skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Curiously, the UK government made an argument to the contrary just recently when talking about when an alleged sex offender should have their name disclosed, which has been a big issue here of late after a wave of allegations about inappropriate behaviour by high profile media personalities going back many years. The argument was essentially that if you disclose the identity of a suspect before they have their day in court, you might encourage other victims to come forward with evidence that will build the case, which is presumably favourable if the suspect actually is guilty but obviously has severe potential consequences if in fact they are innocent but publicly associated with sex crimes anyway.

I'm not sure what the parallel with whistleblowing should be in a case of allegation but not yet a conclusive decision in court, but I'm pretty sure governments shouldn't be entitled to more protection against potential damage to their reputation than an alleged but not convicted sex offender.

(Just to be clear, I'm not commenting on the appropriateness of the policy toward disclosure of suspected sex offenders, just the double standard that would arise if the UK government objected to this kind of whistleblowing using your "innocent until proven guilty" argument.)
Do we know what is secure against the likes of the NSA / what encryption they can break today?

I understand this is almost impossible for us to accurately answer, just curious if we have any clues regarding their codebreaking capabilities in this regard.
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Abridged_XSS_Prevention_Chea... suggests escaping a forward slash “as it helps end an HTML entity”.

I do not understand this rationale.
It's bullshit blaming the EU, given that it's countries like the UK, Ireland e.a. that are pushing for all of this on order to serve their great friends the US.

It's the EU that stands between us and corrupt national governments handing over our civil rights to US intelligence and business interest. If the EU didn't block this kind of crap half the time we would be way worse of.
Ask HN: Do I need to put the free mixpanel badge on every page?
Not sure what the policy is because it says put it in your footer. Do I need it on every page? Or is on the homepage enough?
Set aside the money every month, then make one lump donation?
And the truth is usually much more complex than a quick message like that allows.

It's easy to forget, but even very powerful people are just people and are prone to each and every failing less powerful humans, such as you and I, are.
Drone.coffee: A drone noise generator using the Web Audio API.
The European Court of Human Rights has established that the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination applies.

All over Europe elections are held at least every 4th or 5th year and governments are regularly overthrown, in Italy more often than anywhere else, I think.
By GDP it's really not, no (about 4.7% for much more ability than any other nation). It's a lot in absolute terms, but so is the American economy.

It is higher as a proportion of GDP than many of our NATO allies, but then again that's actually one of our complaints as Americans... ;)
I'd forgotten about that.

I assume the program was competitive, given Stanford's stature in science and engineering (ADDED: and this is bleeping Silicon Valley, this should be a very hot field for the school); if so, getting into tells us even more.
Bruce Schneier's analysis:

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9909.html#NSAKeyinMicros...

Allergen Warning: contains common sense.
McCullagh's star named source Stewart Baker is not a credible source on this sort of thing, he's effectively a PR flack.

He's made a career of banging the drum that the cyber-boogeyman apocalypse is going to happen real soon now, and the ACLU and EFF are trying to get everyone killed, since the clipper chip era.
In software terms, it seems like someone there built a dashboard for higher-ups, and have promised to listen to feedback in a very enterprise-y "complexity vs reward" triage process.
For the record, the only people who see the USA as the "beacon of democracy" are Americans.

I'm not saying this to start a flame war, but to simply point out that the USA is no more democratic than many other Western nations.

(My personal opinion is that the USA is much more of a beacon of imperialism than of democracy. But that's neither here nor there.)
I feel very strongly that my understanding of state has both improved and become far simpler after programming intensely in Haskell for a long while. State in mutable languages is just too big to have a meaningful way to think about it on its own. Much of my Hs code lives in the state monad today, but I am never at a loss as to what that means exactly.
It’s time to reconsider Jim Balsillie’s legacy
Because sales titles at startups are so legit.
Where is that quote from?! Someone switch the links? Can't find it in the article
If you consider what Musk's time is worth between his roles at SolarCity, SpaceX, and Tesla, it seems that he is just prioritizing his time by ending an interview like that.
Marriage as a concept has always been left to the states.

The NSA is by statute international in scope (they are defined as signals intelligence pertaining to foreign nations), and that has always been left to the Federal government exclusively. The individual states don't even have a dream here.
"Rulers who distrust their own people, must govern in a spirit of absolutism ; and suspected subjects will be ever sensible of their bondage."

The Constitutional History Of England Vol II

Erskine May

1863
True but as I got voted down sounds like some one doesn't like my thesis :-) maybe by a cutlet.
Heroku and Engineyard is used a lot, also even before EngineYard had european hosting.

Lots of companies use Google Apps in Denmark.

