skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
On the other hand, they openly and frequently share information about their work on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Palantir-Technologies. Here they sort of address the apparent secrecy:

> This is a common misconception. We do have clients whose names we can't share, but we try to be as open as we can, both internally and externally. We put as much of our customer work as we can on our Analysis Blog (http://www.palantirtech.com/gove...). We participate in the open source community (https://github.com/palantir/). We have engaged with press who have pretty thoroughly profiled the company (http://www.washingtonian.com/art...). We share how our technology works on our white videos (Google "white videos"). We even tell people exactly what we look for when we interview candidates and give tips (see entries in (http://blog.palantir.com/)

http://qr.ae/pgHRy
Your vote is not the only political power you have. You can organize people, even if it is only at the local level. Once you do that, you have begun to gain political power, and that is how political careers are started. We do not have titles of nobility here; nobody is more entitled to be politically engaged than anyone else.

In practice, it is hard to take power from the established parties. It is hard to get past the local level without being well-connected. Hard, but not impossible.
Fascinating. I'm amazed that people aren't pointing out the consequences to the USA of GCHQ had access to data covertly gathered from leading internet firms in the US.

Under US law, US investigators are not allowed to follow trails into this data that go to US citizens without a warrant. According to leaked training materials, they follow that rule. This is part of why they claim that this data collection is not an issue for Americans.

But if the data is shared with other intelligence services, who CAN legally follow those trails, then that's a pretty serious loophole. I'm reminded of the early Bush policy of turning over prisoners of interest to police in non-US jails where torture could be used and then the resulting intelligence reports shared back with the US.

Also the American investigators are told to report all times that they followed a trail to a US citizen. Were those trails shared as well? If so, then it gets worse still.
It's clearly not working. Nothing anyone is doing is working. Look at the cases where the US government actually "catches" a terrorist; they're all clear-cut entrapment cases. If these clowns are so effective, why would they hide the real successes and show us the clearly illegal ones?
Both my country and the US are already signatories to various international treaties guaranteeing a human right against arbitrary interference with privacy and correspondence, e.g. the ICCPR. The US has declined to transcribe it into its own law. My country is also a member of an international human rights court that enforces a (admittedly qualified) right to privacy (for humans - hence 'human rights' - not just citizens of the particular member state concerned). AFAIK the US is not a member of any such organisation.

I'm a bit bemused at the level of cognitive dissonance required to loudly assert both that something is an 'inalienable human right' and at the same time that it doesn't apply to non-citizens. Perhaps the US government uses 'inalienable' and 'human' to mean something different to everyone else?
Jacob , It's great that you're working on this.

But isn't the biggest problem with security/privacy is that people don't care about it and don't use privacy enhancing products?

Because if that's the case, the starting point should be a viable marketing strategy - which will define the product.

Snapchat is is a good example of this. They wrap a viable user need with a privacy preserving idea with great marketing. Have a look at their site.
Great idea! Thanks for making this. So what happens after 30 days, is there a way to recharge the phone minutes?
Who did your web design? I love it.
It's great that they showed a demo tracking a disease
outbreak, but that doesn't really mean anything.

The company readily admits that their software has primarily been used in the defense and finance industries. They don't hide this fact, nor should they feel pressured to.

I'm not crucifying anybody, I was just pointing out that the OP's speculation was based on slightly more than just the name alone (but I agree, it's still pretty weak).
Our government has IMO, proven itself to be poor stewards of the trust we placed in them. Only transparency and a long record of "doing the right thing when no one is watching" is going to restore the trust they seek.
Why on earth would you assume it's working? This is immoral and wrong, it's up to the government to show that it's buying us something (but I'd be against it even then). If they don't show that we should assume it hasn't stopped even one crime.
GamePop Console Plans to Run iOS Apps Using Virtualization
"Being easily manipulated by bullshit is usually for the simple."

Not when you spend your first 20 years of life in school, being trained to follow instructions and being punished for questioning authority. Even very intelligent people can be turned into obedient workers.
Google also does this if you proxy your requests through a cloud IP space. I proxy my Google searches through rackspace IPs and I was given a CAPTCHA on nearly every search.

I actually stopped using Google because of this (and privacy/creepiness issues). I switched to Bing. I have to say, Bing has gotten really good. When others saw me using it, they started using it too. Most of my office has switched now and people have stopped saying "google it" and started saying "bing it".
As a European I take it as an example of the classical US "the world ends at our borders, everything else doesn't matter" mentality.

