skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am not saying that all innovation comes from the market. I am saying that at least some innovation comes from the market.
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"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

--Benjamin Franklin
I understand the need to protect prisoners, but I find the oft-repeated suggestion that people need to be placed in solitary confinement for their "own protection" rather perverse. Often times, solitary confinement, and suicide watch in particular, is so harsh and causes so much physical and emotional damage that it's only "protection" in the very narrow sense that the prisoner doesn't die. (Though, in California, suicide watch has been found to actually drive people to commit suicide as soon as they get out[1].)

Also, I believe we should make these assessments based on what's the right thing to do, rather than on what minimizes public relations fiascoes or best covers the asses of prison officials.

[1] http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/28/local/la-me-ff-priso...
I disagree with your definition of papers. And that is why we have Judges.
Ok, but what about companies who store sensitive data and emails on Google Apps for business, especially non US companies ?
What about non US citizens who seems to have less protection and spyable at mercy ?
Should we the ( whatever your country or citizenship ) avoid by all means US internet corps.

If the American gov wanted to kill the cloud, then good job !
I want to clarify that I do not trust my own gov neither ...
AT&T and Verizon are two of the most powerful companies in the US, and have massive lobbying power. The notion that those companies were compelled to sign on to huge espionage programs, with their chiefs being fully aware of it - but yet somehow Facebook / Google / Microsoft / Apple etc. did not have to sign on to anything related to Prism (which has been openly admitted to exist by the Feds), nor were they aware of anything, is just about impossible.
You are delusional if you think we have to look to the middle east and religion to find 'people acting like animals'. Take a look at treatment and sentencing of criminals in the west - I think in the future they will wonder how we managed to rationalize it for so long.
Citation of such law?
More likely: the first paragraph from the Guardian and the Washington Post both emphasized "direct" access. See the picture here: http://cl.ly/image/2S3i1g2W2R2k

If you're refuting claims of behavior X, it's natural to say "We don't do behavior X."
This is a great example of an attention whoring headline. When you get into the details there's actually no news here.
> however isn't this just an operating system with a control panel

That's a big "just". If it allows someone privacy-minded to install their own mail/XMPP servers with one click, it moves the line from "only techies get privacy" to "anyone with $40 and a few minutes to spare gets privacy".

I applaud this project, well done.
It's disturbing how similar the language of the different denials is. While individually they are quite convincing (to me, anyway), when you read them one after the other they all have the same "voice". It starts to sound like Orwellian newspeak, exactly how it would sound if all these statements were coordinated by a shadowy background figure.

It may be just an unfortunate coincidence of timing and nature of lawyer laden executive language - but together these statements almost become counterproductive.
In fact they drop down a row after some time and every time a row of invaders has been cleared. But they are to stay above the error code by design (the code always being the center of the action).
Option #5: They have a program regarding some data acquired in some manner but since it's still classified, even if something is leaked, they're not going to sit down and explain the specifics to everyone. The government's response has been vague at best.

My assumption is some combination of #4 and #5, really.
I don't understand what's the trouble here. You say "the people that I am attracted to are women". Hence, assuming you are a male, you are heterosexual. Nothing about being a heterosexual male implies that you are attracted to all women, and nothing about being a homosexual male implies that you are attracted to all males, and nothing about being a bisexual male implies that you are attracted to all males and females.

Now it's certainly the case that these three words do not describe everything completely, since for instance you can have a bisexual person who is mostly attracted to females and occasionally attracted to males. That doesn't mean that the terms are useless. The terms 'alive' and 'dead' have the same problem: there is a grey area between them. Doesn't mean that those concepts are useless.
No, it's not. What little we've had about super-secret legal requests isn't that companies have to lie about them. It's that they can't acknowledge them at all.

So the answer they give when asked, and they do get asked, is "no comment."

If they were voluntarily part of PRISM, and legally required to keep that quiet, I'd expect them to say "no comment."

Doing the opposite make so little sense. It means they're having to flat-out lie to their users, something very hard to recover from.
Hashing the code wouldn't help. In fact, nothing besides simply not processing any transactions would.
When Patents Attack ... Part Two
no, that's not the cost to fix

the $14M is just for "an assessment of the problem with the S-80 submarine program and the scope of the work that would be required to correct it"
wow... its a shame somebody bringing darkness to light gets charged. America the beautiful.
If they were truly that powerful and organized, wouldn't they have rather just not orchestrated the leak to begin with?
> Google could not provide the NSA with its TLS keys and then argue it hadn't given the government direct access to its servers.

