skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed."

Actually, if you look at the Constitution, it says -
"The Congress shall have power...To declare War...To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years...To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions...To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia"

If the US was going to have a permanent standing army, an intelligence service monitoring its citizens and so forth, why specifically limit appropriations to two years? Why place power in Congress's hands? Why have citizen's militias repelling foreign invasions?

The US has a professional army more akin to Czarist Russia than anything the founder's imagined.

I never really thought that much about Ai Weiwei, but what he just said is right. There's really no fundamental difference between the kinds of monitoring the government of China does and what the US is doing with things like PRISM.
Uninnovative?

Tumblr, Instapaper, "The Magazine.", atp.fm?

Just saying.
Considering the number of IP addresses they'll probably have to dedicate to every CF distribution with a custom certificate (at least one for each edge location), it's definitely reasonable.

That being said, I'm hoping they'll switch to SNI at some point. Windows XP won't be around forever (well, one can hope...). IMHO SNI is the better long-term solution (especially when it comes to costs), so once the number of clients not supporting SNI drops to a negligible number, they should go for it.
Mozilla, EFF, Reddit And 83 Other Organizations Launch StopWatching.Us
And it's not possible to do the same for Luajit? Doesn't sound like a fair comparison.
FWIW, I didn't submit this item.
IOS 7 Updates Look a Little Too Familiar to Some Apple Developers
In Celebration of Mentors
Ha, that's nothing. Just wait till Friedman weighs in.
Genuine question – who DDoSes Github? From what I've seen, DDoS attacks often seem to be a response to a site or company entering the political sphere in a controversial way.
Is there another company that is updating 4 year old phones? Is there an Android phone released with 2.2 that can run 4.2? I think Apple's backwards compatibility track record is the best there is, but here's to hoping for better!
FISA - The Movie.
We want our users to know more about us than NSA. So here's our budget
There goes our plans for a release tonight. This DDoS seems to be a fundamental flaw of popular SaaS services.
Do you really believe they're getting administrative subpoenas to Facebook for every 18-year-old tourist who might do some side work?
The broader metadata requests had a declassification date of 2038 - they must have argued that it isn't tied to any one case, and that it could always threaten an ongoing case if made public.

It is interesting that yet again we end up in a preposterous situation, where you can suck in all call data and not tell anyone, due to a long chain of small concessions (patriot act, fisa review, 'business records' condition, etc.)
Unfortunately this occurred at the exact moment I was deploying some changes. Makes me think that being so dependent on GitHub for a production code repo is a little big dangerous.

Redundancy would certainly solve this issue, though.
Europe Rattles Its Sabres Over Prism’s ‘Bulk Transfer’ Of EU Citizen Data
It's honestly not that different. Messaging is just as easy as before. Using Calendar is just as easy as before. All of the apps that aren't Apple's are the exact same and will be for the beginning of the official release. You underestimate people and their ability to adapt to change.
If they're not using SNI I agree that it would be expensive... not necessarily that expensive, though. Elastic IP addresses cost $0.005/hour, which is about $3.60/month; multiply that by 40 datacenters and you've got $144/month worth of IPs, not $600.
Where is the FBI consultant that told him this? I am sure he signed a contract.
Seriously? Four years is quite a long time in today's tech world. Think if you had a four year Android or Windows (whoops) phone if that was a reasonable thought. Bottom line - if you think 4 years ISN'T a long time for a hundreds of dollar device then there's not much hope for you.
Yes it already has inbuilt GPS unit.
Source: I own one
In previous threads about Github being DDoS'd, I asked the same question.

