skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In this case "The Atlantic" is Bruce Schneier. Who, if you take a peek, does seem like he might be in a position to have some insight on what the NSA is up to. http://www.schneier.com/about.html

On the merits, I do think he's right to highlight the importance of secure channels for whistleblowers in the current climate.
irrelevant, its Bruce Schneier
I guess because even the most skeptical people can no longer deny what is in front of their eyes. What surprises me most is that this is even news at all.
Doesn't Google Analytics just collect metadata that you're sending in your HTTP requests anyway? And basic tracking cookies for distinguishing unique users/visits?

I don't think there's really a reasonable expectation of privacy for that sort of data. You're already sharing it with every other website you visit.
Against Generalisation
Unhappy with career, please help.
I'm at crossroads in my career. I'm looking for some advice. My case should be fairly typical, so I expect the responses I get to be useful to others in my situation too.

First, some context: I work for a big company on a popular online service. I have a masters degree and my field is machine learning. I'm smarter than all my peers at work.

I started off with a my-code-is-going-to-change-the-world attitude. I remember my heart racing the first time I was looking at results of my code processing petabytes of data. Then, slowly my smart, idealistic, I-will-create-perfect-AI self started bumping into reality. Rather than math/ML challenges, I was faced with problems like technical debt, missed deadlines, unmet expectations, unhealthy peer competition, endless frog-eating, fragmented days, daily scrums... to cut a long story short, it has been a long time since I did anything that I'm proud of.

And I have been in the company for more than 7 years now. Yes, I should just leave and go to a better place - that much is obvious. But here's the thing - I don't expect it to be better anywhere else. I don't want to join another big company and slowly nudge some KPIs upwards. I want to solve hard problems. Problems not solved yet. Problems that are important and that matter. The answer that I'm going to get maybe "go join a startup". But I'm an immigrant on work visa and this is risky. Also, I have a pretty demanding family life and I'm not sure I'd be able to put it the long hours.

After being frustrated for a long time and some failed attempts to change the situation, I have decided to go all-in and explore all my options aggressively. I cannot afford to not change things any more. I plan to interview a lot.

I could use the advice of people on HN. Have you had similar experiences? How did you get out of it? Am I being too pessimistic about potential opportunities? What are the things I should look out for before accepting my next offer? Is there hope for me?
Irc channels for the ruby or node community?
Does anybody know any irc channels to get involved in opensource in the ruby or node community? I want to get involved in something or even chat with fellow hackers. Also what are some of the best ways to get involved in the community?
'Wingnuts' (which the GP did mention) is a colloquial term for the right wing populace.
Abaaso - RESTful JavaScript application framework
Are the Guardian and Washington Post going to explain why their "PRISM" slides are different? (Guardian has no arrow head, and red rectangle behind logo in upper right)
> To me the presence or absence of court orders is absolutely a substantive distinction

Its perhaps a substantive distinction in terms of the culpability of the providers, but its not (IMO) a substantive distinction in terms of the abuse of surveillance by the government if the scope of information collected is as broad as described in the story. PRISM is just as bad if it is done via broad FISA court orders of the type of the Verizon order as if it is done without a court order.

> as is the question of whether information is requested for only a limited subset of customers or for all (or a significant fraction of) customers.

While the providers have denied providing information as part of a "voluntary program" or "without court orders", none have addressed the scope or breadth of information, so, while that may be an important distinction, its not one that is addressed by the denials at all.
Classical computers can be optimized but quantum computers will get faster
The GNU development toolchain (GCC, etc). Without a solid, free, complete, self hosting development environment, literally nothing else you mention would exist.
Quantum thermometer inside a living cell
Considering the punishment by admitting it, and the "silence means you're guilty" thing that happens most of the time, I'd say they're pretty much left with no option other than to deny it even if it's a lie.
It's really hard not to leak information. This is just a guess, but if they see you doing something they don't like but can't decrypt, they can check their huge PRISM database for your ip. Even if you do a good job at hiding who you are, communication outside of the encrypted channel you are using might reveal yourself.

Also they have their hooks in Microsoft and Apple. It stands to reason that means a backdoor in each of the operating systems, as well.

You'd have to really be paranoid to avoid this. Using an opensource OS find an open access point, with no surveillance cameras anywhere, use it only for your encrypted communication and nothing else, and then leave and never come back. And obviously, don't bring a cellphone with you.

