skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>Ease the author's discomfort, more like.

I wouldn't be so cynical, but I agree with

>chances are that your subconscious is telling you to leave them the hell alone

The funny thing is, what is really happening is that it is hard to differentiate between reality (where there is no real evidence that strangers want to be comforted by us, and 9/10 times if you say "are you ok" and they will sniff and say "yes" then go on crying) and the feel-good stories we read about where a brave soul breaks through stifling conventions to reach out to another human being in need.

Which is ironic given that the author is complaining about how technology stops us connecting from one another, while the original technology that started this trend was the written word:

>So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it is called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being men—men with a real individual body and blood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write more from "Underground."
"I'd like to do something but it's too difficult to avoid using cloud services."

In Cloud We Trust, eh?

Oh dear. The fact that this is edging ahead is a worry indeed. This presumes a significant number of people (in a reasonably tech-savvy crowd) decided to build their infrastructure on VMs vs. proper iron (hired or otherwise).

I hate to sound like a broken record, but Stallman was right.

From 2008 :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.compu...

"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is
that you lose control," he said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary
program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of
a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or
somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the
hands of whoever developed that software."

I'm not above absolved though. I use Gmail too.
Rand Paul, killing it again.
The NSA slides are highly damaging to American service providers, thus they are trying to be as forceful as possible in these statements. There are already European government officials calling for the discontinuation of American services and for the development of European alternatives. Making the matter worse is American official's arrogant short-sighted reassurances that the surveillance is for foreigners only. As the NSA called it "our home-field advantage", that these dominant global Internet companies are located here, could quickly be lost thanks to the hubris of our government.
I agree with I think this entire post, strongly, but would still like someone to explain how it's appropriate for HN; it reads like a top-tier /r/politics post.
I plan on setting up a cloud system using BitTorrent Sync, Owncloud, and a Raspberry Pi. There's a great article on it, if you're interested. [1]

[1] http://blog.bittorrent.com/2013/05/23/how-i-created-my-own-p...;
So just say "Julian Assange claimed Wikileaks decrypted the video".
I was mostly surprised by that the official response was "fuck the Constitution" rather than denying that the monitoring was happening.
If anyone wants to delve more into the workings of a JS VM, I've found the code of Higgs (https://github.com/maximecb/Higgs) to be very straightforward and readable. The interpreter and JIT are written in D and much of the run-time is written in JS. It's a successor to the Tachyon project mentioned in that post.
Here's the TED talk ("censored" from TED) A TED Talk on Income Inequality by Nick Hanauer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIhOXCgSunc
Indeed, under informed observers whipping a conspiracy theory frenzy because they don't understand technical details that contradict their theories.
"A random guy with some money and no particular qualifications to address economic theory, addresses economic theory"
No doubt it is our freedom to be decadent. /s
It's an irrelevant remark from somebody who didn't read the article properly.

Downvoting:

- reduces the prominence of low quality content

- encourages posters to avoid posting low quality content
It's like we're devolving back to Slashdot circa 1999. In reality, the Windows kernel is one of the most heavily audited carefully inspected codebases in the world, not because Microsoft spends a cubic fuckton of money getting external firms to do that (though they do), but because every vulnerability research firm in the world has reverse engineered the code --- which Microsoft tends to make very easy, for instance by publishing symbols.

The likelihood that Microsoft is shipping block-level encryption with secret backdoors is pretty close to zero.
Amazon.In - Beating Protectionism By Jugaad
In the same way that it’s a fact that the sun, not earth is the center of the solar system, it’s also a fact that the middle class, not rich business people like me are the center of America’s economy

I think the author is slightly overestimating the extent to which he understands economics. No doubt the author has some very sound data to support this thesis, although he has chosen to support it with anecdotes and incorrect economics instead.

For instance, he complains about the 39% top marginal rate on middle-class, ordinary Americans. Now, it is an actual fact that people who make this top marginal rate are not "middle class" by many common definitions. In his imaginary pro-worker universe which he incorrectly labels "Keynesian", that rate would also be a lot higher.
Is Tecno Phones Taking Over Mobile Phone Market In Nigeria?
I think we qualify under the last two criteria ;-) unfortunately our GCSB get's lots of help from our big brother across the lake. We actually had our own wee 'Oh noes they are spying on our local citizens' scandal the other day.. the response of which was for the government to pass legislation making it retroactively legal. Yay.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1305/S00043/gordon-campbell...
Definitely, I'm on the lookout for any kind of service that operates in a country with transparent law enforcement and accountability.

