skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
None that I'm aware of, and IMO none is likely to be launched any time soon.

Email is open and license-free, only because it was invented back in the days when not even Richard Stallman saw any need for free software. If email were reinvented today, you'd end up with something very different. It would be copyrighted, patented, and supported by corporations who have strong financial incentives to keep it locked into their proprietary platforms.

The only company that I can think of who might have a chance of success at producing an open and license-free reinvention of email is Mozilla, but they don't seem to be particularly interested in email nowadays. Thunderbird has been stuck at version 17 for ages.
Getting GitHub (intro targeted at non-coders)
Are dev tools becoming too much of a good thing?
I bet most of them are younger voters who believe their vote doesn't matter for one reason or another.

I bet most of them are people who don't care about politics. Good luck trying to engage them, people have been trying to do so for decades and have failed. The simple reality is that life is comfortable enough for most. Few are starving, few are persecuted- if you're earning enough to live a relatively comfortable life, why bother voting?
Perhaps move away from MSFT products then. :)

Jokes aside, maybe they also consider the opportunity of using this for offensive purposes a big enough benefit.
Educating us is not the problem. We know. Just not much we can do about it.

We don't have funding to hire coders/developers/designers. And even if we did, we'd likely spend it on that new microscope instead.

Much of what we need doesn't require computational power, but requires a good input parser, a reasonable UI, and some basic (though absolutely solid) math. And a way to change a whole host of variables used in the computations without too much effort. I have a set of a few projects that a mildly competent coder could bang out in a relatively short period of time that would undoubtedly progress the whole field in which it was aimed. But that's pretty much like 20 people. 20 grad students - their bosses don't care if they count the data by hand over a week, or have a computer do it in 2 minutes. It's not worth anyone's (unpayable) time. So I code it myself - it's crappy, it's rough, but it gets the job done. But no one will ever be able to reuse that code.

You hackers want to do something good for the world? Set up a hackathon thing for your local biology/chemistry grad students. In a weekends' time you can write a few open-source apps which would rapidly and noticeably affect the pace of cancer and other basic research.
1-3 BTC is way too much. This should cost at most as much as a very cheap mp3 player. At the current USD-BTC exchange rate, this means no more than 0.2-0.4 BTC

I understand they have upfront costs, but they could work out a campaign where the cost per unit goes down as they reach certain sales goals.
Nice, and they already styled it to look like iOS 7!
If they are handling out exploits, MSFt management is pretty bad incompetent. This would negatively affect their sales to foreign companies and sovereign nations. US government may not hack us companies but there does look like there some evidence they hack foreign countries and governments. And MSFT is handing over keys to the US government.
> "major customers with very real needs for security"

Major customers with very real needs for security probably aren't running Windows... Even if they are, they should be sandboxed in such a way as to reduce potential damages from a 0-day.
What's wrong with Jill Stein?
Only one webmail provider would need to deploy PGP-by-default to start the ball rolling. The system is currently in a dynamically stable (extremely) insecure state. Starting widescale adoption of PGP would disrupt the state of the market and, perhaps, lead to an escalation of deployment security.
Prime example of why storing papers behind paywalls is a bad idea.

I can't read anything linked.

The authors then invoke Faraday's law H r E= i! 0 and conclude that the integral on the left
side of Eq.(2) is identical to the first integral on the right. The theoretical result claimed in the
Letter is directly predicated on this conclusion. This conclusion, however, is valid only ...

Continued?

where m (p) is the peak value of induced magnetic (electric) dipole moment and r (" r) is
the ratio of magnetic (electric) permeability (permittivity) of the sphere and the surrounding
medium at the given frequency. Equation (9) in [1] is a consequence of Eq.(8): JM º¿ 1= ...
Generally: When you say "only apply these changes to domestic surveillance", you mean any program that requires intercepts to happen on U.S. soil, even if one of the participants can be determined to be outside the U.S.?

More specifically:

I would prevent the NSA from being able to wiretap for 7 days without a warrant.

How do you deal with a "hot" investigation, wherein some subject of intense interest calls/emails a previously unidentified subject, who then calls/emails a third party? For the sake of argument, assume they're all from IPs outside the U.S., but using Skype through U.S. servers. (If your definition of "domestic" doesn't fit this, adjust as needed).

It seems to me you have three choices:

- Don't intercept the latter communication. Wait (minutes, hours?) until you get a judge's order on the new subject, while hoping the latter two subjects communicate again, and that no critical intelligence is lost.

- Allow for broad-ranging warrants that either give an agent discretion to follow leads regardless of the actual individual involved, or instead allow for "drag net" style intercepts that are later filtered for relevance per a FISC-approved process (this is essentially what we have now, as I understand it.)

