skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A backup service means you're acting as a dumb pipe/dumb disk. You're copying bytes without knowing the contents at the request of your user. This doesn't apply when you're seeking out data to copy on your own. In some situations you're still fine, like if you're requesting files from public web servers. But I'm not aware of any protection that would blanketly apply to intercepted connections.
I like http://www.Bytemark.co.uk -- have used them for years and would recommend them to anyone who wants to host things in Europe.
All that exists so far is four vaguely worded power point slides, although their is allegedly a lot more which is not being released for unknown reasons.
Working With Data In Sails.js
Eh, so what? The only thing your provider knows is that you're trying to authenticate somewhere, but not where. It's hardly bad.
Show HN: Introducing HTML Inspector - making markup testing easier.
Announcing gogeos: a spatial data library for Go
Isn't that how news used to work :-)?
"Immigrant" does not mean "descended from someone who came here". Some people were actually born here. Yes, we are all descended from immigrants (some of us from those who walked from Asia), but that doesn't make us and our children's children "immigrants" as well.
This sort of stuff has been happening forever. I'm sure if you found some people who were international students in the 80s or 90s they would have similar stories about capriciousness with regards to student visas.

The rules basically say that embassy official should only give out student visas if they are confident that the student meets the terms of the visa, particularly that they have no intent to overstay or permanently immigrate to the U.S. I.e. the default is not granting the visa, rather than granting the visa.

The rules are bizarre: while you're on a non-immigrant visa you have to prove that you have no intent to immigrate or seek immigrant status, yet ultimately many people will seek green cards. Indeed, there is plenty of talk that the U.S. should actively seek to encourage international students to stay permanently, while at the same time the rules say that visas shouldn't be granted to international students who might possibly be considering staying permanently.
The project repo can be round here:
https://github.com/philipwalton/html-inspector/
this data is not for last 10 years. US was open.
Isn't that exactly what they did?
Well if they told people what terrorism technically means, maybe people would stop being terrorists. Imagine if you got busted for speeding, but the speed limit was secret, because cops didn't want you avoiding detection by... Not speeding.
Maybe PRISM is just the front-end to the government service. After all, we know they are running multiple services. Greenwald is really sticking to his guns on direct access, and from what he's told us he has a lot more information.
Hey, just an FYI, to denigrate means "to criticize," so although I understood what you meant, you might want to reword that (not to be pedantic, I just know that if I misused a word, I'd want someone to tell me).
New design direction? Apple iOS 7
We never communicated about this before. So sure, the context is key. But it was always included in our strategy.

Quite a few clients asked us questions about all this... Just hope it's useful to share our point of view.
As soon as you started using subjective terms like "very much" and "convincingly", yes, it was in matter of opinion territory. But if you ask a question with terms which inherently call for an opinion, you can't (justifiably, at least) complain that the response is in "matter of opinion" territory.
That's exactly my thinking when creating https://persowna.net/. Providing authentication that hooks up to the corporation's specific system for the entire web is potentially a very big thing.
The NSA doesn't need to break Google/Facebook/Twitter's private key. They just need to have bought/stolen/subpoenaed/cracked the private key of any CA that is in your browser. E.g. a mole inside GoDaddy/RSA or anyone with an intermediate chained certificate.

This would then enable a man-in-the-middle SSL attack.

There are some challenges about implementing this with just a port-mirror or TAP, but it is possible. For means of an easy example, you can see the DNS requests coming from an end-user for 'www.gmail.com' and fake the response (racing against the real name server's response). This then points the user to your website with your fake Gmail certificate. You then simply proxy the data along to the real gmail and you have obtained the password for that uses gmail.

This is the biggest weakness of SSL. Chrome now has protection [1] against fake google certificates. But for most sites/browsers you have little protection against this.

[1] http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/enhancing...
that is no excuse.
Excluding very bright people from top universities because those people are foreign would be a good way to stop those universities from being top.
You are aware that not all research leads to concrete, patentable ideas, right?
Nothing like real data. The US has over three times more immigrants than any other country.

I should also note it is my belief --my belief-- that most people in the US, outside of certain groups, are for LEGAL immigration. Don't come here illegally or with a student visa and then cry foul if not welcomed.

EDIT: the reference to student visas is about using them illegally to get in and then stay. It is NOT about not allowing students with proper visas to come in and study.
But lets update the technology from when 'right to bear arms' was written ...

If modern arms are cyber-warfare and information flow, then the arms to keep that power in check are computation, math, encryption, anonymity, private messaging, realtime chat, social networks, web graphics ...