I trust Google not to share my sensitive information (product strategies, negotiating positions) with competitors on request, I can't trust some random agent who knows he won't be held accountable if he looks up and sends that information to his cousin.

There's the potential here to 'disrupt' the whole of silicon valley.
I think this is fairly complex rather than a simple uniform transition, and interacts with culture in a way that varies a lot by region.

What the author seems to describe with dismay as being caused by smartphones has been pretty much normal in Scandinavia since long before smartphones. It's considered polite to pretend not to notice things like someone crying on a park bench, if they aren't someone you know. It's also (with some exceptions) considered weird and intrusive to strike up conversations with strangers, and instead you're supposed to be absorbed in your own thoughts, or book, or newspaper—or yes, nowadays, smartphone—unless you're out with friends or family you already know [1]. An exception is if you are at a bar and drunk. Of course, the norms are different in, say, Greece, and different again in Japan.

[1] One blogger refers to this as the Privacy In Public Act http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/how-to-piss-off-a-dane
I wrote an open source face recognition demo here for Google Glass if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aeMJY1AO0
https://github.com/lnanek/MedRefGlass

It doesn't use lambda labs since they weren't out yet, but it is just as easy to use other APIs anyway.
1. A small group of people violate the privacy of people everywhere around the world.

2. Another, even smaller group of people violate the privacy of the above group.

3. The first group says, "Hey, trust us. It's for your own good", and then promptly hunts down the second group for being dirty-stinking-traitor-terrorist criminals.

4. Profit?
"nothing to hide -> nothing to fear" is a misdirection. It gets the enemy to waste time arguing against something that is obvioulsy stupid.
Rdio is 503ing
I still can't get past 'yahoo.tumblr.com'

Seems like a paradox. Mind blown.

Something about this feels like it carries more weight, probably because it comes from the legal department and not from a CEO.
The NSAKEY entry was actually recently posted here...
I don't care about whether a given company "volunteers information" (or has it compelled), or whether it's via "lawful means" (which means, we got a secret court order or an NSL for everyone). What I want to know is, of the N users you serve in Country X, how many have had information turned over to a third party?

If you qualify it as "any third party", I really doubt the proscriptions over disclosing specific FISC or NSL orders apply. They do receive orders to turn over information for all sorts of reasons, some of which are totally legitimate.

Unless the number is "100%".
Internet browsing is the ultimate retreat because it provides an infinite stream of novelty. Having that an unconscious reach away at all times is so potent. Indeed a completely different class to something like a video game which is both contained and usually has diminishing returns in extracting its novelty.
Roon - the easiest way to blog
Is that the entire bill?

Seems extremely narrow-scoped and with no terms defined. IIRC, the ongoing spying is not even warrantless - they're operating under a broad-scope warrant issued by FISC, so this bill would do absolutely nothing.
Ask Michael Scheuer:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgj08e_michael-scheuer-on-b...
Communism is revolutionary socialism that seeks to break the system from the exterior rather than fix from the interior as your standard socialism would.

Communism has the utter breaking of current society as the only method to obtaining true communism and thus is not as far from being terrorist activity as one might think.
Location Aware Group Messaging meets Ustream meets mobility and anonymity
I find it unlikely (though I have no Latin training beyond high school). That "dicendum" isn't appearing by itself; it's part of a syntactic construction, the horribly named 'passive periphrastic' with "est".

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/latinlearning/qt/passivep...

As that page notes, it's the same construction as in "Carthago delenda est [Carthage must be destroyed]".
One fundamental problem with the "nothing to hide" argument is that it makes several casual assumptions which should not be made. An alternate formulation of the saying is "why fear the truth if you have done nothing wrong", which is generally the sentiment of the "nothing to hide" sayings as well. However, the proper form of that saying should be "why fear the truth if you have done nothing the government dislikes". And this is on a much different stance than the others. The issue is not right or wrong, the government is not an absolute arbiter of morality, the issue is government power.

Consider how often and how recently in our own history there have been activities which have been illegal and yet not "morally wrong" as considered today. Aiding escaped slaves. Homosexuality. Inter-racial marriage. Abortion. And so forth.

Also note how I said "nothing the government dislikes" rather than "nothing illegal". And that's because when a government has broad sweeping powers, especially of surveillance, government agents can easily punish people and ruin people's lives regardless of whether their activities are illegal.

Our system of governance has been designed at its core to limit the powers of government. This is very much intentional because it is designed to allow government to enforce the laws only with the cooperation with the public at large. A government that can enforce laws independent of the will of the people is a government poised for the transition to tyranny.

