skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
PPK's original post was in poor taste and willfully ignored the significant benefits of native apps, but I don't feel like this article is any better.

Yes, the web is trendy, and as such it is full of arrogant wannabe-developer hangers-on making all kinds of ridiculous claims and prognostications. I suppose they deserve to be called out just for being insufferable douchebags, but there is one very important issue being ignored:

The web is a true open standard in a time when computerized technology is crossing the chasm and increasingly the powers that be will seek to control everything in order to squeeze whatever profit they can out of it at the expense of all future progress. I don't really believe companies like Apple are the real problem, but over time, proprietary platforms will provide opportunities for mega-corporations to lock in consumers. Up until 20 years ago or so it was very hard to get any kind of lock-in because it was still mostly early adopters and hackers who owned computers. However once the majority of the world is online, software matures and hardware becomes more complex to manufacture, the inertia of existing technologies will make it harder and harder for disruptive technology to get a foothold.

That is why even though the web is inferior to native APIs by numerous qualitative measures, we need to support the web and really push for more "native" APIs to be build on top of standard tech like javascript (where feasible), and also continue pushing standards to improve.
Congrats on finding a hair-on-fire problem, and totally rooting for you guys. Just 2 weeks back I ordered an aXbo (http://www.axbo.com/axbo/CMS/CMS.aspx?Language=E) for the same purpose, but this is a much more convenient implementation.
The author missed two key selling points of web apps. Firstly, users don't need to install to use web apps. They just need to open whatever browser and go to whatever url and the app is already there. Imagine if users have to install 100 desktop apps to have the same set of features which 100 websites offer. It's normal before the web era but ridiculous now. Secondly, web apps enable extremely fast iterating development and release. You can ship new versions as quick as you want, no delay, no real downloads, absolutely transparent to users. Essentially web apps and desktop apps are the same in the sense that they both depend on APIs. Web apps depend on remote APIs and desktop apps depend on local/native APIs. The more local dependency you can remove, the more powerful the apps can be. Therefore, web apps are much more powerful than desktop apps and desktop apps making uses of public APIs such as Twitter APIs, Facebook APIs are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.
If Ralsky is the "godfather of spam" would that make Sanford Wallace his 3rd cousin, twice removed?
"The device has modes for both ‘power naps’ (which last around 30 minutes)"

I'm guessing polyphasic sleepers can use this, but no idea if they provide support specifically for polyphasic sleepers. Just curious, are you a polyphasic sleeper?

"WakeMate is launching with support for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and a standard Java app for non-smart phones"
One of the first pages I navigate to when evaluating a product is the About Us page. If I didn't know that Wakemate was a YC funded company I would not take the product very seriously. Luckily the 'How it works' page (http://www.wakemate.com/about/), and the references cited there make up for the absence of an About Us page (that would hint at your credibility - at least say you are YC funded!). I think it's worth a try! Pre-ordered one
Implementing Regular Expressions and the ability to exclude based on search terms would make a world of difference in usability for a craigslist competitor.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm really completely floored by taking this from the general idea of a resource monitoring attack to actually figuring out how to retrieve the contents of the cache and working out which bits map on to which bits in the key.

Did you ever get it to a practical level where you were able to retrieve a complete key on a live system in a substantially reduced time ?

How much knowledge would you have to have about the process being monitored (in most cases I assume you would not have the luxury of knowing in advance that someone was going to run a key generator, so I assume that you'd have to be monitoring all the time, but then you have to pick the cryptographic activity out of the background of all activity by all processes) ?

(what I got from the article is that you basically stopped at the point where you retrieved a significant number of bits, but that leaves as guess as to how long it would take to recover the remainder, through brute force or otherwise, obviously every retrieved bit weakens the number of bit substantially, in other words, how practical is this attack ?).

Has intel done something againt this kind of attack on the i7, from the references I take it that you did this work before the i7 was released ?

Have you heard of this attack being used in the wild ?

edit: re-reading the paper, more questions :)

Do the people that write cryptography code spend time making sure that the code will generate as little opportunity to do this by ensuring that the length of the codepaths and the memory footprints of '1' bit operations in keys is the same as it is during the processing of '0' bits in keys ?
With regard to UX, web development is a pain in the ass. It's 1000x easier to create a smooth and well developed UX on the desktop than it is on the web.

I believe the web will eventually replace the desktop all together but that's not until it has better access to hardware, especially the GPU.