I think the US Cloud is used by lots of europeans.
I think the biggest worry I would have if I were in Europe is the same worry I would have as an Amazon Marketplace Seller. An Amazon marketplace seller is essentially sharing all their sales performance data with Amazon. This pretty much guarantees that the best way to make money is to see lots of low volume items. Anything that sells in any considerable quantity will not go unnoticed by Amazon and they will start carrying the product themselves.

Anyone in the EU (or any other country) that frequently discusses valuable information via any US service is vulnerable to exploitation. This includes politicians, beaurocrats with gatekeeper positions, banks and other financial services firms, etc. all have information that in the hands of the right person in the US government can be used against them, their firm or their country.

What if the US government deems it appropriate to watch what people in a certain country is saying about the US dollar? That information can be used to manipulate currency markets in favor of the US and we'd be none the wiser.

Every single congressional subcommittee dealing with any foreign affair has an interest in asking the NSA to find out information on and private communication of their counterparts in other countries.

If you want to exercise soft control over all other countries, what better way than to get important people in all those other countries to centralize much of their communications via US Cloud services that the NSA can conveniently eavesdrop on. You get instant access to the words any thoughts of any person you may interact with geopolitically.

I think the worst part is that anyemember of congress could already be using illegitimately gained data and be none the wiser. At the end of the day they make an innocent request like "Get me all the information you have on XXX so I can make an informed decision." Next thing you know, this request is passed along like a game of telephone until a report is drafted up. Nothing stops those requests from making it to the NSA, where a rank an file employee deems it appropriate to spy on the personal communications of foreign nationals because they believe that it is in the best interest of the United States and its position in the World. That data is intercepted and distilled into a report and now that member of congress is operating with insider information, ill-gotten via PRISM, and he is none the wiser and can go on with his life thinking that its only being used for fighting terrorism.
Pretty sure I've read with this exact or a very similarly titled article.

Unfortunately, I can't help but find it very unconvincing, despite that I'd like to be convinced. There are lots of words but few strong arguments (or any kind of arguments).
I did read it, yes. From what I can tell they paid $4.5 in site preparation, and the $2.5 million was on top of that.
I hope this isn't new to you. Since day one the NSA has been legally limited to collection of data on foreigners. That part of it is nothing new. FBI is who handled domestic intelligence operations.

While I don't like that attitude (and don't like it for the drone discussion either, or Gitmo), it's not at all anything new. I think the concept dates from the 1800s in fact
Startups Are Not Glamorous – They Run on Fear
Getting rid of time zones but keeping AM and PM would be pretty silly.

(not much of a point there, but somewhat instructive as to just how easy it would be to get used to it...)
It's one thing to oppose a system such as PRISM in the legal abstract, quite another thing to hear about the wanton details of a real one, and see the CEO's of Microsoft, Facebook and Google publicly fib under FISA gag orders.
I like your style on both counts!

(Edit: I just looked up the 40-bit thing, you're right, I was confusing with stupid munitions laws)
As wikileaks has shown the government tends to classify EVERYTHING.
It's pretty simple, Arrington is stirring the pot, and the bees are coming in. In this case bees are good for his business.
False, national intelligence is still covered by Google's transparency report - see the NSL (National Security Letters) part.
That's interesting, does anyone know how this is in Germany?
One of the journalist involved has stated that the leaker is a US government employee in the intelligence sector. Granted they could have been deceived as well, but I think that's far less likely.
Re the "residual value" balance sheet problem:

If anyone is interested in selling their Model S in decent condition at the Tesla buyback price in 3-4 years, plus epsilon, please contact me (I'd prefer P85, black, with the glass moonroof, and 21" tires, and every other option except the stupid child seats, but am flexible.)

The buyback price is pretty clearly below what the car will be worth (at least to Tesla); the worst case for them is that some magic new battery tech happens and the Model S is obsolete, but I'm both pretty sure that won't happen (sadly), and more confident that if it does happen, Tesla could retrofit the new magic battery into the old chassis.
What is there to investigate? The criminals has clearly been found thanks to the whistleblowers. The whistle blower is the hero while the criminals are NSA and the government for doing such acts against democracy. A democracy needs to be transparent. Otherwise it is a system that you can put no trust in.
I agree, although the stupid ones will probably make these mistakes whether this operation is covert or not, making the point moot.
Europe spies on its citizens in other ways. For example, with CCTV all over Britain. Heaven forbid a company should provide its opt-in users with a marginal service, and spy on them for a little bit of profit.

