skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Some people are leagues better than others when it comes to fight. Handing out a .45 to everyone instead of policing does not put everyone on equal footing.
Firefox OS ? You mean that OS that basically doesn't allow to do anything at all outside of a browser?

Mozilla has ranted about Microsoft restrictions preventing them from making a decent competing browser in WP8. Well, go make a competing browser in FFOS...

Mozilla has tricked everybody into thinking "Web technologies" meant "open", but this is absolutely not true.

Oh, but maybe it will at least solve distribution of apps you can make? Because, you know, everybody knows there will be no distinctions between apps installed from their store and other places, right?

Yeah... Let me tell you how it actually works. Mozilla has finally figured that mobile security is hard, so they have decided to have permissions. There are two kinds of permissions. The first one is those that they think users can understand (for instance "use the camera"). For them, the device asks the user if they grant them, problem solved.

And then there is the second kind of permissions, those that they think are too hard to explain to the average user. For instance, "make a request to another domain" (systemXHR). For those your app has to be in their app store and validated by Mozilla. Does that ring a bell?

So no, Firefox OS is definitely not the answer. Android way is better on that front, actually. Another interesting project could be Sailfish.
"This individual", notice the hideous language "we do not want to have anything to do with this... OK not going to insult him just depersonalize him". Might as well have said "this object". Not even Mr. or jus "he."
He's a high-class, nationally famous lawyer. I seriously doubt he'd do anything illegal.
One stays in your pocket.
As a complete guess: Much electronics manufacturing requires items to have individual (or batch) numbers for quality control.

When items fail test you can investigate the batch to find and eliminate problems of manufacture.

Sometimes this is good and effective and it works. You see that batch #3762387 failed, and that they all used a component from a delivery, so you look at the other batches using that component and they fail too.

Sometimes, however, it's just a paperwork exercise. It's frustrating for everyone trying to do the work, and the results are hopeless for anything because people are just faking the paperwork, or the paperwork is garbage. The company is only doing all of this to get a logo for their letterhead, and they must have that logo to do business with some other companies.

In the UK some of these systems (ISO900x; BS5750; etc) are sometimes seen as expensive makework nonsense.

Let me know if you ever need to find flaws in someone's paperwork because there are a few things where it's trivially easy to trip them up once you know what to look for.
I think Germany is part of the Visa Waiver Program, so she would have had to apply via ESTA before she flew out.

It wouldn't surprise me now if there was a system in place that used the ESTA information to query the NSA/CIA/etc for anything that might be an issue for immigration control.

If she's been talking about working in the USA and hasn't got a visa (ESTA is only for personal visits, not business IIRC), that's enough for the TSA to refuse her entrance for lying to them.
They can't, that's the beauty of it. They can't talk about anything unless they know it's going to be released, because it's top secret, and they have no idea what's going to be released.
I don't agree that git is best for deployment and that beanstalk is focused on beginners - git deployment actually for beginners and beanstalk becomes much more handy when you have more than 1 server and 1 developer. Also, not in all languages "git pull" is enough, sometimes you need to run custom commands after that to run external (to git) tools.
I like the explanation that it's basically a REST api with a required has_fisa_approval field[1]. In practice this gives unrestricted access because FISA only requires a hearing to be held after more than a week of surveillance against a single target.

The existence of the has_fisa_approval checkbox allows the companies to (dubiously) claim "no direct access" even though it is all but equivalent in practice.

1: http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/11/connecting-the-prism-dots-m...
Protesting against surveillance by providing personal information online ...
Here are some ideas to consider:

1. When I see a domain name with the keywords you are targeting, I associate it with spam. My advice is to come up with a memorable name that is less than 10 letters. Think along the lines of Kayak, Hipmunk, Expedia, and Orbitz for inspiration.

2. Figure out why your site is different, and make it your focus. Why should I use this site over Kayak? For example, in addition to Kayak, I will check StudentUniverse, a travel aggregator that focuses on students because they offer discounted rates for my age group.

3. Pick a niche to start with. For example, one niche is Americans who want to travel to China. Many Americans do not know about Elong, Qunar, or Ctrip. If you make it easy to discover these sites, this will provide value for your users.

4. Once you figure out why you are different and you have a picked a target demographic, start driving traffic to your site by contacting people through email, forum posts, and partnerships.

Let's stick with the example above about Americans going to China. I would first email Americans living in China that are writing blogs, and ask them to let you do a guest post about your site. Write about how it is hard to book hotels in China when you are new to the country, and why your site could be helpful for their readers. Second, I would respond to posts where people have questions about booking hotels in China (Thorn Tree Travel forum, R/China, R/travel, Quora, Twitter). Do not spam or you will get deleted. Provide valuable information as a subject matter expert. Third, set up strategic parternships. For example, trade links with websites related to travel in China but in different industries, such as businesses focused on day tours like visiting the Great Wall.