The frustrating bit is how slowly progress in this arena has developed. 10 years later we're still having the rich vs reach argument.. Why can't we have both already?
There is no polyphasic sleep feature, but you could definitely use it track your sleep cycles and optimize your polyphasic sleep. Yes there is an android version.
Damn those post dates are barely noticeable sometimes.
http://www.keynote.com/products/web_performance/index.html is the big name in performance evaluation; has anyone tried them? I get the impression it's expensive.
Can you give us some more details about your experience with the device?
I found http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/five-whys.html to be a better explanation of this phenomena.
We have an app just like this, but haven't released it because a lot of people expressed concerns about not being able to charge their phone at night as well as breaking their phone. The WakeMate is a much better user experience in terms of comfort and convenience.
To help this along, I'm pretty sure that SoftLayer is peering with Amazon at SIX in Seattle.
It appears MS thought this through. The contrived example is but ONE way a mediocre programmer could really munge this stuff up if the language is not specific about protecting exit points from a finall{} block.
Inefficiency + Quality = Desireability
Bouncing Back: Dealing with Post-Startup Depression
How does the data collected compare to sleeptracker?
More like "A Web Developer's Guide to DNS". An engineer could just read about how DNS actually works. Further failure for using Javascript.
I pre-ordered, but there was absolutely no info about whether or not it ships internationally (even after paying). Hopefully they'll be shipping outside the US!
Gomez might also be interesting to talk to. They have hundreds of browsers with their performance plugin that does remote end-user equivalent testing .. Of course having used Gomez's monitoring services, I'm unimpressed with their understanding of "Software As A Service" and their aggressive sales representatives.
Summary: the jouney of a thousand miles starts with a single step!
A couple things can happen I guess, it depends on the interpreting language.
Docs: http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/chrom...

"The Chromium OS-based device login mechanism will provide a single sign on (SSO) capability that users can use to streamline access to cloud-based services."

Presumably regular Chrome will get the same feature.
The axbo uses similar technology and works well, but it is much more expensive, more difficult to use and less comfortable. Also they do not do any of the sleep analysis and personalized recommendations on how to improve the quality of your sleep.
So myself integrating the alarm clock beeping into my dreams is just a built-in way to delay the wake-up point until it hits one of the light-sleep windows?

In any case, cool gadget.
I've tried polyphasic sleep a few times over the past 15 years, and always went back to normal. But I'm about to give it another try, and all of the circumstances that made it difficult in the past (live-in girlfriend, office to go to and an expectation of availability throughout normal office hours, or school+work, etc.) are no longer a factor, so I think it will go better this time. I'm also about to shake up a bunch of other aspects of my life, so going polyphasic will fit right in.
In the homework we do for engineering classes, we would be able to make simplifications without fundamentally altering the problem. For example a continuous load on a structure could be modeled as a single force vector because G, the gravitational force always acts downwards. You can't do that in software with loosely-coupled, autonomous modules. These modules do not obey anything. Just an implicit contract that can be broken easily. Unit tests only help to clarify the contract for a module or between modules. In structural engineering, there are a lot of unknowns but they can be modeled across the entire range because there are many known constants. The load-bearing capacity of the beam, the moment (the twisting force acting on the beam). Virtual abstractions like software do not obey physical rules. Because they are virtual. You can create a Castle in the Air in your program world, if you like. Hard physical reality has real constraints. Virtual reality has flexible constraints. Physical reality is one of the reasons building construction is a solved problem. The irony is with sophisticated software, architects like S. Calatrava and F. Gehry can begin to create almost Castles in the Air.
Based on my observations, experience, and intuition, I've found that a fundamental clarity of mind is extremely useful in trying to do good research and is the basic skill you need to be a good teacher. It follows that, statistically, most top researchers have at least the ability to be good teachers, if not the desire.

Now, being a top researcher takes more than just clarity of mind, so many people with enormous teaching abilities don't have the skill set to be an MIT professor, but I do think that MIT indirectly selects for good teaching.
My understanding is that if we show up as working holiday participants, we can work wherever, but afterwards you can apply for a skilled migrant visa which is different.
You can not escape the speculation, though. Either you speculate on money losing value, or on gaining value (or staying the same in value). In your example, if you sell the chicken for 5$ and through outside forces haircuts become so cheap that they only cost 1$, using money is better for you.

Also, the equivalent to outside forces devaluating the money would simply be the hairdresser dieing or moving away - then he got your chicken for free, because you can not call in your future haircut anymore. At least with money, you can still go to another hairdresser.
.nodeName Case Sensitivity
Huh?! I used to pay Yahoo Mail ~$20/year just so that I dint have to see banner ads on the right hand side (This was before GMail became my primary email).

For the value that Twitter Business Accounts will provide to businesses, a basic fee of hundred of dollars per month sounds reasonable, and then added features could cost extra. I know I would pay if I were a Dell or a JetBlue.
as a guy with a startup focused on this area for 12 months, i am curious to know what the group thinks about having some form of identity be stored in the cloud by a single company (e.g. google) or managed locally at your PC/phone (stored by NO company) and synched across devices?
So does it ship internationally or should we just assume this is US only right now? Clearly interested in this product but I'm from Scandinavia.
What about Africa?
The way I see it is there are definitely still markets - it's just that each relationship between person A and person B is a unique market with unique market values for goods and services. "MarketSpace" A->B would actually be different than B->A - so a theoretic ideal situation would be where "arbitrage" ends up benefiting both parties because of their relative markets.

