skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To be honest, I don't believe much from that article... No, not the things that the author writes. I mean the general image of marketing. It's like I would talk about software that does everything you want and never crashes. It would be a really nice thing if it existed outside of some completely separated mini-universe.

"If people don’t like reading about unicorn tears on the sales site, there’s no way they’re going to like the book.
[...]
Only one person has ever taken advantage of the 30-day refund."

Yes - that's because people are a) lazy, b) trying to justify their choices. They did not bother to return the book; they got it as a present; they resold it on ebay; etc. etc.

Marketing in real world that we walk through every day is about selling you as many products as possible as fast as possible. That's how the performance is measured typically. That's why it doesn't matter anymore if a real person calls you. It's cheaper to do an automated call to 100 times more people, because someone will respond. That's why spam works!

"marketing is about support" may work for a 1-person shop. Sure - you will get the information you need, because that person knows his business. Then at the size of ~100 people there will be a buffer of 2 managers between him and the standard worker - each manager with their own decisions and measured by performance. They know that there's a support department and they know what it's for - answering the questions about the shit people bought. That's why you'll get a call to ask you whether you want to upgrade your service from a person who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Both marketing people and programmers have the same problem - there are loads of drones in their business. It would be foolish to judge marketing by the article's author and it would be foolish to judge programming by DJB's code. They're one in a million. And the rest will work great together - one side will create millions of lines of crappy code and the other will sell it like it was the best thing since sliced bread.

The author may be describing correctly her own environment and her workplace, but... please, stop fooling yourself about marketing ;)
This statement is true in its literal sense but very misleading. Holding currency is close to a zero sum game, holding wealth is nowhere near that.

I already understand that "value" can be generated regardless of how much currency is available. Why is everyone here on HN in a rush to ignore that currency exchange is a zero-sum game and keeps trumpting that wealth can be generated? Perhaps it is because Paul Graham wrote that article.

Wealth is a different subject from currency. You can generate all the "wealth" in the world, and if there is only $100 circulating in the world, all that "wealth" isn't magically going to expand this $100 except when you convince the government to print more money.

This has important limitations on the liquidity of your "wealth". Let's say that you've created $1 quadrillion worth of meat. You want to convert this into alternative forms of wealth such as currency and medical supplies. However, is it at all likely that you will be able to convert all this wealth before it expires? Nope. And this is one of the most important distinctions between wealth and currency.

The supply of currency is artificially limited by the government, while the supply of wealth is an arbitrary measure that people decide to assign their work and belongings.
Ebert's review of Avatar
Nike Dunk High Premium ND Cassette Playa in best discount
But the new year isn't until February 4th! That's when year R turns into year S. Currently we are in day X of month X of year R. http://alphabetclock.com/datetime.html
How many times do I have to repeat myself?

I never said "wealth" exchange was a zero-sum game. I said currency exchange is a zero-sum game.
Hm, apparantly this is not everywhere yet as I got the error saying that you have to put in a search for it to work. Sad
Well, I hope the new guy isn't "fond of sharing [his] latest poop with the whole world..." Else, you'll be taking the credit for it on your FB page!
Having just been given the third degree by both U.S. and Canadian border patrol last weekend, I can attest that it can be a really infuriating process. To be blunt, they can (and generally are) huge assholes, really getting in your face and making you feel like a criminal even when you have nothing to hide. I presume the goal of this is to psych out the people who actually are up to no good, but the end result is that you end up feeling pissed off and unwelcome.

That said, I definitely agree that there is another side to this story. For one thing, everything that happens at a border crossing is videotaped from about 14 different camera angles, so there's no way they're going charge him with assault unless he actually took a swing. The fact that the situation even got to that point--multiple guards, pepper spray, verbal commands--means he did something pretty egregious. The crossing guards are dicks but they are professional dicks, at least in my experience. Do as you're told and you'll eventually get through. Ignore repeated commands and project the same surliness back at them and you're just asking for trouble.
The storytelling here is a little confusing, but isn't he saying that in this universe, he did get back in his vehicle when told?

Not discussing whether he deserved a beating or not, just trying to get his story straight.
1727463 / (60 * 60 * 24) ~ 19 + 12 (today) = 31 = Happy New Year.
At a full 60WPM ~= 60 * 6 keystroke per second *1kb/keystroke~= 360kb / second. However, clunking at 1/20th of a second is probably fine.
Schmidt's advice is good in general. if you want to be a nice person, or rather don't want others to think you are an angry yeller, avoid saying mean things or getting upset, even when you're not in public. if you want to be nice, think nice thoughts. i know this seems like a non-sequitor. eit.
Try this: http://www.google.com/ncr
I got the opposite impression, but it was a bit hard to follow.
You have to go to google.com.
I'm an Aderal person. If I want to work at 3 AM. I take some Aderal and I will have the ability to think and not fall asleep no matter how tired I get. So it(slightly different it) definitely does not do that to everyone.