5. I think there is a lot of good literature out there for Google Search Adwords, so I will focus on Google Display Ads. Use the feature that allows you to add a list of sites to display your ads on. Make a list of 250 websites you want target that are relevant to your niche, and only displays ads there. Then track which sites are sending you people that are converting.

I hope that helps for now. Feel free to email me to discuss further.
It depends entirely on round trips to the server and your use cases.

Generally speaking though, if you keep your result set as narrow as possible, post process aggregates in code, keep your join count low and keep you round trips per request low then c# will destroy stored procedures.
I'm looking at doing something similar. Are you writing about any of this as you go? Would be interesting to learn about the hurdles.
And as such I wish Snowden had a verified Twitter account.
We need to help more white men get into technology
> Personally, I don't believe that the majority of people want to commit serious crimes but are only held back by the fact that if they did, they would be punished. Because of that belief, I don't believe that eliminating security would cause an increase of bad behavior.

You don't need "majority", you need just a handful of really really bad ones.
There's something like that already in the works:

http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan
Inline replies and comment folding.

I know there are several browser extensions for these features, but as native functionality it would increase the UX for everyone, not just those that know of the extensions and are fortunate enough to have them enabled all the time.
Depends how smart the "average terrorist" would be. Because you would catch the ones stupid enough to just gut out the laptop, rendering it inoperative (unless of course for that last one blaze of glory… hem).
A PRISM-inspired Google Doodle
Would you like to support this statement? As it stands it's spam.
Given the PRISM revelations (and the today-reported fact that the AIVD has reportedly been recording and analyzing all domestic calls since 2000) try moving to drop all cases since 2000.
Ask HN: Should I be scared about living in the US? 
I wasn't worried about the PRISM fiasco until Monday when I started reading more articles.
What really makes me nervous is the possibility of innocent US citizens being misconstrued as enemies of the state for posting anything online that isn't 100% supportive of the government.
Right now the US seems like it's on a slippery slope to fascism and/or totalitarianism rule.

Your thoughts, please.
Nokia saying final farewell to Symbian this summer
> Isn't that just a meaningless waste of energy?

It is. People suck at being random, so there's a good chance that those "false positives" will actually be trivially filtered out. And even if not immediately, this is an algorithmic problem - they will just throw few dozen kUSD at some math and CS graduates to make it go away.
Not on iPhone 4. I tested it on my friend's phone and it went unusable and you're also risking geting the phone locked. I would wait the last version, more polished in all aspects, specially on the speed one, because on iPhone 4 is WAY slower.
I think he's more saying that people will be reluctant and/or unable to completely rethink their apps design and functionality and this will present an opportunity for new developers who build things that are uniquely suited to iOS 7 and beat the old slow-moving incumbents.
The quality control and tracking reasons makes sense. It would allow for faster and more automated identifying of parts.

"Let me know if you ever need to find flaws in someone's paperwork because there are a few things where it's trivially easy to trip them up once you know what to look for."

I'm interested in this, can you give some more details?
Having been here (legally) for 17+ years, I would concur that there is absolutely nothing that would prevent a Canadian from living/working here, other than their integrity and respect for the law (which, admittedly, Canadian have in abundance) - Well, that and a desire to return home for free medicare, more generous welfare system, ... :-)

The only evidence I have submitted to a half dozen employers of my right to work in the United States (because it's all I've ever been given) - is a cardboard I-94, filled out by me, no less, with a faint, blue stamp and date, and a (once again handwritten, this time by ICE agent) "Class: TN, Until: 07 Oct 2015". No Serial Number, no tracking number - just a stamp and visa class.
Any plans to pin the login.persona.org SSL certificate in browsers? It seems like a pretty tasty MITM attack target, especially while most identity providers don't have native persona support.

login.persona.org is listed in the key pinning list in Chrome[1], but marked as kNoPins, DOMAIN_NOT_PINNED - whatever that means.

[1] http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/http/tra...
Battery levels will drop when connected to the charger - because of code in the battery controller. It's bad for the battery to stay at 100% for any amount of time, so the controller will cycle it in the 95-100% area. Smarter controllers will hide what they're doing.