Apparently it's some scheme to ask ransom from companies/startups that have enough money to pay and/or not enough infrastructure to sustain the attack without giving up.
I'm almost positive that the comment you're replying to meant "this is the worst level of surveillance ever", not "this surveillance is worse than anything ever".
Isn't Activision is publishing Rovio games on consoles?
Of particular hilarity is that swiping left-to-right on the Now Playing screen did in fact do this on prior versions.
Do you know that Vine has already overtaken Instagram as the biggest social sharing on Twitter?
499$ Glass is the new iPad.
It's already back up (for me at least).
I think you forgot the parts where even devices with a 3 year old OS [1] regularly get updates of many APIs that have been (sensibly) decoupled from the OS, have access to substantial compatibility libraries and so on.

[1] By which I mean Froyo, Gingerbread doesn't hit its third birthday until December (at the earliest).
I happily created a new Github repo, imported some code, made some changes and pushed stuff, all OK. And just now when I want to post announcements of my new library, bam! Github is down.

Mostly I don't care if they are periodically unvailable, but the timing on this was amusing.
Google Expands Its Boundaries, Buying Waze for $1 Billion
Legal Checklist For Startups
Apple’s Folly: The story of the Pippin game console
The thing is a number of developers are just writing for 4.0 and above.

I've not saying fragmentation on Android isn't bad. What I'm arguing is fragmentation on iOS is being framed as a good thing (actually a "great" thing) by the author of the post.
OK, but we're talking about reality here. Four years is an astoundingly long lifetime for a device to stay updated in this industry.
Wow, that's an amazing resource. Thanks for pointing out, and I stand corrected.
Brooks's entire business model is getting people to respond to what he writes, however stupid it is. "Trolling for money" (a trite observation, but there it is). It's unfortunate that even sound rebuttals like this one feed into the cycle that makes him a successful columnist.
The Job of Social Media Editor Isn't Dead, It's Maturing
fossil scm
At least it was never sold with an previous-version installed OS like half of Android phones.
FTA: "Kathryn Olmsted, a historian at the University of California, Davis, says that conspiracy theories wouldn’t exist in a world in which real conspiracies don’t exist. And those conspiracies — Watergate or the Iran-contra Affair — often involve manipulating and circumventing the democratic process."

So the answer to the question "Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories" is "because sometimes they are true."

FTA: "if you think one of the theories above is plausible, you probably feel the same way about the others, even though they contradict one another. "

FTA: "“The best predictor of belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in other conspiracy theories,” says Viren Swami, a psychology professor who studies conspiracy belief at the University of Westminster in England."

Note how we suddenly switched from discussing people who think a theory is "plausible" to "belief". There are certainly nutjobs who swallow implausible theories whole. These people are not rational. Those who commit the crime of conspiracy would love to tar those rational people who find such theories plausible with the same brush.
Although that does sound like hyperbole, the point is that they will be doing a "complete re-think of how applications work" - even though the end result will be much the same as it is at present.
> That’s far too many graphs for a team of 150 engineers to watch all day long!

Does etsy have 150 engineers? Is that even possible?
Is she getting paid an actual wage, or is she getting a room and a trivial amount of spending money?

The first is a job, the second shouldn't be considered one.
Reagan funded revolutions in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Obama's State Department is giving arms and money to Islamic revolutionaries in Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, and other countries. "We came, we saw, he died!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y

And there isn't even a geostrategic goal like turning Afghanistan against the USSR; it's just setting fire to formerly stable Muslim nations in the name of "democracy", just as Bush did.
Sparse Bundles were always chunked (and introduced at the same time as TimeMachine). Sparse Images were single file, but could grow to accommodate additional data. IIRC, networked TimeMachine backups (say, to a TimeCapsule) always have used sparse bundles.
Random Inbound Email
Ask HN: open source ticket / helpdesk system?
Hi I'm looking for a good open source ticke / helpdesk system.

With the following characteristics:

1. Able to receive tickets by mail or web.
2. Able to escalate tickets according to rules. Like: reassign this ticket if no comment in 12 hours.
3. Ideally would allow to convert tickets to github issues.

