skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
And how is it OK for a "senior administration official" to be leaking reassuring information on the secret surveillance programs and the secret court orders to NPR? Is there going to be an investigation of this leak? Will they tap NPRs phones like they did the Fox and APs reporters in previous leaks?

BTW - At least two senior NPR reporters are married to people working in the White House:

- Ari Shapiro, NPR's White House correspondent, is married to Michael Gottlieb who works in the White House counsel's office.

- Michele Norris, NPR host and special correspondent, is married to Broderick Johnson, who has worked on and off for the Obama campaign since 2007.

More on reporter/administration conflicts in a recent Washington Post article (hilariously in the "Style" section):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-administ...
appropriate plug:

Get your T-shirt or sticker at
https://supporters.eff.org/shop
the only telcom CEO to refuse the NSA's demands for access, and now he is in prison.

...for insider trading.
Most powerful guy on the planet? I hadn't heard of him until now.

He's probably heard of you and that's the real power. He may have to do a few searches but he definitely knows more about you than you know about about yourself (you can forget what you said, how you felt or what did--the computer does not)
This is purely on your suggestion of "what you know to be the shortest thing". This may, or may not, seem a bit outlandish but there is a reason it is so lucrative. So my answer would be porn.

I read a figure that said something like 70%+ of ALL Internet searches are related to porn, sex, or nudity. Not that I have really given it much thought, but I am positive there are dozens of ways you could get to $1million in porn. I have a couple off the top of my head:

1. Tube site: I'm sure you could get video crawlers that take videos from other porn sites. You could go on eBay and buy views for all of those videos to inflate the perception of the traffic you are producing to other users. Then you could use an ad network for popups, banner ads, or whatever.

2. Cam site: These are supposed to be super popular, as pirating (although still an issue I'm sure) is much harder. There are numerous examples of popular cam sites, but because it is "porn" all of them are shady. There have been numerous complaints filed against the owners of myfreecams for example. I guess for this after you develop the site, you could use Craigslist to find models. Drive traffic to the site (again, it's porn, so marketing naked girls would seem to be easier to market than some eBook), leverage social media, or whatever else. You could also promote traffic for some other site, but affiliate marketing is overrated in my opinion. No offense to anyone doing it, but it just seems like an awful amount of work for a measly scrap of the revenue you could be seeing if you owned the site/content or whatever.

3. Produce your own content: Now this does need some overhead. Cameras, a somewhat trained crew, models, lawyers, location etc. This one would be what I would stay away from. Too much headache for me personally.

I am not saying turn into a "smut peddler" or some porn kingpin, but if your sole goal is to get to $1million as quickly as possible, porn seems like a great solution. Porn is recession proof, there will always be a demand, and you can't argue with the numbers. Best of luck.
You seriously think that DVDs wouldn't exist if they couldn't have their little ROT-13? Well I don't think this is going to be a very fruitful conversation.

Oh but while you're here how about you explain the popularity of DRM-free mp3 downloads :)
Major Project Debacles
you're right, that's the real reason his mind changed. from outside, it looks like biden and also snowden describe it. from inside, obama gets all the intelligence of potential attacks here and there. he realizes now, that it helps his agencies a lot to dispose of those datasets (phone records, emails etc.).

obama admits, that there needs to be a discussion. but he is also clearly positioned on the topic and as long as there is no regulation in place, his decision will determine if surveillance will continue unencumbered.
More Context:
It looks like he was wearing it at devcon to help recruit hackers. I wonder how that worked out for him.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/27/technology/defcon-nsa/index....
Facebook releases new post-NSA-Prism-leak privacy settings.
I think it's a complex issue and it's hard to know anything without having the full context.

I think Obama is somewhat conflicted over the balance and is unable to reveal the interesting parts of that question.

Assuming an environment where all digital information is monitored and it actually is used in a reasonable way (active, investigations, internal warrants from courts, etc.) I could see there being an argument that keeping the extent of it secret prevents people from knowing what's being monitored and avoiding those methods of communications. I don't agree with this argument primarily because things change in leadership and governments and having a system like this (especially with it being secret) can lead to abuse.

This was Snowden's point about changes in policy and 'turn key tyranny'.

Clearly access to this information changed Obama's opinions pretty severely - there must be a lot we don't know.
The themes selling well are constantly updated though.
That's from when General Alexander gave a speech at DefCon last year.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57481689-83/nsa-director-fi...
Can a sub-$400 Surface RT give new life to Microsoft's tablet?
1. Hypocrisy of those who preach about Internet . The USA might be spying but they don't aggressively remove anti-American content. Much unlike China where criticism of the lives of its political elite will get your foreign website blocked.

2. China has no tolerance for those that embody the courage to fight against the system. It has a military interest in learning what Snowden knows. We may even see Snowden go from wistleblower to traitor.

