skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Most importantly, if they can crack and get the information they most likely can't use it unless there is an imminent and grave danger to the government's ability to stay in power. Because then using it would reveal their abilities.

Now there is a system that can be used for example. That system is once NSA identifies the list of suspects they forward that record to a another agency (FBI?) who then is in charge of finding other evidence, which could have plausibly be found anyway, and prosecute based on that. They can never release the initial reason why they got "interested" in someone as that might reveal the abilities of the NSA.
FISA does not trump the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, this controversy is about tracking the location of Americans in America, which is beyond the purview of FISA.
A dev’s guide to safely escaping and encoding URLs
Testing Meteor Apps with Laika
Presidents, Privacy, and Panties: Obama's Defense
You Won't Finish This Article
If you don't want Google giving your data to the FBI, then don't use google. Oh - wait - Google is gonna get your data no matter what. Google Analytics.
What is civil liberty? Whats wrong with the economy? Meh. What's my tax break? Welcome to New Zealand.
"Direct access" is the specific accusation that has been leveled at them. For example, the Guardian is using the headline "NSA has direct access to tech giants' systems for user data, secret files reveal" on their front page, and the phrase "direct access" is used three times in their story. [1]

I think that everybody assumes that they already comply with court orders for information from individual accounts. The direct access is what is new and shocking.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n...
"It's not a backdoor, it's for debugging!"
maybe they should attack the perpetrators instead??
Considering the scope of the domestic monitoring, the definition of adversaries is disturbingly close to ordinary citizens.
Even if we could trust google to fight for our interest, we may not be able to trust our governments to do the right thing.
An amazing deep-field view of Centaurus A by an Amateur Astrophotographer
I don't think we should extrapolate the N.S.A.'s true data collection policies based on one man's uncomfortability..
Did I sleep in the day we actually made that decision? Because from where I'm standing it looks like the government made that decision for us, without telling us about it.

Had we been asked to participate in the decision somehow, armed with a bit of the 'transparency' this government keeps talking about, we might have weighed the evidence and democratically chosen the exact same course of action - although I'm not 100% sure of that. But none of us were asked.
How likely is the NSA PRISM program to catch a terrorist?
Who cares? Would you purchase a different product based on their racial makeup? Are you looking for the gender balance? Are you concerned about the sex appeal of their CFO?
If it helps, I can assure you personally that it will. Roots is being aggressively developed right now and is already in use for several high-visibility projects at the company I work at full time.

If anything, in a couple years roots will have expanded quite a good amount and, based on my current plans for the future, it will ship with a compiler that several orders of magnitude faster, be quite a bit more flexible with more languages and templates, be coupled with an optional cheap and efficient static hosting service with post-deploy compile hooks, and have a well-developed dynamic CMS that it can be paired with.
I feel that when you have 1600 employees, you're not that scrappy or nimble. It's not like David or Goliath anymore.
Admit to colluding with NSA is illegal - you could go to jail for revealing the truth.
The Future of Fingerposts
hash indexes tend to have really terrible write performance because the locations of the writes on disk are random. lsm trees have way better write performance.
Ooooh - http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/2013/slides/big_graph_nsa_rd_2013...
I'd like to point out that a good plumber can make almost as much as a web developer. I know a plumber who makes $90k. People gladly pay premium money for a good plumber for the same reason they will pay for a good developer: the costs and headache they save by making sure the job is done right are well worth a high upfront cost.
Full res images here: http://rolfolsenastrophotography.smugmug.com/Astrophotograph...
Why is deep integration important? (serious question, I'm not sure). I like Heroku before, I still like Heroku. I'm glad that the website tells me nothing about Saleforce and doesn't require me to make a Salesforce login. As you say integration causes all sorts of headaches and integration does little to improve the business model beyond brand recognition (which is why I'm assuming they do the slight logos changes). Whats the benefit of fully integrating a already successful and recognized platform?
So is this the real issue? Should there be an investigation on whether or not it's acceptable to issue gag-orders so leniently?
You realize insurance companies make the most money by selling policies that never get exercised, right?
Then he did not do enough. Step up as an American, sir.
Zoho has so-so products, but at least their founder has the right philosophy to invest in R&D, to focus on organic growth and to take care of their products, employees & customers vs. Benioff's failed M&A strategy, which is done to sustain more and more expensive growth and their sky high valuation multiples.

