skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What will it take for Obama-ites to finally give up on the man? If you had video of him eating a baby saying "fuck america!" would that be enough, or would you still hope he could turn things around?
I have a problem with the article and title on 2 levels. 1) It identifies a "bad" guy. In a two party system the other party is the "bad" guy no matter how or whom signed legislation into law. If you identify yourself as a democrat or republican, then you are part of the problem. It's unrealistic to think that you'll ever agree with a single person on all issues let alone an entire political group. 2) It does not address the real problem. We have a problem with add-ons in legislation that have absolutely nothing to do with the essence or spirit of the bill. These egregious actions occur all the time, no matter who is in charge. We need to rid our political system of money and lobbyists. Oh, and by the way, a bill that probably mostly affects tech companies, the Immigration Bill, contains the authority to create a biometric database. Note "authority to create" and not "setup a database". News outlets are mincing words.
I'd second the North Shore of Oahu. We took a family vacation there a few years ago and stayed in Honolulu but we spent a couple days up there (Haleiwa and that area) and it was a fantastic place.

I know you'll be "working" and all, but here are a few highlights:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/sharks-cove-pupukea
http://www.yelp.com/biz/waimea-bay-beach-park-haleiwa
http://giovannisshrimptruck.com&#x2F;
http://www.yelp.com/biz/laniakea-beach-haleiwa
Did you get the idea for the name of the product from The Wire?
This is a really excellent collection of facts and opinions that outlines just what we're up against as a "free" society.

I myself, for the past few months, have had this semi-conscious filter on what communications I send to people, and the fact that I have an internal process keeping check on my ideas and how/when they are expressed scares me. This just adds to the fear.

I had no idea the extent of what kind of surveillance we were living under until reading this.

I think this is our next great battle as citizens of the United States. We've spent all of our free time giving up privacy and information to companies that are now funneling it to large spy networks. I believe it would behoove us to take a second look at our actions and how they act against us in the long run.

We are not truly free if we feel like there are eyes on us at all times.
Another reason to support anonymity (and pseudonymity) on the Internet:

So that you can mention your country -- or partner -- without fear of economic repercussions or prison.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-free-speech/...
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_det...;
Entire wikileaks saga.
Anonymous.

Really, you just have to pay attention.
For what it's worth, it was a fear of his that this might come to pass, and I think anyone making an argument like that would be (rightly) dismissed as a loon.
OK, but I wonder, are you breaking any laws?

I see two possible outcomes of this business model:

1. The gov't catches wind, demands you keep proper records and you say "no" so they shut you down.
2. The gov't comes to you asking for identifying information for a customer, you say "no" and they shut you down.

I honestly don't know that much about it, so I can't claim that these two are the only possible outcomes.

Can you provide more details? What are the regulations? Do you have a plan if the gov't comes knocking?
Perhaps if one becomes comfortable with the idea that all illegal acts are immoral, it's possible to trick yourself into thinking that all legal acts are by definition moral.
> Seriously? You're going to make me play this game?

I'm not making you do anything. If I could, I'd make you read posts more carefully (including the attribution line) before responding to them, though.

> "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"

That quote is neither from my post [1] that you responded to [2] with the claim that "You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional", nor from any other post of mine, in this thread, nor, for that matter, from anywhere else, ever. It's from someone else entirely. [3]

And it doesn't say that most things that government is doing are unconstitutional (as you claim now), or even that "HUGE SWATHS" are not (as you claimed before), it says that if the government was strictly doing only what was Constitutional, then most issues would be decided at the local or state level, and that is not what is happening now. So, even if it wasn't for the fact that it was irrelevant to the post it was offered in response to, and misattributed to the wrong person, your characterization would still be wrong.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839649
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840037
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838992
Matt...glad you found it helpful. I haven't purchased the Recipes book yet, but I might after seeing your feedback.

I've purchased the AngularJS Oreilly book (good, not great...it just didn't feel like a well-organized book to me) and the Packt book (Web Application Development with AngularJS)..the Packt book is excellent. At least for the first 5 chapters I've read. Oh, and I have no "referral" params for any of those books.

I'm personally really excited about getting to work with Angular. It has been a lot of fun so far, and its amazing how much you can do with a small amount of code.
That would make it worse.

Instead they should lower the voting age to 14. The only way to get the life experience you are looking for is to DO it!

Despite the common belief, it does NOT automatically come with age. The earlier you start, the better the results are (since younger brains learn faster and are more flexible), and the longer a person has to gain experience.

The earlier people get used to participating in government the more likely it will become a lifelong habit.
It will come back, given half a chance. Sadly, progress must be defended as vigorously as it is won.
What's sad is what he got wrong.

The 'm' in "Thousands dead, millions deprived of civil liberties?" should have been a 'b'.