Google chat messages can be delayed for any number of reasons, ranging from internal glitches to "Your network connectivity was bad at the precise moment the message was attempted to be delivered, thrice, and it retries at exponentially longer intervals."
I absolutely recommend it. A big screen or double monitor is a must. And much better if you use live refresh stuff while coding.
Pro-gun control? You don't remember the one with the gorillas, I think it was, advocating for gorilla control and with people complaining that the keeping of gorillas in public was a Constitutional right, and even if a few people in stores get savaged by gorillas occasionally, that was a small price to pay for freedom?
Finally. This is such an annoying behavior. I wouldn't complain about a small info bubble, but assuming that all visitors comming from a search engine want to install an app before they even know the site is simply ridiculous.
And there was the ultimate test - submit your personal details in order to fight your freedom. Odd, isn't it?
Elden is a top-flight defence lawyer. He's not any good with computers (clearly..), but I'm sure he told the truth as he understands it.
Outbrain - System And Method For Providing Feed-based Advertisements
> Most of them don't have much military.

But they do have some. And they have police, don't they? So they provide some security to their citizens, meaning that their people are free to live without someone bigger than them taking all their things.
> there have been reports that Russian pilots flew North Korean MIGs in air-to-air combat with U.S. planes

Stalin was careful enough to enlist pilots as "volunteers", suspending their official service in Soviet Army for the duration of mission.
Dominance hierarchies are pretty common amongst animals - so we have probably inherited this bheaviour from our non-human ancestors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_hierarchy
You don't have to stretch it beyond normal tasks to get some big WTFs:

https://gist.github.com/hcarvalhoalves/4471029
Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?
But go from 5% to 0%? I am used to glitches but there are oddities here that are either hardware issues (battery discharging while low and connected to the charger), network issues. This is beyond what I am used to. Again, I could be connecting the dots incorrectly but I would not be surprised if I am right :-P
Stop focusing on Snowden, hero or traitor, he's probably fake. The revelation is important, not the messenger.

The idea of "Snowden" is critically important -- citizens standing up against government overreach -- but him as an individual is immaterial.
Hosting your own email server is sub-optimal for several reasons.

Email is still being sent as plain text. Encryption is possible even if you're using someone else's server.

Your deliverability is reliant upon other people's good will. Those people have no idea who Joe Sixpack in Idaho is, and have no reason to extend goodwill. Your deliverability is also subject to wingnuts using a variety of good and not so good blocklists. You may find your time is better spent doing work rather than working around various weird blocklist delisting policies.

Hosting your own email does nothing to prevent traffic analysis.

The only thing it does is to stop your email being held in a big bunch at an email providers servers, but you can do that by wiping it from their servers and holding a local store. (tl;dr use a commercial email provider but keep your email on your machines not theirs; encrypt everything before sending it; consider using tor if you want anonymity.)
It is indicated in the article that Facebook was his only means of contact with this client - he lost contact with the client as a result of the Facebook profile being deleted. Presumably this implies that it was the client, not Elden, that chose to use Facebook as the contact medium.
All calls in the Netherlands are stored, indexed and searched for keywords
Thank god. If I'm on Google search, I want a proper web site.
I am surprised to learn there is none. Isn't that what Open Rights Group is? Even in the Netherlands we have had a digital rights advocacy group (Bits of Freedom [1]) since 2000. Having recently moved to the UK, I think the need for such a group here is much stronger (opt-out internet filters [2], calls from government to no longer make them optional [3] etc.).

[1] https://www.bof.nl
[2] http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2012/new-reports-of-over...
[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-cal...
Yup. Raise your red flags proud, people! Like me, https://twitter.com/AmericanPrismer
Viewpoint: Losing a son to suicide
What's next for the Cologne startup scene?
Thanks. There's a pattern that affects codebases, particularly when they have moved out of initial development and into maintenance.

A maintenance programmer is presented with a bug or feature request. To address it, they make adjustments to existing classes to solve it, rather than refactoring the relationships between classes.

Over time, functionality accumulates within one or a couple of the original architecture objects. But it's no longer really an object-oriented program. Rather, there is a 'God object' that knows about the internal state of lots of the rest of the system. A related development - the inherited data structures are stretched and stretched to meet needs of a system they're no longer suited to represent.

Once a codebase crosses over into this swampland, it's very difficult to drag it out, because there's no longer any unifying principles to guide you in building a supportable application.

If you throw unfamiliar programmers at it in the attempt to improve things, there's a risk you'll make the problem worse, because the key thing is to appreciate where the architecture is, and where it needs to go. New programmers won't have the context for that. Often they won't even care.

I find a strong analogy with government. When a community problem presents, many people will respond, "The government should do something!" In many minds the government is a generic fix-all institution that can right all wrongs.

The dynamic suits cynical politicians as much as cynical maintenance programmers. They placate people by throwing some money at the issue while it is in the media cycle. They might hire some people, or tack institutions on. This new momentum does deliver some quick results but re-enforces the dysfunction. By the time that is clear, the people who have benefited from the short-term play have moved on. Often government wasn't even an appropriate institution to be involved in addressing the problem.