So the right to bear arms in todays terms, I would argue, _is_ the right to a) private internet communications between parties and b) public information broadcast to everyone
Does the USA own the internet? It sure thinks it does.
It was a little tongue in cheek. By all means, if this prompts companies to be more transparent and they can use that as a marketing differentiator, more power to you.
Microsoft defends XBox One's Licensing and Used Game Policies
we finally tracked down how to force the cpu into only using 4 cores

Was the issue the shared fp units, or the turbo-core? I wonder if you can disable the turbo-core?
It was actually TCP, which made delivering player actions reliably and in order trivial to do.

The data in the TCP stream was divided into messages prefixed by a type and a size, which is what I meant when I said "packet".
a) Educating foreign students and sending them back to their home countries is a great example of how to do "soft power". This is actually the explicit intent of many programs, particularly Fulbright awards, where recipients are required to return to their home countries.

b) The terms of the student visa require that visa-holders provide evidences that they have no intent to stay permanently in the country.
I like their 500 error page: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259335/exclusive...
Haven't you got the memo yet? According to the media we can't trust Snowden because he didn't graduate high school.
And if he actually looked at and carefully reviewed all of those (which is possible after 3 months at the NSA) then his point would still apply, would it not?

Manning, on the other hand, leaked too much: "his review of leaked Afghanistan and Iraq battlefield reports revealed techniques for neutralizing improvised explosives, the name of an enemy target, the names of criminal suspects and troop movements". [1]

Does explaining how the U.S. Army was neutralizing IEDs so that Taliban could work around those methods and continue to kill and maim Afghan civilians, children, and ISAF soldiers really help you as a citizen? How many families died from roadside bombs that were designed to avoid these neutralization methods thanks to Manning's leaks? Are you sure the answer is 0?

But again, this is what I mean by tribalism. You try to discredit Snowden's own point since Manning is in the tribe. Does it even occur to you that it's possible Manning could have gone overboard in his goal for transparency? That he could have done 1 thing wrong and 999 things right?

[1] http://www.navytimes.com/article/20130611/NEWS06/306110044
I guess I always expect UI chrome around CodeMirror, but yeah, it obviously says CodeMirror right there, DOH, I missed the color syntax highliting when I skimmed through. I still don't see how to do multifile commits all from the web-ui which is what I meant to reference. I can do one-off files on GitHub but they're a commit a piece.

Both GitHub and BitBucket are really close to letting me do significant editting of code from my browser which is still very useful for me. There are tons of times I'd love to be able to fire up GitHub and hack on some files without having to actually commit to persist changes. But then again, maybe I'm projecting feature creep on what is ultimately a VCS.
There aren't backdoors in OS X and Windows that are specifically designed by or for the NSA, but since we can't see about half of the source (at least in OS X) then they can exploit any backdoor that may be present without our knowledge.

Ubuntu fares a bit better, but with the proprietary blobs, you never know.
At least he has the PhD now. Imagine if academia were academia and his school insisted on having viva in person.
Ubuntu is actually working on a phone OS, and the rest aren't. http://www.ubuntu.com/phone
The NSA or Hacker News?
Reputation.com’s Fertik: Put Humans Back at the Center of the Internet
It's a pretty big grey area, that's for sure.
Not sure what technologies you're referring to, but in regards to the OP, the OP is arguing that people use replacement services (Diaspora vs Facebook, for example) so that the NSA and such have a harder time finding you...But if you ascribe the kind of capabilities and motivations to the NSA that would make you this concerned (the collection/mirroring of all traffic, legal authority to request what they want, encryption well ahead of the state-of-the-art, and the information architecture to make broad-scale analysis possible)...then you're not really diluting anything and opening yourself up to other attack vectors.
I miss the P4 I used to have at an old job. It kept my feet nice and warm in the winter.
Many of those examples also make sense when you consider what you're actually asking for.

For example, Arrays have no + operator. So []+[] requires that [] be converted to a string first. The string representation of [] is "" (although some interpreters use "[]" or "[Array]" for clarity), so []+[]==""+""=="".

Similarly, he used the example []+{}, and claimed it was [object Object]. This actually wrong (at least in Chrome); it's actually "[object Object]", a string. The reason for this is the same as the previous example.