"Bush" in "Congress hurried to pass a resolution giving Bush unlimited power" should have been "the Executive Branch."

Visionary as he was, history surpassed what he anticipated.
Why doesn't someone just built a Tor hidden service that is an interface to the Twilio (or similar) API? Sign up with Bitcoin, get a phone number and then send/receive SMS and send/receive calls using DAP/getUserMedia (html5 mic + audio) in a web browser.

Using a physical cell phone still leaves a trace of the purchase, shipping, physical call location, cell site pings, etc. Plus in a lot of jurisdictions it is now a legal requirement to verify identity and adress with issuing phone numbers.

Using a Tor hidden service (+VPN, etc.) I could be anybody anywhere in the world. Less bits figured out.

edit: apologies if this is hijacking the thread
It could also just be a moral choice. I don't hire H1Bs because I believe we have a sufficient talent pool here in America.
It's a nice hit piece the NYT whipped up. Do they normally publish biographies of journalists who write leak pieces? No? Only when it's time to smear someone. Here's what the NYT was asking:

http://ggsidedocs.blogspot.hk/2013/06/nytsullivan-email-exch...

Is he a weirdo loner biased advocate gay blogger? Just say yes!

Really sad to see the NYT fighting against transparency in government.
Scans show early brain growth in breastfed babies
Oh stfu about libertarian bullshit. Show me another first world nation anywhere on the planet that is libertarian. Show me any libertarian nation of any kind that isn't awful. You know the US concept of "libertarian" doesn't exist outside the US? That's because the rest of the world realizes it's useless.
Does the 30 day talk time start when you get the phone? Or after you make a call? I'm curious if this is something that you could buy and then hold on to as a backup or emergency phone.
Looks useful. I am seeing though

message[pre_encryption]

with my unencrypted message in the POST data?
Very nice idea. I recommend trying to move to direction where you get results for 'ring', 'compojure' and 'friend', ie. examples for prominent frameworks and libraries.
So where do your rights originate from then? Ultimately it comes down to authority. You can say you have the right but so can every other schmoe. I can even argue that you are wrong about your rights and you have no greater authority to say I am not correct.
Like golden dawn in greece and of course italy and belgium have proved the point that PR is wonderful NOT
This is cool, but it badly needs an erase feature. Also, setting a title/permalink for the finished drawing would be nice. Any plans to develop it more?
Reference: Every time I've tried Linux on a laptop, Suspend, Resume, or Both has been broken in whatever $FLAVOR_OF_THE_MONTH distro/package/kernel the community insists is the next big thing.

The BSDs tend to implement these things later but far more reliably.
A Better Way to Do Daily Standup Meetings
It starts after you turn the phone on for the first time -- you can purchase these in advance and activate them when you're ready to use them.
Good catch, I'll take that out right now thanks.

Edit: fixed. If anybody thinks of anything else, please let me know. This is as much of a learning exercise as anything for me.
How do you tie these things back to a domestic botnet controlled by "authorities" local to the US?
I would only add that "pragmatic" versus "idealist" is privileged language in the classically Foucault sense.

Stallman in many respects is being pragmatic in the pursuit of his ideology.

Conversely, the NSA and like organizations are working toward their idealist beliefs.

The risk of being pedantic over language should at least be tempered against the realization that privileged language is at the core of much of this discourse[1].

[1] "Terrorist"
"EFF Takes Fight Against Secret Surveillance Law to Federal Court"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/sunshine-week-eff-take...

The EFF is well staffed with people who know what they're doing. They're on our side.
Moving to AWS (it's more than 6 steps)
why not just flood the NSA with false data? We know what they monitor all data through those big ten companies. Couldn't botnets be configured to just start surfing the internet, maybe doing keywords that would trigger the government monitoring. I assume that enough junk information would fill up the gov. databases that they would have a harder time trying to figure out what's real and what's just useless data.
Oh, a data plan would probably make a killer feature. Not sure how you would deal with people doing "things that are rightfully illegal" with it, though.
Uh, you realize leaving doesn't change your tax situation, right? You still have to file every year and you still may be liable for taxes. Also, if you live in a "tax heaven" then you have to report any bank account you have signing authority over (including any pension, etc.). So don't plan on being a stock trader in your new country, that's not going to happen. Don't plan on having a bank account with any non-international bank because they won't take americans.

