skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Difficult to tell. The fact the Google's name is singled out with 8 others on an NSA slide fuels speculation, and is at odds (again, speculation) with this letter. Someone on either side will have to provide something spectacularly believable to kill that speculation.
Should we infer that the NSA or some other government organization used a FISA request to read a German girl's Facebook messages about her upcoming au pair work in the US? This seems very unlikely, and I believe would be a clear violation of FISA unless they also thought she was a terrorist or spy.
I agree. It sounds utterly implausible on just about every conceivable level.
Finished that blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864434
New Apple Look Doesn’t Fully Embrace Flat Design
Apple will not employ a completely flat design scheme with the iOS upgrade; it just touches on it.

The company did all but ditch the skeuomorphic look that has been almost a trademark of the brand since the release of the first iPhones in 2007.
iOS7 Inspiration
The bigger revelation here to me is that it would appear the information access is shared beyond the NSA for more than security purposes.
You still can, but there are a few more workarounds you have to do now. You have to manually create the sparsebundle AND change configuration options.
Like this and practically every other related discussion on HN right now, which was my point.
Google actually has forward secrecy which prevents an attacker from doing anything passive even if they have google'e key.
http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/11/22/forwardsecret.html

Of course, if they have access to google's servers(and can get the ephemeral keys) or can mount active attacks, this doesn't stop anything.
I think Data Nitro is really cool, and as a data geek the idea of having a real language available inside the Excel environment gets me very excited.

Unfortunately, by increasing the power and capability of what a careless user can do, while expanding the learning curve and moving Python code to a different place than any cell-level functions or global VBA functions are stored... all of this just makes the potential for issues of human failure far greater.
I'm really curious what they intend to share as what they describe as the scope of the requests.
Thumbs up for this coming from the conservative party as well. As others have said, this really is a bi-partisan issue and we should build as broad a coalition of the unwilling as possible.
Smartphones are the original wearable computers
I'm not affiliated with Humble Bundle, but most of the offerings I've seen from them fit on a single line in the default presentation. I would be less upset about being second-from-the-right than I would be about being below the fold.
Like lobo had mentioned, I would like to see a program-based bundle. If you were to able to follow the HumbleBundle's pricing scheme for programs like Sublime Text (and even f.lux which is free), coupled with other utility packages, I would be inclined to pitch in some cash.
Same link previously posted, but without the trailing '#' intended to spoof the dupe-detector:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5864548
I am upset that the government is wasting my money like this. I don't think Tesla is being unfair by applying for and accepting the loan though. Tesla didn't tell Bush to tell the DOE to loan $25B to green automakers. They're merely taking advantage of the opportunities that are available.
Perhaps she posted her intent to work illegally in a public facebook post and not only via PM? Or perhaps her host family was under the impression she was official and triggered some sort of alert when they were arranging things (if she for example, listed them as a contact when she got to customs). The typical au pair process from Germany is quite strict and time consuming to get a visa for a 1 year stay, I've had a few friends come to the US to do it. You most definitely need a work visa to be an au pair and she was attempting to violate her tourist visa in two ways, by overstaying the 90 days allowed, and by working. A lot of things could be going on here.
In secret, with the secret court and the secret order, perhaps he's not a whistleblower, but in public, where we don't know about that secret court or that secret order, he sure is a whistleblower.

Yay for having a secret legal system.
Pretty impressive, we used Quantcast at my previous job and I was really impressed that you guys did for free what other services charge top dollar for. (Nothing wrong with charging top dollar, of course, but obviously if there is a quality free product...)

Some quick questions:
1. This is way more than a simple Show HN hackathon demo. :p I'm assuming you (and others?) spent some time on this?
2. When you say "currently ... (unique visitors)" - is that uniques across the entire time period (120 seconds?) or uniques at one second? What's the window for that calculation?
3. I'm assuming you do NOT use Storm for uniques calculation - just a custom script/job?
her actions are extremely harmless in the grand-scheme of things, and it's ridiculous and unsettling that her private conversation was used against her like this.

Surely you're not seriously suggesting that this was in any shape or form acceptable behavior by the state.
No, that's not true. There's an actual source document, which I link to in the post. It's the argument by the Obama administration that the secret ruling should be kept secret. The contents of the secret opinion was revealed by two U.S. senators. See the EFF article for details.
Yes, that is very much true. That is why I outlined other examples to illustrate the differences- intent and effect of the two systems are very different.
Fantastic news. Best of luck to the team.
There is low hanging fruit in the problems to solve though. For example, finding and highlighting outliers in a column. It's a relatively simple feature but yields big benefits to users.
Taking on Ticketmaster
> Additionally, she was not even an american citizen or resident.

