solution". As the previous poster said, don't reinvent the wheel.
Indeed. We're evaluating Riak CS and Swift. In a vacuum, I'd choose Riak CS any day. Knowing all of the drama at Basho, we're in a holding pattern at best and leaning (reluctantly) towards Swift.

Basho needs to sell damn fast or just call it a day and open source the enterprise version.
That's from my command prompt that I wrote -- the arrows are just Unicode characters. You can see it here if you like:

https://github.com/fj/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.config/shel...

Edit: On further reading, I think you seem to be thinking that the paste of my console is an image. It is just text. To make fixed-width text on HN, indent each line by four spaces, like this:

This text has four spaces at the beginning of its line.
They're not the only ones:

https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/issues/2488#issueco...
I don't think the article is suggesting NIHing the stack all the way down. As I read the article I was imagining a layer on top of SQLite that exposes a very restricted API.
What the founding teams of billion dollar startups look like
You aren't going to make the CIA better unless you are willing to risk a treason charge.
Yeah. I was trying to think of anywhere in Baltimore that gave a 2-mile buffer, and Canton was the best I could come up with.
Ad Campaign Hilariously Wants to 'Save the Bros' from the Junk in Protein Shakes
Did you read the article? It's not about PostgreSQL in a distributed setup:

> Even though the Postgres server is always consistent, the distributed system composed of the server and client together may not be consistent. It’s possible for the client and server to disagree about whether or not a transaction took place.
I should do that, but I got rid of my American bank account when I left the country 9 years ago. I also need to do a bunch of paper work to convert the money since we are limited to $50k a year (not a big problem, since I think this is cumulative). So, ya, I'm thinking about it and taking a hit on forex.
Thanks for providing the voice of reason in this conversation.
Some frameworks which I never know performed very well. But looks like they are not mature. Which framework do you recommend? I used Node.js/Express, Rails and Sinatra but am not satisfied with them. I am learning Go.
Chimp, not person. Young people, not a full person. Corporations? Obviously a person.

Apologies for the snark.