skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I guess anyone with half a brain would hire a really good legal team that would probably arrive at the optimum initial salvo in a lawsuit defense:

* No direct access.

* Never heard of Prism.

* We review each request.

* We want more government transparency.

Edit: Formatted the list.
Webforms hasn't been Microsoft's first-class web development platform for a while. We are a .NET shop and most teams excusively use MVC for all our new web development, which exposes HTML/JS at a very unobstructed level.

Microsoft is moving even further in that direction with Web API, which does largely transform ASP.NET into a "dumb" REST endpoint completely separate from the HTML/JS clientside.
When Your Unpaid Internship Should Be Paid
This just looks like it was crafted from the same template as Mark Zuckerberg's response! Very worrying coming from Page and Zuckerberg, (and I hear other CEOs) like this at the exact same time. I just hope there really isn't a man behind the curtain pulling the strings of such powerful figures in technology today.
He's making the same joke for years now. Not everybody thinks it's still funny though.
What's most likely is that a PR person in companies B, C and D read the first PR piece from company A, deemed it acceptable and followed it with something similar.
Interesting when you change shotSpeed var to 50, only the middle row registers being hit, and when it's 100, none of the invaders register hits.

Pretty fun :}
It's almost as if they all had their lawyers write these statements, who then wrote it in the predictable, stylized, way lawyers do.
"It's like what somebody that's being held hostage would do to make you understand that they can't talk freely."

Assuming it the program is classified, and assuming that Zuckerberg has a security clearance, then under federal law he would potentially be eligible for the death penalty if he were to confirm the existence of the program.
Outlawing is a meaningless gesture if the possibility of enforcement does not exist. They can outlaw seized rights but if they cannot (or do not) enforce their laws then you will remain in possession of your seized rights.

For that matter, this applies even to granted rights. There are plenty of rights that people have that are outlawed by unenforced (and unenforceable laws). Consider for example laws in less enlightened states that specify what sorts of sex two consenting adults are allowed to have. These laws are not enforced, making them little more than monuments to the ignorance of the past.
Facebook: "We do not provide any government organization with direct access"

Google: "the U.S. government does not have direct access"

Apple: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access"

Yahoo: "We do not provide the government with direct access"

The consistency is amazing - do they all use the same law firm?

Something stinks here.
We could go one deeper and consider the possibility that they wanted us to think that they were trying to signal something to us with the similar statements so they would have our goodwill. I feel like Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse.
Whoa, spooky.

First thing I noticed was really the fact that it took these companies so long to put these statements out there, in Mark's case less than an hour ago as of the time of this posting.

Personally, if someone accused my company of giving customer data to the government, and a large segment of my users believed these claims, then I would switch to damage control mode and send a statement out within 6 hours at the most.

Then again, I suppose if you sent out a statement too soon, then people might think that you knew in advance about the leak.

Well, anyway, the weirdness I observed pales in comparison to the odd coincidence you discovered.
> Such Randian nonsense

What I said is my own opinion, didn't come from Rand.

All the supposed refutations of Rand online are laughably ridiculous, including the popular one by Huemer. Until you provide a reasonable one, please don't dismiss people by linking them to Rand. (And please never dismiss ideas by _falsely_ linking them to Rand, as you did in this case.)

As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set tax rates unilaterally.
Groupon was not profitable when they filed for S-1.
It's time you woke up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
The title is not very diplomatic: it suggest that privacy is worth sacrificing human lives. It is, to some extent, but suggesting it out loud is often liable to a "think of the children" knee jerk reaction.
What?

Probably in reference to the labs of an author of a well-known pair of oddly titled chemistry books being raided.
On April 29 I received a notice from admin@nic.io concerning user-generated content that I was to remove from an IO domain "by April 2" (ie a month earlier) - otherwise they would advise the complaintant to contact law enforcement and would suspend the domain "upon receipt of a formal request to do so".
When I attempted to reply, the email address was out of order ("Write error: Broken pipe") and remained so for several days.

It doesn't seem to be the most professionally run domain...
i was joking , my point is there are some data twitter has that could be interesting for any administration.
There was a case here in France where people were making jokes about jews ( "un bon juif"),
Anyway, the french government asked for the ips of the people who made that joke , but Twitter refused to give up user ips.
Someone has already fallen on their sword for that, with more sure to follow. This isn't really a great example of Obama condoning poor behavior by public servants.
I wonder if this could happen anyway in reverse.

I suppose though that whatever part of a NSL that authorizes the CEO to tell developers to make it would likely also authorize the CEO to tell the security guys not to sound alarms about it.. at least not without consulting senior management first.
Previous discussion, with comments of one of the developers:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5480685 (100 points, 66 days ago, 52 coments)
Lawyer-speak tends to be consistent.
Ask HN: Best way to install JS?
The SaaSquatches over at Referral SaaSquatch want to know what the best way is to get a JS library installed.

