skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Perhaps I should defer to Jean Chretien... "A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven."

Honestly though - I don't know. It's why I asked.

Possibly they can't, because how do you prove you're not lying other than saying you're not lying? It's not like there's some sort of an unshakable, absolute truth hardware log that details every single data access.
Some people who are running tor on their pis are getting messages about your computer being to slow. If you see these messages and are curious about the cause arma posted a good explanation today to tor-relays:

The current theory is that these happen when your relay becomes the hidden
service directory, or introduction point, for a popular hidden service.
So these are basically roving hotspots that move around the network. In
the case of the hidden service directory the pain lasts about a day,
and in the case of the introduction point, it lasts for some function of
the duration of the introduction point (could be a while) and the time
that the hidden service descriptor is fresh (15 minutes or so). Based
on the logs here, it sounds like it might be the introduction point in
these cases.

Here are some tickets to look at:

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/3825

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4862

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8950

Also, the switch to the new ntor circuit-level handshake should reduce the cpu requirements for create cells (in addition to being more secure). So once more people have switched to ntor, these hotspots shouldn't be so
bad. It is unclear if that's the same as 'shouldn't be bad'. :)

https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposa...

Full context:

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-June/...
DEFCON 18: Your ISP and the Government: Best Friends Forever (2010
But it says "were the subject ... in the past six months".
haha. Sorry Garry, my comment was completely fictitious. Not obvious?
Why give false numbers when you can give true numbers for only a six month period? Just leave out the NSA request for all user data that was made earlier.
Where is the substance behind the statement "the trust is gone"? Has there been mass voluntary closings of Facebook accounts? Did their stock take a hit? Are their actual customers, the advertisers, even phased? I somehow doubt that we can attribute this release entirely to the fear of trust loss in their "user"base.
Another post along the same lines, this one from Microsoft detailing the apparent presence of two hosts files in the same directory:

"Can we believe our eyes?" http://blogs.technet.com/b/mmpc/archive/2011/08/10/can-we-be...
SyncIt is a Wonderful File Synchronization App for Chrome
I'm pretty surprised they've been given the go-ahead to release this. Typically, these agencies would never consider such a thing, especially under pressure.

If I were more trusting, I suppose I would see this as a nice evolution toward a more transparent state of affairs. But it's uncharacteristic of these agencies and the state of affairs that has been going on.

I find it hard to believe they would move so quickly to pull back some of the secrecy they've imposed if they weren't expecting a great deal of scrutiny for what we've yet to learn.
Well the reason people don't do "public by default" in intel and counter-intel at all is because it also changes the balance of power in that particular cat/mouse game.

We don't even need to talk about terrorism for that. Drug cartels and organized crime have for decades required the legal system to occasionally resort to gag orders and secrecy to avoid tipping off the "bad guys" before the legal system is able to act.

After all, the legal system is deliberate on purpose as to do otherwise would invite abuses of its own. I would be worried to live in a country where you could be locked up, arraigned, indicted, tried and convicted in just a day.

Public interest requires us to have enough due process that the system is inevitably slow. But a completely public system must operate much much faster to be effective against some types of "menace to society". This includes terrorism but is hardly limited to terrorism.

So absolutely we should have that public debate to figure out under what criteria we would operate NSA intel intercepts, what would be public, and what would be secret. But just don't be surprised if there are still secrets when it's all said and done, with a select group of persons to provide the accountability required to keep the system safe.

We do use similar systems for other very dangerous programs after all (e.g. nuc weps).
Not sure how they do it but in part we look for bogus search patterns across a wide variety of IPs. If 1,500 IP's search for (with quotes) "Enter your password or click the button to post anonymously" I'm gonna guess it is some SEO type who has a scripted search looking for forums where they can post link spam. There are a variety of things that in aggregate pop out as not being humans searching for things.
Trust is fragile, even when you're talking about the relationships and reputations of a business.
> Like everyone else, his OS language is set to en-US because nobody likes to mess with system defaults.

You mean pirated Windows system defaults? Because legally you buy localized copies, and when you install any popular Linux distro choosing the language is one of first steps if not the first.
That is- they both had, with exceptions, the same 2 million songs. And of those 2 million available, CD Baby provided some 500k of them.
"were the subject of [a] request", not necessarily the subject of the data the NSA is reading.
Driving Tesla Model S with Google Glass
I may be part of the minority here, but I have/see no reason to believe the Facebook is lying about these numbers, or lying about the fact they actually check every request, and don't have a NSA backdoor. If I am correct, they only thing that shows Facebook has given the NSA/government agency access to their servers is a leaked PowerPoint presentation.
I believe it is more than likely that one of the following two options is true.
(1) The PowerPoint is just wrong, and was made it up someone working for a government contractor.
(2) The PowerPoint is inaccurate in that these corporations have complied with the government, when asked to and required by law too, through the use of warrants, both secret and otherwise.