Thanks in advance :-)
it's probably because Norwegian Intelligence asked them to

I always say, "Norway dot NO"
The Snowden Prism
Guys, please don't forget the advantage of using DVCS to begin with. I like Github too, but if Github goes down it shouldn't put the brakes on your work. Push to multiple remotes. Solved.
It took two weeks to hit 45% when iOS 6 was released. http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/1005_ios...

Wow-level context: Jelly-bean is out about eight months and is at 28 some-odd percent. http://hothardware.com/News/Android-Jelly-Bean-Penetration-U...
How can this be sustainable? all this fragmentation/versions - iOS new >=7 and <7, all different versions of android, windows 8 metro etc etc. how many different platform specific versions are these service providers like say pandora suppose to create?

I feel like unless the app is taking advantage of some inherent hardware capability of the phone/tablet everything should eventually be HTML5.
I think his point was that not that the platform is being "burned down" but that it was going "arise anew, like a phoenix from the Ashes" - it's not like iOS will be gone in three months - but it will be markedly different.

Also - he was highlighting that this will suck somewhat for incumbents (which, having sold Instapaper, and "The Magazine" he is not), but that it offers great opportunities for people willing to fully commit to the new iOS 7 worldview (who in turn may be wiped out in another 8 years - but hey, 8 years is a long time.

Regarding, "If you're going to invest time and money in a platform, the last thing you want is to find out after that investment has been sunk that the platform steward likes to periodically smash everything."

Heck, based on a small sampling of anecdotes from iOS developers I know - I bet 90% of all iOS developers make the majority of their income on an app in in less than six months, fewer than 10% experience "significant income" over a full year, and less than 1% have multi-year incomes from an app that is enough to have a comfortable six-figure salary. The nature of iOS application development is different from Desktop Application Development, and, for most (excluding the top 5,000 Apps) - the real money is in new applications.

So - yes, this may be jarring for that 1% - but the other 99% have a great opportunity opening for the next six - nine months.
Okay, I will.

First, for the record, I think it's helpful to not define this surveillance in terms of illegality or unconstitutionality. By definition, if the branches of the US government have enacted this (executive made the policy order, legislative reviewed it, judicial signed off) then it is constitutional and legal. It's not very useful to debate it on those terms.

My primary objection is the lack of transparency by my government. Democracies simply do not work without the informed consent of the governed. How do I know who to vote out if my elected representatives don't tell me what they're doing? Thus my definition of "this" includes "keeping the extent of the surveillance a secret". Every time you say "we don't know" you are agreeing with me.

My secondary objection is the institutionalization of easy spying. Every defense I've seen from the administration includes some proviso that they're only gathering data about foreign nationals suspected of terrorism. I prefer my governmental legal structures built with the understanding that they could be used for ill. Having no public, non-governmental discourse about these processes prevents the electorate from making that judgement call.

My third objection is to the easy reliance on xenophobia and fear-mongering in the defense of these policies that we don't know enough about. "Oh good," I (am supposed to) sigh with relief. "This network is only to be used for spying on foreign terrorists." Given that global relations are the new reality I find it deeply troubling that my government is defending itself by throwing the rest of the world under the bus.

I wouldn't call my reaction panic. I never said this was "as bad as Hitler" which, in itself, is a meaningless and unhelpful statement.

What I want are answers and accountability.
There are ways to deal with some of the overhang issues with proper tooling though.

Regardless, as I said, 3D printing definitely wins in the complexity capability, overhangs are just one of them.
If You Think Glenn Greenwald Should Interview Pres. Obama, Sign This Petition
I have to disagree. Inside-app navigation in iOS is, truth be told, bodgy and confusing. Throw on top of that the need to handle notifications and app intercommunication and multitasking better and some systematic rethinking was really needed. I agree that graphically the new "commercial-art retro-chic meets skinny Helvetica" look feels like hard going - "it's sorbet and Love Hearts for dinner, everyone!" - but hopefully they'll have tidied and calmed things a bit by launch.
FYI there are a couple other implementations of this, with zswap looking like the closest to being merged into mainline linux.