There is a reason why the term "police state" is so reviled even though in itself it contains merely mechanical descriptions. And that is because even if a "benign police state" could exist the danger is far too great that the reins of power would be usurped by those seeking their own ends and their own advantages. And the most forceful way to avoid such a catastrophe is again to limit the power of the state.
Star Wars: Episode VII (2015)
For brainstorming, try: http://namegen.gorillacoke.com&#x2F;
It is, actually. Do you really think it's a coincidence that these guys set up shop in some of the most religiously oppressive places in the world?
One of the more interesting points I heard David Brin make a while back was - forget the quantity of money for a moment, these organizations also absorb power through membership numbers.

The NRA has 5 million voters with membership cards and it throws their political weight around at the drop of a hat. As a result, nobody fucks with the NRA, even seasoned politicians in stable left-wing postures compromise left and right so it won't smear them as anti-gun. When pressed, the NRA can even defeat things like universal background checks that are supported by 90% of the country.

A 12-month 'Silicon' membership with the EFF costs $25; Maybe they can't sustain & expand legal operations on this, but they can certainly incrementally add to the political power of their lobbying and amicus briefs just by having the member.
Despite Tax Rules, Companies Stick With U.S.
On a Mac:

Get up to very most recent OS X. A dot release in OS X disabled Firewire while the machine was sleeping, which is important because Firewire is basically a thin veneer around direct DMA access to system memory.

Enable FileVault. Unlike the feature that used to be called FileVault, modern FileVault is block-level AES-XTS encryption. (Before FileVault, my recommendation would have been to buy PGP WDE).

Tell the system to forget its key during sleep; the most recent rubber chicken to wave for this appears to be "sudo pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1 hibernatemode 25".

Power down your machine whenever you can; don't just shut the lid.

Buy Knox.app from AgileBits, which is a nice UI on top of the VFS-level block AES encryption OS X does. Create virtual disk drives for each of your clients, or each of your projects, or whatever. Create another for your mail; create another for personal documents. Give each a separate key (you'll rarely have all of them unlocked or need to use all of them). Do not store the keys in the Keychain.

Copy ~/Library/Mail's contents to the virtual disk you made for Mail and then replace ~/Library/Mail with a link to that disk; now, you'll need to have that virtual disk unlocked to read your mail.

Disable sharing; make sure every box in "Sharing" under Preferences is unchecked.

Enable the firewall and block all incoming connections; Preferences->Security->Firewall, Enable, Options->Block All Incoming Connections.

Get GPGTools and GPGMail (the most recent official build supports Mt. Lion nicely). Install them, and use GPG, from your Mac only, to send mail.

Do not supply your GPG private key to any service, ever.

Uninstall Dropbox. Sorry. Dropbox is fantastic. We ban it wholesale.

Though we can't use it for a variety of contractual reasons, I highly recommend Colin Percival's Tarsnap for backup.
Ask HN: What does "direct access" mean?
I have seen the complete and comprehensive looking statements by companies indicating that they do not allow "direct access" etc. On the other hand, looking at the Guardian's slide[0], I see the line "Collection directly from these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple."

Admittedly, I'm confused. Why would the NSA claim direct collection, while companies reiterate no "direct access"? What's going on there?

I can think of a few ways to deal with this:

a) Google/FB/Yahoo are unaware at top levels (Larry, Matt Cutts, whoever) of the information they expose, presumably due to a gag order or other legal mechanism on those actually facilitating the exposure.

b) G/F/Y are aware at top levels, but consider collection indirect, or not vast, and the NSA PowerPoint creator does not share the same definition. For instance, perhaps G/F/Y consider access "indirect" because it complies with a court order which has been reviewed, or because selected data has been quarantined in a separate server.

c) The terms "direct access" and "collecting directly" mean the same thing, but NSA PowerPoint is false, or constructed by someone who doesn't understand the program.

-----

I would like to limit the discussion in this thread specifically to reconciling these two claims. Discussion about the extent and value of surveillance are worthwhile, but best done elsewhere.

[0]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server-collection-facebook-google
> The officials would not disclose the names of the companies because, they said, doing so would provide U.S. enemies with a list of companies to avoid.

I too would like to avoid these companies.
Someone's "decadence" is much easier to ignore if they don't keep bombing your villages and cities.
People have spent the time writing it, but it's still too buggy to be deployed. Somehow, it even has a tendency to actually corrupt the SD card. I'm not a GPU driver developer, so take this all with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that X is harder to support because it is such an unwieldy behemoth. Not only do you have to write kernel modules, but you have to write a user-space driver for X (known as a Device Dependent X or DDX driver).