A bunch of companies like us rely on a javascript library being installed as part of the setup process, for example: KissMetrics, Intercom, MixPanel and Olark to name a few.

How do we make installing the javascript library as easy as possible?

Besides providing a copy-paste snippet, good documentation, and follow up emails, is there anything that we're missing? In your experience, what has made installing a javascript library an enjoyable experience?
That doesn't seem likely to me. If you want to let the truth be known, but you feel so much under the gun that you issue not just a minimum-compliance false statement but a fulsome one under your own name, would you really feel safe contacting a bunch of other Silicon Valley CEOs to co-ordinate such a subtle but intentional secret message?
NSA PRISM and how it affects your 1Password security
Realistically though, can you imagine there being so many CEOs knowing that this thing is going on and being forced to lie about it, and not one of them spilling the beans?

Even if the gov tries to arrest them for leaking classified information, they'd be near-impossible to convict following the inevitable massive public outcry.
Mark and Larry seem to disagree. Someone's not telling the truth.
The term direct access was first used by the Guardian in their original story: "but the Prism program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies' servers." - most of the early denials (where the companies presumably hadn't read the article) didn't include the phrase but the later ones did.

So it's reasonable to suppose that the article was the source of that phrase.
And that, for instance, means that your simulation running on a huge CPU cluster that does not even have a GPU can run interactive graphics on your desktop GPU.

I am not sure whether that still is a big advantage nowadays, as the typical cluster is fast enough to do OpenGL in software, but 20 years or so ago, this was a big issue, as that huge cluster might have been a 4 CPU, 2 GB, 100 MHz machine, if you were lucky.
Santa Monica shooting: two dead
First, thanks for comments.

Now, it's a perfect 404 page (Status 404 with simple message body, the game is injected by JS, so it's not registered by any crawlers.) For a better understanding, things that might not be clear for any direct-linked visitors:

Most of the site's content is about classic computing in one way or the other. Also a main field of activity is in interactive web content (including a tradition in porting classic arcade games to JS). So it did make sense to offer an interactive error page, which is perfectly in tune with the main theme of the site. (So it's a perfect check for any item on the check list in the link referred to above.) Also it was meant as a humorous comment on interactivity, as you may either watch the interfering error being destructed to ruins (where the invaders would represent the site and the tank the user) or you could get even hands-on by "reaching trough" the error and interacting with the site (by shooting at it for being so dumb and lazy and not providing the right document).

Also, the error page isn't exactly new, in fact it is as of March 2012. (Which is still quite fresh, considering that the design of the main pages is as of 1999. Yes, I'm a bit lazy with this. But at least there's a current error page.)

[Edit] Just for info: An extra set of touch controls is injected, if a touch-enabled device is detected (supporting webkit/blink-style events or the ms-pointer-API as used by IE10). – For the benefit of SmartPhone- and tablet-users.
Unless I am mistaken US and most European countries are based on Democracy.
Wikipedia defines Democracy as a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Granted, wikipedia is not the oracle but it gives a good definition in my opinion. Does, the gathering of my personal data, affect my life ? Well in my personal opinion it does, therefore I should be informed about it.
So the gmail access given to government agencies, that allegedly enabled the Chinese to hack it in 2010 - as reported by CNN (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.ha...) was just a figment of Bruce Schneier's imagination?

Or was it just "indirect access", as in via some other company?
I may be naive but I have a theory that government officials will defend anything the government does -- regardless of whether the accusations are true.

The NSA PRISM program may not even exist, however the Obama government may be too incensed with the notion of anybody opposing government's encroachment on privacy and civil liberties, and thusly they're hastily defending and deflecting any accusations of wrong-doing.
Best Github Issue ever
"EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this story was published, The Guardian has reported that the UK intelligence gathering organisation GCHQ has had access to the PRISM system since at least June 2010 and has generated 197 intelligence reports."

So other governments have a backdoor to our government's backdoor... What stops China among others from being able to access this?

On the other hand, what is the truth if Larry Page is saying that Google does not allow 'direct' access but the White House is saying that it does have access? This just looks like a giant finger pointing and blame game now.
I'm seeing a CloudFlare error:

DNS Points to Prohibited IP
You've requested a page on a website (shortcatapp.com) that is on the CloudFlare network. Unfortunately, it is resolving to an IP address that is creating a conflict within CloudFlare's system. If you are the owner of this website, you should login to CloudFlare and change the DNS A records for shortcatapp.com to resolve to a different IP address.

