skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
tl;dr citation 9. If nothing else, read that. Great article.

The massive scale of the NSA's operations are hardly being disputed (logging of US-based backbones, underwater cables, foreign fiber, telephone records), what is up for debate is implementation details, specific wording, and the extent of protection for US citizens.[9] The "insanely massive data collection program" has been conducted for years.

PRISM is one of 504 currently active SIGADs, or intel gathering operations. "The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013." 97 billion were collected in total over that time span.[1] The FAQ for this program clarifies that it applies to metadata. [8]

edit: that's 97 billion computer records. Metadata for 124 billion phone calls was also recorded over those 30 days.

The NSA does not define "collection" as actually obtaining the data or metadata, it is defined as a human analyst viewing the data.[2]

11 FISA court warrant requests have been rejected over it's existence, out of over 33,000 total. The last one rejected was in 2009.[3] Warrants are also only needed retroactively (within a 7 day period), there is no need to obtain one before accessing data.[4] According to the New York Times, "FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said." [5]

The Fisa Amendment Act section 702 bars the NSA from collecting data on people "reasonably believed to be located outside the United States."[4] Additionally, data can be intentionally collected on any communication that has at least one foreign recipient or sender.[6] Note also that these warrants specifically contradict the fourth amendment, but as long as the target is "reasonably believed" to be a foreigner, it doesn't matter to the NSA.

The test of whether someone is located outside the US has been interpreted as a keyword-based system indicating that it is at least 51% likely. And if they aren't actually foreigners? It's nothing to worry about, just include it on a quarterly report.[7] It's also possible that a warrant for a foreigner would permit access to data on US citizens up to 2 social "hops" away, but [citation needed].

Additional reading: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/foreign-surveillance-h...

Written primarily for my own benefit, posted in the hope that someone else finds it informative.

p.s. This account is wholly controlled and accessed by a United States citizen.

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-in...

[2] https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect

[3] https://epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html

[4] FAA 702.g.1.B, page 6 at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-110publ261/pdf/PLAW-110pub...

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-...

[6] FAA 702.b.4

[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence...

[8] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/08/boun...

[9] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-prism-success-even-big...
I know this works on Cockroaches, but can I connect it to my landlady? There should be fewer ethical issues as well, as she has no soul and can't feel any pain.
Paris doesn't really need to add density, it's already one of the densest cities in Europe. Clearly some other phenomenon is at work here.

Very tall residential buildings have surprisingly low densities for a wide variety of reasons: extra building infrastructure, high capital costs result in expensive apartments which price them out of most people's means so they end up being sold to the rich who can afford to pay twice as much anyways for more floor space, etc.

Density:

Paris: 21,000/km^2

Seoul: 17,000/km^2

Hong Kong: 6,480/km^2

Cairo: 18,071/km^2
Most youg Londoners cannot afford to buy property full stop. Unlike in the rest of the country, the majority of residents rent rather than own their homes.
I keep banging on about how remote working will enable the spread of resort / rural living, and yet it is not quite true.

I am going to guess that you live within some commutable distance of your or your wife's family, and that one of the things you would lose moving to London would be that connection to family.

Its probably the biggest thing holding most of us from heading for a nice cheap rural life.

PS, apply for a grant from the Yorkshire Tourist board !
Alternatively, you very well could be wrong, case in points: http://dcurt.is/what-a-stupid-idea
You libertarians are making me sick, you are so naive thinking the world is black and white. Just because governments kill and torture people, just because they lie to everyone and never keep their promises, just because they put people in jail for victimless crimes and conscript them to be part time accountants while taxing the shit out of them, just because they coerce businesses to cooperate on illegal activities, just because they do all that, doesn't really mean governments can't do nice things. We still need a government, so the only thing we can realistically do is vote better next time and hope the next guy in office is going to be better.
I wonder if Germany was the most spied upon EU country because they have a similar deal with US that UK has: "you spy on ours, we spy on yours, so it can be 'legal' for both of our countries, and then we hand each other the data".

This continuous skirting of the constitutions, laws (or at least the spirit of the laws) to get whatever they want makes me sick. If they would've thought this sort of stuff would be "okay" with the public, they wouldn't try to keep everything so secret and how they even interpret their own laws.

I don't care what laws exist to protect this sort of stuff. People should have privacy and they should be free from suspicion by their governments, unless the government has probably cause for specific crimes. If the laws aren't protecting us like that, then the laws need to be changed.
> limited by the angles you can think of

Which still falls under "every angle imaginable". Increasing the pool of imaginable angles is of course good, but you won't get there if people say your idea sucks instead of sharing their angles with you.
The obvious choice is creating Ai, that would solve all solvable problems thereafter.
Physically no.