Have you ever used Salesforce as a product?

I tried it and cancelled within a week; it's super-clunky & complicated. He's got great marketing, but the product is crap.

Dismissing Zoho's points based on the author's tone is a bit shortsighted don't you think?

Benioff's headcount is ludicrous when you compare the # of staff he has to 37signals on any reasonable metric ($ of sales per employee across any business function).
http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/2013/slides/big_graph_nsa_rd_2013...
NYT: Senior Govt Official Confirms PRISM Data-Collection Program
Yes, I got hired via "Who's Hiring" and I've hired an intern through it. A positive experience indeed.
Oh OK Google "tries" to resist FBI requests, but how about requests from the NSA? Top secret:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/217550/google_watchdog_white_...
Does anyone know how much the Gov't agencies pay for this data?

I'm guessing here, but it seems logical. There must be some kind of economic benefit for Facebook, Google, AT&T, Verizon, etc. to save and provide this data. Perhaps they even help organize it for the "requesting entities".
> It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States.

"Intentionally" is a weasel word. Clapper also used the word "wittingly", another weasel word, when questioned by Congress.

The takeaway: They still don't deny that they're collecting the info.
Really interesting idea. I wonder how many HFTs are trying to research the possibility of building their own
Companies like Google, FB, Tweeter even Amazon and Opera are intentionally built to collect, mine and analyze, then sell (or profit from) its user's data. This is just a standard way of making money - collect a huge dataset of user-generated data and then monetize it.

No wonder that authorities will use the data, because, well, it is just business as usual.)
Im interested in how long these treasures will last now that they are on dry land. War, greed, weather. Will they last another 1200 years? Why excavate them? I'm thinking Indiana Jones, not responsible archaeology.
Theres quite a bit you can miss when initially deciding on a product. Perhaps knowing the developers on the team would make a long-term decision on the product easier. For example I'm sure it helps 37signals to employer the creator of Rails.
I'm reimplementing Go-style channels in Python, including multiplexing:

https://github.com/stuglaser/pychan
That proof is very confused.

The ability to detect duplication in no way proves the files are unencrypted (indeed this should be obvious from the fact that there is only negligible network traffic to confirm a duplicate! The bits can't be compared if they're not transmitted.)

It's the ability to serve deduplicated files that brings the service into question. Yet I wouldn't be surprised if there exists an asymmetric encryption method which permits decryption with one of several private keys – if so, secure deduplication is trivial: confirm the duplicate using a hash or comparing public-key encrypted versions; re-encrypt using both original and duplicate keys.

(And let's not even forget the ability to reset a forgotten password…)
Boston Founders: Does this seem offensive to you? Or are people just busy?
So I'm moving down to Cambridge in a few days, initially to participate in the Startup Institute [http://boston.startupinstitute.com/] and subsequently to [hopefully] start building something of my own. In advance of the course, I thought it might be prudent to reach out to a handful (10) of local startups that piqued my interest to see if any might be willing to let me do a tour. I was surprised when out of the 10, only 2 replied (after 2 days I even tried pinging a reminder via twitter...but no response), and of the two, only 1 was willing to accommodate the request.