Considering this was top secret, I would bet that a lot of persons of interest didn't know about PRISM either, making it a lot harder to realize that they fucked up.
Weird Quantum Entanglement Achieves New Record
Stop Procrastinating Using The "2-Minute Rule"
Are you using chrome on android? It does that for some idiotic reason.
Happy 100th birthday to the Bohr atom
Sridhar, thanks for taking the gloves off and writing this. You just don't read stuff like this every day. I don't know why, maybe it's the ultra-PC feel-good environment we're in (esp. in San Francisco), or everyone is worried about each others' feelings, I don't know, but such direct, crisp writing seems so rare today.

High-level business tradeoffs like this are fascinating and worthy of discussion. Even though you name names, it's clearly about the ideas, and not the people. I wish more people had the courage to write so openly and frankly about how they feel.
For a sense of scale, when this facility was designed, it was planned to hold more storage than existed on the entire planet.
Welcome to the real world people , everyone has taken their red pile yet ? I mean you are giving up personal infos and data for (crappy) free services , what did you expect ? a free lunch with no hidden cost ? the government has all your datas and it will use it against you sooner or later.
> The same thing happened when Steve Jobs died.

People and events resonate with, move or touch other people.

Most other people, I should say.
Today I am throwing out the newspaper I was saving from the day after Obama was elected and all the electronic newspaper front pages from around the world I was saving from that day are being deleted from my hard drive. I've lost all pride.

I am utterly disgusted with this administration. Any good he has done is wiped out by being far worse than Bush with the domestic spying and whistleblower prosecutions.

How are we any better than China - because we at least eventually find out? Because people don't get disappeared off the street?

You remember that feeling of incredible relief when we saw Bush finally being flown away in the helicopter on his last day? Well that feeling is going to be deja vu in a couple years.

I just hope the next president doesn't try to do a one-up like Obama did to Bush. Obama's library/museum is going to be even more hypocritical than Bush's.
But consider that "it's dystopian and it doesn't even work" makes a strictly stronger argument. Pointing out that it won't work has better results than "those who would trade freedom for security..." on stodgy old republicans like my father (anecdata sample size 1).
Not only that, but Microsoft and Apple? The same companies who make the most popular OS's and phone OS's in the world?

It's not much of a leap to think that the NSA has backdoors into each of these OS's, too.
But he isn't a senator.
Zoho's products are mediocre. But I suppose it makes sense in the context of going for the strip mall approach to cloud software. Offer a ton of services and hope to hook the user and upsell.

The main problem I find with their service is the design is atrocious.
Looks like it was an AP dispatch, so it's available by the same name elsewhere, such as http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/intelligence-chief-...
Dude ..Innovate something..
People dont have talent like you..
Take few days off, think something that is kinda impossible and code it

PS : Put it on GITHUB so that everybody knows that you created it..
More details and related HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4329101
So realistically, what can we, the populace, do?
What bothers me is that Apple and Microsoft have both been cooperative. It's not much of a leap to think that the NSA has a backdoor into Windows, MacOS, and iOS now either.
I want to say 'go work in academia' but as you are probably aware that environment is easily as political as any large corporation, you waste lots of time wrangling over funding and departmental politics and so on. Since you're foreign, a career in the intelligence service isn't on the cards either :-)

I think you do have a strong possibility of success at a startup - your comments about being smart seem matter-of-fact rather than ego-driven to me. Your big problem is that instead of nudging KPIs you may just find yourself on a growth-maximization/VC funding treadmill instead. The best thing I can think of is to seek out ML problems focused on natural phenomena (weather, epidemiology and suchlike) rather than market-driven ones involving consumer behavior, which will inevitably revert to revenue-maximization problems.
How about creating a website which allows us all to find a pen-friend in Iran, Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan or wherever, and we send regular (e.g. weekly) communications to that person. It would be a good thing to do anyway.
Probably not; it suggests that they were separate leaks of different versions of the same presentation.
Replacing The 2nd Amendment For Modern Times
This is pretty simple: if they got to AT&T and Verizon, it's crazy to think they wouldn't get Google / Microsoft / Facebook / Apple.

Apple has recently been the world's largest company, and has nearly half the US smart phone market.

Microsoft still has a practical monopoly in desktop operating systems (and combined with Apple they cover 98% or so of the market). Also, Microsoft was already leashed by the Feds via anti-trust. Once you're under their heel, there's no going back.