Example:
I can re-build volkswagen/porsche engines. While the market value for this is roughly 1.5k usd in labor I would gladly do it in exchange for you staining my arcade cabinet - a service with a roughly 300-500 usd value.. I would feel like I was getting a killer deal and so would you.

Is that "degenerate" because it is not optimizing exploitation or do you mean that in another sense of the word?
His redefinition of passion is:

Passion: The feeling that arises from having mastered a skill that earns you recognition and rewards.

He did not toss out the "like" or even the "love" from the idea. The feeling is the exact same. What he changed is how that feeling comes about.

If you have an interest in something, that means you like it at least enough to explore it further. What he is saying is that if you like something, you can work at it and get to the point where you've turned a simple "like" into a "passion".
Nobody is twisting your arm....
Weird. I am actually tempted to buy one.
On my window this wrapped so the first line read

I was fortunate enough to know these guys while they were building the wakemate prototypes, and even luckier to have had the opportunity to sleep with one

Joking aside, if this actually works and you value your time it should pay for itself more or less straight away. I'll be watching closely.

edit on re-reading it looks like the parent noticed that too...oh well.
I know you're being facetious, but I'd argue that's exactly the type of problem that we should look at solving. And admittedly there was a ton of hand waving around my potential solution, but ultrasonic cleaning techniques have been around for years, it's not impossible to think that the techniques could be applied to clothing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_cleaner).

Maybe the nanobots were a bit out there, though. :)
Good questions. I tried to answer your question by replying to your other comment a few minutes ago.

The answer to your question lies in the idea that the more software can adhere to rules (assertions, aspects, closures) the more rule-driven the virtual model+behavior the software will have. Rules are good. It's good that we always fall towards the ground. It's bad a buffer overflow or exception will gum up a running software process.
Major potential flaw.

If I am looking for a new job I'm generally not going to put that information anywhere my employer might find it because then I'd be concerned that the urgency of my job search might suddenly increase substantially. Therefore I don't want to put my information anywhere where employers might search and find me.

Yes, they can put something on it to say, "Employer can't find their own employees." But that is too easy to circumvent either on purpose or accidentally through a clueless recruiter.

I'd want to see the design of phase 2 before deciding whether I'd dare participate in phase 1.
I didn't click on your link, but that looks like a good alternative to using a standard washing machine.
My response to your response: "no, it doesn't."

You have to progress beyond the initial period of total incompetence, where nothing is fun. Your guitar strings buzz mutely, you keep dropping your hand and your opponent punches you in the face, and javac keeps yelling at you about "array index out of bounds." After that, though, the increasing success in the activity becomes a positive feedback loop, increasing your desire to practice it. The end result is what any reasonable person would call passion.
Did you ever get it to a practical level where you were able to retrieve a complete key on a live system in a substantially reduced time ?

I retrieved enough key bits to make the rest easily computable, yes.

How much knowledge would you have to have about the process being monitored ?

Cryptographically speaking? None. Operationally speaking, if you don't know what program is running (or more importantly, what cryptographic library is being used) it may take you a few hours of "eyeballing" the timings before you see something which looks like a modular exponentiation -- but once you find it, you should be able to extract key bits (if the cryptographic code is vulnerable, that is).

you retrieved a significant number of bits, but that leaves as guess as to how long it would take to recover the remainder

Recovering the remaining bits is just a problem of modular algebra -- computationally speaking it's trivial.

Has intel done something againt this kind of attack on the i7

I don't know. I've asked, but they don't want to talk to me.

Have you heard of this attack being used in the wild ?

Not exactly... but I've heard reports of certain government agencies suddenly getting very interested in how to defend against this sort of attack, so I suspect that some spooks are aware of this attack being used.
Excellent service from the guys! Sent them an e-mail about shipping and got a reply in eight minutes - "we ship worldwide for free if you pre-order".
Thanks for the link on the washing machine patents, I'm going to add that to the post. And I was actually going to mention the Dyson, until I saw that they had been discontinued due to lack of profitability.

From that review:
"Unfortunately, although Dyson announced plans to bring another Dyson washing machine out, for the moment, the Dyson washing machine is no longer being made in the UK (although you will still be able to get them repaired)"
I believe he has the position that he implied. However the tone of his message invited the find-fault investigation. It was a nice scavenger hunt. You were brave to confront his seemingly many-standard-deviations-removed-from-his-NewsYC-composite-comment-profile.
As other people have pointed out, this doesn't exactly arrive at a "root" cause, just a convenient one for the asker. You can keep asking "why?" until the problem is no longer your fault.
The "Sleep Cycle" iPhone app works by placing the iPhone next to your pillow. I never got it to work reliably, even though the motion detector is sensitive enough.
Here is a simple example.