So my question is two-fold: Did I say something wrong in the message below? And regardless, if anyone in the area would be cool with providing a quick tour of their startup next week, I would love to hear from you!!! You can reach me via colin at charliesfreewheels dot ca

The original e-mail I sent to the ten startups is at http://i.imgur.com/XNicms4.png
Bradley Manning is a goddamn hero.
Baltimore, MD; Reston, VA; - Videology - FULL TIME, INTERN (H1B maybe if already in US)

Videology Group - http://www.videologygroup.com/

Internet advertising startup looking primarily for server-side Java developers (if your Java is rusty but you're good, drop us a note anyway). I was working for a start-up called LucidMedia Networks (hence the "lmn" in the e-mail address below), which got acquired by Videology. The Baltimore office is a .NET shop, but the Reston office is Java on *nix (Mac for dev, Linux in production, and no plans to use Microsoft anything). Our stack is Java on Spring with MySQL and some NoSQL stores on AWS. We have some big projects in the works involving big data and volume as we scale globally and across mediums (video, mobile, etc.). Currently, our Reston platform alone handles 4 billion requests a day.

Contact me directly at sahil_lmn@yahoo.com.

I actually got hired through a HN "Who is Hiring" thread, and I hired an intern through these threads. These things do work!
From perl to ruby, first it was annoying. Now it is annoying and slow. Great!
I am not defending the program. But doesn't the program only collect data when there is a 51% percent confidence or greater that the source is foreign?

That's a bit slippery, but could be an explanation for his statement.
Everything on HN front page is about the NSA
I know it's an extremely important situation but doesn't anyone else feel that it is a bit much for the story to take over the entire front page? I completely understand that there is a greatness in sharing different viewpoints on such a big story but again, 20 just seems like too much.
"Hypothetical": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foiled_Islamic_terroris...

And those are the ones we know about, Obama doesn't spike the ball on that stuff quite like Bush did.

And if you think there wouldn't be global ramifications for blowing up the New York City subway line you're not thinking clearly.
Furthermore it seems apple fb google etc leapt at the chance to loudly deny using white listed talking points, knowing full well that the story was unfolding. They want the public to know they are gagged.
You can dismiss any discussion now about collecting "metadata", as it's just a distraction. Cat is out of the bag that they're also collecting everything, just under a different name.
It's pointless giving start-ups money if they don't know what to do with it
OP is talking about the completeness-type of optimization, whereas you're talking about the effectiveness-type of optimization; OP touches upon this:

> "This is great, but only if the business [in your case, library] is already working."
Why Entrepreneurs are Bad Mountain Climbers?
> and for that, let’s give credit where it is due: it is not Benioff, it is Bernanke.

[applause]

The only caveat I'd add: Japan has shown that monetary policy can stay bad for a looong time. While I personally think Zoho's chosen path is certainly more solid, monetary stupidity can last a lot longer than anyone believes it should.
My guess? These companies setup the data-equivalent of the CIA 'black sites' ... Out of the country duplicate databases that the NSA has access to beyond the laws of this nation.

Watch this video and listen how many times 'in the United States' is mentioned.
Julian Assange has said a lot of times that he doesn't like to edit the leaks in general because it is a slippery slope. Many times they do it to prevent dishonest attacks from people regarding some information, stealing impact from the more relevant worthwhile information of the leaks. I agree that the edited version of the collateral murder video was unfortunate but it hardly changed the substance of the video: collateral murder. The changes were minimal, specially if you take into account the impact that the video had. You're giving too much weight to the editorialization of that video, which amounts to nearly nothing in context of subsequent (and previous) leaks from wikileaks. To top it all off, there is not other news organization at the same level of wikileaks in this stuff (I wish there were tho) so for now we're stuck with them, and they are more than good at what they do.
I guess the authors point was that it since there isn't a deep integration, it doesn't provide value to Salesforce.com users. The question is, why should it if they're not the target customer?

Specially recently, people have been acquisitions that get integrated (closed down) and are happy then the company is left alone (Tumblr).
Sorry I missed this. Used Tesla's blog published data as my source here:

http://www.teslamotors.com/it_CH/forum/forums/cost-charge-an...

