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Stories from September 21, 2008
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1.
Interview with a hedge fund manager (nplusonemag.com)
50 points by eru on Sept 21, 2008 | 18 comments
2.
Palin Hacker Caught - Son of Democratic TN State Rep. (tgdaily.com)
42 points by pmorici on Sept 21, 2008 | 63 comments
3.
Most Alien-Looking Place on Earth (darkroastedblend.com)
42 points by umangjaipuria on Sept 21, 2008 | 12 comments
4.
Python's Super is nifty, but you can't use it (fuhm.net)
29 points by alexk on Sept 21, 2008
5.
Erlang's Mnesia no longer has 2GB storage limit (weblambdazero.blogspot.com)
25 points by iamwil on Sept 21, 2008 | 3 comments
6.
Japanese Girl Sensation: Virtual Boyfriends (Webkare) (techcrunch.com)
25 points by blackswan on Sept 21, 2008 | 24 comments
7.
Success as an Entrepreneur: Why It’s Not About You (getrichslowly.org)
24 points by rantfoil on Sept 21, 2008 | 7 comments

I'm pretty sure that "the lock was poorly designed" has never successfully been used as a legal defence by a burglar, and that "but they were so easy to fool" has never successfully been used as a legal defence by a conman, so I'd be surprised if a poorly-designed password retrieval mechanism could be used as a defence in this case.

If nothing else, the kid committed some kind of fraud by telling the system he was Sarah Palin when in fact he wasn't.

9.
New York in Black and White (wirednewyork.com)
23 points by gopher on Sept 21, 2008 | 5 comments
10.
Second interview with the hedge fund manager (nplusonemag.com)
23 points by eru on Sept 21, 2008 | 3 comments

Not even that. Social engineering would be if he tricked Palin into divulging the information.

It's really just being able to use Google.

12.
What Was Stack Overflow Built With? (stackoverflow.com)
22 points by rnesh on Sept 21, 2008 | 22 comments
13.
Another iPhone app, MailWrangler, banned from App Store for "duplicating functionality" (dinardi.name)
22 points by nickb on Sept 21, 2008 | 43 comments

He forced a password reset by answering questions about Palin’s birthdate, zip code and where she met her spouse, Wasilla High School.

By this admission, the media needs to drop the word "HACK" right now because that's not hacking. That's social engineering.

15.
Freelancers: Two Methods for Making Sales the Easy Way (nerdburn.com)
21 points by nerdburn on Sept 21, 2008 | 6 comments
16.
New Neal Stephenson Book Out - Anathem (nealstephenson.com)
19 points by fkrueger on Sept 21, 2008 | 24 comments

Social engineering is people hacking. He didn't hack any people. He subverted a poorly designed password retrieval mechanism.

Just because he didn't use a personally crafted 0-day exploit doesn't mean he wasn't hacking (or cracking, if you're in to semantic debate).


I published the same link a while ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88544

Anyway it's a great link so I guess it doesn't matter much.

19.
Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal (nakedcapitalism.com)
19 points by furiouslol on Sept 21, 2008 | 12 comments

It's not there because it's not his quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There%27s_a_sucker_born_every_m...

So boys who play counterstrike do it, instead, because they really want to kill people?

AFAICT, what we know at this point is that Palin's email was hacked and somebody claiming that Kernell's email address was theirs claimed to have done it on 4chan. I think it's a little irresponsible to have a headline that shouts "Palin Hacker Caught" when he hasn't admitted to it, been convicted of it, or even been charged yet. I'm not saying he didn't do it, but internet trolls have been known to attribute their actions to others before.

"Give a boy twenty thousand dollars and put him in business, and the chances are that he will lose every dollar of it before he is a year older."
24.
Recommendations all the way from Berlin, interview with Directed Edge founders (thenextweb.org)
16 points by wheels on Sept 21, 2008

Henry Ford's book is pretty good, too. (My Life and Work. 1922.)

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/hnfrd10.txt

"Business" in the sense of trading with the people is largely a matter of filling the wants of the people. If you make what they need, and sell it at a price which makes possession a help and not a hardship, then you will do business as long as there is business to do. People buy what helps them just as naturally as they drink water.


Ok it's not only in the west the programmers are focused on bullshit...

I'm really curious why this is cast as a "Japanese girls are lonely". My girlfriend also watches those horrible Asian romance dramas and (jokes notwithstanding) I'm pretty sure the reason is more to fulfill her sappiness quota and not to cure her deep aching loneliness.

I think its more notable for its interesting game mechanic and the utterly evil method they have for getting high page counts per user. (I mean, it seems that the company just implied you advance in the game by looking at pages you wouldn't have looked at normally. Devious!)


Still halfway through it, but it's a good read so far. I like this quote:

"Today we have a recruiting group, and what do they do?—they throw resumes at you, and it's, like, one business school guy, one finance major after another, kids who, from the time they were twelve years old, were watching Jim Cramer and dreaming of working in a hedge fund. And I think in reality that, probably, if anything, they're less likely to make good investors than people with sort of more interesting backgrounds."

I talked to a lot people in a lot of fields before landing where I am today and the people in each one who really knew what they were talking about all shared the same belief as this hedge fund manager. Much of the technical knowledge necessary for these jobs can (only?) be learned on the job. But the ability to look at problems in innovative ways comes from having more lateral experience.


If you read any old literature, even as far back as the 1800's, you get this feeling. No one ever outright says "this will kill you," but it was certainly regarded as a poor health choice.

The one thing that bugs me about this was, as a kid in a health class, I was shown a video of a little girl and her grandma. The girl asked the grandma "Why do you smoke grandma?" The old lady responded "Because when I was your age, nobody knew that smoking was bad for you."

The bullcrap we were fed as kids is incredible.


Well, this settles the question, posted in an earlier thread, about whether the culprit was very very smart or very very stupid.

(Unless, of course, this guy is innocent, in which case the real culprit was very very smart.)

In other news, I sure hope everyone who feels compelled to express an opinion about what should happen to this kid now will stop for a moment and consider whether their opinion would be the same if he were the son of a Republican senator and got caught doing the same thing to a Democratic candidate, and to make absolutely sure that their opinion would be the same either way.


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