In all probability, it's /because/ she's not an american citizen or resident. The fourth amendment doesn't apply for non-persons.
Traitor or patriot is not defined by the current crowd in office, or by whether you support the current questionable policies.

A patriot is someone who consistently defends the constitution, which every one of those clowns took an oath to do.

L'État n'est pas eux.
WAZ is a mainstream newspaper with wide circulation in western Germany. It has better reputation than a tabloid, worse than a top tier newspaper like NYT or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
There is a link to the motion to keep the court filing secret. The entire point of the EFF piece is that the constitutional merit of the legal argument underpinning PRISM is being kept under total secrecy, so obviously they don't have access to the actual ruling.
We in the USA are much more likely to die from chronic illness due to overeating/soda that a terrorist attack. If you want to kill Americans, just buy stock in Coke and McDonalds.
I'm not going to type down a translation, but I can tell you this computer generated translation is very accurate.
Suggestion: Please let me know there are no servers available without requiring me to type in the incredibly frustrating recaptcha.
I assume they're not tracking CSRF, since CSRF tends to be much more common than XSS.
Yup! Some of those are less serious than others, though all are a beachhead you don't want available to an attacker. And SQLi, I agree, is among the worst.
That's a great point. Back then I feel aardvark heavily utilized a google chat bot.

What happened back in the day is you would chat with the aardvard bot, and it would come back with answers fairly quickly.

I'm guessing everyone else was on google chat also.
It's unclear to me who provided the print-out of Jana's private messages. Obviously it seems much more likely that Jana provided the messages, not Homeland Security.

I hired a Canadian once under a TN NAFTA "visa" and he had to bring some correspondence from me to the border. We had to be very careful to word things correctly and not to use specific words that could prevent him from coming to the US. It seems that this is similar to what this young woman experienced.
It is certainly not one of the big newspapers, but still the largest regional one.
We actually were, for a while, but are working through some bugs in that particular module for the last couple of weeks. However, it still didn't show up as often as XSS in our testing, actually.
To each according to his need, from each according to his ability. That's communism and that's what the parent was talking about.

Now, the countries you visited are probably quite a bit off from the above even though they call themselves communist, but the above most certain is communism. Speaking of visiting, I lived in one for a very long time, does that make me more qualified than you to speak on the subject?

If you're going to stand for something, at the very least identify it properly.
The whole story is suspect. Why now? If the US government were to use this kind of intel to address issues as small as this, and this is at the level of shop lifting, wouldn't such incidents have made it to international news several times by now?
Native German speaker here. The article alleges that "apparently" authorities had been monitoring their private correspondence for weeks. I highly doubt that this was the case. Usually it works like this: Once you're deemed suspicious at the passport control, you're sent for "secondary inspection" to an office in the back. There, you're being questioned further, and officials will search publicly available information for anything suspicious. This includes your Amazon wishlist [1] and in some cases searches of personal items like laptop data [2]. The most common case is when future au-pairs bring physical letters from their hosts with them, and CBO agents find them. There have been thousands of stories like this going back for decades, that's nothing new. What's new is the ubiquity of social media.

In this case, I assume the girl was stupid enough to post publicly on the wall of her future employer, and the CBO agents could easily find it and print it out. I seriously doubt that their private conversations have been monitored. That just wouldn't make any sense.

[1] http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/16/16039/1.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
I saw Hannity on Fox news yesterday at a restaurant and he was all up in arms about how this program violated our privacy and the 4th amendment, but after 9/11 the same guy was talking about how we needed these types of programs to protect the U.S. from terrorists.
Minimal circular progress library for iOS
By "curate" I meant to pick a theme or clear connection between the chosen apps. For example, you might offer an "analytics" bundle that offers numerous services that either tackle different aspects of site/usage analytics or allow the buyer to cheaply sample many "best of the best" services before making their decision.

This bundle lists an e-zine, a web-tv channel, SMS/VOIP API, CI, a dashboard, image hosting... The only thing linking these disparate services is the claim that "someone on HN recommended them" and that's it (was there a poll thread that you could link? citation appreciated). Taken together, this bundle makes for an incoherent product picture.

Another observation: the site claims that there are "limited units remaining", however the deal is running for 26 more days. Does this mean the bundle will be shut down when all digital licenses are "sold" or is this a way for getting more conversions? If the latter, you could step it up a notch and display fake dwindling license counters next to each product so users are placed under more pressure to make the purchase before you "run out of stock".
Asking US government to allow Google to show more national security request data
The USCIS reviews Facebook for those applying for long term visas, to prevent fraud. It doesn't have anything to do with the NSA.
This majorly fails the two-second test (both submitted links do). I spent about ten seconds on each site, couldn't figure out what the heck Kippt was, and left. I still have no idea what the service offered is.
A programmer's guide to creating art for your game
He did an interview with sarah lacy on the pandodaily and talked a bit about palantir and transparency. maybe you'll find his view there.
Via over-reaching powers granted to the executive branch by the legislative branch.
Maybe the border agents were in possession of her laptop and used that to get access to her private messages.
Now, THIS is deserving of a White House petition.
I personally have the opposite impression.