How does the quote go? "Don't spy. Government hates competition"

EDIT: I should also point out that if yes, google data goes to the US gov't (which I believe in a qualified manner) one could chalk up the european shutdowns of google to basically just be jealous of the US's access to that data.
> Europe, which lacks internet giants of its own, has long yearned to contain the power of the U.S. titans that dominate the Web,

Rubbish. The EU has quite strong notions of privacy and personal freedom, which the US doesn't have. It's not about 'containing' US internet companies it's about protecting the rights of EU citizens and fighting against the societal harms that come with the erosion of privacy.
Ask HN: Thoughts on Elixir
I have been hearing a lot about Elixir (elixir-lang.org) lately. I am a big fan of Erlang and use it whenever possible so Elixir seems like something which should be looked into.

Whats your thought on Elixir? Anything and everything is welcome.
Third PRISM slide released (detailing methods of data collection)
Why would you need to have something to hide to want privacy? What bothers me about being watched or spied on is everyone having their nose in my business. I also see it as an insult, as you are essentially degrading me and treating me as though I am hiding something, when I'm not. My business is none of your business; keep out of it.
That's the easy way out, and in my experience, far more likely to produce "the residue" type of employees mentioned in the article who sticks around due to "golden handcuffs."
I'm surprised we haven't seen posts comparing the NSA to the Gestapo yet.
The existence of stupid terrorists is a nuisance in the grand scheme of things. The inspiration for the level of our efforts is fear of something on the scale of 9/11..or bigger.

There are people with the funding, means, and motivation to do something like deliver a fully weaponized anthrax bomb in NYC or Washington, DC. A large portion of our intelligence efforts are devoted to making sure that they do not succeed.
Right, and if Twitter were approached would they be allowed to go tell the press about it? I'm finding it hard to believe they were the same program.
Most searched for software technologies this month
The key size of DES is 56 bits that is expanded to 64 bits by the addition of a 8 bit checksum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard
Well the US definitely "has their cake and eats it too" on your example. We will oftentimes (incl. for alleged sex offenders) publicly mention the name of a suspect, mug shot, general details, etc. even while the case is ongoing. In fact I'm convinced that's the only reason Americans know about "innocent until proven guilty", to remind them that the suspect hasn't been convicted yet.

But here we go, perhaps the whistleblower technically broke the letter of the law. It doesn't sound like he was leaked illegal activities so he doesn't have the benefit of that particular shield. And just the other day a few on HN were arguing that a prosecutor should not be able to use prosecutorial discretion.

I think we can all definitely agree his heart is in the right place though (and all the previous elements of my ode to him still apply), so I wonder what we would think of prosecutorial discretion after this?
Thank you for this comment. Do you know what the relationship is between water and atmosphere? That is, what do these rivers imply for the ancient Martian atmosphere? Is there no relationship? Does anyone know?
Google has been by far unquestionably, undeniably the MOST transparent. They were the ones that started disclosing government requests in the first place. They are the ones currently fighting against National Security Letters as being unconstitutional in the courts.

If you can find a more transparent company when it comes to government data requests I would love to know about that company.

And no shit Facebook and Google are in damage control mode. They'd be in damage control mode regardless of if they are guilty or innocent, this is a huge PR disaster for both of them and nobody seems to give a shit what the facts are - this went from a few bad power point slides to national panic overnight.
The IRS did not target the Tea Party.

The Tea Party asked the American taxpayer to subsidize their political action committee, by applying to the IRS for tax exempt status. THEN the IRS selected their application for audit and this delayed it -- this was the bad part that Congress needs to fix.
Isn't it alleged that the chinese government does exactly that?

I seem to remember stories about quasi-government hacker groups. Of course that may very well have been spin that allowed those doing that reporting to blame the chinese government for the actions of their civilians.
It says right there in the slides PRISM has direct access to their servers. How the media and the public interpret that, that's different. Maybe if the government was more transparent, this wouldn't happen.
Likely he's hedging on supercapacitors as well as battery technology both playing a role in Tesla's future.

He's publicly stated that he believes that supercapacitors will eventually replace batteries long-term, and there is already some interesting progress being made, e.g. http://vimeo.com/51873011

A supercapacitor + battery hybrid would be interesting given the difference in charge profile. Similar to the concept behind Apple's Fusion Drive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive
California Nuclear Power Plant Decides to Close
NSA's Backdoor Key from Lotus Notes
Could someone explain to me how these protocols are superior to Bittorrent?
I really wish someone would just consolidate all of these... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Prize_Problems
Good question. It appears that they're only spending $3.8 million a year. It'd be great to see them up their program expenses to shrink that surplus.
Going Nuclear
If the adversary can watch the traffic at the entry node and any one of {the exit node, the websites you're visiting, a compromised router in between}, then they can de-anonymize your traffic pretty easily using statistical techniques. (All my links on this subject are a decade old; I'm sure there's newer research.)