Personally I think option 2 is the most likely scenario. Facebook (and Google and most of the other named corporations) have done nothing to lose my trust in them. The only party that at this time, I know is to blame is the NSA/government for conducting a cloaked surveillance operation on the entire US population. Until there is proof, or a reasonable argument, showing that these corporations willingly complies with the NSA and were a part of PRISM, I don't think they have lost any substantial part of my trust.
These edge cases are stupid. If 99% of Americans are safe, that's good enough. Dudes that actually break the law are not our problem, government should get them. The problem is all the other people who are doing nothing wrong other than have opinions or beliefs that the government does not like. Or in the case now are simply sending e-mails. If we can make it harder to get their shit that's enough.

This whole idea that no we can't do it, is defeatist. We can and we should do it, and then we should do more. As much as we can to make it as hard as possible. And if the government still wants to do shit, then let them. That's their prerogative.
While I've never believed their statements...

..by their own account this is ~50 "intercepts" per day, on facebook alone... that's more than 2 per hour, every hour, for 6 months.
1) Your message is a bit confusing. Not sure if you're a developer or designer.

2) If I'm thinking like a hiring manager or founder, it would be a huge risk (for both of us) to relocate someone inexperienced. Remove that part and I bet your response rate doubles.
It still takes time to retrain, even if the education is free.
Simply put, we cannot.
Yep. If you can't legally acknowledge the request, leave it out of the data you report.

Or walk the line by conveniently reporting your data for a six month period that doesn't include the NSA request for all user data now and in the future.
That's a massive load of shit, the 'economics of surveillance' is a drop in a very large bucket.

Most people don't give a shit about surveillance and half the people that do care think it's great.

This blog post is damage control to avoid getting banned across the world since it's become painfully clear that Facebook is inseparable from the US Government.
Those numbers seem odd. So almost 2 persons are the subject of every request?
Ask HN (Azure users): SQL Database or SQL VM
Hi guys, we are considering using Azure to host a medium-sized (in terms of traffic and DB/IO read/write) Web app, and wondering if anyone can share their opinion and experience.

Azure offers two main options for SQL Server databases: SQL Database (which seems like a managed high-availability database on a cluster) and SQL VM (which seems like an unmanaged/self-managed instance on a VM).

In terms of cost and basic needs, SQL Database should be sufficient for us for now, but I'm not convinced about it's performance (plenty of posts about slowness, even for simple queries & small datasets). SQL VM will obviously be faster and more efficient, but the relatively higher cost is a prohibition.

What do you guys suggest? How has your experience been with either (or both) SQL Database and/or SQL VM?
Any attempt to do stuff like that will still require a clock signal somewhere. That clock will be noticed. An attempt to do it in the analog domain with no synchronous logic would be even more apparent to anyone who studies the internals of the phone.

In short, no, it ain't gonna happen. It would show up on Bunnie Huang's blog one day and there would be blood in the streets the next.
I don't think it's Zucks fault and there's nothing he can do, but he's still going to hurt for this. It's a political and governance problem and can only be solved at those levels.

Until we're sure that intelligence agencies can't lie at senate hearings, secret courts and laws don't exist, and we're sure the government can't force CEOs to lie, we just can't be sure

And until foreigners get the same right to at least a judge overseeing a warrant we're going to see a move away from US companies no matter where in the world they are.
I wouldn't trust them even after all the agencies are dismantled. New agencies get made and who knows what they'll turn into?

The only thing that would work is some kind of widespread ban on the use of gag orders, non-disclosure agreements, and similar legal devices by our government. And for what, so we can trust our own corporations to at least say what is in their own best interest? So then you also have to ban the use of funds to keep them silent. Really, the whole thing is a mess.
> Greenwald has been a passionate critic of Lamo, suggesting that Lamo lied to Manning by turning him in, and also lied after the fact to cover up the circumstances of Manning's confessions.

Not sure about the second part, but the fact that Lamo lied to Manning isn't controversial. He's talked about it in a few interviews.