After a time people say, "it's impossible to [create good government|write good software]." This is completely untrue, but it's easy for that depression to set in when you let media cycles or your manager's next bonus payment drive development.
Eagle/CEREBRO - Arab countries' PRISM
>> don't even pretend that they encrypt your data.

> would it make you happier if they kept their services the same, but just pretended to introduce encryption? ;-)

No it wouldn't. What I wanted to say is that Wuala at least claims that they do client side encryption. I believe them, but someone else doesn't have to. So, data being safe with Wuala has probability between 0-100%, while data being safe with Dropbox has probability of 0.
double yup
You can use the Sha-2 hash of the last 1000 URLs in your browser history. The NSA will then hash the same on its side. If the two match, they know it's you.
12 tips for a stress-free vacation from a SaaS entrepreneur
"there is a way to look at digital communication in the past ... no digital communication is secure"

Wow.
Headline is inaccurate - they don't downrank for redirects. They downrank for redirects to the mobile homepage instead of the mobile specific page.

I didn't see anything in there about app banners.

(In case it's changed the headline currently says:	"Google downranks sites that do mobile redirects / app banners".)
What's trending on Google right now. - excellent
Except they never starved anything. Government expenditures did not decline in any meaningful way.
That's a really good quote in the light of the NSA drama.. i still don't understand how people can defend this..
Probably for AGPS and a better positioning using both GPS chips and other positioning sensors (cell towers, wifi). The Glass GPS antenna is tiny, it can take ages to synchronize without aid.
> This is seriously the weirdest part of this story so far. Why is it news that this guy, who clearly has resigned, is being "fired"? And why was his precise salary released? Why is it being reported on? Why does it matter that he did, or did not, finish high school?

It's called "character attack" to discredit the source. Same happened to Assange.
I haven't, but you're right
> because voting to repeal it might be political suicide.

Then provide political cover.
> Right now the US seems like it's on a slippery slope to fascism and/or totalitarianism rule.

If that is the only thing you see, when you look at the US, feel free to leave. There is a long line of people who would be happy to take your place.
"First, it’s not clear to us that other governments have any less intrusive surveillance activities."

Well, it is clear the US has it. That should be enough. There are some unknowns unknowns, but this is a known unknown. There are other governments with the same willingness and capabilities of spying on everyone (do not move to China), but most of the countries in the world do not have a Government with both willingness and the technical abilities to do it. And most of the countries do not have a huge and highly sophisticated shadow-government, with multiple agencies working out of the public oversight. Most countries have secret services, but they are a joke compared to what the US is able to deliver.

"Second, as a US company, Mozilla is subject to US Laws, wherever we host our servers."

Move the company out of the US. I undertsand that it won't be easy, but is the only way to be 100% sure that the US Government will not come requesting data (not that they will not take it anyway, if they are able to)

"Third, we’d rather not engage in an arms-race with US government agencies."

Read: we are afraid to lead here, because backlash from the government (and the public?) could be too damaging for Mozilla.

"We’d rather focus on efforts to change the Law to respect user data wherever it lives."

We know so much: the privacy situation in the US is bad, and getting worse very fast. No amount of public discussion or legislation is going to change that. If PRISM is outlawed, even if those responsible are put into prison, they will start the PROSM program, more secretive, more broad. We will know about it on 2037 (maybe not, since by then we will be already living in a fully accomplished Orwell world). By then Mozilla will issue a statement similar to this one, explaining why they are not really taking the necessary steps.

Fazit: if even a company committed to freedom and openness like Mozilla is not willing and/or able to take the necessary steps, it shows how unavoidable 1984 is.
This is what they're dancing around, instead releasing tidbits of info that make it look as if it's not as bad.

Just because the transfer mechanism is sftp doesn't matter. My supposition is that prism is an auto-importer of these files: able to parse the data formats from these companies and present it to agents in their database UI.

Prism: import.io for anyone's data?
The chip is taken from the specs, you cannot see it in the photos.
Yes, and when Apple steals it's called "innovation".
Nice!

But ... will it run linux?
Thanks, i've changed the headline.
Well, maybe they assume most people will just roll their eyes, disbelieve, ignore and forget about it. Which is a silly assumption of cour-- hey wait.
How can you blame journalism when the nature of those data requests is such that in some cases companies (and even politicians) cannot talk about them, cannot fight them in court and they do not have to be approved by a judge?

This leaves a lot of space for speculation, how can somebody possibly know if they didn't request a bulk copy of all Facebook data? Or issue a billion seperate requests when by law nobody can talk about the count and scope of those requests.
If I were a journalist, the first thing I would question is if they did exactly this, because they wrote a law that allows exactly this type of behaviour.