victork2

Hey, thanks for putting that together, it's a very insightful read. One thing I would mention in the section "Encrypting Data":

KMS is great and very useful but there are limitations, for example the 4kb payload max. Another one is latency (back and forth is OK for a single decryption step, for 10.000 it might become problematic)

In case you have to go around these limitations they recommend a data key that you use to encrypt the data, encrypt the data key, store both encrypted blobs in your DB and throw away away the data key from the memory as quickly as possible.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/progra...

Thoughts?

Hi there,

you seem to know a lot, any chance we could talk about this topic, would love to hear more of your thoughts on the topic? I don't see an address to contact you.

Thanks!

Interesting, this is a topic that very rarely get discussed on this website, but which is probably top of mind for many here.

I am an immigrant myself, I don't think I have anything to complain about, but it is definitively harder to find a date when you're a guy on the West Coast (especially Silicon Valley) than on the east coast or anywhere else... If you are in a place like the Bay Area two things play against you:

* First the gender balance is not in your favor (Not sure how accurate it is, but check that out: http://visualizing.nyc/bay-area-zip-codes-singles-map/ ) no matter what, you will have a limited dating pool.

* Second, Silicon Valley tends to be pretty normative and it sometimes can feel like every male in tech fits a defined stereotype, which is not attractive. It's a cliche but it's one that people believe in.

In terms of solutions, I have two beyond maintaining a good physical appearance. The first one is to cultivate a real and genuine personality and find a way to let it shine by not being shy and unafraid to show who you are (haters be damned). The second one is to truly work on being OK being alone and single!

Ah... trying to apply entrepreneur spirit everywhere, how could it go wrong?

Okay so let's recap, we are shown a table showing the PISA score of a lot of countries and we see the US in a very bad position. Great. Now let's look at the countries which are at the top, and weirdly these countries apply principles that are totally the opposite to what the author is trying to propose. China, France ( where I come from), Korea, Taiwan propose heavily standardized education. Specialization and choice comes very very late in education in the countries at the top. The best results on these tests should not be the ultimate goal of education in a country but they are an indicator of deep issues in the system.

I think one the problem in the US is the perception of education and the bad reputation is gaining over the years is not helping it: paradoxically by pointing out the real of imagined flaws of the system, you discredit it and lower the test scores because parents are blaming the system rather than the kids. HN is a great example with every week yet another "I was too smart for school, so they crushed me".

Please stop trying to fix it with entrepreneurial methods, it's an over simplified solution to a huge problem with many factors: financial, sociological, historical.

Oh and if we want to emulate the spirit in the silicon valley we have to remember that the vast, vast majority of projects FAIL. So maybe it's not so ideal.

Thanks, I really want to get serious with that language seeing all the praise from people around. I have began to do some small things with it and it feels like a great language ( I love the no makefile idea !)

My only regret is that this format makes it really hard to print in one motion. Could you provide a link for a PDF version?

The animal on the cover looks really hilarious too!

Hi Steve,

I don't know if you are going to read this, but I'm going to write it for the rest of the audience too.

I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of "sour grapes" or "haters" very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to give their opinion, weight the different possibilities etc... It's brutal, it's direct. If you have run a service online you certainly know that you receive very angry/ threatening emails from people that use your services and are displeased. If it disturbs you it means that you are not ready for having a personal project on display, it's as simple as that. People in life and particularly on the internet are very angry and you have disturbed individuals. Opening a service with your name and your address is becoming some kind of "celebrity", people will HATE you for no good reason.

To come back to what I think is bad/annoying on Hacker News is of a different nature and I'll list a few:

* Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored )

* Stardom: No matter what they post some ""famous"" people around here get their post on the front page. By courtesy I won't list who they are but everybody can spot it pretty easily. I'm very disappointed by this attitude personally, and it doesn't speak highly of a place that is supposed to be almost a pure meritocracy.

* Fads/ Jealousy: A lot of people here want to be rich and famous thus it creates tension. It allows me to come back to your point: these people are likely going to dismiss your ideas based on jealousy.

* Over-repetition of some stories ad nauseum: dumb benchmarks to see the number of req/s, analysis App.net, Education sucks...

All that being said it remains an interesting community but with some drawbacks. I guess nothing can have it all.

Not entirely true, see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29#Wea...

"security consultant, revealed that he had intercepted usernames and passwords for a large number of email accounts by operating and monitoring Tor exit nodes.[27] As Tor does not, and by design cannot, encrypt the traffic between an exit node and the target server, any exit node is in a position to capture any traffic passing through it which does not use end-to-end encryption such as TLS."