(Not that this whole age discussion is relevant at all, I must add.)
I have the Lumia 920 and Microsoft absolutely nailed the design of the OS. It works seamlessly with Office Live/Online/365 whatever the heck they call it too. The home screen of the phone agitates my OCD something fierce because I have to get it just right or... I'll... die...

Seriously though, its a great phone and if you need one for work like I do, might as well get one you really like.
Yes, I am. Or I would be, if I thought this story was remotely true.
this is a great movie about surveilance in the east germany. I don't know how accurate though.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/
One reason I've heard is that when you're on the phone with someone, they don't know what's going on in the car whereas if you're talking with the person next to you and you suddenly need to focus all of your attention on the road, they can stop talking rather than adding to your distraction. Plus they provide a second set of eyes. I don't know how accurate and reliable that theory is, but it makes sense to me.

I also wonder if the mental effort of listening to a voice coming through on a speaker would make it harder to focus. I tend to have trouble hearing people when I'm talking on the phone; but that might just be me.
Ah! We could, but StatsD provides support for more complex metrics like aggregated sums over time. Not something that lends itself easily to a discrete datapoint.

It is. But we use multiprocessing, which is basically the same API. Still, you can't beat the awesome Python stats libraries: Numpy, SciPy, Statsmodels, Pandas..
It is inconsistent, but the Chicago Manual of Style, the New York Times, the Oxford Dictionary, and the AP agree that i's is their preferred format. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/55970/plurals-of-...
Durbin: FISA declassification bill dead on arrival
Would many novices actually care. The commentary floating around the web by people without any background in data analysis or technology seems to be that the indignity of TSA searches matters more than the actual danger of enabling future people to appoint themselves power brokers in the model of J Edgar Hoover.

If novices don't care, wouldn't it just be an additional hassle?
This is a problem I've spent a lot of time pondering. The author makes several suggestions; one in particular (a GitHub for datasets) is an idea I felt strongly enough about that I founded a start-up called BuzzData to address this concern. Unfortunately, we did not find our critical mass and the product has since successfully pivoted into an entirely different product called LookBookHQ.

I do have another idea, which is to bring the concept of testing to the Excel world.

I think that the combination of:

- a framework for building up test cases that can be run against the data as part of the saving process (think rSpec)

- an English-like, indented grammar for defining user stories that can potentially generate code for tests (think Cucumber)

- a strong push for a culture of testing in the Excel community that would have to include Microsoft

I dunno, honestly. Could be crazy. The culture might never accept testing.

But then again, one of the basic ways to sell something is to give people insurance against humiliating themselves. It's possible that this thinking would make a lot of sense to the twice shy, highly risk-averse board members of the major financial institutions and governments of the world.
Yeah I was thinking the same exact thing.
How To Hack Your Startup’s Public Relations Strategy
True, although DDG's dedication to anonymizing searches seems it would make data retrieval more difficult.

That said, the options look unappealing. If it really comes down to it, would you rather be giving your information away to US, Chinese or Russian agents?
Agree. My plan is not for weather alerts.
"Ingram’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of an improper invocation of Godwin’s Law approaches 1.

"...it should be evident Ingram’s Law does not excuse irrelevant, improper mentions of Nazism in any discussion. It is not a purely rhetorical device. But it ought to be used to counter any attempt to side-step proper mention or comparison with Nazism and Hitler or avoid admitting the similarities between Nazism or Nazi practices"

http://richardvaningram.hubpages.com/hub/Godwins-Law-and-Ing...

Incidentally it turns out the Glenn Greenwald wrote a little commentary on Godwin's Law a few years back: http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/

In the comments to that article, Godwin himself showed up, and wrote that his Law was intended only to discourage frivolous comparisons to Nazis, not substantive ones.
If there was a reason to impeach a president this might be it.

Nixon was impeached for spying on a few competitors but eerily similarly using the FBI, CIA and IRS to spy on competitors and was statesman enough to resign.

Bill Clinton for being too good and making people pry into his personal life.

So far this trumps both combined.

Granted this is the first time technology has allowed this amount of spying and illegal search and seizure of papers so timing would put any president there.

I am scared at what will happen 2-3 presidents from now if the executive branch overreach continues, the exact thing Obama was complaining about in 2008. Considering he was not for it before he became president.
Bringing Health And Fitness Back Into Daily Focus For The Startup Founder
Interesting and agreed. What if excel was very basic in functionality, and then as soon as you get into complex modeling or advanced functions you pull from a user generated (either private or public) template library. The trick would be in making the implementation of templating simple and intuitive.

