Hacker News Reader

epoxyhockeyon Advanced Off-the-Shelf Targeted Attacks Against Nation States [video]

To be honest I was a little disappointed when I saw this talk.

Agreed. The technical sophistication of the described spear-fishing attack was certainly low, using 10-year-old software and requiring the victim to enable macros, when prompted, after opening the excel spreadsheet. The only takeaway from this talk was that a dozen or so fishing emails were related together by the excel spreadsheet metadata.

Certainly not worthy material for the front page of HN, in my opinion.

epoxyhockeyon Harvard’s Asian Problem

In 1992, 19.1% of Harvard’s admissions offers went to Asian applicants, compared to 25.2% who were admitted to the California Institute of Technology, a school that doesn’t use racial preferences. In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students.

It is an interesting choice to compare Harvard's racial admissions with that of CalTech. I would think that Harvard vs. MIT or Stanford would create a more convincing argument. So, here are the numbers:

Stanford class of 2018: 22.6% Asian [1]

MIT class of 2018: 30% Asian [2]

Harvard class of 2018: 20% Asian [3]

It looks like the writer of the article chose the school with the highest percentage Asian population to make this comparison (excluding Hawaii). [4]

[1] http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile

[2] http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile

[3] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

[4] http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-hi...

epoxyhockeyon Ikea Standing Desk

Yes, that is the point of a motorized sit stand desk. You stand when you feel like it and adjust it down when you want to sit, and so on.

epoxyhockeyon How Standing Desks Can Help Students Focus in the Classroom

$500-$600 is actually cheap! I haven't been able to find a motorized sit stand desk for less than $1200.

epoxyhockeyon Stealthy startup Soft Machines launches virtual CPU cores

For those that don't get the reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta

epoxyhockeyon Tim Cook on iMessage Security: It’s Encrypted, and We Don’t Have a Key

Thanks for the insight. Rather than excitement, I am actually most disappointed in Apple caving into the PRISM scheme because I hold them to a bit higher standard than other companies when it comes to privacy.. kind of like being told that Santa doesn't exist.

epoxyhockeyon Tim Cook on iMessage Security: It’s Encrypted, and We Don’t Have a Key

Do any down-voters care to offer a comment? Is it that one contests that Apple is a PRISM participant?

epoxyhockeyon Tim Cook on iMessage Security: It’s Encrypted, and We Don’t Have a Key

Apple is a PRISM participant, as of Oct 2012 (one year after Steve Jobs died). I highly doubt any iMessage is more secure than a plain text SMS sent via any cell carrier's network. Apple probably offers a sexy interface for the Feds to read everything.

Reference: http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-sl...

epoxyhockeyon Postgres 9.5 feature highlight: Import Foreign Schema

Yell-caps in SQL are gross. I write all my sql in lowercase.

This may not be the right battle to be fighting. SQL reserved words have been written in all caps for a Very Long Time - it is a standard. From my personal experience, when I encounter legacy code where SQL keywords are lowercase I immediately think that the statements have been written by an inexperienced engineer (probably without any formal education).

The last time I encountered SQL statements with lowercase keywords, the individual included a table named user in their schema, causing all kinds of havoc, and reinforcing the stereotype.

epoxyhockeyon Rental home shortage is America's next housing crisis

many condominium deeds restrict rentals of units in order effort to limit association fees

Many condominium bylaws restrict the number of units that can be rented (somewhere between 30% - 50% rentals) mostly due to conventional/FHA loan requirements. This is applicable when a unit owner decides to sell their unit and the purchaser cannot get a nice low-cost loan. The unit owner would have to reduce the list price in order to compensate, thereby reducing the market value of other units in the building.

Other than this market value issue, a higher percentage of rentals does not cost an association more.

epoxyhockeyon Starbucks to Provide Free College Education to Thousands of Workers

If a Starbucks barista wants to pursue continuing education for free, why would you ever argue against that? Especially when 70% of employees wish to do so? Even if they only pick up a single additional piece of knowledge from the ASU program, they are a better person in the end. And, you benefit from that whenever you interact with the person.

epoxyhockeyon Starbucks to Provide Free College Education to Thousands of Workers

Focus on the part about having a more educated population. Educated persons tend to vote for candidates aligned with their best interests, spend money more wisely, and commit less crime. More educated peers and neighbors will make your life better.

epoxyhockeyon Comcast turns 50,000 paying customer homes into public hotspots

Comcast has large gray boxes installed on some telephone pole lines that are wifi access points (with an ssid of xfinitywifi). They are installed in many cities across the country (including in NJ) and can be found on this map: http://www.att.com/maps/wifi.html (ignore the fact that this information is hosted on an att.com website)

epoxyhockeyon MongoDB, Better

Yahoo isn't the only large company to instruct its employees to avoid mongodb due to it being AGPL. In my opinion, the only people using mongodb in a commercial setting are those who are paying 10gen for a commercial license or those that don't know they are violating the AGPL license.

epoxyhockeyon Phone call metadata does betray sensitive details about your life

I think it is very naive (bordering on denial) to think the the NSA doesn't record the contents of every phone call it can get its hands on, not just meta-data.

epoxyhockeyon How the world came to hate Silicon Valley

I would argue that Wall Streeters go out of their way to ruin peoples' lives, not just careers, in the name of greed.

epoxyhockeyon How the world came to hate Silicon Valley

employees low enough level to be riding the shuttles

Yes, SF's banking-class and politicians are loving this. The middle-class is distracted fighting their middle-class peers.

epoxyhockeyon Ask HN: does everything known by Google engineers exist in books?