On a side note: I have ADHD (and dyslexia but not really important) and Aderal can sometimes make me more active that before-Yes it depends on how much I take at one time, but still. I wouldn't say it calms me down. Meh
Blindsight (his book) is awesome.
It was an interesting interview which could have very well be summarized in 10 min. Andrew Warner has just dragged it way too long.

Kid's spending patterns and his love intersts. Not necessary. It pretty much seemed like he ran out of questions or was it like a highschool kid in awe interviewing another highschool kid.
They aren't around the edge of the screen, or along side each pixel - they're on another plane, behind the LCD. The LCD modulates between the image being displayed and a pinhole mask.
I'd like to donate to the border guards. I figure there's a 50/50 chance there's a lot more to this story than Cory Doctorow's (his friend) has told, but nobody else will blindly take their side.
for the record, I blame 50% hosting provider, 50% myself

Is his tweet. Sounds like blaming to me. I suppose it's a matter of personal taste but if you write about how you're serving your images off S3 and how everyone should be making redundant backups and then get bitten by the fact you somehow wrote about these things but didn't actually do them, you're not looking very hard at yourself.

My simple point is - if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility.
> The "in some other universe... I didn't get back in my vehicle when I was told to" quote is telling too.

I agree. I do not know this man - but from my frequent Canada <-> USA border crossings I do know that while border guard power trips are frequent (too often so), getting beat takes effort. The story is clearly not as clear-cut as a bunch of crooked border cops deciding randomly to pepper spray and beat some guy. His friends and family are free to contribute to his legal defence, but without knowing what really happened I am unwilling to contribute.

That being said, the amount of unprofessional power tripping at American borders is ludicrous - myself and other Canadians avoid cross-border travel for this very reason, and it's costing America business. Even my American coworkers get hassled on their way home from Canada, and nearly everyone agrees that Canadian guards are on the whole a hell of a lot more professional and polite.

Nothing tops the time I was at the airport in Vancouver, pre-clearing customs. A very large border guard with a pissed off sneer on his face was hassling everyone he dealt with, and verbally berated an elderly gentleman for moving too slowly as he shuffled his way up to the booth. That sort of bullshit cannot be tolerated, and gives America a bad name for no good reason.
Maybe they've finally made javascript so fast that it distorts time itself.
On the other side of the globe, car searches by customs without a warrant or a probable cause were a standard thing up until ~2000. Now not only don't you see any border control when travelling in Europe, you're not bothered at all by the authorities at the airports (unless you're from outside EU). It seems ironic, when you think about people running away from here, over the ocean, to get to freedom just a couple of decades before...
All that genius and no chance to execute
Tried Doug Crockford's little Javascripter:
(define loop (lambda (x) (loop x)))
(loop 1)

Result in Firefox: "Too much recursion"

I'm still surprised I didn't flunk B521 when Dan Friedman put something like this in my Java implementation of a Scheme interpreter and it blew up after some finite number of iterations.

It might have worked if method calls were properly tail-recursive!
Is Sony's PS3 Ad Campaign Failing?
Slashdot Hardware Story | $860 Million In Fines Handed Out For LCD Price-Fixing
What a neat blog post. Some comments:

1. I think that the upper left hand corner is where the eye usually goes first (because we read from left to right in English). In this case, the picture draws the eye to the upper right corner first.

2-4. Classic sales ploy.

5. Spot on. I scan the prices when they are in a column. :)

6. I didn't realize that box was part of the menu. My eyes skipped over it, kind of like ad-blindness.

7-8. Nice points.
That worked, interesting. Especially since I was hitting .com (I'm in the USA).
I predict that almost all of the reaction will be "oh, that's interesting, but I'd never use it." I also predict that CNN will at some point in the next week have this in their rotation of stories.
Yet, it is a pandemic. That fact does change the calculus of whether to recommend treatment. Do you say, "I don't have enough evidence yet to recommend it?" Or do you say, "Based on the evidence we have, it is a good idea?" There is no right answer until post-pandemic studies.
We're all on a site centered around the idea that we want to be them, but that's simply not the case everywhere. Sure, you may own stock in your company and be great pals with 'em, but what about normal people who work for large organizations that pay them by the hour and screw them over?
Haven't had to cross the border much, aye?
You already do donate to the border guard; it's your tax money paying his/her salary.

More importantly, I don't think blindly taking the government's side on any issue is a good thing. I'd much rather have everyone default to believing the private citizen and be wrong some of the time. Blind faith in the citizenry probably at worst has a net zero effect. Blind faith in the government is most certainly negative.

