skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been quietly working on this project for awhile now, but with all of the news about NSA in recent days, I thought it important to share a little about my project.

I am working on a platform called arkOS. arkOS is an operating system that is initially designed to run on the Raspberry Pi, and will eventually be expanded to other architectures. It comes with a built-in graphical server management system called Genesis, which will allow users to easily and securely host websites, webapps (Wordpress/Drupal), email accounts, cloud services like ownCloud, Dropbox clones and anything else. The coolest part of Genesis is that it uses a plugin interface, so anyone who has a new project that they want to manage only needs to whip up a quick script in Python and it can be easily integrated into the rest of the application. Genesis was initially a fork of another server management app called Ajenti, but now extends its features and takes it in a more comprehensive direction.

arkOS is similar to two other projects that have been in the spotlight lately - FreedomBox and Space Monkey. It differs from FreedomBox because it is not focused on redoing existing networking systems. It is simply dedicated to hosting your data and does not try to reinvent the wheel. It also puts a premium on user experience - it is designed to require as little command-line work as possible in order to maintain it (ideally zero). It differs from Space Monkey because it allows you to actually serve the content you put onto it, rather than just serving as a media storage system. While both of these tools are very exciting and important steps to "liberating" the cloud, I believe that arkOS fills an important niche in between the two.

EDIT: Regarding how it can prevent against gov't/corporate spying like with PRISM: The idea is that it would provide an easy alternative to the services that are provided by these large companies, i.e. Google Talk (or whatever they call it nowadays) replaced with an XMPP server, Gmail replaced with self-hosted email, Dropbox replaced by your own self-hosted instance of ownCloud, etc. The only part of PRISM that it might not provide a defence against would be big social networks (Facebook et al), but you would still be able to host your own StatusNet instance or Tent server on your arkOS server and have alternatives that way. When services can be decentralized and brought back under individual user control, a "direct link" into major web company's servers is definitely made irrelevant.

If anyone is interested in this project or would like to stay apprised on its status, I encourage you to check out the links below. I have many more things in the works for arkOS, including a system that helps people get around port blocking and dynamic DNS issues, something that prevents a large number of people from self-hosting their data.

Thanks for reading :)

--

Free The Cloud: https://ark-os.org/cloud

Project Website: https://ark-os.org

Github repo for Genesis, the server management GUI: https://github.com/cznweb/genesis
Like cell phones.
Understanding Express.js
They started with hg, then added git (or GIT, as they call it).
Isn't that a bit unfair to judge the quality of their service based on the DNS being down for every .io service?
This is where the 'many eyes' things comes into play; if the whole distro is OSS, then you can be pretty sure that it's good.
Open IPTV Forum publishes HTML5 profile for connected TVs
AJ is in an interesting position:

* most news networks in the middle east are state-run (and very obviously oppressive with heavy censorship), however AJ operates distinctly independently

* as such people in the middle east are exposed to news they wouldn't normally be exposed to, for example controversial news stories or other news stories that require strict objectivity

* western news networks are increasingly rebroadcasting AJ footage, most interestingly because AJ acquires exclusive interviews that other news networks aren't privy to

* AJ provides live feeds of their news channel for free online

* they are growing, and have plans to offer[1] Turkish (Turkey), Spanish (Latin American), and Urdu (Pakistani) channels

It's exciting to say the least.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Plans
My website, brand.io, seems to be up... I hope my email isn't down. :(
ViziCities: London Underground in 3D, Leap Motion, funding and more
I think all these are interesting and relevant questions, but these aren't (typically) what are being discussed. Instead we're going down well worn paths about libertarianism and whatnot...

I understand that basically all I can really do is flag what I think should be flagged and whatnot, so this just falls into the category of "pointless whinging about HN degradation."
I'm not sure why you were downvoted; this is true in many places in the world.
Lets be honest. Most people scream about privacy violations but in turn are more than willing, hell you cannot shut them up, to tell you all about themselves, their stuff, their friends, and such.

Even with legislation do you expect it not to be easy for any agency to just gather the information? At worst we will get an "Online Users Bill of Rights" which will only codify their rights to our privacy.
from Germany a.ns13.net and b.ns13.net return NXDOMAIN. Both seem to be located in JP. The other DNS are working for me.

They recently switched their backend to a new platform (May 29th) maybe this issue is related…
I try daily. I program web apps for a living.

A web browser is literally a "dedicated REST client". REST is just HTTP. It's the pattern HTTP to exchange messages. Representations and methods. Sure, HTML forms never implemented the full range of methods [facepalm], but most engines allow method parameter overrides (_method=PUT|DELETE). And it does get harder when doing these live via JavaScript, and exchanging data other than HTML like JSON.