BTW, the US is the only country in the world to behave this way (well, perhaps NK but that's not exactly a favorable comparison, is it).
Looks promising. It would be interesting to know a little bit about the history of the term. For example, the Alligator Arms one still doesn't make sense to me. So in addition to using them in a sentence, perhaps a little bit about why they mean that.
I'm confused with how a dead man's switch would be useful in this scenario. If the company is persuaded to keep the transaction logs linking sim cards/phones and credit card numbers/addresses then how would we know? I don't see that as being fixed by having a dead man's switch.
Obama defends digital spying: “I think we’ve struck the right balance”
Meanwhile, it is a public fact that Cisco helped build the great firewall of China[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peo...
fwiw, anyone paying attention to infosec in the last decade has known this is going on.
What To Do If You’re Winning the Product Evaluation But Losing the Deal
This article is a joy. What a wonderfully written and through explanation of the space. I live for this stuff.
Ok Palantir rep.
Amp Your Firefox Contest
You think the US doesn't do this? They don't make you register when you move because they'll update their databases when you file your taxes.
It seems to me that we do have "societally accepted norms, and possibly laws, regarding privacy." The norms/laws are that the information you share freely with Google/FB/Verizon/etc can be passed along to the gov't in support of national security.

These norms/laws aren't arbitrary, they're based on the views of the majority of the citizens of this country, expressed through the democratic process.
The Rise of the Data Science Course
It's striking how much of modern political thinking comes down to branding.
How old do you have to be to be considered an "adult" in California?

Think about your statement and potentially revise.
When the government grabs every single fucking telephone call made from the United States over a period of months and years, it is not a prelude to monitoring anything in particular. Why not? Because that is tens of billions of phone calls and for the love of god, how many agents do you think the FBI has? How many computer-runs do you think the NSA can do? When the government asks for something, it is notable to wonder what they are seeking and for what purpose. When they ask for everything, it is not for specific snooping or violations of civil rights, but rather a data base that is being maintained as an investigative tool.

In other words, he's completely oblivious to the game-changing effects of highly scalable data mining and machine learning.
It reminds me of the final scenes from The Lawnmower Man.
Hah, no. Myself and my partner both work in the telephony industry, and are familiar with the name 'burner phone' (sounds kind of cool, usually refers to those spy phones that get thrown away in movies).
I really like that idea.

Quick question about how it would play out in practice: how would it apply to things like financial regulation? For example, if more than 1% of banks ignore the rules about capital reserves, does that make the law about maintaining capital reserves void?

Or would this type of law only apply to laws enforced against individuals?
Brilliant! I just bought this based on your recommendation.
I can't read the name other than ClusterFuck. Sorry, it's my brain. :)
>but I think overlooks the fact that much of this record keeping happened prior to the internet. Almost all public activity generates a paper trail, and before the internet, your phone company, bank, grocery store, even your VHS rentals and public library, were keeping records on you.

I think you would've had a very hard time tracking someone through these records.

As an NYer, tapping John Gotti was very traditional compared to the blanket tracking of US citizens that has been granted by FISA.

As for Schneier's link to the Atlantic's article, I think we're moving to a new era where we trust developers and not the popularity or the design of the app itself. I'm sure one will be tracked when you don't have to pay anything for it.
Also see: https://oneshar.es

I created a similar web application in Django as part of a College minor project last year. Best part was implementing the AES algorithm ourselves. :D
The wire didn't coin the term. Burners have been burners for... well, I've been familiar with it since the 80s, so at least 3 decades now.
Show HN: Get the lowest price of any book from online stores across India
Now Palantir can take up the work under this mask of publicity, then it'll be revealed in a few years or decades.
People from the American Revolution took up arms, and many of them died. Are you ready to do that? I'm not. If not then leavings probably a more realistic option. Call me a coward if you like, but I've already escaped. How many people have joined your militia so far?
Here's a thought, though: if Google's data were tapped, would Google Voice phone records be within their jurisdiction?
As much as any normal credit card. They're linked to your social security number.
Feature not a bug!
You don't see much American patriotism in California. If you never see your country's flag throughout the day, you don't have fascism.
A lot of places are better in terms of civil liberties. Most of western Europe (though stear clear of the UK).
Why is the password stored in plain text "for now"? What is so hard about running bcrypt or pbkdf2 against the password before storing it in the database?
The life of an average American is in no more imminent danger than it was 50 years ago, when this technology was simply unimaginable.

Just because it's possible to do something, doesn't mean it has to be done, although I realize it's not how it works with governments.
More options is good! Centrally storing configuration is always a good idea.

Amazon OpsWorks manages configuration centrally via a web-based command and control.

Heroku manages configuration centrally via environment and heroku config:add.

ClusterFsck (did I type that right? :)) lets me store things on S3, centrally.
Damn, it looks like this article just got banned from the front page of HN. =/
I think Fascism is the best and closest term for a system of control that is emerging that hasn't been properly defined or given a catchy name yet. Fascism wasn't a bad word in the 30s, just like propaganda wasn't a bad word then.
Concept to Finished Piece – Generations of an Electronics Project
> I think limiting utilization and retention is key.

I think the retention point is valuable. But it also seems sort of impossible in some arenas.

Take Facebook. Say that the government can only retain information it collects for 6 months. Fine; but they could re-request that same data 6 months later.