Linking to:

http://teslarumors.com/USA-Residental-Energy-Cost-2011-by-St...
Our elected representatives might have decided that bypassing the FISC courts were acceptable. Is that not a democracy?
Technology helps Silicon Valley sex workers
I think we all hoped it wouldn't happen but knew it would.
Your neighbor committed a crime. Hitler committed
a crime. Your neighbor is literally Hitler.

This is your analogy.
Maybe indeed, but what was easier?
Yeah, PRISM!
Which is why acts of 'terrorism' are no longer covered under almost any insurance policy unless you pay through the nose for an additional rider.
Wow. Look at the beautiful apple bullshit. Cause they've never "heard of prism specifically" cause the government never called it that. And of course apple never gave the government access to the servers. They just handed the data over
Yes, of course. I was pointing out that Buffett has thought more carefully about terrorism risks than most people, since his business has written very large insurance policies providing (limited) terrorism coverage.
Libertas Institute will be interviewing William Binney, the NSA whistleblower
I am working on a survey programming and cross tabulation engine. It's open source hosted here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xtcc

There are 2 versions of the Survey compiler, one in production use and a newer version in advanced prototype targeted at tablets etc. The production use compiler is targeted at India and the Middle East and anywhere else where you do Market Research using Pen and Paper format. It can generate outputs for IBM SPSS-Quantum (a specialised software for data processing) and SPSS and and my own cross tabulation engine, described below. Our current offering to clients is a potential 70% speedup in data processing using our system for Pen and Paper data entry.

The cross tabulation engine is on similar lines to IBM SPSS-Quantum but removes many limitations and is potentially much faster. I tested it on 1 million records - each record had about 64000 conditions, it was able to process the data in 20 seconds (I tried this after seeing Evan Miller's post on HN and someone asked about how fast his software was on 10 million records). I compile the input programs to simple C++ fixed size arrays and data is stored on disk as a flat file, fixed length per record. I have been experimenting with sse instructions - there is a lot of potential for further speed improvement.

This is a git repository, active branches are:
nc - this is a stable version of the compiler, but uses ncurses and

web-questionnaire-2: this is the new survey compiler

Active GUIs/Framewors we can compile to are :
1. gtk
2. wxWidgets
3. webtoolkit

I have also separated out the runtime environment so that we can compile with emscripten
Using this, we can compile with

1. Dojo, ExtJs
2. DojoMobile - I could not get Sench Touch to work.

web-randomizer: this is a branch for a randomization grammar

rdg: this is a branch for a Random Data generator. This was used to generate the 1 million records for my testing. I was able to get it to go at a speed of about 170 records a second.

If anyone is interested in playing with it, please write to me - my email should be all over the source code. We are also looking to make a business out of this (I have 2 friends and family investors).
You were asked, it was called "mid term elections". They had them without you.
Nice try, NSA. You're not getting any more of my information.
Good. If they're not going to play by the rules, then I shall feel no regret by in abiding by their lead.
I've seen it taken to the i'th power:

e^(i*pi)i = 1^i

or

e^-pi = 1^i

which seems very strange - e and pi are real numbers, so 1 to the i'th power must also be real?
Ask HN: can we get the black banner for the death of privacy in America?
PRISM scandal: tech giants flatly deny allowing NSA direct access to servers
Addressing points from this whole comment thread.

Regarding the relevance of Tim Ferris: I'm not overly familiar with his work, but from what I do know, he's very well known for writing best-selling books on applying a scientific method to life improvement. That's what this app does, but puts a nice interface and layer of gamification over it. If Tim also has the tech company exposure as mentioned in the article, why would he not be a valuable advisor? At least on paper, his credentials seem very relevant.

Regarding the manual input of readings, I'm not diabetic, nor do I have anyone close to me that is, so purely an outsiders perspective here. The limitation of cable transfer of data is that 1. You have to support X number of testers 2. You have to support X number of phones 3. It doesn't encourage you to monitor your variations throughout the day. The end result is probably diminished user experience and a much smaller addressable market.