You know at an amusement park how they take your picture, print it out, then try to sell it to you at a ridiculous price? I have a friend who always says, "So what do you do if I don't buy, just throw it out?" "Yes." "I'll give you $5 for it."

He says that if he gets the owner he usually gets the photo for that. If he gets the employee he usually doesn't.
Cal Newport is Wrong About Passion
They are not a no man's land, it's that the ME is a government monopoly. I lost good money setting up a SIP termination/trunking service there, and officials from a certain government told me I was competing with the government telco; it was nice while it lasted, doing corporate VOIP, but people started printing cheap phone cards using my lines and we came to the feds attention in less than 3 months.

I still wanna go back there and setup a regional presence, perhaps leasing bandwidth and storage to CDNs.
Rejection Letter Do's and Don'ts
I learned about polyphasic sleep a couple years back, and came across stevepavlina's blog posts about his experience. I want to try it (just for the heck of it, and to see if it fits my lifestyle better) sometime in my life.
If you happen to get Wakemate, I'd be interested to know if it helps or eases the transition to polyphasic.
For Ralsky unfortunately there are about a hundred thousand that took his place and spam continues unabated.

It's good to see this guy taken down though, but considering the fact that he forfeits his money I think a sentence that is comparable to robbery 1st degree, with deadly weapon (min. 5 years) or manslaughter 1st degree with a firearm (min 5 years) is a little on the stiff side.

Pump & dump thrives by the greed of others and in that sense I think those that lost money after following this stupid spam got for the most part what they deserve.

Anybody that takes their investment advice from spam shouldn't complain when they lose some money. I'd say it is an educational service.

And plenty of people 'riding along' on this probably made money and got off scott-free.
For Dell with $60B in revenue, $50/year would be 0.000000083 % of annual revenue. You cannot call it a "rounding error". You need to invent a new term to describe the negligibility of that fraction.
Do you plan on verifying if this vulnerability is still present in nehalem/i7 ?

What about multi-core and level 2 cache monitoring, is that also feasible or do you get too much noise ?
Awesome. thanks!
Yeah, no problem.

I didn't get to use one of the new, super sleek, production quality ones. I used an early prototype that slipped inside a wrist band (like tennis players wear). It was actually still pretty comfortable to sleep with - I didnt even feel it after the first night.

It definitely woke me up at the optimal time in my sleep cycle. The alarm app was a really simple web app, and the bluetooth was simple. It was cool to see my sleep analyzed with all our different metrics and quality rated. The sleep analytics software was pretty simple, but definitely did the trick.
You mean after 2.5 right?

try:
return True
finally:
return False

-- There's an error in your program:
* 'return' outside function ...

Just sayin'
In CouchDB, Map/Reduce is the primary way that you access the database. The first time you access a "view", it will do a Map/Reduce on the entire database. On subsequent access, it will redo the Map on new records. To make this work, the action of the Map function needs to be immutable with respect to the record; this is intellectually pleasing but incredibly annoying in practice.

I haven't really used the Map/Reduce functionality of Mongo yet, but I have poked at it a little. Basically, with MongoDB, you do a one-time transform from one "collection" of records to another. It doesn't automatically update the way CouchDB does, but I can do things like joins that I couldn't do with CouchDB.

Once again, Mongo's practicality makes me happy, while Couch gives me reason to admire but avoid.
One of the few startups where my first question when I met them was "when can I buy it"? I hope it's effective as I've heard. Pre-ordered.
Funny all this distrust.

If someone says something to me, online or irl I tend to believe what it is that they say.

Maybe I should be more suspicious but I think that if you think it is 'brave' to start throwing suspicion in public as an anonymous newly signed up user to a forum that we probably have a different definition of 'brave'.
I just pre-ordered, too. This is just the right price point for me; enough to signify it's a serious product but low enough to make it an easy sell.

Now I just can't wait to get it!
Evidence that programmers need to exercise more
I can't immediately find any context for this, did he drop the name twitter unprompted, was it part of a broader discussion or was it a direct question?
'Rationalizer' bracelet tells traders when they're stressed
I'm going to steal this for the ethics class I teach. Heh heh heh.

Of course, I'm still trying to develop a grading curve based on game theory and economics. Given there are only enough points available for 10% of you to get A's, most of you will get B's, and some of you will get C's. OR all of you can work together to get B+'s.

This probably wouldn't work. BUT I think it has possibilities ... Any ideas?