skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Nobody sane wants software to auto-update, especially not security-relevant software. This is in particular true if you reviewed the source code of the software at one point in time.

Furthermore, for the software to be able to even auto-update, it would have to be able to change its own binary. I don’t know how this particular piece of software works, but it is possible to run FUSE ‘drivers’ as a user on Linux, with the binary safely sitting in /usr/bin, hence removing any possibility to auto-update (if you don’t do shady tricks like placing an ‘updated’ binary somewhere and changing the user’s PATH – and even that could – in theory – be avoided by mounting all user-writeable things noexec).
Thou it wasn't my initial reason, this whole PRISM thing makes me happy I don't use OSX.
The OP explains that the Hong Kong judicial system would handle an extradition, but Beijing would be able to veto it.

"Lawyers said Monday that any extradition request would also need to go through the city’s legal system before Beijing could intercede, a process that would likely be drawn out."
Here is a good article by Charlie Stross (HN cstross) on how silly the UK's "indepedent" deterrent is:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...

Another reason why other might people might want to worry a bit about UK nukes is that our Trident submarines are unique in that they don't have PALs - they do not require any authorization through the chain of command to launch weapons - they can do it all by themselves if they wanted to. Of course, being the RNs finest they are probably pretty decent chaps...

[NB Charlie does say the UK Tridents have US PALs - I need to check that, my understanding is they don't due to fear of a decapitation strike and the famous Letters of Last Resort].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort
So you are saying that social networking sites like facebook and twitter are only for public sharing? You never do private messaging with your friends in these social networking sites? Do you want people to look at those private messages?
This is a big, bold article worth reading in its entirety. He does not shy away from taking a very strong stance. Here is one paragraph that stood out:

"Whistle-blowing is the moral response to immoral activity by those in power. What's important here are government programs and methods, not data about individuals. I understand I am asking for people to engage in illegal and dangerous behavior. Do it carefully and do it safely, but -- and I am talking directly to you, person working on one of these secret and probably illegal programs -- do it."
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I didn't knew this about Israel, although the fact that the situation is worse in other parts of the worlds doesn't justify this level of Surveillance in US.
That was brought up a few days after launch and patched next day after this post.
Yes, that's correct. So if you have a 1GB TrueCrypt container the whole thing needs to be uploaded again.

Another annoyance is that you cannot change the size of a drive after you create it [1] and it doesn't shrink to fit the data either.

[1] http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=issues-and-limitations
>This is foolish. Non-violent protest is how the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. forced better law, Gandhi did the same and freed India from the British empire.

What ridiculous nonsense. King would have gone nowhere had it not been for the Black Panthers blowing shit up (he even mentioned "the blast heard round the world" in one of his speeches, so he knew this). Likewise Gandhi would have just been ignored or killed had it not been for courageous revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh.

The truth is, a proper revolution requires violence (or the threat of it) and a peaceful side. The violent part is requires to force actual change and the peaceful side is needed so the targeted party have someone to give the power over too. The British empire would never have handed the reigns to someone like Bhagat Singh. But once Singh and co had made holding onto India simply not worth it, they gladly stepped back and claimed it was because of Gandhi. This way, the next time they're doing some awful the people will hopefully think they can be like Gandhi and they would be free to just ignore/kill them.

Governments don't want people to understand just how effective violence actually is (if violence isn't effective why do governments use it so much and try to maintain a monopoly on it?) because they don't like to lose.
I think the timing is a coincidence.

The most surveillance-relevant services Apple provides are probably iMessage, iCloud and FaceTime. All were announced in 2011 and saw widespread adoption in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details.j...
git-annex has local encryption for specific remotes (i.e. you can add a remote and say ‘encrypt data before putting it there’, and then add another remote, such as a USB key, and don’t encrypt data on it). I haven’t used it in a while, but it is becoming more and more mature, methinks.
Yup. Same thing happened to me! Got the captcha but it posted fine.
No it's not. Laws function by intention, too. He didn't make it public to aid the "enemy" (who is the enemy anyway? the world?). He did it to protect America. I think he also swore an oath to protect America against enemies both domestic and abroad. And he also swore to defend the Constitution - not the president.
Half of these services are run or maintained by private companies... This is fundamentally something that we can't trust.. trusting our security and privacy to an opaque organization. Any tool needs to be open source and transparent
Reminds me of the plot in V for Vendetta. I'm sure we'll hear from some of Anonymous this week, but in regard to hacktivism...just remember, the nail that sticks out gets hammered.

In memory of LulzSec: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ
He earned $200,000 a year. Maybe he has some savings.
In China, the government is predictable and the streets are safe. In the US, the government is the enemy of the people and young school children are massacred while in public school for no reason.