- Allow backdated or 7-day-forgiveness warrants. (Again, what we have now.)

Is there an alternative?

Many of your other points I agree with, or at least agree they're proper grist for an intelligence oversight bill. Separation of powers is a real issue, though: Congress can't tell the executive how to run national security operations any more than it can tell the executive how to run a war. It has the power of the purse, but we don't live in a parliamentary system. If you don't like the way the President uses his Constitutional powers, vote for another guy/gal.
It was founded in 2006. Has it managed to field a single candidate for office anywhere in the United States? As far as I can tell, it has not.

Has it raised a single dime to support candidates who follow its principles? As far as I can tell, it has not.

Has it done a single day of door-to-door organizing, either for its own growth or for a candidate it supports? As far as I can tell, it has not.

By all appearances it's just a group of people who chat together on IRC. That's fine, but it's not a political party.
He should also request a subpoena for all of the associated metadata, which probably includes location tracking information. That way, we know if any of the involved parties met in secret. The what-do-they-have-to-hide argument is nonsense, but I have no sympathy; the government has brought this on itself.
I may not like java that much - mostly due to bad experiences from uni. But WOW! that video was really great, very funny.
My old phone (LG Thrill) had a bug where the clock would simply stop syncing for some unknown reason. It could be hours out of date at any given time. The only way to resolve this was to restart the phone. Of course, it was never fixed before LG abandoned the phone. There were other very serious problems with that phone, and the whole experience put me off Android.
It also means I can actually hear the flight attendant. And personally, human noise really doesn't bother me. I ride public transit all the time without issue.

It's just the constant loud wind/engine noise that gives me a headache. Objectively, the A380 is by no means quiet (compared to a modern train for example), but the level of cabin noise feels much less oppressive.
Is this why Microsoft called the Google engineer, who uncovered one of these bugs, "irresponsible"? Because they couldn't give it to NSA anymore? If they are doing this, at least they should shut up, and let the engineers who uncover them help the public.
The difference is AV vendors use it for defensive purposes while the USG uses it for offensive (read: destructive) purposes.
For a vanishingly small market share? Not worth the effort. The web app works just fine.
Encrypted email may not be best approach to avoid NSA scrutiny
Turning a WordPress shortcode in to a Widget
In my last tutorial we created a shortcode for displaying recent Tweets using the Twitter API and OAuth2.0. Having thought about it a bit more, I think that it would be quite handy to have it as a widget as well. It’s actually very easy to turn any shortcode in to a widget, and this logic could be used for lots of different shortcodes.
Clever Cloud's Databases are out of beta (price table)
Because the UIs for email encryption suck, few customers would verify the signatures and it would create another avenue for phishing.
>Why would Trezor be better than an IronKey?

An IronKey is designed to defend against it being lost or stolen. A Trezor is designed to defend against malware. Malware can submit a transaction to the Trezor, but it can't push the button on it.

>Does it just store my wallet or is it running a bitcoin client?

It just stores your wallet. Your Bitcoin client needs to have Trezor support for this to work.

>When I click on "About Trezor" it takes me to...a very brief overview?

Yeah, didn't they say it was open source?
Ah so you're saying the government pumping up economic growth artificially won't be able to continue indefinitely. I'd agree: organic economic growth can't cause economic collapse (unless there are serious infrastructure issues) but artificial growth certainly can.
Unlikely, as their competitive advantage does not come from IT.

For example, a bank competes on the basis of access to capital (i.e., deposits), which depends primarily on size, location, and interest rates. Given the choice between upgrading their computers and opening a new branch, it is much better to open a new branch.
It gives the ability for the government to use it for offensive purposes. I don't see any evidence that they've used it for such purposes.
This is a very interesting idea. However I think the ordering process for this highlights a crucial problem with Bitcoin, instability of value. They aren't planning to deliver the device for four to five months. Using the last four months as prediction of future fluctuation in Bitcoin value (insert usual caveat about past performance predicting future performance), the more expensive version of the device could cost anywhere from $100 to $700 USD when you actually receive the product.
Search Engine Ixquick does not collect or share information
At the end of the day, it's never about what we can do, it's what we can do within the budget and time that we think is appropriate for what we want to do.
I can imagine news like this leads to security researches giving lot less time for companies to fix the vulnerabilities.

As it was reported in Hacker news some time ago, Google decided that seven days should be enough for actively exploited vulnerabilities.
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.ch/2013/05/disclosure-t...
Asking for city, state and zip code is my favorite on the list. Plus the country should be asked for first then if US only get the street and zip code.

There was a link on HN sometime ago that showed that people trusted the form/page more when complete address information was requested (I believe the conclusion was that people were used to doing it that way) so maybe there is a downside to the shorter version.
Agree. The irony of the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" statement being turned around on the government was delicious.
> Please describe how these operating systems could be compromised "at any time"?