It's strongly suspected that China used that method to arrest some opponents of the regime that were talking with TOR. I don't know if Australia has the same level of organization and can drop into communications like that though.

For this story, it really looks that they just used other factors than TOR to find out this guy.

edit: apparently Silk Road is 100% TOR, so it does not work in that case! Mea culpa

I have read Steve Jobs biography and this is definitively a cautionary tale and a great warning for anybody, but for other reasons that stated in this article.

I am no Apple fan, as a matter of fact I don't like the look and feel of their product but I gained a great admiration for Steve Jobs because he seemed like a man in immense suffering. I'm not talking about the obvious physical pain of cancer and all his crazy diets ( we share something in common ) but mentally he seemed like a sad sad person. I don't want to do bar stool psychology but it seemed pretty obvious that he was missing something in his life and he probably never found it.

But he's the paragon of the self made man, in the Ayn Rand sense and people ( especially here, where there's something approaching a cult ) look up to that and as soon as they encounter problems they imagine themselves in the shoes of this man and try to act tough... or act Steve Jobs.

If there's one paradoxical lesson that should be taken from his biography it is that you should never to listen to anybody that tells you how to act, don't try to fit in a mold, even in the mold of a great man, because you fundamentally don't have the same substance and thus you won't come out the same way: ie successful nor happy. Be your own man, forge your own mold and challenge the statu quo.

Well it embodies the best and the worst of internet movements.

While the foundations are good: protecting the web from bad laws, restrictions etc... the execution is really ridiculous. Imagine you're an old style Senator or representative and you see that website with a weird ass looking cat... Do you really think it's going to make them think you're anything but a joke?

I find that the words used are equally ridiculous: "League", "XXX signal".

It really feels like a little club of geeks trying to have an impact in the world and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It could have been a great idea, it's ruined by a poor execution.

edit: I have seen a lot of negative reactions and I appreciate people taking the time to answer to me. I won't edit my previous comment but let me add some things:

I didn't mean to be insulting but if you want it to be a democratic movement you have to avoid inside jokes at all cost. It's literally filled with Reddit/ geek pop culture references and it won't take off in the general public because a very large portion of the population do not understand or don't like it. It's like saying a meme out loud: you feel ridiculous.

For old style senators I am talking about basically any person over 35 that has no idea what reddit/ twitter/ cat facts are and who will find that ridiculous. Yes Senators and representatives are supposed to work for you, but it's like for everything they have to take you seriously. We belong to the Z generation but in order to talk to other generations we have to use common references and avoid cats or internet memes or super hero folklore for what it matters. Serious business in two words.

Hey another one of the "I was too different/intelligent for normal school", backed up by a TED Talk.

Here on HN we have one of these articles every week. I think that all of the "misfits" should acknowledge one thing: school is not for YOU it's for everybody to have "similar" chances in life.

Yes, yes you're all beautiful trouble makers with a mission to change the world. Now do things please.

Gosh I feel snarky today :)!

I don't want to be mean or anything ( and probably it will go against the HN crowd) but you're part of the problem. Basically it's the reliance on computerized system to assess somebody's skills that is at the root of the problem.

I know it seems horrendous to a lot of people that thinks that computers are the solution to every problem but as of the current state of technology, it just does not work. I have been in the position of an applicant recently and the tests are just plain ridiculous. From the "IQ-Test" at Bloomberg for engineers to the automated "solve our problem and get hired" websites the system is just bloated with these cheap ( and shi* ) solutions.

It's time for companies to put some money on the table to hire real people doing real interviews to candidates. Any company that don't involve somebody at step 1 of the recruitment process to assist you and that claims that "Employees are first!", I say: bullshit!

I like how I got downvoted. Please read everything that is on the website:

The BBC say it's an estimate, with a link on estimate leading to its definition and a disclaimer about BMI.

They never say that you are fatter or slimmer than the rest of the population but they talk about your BMI and your BMI only, just a quote:

"You have a lower BMI than 88% of males aged 15-29 in your country"

"You have a lower BMI than 54% of males aged 15-29 in the world"

I really don't see anything about weight or any scheme to make you think you're fat if you have a high BMI from the BBC like some imply in the comments. It's very funny how hyper defensive everybody gets around the BMI thing, especially the ones who don't have the "right" BMI.

Before complaining about "wah wah that's BMI, BMI sucks" please think twice. Everybody knows it's BMI, BMI is a rough measurement of your ratio height to weight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and...

"The medical establishment has acknowledged major shortcomings of BMI.[...] found that BMI-defined obesity was present in 21% of men and 31% of women. Using body fat percentages (BF%), however, BF%-defined obesity was found in 50% of men and 62% of women."