I've telecommuted for a few contracts and the structure of those companies appear to be similar to what I've been exposed to here on the east coast.

I would imagine both have their fair share of differences and being there physically is, I'm sure, much different. However I find it hard to believe that the difference is so significant that it warrants surrendering financial gain.
Nitpick: the City of London does not have neighborhoods of empty luxury apartment developments, because the City of London is the one square mile of the city where the financial industry lives. It's equivalent to the Financial District in New York. The only significant chunk of residential building is the Barbican, which is not empty, just awful.

The name of the city as a whole is simply London. You could even call it the city of London if you were being poetic. But as soon as you capitalise it, you're talking about the City of London, and that's something different.

Yes, that is confusing, arbitrary, irritating, and only justified by arcane details of history which predate the printing press by five hundred years. That's because this is England we're talking about.
Blogspam at its worst:

> The details of Yahoo's challenge are not completely clear, since the procedure is in part still classified. All the information available on the case comes from the Times story

The Times story is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court-ru...
I don't think many people would pay for Free software (especially if you're targeting this toward developers)

But many would pay for services.

- First class 24/7 phone support.

- Pre-configured vertical software stacks
(Eg. out the box VoIP server, or whatever)

- Option of off-site hosting.
Thanks :) I know I'll be burned for this but, my thought was to make it more Mac OSX-like. With a similar File Hierarchy (the Unix one seems over-complicated for its use).

A nice UI (similar to Unity), a for-profit app store, and drop support for 32-bit, and every other platform, except 64-bit and ARM, I hate so much backwards-compatibility like being able to run DOS on Windows 8 - I mean really?

I had a bunch of other ideas too, but these are all mainly behind-the-scenes work, no "concrete pain points" unfortunately I think.
Where are these "neighborhoods of empty luxury apartment[s]"? It is true that the The City of London, understood as the financial district of Greater London, doesn't have many residents, but this has always been the case. It has never been a residential area. Almost all housing space there is offices.
Talk Amongst Yourselves: The hallway track and beyond
Mostly because it's not productive. Ideas, especially early ones, are malleable and changing. Saying it "Sucks" is like building a brick wall. Instead you want to ask something that illuminates the way so the idea improves.

That being said, first time entrepreneurs benefit most from this approach while people more experienced can cut to the chase.

It's all about trying to be helpful.
If you don't mind me asking, how much do you earn? If you're on the median UK national income and you double it you'd very easily be able to live in a nice place in London. Your lifestyle would of course be very different, but not necessarily worse (I'd rather take good public transport than drive, for instance). Housing is the only thing that's objectively worse, unless you have kids, that is..
One of my friends (here in the UK) uses http://www.peopleperhour.com/ and has had a lot of success (despite his constant whining about how some clients are hard to nail down specs with). It seems like it might tick the non-US and non-slave-rates boxes.
Governments make investments in infrastructure and other things to encourage local business in particular sectors to come here. I'd like to see my city take the forefront in courting IT in Australia.

Because local industry in Queensland is focused on pulling finite resources out of the ground, which can only last so long before it must move somewhere else. They're not interested in conquering problems that the rest of society faces, and in my personal opinion, basing our state's long term future on the sector (even if it is GREAT temporarily; for ex. my dad is a Civil engineer working on the roads around the mines, makes over $1mil/yr revenue from his business), is going to bite us in the arse.

Because of that, if Queensland and Brisbane wants to stop playing third fiddle to Sydney and Melbourne on a local and world stage, then we need to start doing something in the future.
I should have clarified, sorry - I intended on making it a developer-friendly desktop distro.

Also could you explain off-site hosting?
Show HN: Can a Developer with no Design Skills Make a Nice Looking App?
Python Headless Web Browser Scraping on Amazon Linux
So, basically:

Step 1: Fraudulently foreclose on people's mortgages

Step 2: Sell the houses to private equity firms who will rent them out to all the people who are now homeless due to foreclosures

Step 3: Profit!
If you propose a building in London that would obstruct the view of St Pauls Cathedral for someone many miles away, that can be grounds to have your application denied:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view
I think I combined the info in this article with another article about empty buildings elsewhere in London that someone else pointed out

http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/04/mysterious-residen...
I actually know the difference between City of London and London because I watched that one clever Youtube video explaining it. However, I don't really have the details internalized as I've not been to London.

To explain what I meant, I was thinking of this article that I read about One Hyde Park: http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/04/mysterious-residen...