Targeted, automatic updates by the vendor with a suitable payload.
If it is then he's going to lose a lot of sympathy, and face much more serious charges.
Solar power without semiconductors; only light
There is a subreddit for this if you feel like reading more http://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/
5. They get so sick of sharing that place with him that they appoint him ambassador to the UK for life and the rest of the staff bails.
The other problem -- despite the changing of the guard in the Executive branch -- other branches and workers stay the same.
Oy vey, a bunch of trolls trolling trolls.

I wish that politics hadn't turned into this sort of nonsense; this makes a very sensible concern into a tool of politics.
What I get from the video is that it stores the wallet - a set of public and private keys for your addresses, along with a list of transactions to/from those addresses - and signs transactions.

Bitcoin clients will implement support for reading the list of transactions to/from your addresses to figure out how much money you have. They will also implement support for using the device to sign transactions, so the private keys never touch your computer, and therefore a compromised computer cannot steal bitcoins without the device prompting the user to confirm the transaction.

As the device is a single-purpose computer, likely running the absolute minimum code necessary to implement transaction signing, it should be significantly more secure than your PC just there. And you can easily physically secure it in any way you want, whether that's carrying it around with you at all times or locking it in a safe. Anything over that is a bonus, in my eyes.

I do not currently use Bitcoins, at least partially due to security concerns, but with this, I would be very interested.
Right. Disclosing to some people first before you blow the patch out to the public can be of great defensive benefit. But it has to be people you trust not to blab about it, deliberately or accidentally. Apparently USG is in that category.

This may allow the USG to also perpetrate attacks. But we really need some evidence of that.
What is with HN?!

Just because they are Chinese means they don't deserve basic human liberties? Just because you live in a different country doesn't mean you lose these rights, they may not be recognized but you are still entitled to them.

Furthermore, there's an extremely large cognitive dissonance here. China owns trillions of US national debt... this is debt that the leaders of our country have given willingly, and gladly pocketed the resulting cash. How is that any less treason than alerting our lenders that their systems have been broken into?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."

Chinese, American, British, Pakistani, Russian, French, it doesn't matter. The targeting of innocents by drones is wrong no matter where you are from, why does the right to privacy and property (or happiness, depending on your school of philosophy) not follow that same logic?

Perhaps we should be more concerned that we are continuing to pick petty fights with our fellow man over ideologies, rather than the fact that one man is perceived to have violated our specific ideology. But I guess my idealist is showing.

My 2 cents.
“I just got home late tonight from Taksim square”
I think that the un-broken version of our system is one where votes are still for particular candidates directly but tallied via approval or range voting. What objections do you have to such a system, that make it look comparably broken to the current one?
What is up with tptacek anyway? He seems to vehemently deny any wrongdoing on the government's or tech giant's part.
Those are minor issues blown out of proportion to engage the population, divide it along imaginary lines and have them go through victories and defeats and enjoy the show. It's the circus part of "bread and circuses". Real issues are decided upon without ever consulting you. Just IMHO
I always find it jarring when a site does this inference since it's so uncommon and really doesn't save much time or mental capacity.
Very well put, and why these various spying, leaks, and harassment issues need to be a big deal for everyone.

Do we really trust a large institution that no one knows about (and thus has no accountability) to grab just the data they need and that corresponds to other laws?
Do we trust the individuals with the power to access all sorts of data to always do so responsibly, to never play games with it?
Do we trust the organizations to always deal with it equitably and never put certain political persuasions under greater scrutiny?
Do we trust that the retention won't be used to build cases against formerly innocent people after the fact?

Whether this is your guy, the last guy was your guy, or whether neither are, this is frightening.
I've used stackoverflow count less time to find answers to my problems and just this last year I started to read through newly unanswered questions almost daily as part of my morning routine. I find it interesting and challenging. A lot of the times I don't know the answer off the top of my head so I go and do some research and solve it. Stackoverflow has become my daily programming challenged. Just from answering questions I've learned a lot and some of my answers have lead to bug fixes.
> the majority of the USA prefers to have the electric eye of Sauron to watch over them, because the alternative -- more freedom that might lead to more terror attacks -- is too scary for them to accept.

As a guy who has never set foot in the States I found it strange when I first heard Dakota Fanning asking Tom Cruise "Is that the terrorists?" in Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" (when an airplane falls over the house they're in), I was asking to myself "why does the Americans' first instinct in case of unknown danger focus on terrorists?".

And talking about "the eye of Sauron", there is of course this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kytDzjuBGJI , which still gives me the chills. An under-estimated movie, IMHO.
> And that would be ???