https://lwn.net/Articles/551401/

https://lwn.net/Articles/545244/
Don't forget the iAds with your flashlight app.
Two projects I have been following that I like are Salt and Ansible.

http://saltstack.com/community.html

http://www.ansibleworks.com/
I've faced it in other platforms and it's easily overcome with software patterns that you should already be using. If you have a good separations of concerns and the UI is truly decoupled from your logic and models you should not be having any issues. If you don't already have that use this time to refactor and move forward. Some things won't be possible across both platforms. Find those now and address them first.
Aren't the well/better funded dev shops and apps going to more easily make the transition? Won't the smaller ones feel the pain of backward/multi version support more acutely? Didn't we just empower the status quo? True there'll be net new revs with no legacy issues but not sure how game changing that is.
The US Government killing Snowden would be political suicide and only give the anti-surveillance movement teeth. (I'm not even sure that there is even a "movement" right now, but it would certainly become one if this were to happen.)

Ron and Rand Paul are just milking the NSA situation for all it's worth right now.
Web applications intrinsically suck and aren't particularly viable unless your product fits the SaaS business model (I find that most things of value to me do not, personally) and unless you want to spend your life supporting SaaS (I like not getting pager alerts at 3AM).

Linux has such a small userbase as to be essentially irrelevant. Platform fragmentation is a massive pain in the ass and its users are generally unwilling to spend money on software (video game addictions aside).

Android has a userbase but they don't seem to really spend money, either; the overwhelmingly dominant revenue source for most cross-platform applications is iOS. And I say that as somebody who really likes Android and uses a Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 as daily devices.

You can "develop for an open platform" and have shit-all for a potential ceiling or you can take the (generally minor) risk of developing for iOS and actually have a chance (if small) of making something that pays for itself. It's disingenous to tell developers "well, develop for an open platform" when doing so means you don't pay your rent.
Whether or not the client is a citizen and inside the bounds of the US is irrelevant. If they're being legally challenged by the US criminal system, they should have legal counsel.

What you describe is basically reinforcing the morals behind Guantanamo - 'as long as they never get here, we don't have to treat them properly'.
Rovio wouldn't exist as it does without the success of Angry Birds on mobile and the open market there.

On consoles currently you have to publish 4 titles a year to be an approved publisher. So they need them probably to publish but I am sure they would love to self-publish their own or it is more beneficial to use Activision now that they are bigger or need the retail side.

Small and medium companies that are up and coming like Rovio once was need open markets and self publishing. They shouldn't have to sign over a large portion of profits because they can't launch 4 titles a year.

Open markets allow some companies to break through, most wouldn't be there without the mobile game disruption.
Police obtain Australian phone records without warrants ~1000 times a week
Cause, like, I still use Visicalc and it works great.
BrickPi Is A Robotics Hacking Platform That Combines Raspberry Pi And Lego
But Android wouldn't be (OS) fragmented if you had 90%+ of the user population on Jelly Bean 4.1+

iOS isn't going to fragment - the vast majority of the user base will immediately upgrade to iOS 7.
Think Bayes: Bayesian Statistics Made Simple
Behind Kanye’s Mask
I don't know: if you see any of the "real-world", non-studio-lit/Photoshopped pictures of the internal cylinder it looks pretty groady http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/mac_pro_... . (Ash-grey plastic panelling pockmarked with slots, how I missed you! Good to see you still have those big roundrect corners too.) It's a long way down from the internal fit-and-finish of the last Mac Pro design http://nonstopmac.com/images/macpro.jpg . Even the internals of a typical self-build PC can look pretty nice if you take care to braid up cables and so on.
One thing I find interesting about many conspiracy theories is that they are effectively true, even when the conspiracy is false. Many seem to involve not a group of cohorts acting in agreement but a group of influential people with aligned interest acting independently.
Android would not have a real fragmentation issue if 70% of all users could easily update and did so within 12 months. Important distinction that negates this argument I think. (I am Android user for day to day phone)
These Germans?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/world/europe/uproar-in-ger...
The BBC's hi-tech failure: Don't Mention It
I'll nominate fabric.