That being said, I'm completely open to the possibility that the border guards followed procedure. I definitely need more information to form an opinion.
I saw 20 minutes of Avatar back in August at Avatar Day. Its incredible, from the 3d to the storyline. I'm really excited.
>I wouldn't be surprised to find out their General Orders demand decisive force once a situation escalates

They demand compliance. If the officer does not have compliance he is legally required to gain it by escalating up the force scale.

According to the police manuals, in the event of non-violent non-compliance, non-lethal force should be used such as pepper-spray or taser until compliance is gained.

The charge of assaulting an officer probably came into effect after the writer was pepper-sprayed. The police probably tried to subdue him and he struggled - struggling often counts as assaulting an officer. And people who are getting tasered and pepper-sprayed often struggle out of instinct.
"Sounds like blaming to me."

I thought we were arguing about whether he cares about looking foolish.

Of course he's blaming them. There's reason to blame them. Regardless of what he did or didn't do, they screwed up. In fact I think he's being very restrained and humble taking 50% of the blame. I'd be fucking pissed if that happened to me. Even if I restored from backups in 30 minutes (extremely optimistic).

"if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility."

Again, the humility he was referring to was to assume first that it was your fault until you determine otherwise for sure. What's that got to do with them screwing up?

You're basically saying: if I act holier-than-thou and advocate backups, then Slicehost or Amazon can give me crappy service because I'm not allowed to 'blame' them or mention how they suck. Which is really weird.

(I feel for the guy. I'm sitting here yakking because I can't connect to my EC2 slice for the last n hours.)
You don't get harassed at borders but you have lost national sovereignty. So it's one freedom for another - and in the case of the EU many would argue that it is a net loss of freedom.
The Tao of Linux
This page tenses the link between the Holy Bible and Linux. You will be astonished how many connections there are!

vivaldi@tux.us.to
I've had really bad experiences crossing back in via car too. Really intrusive personal searches, and a horrible attitude. They really deserve the reputation they have. But, that said: they have that reputation, and so I think you'd have to be kind of crazy to give them any shit.

On the other hand, coming back to the States from Europe has always been a pleasant experience for me.
This is a dupe but it seems like a rather big deal and the previous story went no where.

Here's the theory paper for the algorithm: http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0779

Can anyone find more details about the hardware?
I wonder how it compares to vim-addon-manager, which I've been meaning to try out.
I had my bags searched on a train Europe, in the middle of the ride, not at a crossing. Just taken out and rifled through. Say what you will about the States, but that's unconstitutional here --- except at the border.
According to a ex-cop relative of mine, when police assault people they fairly routinely charge those they've assaulted because it covers their asses if the person files a complaint or wants to sue. If it goes to court the word of the police generally has more weight than a the average person's.
Emerging dimensional portals in LHC
Authorities have reported that there might be the risk of emerging dimensional portals while the LHC is operating.

vivaldi@tux.us.to
It doesn't really feel like it. For typical people nothing changed. The laws were changed a bit so that they're more unified and the market forces work a bit differently. But sovereignty itself? No. Every country still has authority over its own territory. It's not independent authority, but was it ever? (in practice, that is) The countries are still divided much more clearly than the states - in every way I can think of.
The plot seems so. damn. bland.

Humans take natural resources! Evilly!

How about throwing some depth on there, eh? Make it so that the humans will literally be wiped out if they don't get the go juice or whatever. Put the blue guys in the same position.

I hope I am proven wrong.
I suspect this has to do with the fact that you are Canadian. I am American, I have always found crossing back into America to be much less of a hassle. The Canadians have been stone-cold S.O.B's whereas the Americans are just rude.
I'd rather people defaulted to not "believing" anything or anyone without specific reasons to, myself, but then I'm weird that way.
3D editing with a 2D input device is clunky. If you've ever used a tool like Blender and tried to position a vertex in three dimensions with your mouse, you've discovered you have to do it twice from two different angles. With a system like this combined with a stereo display, you could simply move your hand to where you want the vertex to be.

Of course there are other ways to achieve that, but there must be tons of other applications that require 3D input, that's just the first that came to my mind. Most of what we do every day in real life is manipulating objects in 3D.
Well put - to put it simply - Don't act like you have any rights whatsoever when crossing a border - the instant you think you don't have to answer every question, be prepared for an instant search, or otherwise, be completely docile - well, that's the start of a fairly ugly downhill journey, as Mr. Peter Watts has just discovered.

As a frequent border crosser though, I'll note that I have _never_ witnessed, nor been exposed, to anything other than thoroughly professional (if sometimes highly antagonistic and hostile) behavior on the part of Immigration. These guys _really_ know what they are doing - and the "psych out" is intentional - nothing personal.