I had merged this info in my head with another link that someone else had already posted, about empty buildings in London owned by offshore corporations.
Django registration is awesome but still no default templates ( or official companion project that provides them) I don't get it.
> Also could you explain off-site hosting?

Customers who don't want the hassle of having their own hardware.

You provide the hardware (in a datacentre) and rent out usage.
AlleyShowdown – Battle of the TechStars’ MDs
It's great that you two feel that way. As someone who grew up in cities in the south and now lives in London, i'd rather saw my own leg off than live in rural Yorkshire. There just isn't anything there that appeals to me. Newcastle would be less scary - i'd only give up a foot to avoid living there.

This is not in any way a slight against either Yorkshire or Newcastle. Just an observation that one man's meat is another man's poison.
Ah, I just came off a frustrating weekend of PPH! Should've mentioned that above. 2 different bids interested, both then tried pushing bid down and disappeared, re-listing at half the price later (re-listing 4 additional times in one case). It could get better but right now I'm not confident!
It goes both ways; the idea is of little significance. A great idea does not guarantee success and a shitty idea does not guarantee failure.

Execute, understand your market, and make fucking money.
Your hackerb.io idea was something I wanted to do a while ago and still did not get around to doing to buff up my programming skills.

Very, very useful and cool. Keep up the good work!
None of that matters. Its about motivation. Why one would do something.

Killing cockroaches in a domestic setting, where shock, fear, disgust, etc take over in an instant, is different from deciding to remote control one for fun.

Fair enough from a pure research POV, where ethics and welfare are discussed and addressed, and there is a reasonable research goal, but for some individual at home, for fun?
If so, then the law essentially forces you to give your files up and no server location will protect you.

For any person who is not being forced into giving their keys up, encrypting their own files must be safer than hoping a cloud provider won't freely hand them over to the US government.

This is especially true for non-US citizens, who seem to have no protection at all. Even the earlier whistle-blowers don't consider us anything but open season:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowd...

Fine. If you're foreign, encrypt your files and store them anywhere you like. If you're a US citizen, do the same and know that the government only has them when they force you to hand the keys over.

(Barring them being able to hack them some other way, e.g. simply grabbing your keys off your machine.)
CNN Poll: 66% Believe NSA 'Right' to Analyze and Collect Internet Data
In the developed world? Your own. Hopefully then the data doesn't come in contact with any other jurisdiction with different laws and there are much fewer hops between you and the place data is stored, thus limiting the chances that it is intercepted along the way. However, there is the issue that if you store data with a local company, they may be forced to comply to the local law enforcement while a foreign company may or may not comply.
Knowing SAS/R in isolation is worth very little. Knowing statistics and data analysis is worth a lot and SAS/R are pretty good tools for doing statistics and data analysis. Unless you're also willing to learn the underlying statistics and data analysis there isn't much demand for SAS or R programmers. However there is massive demand for competent data analysts capable using SAS or R.
Romantic is the right word. Any sufficiently capable life-form has power over other life-forms, often very deadly power. What do you think farming, herding, hunting, industrialization, politics, business, and global warming are?
This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for - more please. I'm interested in golang but don't need general programming tutorials. How go is different from other languages and what it's idiosyncracies are is good to know.
I had to double check if today was April 1st. I try to avoid "middlebrow dismissal" comments but come on, do they really think £1 million is going to motivate anyone in solving the world's biggest problem? This is borderline insulting.
Your fingers seem to have slipped while typing "rather worse issues".
That sounds like a lot, but it's really nothing.
This is wrong on so many levels. Among other things:

- The solution isn't hard, it is the implementation of the solution that is hard. Hey, we have electric cars. But getting people to use them requires having electric cars succeed on the open market (which Tesla and others will eventually do, I think). Overpopulation is the problem; educating people to a higher level results in more well-off people having fewer kids. And so on.

The solution is easy! How the hell do we actually get there, as messy, lazy, corrupt humans? That is what the prize should be for.
This seems like something of a PR stunt, I would much prefer a serious re-investment in science and acknowledgement that the UK economy could be driven by a knowledge economy. Good recap here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/occams-corner/2013/mar/11/...
Is a VC Partnership Greater than the Sum of its Partners?
No. On paper it's a Republic. In reality the USA is run by a bunch of self serving politicians and unelected bureaucrats who get their positions from the special interest and big business lobbies.

It will only get worse as long as people want security over liberty and elections are decided by money and not voters.
If you wanted morse code for entire messages, that would require a much larger storage ROM just to hold them. Instead of a two-byte error code holding the entire failure indication, those same two bytes now only hold maybe a word in the error message at most. And when you're troubleshooting an error, now you have to sit through the entirety of the word "Missing " after trying a fix before you can tell whether it's the same error or something different this time.