China's Internet policy is increasingly leading to cultural isolation, xenophobia and bellicose nationalism. I don't trust Fang Yang and other social engineers to control the feelings they cultivate.
And the founder and CEO of the only major tech firm to resist the NSA is dead! People just love their conspiracy theories.

http://www.cultofmac.com/231714/andrew-stone-steve-jobs-woul...
>I'm no expert on the matter but I would say a general outsiders perception was that internally the American system treated it's own people fairly.

More or less, yes, that's true. People admired the economic affluence of the US and the political stability and rule of law (if they came from corrupt/troubled/colonised/etc countries). Younger people also admired american pop culture.

But all those still hated the US for its foreign policy.

And the more leftist ones, also had a dislike for the rampant capitalism in the US (they sided with worker's unions and such), and a cultural dislike for the emptiness of consumerism (they sided with the beatnicks, the hippies, etc).
I wouldn't encourage this, even for testing. Github isn't built to be a CDN -- it's not super performant.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5502540/should-github-be-...
Of course, then there are moments when it was much less "for the people" than it is now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
>Visibility is an issue. If the album artwork has a white background the time and date are actually impossible to discern.

Sure, but only having seen the image and not the UI live, I don't know if they change the date/time colours when the background image changes to whiter. Perhaps they do?
How does this story get 56 points and frontpage (as of this writing), yet when I submitted an article on computing with water droplets on superhydrophobic surfaces [1], it didn't get any upvotes at all?

Anyone have ideas for reducing the tendency of HN to sometimes ignore high-quality content? I shudder to think about how stressful being ignored must be for startups who try to launch their product or get feedback here...

EDIT: Multiple downvotes? Does this mean that people are uncomfortable with the idea that HN may be less than perfect? Or is it merely because my comment's too far off-topic?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885419
Not sure what salaries Canonical pay , but I assume that they are competitive enough. I have heard that the perks are good, work from home etc. So I doubt that they have a problem attracting good talent, I would wager that their average level of developer skill is significantly higher than the average devshop.

Of course they are a smaller company (than say Apple), so may not have the resources to build every single program people want. OTOH third party vendors can certainly fill this gap, but then you hit the chicken and egg problem that third party vendors don't want to develop for it (at least desktop software) because marketshare is low.

Web based and cross platform software alleviates this problem significantly though.

Of course it depends if you are Richard Stallman and must use 100% GPL software for everything, or whether you are happy with certain compromises. I would say that having your core OS as 100% open source software even if you run proprietary apps on top is a significant step forward.
And some people call the NYTimes 'Pravda on the Hudson'.
There's cynicism on one end and naivety on the other, but there's a whole spread in between. Despite what the cynic thinks, reality is almost always somewhere in the middle there.
Hmm, yes you are right.

Spideroak's functionality seems closer to Dropbox. Spideroak does seem more practical to use.
Classical Sculptures Dressed as Hipsters
Scarface and the Surveillance State
rawgithub.com is not raw.github.com. You can read about it on the homepage: http://rawgithub.com/
Why don't you call the PRISM hotline and enlighten us?

You seem to be obsessed with criticizing Glenn Greenwald instead of the surveillance state which has been (partially) revealed.
It's not censorship, and they aren't going to be suing, because they have waived the right to consume this information freely.

The purpose is to prevent somebody from combining an (undisclosed) secret with a leaked secret in order to deduce or infer a third secret.
He is still subservient to the government. And really you would only know the most mundane stuff about me by seeing my google searches.
I agree with you, but would we think this way if we were cleared and had access to this information?

I'd like to think I would, but it's hard to define ideas when you're missing huge pieces of information.
I've always been interested in maintaining the ability to perform general computation. To me, that's being able to run any program I construct on my hardware. I don't demand that the program be able to interact with other systems, but I do demand that I be able to execute the instructions I want.

That generalizes freedom 0 to the set of programs the user constructs.

If a general-purpose program has to pass an authentication protocol before it's allowed to run, the surrounding environment is an attack on the construction of free speech by more efficient means.

Or something like that.
Based on the name, I was sure this was going to be an academic paper (or maybe a mathematician's blog musings) on the rate at which "standard" mathematical notation changes over time, with interesting historical examples and analysis of current trends, maybe with a specific mention of the Tau Manifesto.
HN went full retard and it isn't coming back.
Well the NSA head did say that dozens of terrorist acts had been thwarted with the help of the phone records. Which could means that there are potentially hundreds/thousands of active terrorist investigations. Given that any one could be the next Boston Marathon, 9/11 or perhaps on an even bigger scale like polluting water sources or dirty bombs using material from poorly secured Pakistan/Russian nuclear sites.