A mostly secure linux distribution booted from a read-only device would be a good start.

c't Bankix is such a distribution, made specifically for secure online banking: http://www.heise.de/download/ct-bankix.html
How we feel can change how we taste fat
Incentives can impede productivity
Everything the government does is, by definition, political. You can't wish away the politics an on-going mass surveillance program; you can only avoid initiating the program in the first place.
It is not illegal in the US to break Chinese law. In fact, it is the job of the NSA to gather intel, not to obey laws.
Nation state level adversaries
Native Money
"Scientists call for more regulation (ie more grant $) before the devices is sold to the public, film at 11."

The only problem is the DIY crowd. A 9V battery is not exactly under regulation. What people do with their body is their problem.
Why doesn't anyone use it?

The FIRST question is: Is it really a solution?

The answer to that: NO, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879308
Thanks btw! I wonder if it has something to do with not being in the Valley bubble...

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130219190155-44...
So MSFT was holding off on the fixes for as long as it took USG to weaponize them?

Those are the worst bugs for USG to weaponize. First, Microsoft is going to patch them soon. Second, there is now a paper trail from Microsoft talking to the US about the bug.

LATE EDIT: in fact, if the person in charge of Stuxnet also saw the exploit they were already using come across the wire from Microsoft, he would likely order it pulled from Stuxnet. They want total deniability.
I've understood that most people have been surprised by the surveillance just because its in an area not many people pay attention to, but for a well run government to A. Not know this is going on or B. Not expect it, is inexcusable.
When US becomes a more democratic country (in the literal sense of the word), sure.
Ok, thanks.

That's good information on the NICS records. It would seem, though, that given the information in the NICS check record and information attainable from a mandatory bound book inspection that the end result would be the personally identifying information of the transferee. It is good, at least, that this would necessarily be a manual process.
Remember PadMapper? It just won a copyright battle against Craigslist
Well http://www.risingup.com/fars/info/part91-817-FAR.shtml pretty much sums up the whys.

The passenger miles per unit of fuel were not in favor of super sonic planes which were originally developed to compete with the smaller jets (707) that were around when development started. Those jumbos (747) made air travel really cheap.
Couldn't techniques typically used for finding moles be used to test this? Astroturf a politically antagonistic group with carefully crafted information and see what happens. Similar to inserting random strings into documents with each distributed copy in order to later find who leaked their copy.

Either the NSA(or whomever) would have to be incredibly careful in using the information to some end, or they would abstain from using it at all. I'm not sure the benefits would outweigh the risks here.
Open isn't necessarily verifiable.
Solving the problem with nested replies and too much indentation
in the light of the current NSA revelations

"It fits the narrative, so it must be true." HN is getting into the same Ouroboros that Dan Rather found himself in.
LOL. You offer the presence of stickers on a laptop as proof of anything. What a joke. Perhaps the govt money is because the gov needs cover traffic just like everyone else. Or perhaps the feds have a vested interest in providing a secure comm channel or dissidents in unfriendly countries.

I need to reinstate my moratorium on reading HN prism discussions. I can't wait to tell people:

"Its not the academic literature or availability of the source code that makes me confident in tor's security, its the stickers I saw on a laptop"
Experts Doubt NSA Leaker's Claim About Wiretaps
I understood that it's only for iPhone. I hope they're not sacrificing office sales, just to force you to buy RT. It's not yet available for me so I can't check that.
Except the policy discussion takes place in the country scale not the territory scale.
That's been there since Chrome Incognito mode was introduced.
The Data Center Next Door
Spying on EU citizens outside of Netherlands is more complicated, first because we aren't Dutch and compared to the US, we are EU citizens so it's not like they don't care about foreigners, the issue being delicate.

I'm not saying that they can't do that. I'm saying that they are thinking twice about it.
Maybe.

But the real problem is: encryption is really only a short-term solution, we need a more fundamental one, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879308
Also, I wonder how long it will be until we see the first civil case that tries to subpoena this information. Say, a nasty divorce where one of the parties is trying to prove cheating. Or industrial espionage.

And think of all the criminal cases this would be useful for - price fixing schemes, anti-trust cases, and on and on.

The uses for a massive store of location information boggle the mind.
Doesn't a FOIA request have fees associated with it? Will the government just bill you for it when they provide documents?
Okay, so lets assume that the NSA has quantum computers that can decrypt RSA and ECC with ease. They would have to assume another state funded effort by someone like China could do so as well. Then the NSA wouldn't issue recommendations that the US Government itself use these encryption methods for TOP SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL documents.
Generally speaking the purpose of the maiden flight isn't to actually test anything (other than the obvious "does it fly"), but rather it's more to collect that will be used to design the scope and scale of future tests.