The goal behind templating would be to prevent complex formulas from being entered in tiny cells, and to leverage a userbase that has "been there, done that." Do you think that would shorten new hire ramp up in using existing complex models etc?
I hadn't heard about medium.com until today, but now I know it's a blog for whiny know-it-all "designers"!

>"When notifications are present, however, that same action opens the corresponding app. So, we must either learn to swipe from the very bottom or risk opening the wrong application from time to time."

Isn't this how it works now? Why does this require learning a new behavior?

>"The new Mail icon is particularly horrid. I’m happy they simplified it, removing the sky backdrop, but the gradient is all wrong."

What does this mean? Excuse my ignorance but how can a gradient be "all wrong"?

Combined with cullenmacdonald's comments, I fail to see a single substantive argument here...
If you knew this was happening and had proof before two weeks ago then you've got a great point.

This is different. Now there's proof. Leaked documents implicating the largest consumer Internet companies that are recognizable names for every US citizen. Now these large Internet companies have to stand in front of their customers, their shareholders and say something about this. Now's our chance to demand answers from them and from our government. Now there's money involved; this strikes me as a very nice lever with which to move the world.

I agree, standing around saying, "Well, I know there's spying going on but, oh well!" is not productive. My ass has been gotten off of for a very long time.

But thinking that nothing is different today is over-the-top cynical.
My thought as well. My guess is she or he had posted something on her publicly visible wall and they just printed that off.

Hardly takes a genius. A couple pages of FB wall would take you back a few weeks as well, the agent probably just hit Print.
Yeah the TN wording is picky, but I can't imagine a situation where one would even think of using Facebook communications as evidence for your visa/status application. In the case of the TN, the only evidence you need to provide (beyond the letter you mentioned) are your degree, letters from previous employers (if relevant), marriage certificate (if relevant), passport (obviously), and your school grades.
here's a preprint of the 3 layer cake article referenced in blog post (Johnson is, of course, the Gang of 1:

http://www.upcrc.illinois.edu/workshops/paraplop10/papers/pa...

and also this deck on Go/clojure/scala/erlang for comparison

http://kachayev.github.io/talks/kharkivpy%230/#/26

__________

Haven't coded in erlang in a long time, but the phrase "unbounded lifetime of actors" seems to be the antithesis of how actors are used in erlang and akka... need to read more about rust
Chef and Puppet Won’t Fix Your CMDB Problem
Essen. Anyone interested in traveling the US to experience everyday life there as an intern or an au pair should be careful with their correspondence. The staff of the immigration authorities appear to be happy to read along on social networks like Facebook. Two young women were put onto the next plane back to Germany right after landing.

After completing high school, Jana H. wanted to go abroad to the land of unlimited opportunity – the United States of America. She organized her own au pair exchange. Found a nice family she wanted to work for and live with for a year.
For agreed-upon daily spending money, Jana would take care of the children. At the same time, she wanted to take a language course to improve her English. She had regular contact with her host father through Facebook.

When the high school graduate finally landed in the US, she was taken to the side and questioned at the passport control in the airport. The officials at the American immigration agency wanted to know the reasons for her travel and how long she wanted to stay.

Wrong answers

Jana was ready for this kind of question. She wanted to visit friends of her parents and take an English course. Was she sure of that? was the next question. Yes, she was sure. Really, really sure?

Finally, the officials presented the astounded Jana with a print-out of the entire Facebook correspondence she had had with her host father. Their accusation: The young woman wanted to work in the States illegally. The authorities had obviously read along in Jana's private messages on the social network Facebook for weeks. Jana was not allowed to enter. The next airplane brought the 18-year-old back to Germany.

It wasn't an isolated incident. The dream of another youth of an internship on a horse ranch in the US also never came to fruition due to snooped Facebook messages – he, too, ended up right back at the airport after the flight over the pond.

291 words.
For heaven's sake: there's a compromise to be reached between sending postcards and using a Brink's truck.
I think the target market is hackers doing startups, not individuals to use on their own.
Exactly as I read it. The translation is better as "Jana was baffled when the officials showed her a print out of all of her facebook correspondence." The article makes it clear they asked her a lot of questions before they presented the facebook messages, so they clearly had suspicion.
My translation would be "Officials baffled Jana with a printout of her complete Facebook correspondence with her future host. Their allegation: the young woman intended to work illegally in the US. The authorities had apparently been reading Jana's private messages on Facebook for weeks".

The key word being "apparently", i.e. bad journalism, jumping to conclusions for a more sensationalist story.
Pay what you want tickets. Finally an alternative!