http://fabfile.org/
In public surveillance terms, this is basically the equivalent of gluing your camera to your temple. The Snowcrash quote is pertinent. Glassholes will be excluded from free spaces.
Your parent post may be referring to what happened to the CEO of Qwest after declining to support the surveillance state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
A lot of people rely on other features of GitHub for their workflow: issues, pull requests, comments.
He's not saying it's a great thing for users - he's saying it's a great thing for developers looking to enter a crowded space, because there will be some room to enter the market targeting only iOS 7 while established players are figuring out how to juggle the multiple OS versions.
I've used desk.com and it was good enough. It also had a decently good API and email integration.
Just because a change was necessary doesn't mean this change was necessary.

I'm still flabbergasted that Apple did their big overhaul (apparently) without addressing inter-application communication, default apps, Siri APIs or most of the other "power user" issues that would have helped them grow their computing paradigm. To me, increasing the scope and power of iOS devices while maintaining the predictability and control that are at the heart of Apple's take on mobile/touch-based computing is the problem Apple has to solve over the next few years. Judging from what I've heard about iOS 7, it sounds like Apple couldn't disagree more.
For those of us not in the US, I wish you had opened this up at a different time of day. I would have loved to join but this went up and sold out while I was asleep. Best of luck and please contact me if a spot opens up.
i use a git post-receive hook that calls a bash script and supervisor for small projects
4 Reasons Google Bought Waze
How I use Stack Overflow
There's a fallacy in your reasoning: that quality wins.

This isn't always true. Word of mouth is a much more powerful force than raw quality. Look at eBay, for example.

Most apps luckily don't have many network effects. But I won't be switching PDF readers just because the new one looks more like iOS 7.
I've worked on smaller teams and with consultants. What I can say with confidence is that consultants/contractors tend to have a bias in that they don't care for properly architecting something and are more about hitting deliverable/feature milestones [generalization, not absolute]. I bet the BBC outsourced this..
SCP, and human monitoring.
Listen to half a dozen developers at WWDC right now - see if, based on what they have seen so far with the DP, if they aren't completely rethinking their approach towards how their apps need to work/behave to feel "modern?"

I'm not up in the city right now, but from the few podcasts I've listened to - people are already commenting on how "dated" their app feels.

And - with the exception of the Mail/Calendar (Apple Favoritism, at its worst) and wacky "geofencing wakeup in the background techniques", all of our backgrounded Apps on iOS have basically gone to sleep permanently (until user pulled them back into the foreground) unless they were a GPS/VOIP/Music/Newstand app (and even some newsstand apps performed poorly with background downloads - I'm looking at you NYT).

In addition to the 3-D geometry (where I'm expecting lots of slide over sheets as a new metaphor) - I think all developers are right now considering how they can take advantage of an App that they can "wake up" remotely from a notification and perform activity with.
> But recent scientific research tells us this much: if you think one of the theories above is plausible, you probably feel the same way about the others, even though they contradict one another

Believing a thing is plausible doesn't necessarily mean believing it is actually true, ergo there's no contradiction in believing many contradictory things are "plausible" until the question is properly settled.

I always see this kind of shit from mainstream propaganda trying to ram home the party line and paint dissent as somewhere between crazy and eccentric, it's getting really old.
An Apple system is intended to be never laggy. The background apps should be killed to make room for UI.
Europe Formalize How Consumers, Companies Can Sue Big Fish Like Google
My original comment was somewhat incorrect. I log in via a browser minimally these days, but I still rely on both Google search and Gmail. I hope to find a good alternative to Gmail at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.