This one was a little odd:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/03/adrian-lamo-brad...
I would like to see companies prevent sharing, if they want to, without using the government to charge people fines. This seems like a step in that direction, however, changing words won't really cause anybody to stop.
I really wish more articles about frameworks were about the ugly bits. If you do exactly what the framework expects and never go off the reservation, they all are fairly decent.

What I want to always know about is what happens in the framework when stuff goes bad. "When frameworks go bad, your guide to life after the honeymoon period"... I would read that.
> what reason do you leave for them trying to improve transparency?

To decrease the mistrust.

Facebook hasn't been fully trustworthy for a long time, if ever. That's normal - I don't think any company really is.
How much longer till a similarly-worded release from Google?
Of course ancient Roman concrete is better than what we have now. The ancient Roman concrete that wasn't better than what we have now, didn't survive to today. There was probably a wide range of random kinds of concrete, and a 2000-year experiment has told us which of those random kinds was the best.
But how will you know you're not just a brain in a vat being fed false electrical signals?
There's more that can be done than pre-crime, though. For example, statistical analysis/datamining of things like ambient sound levels, vocal stress levels, positive/negative sentiment, etc. could reveal trends even before they reach Twitter, allowing them to be preempted or directed.
Too bad I'm such a cheapskate, as I refuse to pay for such content, but viewing the source gives some idea of what it's about.

I find it ludicrous that the spies won't gather data from foreign owned TelComs when it's been common knowledge that all foreign communications in & out of the USA have been under scrutiny for years now.

http://aapd0418.com/2013/06/13/bush-lets-u-s-spy-on-callers-...

http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Timeline-of-revel...

Doesn't anyone remember the SCOTUS granting immunity to Verizon et al for their participation in the unconstitutional domestic surveillance program?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/29/us-telecom-immunit...
"The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them," James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News.

Absurd. Total fiction.
Yes and these ass holes will keep lying their teeth out and now no one will believe them.
You might dig http://amplifier.com/

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation to Amplifier ;)
All you need to remember about Zuckerberg and Facebook from his quotes here:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
Friend: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
The second amendment is about ensuring you have a body of men that know how to use weapons, that you can call up in defense of the country. That's what it's for, all right there in the first half of the text, up to the comma.

"being necessary for the security of a free state" isn't high-minded idealistic philosophy on the nature of the individual human, it's meaning "to keep our country safe from those Europeans over there, should they come a-knocking". Instead of "it's there so our government will fear us", it's "it's there so our government can call on us, and we will have the right skills to serve".
Unfortunately it's not a fraction of a percent.

2.2 million people in prison in the US at the moment.

That's probably about 1.5 million that are "wrongly" incarcerated (extrapolating based on the number of people in prison before the war on drugs began, and what it should be today based on population growth). They're political prisoners.

This graphic nicely sums up the obviousness of that:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/US_incar...
Most people don't give a shit because it does not effect them. If we can show them that it does effect them, their opinions will change. And it does effect everyone, because if you have to worry about explaining what you say to other people or face consequences then freedom of speech and freedom of conscience is effectively dead.
It is common for government agencies to farm out much of the work. At NASA, for example, the government employees do almost no engineering work. It's all private contractors. I never worked at NSA, but I would imagine it is similar.
They already do. Google have been publishing statistics and reports about this stuff for a while:

https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/

None of this is relevant though. These are legal requests. The issue that people should remain focused on is whether or not the NSA has illegal, ongoing, unfettered access to wholesale data under PRISM or other programmes.
Am I to understand that this:

>The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.

Is global? As in, 19,000 accounts in total across the globe over the past six months? The description of the requests is "all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters)." Or is this just the number of persons 51% likely to be a US citizen?
They have very good reasons to lie if the government threatened Zuckerberg, et. al., with the Worldcom treatment.
So if people don't trust them, figure out how to verify this. Hint: they are publicly traded companies.
Vivisection. Public vivisection.

Strap these organizations down and cut them the fuck open with no regard for their wellbeing. If the procedure kills them, then so be it.

There is a threshold past which live dissection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Recovery_of_the_Stasi_fi...) is the only way that trust can be restored. I assert we have run across that threshold. And before anyone whines about it; no, we are not as bad as the Stasi yet. The Stasi do not represent the position of the threshold, they were miles past it.
But you're kidding yourself if you don't think

Oh, but I do. Further, I think it's natural and inevitable. It's ridiculous to expect governments to artificially hobble themselves in terms of potential just because they're governments. It's what they do with that potential that concerns me. As an analogy, the fact that the government controls vast arsenals of weaponry does not necessarily mean it's planning to kill everyone else.

