skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
<A HREF="http://www.gerardmanleyhopkins.org/lectures_2001/imagery.htm... sucks</A>, though you can have as much rope as you need.
If you haven't read Gellman's _Angler_ yet, you really should; it's riveting. Read this whole article; towards the end, it reports that acting AG James Comey, along with FBI Director Robert Mueller, threatened to resign if NSA continued slurping Internet metadata out of American signals intercepts on orders from David Addington, a Cheney henchman.

Gellman's underselling the drama here a bit, but he captured it in _Angler_. Comey and Mueller didn't just threaten to resign. First, Comey simply refused to authorize the program. Comey was acting AG at the time because John Ashcroft --- a punching bag figure for civil libertarians (like myself) --- was hospitalized with appendicitis, doped up, and incapacitated. When Comey pushed back on the Addington order, future AG Alberto Gonzalez went to hospital to try to get Ashcroft to override Comey. Ashcroft, who Gellman (IIRC) reported was barely lucid, refused to override Comey. Comey and Mueller threatened to resign. The rest is history.

It is really hard to fathom just how bad the first Bush administration --- really, the Cheney shadow administration, which is what it was in the first term --- was. The last time mass senior resignations were a tool of influence in Washington was Watergate.

Incidentally: Comey and Mueller were both Republicans. From everything else we know about NSA surveillance post 9/11, we have every reason to believe that Addington's plan was stupid, but not much reason to believe its goal was to target anything other than foreign terrorists. Both Comey and Mueller were prepared to resign, from a Republican administration, over what most Americans would consider a legal technicality --- in a program whose goal they supported, and whose harm to the American people was abstract. This squares with my experience talking to judges and law enforcement people: their belief in the rule of law and in the importance of the law is profound.

Comey's been tapped to run the FBI for Obama.
So what? The subject of this thread is that the NSA admitted that analysts can listen to the content of all of our phone calls without a warrant. We are having this discussion because the Snowden link put the NSA front and center.

Yet, you are arguing some mundane semantics?

Instead of smearing the people responsible for these revelations, why not try to focus on the big picture? That is, all of this is leading to long overdue appropriate dialogue, that is engaging our representatives in the oversight that is required to uphold our Constitution. Big picture!
And what do people think about this thing anyway?

Will we be able to evolve beyond our bodies by 2045?

http://2045.com/
Google has many exciting projects, but those are not responsible for its success. Google's success is owed to comparatively pedestrian products: a search engine and an ad brokerage.

Take away Glass, self driving cars, Loon, and all the other blue sky projects, and you still have a wildly successful company. But take away those two cash cows and Google is broke.
I think learning is what keeps devs happy and interested in their job and that's a good thing. In my opinion, having a restricting mentality in the workplace will lower morale and lead to shitty code.
Bitcoin as money
The ropes provide energy efficiency. On one end is the lift car, but on the other and going in the opposite direction is a counterweight of similar mass. The lift motor only needs to move the difference in mass.

If you put the motor in the car without ropes then it has to be powerful enough to lift the whole car and all occupants. And if you want any hope of energy efficiency you'd need regenerative braking for when going down. This would make the lift car a lot heavier and the electrical system a lot more complicated.

Sometimes simpler is better!
Debunking The Narrative Of Silicon Valley's Innovation Might
If those are 1,5000 professional tax preparers who each perpare taxes for many taxpayers, it might make sense.

Going after only high income citizens might also create a reasonable situation where $133k/taxpayer in their biased sample set might happen. It's often not unreasonable to focus only on those individuals who might produce the largest numbers...
It isn't merely a hand wave. She appeals to her own authority in the linked piece and thus it's legitimate to question that authority.

Neither of those books addresses whistleblowing or the NSA in any detail. e.g.: the word whistleblower appears precisely once in The End Of America. Neither the acronym "NSA" nor the phrase "National Security Agency" appears at all. So if Wolf does have some sort of authority in this very specific domain, it doesn't come from those books as you claim.
1. Doesn't prove anything. Correlation != causation.

2. Because they like fire. Prove me wrong.

3.Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. They've had a lot of time to figure it out (they don't even have jobs)

4. They're clever animals. How can you say they wouldn't?

...to be more serious about it, I was using an extreme example to make a point. It is next to impossible to prove that someone has never done something, so when you start arguing on a basis like that you just descend into an abyss of unanswerable mess.
Darn, I'd always kind of hoped we in Canada weren't so surveillance crazy too.