Besides, you didn't need the internet to look up the error codes when you typically had the dead-tree edition of the same information.
What I meant is that, against the cliche, Chinese people are not easy to control, because they have a very long experience gaming the rules and enjoy this sport. In this sense they resemble the French more than the Japanese.
Automated cars? No. it's fantasy to think these will have a substantially different effect to railways.

Automated bulldozers and high-rise house-building machines, though ...
66% Believe Obama Administration 'Right' to Analyze and Collect Internet Data
Hmm, I thought that was more about increasing contrast. But maybe it does something with the text colors too.
HP sacks English employees to bag Scots gov jobs cash
I wouldn't pay for a Linux distro in isolation, but I would pay for a Linux distro guaranteed to work 100% out of the box on my laptop, backed up with support.
The liberation-tech list is interesting sometimes: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech

The rest of the mailing lists/IRC channels I read are all related to specific software projects, though.

I feel like I should add something here about how spending a lot of time on IRC can be inversely correlated with being someone who's doing a lot of work, in some cases. The veterans you're seeing might be people who now spend more time talking about technology than creating it, unless they're using IRC to coordinate their contributions to a project with its other members.
What bugs the hell out of me is that we know how to solve the biggest problems of the world today. We just don't want to do it. Lets hit three:

1. CO2 emissions.

2. Water scarcity

3. Trade imbalances

(2) Is an agricultural problem. Drip-feed everywhere.
(1) has a agricultural solution - stop using livestock in agriculture. (3) Well, this has lots of issues, but start with the easiest. End completely the use of agricultural subsidies in the developed world.

Three things, all pretty much the same solution, all uncosted and not backed up with references, which can be done with no technological inventions, and will drop the big issues of the day by a ridiculous amount.
Wait a minute, isn't that both mail fraud and wire fraud at the very least? I don't think anyone who argue that bankers can't be prosecuted because they didn't do anything wrong has a leg to stand on at this point.
Housing is simply not just another commodity. An utterly fundamental aspect of commodities is that their production is price-elastic, and governed by supply and demand: if demand increases, prices rise, so, supply increases, prices fall again, and the market remains efficient.

The housing supply has very little price elasticity, at least in London. This is for the very simple reason that there is hardly any space to build new housing, and enormous barriers to demolishing existing housing to free up such space. So, when prices go up, as they do every year, supply does not expand accordingly.

I'm sorry, but to brush the problem off with an assertion that houses are just another commodity is simply to advertise one's ignorance of economics.
I tried doing that with the last planet I was on, but it just ended up solving for grey-goo....
Laptop 'power' lights convey a couple of different states with a single light. Besides the typical on/off, there's also the 'sleep' fadeup/fadedown sequence.

One could also add a few blinking states. Slow blink = charge, fast blink = problem, two quick blinks = alert, etc.
Economic depressions are unavoidable, whether we are talking about socialism or capitalism, if you don't eliminate the root cause - money.

"Financially decimated" is being a little melodramatic. As far as economic depressions go, this is a pretty mild one and also, 2012 has been the year with the least hunger, least poverty and least disease in human history. In terms of warfare, we also live in a time of abnormal peace. All the stats we have show us that it never was a better period to be alive.

When speaking of controlled economies, I think your line of reasoning about China is pretty invalid. In many ways China's economy is more capitalistic than what you find in the U.S. China has cities were the public roads themselves have been paved by businesses that had no other means to get their employees to work. China is one of the few countries that allows the exploitation of children in sweatshops. In my opinion China is not succeeding because of its government's control, but in spite of it.

So I'm curious, besides an opinion by Albert Einstein and China, what else have you got?

P.S. I'm not from the U.S.
Interview with Rob Reynolds creator of Chocolatey
So it makes series of different blinks for a particular message?
I agree, apart from the over-population thing which is best explained by Hans Rosling - http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...
DC Beer.js this Wednesday
This "attack vector" is relying on the fact that you get physical access to the targets router/switch, so you can connect to the network and I think network admins would stop extra PSU in their networking closet pretty fast.

Which started me thinking... What if you would build RPi or similar small device into a router's casing and made it act like a router on the same time. Obviously you'd have to have some way of copying configs over from the old box to the impostor box, but it could be harder to spot since there wouldn't be any extra hardware.
Help me collect the best A/B testing tools
Other than Optimizely, Zentester and Maxymiser, what services are out there for people looking to A/B test their applications and websites?
Like Deep Thought designing a massively powerful computer to find the question to the answer '42'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Thought_%28The_Hitchhiker%...