Timestamp: Fri, 07-Jun-13 22:40:20 GMT

Requested URL: shortcatapp.com/0

Error reference number: 1000

Server ID: FL_29F5

Process ID: PID_1370644820.240-1-3281482

Edited to remove my personal info.
You're asking very broad questions with only negative (ie: unprovable) answers. I don't think any company could ever say there is "no" way anybody can every get your search history after you delete it.They don't immediately run out and shred all the hard drives storing your data every time you delete something. Data would always be recoverable with some extreme amount of effort.
> Verizon was given a Patriot Act order for business records, metadata; no names; no content, but all citizens or foreigner.

No, it was a FISA order: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/veri...
As someone who has tried to come up with a lot of product names...

"Shortcat -- killing mice, one at a time."

is just genius. Super-kudos to whoever came up with that.
2013 OpenStreetMap Data Report
We routinely rely on social codes rather than technology to protect our privacy (as well as our property and lives). There's nothing physically preventing my building super from using her key to go into my apartment and look through or steal all my stuff, but I'd be upset if it happened. What's more, 99.9% of Google's users are in no position to evaluate the cryptographic security, or lack thereof, of their documents. Finally, Google has actually said no humans read your email, in response to that Microsoft campaign. So no, hypothetical you wouldn't be stupid, and you are wrong to imply that the millions of Google users who would have a problem with those things are being stupid now. Making a series of decisions that we will at some point regret, perhaps, but your condescension is unwarranted.
Telco is a commodity. You want to raise as much money as possible and you want to drive your margins down as it makes competition impossible.
The art of taking notes 30 years before OneNote and EverNote
If the NSA was MITMing SSL communications on a wide scale, presumably the companies would notice that the cert fingerprints were not what the companies expected.
Something fishy is going on... the same message, same exact words being used.

I'm thinking all these companies are legally being forced to give up data and provide direct access to some kind of third party company, which in turn works with the NSA.

It's pretty clear Google, facebook, apple, etc. can't just come out and say they're doing this. They're choosing their words very carefully.
Satellite Finder | 3D Satellite Lookup
Isn't a possibility just that they are using the same PR template, or that one looked at the other as they were responding? They are remarkably similar, but if you were the PR person at a company isn't that exactly what you would say as well?
In the last three months i have recieved 2 bomb scare emails and now this one:

There have been reports of a shooter on the main SMC campus. The college is on lock-down. This means that if you are on campus, stay out of open spaces, stay in doors, lock all doors and do not open the doors until you receive an all clear from college officials.

If you are off campus, do NOt come to campus.

Thank you for your cooperation!
If read the right way the responses could still allow for direct access to all their users data through a special API. Direct access to the server itself isn't necessary to get at all the data at will.
How do they disagree? They have access when they get a lawful order from a court. Obama confirmed the same:

"Now, with respect to the Internet and emails [...], the FISA Court has to authorize it." [1]

1. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/06/07/transcript-what-oba...
Because the metadata is information that the phone company has to know in order to provide you the service and to bill you for it, and therefore cannot be information in which the parties to the conversation have an expectation of privacy.

This doesn't follow. If you are suing/being sued, your lawyer needs to know everything about your case to mount a proper offense/defense, but you still have an expectation of privacy. Similarly, your doctor needs to know everything about your medical history in order to treat you, yet you have an expectation of privacy there as well.
They wouldn’t do that, obviously, even if it was actually feasible. That kind of MITM would be easily detectable (though still effective, in short term)—we know when the Chinese do it.

However the private keys have to deployed, on scale. So if as someone here is suggesting the NSA has infiltrated those companies, they could have got those keys and just decrypt the stream.

I wouldn’t bet my money on that… but it’s more likely than breaking the encryption, and if they can get military secrets, I guess they could get the keys.

Also those companies could have just volunteered them—that’s where the emphasis on ‘direct’ access comes in.
direct messages are private.
Being able to define new shortcuts in real time is awesome, but half the battle. Helping me learn the shortcuts that are already there is the other half.

Can you guys add a feature that flashes on the screen the keyboard shortcut that already exist for an action performed via the mouse?

Even better if you can add a threshold for an action. For a trivial example, imagine just going to the edit menu and choosing cut/paste/copy. If I perform that action more often than once every 10 minutes, shortcat would flash a fairly large overlay on my screen showing me that shortcut. You could even make this progressive. First teach me any shortcuts for any action performed every 5 minutes for a particular application. Once I learn all those actions, expand the threshold one minute at a time until I learn a new action. Once I consistently perform those actions within the threshold via the keyboard, further increase the threshold until I learn all the commands.

How much do you plan on charging?
The key issue here is that Google and the other companies may have no idea this is going on. My read is that the NSA has managed to gain access to the data centers either through inside help, spy craft, hardware/router back doors, or some other means we have no idea about.
Screenshot would be helpful. And juicy.
PRISM Confirmed by gov & Denied by companies - and we do what?
I understand the outrage brought on by this reveal (most coders I've talked to have assumed this has existed before it was confirmed).

My question for everyone here is simple...what will you do now that PRISM is confirmed.