If you were receiving daily updates outlining the creative and more sinister ways terrorists were planning attacks perhaps you might come to the conclusion that the US is out of its depth and needs every tool at its disposal.
ebaumsworld is still slapping their watermark on anything that moves?
WWI is more like a Neal Stephenson novel. I'll admit I never read the Difference Engine, though.
Not to be too glib, here's another impressively depressing stat: 56% of Americans don't have a problem with the recent NSA tracking revelation and a significant plurality would be happy to see it expanded[1]. What do we do when our representative government truly is representative?

[1]http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/most-americans-suppor...
"Why is a dude wearing a shirt on the front page?"

Not sure if...

"Most powerful guy on the planet? I hadn't heard of him until now."

OK. Troll.
Outsourcing and Limiting to Core Competencies are Essential
Thats noble if somehow publishing non-fine-grained information precludes or hurts their chances of publishing fine grained information later. I can't think of a reasonable argument that thats the case.

As for being a tool of the NSA,I feel grossly underpaid.
A rapper does a few hours work, it buys him a new car. Very rational cost-benefit, even if short-sighted. It'd seem exceptionally inefficient for that rapper to launch a political career for the purpose of increasing his fortune, particularly with the increased scrutiny and fewer post-term consulting gigs he'd have compared to your average politician.

I can see celebrities doing it for the fame though-- specifically to show that they're "more than" an actor, singer, athlete, or whatever.
In addition to the SIGINT/spying mission, they also want to secure US (government and private) infrastructure, and need a technically competent workforce to do both missions. So not that hard to understand.
Tatsuaki Okamoto has quite the crypto and coding chops:

https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&q="Tatsuaki+Okamoto"+...

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/1002804/tatsua...

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/%7Eley/pers/hd/o/Okamoto:...
The Ubuntu App Developer Cookbook Announced
>The notion that shit is all broken in Linux and a bed of roses in OSX is nonsense.

No. Stuff just works 80% good in OS X and 60% good in Linux.

And there's stuff like video editing, audio editing, multimedia work, etc, that works 90% good in OS X and 20% in Linux.

On the other hand, on the CLI, Linux works 95% and OS X works 60%.

The numbers are pulled out of my ass, but are what I subjective feel as a long time UNIX (Sun OS, HPUX), Windows (3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, 7), Linux (RedHat 5.2 IIRC, Mandrake, Debian 3+, now Ubuntu and Centos 6.x) and OS X (10.3 onwards) user.

So that's that.

And don't get me started with the continuous move to different libs, infrastructure changes underneath, multimedia frameworks, general brokeness and projects that start with high hopes only to be abandoned after 1 year, Gnome 3 and KDE 4, etc etc.
Well, let's take a look at two definitions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservative

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crony_capitalism (what I mean by corporatist)

Think about those two in the context of the president's actions and come back to your statement.

Let's tally his accomplishments, shall we? He's bailed out private corporations at the expense of the middle class (ugh, don't like this phrase) through both taxes, and worse, inflation. He's not only continued the middle eastern wars, he's vastly expanded them (and I won't even mention drones). He's allowed the wholesale spying on Americans. Increased the size of the incompetent DHS. Basically said that murdering Americans without due process is alright. He hasn't legalized gay marriage. He hasn't decriminalized marijuana. What political ideology does that sound like? The president has only been 'liberal' on one point: healthcare. Even there, he basically handed (well, forced) over all our healthcare to private corporations. And our healthcare is still expense, even more so!

Look, President Obama is neither liberal or conservative, he's a political opportunist who's actions happen to align with the neoconservatives minus the religious stuff (thankfully). I doubt it's intentional, but if it walks like a duck...
Don't take it personally dude. It's a human system, therefore an inherently flawed one.
There is a not so subtle carrot and stick. A reporter who goes along with those in power can expect access, leaks and perhaps lucrative jobs for their family [1]. But a reporter who embarrasses our leaders will lose the access they need to do their jobs and may be harassed by airport security or even investigated by FBI [2],[3] or have their computer hacked [4]. Powerful incentives to go along with their views.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-administ...

[2] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/govt-obtains-wide-ap-phone-re...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/politics/white-house-de...

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2013/06/1...
This is what makes Google different from the other enterprises.
>There are companies who sell Ubuntu computer pre configured with drivers etc installed. System76 for example.

Why should Linux be compared as "pre-installed"?

Even a plain user can install OS X himself. And then upgrade it himself.

Also, what happens to the pre-installed Linux after 2 years? When the user needs to do some multimedia work? Does it play Netflix fine? Does Flash works ok in major browsers? What happens when he installs some new gizmo which doesn't have a Linux driver?
PRISM, government surveillance, and Wikimedia: Request for community feedback
It bears repeating because this argument comes up in every PRISM thread...

The basics:
HTTPS is TLS/SSL transport level encryption of HTTP traffic (including HTTP headers).