Of course I use HTTP tools other than the generic web browser UI. Firefox extensions get you pretty far with HTTP logging/modification like Firebug, Poster, TamperData. There's also some standalone apps like Fiddler and friends. But meh.
Note on Generationism
I was referring to the exit code problem. Is it solvable?
Wait.... if I use Google Analytics on a site this implies that the IPs of every visitor to the site is available to the NSA? Correct?
This isn't really true. Bush certainly campaigned as being opposed to the excesses of Clinton/Gore. Among other things, Bush chose Ashcroft as his AG to demonstrate his support for civil liberties.

(In spite of his contemporary reputation, Ashcroft was proponent of civil liberties. He ruled that Stellar Wind was illegal (leading to Bush firing him), fought in the senate for encryption and turing machines, opposed racial profiling and protecting 2nd amendment rights.)
Real-time friendly Linux for communications uses Yocto
At least you're honest.

:)
When is the last time you heard of the .com infrastructure failing across the board?

Just because you're exposed to some reliability risk doesn't mean that you can't expose yourself to more by using a smaller TLD.
30 Linux Kernel Developer Workspaces in 30 Weeks: Steve Rostedt
You use a JavaScript polyfill which handles browsers which don't yet support them. For example, I recently launched a project using <input type=range> with a [modernizr.load](http://modernizr.com/docs/#load) test which uses
https://github.com/freqdec/fd-slider if the browser doesn't have native support.

As for styling the native controls, I generally recommend thinking twice about that as the usability benefits of having a familiar standard control are significant but you should read up on the Shadow DOM and the emerging CSS support for it: http://glazkov.com/2011/01/14/what-the-heck-is-shadow-dom&#x...;
worry not about that, but whatever in the future they decide are crimes warranting the use of this information. When they decide that is serves the purpose of the government to track tax issues this way, child support, or even political donations. The real future threat is that they don't seem to have limits of retention in place.
Apple’s WWDC App Subtly Flattens Visual Elements
+ We haven't committed any crime — then there's nothing to worry! And so spying on certain accounts is fine, if they need to investigate, track and analyze data for Intelligence.

+ I'm perfectly fine if they take my data — till its serving in the good interests of my family and people's safety.

+ It should only be in the good interests of our system and society.

+ But such credible data, should not be misused by the govt bodies or elected representatives!
Couldn't you just buy a cheap printer with cash, use it, and then dump it as well, perhaps leave it in a charity bin somewhere.

Printers are pretty cheap these days, and it seems that in order for any of the markings to be useful they would have to find the printer in question in your possession/prove it was your printer.
Manning leaked information far before his discharge processing had started. Go read his own personal statement he made to the court, it's enlightening if nothing else.
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hackurls
Thanks, that's an excellent tool!
Apple's Pandora-Killing iRadio Service
I hate genericized ccTLDs, but I don't think the VCs are the ones who should be avoiding them. People creating services should stick to .com, get the .net, and if they have to do something like "getdropbox.com" until they can buy dropbox.com, so be it.

Going from dropbox.io to dropbox.com is ok, but I'd probably go for getdropbox.com in preference to dropbox.io.
It just seems like it ends up making these useful for utility stuff, but will just get ignored for most real projects. It's 2013, the idea that anything should not be able to be styled is ignoring the real world.
I agree on the font-weight. Go for legibility first and beauty second. Personally I prefer 16px myriad pro.

Love it though! Will definitely use :)
God dammit! You just made me realise my internet was down :-( I thought that I was just having a quiet day. So that's an entire days worth of business lost.
Even more self-marketing for you:

"Brandon Thomas is a triple major undergrad at Southern Polytechnic State University in the Computer Science, Biology, and Chemistry programs. Brand loves science, uses Linux and vim, and programs primarily in Python, Javascript, and C++. Computing interests include machine learning and computer graphics. After graduation Brand intends to study computational metabolomics or possibly found a startup company."
I seem to remember someone doing this for the original xbox and getting up to the halo "start game" screen. That was probably easier due to it being roughly the same architecture. This is something else quite different and really neat.
Ubuntu holds its own
The service is only as strong as the weakest link.. choose those links wisely.
a.ns13.net. and b.ns13.net. were the last 2 to be fixed, seems to be all ok now. If you can, flush your resolver cache.
Many git novices don't know that the log output can even be changed, and aren't likely to be searching for an alternative syntax. Don't assume that just because you know something, everyone else does, an that the training is useless.