Sure it could. First, it would be accurate: TLS keys give you the ability to decrypt communications, which is distinct from direct access to the servers (though, obviously, it can easily substitute for it.) Second, even if it wasn't an accurate distinction, people can (and do) argue positions on unsound bases, and Google doesn't seem to be especially incapacitated in that regard.
One of my (subjective) requirements is that the word not be annoying (i.e. incongruent with the rest of the language). "Performantly" certainly was not, I think smalltalk is only complaining for complaining's sake.
How (and why) I'm not running my own DNS anymore
It would be great if that instructions were just saved by someone. But I've found something:

>In July 2012 the Computer History Museum accepted a donation from Texas Instruments Inc. of over 1,300 patent and laboratory notebooks written by Members of the Technical Staff and other employees of the Research and Development Laboratory of Fairchild Semiconductor. TI acquired the books when it purchased National Semiconductor, which had owned them since its acquisition of Fairchild Semiconductor in 1987. Included with the notebooks were two indexed collections of technical reports and technical memos written between 1959 and 1973.

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-fairchild-semicondu...;
Dissecting Tech Companies' Denial of Involvement in NSA PRISM
this is fantastic!
Many times this.

Do you all remember when the "news" was "leaked" by "anonymous hackers" who claimed to lift Apple user data from a hacked FBI laptop? The Internet lost its mind frothing against the surveillance state.

The minority of critical thinkers who suggested that maybe the claims of anonymous hackers shouldn't be taken entirely at face value were either ignored or shouted down. Blanket denials by the FBI were met with retorts of "we know they're lying!". News outlets -- many the very same covering the PRISM story -- repeated uncritically the accusations of the FBI harvesting Apple user data.

Do you all remember what the actual outcome of that story was? Spoiler alert: the allegations were grade-A bullshit. The only part that was true was that it involved (old) data lifted from a hack (against an app developer). Everything else was bogus self-aggrandizing, and the Internet loudmouths played right into it. Why? Because it confirmed people's existing fears.

The sad reality is that everything that has hit the news about this PRISM story -- and the Verizon story -- has actually shed very little light on anything. We have a source with unknown credibility providing incomplete and possibly even misunderstood information colliding with large corporate and government interests. Maybe everyone is lying. Maybe nobody is.

The only thing that is certain is that people unquestionably believe claims that confirm their existing beliefs.
And since HN is https they don't even get a referer to see where it came from.
Plus, you can sell pre-installed microSD cards for $10, which should bring some revenue to help the project along.
"We Steal Secrets" new documentary on Wikileaks
With Clapper's admission that Prism is real, I don't understand why it's still a debate as to whether Google / Facebook / Microsoft / Apple are involved.

What Internet companies are they getting information from, such that they wouldn't target the top dozen companies that account for the radical majority of anything you'd want to bother tapping into? Who do people think they're talking about? Excite? Some small local ISP?

They got Verizon and AT&T to sign on to massive scale spying. If they can do that, they can get Google and Facebook and so on. These companies simply have no choice in the matter. You'll recall that Google's anti-trust inquiry recently, conveniently, went away with barely a slap on the wrist.
$14 million to find a solution, not to actually put that solution in place. A delay of two years in the $2.7B project will cost at least an order of magnitude more than $14M.
I find the timing of this release pretty amazing...
It's not the phrase "direct access" (which they could reasonably use given it was used in the original leak story), but rather the construction of the whole sentence.

There are millions of ways you could phrase the response
(Dropbox and Microsoft used completely different language), the chance that these five came up with the phrasing used independently seems fairly low. Especially as the statements weren't all given to a single reporter (who could have phrased the question in a particular way) but rather to a variety of different news sources.

It could still be completely innocent, they could all have cribbed off whoever did the first denial or they could have discussed it beforehand and co-ordinated messages without there having been any government involvement.

It is however something that needs explaining.
Nobody should store sensitive data and e-mails on a system where they're sitting there in plain text accessible to god knows how many people at Google and their data centers. That's insane.
I'm like 19033349x more concerned about CALEA in WebRTC than anything with the NSA. My concern would be WebRTC configured in a way to be construed as an "interconnected voice system".

If you're ruled to need to comply with CALEA, and don't, you're shut down.
if it was direct access, didn't the years here differ - http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/prism-sl...
Data intelligence complex is the real story
Are you complaining that they can't win when it comes to the right PR spin on a massive spying program?
The President has said that the only access being given is to content posted by foreigners. Do I believe this? I have no idea. But it is important to note that he said this, as it was the exact same rationale given for warrantless wiretapping years ago(We only monitor communications between foreigners and Americans.) And it's this dinstinction that gives a plausible (note: i don't say correct) constitutional defense of this.
Google Chief Architect: we only respond to specific orders about individuals
Well, he posts on his website every day commenting on articles from other websites, so whatever solution he uses, it seems it's effective enough.
In reality, I could write in my neighbor's dog on the ballot, to demonstrate I am a politically engaged individual who is likely to vote for a human candidate if the candidates change their tune.