Google, well, comeon... they're a data wet dream. Ditto Facebook. One has a near monopoly in search, and develops the most popular mobile operating system (reaching almost a billion users), the other has a monopoly in social (particularly the kind of social where Joe Smith uses it every day).

For all intents and purposes, once a company gets as big as these guys, they become government/corporate entities, no longer strictly corporate in nature. Much like Boeing or Bank of America or GE or Exxon. The intermingling is impossible to avoid at their size. And in fact, the Feds would never allow you to remain very distant at such size, too many lobbyists and too much money and power is in play.

And while we're at it, let's remember the close ties to the Obama Administration that some of these companies enjoy. Hardly far-fetched to imagine them cooperating with continuously expanding espionage programs, particularly even more so when they like the administration in power (I would say it's plausible even that companies would be less likely to fight if they thought highly of an administration; personal political bias clouding judgment, how many have fallen for the Obama campaign charm?).
Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I'd ask how effective torture would be. If torturing, say, five people a year for one day each, prevented all deaths from war and terrorism for the whole year? Make that deal any day.

To me the problem with torture isn't that it's "bad". It's that it doesn't serve a useful purpose and serves many counter-purposes. If it wasn't so clearly useless, I'd have to think a lot more about whether I'd support it.
No, there's really nothing suspicious about the almost instant complete mass denial.

It sometimes takes months for these companies to come up with a full public statement on any privacy scandal. The process of getting hold of the people with enough clearance to be able to deny alone takes time. Let alone ensure that the statement is approved by senior management and legal.

Usually the best statement you can get within 24 hours is "we're taking these allegations very seriously and are looking into it".

This very much feels like a scripted response to an anticipated scenario.
What are you saying? That welders and plumbers are making more than you? There's two good reasons that's the case, if it's so. (1) They work way harder, physically, and have to deal with burns, OPP (Other People's Poop), and a bunch of engineer-types as customers who try to "fix" things first and then finally give up and call a pro, but want to learn from the pro the whole time he/she is working. If that doesn't command $50/hour, I don't know what does. (2) You should be doing more intense programming. I don't know your skillset, but if you're mainlining Cobol with a dose of Lisp and keeping some foreign government from collapse, you'll make more than a plumber. But if you're honing CSS all day and your workplace cubicle is surrounded with Manga and everyone has corporate logos on Macbooks, and there are "decompress rooms" filled with Herman Miller furniture, well, keep in mind your comfort level at work may partially explain your salary. I kind of think the poop guys should get more money than you.
Should you care if the government spies on you?
The prospect of interviewing with us is not the reason most people go through the crypto challenges. They're intended to be intrinsically interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3ISWHLfP8U
This comment should be included (scrolling Star Wars style) before every Alex Jones video.
PRISM by the Numbers: A Guide
apparently scheduled long before the NSA news broke
You mean like this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/business/global/top-google...
Government acknowledges PRISM spying program, disputes details
>Because people don't get disappeared off the street?

dont worry, the legal frameworks are in place for that to start happening too.
Really this spying is a surprise?
Looking at the home page of hacker news its just story after story about the US government spying on American Citizens. How is this even a news story?
To see it take over as the dominant news story and see the hysteria it's caused makes me doubt the basic intelligence of this whole community.
The Xbox One Just Had A Very Bad Day
Before we begin this scheme, you should have yourself and/or your family waterboarded for a few hours and see if your opinion changes.

Edit: I mean, even if it were useful, is is acceptable? Probably not.
I'll just suspend my critical faculties then.
I always dreamed of living on a sailboat, docked wherever I choose.. Mobile apt! Why not!? People think I'm crazy when I talk about it.
Google tends to do a pretty good job of predicting my ideas as I type.
Oh those poor spooks. What are they to do! Life must be rough for them; we should be more considerate.
Evidently only if it's a Republican administration doing the spying. Funny how the outrage at the last administration's privacy atrocities evaporates when the opposing party is in power. Especially egregious given that the previous administration never promised to be transparent.
> If torturing, say, five people a year for one day each, prevented all deaths from war and terrorism for the whole year? Make that deal any day.

Ok, we'll start with you.