If so, then the other problem is bringing attention to it. If something like Edward Snowden happens in the US, it gets a lot of attention and world-wide recognition. If it happens in Canada, only we know about it and it's likely to slip from our news rather quickly (or so it would seem).
thats good news.hope they will continue delivering quality bus booking service.
I think your subtlety missing the point - it wasn't a comment on current teenagers or even past teen generation, but a comment about how ones perception change with time. A different story emerges on reading it years later. It is more subtle and deeper than I initially appreciated. This happened to me also, and it completely changed my perception of the book re-reading it 15 or so years later. I may also have missed the point, but that's how I interpreted the comment.
Hasn't this been the "norm" with the GHCQ in the UK.
> but if Prism includes other not-yet-revealed acquisition methods, might still be substantially true

Yes, but that's close to being a tautology: what outlandish claim might not turn out to be true if in future startling new revelations supported it? In fact, direct access in the NSA-has-root sense is less likely in light of the PRISM slides: why file 702 orders and dicker with webco lawyers if you're able and willing to get whatever you want through some kind of back channel? Why create a Top Secret overview and training resource for Internet surveillance and apparently not mention this backdoor?
See what's happening in Brazil: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIBYEXLGdSg
Boston Children’s Hospital Finds Root Cause of Diabetes
I was chatting with some of the Google people at the event, and they said that the balloons have been responsible for a few UFO sightings. In fact, when one of the balloons' transponders failed in flight, they were able to track the balloon by the UFO reports online! This happened while they were testing the balloons in California's Central Valley.

They said the balloons are expected to take two weeks to circle the globe. Given that they said they'll eventually stay afloat for 100 days, that gives them plenty of opportunities to bring the balloons down in a specific location in order to make reuse easy.
"we skip entirely over the value of working for large, established companies before you create your own."

When I first started writing about startups, I believed this. I suggested that would-be founders work for a couple years for existing companies before trying to start their own. But the empirical evidence changed my opinion. You can learn things from working at an existing company, certainly, but you learn more from trying to start a startup.
Second statement from the article:

Ć is a new language, aimed at crafting portable programming libraries, with syntax akin to C#
How not to handle a critical security vulnerability
[1] http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1275572
[2] http://localhost.re/p/zamfoo-120-vulnerability

tl;dr security researcher reports critical root vulnerability to Zamfoo (a tacky yet popular plugin for a hosting control panel) software developer two weeks ago, no action is taken, "in the queue", two weeks expired software developer starts threats "You publish a vulnerability your done forever. You threaten us again and your done forever."

Now threatening legal action and so forth.
Australia gets 'deluge' of US secret data, prompting a new data facility
That's awesome. I remember I spent some time rewriting the code I had from C# into Java and wishing there was a way for me to just write it once and reuse in multiple places. Just so that I do not have to patch multiple locations as I add features.

Maybe Objective C for the next iteration? :)
And I agree with it. I was addressing a different view altogether. There seems to be a very widespread paranoia that the worst possible event is the one that is occurring and that all entities but the user are collaborating willingly to make it happen. What is surprising is that most of the people here are US citizens who at least have some of their rights intact, enough for the companies to fight back as they have publicly acknowledged that they do to as much extent as possible. I am more worried about the legal requests from US government for data about non US citizens. Does there even exist a legal system to prevent mass unmonitored snooping on them?
>if you're working in .Net

For the record, I've avoided .net and C#, so I'm not locked in that box.

I said Visual Studio because the C/C++ development features are pretty much unequaled. I've tried. At some level I hate Microsoft AND Apple, and would love to be a Linux user and get away from The Man. But I don't love the idea so much that I am willing to do even 20% more work to be on Linux full time, and honestly it would be far more than that.

Some things would be absolute showstoppers, like reading Photoshop files -- so I'd have to have Windows running in a VM. And while I'm sure that's getting better, the integration never seems to be quite as clean as you'd like.

>Amazon video has worked fine in Firefox for me on Ubuntu forever.

Good to know. Strike one thing off of my list. I expected that with that many items I'd likely get one wrong. The rest stands, though. ;)
Yes but that's a very limited amount of information, maybe only a few bits. Seems like a pretty inefficient way of hiding such a small message.
Thank you for sharing! This technology is definitely interesting. I will be following news about it closely and would appreciate it if you could post more updates in the future.
Whistleblower [RAP NEWS 19]
The reason petitions like this are important is that ultimately, the fate of whistleblowers must rest in the hands of the people. The government must prosecute leakers; failure to do so would invite rampant leaking, placing essential secrecy in the hands of every single individual with access to confidential information. The key question about a leak is: does the value of the information being public outweigh the cost to national security? The ultimate arbiter of this question can only be the people. The executive branch is too invested in maintaining security; the judicial branch is charged with enforcing the law, not with making policy judgments; and the legislative branch, while it can be very influential, has (at least in the US) no direct control over the fate of any particular whistleblower.