Take it as a statistical game and stop getting self conscious about it.

Note also: If you are very muscular with a crazy BMI despite no fat it's not healthy either.

Very well put together, I just want to say I fully agree with your point. To give a face to what you describe I would say that Apple is one of the most blatant example of what you are describing.

Furthermore the same dumbing down is happening with websites: we lose control over the information or customization because we want a slick design. Just take a look at modern website with just one function that are posted almost daily on here. They just feel so empty compared to the old and clunky websites of just a few years ago.

I don't want to make it sound like a rant but I really wonder where we went wrong in society and decided, again, to take the simplest path and just ignore details and be dumb about a technology that governs us all.

What about the quality of the headphones?

For me that's the main problem of Apple headphones: they are utter crap in terms of sound quality.

Another problem I could see: you add weight to the chord which will make the headphones more likely to fall from the ear, that's a big deal if you do sports with it.

If there's one rule in gaming it is: "Do not trust Peter Molyneux".

This guy is the biggest bullshitter in the gaming industry. A guy with such claims that the book "On bullshit" perfectly applies to what he says in many cases.

Again this thing looks so pretentious that it gives me nausea just listening to his... uh project I guess. It's the same nausea I feel when I try to listen to artist justifying their performance in "modern art".

Sorry to be so harsh.

Pardon me but ... I think that there are way worse dangers than "humanoid bombs"... One of the main reason is that to achieve a nuclear explosion you need to have a critical mass and the it's hard to conceal for a lot of reasons (radiation etc...).

What's the difference with a car that could have a bomb in its trunk? Or a bag? A lot of scientists have wondered about these ethical questions but I believe that the benefits of high performance IA outweights the downsides of its research.

BUT I definitively agree with that:

"Americans should grow up and abandon their juvenile-minded treatment of weapons, high technology, and the value of “non-American human life” (which, sadly, to many of them is synonymous with “lowlife”). This is the hardest part of my proposal."

*edit: And what about an android to dismantle the atomic bomb instead of humans ? Sounds good to me!

Same. At least you have my upvote, for what it's worth!

Light table looks to me (with all the respect due to the work of the authors) like a fad where people get all hyped up about a product. I mean there's nothing revolutionary and while looking at the video I was thinking "boy this is too confusing!". I also believe that when the project is going to have 500+ lines of code per file, the way it's done now, is going to be horrible to deal with it!

There are other stuff that bug me out: when I program I don't want rounded borders and everything. I don't want 40 different colors.

But if people are going to be it, great.

Interesting point. Hard to discuss too, because as always with women-related issues the heat is pretty high.

However, let's play devil's advocate and extend it to the man's case too. If I put myself in the role of a VC I would think twice about hiring anybody who's going to have children soon. Children, from what I gathered, are emotionally and physically draining for both parents. If you add up the challenges of having a startup, which is like another child well that's a good damn reason to refuse investing.

The problem is that pregnancy and a child coming soon can be physically seen on a woman, but we can't ask a VC to be blind on that.

No we don't because regulators are always one step before the corporations on taxes.

Actions that you take legally must have consequences too, as long as these consequences are legal the thread of legality has been preserved along the way. It's not a punishment, it's a consequence. I am not born in the US, thus I don't have the right to be the US President, is it a punishment ? No it's simply a consequence.

I would love all people that say that we need to "fix" the tax system instead of making "rich go" to take a step back and get out of their simplistic views. The tax system and a state is infinitely more complex than any company you could imagine. The worst part is that a country sets its own rule and thus has way more responsibility. Moreover higher instances require a state to behave a certain way and prevent certain behaviors. Even worse, external entities such as foreign countries can interfere with internal regulation mechanism (that's what's happening in this case).

The US being a relatively free state cannot prevent any body to abandon a nationality and thus to lower their tax. For most it's an important procedure which allows you to forfeit other nationalities and take a nationality that requires you to have no other nationalities( some countries impose that). Tax evasion is a constant battle because the laws have to guarantee cases like the one I mentioned but they are also used to save money. Thus legislator are constantly fighting a war against tax evasion and this is one example.

Again, your success has a burden on the whole community and we have to pay it. I know why it's so hard to understand here, many of you who see themselves as future entrepreneurs are thinking "Oh gosh, it's going to happen to me one day, I don't like that" and want to fight against it, but really try to see vastness of the complexity of the problem. There is no simple fix.

edit: Changed the phrasing

Why not, after all actions must have consequences. If he wants to avoid taxes and it's legal by all means he should do it. But there should be consequences to his actions, this proposition seems like a possible one (quite extreme though).