Though, I'll admit, traveling back to Canada for a visit (I work in Silicon Valley) and explaining what I (a Canadian Citizen) will be doing there, and why, and where - does get a little old after 10+ years of doing so. At least I know what to expect.
What about a non-violent non-compliance where it's still too risky to attempt even non-lethal force? For example, what if a person gets out of their car holding a baby?
What I don't get is why more people haven't been using Flash's socket support (XMLSocket, and the more general-purpose flash.net.Socket in AS3) for this sort of thing. Flash is installed on practically all web browsers, and you can still write the rest of your app in JS if you want by using ExternalInterface.

For extra credit, you could probably write a WebSocket implementation IN Flash using these techniques. Anyone on it?
I'm not saying it's a bad thing - most people are happy to trade their freedom for some convenience, money, and
security.

You don't notice the difference because the freedoms you have lost were ones you rarely exercised.
I know someone who often has to get tour groups through customs. He could tell you all about what great fun it is.
At grave risk of redundancy: I have had the opposite experience. Canadian customs have always been friendly to me, and US customs at the Canadian border have always been total dicks.
It's not just Cory Doctrow vouching for him, but also Charlie Stross and Neil Gaiman. Is it possible that there is more to the story that exonerates the guards? Of course it's possible, but given the US border crossing guards, it's not bloody likely. Even if he did something tremendously ill-advised, which doesn't sound like the case here, that does not justify a brutal beating and an assault charge, nor does it justify attempting to get Watts to waive his Miranda rights. Hell, we can even take the extreme case that Watts did somehow commit a felony (no evidence of this); the guards still should have respected his rights and his human dignity.
Ironically - I have precisely the opposite experience. As a Canadian on a TN-1 Visa, approximately 85-95% of the time (more often in the last few years) - I get fingerprinted and asked a single question "What are you doing" when I answer back "Going to work in Redwood City" - the interview is terminated and I'm waved on.

Coming back INTO Canada though, and I'm subjected to the third degree - asked why I'm coming back, where I'll be going, what I'll be doing, etc...

But, after having done this six times a year for 13+ years, it's become pretty routine so at least I know what to expect.
I agree, that's been my experience as well.

The Canadian border guards are always very professional and stone cold, while the American border guards are just plain rude and unprofessional
No, we have voluntarily pooled our national sovereignty by treaty in some areas, and enjoy an increase in individual freedoms as a direct result. This is quite different from what you describe.
Tasers and pepper spray would probably not be considered non-lethal against babies. Cops would be expected to show restraint I think. But I'm speculating.
You didn't read his comment carefully. He refuted you. According to him, there's no further poking to be done. "There are no public-facing forms or inputs that take these values as inputs".

Not only that, but the title of your post was "SaaS Vendors Should Learn The Art Of Security Before They Open Shop". It's a bit late to walk the sentiment back now. Either come to the table with more information than you've shared, or take your lumps and apologize. I think you got it wrong.
Brand Spanking New: Tiger Parking Slam
Tiger Woods has been dealing with quite the mess as of late and we only felt it was fair to make a hilarious game about him. So today I give to you, Tiger Parking Slam! Yesterday The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post both ran a story about the games creation and now it is finally here! In Tiger Parking Slam it’s up to you to help Tiger park his car before it crashes! Remember to be careful! He barely got the car out of the driveway before he crashed it irl!
If following procedure means beating someone senseless and trying to get them to waive their legal rights, then procedure is fucked. Yes, I am taking Watts' story at face value, and I could be wrong in that, but given my experiences, it seems much more likely that border crossing guards acted out of line than the alternative.
Heh, we are absolutely going to validate the 'comment value drops exponentially with nesting' rule.

I didn't say he deserves crappy service or that his provider didn't screw up by firing his VM into Neptune. What I'm saying is (in 17 different ways, at this point) - if you are a vocal advocate but don't actually practice or believe what you preach, you're not really an advocate or useful commentator but a hack. When circumstances (that incidentally and in part happen to be someone else's fault) expose you as somewhat of a hack, it's a little uncouth to be pointing fingers at others for their much more minor screw-ups. Being a hack is bigger screw-up than accidentally (or through negligence) firing someone's VM into Neptune, that's all.
i wonder why such posts kick it & attract readers. i don't see what anyone possibly could take from it except offence.

trolling 2.0?
I do infosec in the financial industry, mostly UNIX, but a little mainframe and windows stuff as well when needed. I believe you can find my email address in my profile. Feel free to contact me.
There are many, many images in the pinboard archive, a couple of hundred posts' worth. I don't know if he also has other sources from which to retrieve them, he doesn't seem to have grabbed them from pinboard yet. But a good chunk of his stuff will be recovered, images and all.