So the only way to keep a whistleblower out of prison has to be by the sheer weight of public opinion. There isn't any other way and there never can be. This is one responsibility we cannot delegate to our elected representatives, because it directly contradicts other responsibilities we have placed on them.

So, if you believe, as I do, that we are better off for Snowden's revelations -- that we desperately need to have a national conversation about what our government is doing to protect us, and whether the price of that is worth paying; that the material Snowden has leaked has been essential in bringing that conversation into focus and drawing attention to it; and that the damage to national security is minimal -- then I urge you to sign this petition.
Dude. Provide evidence for extraordinary claim. I'm all ears. Also: this content vs. metadata thing? Also I think a red herring: they don't have full metadata access from Google Mail either.
The author works for Human Rights Watch, so this isn't unfamiliar territory for him.
If Snowden were popular in the sense that matters, there would be protests down the thoroughfares of American cities to free him. Sadly he is not popular in the sense that matters. He's not popular in the same way that free abortions are popular. He's not even popular in the way that legalizing marijuana is popular. He's just popular enough that libertarian-types (of whom I count myself as one) scream indignant outrage at the grim reality that has been exposed to us (and which many of us have long suspected existed). Most of the rest of the population is already yawning and moving on to the next story. The Economist lead with a piece today barely acknowledging the Orwellian nature of the PRISM program, blandly stating "Our point is not that America's spies are doing the wrong things, but that the level of public scrutiny is inadequate".

The true lesson to those of us who cherish freedom is the awful extent to which we have lost.
Ya I was thinking about the scary irony of being interviewed by a man named O'Brien. But since I assumed it was real, I thought it was just a coincidence. And in hindsight, a lot of details of the story don't make sense, but that it could be fiction just didn't cross my mind.
Meh, just gather it directly then say oopy when caught. See Dotcom, New Zealand.
Every time a 'new' president does something that seems completely illegal on a national security matter, I have this little film reel (er, h.264? Youtube video?) that plays in my head.

It generally begins in the Movie-Standard high-level, windowless, government briefing room. President and the national security advisors are there. The advisors spill whatever beans are appropriate to the situation. President pulls a Home Alone face and poops his pants.

Obviously, it doesn't let the GHWBs, or any president, off the hook. I imagine it to be a test of the sort of moral character we should focus on when evaluating candidates, rather than whether they inhaled or let a skanky woman sit on their lap while boating.

Maybe candidates should get a briefing six months before the election and then we can make sure we elect a total bastard from the start.
china seemingly managed it. why wouldn't the nsa have an easier time at it?
In school I learned that we have the three powers - the legislative, judicial, and executive - are separated so that they keep each other in balance.
If any two of these are held in the same hands there are no restrictions. (if you can make laws and preside over trials you make bring anyone to jail, or if you can preside over trials and execute the sentence)

That's why (IMHO) individual wiretaps with a warrant are fine. Somebody had to make a law, a judge had to weigh the facts and issue a warrant, and an FBI agent/cop/etc executes the actual tap.

In this case the NSA analyst is both the judge and the executor violating these checks and balances.
Now maybe there might be temporary warrants for wider range of individuals, even t
No, I am arguing that AT&T rolled over (and, as it turns out from today's Gellman piece in WaPo, took money from the USG to do it), while Google fought back. But commenters on boards like this are happy to shit all over Google because (a) any allegation that Google rolled over to the USG confirms their biases, (b) they're inclined to put people into binary "agrees with me entirely" or "disagrees with me entirely" buckets that presume anyone who argues with them must be apologizing for NSA, and (c) because it's fun to talk about big companies like Google being evil and less fun to talk about them working hard not to be.

You think these are mundane semantics. I think they're more meaningful than that. People on HN can't get me to shut over the right fix for a CSRF bug or how taxicabs can be licensed; why would anyone think I'd back down on an issue like this?
I hated most literature when I was 18, then magically fell in love with the same novels I hated when I was 24. Still, there is more nuance I can pick up now at 30 with more study of history. If you haven't read the Iliad and a majority of the Bible, then you simply can't understand most of Western literature and those things take time.

It's interesting to see that this is a universal experience. School gave me literature before I was able to appreciate it, and it nearly turned me off to the taste.
The NSA and Congress don't run the justice department. We've had high profile civilian criminals before.
The article implicitly urges one to keep "core competencies" in house. It sounds as if in these instances, the core competency - development of the software product - was outsourced.
I really like this concept. It would make a good counterpart to Haxe.
That's about when it stops. Once you hit 30, it's all about having enough information to regret everything you ever did in life.