The Tor client tries to take this into account when choosing entry and exit nodes, but it has to consider other threats as well and there's a limit to how well it can do. Remember the adversary only has to get lucky once to discover that you are a member of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor; you have to evade them every time.

Ross Anderson calls this "programming Satan's computer". It's like you have an NFA that always chooses the worst state transition rather than the correct one.
It seems to me that a strength of the Java should be it's ability to only reinvent-the-wheel where necessary, and simply provide a thin compatibility layer over existing wheels on systems that already had them.

I mean, they already have different low-end implementations of "draw this shit onto the screen" for X and Windows..
Joe Armstrong: concurrency and parallelism (explaining it to a five year old)
White-Box Cryptography - COSIC - KU Leuven
Ok you've inspired me, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846189
Sadly, it is a business, and it's become an entrenched part of the political landscape. It's hard to read "Top Secret America" [1] and not come to that conclusion.

A lack of transparency for intelligence operations means their outcomes are difficult to measure, which in turn means the bang-for-the-buck efficacy of those operations is probably not a significant deciding factor in the funding they receive.

[1] http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america&#x2F;
An iOS, Android app to get healthy with friends
NSA Chief describes what PRISM is
I'm pretty sure the NSA has an active program to recruit high-level strictly theoretical mathematicians specializing in algebra and algebraic analysis (typically at the undergrad level).

Agree that the US's COMSEC is degrading, rapidly. As is the USN's nuke reactor program. Sigh.
What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you?
DNI Statement on the Collection of Intelligence
The name of the high-ranking police official in the late Weimar Republic who investigated Hitler because he was considered a subversive by the then government, and who continued in his office after Hitler came to power, now investigating the Resistance, being ever faithful to what government there was, this name escapes me.
s/americans/american government and media(for a lot of us at least)
This question was already answered in 1970:
http://lettersofnote.tumblr.com/post/28831666763/why-explore...
PDF link of the description http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Facts%20on%20the%20Collec...
Good news for California. They should dismantle the radioactive material asap as it could always be a Japan rerun...
Being under a gag order is VERY different from being under a "legal obligation to lie". There is no such thing as a legal obligation to lie. You can be under a legal obligation to not disclose it, or to not talk about it, yes, but to lie about it? No, absolutely not.

Maybe these companies have VOLUNTARILY lied, that's possible, but that's also rather unlikely as that would suggest they are friendly with the NSA for some reason.
Should my startup use cloud services hosted in the US? — on startups — Medium
This is a neat little free app we made, after placing second on the Berlin Health 2.0 hackathon last year (http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2012/11/28/health-2-0-berl...). In a nutshell, it's like an Instagram/Lift mashup, and is really fun to use (take my word for it, ha :). It's goal is for people to be motivated to do something about their health, when they see their friends also doing fun challenges to get healthier. We'd love to hear your opinions!
Correcting your mistakes is not shameful or pathetic.
You have to make implementations in all plataforms to make sure that they behave exactly the same way.
The answer to this is that the bad guys are doing it too. If Facebook is based in the US, China and Iran will eventually break into it and compromise national security. If Facebook was based in Germany, China and Iran (and the NSA) would eventually break into it and compromise national security. It doesn't really change anything.

However, if Facebook was a distributed system, such that no one could compromise it in its entirety at a central location, it would help keep the bad guys out. Which in this context is more important, because we have a lot more spies, undercover law enforcement officers, military and commercial secrets etc. that we need to protect than we have terrorists we can't catch through other means. Which, for exactly that reason, is the way things would go if they move away from centralized US servers in response to spying fears. There is a reason the Navy sponsored Tor.
GamePop: 500 top mobile games on your TV
It has prevented WMD proliferation ... because we all know that Ahamaninejad and Kim talk to each other on facebook.
So much for not looking back and only looking forward
The government create AT&T's monopoly on long distance.
from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/08/boun...

Stack is: Java/Hadoop/Tomcat/cloudbase using Machineshop(http://machineshop.io&#x2F; ?)
data input is protobuf/queries are translated to a map/reduce job by cloudbase
Client uses Ext GWT (Java Component UI Library for Google Web Toolkit |)

cloud based, not sure which cloud. Docs aren't clear if machineshop hosts the actual data..wow
Quantum Teleportation Between Atomic Systems Over Long Distances
Which has had a horse and cart driven through it out to the middle of the bridge - which is then set on fire at both ends.

This is happening in both the US and the UK there have been numerous stories the the main stream media about this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/28/unpaid-i...

Even the current conservative govenment thinks that unpaid interns are a bad thing http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10077099/...