This had better work!
Commandline C Source to list, set and modify Finder comments in OS X
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I have to say I find this oddly disingenuous. Senator Udall is surely aware that he could have offered up this knowledge in a speech on the Senate floor and enjoyed total legal immunity under the US Constitution, with Supreme Court precedent to back him up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause
I wonder if the intense scrutiny these programs are coming under increases the likelihood of catching the next attempted terrorist attack by using them. (if you catch my cynical drift)
"Protecting the privacy of our users and their data is a top priority for Facebook." -- and here comes the cue for the sitcom audience to start laughing.
Please don't make this about one party or one president. It's not. This kind of behavior goes way, way beyond partisan politics, and to reduce it to that is to abdicate pretty much all of your agency or ability to do anything about it, not least because partisan politics is more about apportioning blame for problems than it is finding solutions to them.

Getting all, "Thanks, Obama!" over what the NSA was up to long before he was elected — if not before Bush was elected — is giving the people who actually did this, and are still doing it, a complete pass.
somewhat OT: how can one get reasonable technical career advice these days. I definitely have a few questions myself, but i never felt like asking everybody on HN was the best way to go about it.
As in most things of this nature, I think a good deal is to be learned by who are the most vocal informed opponents. The most vocal market participants against HFT are usually large, institutional market makers who used to grow fat on $1/16 spreads and liquidity rebates (Themis, I'm looking in your direction). These guys used to not have to work particularly hard for the cash, but they're getting their lunches eaten by new market participants who can do it faster and cheaper and have built their companies around integrating new tech very rapidly.

You'll find people trotting out the same old chestnuts (brain drain, unfairness of server colocation, etc.) but those are distractions from the interesting issues.

As an aside, I once had the distinct pleasure of watching a conversation on one of the CNBC programs running in our kitchen in which a NYSE floor trader actually used the phrase "we're the institutional investor looking out for the little guy" while managing to keep a straight face. This dude probably would have curb stomped his own grandmother to pick up a $100 bill. Even the usually sympathetic hosts just laughed outright.

I'm surprised that the outrage against HFT is so strong given how comparatively little is at stake there. After the HFT's much, much, much larger financial cousins, the "big bank" market participants nearly destroyed the entire planet's financial system, it's quite a coup for them that they've shifted the outrage to the guys competing over less money than some banks pay out in bonuses.

I have no love for anyone in the financial industry (I'm a self-loather, if you haven't noticed), but the HFT guys are way, way further down on my list of people to be pissed off at.
Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio did that when it was blatantly illegal - he's serving a six year prison sentence now.
in my case... theres no business without optimization :)

but I suppose you're right and I'm being a tad literal!
Comes with having optimization on the brain all day1
Still doesn't seem very transparent. It's kind of like saying that I didn't drink any alcohol today, but I might be doing an undisclosed amount of drinking with my friend Ned. Kind of defeats the purpose.
We simply enjoy writing software, and as long as customers keep feeding us, we hope to continue doing it. As for design, have you checked out any of our recent offerings? Would you want to offer a point-by-point critique of our design? I can be reached at svembu at zoho ...
The very core of his entire agenda has been to expand the scope, size, and power of the government in all directions. I'm glad this particular issue finally got your attention.

I'm not giving Bush a pass here, either. He tarnished the name of the Republican Party -- the party of Abolition, Civil Rights, Reagan, freedom, etc. -- and grew government with the best of them.

Maybe the behavior of these last two administrations will wake the people from their stupor and cause them to realize that the God-given liberties described by our Constitution have been under assault for quite some time.
Unlike Bradley Manning, Senator Udall enjoys the privilege of legal immunity for anything he says on the floor of the Senate. Manning was not invested with such responsibility, or freedom.
Zoho's strategy is this

1)Let others innovate, we will copy - Always copy the market leader. Anything that can be copied and built by using Java/MySQL and other free software, they will attempt and flood the market.
Let others innovate - Zoho has no patent/discovery to be proud of. They always wait for someone to start first, then piggyback on them. The breadcrumbs that are left by the master is more than enough for the puppy

2) Hire Cheap, Be cheap - Zoho hires school students and give them the ludicrous jobs - Help desk ticket assignment, routine jobs like build management etc. Less than 20% of the total school students hired are working in developmental activities. If you see Zoho's linked-in and facebook pages, they are advertising for fresh Engineers to join them. So what about the school students, CEO?

3)Pay Meager - Zoho's salary is very less compared to other product companies around, but marginally better than the consulting/services company. That way their cash reserves are huge. I assume around $50 million goes into cash reserves every year.

4) Zoho is controlled by Sridhar's family. All other founders have either been chucked out or been demoted. Such a frustration lead to the creation of freshdesk.com
See: CALEA
See: Cisco "Lawful Intercept" feature
They don't need to have all of the hardware for v1.
Spies of the future.