With Wayland, the entire concept of a DDX driver disappears. There is a compositor backend that knows how to talk to the appropriate kernel module, and everything is happy. It's probably this reduced complexity that has made it so much easier to develop an accelerated user interface with Wayland than X.
Until they ignore it, just like they ignored the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Or, in a secret legal opinion, construe "phone records" to not include mere metadata about whom called whom from where for how long.

You can't get around the need to identify the people attempting to circumvent the very explicit restrictions placed upon them and exclude them from the levers of power.
Ask HN: Which VPN service do you trust to have your back?
The 20M project could well be a number of things not involving the companies direct participation

* An interface to fuse data received by court order from each site.

* A scraping tool to pull in open source data, possibly with seed accounts (i.e., a facebook account for each university) to give you better access.

* Scraping data on the wire to and from each service, at the level of the internet backbone
Sincere question: was it not common knowledge that these companies would hand over user data if compelled to do so by the government? What exactly is new about this revelation?
> "What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you're likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you've done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts?"

That's a lot of ifs. I don't think it really has anything to do about privacy issues. Privacy issues created those "ifs". That's a paranoid state, not a state of law and rights. Those are issues created by society unable to sort its things. I doubt a government can really forbid things based on information, and if so, it already existed before.

Of privacy issues make things worse, but those issues were the mix of a digital age and terrorism. Nobody can escape the fact congress will vote laws and agencies will want to work on things.
Don't use "EphemeralChef"; nobody knows what "ephemeral" means.

It seems very unlikely that you'll get "PopChef.com".

"Sublettable.com" sounds like a real estate site.

The heat death of the universe will happen before you get Kettle.com, which is also a major US consumer brand.
Yes, the entire rulemaking part.

It's true the Verizon spying had a secret-court FISA warrant, but was that warrant required to have "probable cause"?
Didn't Bin Laden also supposedly say that he was against the US because of the lack of action taken on global warming?
| they need to admit that these reports are true

Assume for a moment that the reports aren't true, or are exaggerated. Are they supposed to lie to you in a way the hurts them just to appease you?
How have you convinced your contacts to use PGP and OTR to talk to you? I've always been interested in using these, but then I would never be able to talk to anyone.
Probably nobody.

The most likely explanation is that PRISM = FISA. The Washington Post article with the slides begins "Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)..."

Now imagine how this works in practice. The FBI (not NSA, other articles have stated that the NSA works by handing a request off to the FBI to implement on domestic soil) comes to a tech company with a signed court order to hand over the user data for a user suspected of criminal actions. The tech company complies. The data is normalized and assembled on the NSA end, and then a realtime feed goes to the PRISM GUI where an analyst looks it over. At no point does the government ever reveal the name "PRISM" to the tech company - why would the NSA ever reveal top-secret codenames outside of the organization.

When the program is made public, it's the NSA side of the story that hits the papers. The tech companies have never heard of PRISM, they know that the NSA does not have boxes inside their datacenters, and the whole accusation seems ludicrous.

It's a mistake, when you find out that a secret has been kept from you, to assume that other people know about the secret as well, even if they were involved. The NSA is not in the business of telling businesses about confidential national security projects.
It's not about the problem going away or not. Saving a life also increases cost, especially if the life you are saving is non productive (ie require food)

Fact is, there will always be people dying on earth. It's sad. But why bother?

Sending the human race to another planet, then maybe another galaxy, are long term projects, and it makes sense to care about that however.

If it only required the sacrifice of 5,000 children, that would be a very cheap price to pay. It will certainly cost (as in opportunity costs - how the money could be used in different ways) many more lives.

Yet you know what? It's a great deal. If we lose our only current planet, all of humanity goes down, including any possible future "children" one may imagine.

How many people do you expect will have existed in 10,000 years from now (humanity is much older than that!), given our current population? (let's say no grow)? Round that to 5 billion per 100 year with an greatly overestimated lifespan of 100 years to ease our calculations. We have a lowball estimate of (10,000/100)*5b = 5 000 billion

It would be quite a bargain to sacrifice a total of 5 billion to ensure a living of the 5 000 billion future humans that will exist... hell, even a 100 billion!!

So yes, children are dying, it's sad, and your use of "saying that to the mothers" is a call to use sentimentalisms to obscure the facts.

Yet the facts remain : having more than one habitable planet is a necessity to protect the continuous possibility of a thriving human race, in case of major disasters (at mass-extinction level).