Additionally, the discussions that this post created here in the comments have already given me three new aliases that I didn't know we're possible.
Torture results in more terrorism. You would not be stopping it using these methods. Instead, you would be engaged in it.
Someone high up at Google could have risked jail time if the issue mattered. None did. That says it all.
There is a model for people winning freedom when they never had it before. It has been applied in some countries. It takes courage and solidarity, but people power can gain freedom. The most thoughtful writer on the model that works is Gene Glass of the Albert Einstein Institute. The institute has several different publications available for free download in multiple languages,

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html

among which I especially recommend From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf

as a how-to guide for gaining freedom even when the dictators are willing to torture and kill to limit freedom. (I have seen one country make a successful transition from dictatorship to democracy largely by following this conceptual framework.)
So...

- A walrus eats food.
- Obama eats food.
- Obama is acting like a walrus.

The real issue is that the idea that only dictatorships have some selective enforcement of laws is unsubstantiated.
IF that's the risk it takes, so be it. Safety be damned; this is the welfare of my children's, your children's, and their children's, future.

And our future too. We're going to be here quite a while.
Nothing gets me riled up like a vaccination denier. I can't even hold a conversation with them, I just get really angry.
Very true, for that I wholeheartedly agree and I do admire his earnestness in pointing what many may have noticed but chosen to ignore anyway.
You need some way of documenting your skills. A degree in CS is the most common, and probably easiest way, of doing that.
Most people never review source code, and they certainly don't disassemble and review all the binaries. 'Many eyes' is a security fallacy in cases like this.
I experienced this as well at http://quantify.io - New Relic reported a 2 hour outage which just ended.
‘ReefLive’ Introduces The World To The Great Barrier Reef
Interesting question.

I think the first obstacle would be HR. I'm not an HR person, but my guess is that a lot of them would pre-screen resumes without a degree. So that may limit you to really small companies and/or places where you have contacts that can root for you.

The next hurdle would be a dev interview. Here, it's not whether you have a CS degree, but whether you understand concepts you would learn in CS courses, like runtime complexity. You need to be able to make it through a typical whiteboard interview (see Cracking the Coding Interview.)

I think that with hard work -- networking, something to demo, some study of algorithms/data structures to get you through the interview -- one can overcome all of that, but it will take work.

Your other option is to found your own company. The founder of the last place I worked only had a HS diploma.
I do not doubt you have good reasons for saying that. But can you share them with us? I contend that isolated opinion from almost anyone is not worth a bag of nuts unless supported by an observation, reason or argument.
And we can always trust the government, right?
Thanks -- I'll check it out.
I had the same problem with notable.ac The problem appears to have been resolved. The latest DNS queries show that it is now delegating properly.
Or tell the reporter to take out a classified ad in a free, public paper distributed in the nearest large metropolitan area.

The communications from the reporter don't need to be private or targeted. Everyone will know he's involved when he publishes, and he can reasonably encode questions by referring to the documents already sent. "MR X, CAN YOU PROVIDE FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE EVENTS DISCUSSED ON PAGE 13."
In this context it sounds a little scary either way(don't the local police have access to local government records so same difference.) It could be quite innocuous, like being registered to vote, and needing to know in which local elections you can participate.
git.io is UP.
Works fine here in México.
Oh my, I just announced bitnodes.io like a couple hours ago..
My GF and I's income combined puts us somewhere over the 90th percentile, but we feel like we're barely above supermarket employees - and we have no dependents. There is no way we could afford the rents on, say, the upper 70% of the whole-house / 2+ bedroom apartment rental market.

I don't understand how most people can afford it, unless they're paying well over 50% of income on rent.
Modern Design at Microsoft
Warner Bros: We’re Fining File-Sharers Who Use Non Six-Strike ISPs
Who is to decide what is in the "interest" of your family and people's safety? This is subjective and cedes power to whoever is in control of the surveillance mechanism. The surveyor may have motives that are not as benevolent as you would like to think.
Hmm every .io domain on this page has worked for me even if I've never visited them before. Maybe my ISP (VirginMedia) has cached the records.
Agreed. The author obviously knows little about opsec.
Introduction à Gradle les gens
Bringing Continuous Deployment to everyone
It looks like all of the nic.io root name servers are delegating again.
Atomic I/O operations
"CIA calls Facebook 'Reason We Invented The Internet'" [1], gotta love The Onion :)

[1] http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...;
Yep, it seems the same registry runs .io, .sh and .ac.
UK is gathering intelligence from PRISM too
Apache CloudStack AutoInstall Script
politicians lie? nowai
We have voted them up — they are elected representatives.

And Life goes by Hope and Positivity!
That wasn't the universal response to cochlear implants. Some viewed their deafness as part of their identity, and not a disease to be cured.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochlear_implant#Controversy_i...
In my experience, there are some employers who flat out refuse to consider you if you don't have the degree they want. It has absolutely nothing to do with your qualifications, skills, or ability.