I would like to remind all the wannabe rich on HN who believe that one day they will be in his shoes, nobody succeeds alone and your success has a price for the country. For example in the case of Facebook there are more infrastructure costs for the whole internet, additional regulations have to be passed, etc...

PS: Ghostery on Venturebeat: 17 spying widgets found... Not going on that website ever again.

I have to agree and even add it's more dangerous than that.

Never mind the fact that what attracted me to Google was its sober interface, its minimalist approach of results on the web (that's also why I like Hacker News). Never mind that Google tries to fit more information per inch square for no good reason and sacrifice readability of the "normal result", after all they are still a search engine.

But more worrying is that they are going to make assumptions without putting sources[1]. It's a very Orwellian approach to answers and that's something we should grow out of. There's a reason why we need sources: because what's written is just one of the way to see an event or somebody.

And Google, really your new Blogspot is awful, useless eye-candy.

[1] At least from what's shown on the blog.

Thanks for your answers.

I am genuinely interested by what words carry and in your case the kind of people they are going to attract. I actually write a bit on that. If you emphasize a lot on ninja/ elite etc... I would guess you will attract a lot of immature people who have ego probably bigger than their talent.

If you look at the phrasing of Y Combinator or even Facebook ads for developers you can see that even if they add some words to be fun they are careful about their use not to send the wrong signals.

Anyhow I wish you the best for your initiative!

Take that in your faces "Elite" startups, you wouldn't be selected, you're not even "Ultra elite"!

More seriously though, I respect the initiative, but I would love to hear why this particular vocabulary is employed (from the website and the company's website): [ "ninja", "ultra", "elite", "brotherhood", "sisterhood" ]. I don't believe you say that randomly and you want to appeal to a certain population with these words but don't you think you'll only attract bozos and pretentious people?

For your website ( given in the comments) please no violent transitions like that, it's really bad for slow computers like mine. If anything I would have think that ninjas love discretion...

I might have a bleak vision of this place but unfortunately I think this article is not going to ring a bell in here. Well it might be upvoted but sparsely read.

A good portion of HN users don't care at all about privacy, or at least not when they could be the ones protecting it. I read this board every day and every time I am floored by the fascination for cloud services, the (relative) savings from it and monitoring software. As long as they are glossy and beautiful, that's it, sold.

Anyway I was shocked by the last one with Brita and that's great that EFF is publicly calling these companies and their actions.

Thanks for reminding us that we must remain vigilant.

I give it that: It's a good satire of today's buzzwords clogging HN.

I would add "Beautiful" to the bunch, since it's so overused.

Oh... your distrust uh? Do you seriously hold grudges against companies when they release a good product after some bad releases? And it's not like you need to do anything if IE 9 is not good enough, just don't be an ass and block them.

I know some think it looks "cool" to appear tough and act like an internet super hero, but really it's counterproductive and this witch hunt is getting ridiculous.

Gosh, sometimes I wish the HN and tech crowd was a little more mature technology. Grow up a little bit and stop the knee jerk reactions to everything you see.

The right title should be: The rise of the brogrammer in media.

The thing is there's a huge difference between the perception that people have of a field and what happens in the field. It reminds me of how CSI (the show) shows police work: super high tech. solving of cases. Sorry to break it, it's not the case, it's long interviews with people and little lab work with overused equipment. In the same spirit slowly since the Social Network this notion of "cool programmer" has emerged in the media. The reality is that we're still very far from it, and it's mostly guys sitting in front of desks typing on keyboards (not so sexy, uh ?).

Anyway, this article is ridiculous, but I don't trust CNN anymore to provide accurate news. Let them read tweets live, that's their line of work now.

Here is the direct link to the study:

http://sciencewithart.ijs.si/pdf/Do%20female%20and%20male%20...

I think it brings a negative perspective on the propositions of several people here that assured us that creating role models was the way to go to increase the number of women in science and programming (which would definitively be an awesome thing ).

Well most of us have been very very lucky in life, we have won the lottery, but among other things:

* Born in a 1st world country

* Born in a wealthy enough family that can afford computers and education for their children

* Born with parents that are supportive of her actions

It's a very common misconception on Hacker News that we have started from nothing and if people don't succeed it's because they don't "try enough". If you really want to see nothing go to Africa and say you haven't been lucky in life. "Trying" for these people is way harder than YOUR trying and you have to realize that.

By the way I am in no way sour, it's just important to realize what we were given in life and stop giving lessons to everybody based on our limited experience. Just a little decency.