America, you have NOTHING to brag about.
Data‑Driven Tech Industry Is Shaken by Online Privacy Fears
Web Audio Stylophone
What are the implications of including binary blobs in the Linux kernel?
The problem here is: the people who has data (Wuala) also determine how the files are encrypted.

No box is ever unbreakable, however, the chance of breaking it is much bigger if you have the locksmith holding on to the box.

I've talked a little bit about this in my humble blog post not too long ago about a simplistic view of security in the cloud: http://vuongnguyen.com/personal-business-cloud-security.html.

-V.
Say, Skype is as private as talking in a crowded place (i.e. there's no privacy at all). Yet, we still talk outdoors.

So, I doubt Skype will get out of business. Sad but true.
I quite like the layout. What's your background?
Time for Europe to stop being complicit in NSA's crimes
This is not true. There were plenty of things that were university desired from the Occupy movement (e.g. bankers in jail). But since it was purely peaceful it was ignored, sniped and smeared until it finally unraveled. The same thing would have happened to Gandhi and MLK Jr. had it not been for violent groups working at the same time.
I'd say this one is :) http://obamaischeckingyouremail.tumblr.com/image/52498185767
> At least in Germany a lot of people have become disillusioned by the (german) Pirate Party.

In termss of the Hype Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle), they've passed the peak of inflated expectations and are now in the trough of dissillusionment. This state will not last forever.

> They seem to have degraded into a mix of ridiculous infighting and traditional political party stuff.

They grew too quickly. Digital rights issues aren't going away, and nor are the Pirates.

> I'd much rather see them to push for just one topic: Getting direct democracy.

No, they need a full range of policies if they are to get people to vote for them. Otherwise, people will say "I agree with you on X, but other policies are more important to me, so I won't be voting for you."

> Right now they are just dispersing all the resources they have (in mind and matter) towards hundreds if not thousands of different topics

As I pointed out above, this is necessary.
Old Opportunity Mars rover makes rock discovery
When Artworks Crash: Restorers Face Digital Test
What's funny, is how horribly this site loads in Firefox 21.
> Internet Relay Chat (IRC) can be set up to encrypt all messages

Wouldn't SILC[1] be more appropriate than IRC? IRC can be made secure with OTR or FiSH but it's very much insecure by default.

Also, you're probably much safer with Tails[2] than with a manually configured Tor instance.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILC_%28protocol%29

[2] https://tails.boum.org/
I don't disagree with you on the importance of the 1st and 4th amendments.

I think the ACLU and EFF will indeed become stronger. I don't know of any 2nd amendment supporters who are also not strong 1st and 4th supporters, the issue comes down to how their voice is heard. Also I don't know any of them who who wouldn't rather change things peacefully, it is a much better solution.
Firstly, I feel like assuming the government has the ability to monitor your communications and acting accordingly is better than assuming they can't and getting worried when it turns out they do.

Secondly, I have zero power to change how the U.S. conducts it's business in this regard so I'm not going to expend energy fighting it, I just take it into account and try not to use these services in a way that I wouldn't want to be discovered.

Thirdly, I do agree that the government (U.S. or mine) should be allowed to get information on me if they show probable cause. I strongly support that. And if I accept people might look at my stuff, then it doesn't really matter in the end why they are doing it- I should still plan accordingly. The Government could very well have probable cause to investigate me even when I've done nothing wrong.

We have the technology to keep what we do online anonymous. Even if the government had no power to check this, stuff like the AOL search data debacle shows there is always a non zero possibility someone could be looking at your unprotected data. If you're worried about that, you should protect your data. That's the only real solution. I agree with people who fight against illegitimate or non transparent ways people try and access that data- but that's not what I rely on to keep my privacy.
$300 (which is even more reasonable. Otherwise +1.
So those fleets of warships keeping shipping lanes open and free from pirate activity have done nothing for safety?

I'm not saying america is perfect, but if we scale back our navy for example, there is going to have to be a lot of slack for other countries to pick up. And that means costs rising and more taxes for others. As well as the chance of increased conflict.

The world isn't so cut and dry as you make it out to be.
ALL of those are possible and have occurred to that class of account so you've hit the nail on the head there.
I have no problem with politicians, well, being politicians. Spin me, bullshit me, tell me the sky is green and the grass is blue. This is all in a day's work for those guys.

But Obama is crossing a line here. Yes, Congress in the aggregate could do a hell of a lot of things, but not in some generic sense. It's not like one of them could go out and start making press releases.