Many large engineering organizations have internal document collections that detail past research and lessons learned. Google may be the most visible engineering organization, but many quiet financial and defense-oriented organizations have a wealth of information available, once you are inside. This info is commonly very specialized, so it would be unlikely to help you build the most scalable website or awesome mobile app, but might be useful in creating a toaster-oven that can survive a 100ft drop, being run over by a tank and lasting for 200 years.

Any engineering firm can develop a world-class knowledge base. But, that involves an engineering process, like starting projects with statements of work and conducting internal engineering reviews at certain milestones (all documented in whitepapers), not just by creating a Trello card or JIRA issue.

epoxyhockeyon Secure your rsync shares

Using ssh as a transport has been my solution and it has been working very well. The sample command to do this is listed under the Troubleshooting section of this page: http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html

epoxyhockeyon I wanted to work at Apple really bad, and now not so much.

It seems like every organization practices some sort of hazing or 'bootcamp' techniques for new people. It's a way of testing people out to see how they react and it also seems to be human nature to do so.

No, it is not normal for an organization to haze new hires and I am sorry if that is the only behavior you have ever experienced in your career. If you ever find yourself in that kind of environment, you need to transfer to another department or leave the organization. In the case of legal harassment, you may report the individual to HR, even if you are a contractor.

Under proper management, new hires are treated like gold. They are, after all, the future of an organization. New hires would be raised like they were part of a family and an abundance of good will should be provided.

epoxyhockeyon Severe Drought Has U.S. West Fearing Worst

For the Bay Area, the charts on this page are interesting: http://sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=69

Particularly this chart on rainfall at Hetch Hetchy (where SF's water comes from): https://infrastructure.sfwater.org/fds/fds.aspx?lib=SFPUC&do...

epoxyhockeyon “Marriage promotion” is a destructive cargo cult

Not entirely unrelated to the discussion, it's the usual time of year where I get furious about the large financial penalty that I pay the government for being single and without child.

For single folks, getting a house and deducting mortgage interest is a great way to reduce your tax burden. Of course, that means taking on a mortgage, which may or may not be possible (especially in the bay area).

epoxyhockeyon Nvidia marketing manager killed during train rescue attempt

Urban planning 101 teaches one that bigger roads do not decrease traffic, they actually increase traffic.

epoxyhockeyon Rosetta: ESA’s ‘sleeping beauty’ wakes up from deep space hibernation

I was mainly referring to DoD workers. NASA is a bit of an exception since many aspects of what they work on is public info.

The point I was trying to make is that I imagine that these brilliant engineers wouldn't be focusing their efforts on iterative improvements to vacuums and tablets.

epoxyhockeyon Rosetta: ESA’s ‘sleeping beauty’ wakes up from deep space hibernation

Make you wonder if our industry's mind share being wasted on web apps and consumer gadgets because of the profit incentive associated?

Engineers that work in defense/nasa/etc generally aren't on twitter, linkedin or facebook broadcasting, well, anything - you just don't hear about them unless you personally know some of these people. It's part of the job description to be private and avoid becoming a target of the media or a foreign nation. It also makes it difficult to stay in touch with colleagues when you're relegated to the rolodex-era of communication.

Quite contrary to your statement, this world might be 1000 times better if the same engineers working on government programs were to work in the commercial sector, pushing the boundaries of tech that is accessible by everyday people.

epoxyhockeyon Cities and Ambition (2008)

I agree with most of everything you described about power in DC. I do think you're showing a bit of staleness in experience when it comes to life in downtown DC.

D.C., the city, also dies after working hours and on weekends. There's minimal night life.

In the past 10 years, there has been an absolute transformation in housing and retail from Gallery Place/Chinatown, to 14th St and all the way up to Columbia Heights. I challenge one to stand on the corner of 7th & H St and say that the city dies after working hours and on weekends.

It's so bad that many of the Agencies are moving or opening very large satellite offices 20 miles or more from D.C. just so they can find qualified workers.

Unless you work for GSA, I wouldn't make assumptions like this. It is impossible for the federal government to open up a new 500,000 sq ft facility in downtown DC because there simply isn't any available space at a reasonable cost. Sprawling complexes are cheap and easy to build in the exurbs and the employees don't have any choice but to follow their agency to its new location. It has nothing to do with finding talent, especially in the hills of Virginia where fewer people choose to live.

The really powerful people, people sitting on all three legs of the tripod, don't live in D.C. at all. They'll live in Northern Virginia or Southern Maryland.

Suburban Maryland (esp. North of DC). Southern Maryland is Waldorf, St Charles and La Plata, which I would argue are not places where Senators reside. Though, I think you will find that more of the recent politicians are residing in DC. For example, Obama, while a Senator, resided in an apartment building in downtown DC.

It doesn't help that the residential parts of D.C. are rather grim and not very pretty. Even the old historic row houses are rather gritty looking piles of old bricks with broken sidewalks outside and overgrown weeds and grass everywhere.

Again, you might benefit from taking a walk anywhere in DC. H St NE, areas around Union Station and even New York Ave & Florida are nice.

epoxyhockeyon Lost city in Darfur

It is named on the map view (non-satellite) for the 3 highest zoom levels. I also doubted dmayle's allegation, but did find the label after a minute of searching. I agree with the suggestion that the label should show up on lower zoom levels.

epoxyhockeyon DEFCONBOTS - An Autonomous Robotics Competition at DEFCON

This sounds like fun. Perhaps Gen. Alexander could be invited to MC the event.

epoxyhockeyon I flew on a plane without going through security. It was amazing and no one died

Others have also mentioned that many times the PreCheck line is closed, forcing background-checked passengers to go through normal security lines anyway.

epoxyhockeyon Protesters block Google bus in S.F. Mission

20 extra individual cars on the roads

Those double decker buses hold about 80 people. Assuming a handful of people would carpool, we're still looking at 60+ more cars on the road, per bus.