There's a popular meme on HN that government inevitably tends towards tyranny. I think this is total bullshit; tyrranical government is far from unusual, but it isn't the norm either, and the assumption that it is, is a false premise. Or put another way, there's no good priding yourself on your skills at Bayesian analysis if you have a habit of selecting inaccurate priors.

Edit: while I was making dinner it popped into my head that while nowadays there's a high probability that any given terrorist is Islamic, the probability that any given Muslim is a terrorist is, of course, quite low. Likewise, while tyrannies are often perpetuated by governments (that is, bureaucratic organizations as opposed to warlords or roving tribes), the probability of a given government turning tyrannical is far lower.
One of the news reports on Snowden said when he logs types his passphrase he drapes a blanket over his head and laptop.

Keyloggers are a problem, so keep the laptop in a nice safe when you're out.
Yes, when you create a venue for free speech, it will -- gasp -- be used to express various opinions and ideas you will not agree with. So?

The Nazis had no trouble doing their dirty work the last time without Facebook, Reddit, or Twitter. These days, they have more to lose from exposure than they would ever have to gain. The antidote to bad speech is more speech, and that's precisely what Reddit is good for.
The sales guy didn't laugh at my friend's dad, just at the concept. It also doesn't mean he was rolling around on the floor like in a cartoon. It's really not that far-fetched a story.
As far as I know, they deny any sort of blanket availability of data - so a shared private key would seem to be denied under that guise. I think claiming a number as they have, and a number of affected users, would also be denial of that. Circular logic, but we can't do much better. If they're lying and just made up these numbers, there's nowhere to really go with that.
I'm not saying you are wrong. There is most definitely a chance that you are correct. I guess my point is that I think these companies deserve the right of "innocent until proven guilty." And I don't believe enough has been done to prove they are guilty.

EDIT: I don't think that "innocent until proven guilty" should only apply to crimes. I think the same concept can and should be used in almost all cases of accusing a party of something.
It's possible that some requests they aren't counting as hitting any accounts.
You could if you asked the author and they agreed to give you a different license.
Tor based mobile phone app. Encrypt your phone calls.
They don't have to be lying.

19k over 6 months is still quite a large number, I think.
This is Kevin Poulsen. Just popping in to correct this. Adrian Lamo turned in Bradley Manning. All I did (being a reporter) is break the news.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/conscience/
Presumably the same way he goes about answering that question now.
Sure, trolling.
There is a great use of the legal system.
Oh wait ....
They aren't being accused of a crime (or at least most of the controversy isn't about things that are normally considered crimes), so I'm not sure if innocent-until-proven should necessarily apply.
> from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child

So ... why do they need to hide a request for something as 'innocent' as this?
Will you hit Hawaii/Honolulu on your book tour? We'd love to have you!
hadn't seen this. Thank you!
What good comes to you from "them buying your goods" if you just gave them the money they are paying you?

Of course, the good comes from not making them suffer, keeping things calm, having a sfety, getting an overall civilized society out of the deal. But that's not the kind of benefit implicit on your phrase (or in the Ford's original).

Oh, and yes, there is one benefit that is not dependent on the price you pay for it. It'll make it possible for lots of people - that otherwise would just starve - to work into making the world a better place (for profit or not). But again, it's at least not obvious that you mean this, and it's obvious that the original didn't.
Thanks for the reply. I am capable of both, but not really great/expert at either. That is great feedback though. I will clear that up with a small message.
Hardly even a use of the legal system, the clause would not stand up for one second. What is really being used is the victims attitudes toward the legal system.

It sort of seems like this license may bother you. It really is good at this.
You're behind the times if you think people had trust in Facebook before this latest round of issues. I've had friends and family closing there accounts and not returning in a slow dribble for the last two years.

Go have a look at your friends list, see how many accounts are inactive but still listed. Most people I've done this come in around the 10-15% of contacts in that inactive state.

Mine has been growing slowly with most people not reactivating accounts. It started out around 5% a year or so ago, and was headed upto towards 15% before I just deleted a bunch of them and screwed my metrics.

Doing that should give you a metric you can start to track yourself without taking anyone else's word for it.

An interesting this I've noticed is with married couples, the less socially motivated of the pair will usually close there account and get there partner to do all the leg work for them. Generally its the husband that closes the account, but sometimes, in the case of my mother, its sometimes the wife that closes.

My mother did something novel I thought for handling family photos. She has started uploading them into a shared drop box account. I literally get notifications while I'm sitting at work that new photos have been sync'ed. I'm quite enjoying that form of photo sharing ATM.