The way it works is that client and server go through a handshake process where the server (and optionally client) present a public key and proof of ownership of a private key. The server public key is also normally signed by a certificate authority (e.g. Verisign), this is what is normally meant by a certificate.

Threat Models:
There are a number of different threat models that crop up when talking about TLS. I'll talk briefly about each below.

1. Compromised Certificate Authority (CA)

If the CA is compromised then the rogue CA can be used to create new certificates that claim to be for the intended target server (e.g. Google or Facebook)[1]. The fake certificate can then be used to launch a Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attack where the attacker convinces a victim to connect to them, and creates two separate TLS connections VICTIM<-TLS1->MITM<-TLS2->SERVER. The MITM can see the unencrypted messages since the victim is encrypting to the key in the fake certificate.
Chrome's certificate pinning can be used to prevent this type of attack since the browser will check to see if the server has presented the _correct_ certificate for the intended server (by comparing public key fingerprints AFAIK). This attack can also be prevented if the connection is mutually authenticated by either a client certificate or an ephemeral ChannelID as discusses here[2].

2. Attacker has _correct_ private key for server

This threat model assumes the attacker has obtained the server's private key either via coercion / collusion. Certificate pinning doesn't prevent this type of attack.

2a. If the attacker is a passive attacker, meaning that they can only observe and record encrypted messages, then they can decrypt any messages that are sent over a cipher spec that doesn't have perfect forward secrecy (PFS). If the connection is setup using the Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key exchange then the communication channel should be safe from a passive attacker. If the connection is mutually authenticated and the client certificate has not been compromised by the attacker, then the connection should also be safe from this attacker.

2b. If the attacker acts as a MITM then even PFS cipher specs can be compromised.

3. Attacker can break TLS encrypted channels and extract data without needing the keys

All bets are off if this can be done in a general way. There have been several attacks (BEAST, CRIME, Lucky13) that can extract small repeated bits of data (user authentication cookies), but no known attacks that can get at all of the data sent over a TLS encrypted channel.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiNotar#Issuance_of_fraudulen...

[2] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-balfanz-tls-channelid-00
This article makes reference to a 38-page manual uncovered by EFF, in the context of a story about broad claimed authority by the IRS to examine online data to defend tax challenges. What the article doesn't say is that the manual was praised by EFF: it instructs IRS employees only to use public information, never to misrepresent themselves or attempt to gain access to people's social networks by posing as "friends", and never to use confidential information as search terms.

At one point, the manual explains to examiners how to use DomainTools to search for domain names, but cautions examiners that the site may ask for email addresses sometimes, at which point the examiner is no longer allowed to use the service and must instead revert to asking the taxpayer questions.

It's this kind of writing that drives me crazy. IRS may be overreaching, or they may not be; who knows? We get all our information through a game of telephone by media organizations that incentivized to write the most lurid stories possible.
How my crowdfunding turned into singlefunding
Publishing the aggregates allows the USG to claim that Google has already been authorized to disclose the important information. How much do you think it costs Google to fight this fight with the USG? How much do you think a lawyer who can participate in a team effort to make this kind of case bills an hour?

Why aren't you cheering for them, instead of trying to tear them down?
1. It wouldn't have to be a massive conspiracy. It would just require access to the data through a few people. It's called compartmentalizing and it's how they work.

2. There certainly are laws that govern classified information and the gathering of it. Leaking US government secrets is against the law, period. Are you arguing that's not the case? Verizon was required to assist the government by law. What makes FB and Google+ exempt from the same rules?

You can dig further and find out I'm not just making stuff up. This really is how they work, frankly.
Here are some articles covering one of the most controversial bombs he has thrown during his career, accusing the government of conspiring to kill the followers of David Koresh in Waco, Texas on account of their gun ownership. I couldn't find the original article in question, which appeared in Guns and Ammo magazine.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Texas-Lawmaker-Says-Waco-...

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=861&dat=19950513&id=gy...

It only takes a little bit of research to see that the man is an extremist with a very consistent record of partisan-centered politics.
I want to believe. I suspect that hacking at large codebases with emacs/vim isn't the way we're going to build complex codebases over the next few decades. But I downloaded the free trial and got out of there after about 5 minutes and went back to shell + emacs. I just can't see how I'd ever really be in control with this complex layer between me and the actual python/django processes executing on my laptop. Without meaning to be gratuitously insulting (but being insulting) I do think IDEs like this make sense for code monkeys in large organizations. But for someone whose job involves actually writing the infrastructure of their django project (as opposed to relying on another department), I'm still not seeing it.
I can understand people already owning the necessary hardware doing this, but buying $95 kit which essentially makes for a lousy WLAN router seems bit odd. Surely it would make more sense to buy purpose-built WLAN router (for $95 you can get quite fancy one), and install Tor on that?
Man's static jacket sparks alert (2005)