I contacted one employer about a job which I believe I was qualified to do; on the phone, they asked me, "do you have such-and-such degree?" I said no. "We can't hire you then." And that was it.

Another employer I worked for asked me to physically bring my degree in so they could photocopy it for their records.

Another employer officially had a policy that all "engineering" jobs be filled by people with at least a bachelor's degree, but management had promoted some qualified folks without degrees into those roles. Eventually HR changed those people's positions to a different title, because they "couldn't be an engineer without a degree"... though they continued to do the same work they were before.

But neither a degree nor lack of a degree actually means anything in terms of ability to do the work. I've seen people who held a degree (or two, or three) and were pretty clueless about their work.

I for one think the whole idea of demanding a certain degree is ridiculous. Demanding certain experience makes much more sense. But it's easy to check for a degree, and hard to verify experience. With all of the non-traditional means of learning available today, I don't see how demanding a degree will be a sustainable employment practice, but then again, I don't understand why it's been going on for as long as it has.
I remember that.
My site at kun.io is working for me…
Pick your domain registrar carefully
Could I have an invite? at kmlymi@gmail.com
Exactly, that was the idea behind the hosted service :)

The inhouse-version of RhodeCode is already used in thousands of companies all around the world but it still requires admin work, own servers and a deep understanding of the topic.

The hosted service instead makes it so much easier to get up and running with RhodeCode and opens RhodeCode to a broader audience.
I think the topics have a place on here (and really, it's supply and demand, so I have a hard time complaining about what people decide to upvote). Regardless, I agree with you about that particular poster. The tone is incendiary, and the content is ignorant. It's feel-good, meaningless tripe. It's the lowest common denominator of critical thinking: "Oh look at how smart I am because I recognize the situation is 'bad' and when will you sheep all wake up?" This sophomoric argument is the most ignorant, because it sits in between admitting you don't know something and actually doing research to become informed.
It's an interesting story, somewhat emotional and romantic even? Maybe more to me because I was a kid here when it was all happening (born in '84). If you're into conspiracy stuff, watch "The Weight Of Chains". Although I believe the film is heavily biased and greatly downplays the responsibility of serbia itself in the conflict, blaming most of it on outside forces. Nevertheless, it's very entertaining and paints a grim picture of foreign interests at play and their influence on the post-war politics.
Agreed. If this surveillance is going to happen, it needs to be a two way street. We should be allowed to know how it is being used and when we are individually being tracked.
The untouchables: N.Y. bill would make annoying police a felony
I would, but that doesn't mean it's not a niche. We are on Hacker News, after all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_promise#Broken_promise...
It's somewhat random, so it seems you had good luck today.
What about "simply" using DeadDrop?

http://deaddrop.github.io

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/05/intr...

Or Retroshare:

http://retroshare.sourceforge.net

https://retroshareteam.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/cryptography...

https://retroshareteam.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/privacy-on-t...
Chhi... Compare it with the words and deeds of Abraham Lincoln 250 years ago:

"If slavery isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong." [1][2]

There is a stark change in quality of leaders available today. There is so little correlation between words spoken and execution.

[1] http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt027.html

[2] http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/ltoh1.jpg
I've been following these discussions the past couple of days on HN, and there are a few calm minds who are very knowledgeable of the law, who's comments have been enlightening and reassuring ('rayiner and others).

But we now live in a completely online world, where nearly all communication and files are conveyed and hosted by third parties, and soon it will take several minutes for even a geek to mentally count up the number of internet-connected computers in their house.

I am comforted by the idea that Jack Bauer and Chloe have timely access to information to stop the bad guys, and that US secret agencies have little motivation or bandwidth to use this information for anything but national security threats (and hopefully kidnapping and such). Bad actors in these agencies can obviously do a lot of harm to individuals, but those cases will probably be personal and few, widespread malicious use of this data by agency employees would be easier to uncover.

What I find most troubling is the ease with which the government can view my information and how I've steadily made it easier for them over the past five years by getting that iPhone, using Dropbox and Gmail. But, my life has seemed safe, prosperous and peaceful over that time and these services I use have had a profound impact on the efficiency and convenience with which I perform my daily routine.
The NSA are not elected officials. They are appointed individuals. And they really don't need to report or justify anything they do.
For the common man, it would be easier to pay in cash to avoid credit card transaction tracking, rather than setup your own mail server to avoid email snooping.
This is ridiculously good. I never realised the London underground was shaped like that!
I do not think I understood just how little I survive on.

Our household (girlfriend and I) have a total income of less than £10k per annum.

This puts us worse off than pretty much everyone. But then, the money just doesn't bother me... not that I don't like money, but not having money dictate my life (by choice) gives me the freedom to work on the things I really believe in (the startup).