That is the superior answer to the mythical doctor visit, as well.

I would further argue that refusing to be involved may have resulted in cancer in both the left nut and right nut.

Unfortunately the analogy may be a bit too applicable for comfort, eh?
We are allowed to increase the limit as needed.
I would like this:

The only requests for information to which we respond are requests that contain the full name(s) of the people whose data is requested.
I'll be the one to say it. Awesome. Anything like this for Linux or Windows?
The nuclear industry honestly couldn't give one shit about whether regulators choose LNT/ALARA or "hormesis". If anything hormesis would make their work planning more difficult as then they'd possibly have to worry about ensuring their workers have enough exposure. ALARA is simple and easy and would remain used for work planning.

But either way, nuclear emits less radiation than coal, so if you're worried about public health effects then we're again in the situation that the power company doesn't really have to care either way; if they want less radiation overall they should build a nuke, if they believe in hormesis then coal would probably be preferred, but even assuming a Fukushima-style triple meltdown would not be a large public health disaster.
Tesla Makes a Profit, But Not from Selling Cars
Decimal points vs decimal commas is a common problem here (and other countries with similar locale details) with software, when exporting numbers in text format to be processed by other software. Over the years I have had to correct for this in 3DSMax and Excel scripts. Very annoying.
Love it how they got played. I hope they appreciate the way the administration let them look and lie their customers in the face.

Wish I had been a fly on the wall when they where instructed on what to say and how to phrase it. It is certainly no accident that they came out on the same day, with the same phrasing, etc
Google Glass Banned From Google Shareholder Meeting
How does this logic work? Because people in this profession 80 years ago contributed to those efforts we should somehow be grateful to them or something??
This is why decenteralized systems are important. WebRTC itself can be used in an entirely peer to peer manner.

Do you foresee CALEA being successfully imposed on open source software (e.g. firefox) where users connect directly to each other without an intermediate server?
The presentation made it seem as if each company was not participating passively. Specifically the stored intelligence "varies by provider" and there are "special requests available." Interestingly, there is no mechanism described which captures all content of a certain type i.e. email; it seems to be apparent that only content from the providers is available. Surely, if you can intercept email from google without their help you can grab ALL email traffic as well.

The slides also show that providers join over time. If they were just intercepting you would expect all email providers to join at once; that doesn't appear to be the case.

There are also stuff like "online social networking detail" and "login notifications" which make it seem like facebook has given access to their systems.
It's a part of the Patriot Act. This is from a Wikipedia article on a warrant canary, which is a clever method devised to alert customers of such warrants indirectly. [1]

> Such subpoenas, including those covered under the USA Patriot Act, provide criminal penalties for revealing the existence of the warrant to any third party, including the service provider's customers.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
Are LXC containers enough?
I'm not sure what the best operator would be for my suggestion, but after thinking about it '/' would work well since it calls to mind the idea of navigating a hierarchy. 'Shortcat/comments' feels nice to me. It can also be typed without using shift on a US keyboard, which is convenient.
The NSA wouldn't be storing all the photos or videos from Facebook. Storing text is trivial compared to that.

If you reduced Facebook's storage demands down to always static text, I think there's little doubt you could eliminate over 90% of their storage requirements (I'd say closer to 97%). And that's without any kind of compression.
Getting Started With RVM: Features To Use and Pitfalls To Avoid
I would like to see a benchmark showing if HyperLevelDB's changes made compaction slower or faster. (This is important because LevelDB's bottleneck is commonly compaction.)

Under the compaction section, a chart does show a dramatic improvement on the fillrand benchmark. But since HyperLevelDB removes the LevelDB write delay when compaction falls behind, writes in HyperLevelDB will continue at full speed even as compaction falls extremely far behind. So, yes, the data for the benchmark was technically written into the db, but at the costs of making reads insanely expensive.

Most reads need to touch every level-0 file. If compaction moving data out of level-0 fell 10GB behind, then there would be hundreds of level-0 files, and most reads would need to check all of them.

If the benchmark had mixed in one random read for every random write, I assume HyperLevelDB would have been dramatically slower than LevelDB.

But if the changes in what to pick for compaction made HyperLevelDB non-trivially faster, that would be quite interesting. But I can't tell if they did.
If it's going to come out eventually, why not control the leak?