What I've done...nothing different...still using google, typing this on windows, and playing a youtube video in the background.
Interesting, well I'm just glad this is all hitting the mainstream as it is... I think the community here had been well aware of the lack of privacy in most online services.
GitHub Principles for Awesome
I didn't say MITM. I said redirecting/copying traffic to spy on it.
Yet the fact that you do or do not call your wife when you're out of town speaks volumes about the strength and nature of your relationship, information which could be used against you if in the wrong hands.
The really sad thing I thought when I clicked the link was that over 100k people liked that post.
The Washington Post Has Now Hedged Its Claims About PRISM
Of course it's weaseling. Maybe they disclosed such information on a slightly lesser scale. That passage doesn't say.

They all said stuff about "direct access", without discussing what would and wouldn't qualify as "indirect". They didn't deny doing all kinds of different access that could be called indirect in some way.
What a steaming pile of arse.
Aye, though the same code later appears in Go.
Probably limited to webrtc datachannel only, but as a developer, you could add in a JS OTR implementation - https://github.com/arlolra/otr
We have AFAICS.

Resort to that and fight back from there.
I don't know if you know this, but we all have access to facebook data. Not much of it is private
Other relevant links:

https://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/CALEAII-techreport.pdf
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/the_problems_w...
http://sporadicdispatches.blogspot.com/2013/06/webrtc-securi...
أرخص إستضافة مواقع
افضل استضافة , افضل هوست
أفضل وأعلى وارخص إستضافة مواقع ، إستضافة ووردبريس ، إستضافة منتديات إستضافة جوملا ، إستضافة Reseller ، إستضافة VPS ، سيرفرات خاصة Dedicated Servers مساحة وترافيك غير محدود .. واحصل على كوبون خصم
أفضل وأعلى وارخص إستضافة مواقع ، إستضافة ووردبريس ، إستضافة منتديات إستضافة جوملا ، إستضافة Reseller ، إستضافة VPS ، سيرفرات خاصة Dedicated Servers مساحة وترافيك غير محدود .. واحصل على كوبون خصم
I agree, and this is the exact same reason why 9/11 conspiracy theorists have such a weak argument: of the 535 representatives in Congress, NOT ONE spoke up and said it was an inside job? Or any of their interns, assistants, etc.
Possibly no direct access because the NSA has copies of Facebook, Google and Apple SSL private keys? Just sniffing the backbone...
We didn't have a federated system, we had a bunch of silos to which we would connect to. The advantage of a federated system is that you use your system to interact with others' data, so the experience is consistent to you†. The server to server protocols are domain specific (unlike HTML), so it's much harder to deviate from the standard without breaking the connections.

In the end what you're advocating for is governance, but I disagree that it must be enforced top-down; shared consensus works in irrigation systems in Nepal, and it works in online systems as well.

† Mostly, but then again, Github isn't perfect either. Some repos don't have READMEs, some don't accept pull requests (e.g., torvalds/linux), many depend on various build tools
If moles are involved, they might have simply leaked the private SSL keys. If used together with MITM this would be almost impossible to catch.
It predates IMAP, which should say everything.
Root certs don't let you decrypt content encrypted with a descending cert. They just let you issue new certs that'll be considered valid. So, a MITM could send a client a compromised cert in the hopes that the client will encrypt content with it (after accepting it as valid due to it validating up the cert chain to root), but Chrome's certificate pinning is specifically designed to detect this class of attack - it is how the compromised Turkcert certs were discovered.

Even if you hold the root certs and can issue attack certs that validate up the cert chain, you can't MITM a cert-pinned client. In order to attack a cert-pinned site, the NSA would have to inject their own certs into Chrome's cert store, or have Google's private cert keys. Either would require compliance from Google.
Here in the USA, we can trust our government not to do the right thing.
Actually it wouldn't let authorities simply read emails transmitted to a server under the suspect's control (assuming no intermediary copies are kept by a man-in-the-middle type of scenario).

Whether people like it or not, rayiner is right on target with what the law says about privacy rights. It isn't that emails can be read because a law was passed to strip their privacy, emails can be read because a law hasn't been passed to strength privacy controls on email.

The same issue occurred with telephones, beepers, cell phones, and more. They were considered fair game in many scenarios until specific laws were passed to make tapping them illegal and require warrants/wiretaps.
Nice try, Eric ;)
Doubt they would be formatted w/ the same structure into four paragraphs, in the same order, with the same exact wording for the important phrases and points, and nothing but phrasing changed for the general talk. Perhaps you do, but I don't believe these two letters, as they are, could have been arrived at independently. I had assumed 99% of people would agree with me. Do most of you feel the same way as drhayes9?
They're generally associated with fraudulent orders in a lot of markets. They're easy to get and hard to trace, and limit the liability of the person doing it. I've heard that they're common to use for buying resealable goods to launder smaller amounts of money.