But hey at least when China rises to be a world power it will become even worse.
Frankly that level of xenophobia is just bad - period. Sure, it would be "worse" if the US was spying on their own citizens as well (and frankly I'm not convinced that they're not), but I take real objection to you saying that it's "less bad" as it's essentially saying that something is "ok" when you compare it to something even worse - when in actual fact both examples are appalling.

America should be leading by example rather than hypocritically condoning China (et al) for their spying then turning around and doing the same thing themselves. And most importantly, America (and every other country for that matter) should be comparing themselves to the best examples - constantly trying to better the nation - rather than comparing themselves to the worst and saying "we're less bad than those governments".
Well, when the government keeps tens of billions of dollar worth of activities totally secret--not just the details of, but the very existence of--what are you supposed to do?

Wait until the NSA does a press release of everything it's doing?
Really? What has the public done exactly that makes you think that? I still see Obama in office. I still see everyone else who signed the PATRIOT act and so on.
Why should I agree to that? The director of the CIA is a political appointee not an uber spy. They probably have more security training than your average citizen but not much more.
I don't think the example of CIA director John Deutch, who I tracked because of his prior role in the midnight execution of the MIT Applied Biology Department (I had a roommate in it at the time), give us any assurances of that. The bare bones from Wikipedia only hints at the severity of his crimes (read later, pardoned by Clinton in the latter's last day in office; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Deutch#CIA_career):

"Deutch left the CIA on December 15, 1996 and later that year it was revealed that several of his laptop computers contained classified materials designated as unclassified."

Specifically, he took sensitive compartmented information (SCI, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Informa...), stuff which was covered by special access programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program) that required you to acknowledge each time you accessed it that it was so, and that you not leave the secured area with it, and put it on his personal PCs connected to the Internet, which he used to write up stuff which he emailed, again over that unsecured Internet, to people in the Clinton White House.

It's hard to express just how bad this is, not to mention how this angered the community of people with "tickets" (clearances, which, BTW, I've supplied recommendations for two of my friends, one who went to the NSA, the other with a TS/SCI ... which I know nothing about, except we can and do discuss which technology he's using (e.g. Microsoft)).

I would hope "the average person", after getting the usual training, and signing off on access to SCI, would understand and follow the simple idea that "Don't take it out of this room" means exactly that.

"The average person" would, I think, know he wouldn't be protected from prosecution by political pull if he violated that simple, white line rule....
Food and Books
Burton's Biscuits safeguards Llantarnam jobs with £4.6m
WHAT!

Please don't like sites that make AV flash up red with warnings (probably some hijacked advert).

Also lacks details about context of said reports, proof said reports happened and again, general says nothing. As said before UK and USA work together, nothing new there, 197 seems rather low and when not measured against results is futile in discussing.
My problem with "I don't vote because it's a sham" is in two parts:

1. It's very often just a pseudo-intellectual justification for not bothering to educate yourself about any of the issues, politicians or policies at hand, or to actually define your own philosophical/policy position and have it subjected to possible challenge and critique. It's laziness and cowardice masquerading as superiority.

2. It's also very popular as a defense mechanism for fantasists and fundamentalists who refuse to accept that: reality is messy, none of us has all the answers, none of us has quite the same experience or expertise and thus even those disagreeing with us have much value to bring to the table, that there's no rational reason to expect 300 million people with different experiences with different policies and different parts of the country to ever agree on where the problems are nor how to fix them, and -- most of all -- that we ourselves might actually be wrong about some of our fundamental assumptions and the people disagreeing with us might not only have a point, but that we might be standing behind the wrong policy.

If you can accept these things, you can accept that compromise is not awful or evidence of failure in and of itself and that democracy is very rarely about 'right' and 'wrong' choices. You would recognize the messy process of compromise and politics is itself a feature.

Progress is a messy, irregular march not from A to B, but from A[n] to B[n], where not every path is straight, or known, or necessarily moves forward on each tick of the clock. Much of the time the destination isn't even known when we have to decide a course (whether it exists, where it is, whether it's fixed or floating -- even whether it's fundamentally knowable) and sometimes we're not even sure where it is that we're starting from.

Now, if you want to argue that there are problems (primarily, that money has corrupted the system) I will enthusiastically agree. But there's no solution to those problems that hinges on not voting.

There are things that we can do other than and in addition to voting. But they don't in any way preclude voting or benefit from our abstaining from voting.
I would venture to say that most of the dismissive criticism I've read regarding him hinges on his having BO or idiosyncratic speech patterns or similar surface attributes.
I would have thought the IRS scandal enough to make the government look like a bunch of lawless thugs.

