It looks like it's pulling characters from the paragraph to generate the "unique" paragraph ID. ID = First letter from the first 3 words in the first sentence in the paragraph + First letter from the first 3 words in the last sentence in the paragraph.

I wonder... for all the different articles on NYTimes, and the different configurations of words across paragraphs, is this unique enough such that you won't get duplicate paragraph IDs in any given article?

It only has to be unique within the article, since it's added to the article path, and there would likely be some kind of provision to add or swap out for a unique character in case of conflict. It's also case-preserving, so that implies likely case-sensitivity as well. I guess we'll have to find an instance of two - probably single-sentence - paragraphs with the same characters and same capitalization in the same story to be certain.

Not it!

Especially because it works in exactly the way you specify even when there’s only one sentence in a paragraph. So the paragraph:

That was too much for the water district’s attorney.

And:

They were torn apart by angry ducks.

Will both hash to “TwtTwt”. One-sentence paragraphs are probably deprecated in the NYT’s style guide anyway, but I imagine it might still come up.

One sentence paragraphs still happen but it still works :)

I overcome problems all the time by talking it out with someone--they don't even have to be a programmer. Just describing the process, what I'm trying to accomplish, the pieces of information involved, and the "why's" of each step can help me find where my logical flaw or bug is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Yeah, for every StackOverflow question I ask, there are several that I start formulating and then discard, as merely putting thoughts into words leads to new insights.

Also I use paper a lot for solving problems and making decisions. Simply write everything down as if I was explaining the thought process to someone. Writing it down helps the same way as with SO questions, but also extends my very limited "immediate memory" (similarly as with arithemtic operations in head / on paper)

yup StackOverflow is awesome, especially for the reason that you meant. In order to not look like an idiot, I do a bunch of research and try to cover my t's so that it is actually a decent question, and usually by the end of writing up the question, I have found my solution. Stackoverflow is the best resource I have, working on my own now.

I would recommend a card game called Dominion.

My guess is that since Sifter is a bug-tracking app, "no custom statuses" means a user can't provide a custom status for a particular bug--only pre-set options like "Open", "Assigned", "Resolved", etc.

As a .NET developer who has yet to integrate regular unit testing into his work, I thought this article was too short to be useful. Some concrete examples would help.

There are additional examples at http://www.typemock.com/articles

They seemed to be concerned about the lack of security they were witnessing, and they also alluded to "this could be bad in the hands of a spammer".

If this log is real, is it truly the conversation of those that took the data?

I'm with you on all points; however, what I find interesting is that these guys talk explicitly about the credit card data being available via the path they took. If these are the same people--or if perhaps it was someone lurking in the channel--the suggestion is that the technique used would have exposed the credit card data of these users--despite Sony claiming that they felt it was unlikely.

I'm not sure there's a lot of "news" to this post; my feeling is that if Sony, "isn't ruling out the possibility" that my credit card information was stolen, I'm working under the assumption that it was. I'd encourage everyone else who was subscribed to PSN to do the same.

They only talk about the unencrypted credit card data available to the console, not to PSN. This chat happened weeks before whoever gained access into PSN's network. Basically the same thing as pointing out the flaws in someone storing their passwords in a plain text file on their desktop. It isn't secure, but you'd have to get access to the single machine before you could get anywhere else.

I agree. This isn't much for "news".

I am, however, curious on the repercussions of the current hack of other services tied to the PSN network, like Netflix, that aren't directly gaming related. Do you think it will make companies give pause to developing dedicated clients for 3rd party services on game consoles that rely on the manufacturer of the console to maintain a network outside of the 3rd parties control?

Right, so what changed in mid-April then to prompt Sony to pull their own plug?

All I can figure is either Sony saw evidence that someone was sniffing their decrypted SSL traffic, or Sony is exaggerating a little (or passive-aggressively erring on the side of it) to bring the heat of financial crimes down on the console/PSN hackers. The latter seems like a reeely expensive and painful way to combat a few console hackers.

I glanced at some PSN domains and noticed that their certs were fairly old and not revoked, and they were being served by some kind of 3rd party DDoS mitigation service. They're likely using some form of SSL offload hardware, which might provide more opportunity for the unencrypted (now plain HTTP) traffic to pass in view of a compromised node.

Looks to me like guys trying to get banned PS3s back on the game network, not steal user info and credit card numbers.

[user12] know this, sony in realtime, monitors all messages over psn [user12] I verified that, its part of my privacy threats thing I am doing [user5] ok too bad id like the psn messenger on pc [user12] the realtime monitoring is a bit bothersome to me

It seems plausible though that people were using this info to do things which violated Sony's security model and that their security model also didn't effectively separate credit card info from the game data.

For example, there were claims a few weeks ago (Wired or ARS I think) that they were all mixed together in the same SSL stream.

I think it's where the only submissions displayed are those submitted by users who have karma above a certain threshold (or where their account was created a long time ago, i.e. not new account submissions).

It is actually submissions ranked by HN users whose accounts were created in the first year.

Refresh the page and you'll get a new lady.

After hearing your interpretation, I realize that probably does make more sense within the context of the paragraph.

But I certainly heard it the other way first. That's probably another good example of meaning being lost in text compared to spoken word.

> Google is a freakin' giant. I don't see how you compete with that, unless you are a large company like Microsoft.

I agree with your statements here, but still, I think it's flawed thinking. Just because Google is big doesn't mean one person (or a small group) can't come up with innovations and compete.

Even if Gabriel says DuckDuckGo is not a competitor to Google, or if it doesn't have a sustainable business model, I applaud his efforts. I too enjoy the bang syntax, and that's something I wouldn't get using other search engines (even if DDG isn't classified as such).