If you watch their demo video, the process to enter your reading is very simple. It will remind you if you're being slack and rewards you if you add information beyond just the reading. For example, you can take a photo of your meal, and make notes on how you're feeling. Presumably the more that goes in, the more value you get out.
"Tomorrow we'll also be interviewing William Binney, the whistleblower who worked at the NSA for over 30 years and quit after they started targeting innocent Americans. He has some fascinating insight on exactly what the agency does, and with the data center being built in Utah, has a message to deliver to us."

I actually live down the street from this new NSA data center in Utah. This should be interesting. Are there questions I should be asking?
Good development is hard, but so is just about every job.

I've been attempting to farm, a job that popular media will have you believe any slack-jawed yokel can do, for the past few years. It has been quite an eye-opening experience, making programming seem like child's play by comparison. If any slack-jawed yokel can do a job that is more difficult than development, where does that leave developers?

You are right that we should value ourselves and feel good about our accomplishments. Being able to develop software is a pretty significant one. But we should not feel the need to minimize other professions to make ourselves feel that way. They are doing things that are just as complicated and important, and they should feel equally good about those accomplishments.
We'll see what the upvotes say. I personally like seeing stories from various angles on this issue. There is of course a technology interest in these stories, as many HN readers expect to set up businesses (or are already running businesses) that involve using the Internet to communicate with clients.
The biggest government spy operation in history is now public knowledge. It's kind of a big deal.
> No fair, you had Linus guiding you.

Part of the reason I chose it. ;)
they could label them as terrorists and it becomes alot easier...
The paper is a bit long in the tooth.
In reduce the accumulator starts as the seed and is changed in the forEach for each elem. Since there are so elems (funs) the accumulator never changes and returns as the value of seed (5).
Apache Accumulo
The reason is because high P/E stocks are speculations, not investments.
An interesting application of Bayesian reasoning to the problem of screening for low-base-rate phenomena. (And terrorist criminal activity is a lower-base-rate phenomenon in the United States, so far, than prostate cancer or other dangers that are screened for.) The mathematics, of course, is exquisitely sensitive to exactly how sensitive and specific a screening program is. (By the way, so far news reports are saying that the NSA program that is all over the front page of Hacker News, deservedly so in my opinion, is not a screening program but a data collection program, with analysis of the collected data triggered only by other kinds of law enforcement evidence-gathering. We'll see what further reporting says about that issue.)
Your email's too long and people are too busy.
I'm aware of the distinction, but the average person out there doesn't think of themselves as sharing with Facebook the company, they think they are sharing with their friends.
Doesn't FISA order them to not disclose such practices?
On a related note. The Utah Libertas Institute says they'll be interviewing William Binney a whistleblower who worked for the NSA.

"Tomorrow we'll also be interviewing William Binney, the whistleblower who worked at the NSA for over 30 years and quit after they started targeting innocent Americans. He has some fascinating insight on exactly what the agency does, and with the data center being built in Utah, has a message to deliver to us.

What questions would you like us to ask him?"

https://www.facebook.com/libertasutah/posts/584519078248420
I can understand "no comment" but can a government order me to lie unless I am in its direct employ?
Come over to Australia!
Misleading headline. Google fought that one time but it's been years since they've been part of PRISM.
https://github.com/owncloud/core
This is the guy that, when asked by congress (I assume under oath) if the NSA was collecting data on US citizens, he responded "No sir." That was just 3 months ago.

So... not sure what his statements are worth now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs&t=6m10s
(starts at 6 minutes 10 seconds)
Zoho was founded by Sridhar Vembu. Wiki entry here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sridhar_Vembu . He completed his Phd from Princeton and according to his various interviews was really frustrated by it and decided to start his company. He has a very unique approach in grooming future employees.
It's more of a job title.
I agree but I'm not sure I want to post that on a public forum (I assume the NSA is parsing HN).

Doh!