Intelligence committee members and their staff are the only folks that are supposed to know about intelligence matters. Not "every member of Congress". And they are thoroughly briefed NOT to disclose any information that comes their way. In fact, there are clear penalties for doing so. Releasing unauthorized data is a felony, and felons go to jail, Congressman or not. (And no, Article 1, Section 6 specifically does not cover felonies)

Even then, the intelligence community doesn't brief the intelligence committees on everything -- they've found out from painful experience that somehow or another anything really juicy they tell them always gets out. So with some of this stuff, the only people that were briefed were the majority/minority leaders and the chairmen of the committees. Not "every member of Congress" Not even the people supposedly overseeing intelligence matters.

I think it's one thing to go about bullshitting when it comes to public policy, or any other thing the nation does. But when the government purposely keeps secrets from us, they take on the responsibility to at least honestly explain to us how the system works so that we can address the problem. Not continue to spin us as if this were just some proposed employment law or something. You can't keep it secret and then also lie to us about what we need to do to fix it. For Congress to again be a player here, it would need to pass some major legislation -- and the president would need to sign it. Let's with what that legislation would look like, which the president would be the best person to say (since the executive branch knows all the secrets anyway), and go from there. I'm happy to call up my Congressguy and give him hell -- but not in order to be some kind of pawn in a PR war about whom to blame.
Frankly the Israeli situation sounds more proportionate and reasonable than many - plus groups are challenging it in court which is always a Good Thing(tm).

If you want to see the REAL masters, look no further than the UK Regulation Of Investigative Powers Act.

That gives (for example) local garbage collectors the legal powers to obtain, say, your medical records - all they need to do is establish they are 'investigating' some garbage related offence and they have access to anything they want so by saying you have disposed of some 'unauthorized' medical waste they are allowed to obtain your medical records to see if you have a genuine medical condition justifying it. It is an offence for the medical staff to refuse or to inform you that they have been handed over.

Want to send your children to your local school ? Expect 24x7 surveillance of you and your children for 3 weeks: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2248295/Second-counci... [edit: this is a different example of abuse, reply below has the correct link.]

The list is endless with over 500 different 'official' organizations entitled to mount total surveillance and the abuses of the legislation are so egregious that they read like a wild fantasy.

This is the "legal framework" which the UK PM David Cameron is assuring everyone keeps them safe from PRISM and the like.

Absolute power corrupts and this power has long ago corrupted absolutely in the UK.

[edit: originally said months and it is merely weeks, reply below has the link to the correct article. Thanks to Jabbles for pointing out the link was the wrong one.]
They didn't give all those ex-Nazi scientists jobs for nothing you know.
Military told not to read into Verizon phone record stories w/ memo
What should be noted is that before Sweden gave FRA authority to increase it's surveillance the swedish public was well awere of what was happening. There was a public debate, the adversaries would say it was only for the curtains, but the people still had a chance to rally up against it before the legislatures reached their decision. But the public majority didnt care that much.
Citation needed that it's even remotely useful because I've only ever seen evidence to the contrary.
I agree a well educated and informed society is the best deterrent to keeping governments serving the best interest of the people. Yet recent events have shown that we are not that well informed by our media and government on purpose.

Guns are not a deterrent in as much as a means to allow the people to defend themselves against an abusive government when and if needed.
How many more times do they need to prove this to us? "Well, I know he punched me in the face, kicked me in the balls and raped my girlfriend in front of me but I'm still not convinced he wants trouble".
Yes, for seven days. My understanding from following Ha'aretz is that indefinite detention is allowed there.
It's interesting to note that in neither case (physical security OR information security) has the government accepted responsibility to protect you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
This is in Norway. And I am absolutely sure that it's not sold in supermarkets. Same with flank steak. When I asked a local butcher for it, I was told that they could have it ready for me in 3 days, which implies that the slaughterhouse (or whatever is their upstream is) don't even deliver that part of the animal to the butcher.
No.
From the truecrypt FAQ [0]:

> The ciphertext block size used by TrueCrypt is 16 bytes (i.e., 128 bits).

Meaning one bitflip should only sync 16 bytes since dropbox only transmits deltas. Of course this now depends on dropbox' delta sync implementation.

From a quick google search [1]:

> For what it's worth, Dropbox claims to create hashes on every 4MB of each file. That way, if you change a contiguous 2MB of a 100MB file, it will likely only need to upload 4MB (or 8MB if you cross into a second 4MB block) to re-sync the file.

So worst case if a bitflip happens to change a truecrypt block that doesn't align with dropbox' chunks you're looking at around 8MiB. That's still quite an amout for a bitflip but i think it's feasible with todays connection speeds.