Then you just wait to die. Why bother trying to save this mess now?
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Innovation vs Commissioning a Masterpiece
By making himself publicly known he made his assassination a very awkward proposition. Don't forget that Nixon tried to have Daniel Ellsberg killed.
Indeed all states derive their power from the consent of the governed, do they not? What would have happened if even a third of Iraq decided to ignore their government under Saddam? The government couldn't have responded. Governments work because we agree to do what they say. Now things like drones centralize some of the power in ways that could not be done before but only to a point and the complexity overhead counterbalances that.

Complacency is how tyranny works everywhere and in all ages.
Selection bias?

People who can get into YC at 20 are probably better off starting a company than getting a job. However what about the other 99.999% of 20-year olds?
Does this apply to non-startups? Once one becomes an incumbent, is it not wise to minimize external access (inherent in outsourcing)? E.g., the core competency of the NSA might not be system administration, but perhaps they would now prefer that someone more imbued with their culture had performed those duties.
Is all that pathetic flow of long-words about the old idea of having a secretary?)

btw, is it possible somehow to reduce the amount of nonsense^W links from medium.com? We have enough narcissism here from patio11 and likes.)
Safari Web inspector is open source now, someone can integrate and submit a patch for it as well. I prefer Safari over Chrome.
This is a problem that won't be solved with an algorithm. Emotions dictate the actions of humans. It's hard to fix that problem.

You sound like someone who checks your watch to figure out whether you're hungry or not.
It seems to be missing the real issue that you generally don't want lifts that go all the way to the top in one run because it uses up to much real estate.

You have to have multi-stage lifts else the whole building becomes full of lifts rather than offices etc

Much more exciting for projects like loon I would have thought.
Here we have a great tool at our diposal(internet) and all we can do is use it to bitch, moan and compare notes. Surprisingly, politicians feel they can do as they please. Its a shame we cannot organize and do something about it. I wonder what effect(s) striking for a week would have? Typically solutions are of equal proportion to the problem at hand. But its so inconvenient-i know. A less affected Hong Kong has held a rally but here those most impacted-nothing. Ughh im tired of reading this shit. We deserve everything we get.

Or we could take this as a challenge to see how many people we can get to strike. So much talent here... How will it end?
While I too have had moments of wishing he had stayed anonymous -- the story has become more about him than I would like -- I think he probably made the right call by outing himself. Had he simply continued in his job and life, he would probably have been identified eventually -- and then treated like Bradley Manning. Had he gone on the run without exposing himself, he would have been identified quickly, and then the question would be, how long could he last as a fugitive? I think he really took the best path: in the short run, it was wise to be outside US jurisdiction, and in the long run, public opinion will be his best -- possibly only -- protection.
edit: I take it back, my memory is failing me. Some intermediate-modulus high-strength PAN based carbon fibers have strengths exceeding most synthetic polymers. Here is a comparison I put together a few years back for some research on fibers.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3730003/fiber%20strength...

This is quite surprising as many synthetic polymers (zylon, spectra/dyneema, kevlar) are much stronger than carbon fiber. There is even a competition to make the strongest rope for potential space elevators:

http://www.isec.org/sec/index.php/technical-program/strong-t...
It's a catch-22. The information necessary to fully appreciate what's going on is classified and the only way to understand the argument completely is to get a high level clearance which then prevents you from making any arguments about it.

That's one way to put it but it seems like a jarringly bad way. Secrecy is such powerful force that we shouldn't bluntly say it has a corrupting, corrosive and poisonous effect on our society? I disagree. It is so powerful we should say that.

Sorry if that's too simple or something
I would bet not 1 in 100 high school students ever hear about COINTELPRO in school. If it was ever part of a standard civics curriculum it was briefly in the mid to late 70s.
It seems beneficial to have at least some experience with working at an existing company. Knowing how things are traditionally done, knowing where the bottlenecks and communication problems lie, can be a big help in figuring out where you can take advantage of your own situation. It also helps you not take for granted many of the more subtle benefits a startup provides.
Forget wiretapped. He was assassinated in a conspiracy with 'unspecified governmental agencies.'

"...the jury ruled that Loyd Jowers and others, including unspecified governmental agencies, were all part of the conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King Jr.[3][4]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_....
Thing is, I still don't get what these protests are about, or who are they aimed to. To me, they all look so random.

It's seems to me that it's just a bunch of people that think that the situation is bad, but don't what is wrong, or whose fault it is or what needs to be done ir order to get things fixed.

What are they aiming with this? What would make the protest end? A price-drop on bus fares? The cancelation of the world cup?

I think they want someone, somewhere, to notice this and magically fix everything.
it depends entirely on the matrix material, and then after that the mechanics of whatever structure you're building.

Pure carbon fiber is far too delicate to be used on its own without a matrix, but the fibers themselves behave very much like a lock of hair.