In truth they aren't lawless thugs, they are the thugs who write the laws necessary to allow their desires.
It looks good and works well. It's a nice touch that the user is informed that a search term is not in the database but that the organizers have been alerted about the term.
Web Languages and VMs: Fast Code is Always in Fashion (V8, Dart)
Well if you look at TAX laws and how companies avoid TAX by offshoring then how can anybody be supprised that data gets offshored and loopholes are found.
> The whole point of releasing to the few reputable parties in the current case is so that they go on to release it to everyone else including the internet.

The media reports on the information they obtain, but they don't always release the raw information as it was received.
'Progressive' phone company CREDO Mobile slams govt snooping, but can't stop it
Is it compatible with pre-canvas browsers (legacy IE and so forth)? That could be a valid reason particularly if it was written a while ago.
I love how their hypothetical reads like an episode of 24.
The FISA courts have been being essentially bypassed since the Bush Administration.

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

This is not what you do if you're only going after call records. This is what you do if you're siphoning off communications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
So what happens when the government (or IRS) persuades you to not destroy transaction logs with a $5 wrench?
http://xkcd.com/538&#x2F;
Right now I'm watching MongoDB et al reinvent IBM's IMS from the 1960s. They're about to have to reinvent TPF too. It's quite comical.
Facebook Finally Ditching Those “Sponsored Stories” We All Love So Very Much
I've looked at this sort of stuff as utter voodoo for a long time. Then I ran into this book[1], and everything just kind of 'clicked' into place in my head. I can't recommend this book often enough.

[1]: http://www.nand2tetris.org/book.php

In short: It gives you a hands-on approach in designing and building your own computer and programming language, to end up writing and running your own games on the system.

* It starts with simple boolean algebra to explain and create logic gates (NAND, AND, OR, XOR, etc).
* Use these to build an ALU, memory banks and eventually a full CPU.
* Design an assembly language and assembler for this system.
* Use the assembler to create a higher level OOP language, compiler and code base.
* Use this language to write a rudimentary operating system.
* Write a game to run on the OS.

All using very clear and simple English and a very comprehensive emulation system (written in Java) by the authors.

Edit: For some reason, this site has started showing malware warnings in chrome and firefox since today. Even though Google's advisory[1] makes no mention of any actual malware being detected. I've visited this site safely for a long time. Still, if you don't trust it, then wait until Google clears up the issue. I've already contacted one of the authors about it.

[1]: http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...
Hey all, I'm one of the creators of BurnerPhone, and just wanted to leave a comment with a few facts about the product.

We weren't really planning on launching this thing so quickly (we planned on making improvements to the site, etc. and launching in the next couple of weeks) -- but since all the press about the NSA / phone stuff came out it seemed like a good time to put our MVP online.

Anyhow, we're basically trying to provide our users with a secure-as-possible communication device that allows them to remain as anonymous as possible. Yes -- the government can definitely collect call data and SMS data, but by using different devices and SIM cards (phone numbers) you can abstract away all but the most difficult to track details: your voice, your writing style (sms messages).

Using a BurnerPhone allows you to make phone calls and send SMS messages that won't be linked back to your by your telco billing records.

In regards to how we work:

- These phones come with unlimited talk and text for 30 days, nationwide coverage.

- We piggyback off of tons of US carriers, so depending on where you're located, you'll be connected to a different cellular network.

- You can recycle these phones (we have a lot of plans with this in the future).

I'd love to get some feedback from you guys, really respect HN and your opinions.
They're not just collecting metadata.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T
Yep. They're Haswells.
If you keep the phone turned off when you're not making calls and call from random locations in some big city, the GPS location data won't be very useful. For example, "this phone was used to make calls from a few scattered parks in Washington DC" doesn't really help to track down who leaked some item of classified information. Using the phone from your house or workplace even once could be a dead giveaway, so if you're security-conscious enough to want to have an untraceable phone, you would have to use it in the way I described.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T
If leaking information about likely-illegal activities of the government is now treason then we may as well all put on swastikas and be done with it.
Anyone who grew up watching The Prisoner or reading Orwell would know that this level of surveillance enabled by technology was foreseen by other kinds of visionaries...

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

...and Orwell's vision exploited by Steve Jobs for commercial ends :)
I think you're overstating the situation there. My understanding is that FPTP tends to result in a 2 party system, but I have not heard it asserted that it guarantees such. And there are counter-examples listed on the Wikipedia page for Duverger's Law[1], so we know it doesn't always happen.