[0] http://www.truecrypt.org/faq

[1] http://serverfault.com/questions/52861/how-does-dropbox-vers...
The point is that Israeli citizens and nationals can be held without trial indefinitely in Israel. That is not something we have to worry about here to the same extent.
فساتين خليجيه
http://www.alhqeqa.com/?p=11371
فساتين خليجيه فساتين خليجيه فساتين خليجيه
فساتين خليجيه فساتين خليجيه فساتين خليجيه
http://www.alhqeqa.com/?p=11371
To me, the real story is possibly how the government over pays contractors.

The other real story is not that the government does this, it is that the government did not tell us it did this. THAT makes it underhand.

If the government came out and said, look we are storing who calls whom and asking telecos to store that information and, with judicial oversight, we will access that information, and we had a debate about it, that would be the proper way.

The government is taking the course "It is better to ask forgiveness than permission".

Obama is going to take the rap for this, and I therefore wonder at the timing. I think it is important to realize two things

1. Obama continued the Bush era policies
2. Obama continued the Bush era policies

Either that is the ONLY way security can be done, or there is some powerful faction within the bureaucracy which has gotten used to working in the shadows.

I think that there is some bunch of bureaucrats who have gotten too used to having information at hand.

I think we as a community need to keep using the regular methods offered to us via democracy (like posting on this online forum) to express our wish that

a) We be told what the government is doing
b) Express our displeasure at the direction the style of governance is going
It doesn't force anything. The petition can be completely ignored, some bullshit answer given, etc., etc. How many more ineffective petitions will you people piss away your time with before you understand it's just a distraction?
The attacking group exploited a vulnerability in the banking system that they did not account for. Bank transfers can also be reversed in certain circumstances. To deal with these edge cases, instead of relying on other parties, I think LocalBitcoins needs to proactively add some procedures to avoid getting robbed.

I'm not a securities person, but there are a few common sense things they could change to avoid getting exploited. Their trust model seems based on total number of transactions, and not transaction volume. Just because someone successfully transacts $10 for several transactions, does not mean they should be cleared for their next $10,000 transaction. They could use rate limiting.

Ex: New account max is $100. After hitting $100 in bitcoin transactions, raise the limit to $200, etc. You'd need to look at your transaction logs to determine what the specific rate limits should be, but it's not more than a few SQL queries to figure it out.

I'm not sure if LocalBitcoins is collecting identification, or are even required to, but they might start considering it. MtGox has started requiring identification for opening new accounts. Adding this routine requires adding tech, operations, and customer service overhead.

Alternatively, LocalBitcoins could purposely keep really low amounts in their hot bitcoin wallet.

if @transaction.amount > hot_wallet.amount {
alert operations
show pending transaction message
}

This is done at CoinBase: http://blog.coinbase.com/post/33197656699/coinbase-now-stori...
Your outrage is justified, but let's not just make up facts.

Your link says the surveillance lasted for 10 minutes. Not 3 months.
I'm Brazilian and in the corporate and government space there is considerable resistance to hosting systems and data outside our jurisdiction. What I don't think people have fully realized yet is that American companies are subject to the Patriot Act wherever the operate, so even data stored in Brazil might be exported by them to USA authorities without the customers being notified. I ask myself, how far does this extend? Not only to online services, but even to mainframes and storage systems? Application software? Operating systems?
I can provide you an interesting analogy that may (or may not) resonate with HN readers:

It turns out that hiring a guy who's an expert at optimizing I/O systems for databases, to optimize your massive multimedia streaming farm, doesn't usually work. Because one is hyper random access and the other is massively sequential, also typical block size for one is probably measured in K and the other typical transaction size is probably measured in G. And there's certain latency consideration. And probably others.

The real question is if costco is successful, why are b-schools charging $100K to churn out cookie cutters that don't cut it in the real world?

If costco were swirling down the drain, AND simultaneously rejected "MBA culture" (or HN culture, or 4chan culture, doesn't really matter) then it wouldn't be much of a story. The question is why MBA schools, despite all the worship of their holy paper credential, can't graduate people who apparently know anything about retail, or at least don't know how to be legendarily successful in retail.

It would be like a med school that charged $100K but simply decided to not teach their students anything about biochem and then no one seemed to care. "Eh, blood sugar and electrolyte levels, eh, that stuffs hard, lets skip it and do some extra anatomy studies". Or in engineering, "Well, I never really liked finite element analysis and you'll probably not be expected to successfully do it on the job, so here's a engineering degree anyway and best of luck to ya". And no one cares other than a successful, yet fringe industrial company, who doesn't hire eng school grads to do finite element analysis.