I suppose there is always a way around this (no extensions without a warrant), but in principle retention seems both critical and a minefield of potential confusion. I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the topic.
There are secure services for IM/VOIP and maybe email(npt sure how secure) and of course TOR. Some are very easy to use like Redphone/textSecure which integrate transparently with android calls/meessaging.

As far i can understand, they didn't grab much popularity. So i'm not sure ease of alone is enough.

I'm not really a marketing person too, just interested in it, so i don't think i could help much.

Anyway, best of luck with the project.
Good on you for having a list of known weaknesses, but here's the one that really makes this completely unsafe:

The server dictates what's run on the page, and thus can access the plaintext data in any way it sees fit. The trust model is fundamentally broken in client-side crypto of this nature.

Edit with two more thoughts: 1) Even if you trust the person running the service, how much do you trust the other users (who may be using stored XSS to compromise your data)? How much do you trust the hosting service behind it, if there is one? 2) Am I the only one that finds it massively irresponsible to not have a huge flashing "DO NOT TRUST THIS UNTIL IT'S BATTLE HARDENED" sign over it? This goes for just about every project of this nature.

Edit with a final thought: Most of the time, we think in terms of "relative goodness". A good car is better than a bad car, but a bad car is still better than no car at all. This logic completely breaks when it comes to crypto. Simply put, bad crypto (and bad implementations) when released on the world put lives at risk. This should be taken seriously.

It's one thing to build a project for learning (and please, please do!) but cover every friggin' surface you can with disclaimers.
The idea is that it should be hidden because if the enemy knows the details then the enemy can adapt. There are (probably) instances where this is true; more likely those involving more specifics than this does, but in any case that's the issue at hand, whatever determinations you may make about it.

There's still the question of how we ought to negotiate such things. Over the past 70ish years we've made some cuts at it, with various outcomes...
It doesn't bother me that he feels like this. I kinda want the director of national intelligence to be a super-secretive, paranoid psycho.
What's disturbing is that his elected handlers apparently feel the same way.
Although set in London I always thought 1984 was rather Soviet.
Except that, in the cases I've seen, the "why are you surprised" people aren't limiting their trace-ability. Again, these are not people who are in the same tech world as you and me. Their attitude comes from a cynicism toward government, not toward a confidence in their tech abilities.

More so, the "why are you surprised" attitude comes with an unsaid "so what?" "Yeah, we're being monitored. Why is this a big deal?"

And that is the point of my question: what can you say to explain that this is a big deal?
Pizza delivered by Drones
Well, you might want to avoid 3rd world shit holes, and joining terrorist groups.
Are you willing to insure, in real money terms, the privacy of your customers from leaks/warrants at your end?

If so, how much? Can that money be held in escrow by a third party?

Are you willing to go to jail for your customers? For how long?

If a customer orders 134 phones ($10k), will you comply with any relevant federal financial disclosure guidelines?

If served a national security letter that includes a gag order, how will you react?

Will you accept cash transactions through the USPS, with only $75 and an address enclosed?

Can you prove that records are not kept? How?

These questions are partially rhetorical, but for people who want/need anonymity, they're important.

edit, to keep questions in one spot:

How do you anonymize shipping? It's straightforward to find ways to accept anonymous payment, but how do you keep the Man from following all outbound packages from burnerphone?

What are advantages over buying a gift card with cash and purchasing a phone online or through an intermediary?
I don't know anything about his hygiene and I don't care. When he's right, as here, I applaud him, and when he's wrong I call him out: http://lee-phillips.org/StallmanOnFinkelstein.html
it's, um, not illegal to buy a phone?
Yes, but you missed the part that "common Defense" occurs in the preamble discussing purpose, not powers, and in a phrase limiting the purposes of the Taxing power. Its not itself an enumerated Congressional power (Congress does have more narrow enumerated defense related powers), so its irrelevant, in discussing it, that grants of power to Congress are generally plenary except within express limitations.
In a Shift, Facebook Says It Will Make All Ads Social
Errr, I've read that's a standard tactic nowadays. You write and save drafts, and the other person logs into the account and reads them. No email servers are touched, it's supposed to be a good method ... unless of course an IP address is compromised. As mentioned, once they started looking, they correlated the IP addresses and times with her hotel stays.
Understanding Buffer Overflow Exploits
I was about to post, "Nice try, Palantir employee." Then I got to the full disclosure bit. Fair enough.

I would assume that PRISM is an internal codename for the project within the NSA. Just a wild guess, but perhaps it stands for "Palantir's Repeated Interception of Society's Metadata."
That's only because Germany has some of the highest taxes in the world (can be upwards of 50%). Try moving to Lichtenstein (~10% income tax) and see how long you don't pay taxes.
The most anonymous way to get bitcoin is to mine it.
Generally, you will have many copies of the public key on many servers.