It's also important to keep in mind what "two party system" really means. In the US, for example, it is not the case that every elected official belongs to one of two parties. There are both independent ("unaffiliated") office-holders (in what would be considered partisan positions) and 3rd party office-holders. The Libertarian Party, for example, usually claims approximately 600 elected officers nationwide (not all in partisan positions however) in average years.

So, net-net, while FPTP is a bad system in many ways, one should not feel that there is no value in voting for 3rd party or unaffiliated candidates in such a system. Under some circumstances they do win, and in other cases they at least affect the outcome, which - in turn - affect the public discourse - and they may impact the Overton window as well.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
Yes, I use them all the time for both personal and work related projects. The use of a mind map really help me to provide structure to my projects.

I have recently started using MindNode and have really enjoyed the ease and flexibility that the solution provides.
I am not sure you realize that UK citizens go to jail if they express unpopular opinions on twitter.
We're committed to this product, not only for our users, but also for ourselves.

We value our privacy HIGHLY, and wouldn't be open to selling out. We'd much rather just close down the company than destroy our core principles.
Linux: can you keep your system under control?
Two bullet points from the site:

- Unlimited talk and text for 30 days.

- 16 hour talk time.

I'm confused. Which is it?
Who cares if it's legal? They just change the laws when the laws get in the way. It is certainly unjust however.
The web site mentions that there will be a way to get phones and SIMs separately, so you could discard the SIM and keep the phone.
Still doesn't deal with the fact I have to give you my address...
Thanks! After 30 days, you can purchase a new SIM chip from us directly if you'd like -- but the existing SIM chip will be completely unusable.

Right now our site only sells the phone + chip together, but we can sell both the hardware phone and SIM chips separately as well (3 day, 7 day, 14 day, and 30 day SIM chips).

Due to our early launch (this is our MVP), we don't have those advertised on the website yet (although, if you email us, we can arrange something).
A lot of them also obtain US Govt security clearances, and it's a bit of a process to obtain and something of an achievement in and of itself.

But the ones I know also take the responsibility seriously, and I can't help but wonder if that influences some of them to spend more time with each other where they don't have to watch what they say, and less with the "outside" world where they have to be a little more on guard.
Consider this from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22811002

I'm of the view that life is too short to worry about whether the FBI is reading my emails

I sure as hell hope he didn't leak anything to the BBC as they have abandoned the notion of protecting their sources!
They've been essentially bypassing the FISA courts since 9/11.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...
Seriously? You're going to make me play this game?

"most of the political decisions that affect my life to be decided on the local or state level before it becomes a federal issue. That's exactly how the US was designed, but that's not the way it is being run now"

MOST... federal... the way it is being run now.

MOST means more than 50%.

And that's complete bunk: it is not the case that 50% of the political decisions made by the federal government that affect your life are unconstitutional.
Anything but cash/bitcoin leaves too much of a trail. Just because you destroy your records doesn't mean your merchant bank does. Nor does it mean my bank will.
Remind me not to ever buy something from you.
True, props to Stallman for joining in, but there was much discussion along these lines at the time in late 2001. Or at least, the certainly was in the UK.
16 hour talk time is the amount of battery life you'll have if you're on the phone for 16 hours nonstop talking.

You get 30 days of unlimited talk / text, so if you talk for more than 16 hours on the phone you'll need to recharge using the charging cord that comes with the phone.

Sorry for the confusion there.
> I'm curious if this could be solved at the federal level via checks and balances provided at the state level. i.e. could a State legislate that it is illegal for candidate for US federal office to make false campaign claims when in that state.

No, states can't enforce laws which would penalize federal officials for how they perform official duties. This is pretty well established Constitutional jurisprudence.
i'd like to think we've gotten past this kind of shit, but my senses tell me we've yet a ways to go.

RIP AT. everthing i've read suggests he was a really nice man.
exactly. A better question would be "How can we operate like this?"
It takes a lot of humility to admit the hotel story. Your team is lucky to have you as their leader.
Lots of things are legal that should be hidden. When the Secretary of State writes a memo to the President about how much of a dick Vladimir Putin is, that's entirely legal... but it's not something that Putin needs to be reading.

That's not the case here, but "if it's legal it should be public" is not always a reasonable standard.
20 years of media demonization?
We're adding bitcoin right now (will be available in the next day).

We launched this early due to press on the subject, which is why it's not as polished as we'd like it to be =/
This could never happen on Android.
FINALLY!

Yes, this is where things need to go, forget the whole political charade and just jump straight to the end game; don't ask for your privacy from an authoritarian state, take it back with cryptography.
The 16 hour talk time is in reference to the battery life of the phone, I'm guessing (the next bullet references 30 days' standby time).