PR 101, mang
I have a friend who does recruitment at Palantir and he told me he has PERSONALLY hired 100 people in the past year. Sounds like quite the conveyor belt of new people coming in. He said it was mostly interns, so I guess they must have a strong college program.
Hmmm…

<conspiracy theory>
We haven't seen posts from the CEOs of Cisco/Juniper/Dell/HP or other manufacturers of datacenter grade network equipment. Who needs Google/Facebook's "knowledge" if you've got root on all the border network gear (and SSL termination hardware)?

I know here in .au, Huawei have been excluded from the government-deployed National Broadband Network due to suspicions that the Chinese government has too much control/access to Huawei newtwork hardware.
there are crimes against the System and crimes against another person(s). Through the history of the human race the former were punished harder than the latter. Jesus for example.

There is a joke in Russia about a person buying a fake money printing device. After discovering that the device itself is a fake (it was loaded with a bit of real money for demo purposes during sale), the buyer reports the fraud to the authorities. As result the seller gets relatively small time for the fraud he committed against the buyer and the buyer gets much bigger time because he tried to commit fraud (ie. intended to print fake money) against the government.
I think lawdawg is saying there's no reasonable way they can deny participating in a massive spying program without somebody saying it sounds dodgy.

And it is kind of true: "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers" is the clearest construction I can imagine for denying involvement, but they get called out for it anyway.
I've stopped clicking on businessinsider.com links. And, forbes.com is a close 2nd in this form of useless publishing.
or all these companies are intentionally making similar press releases in hopes people will catch on that theyre being coerced into denying involvement. this way they're (assuming they have one) fulfilling their denial obligation with the NSA, yet still are protesting what they dont actually want to be doing
No, it's not a conspiracy theory.

1) James Clapper admitted Prism is real

2) Of course such a program would involve the top Internet companies, who in the world else would it involve (the smallest Internet companies?)
I might be wrong, but I believe it a section of the leaked document that discussed using a sniper to kill leaders of Occupy movements.
In what sense is Github closed-source?

In the colloquial sense. But as that page refers to, at least the JS code is proprietary.
Relevant: This NYT article from last month that profiled the mail scanning system and visual triage that is used to process the many unreadable pieces of mail that come through:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/us/where-mail-with-illegib...

I guess it makes sense that every piece of mail is "photographed" at some point...in the sense that a scan is a photograph. So the act of photographing each mail isn't a surprise.

But, as opposed to the Verizon and PRISM cases, when you send a piece of snail-mail, you are literally sending it to the government to be handled, have its "metadata" read and recorded as necessary as a means for it to be sent to its destination.

On the other hand, the aggregation of data and retention of such may not be something we're all happy with, so what's the policy on that?
Uh, doesn't the first sentence in the updated paragraph still say that the government is tapping directly into central servers blah blah blah?

I'm sure PRISM is not the all-powerful intelligence apparatus people here are claiming but I'm not sure how much hedging is really going on here. It was obvious even from the first draft that the claims WaPo were making were based on the slides that were leaked.
Hey teawithcarl, I appreciate that. I'd be interested in hearing what you think the right thing is. I suspect that we're actually in agreement on most points. If there's something you think we should be doing differently (and I agree with you :), I'm more than happy to lobby for that within Google.

I do think Google is working hard to protect our users from unwarranted government requests. Just speaking for me personally, I really dislike provisions in the PATRIOT Act and FISA that compel secrecy. One thing I did like in Google's blog post was that we spoke out against the "level of secrecy around the current legal procedures." I was encouraged that Facebook later said something similar. In my opinion, a lot of the frustration about the current situation would be best applied to changing some laws in the United States.
I don't think anyone is 'falling prey' because of what happend to Turing. What evidence is there for this?
> they could have discussed it beforehand and co-ordinated messages without there having been any government involvement

These are after all companies several (all?) of whom have co-ordinated illegal no-hire compacts in the past: it's not far-fetched to think they'd work together on a PR response to this. Which isn't necessarily to rule out a more sinister explanation of course.
You're supposed to love it and feel clever. Meanwhile the machine marches on.
As Microsoft was the first company to adhere PRISM as stated by the leaked slide, that also means that no company worldwide should ever use office 365, azure or managed sharepoint / exchange !

These software corps better be persuasive because a whole economic part of USA will be endangered then !
#1 - It's really pretty simple. The companies get legal immunity from the government by denying the existence of the program. They already are, no doubt, indemnified. Companies are so risk averse they wouldn't do it without immunity. Disclosing information about the program would violate the conditions of that immunity.
I thought it had been common knowledge that the way handwritten mail is sorted is that it is barcoded and photographed, and then the address is keyed on by a human.

It doesn't take much imagination that these days each such address is kept, and that the three-letter agencies have a sample of everyone's handwriting, in case it is needed.
may use a version of this for my crappy website? can I fork it? Thanks = )