However, there is a different reason why {}+[]==0, given that "[object Object]"+[] == "[object Object]". There turns out to be something special about {} at the beginning of a statement (It's a block, or something). Thus, {}+[] is like {};+[], where +[] causes [] to be converted to a number: 0. Compare: {}=={} (syntax error, unexpected token ==). Yes, this one is actually confusing. (However, expressions are not usually evaluated in void context.)

He also observes that ",,,,,,,,,,,,,,," is a bad representation of Array(16). It is, since the undefined in each element is important, but again, that can be solved by using an interpreter with better string generation. (Or a version of IE that doesn't attempt to be clever and just returns "[Object]" all the time).

So perhaps the moral of the story is: Yes, it's an entertaining talk, but a several of the examples break down because his interpreter is vague.
IPhones can auto-connect to rogue Wi-Fi networks, researchers warn
Ask HN: What are your views on open-sourcing literature?
Open-sourcing has done wonders in software, and now in hardware as well. How about, we open-source literature as well? We could have a platform like Github, just for those who write. Think of open-source fiction novels, non-fiction books, literary pieces, so on and so forth. What does HN think?
If Greenwald would so much as acknowledge that other theories can explain the details he's leaked to this point I'd give him more credit.

But he doesn't, either because he is obstinate or because he doesn't understand the technical nuances.
Well I've just learned that the guys from https://www.cozycloud.cc/ have come a long way implementing a user centered platform ( personal cloud ).
It really looks promising.
So should we be writing checks to Germany when a German-educated person comes over to the US and starts a business? After all, Germany should be compensated for their loss, right?

If an American chooses to move to Singapore to work for an international bank, then maybe they should be forced to pay back the subsidy on their education, right?

Here's the thing: Education is not a waste of money. It costs almost nothing to host a Ph.D. student, there just aren't that many of them. It would take tens of thousands of Ph.D. students to add up to the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet.

Investments aren't about a guaranteed return, they're all about probabilities. I'm pretty sure that MIT's investment in graduate students, including the small number of guest foreign students, pays enormous dividends in terms of research and prestige.

Also if you can name one Ph.D. student that's been given a signing bonus that's anywhere near the kind of money thrown at football players, please do. If you want to know where money's being wasted, it's on lavish stadiums, enormous scholarships, and all the associated pageantry.

Don't think you're the only "taxpayer". Virtually everyone who's ever set foot in the United States is a taxpayer in some form. I know I've paid my fair share of sales taxes just visiting.

If you want to cut funding to MIT so that it becomes a shell of what it is today, you're entitled to that opinion. Just don't complain if that happens and over time the US becomes completely uncompetitive, full of people with obsolete or inadequate education, reduced to having to import talent wholesale like Dubai.
I'm yet to find an actual source for that figure whenever it comes up. Is it just some tech site comment section spitballing or did they actually disclose the TDP?
Yes you're right that this is also a problem. Along with mobile versions of sites that offer no link to the desktop and vice-versa. Some smartphone users might not want the mobile version for whatever reason.

Luckily there's browsers such as Firefox for Android that allow add-ons. One of the add-ons I have is called Phony which tricks the website into thinking you're on a desktop browser. Often the browser's built-in "request desktop" option is not good enough because the website uses modernizer or something like that to determine if you're mobile.
> But it would be noticeable at the origin if you knew what to look for: all of the sudden your usual distribution of client IPs would be replace by a much smaller set of NSA IPs.

That's not a safe assumption. Given that this is the NSA we're talking about, it's probably within their capabilities to transparently MITM all connections to your server.
Working as one of two programmers at a startup has really reinforced this for me. As a student and even when I worked at BigCo, I loved taking the time to do things myself, do things Right (with the capital R), and so forth. Now, since I'm surrounded by business people, I'm thinking more in terms of value-provided, not cool-hacks-provided. It's made me ship better things a lot faster and make more people happy. And, really, that's the end goal.
Regarding the modding, I guess the group think is still in the doe eyed fanatical allegiance phase.. and hasn't reached the bitter disappointment and finger pointing stage yet.
Do the users get some sort of notification of the change, or is the only difference to them the "made by" label in the App Store?
Need a standing desk?
What Hong Kong's Chinese papers say about Edward Snowden
>> you know that at least two agencies (FBI & NSA) have total access to your Facebook data.

This statement is not supported by anything in the wikipedia article you cited. You're spinning conjecture.
Congratulations, that's the first time I've managed to laugh about PRISM in the last week.
Not only government's credibility. Credibility of all those companies who lied to us that our data is safe. Apple, FB google and likes
That would certainly fit with the classification of encryption methods by the government as “munitions”.

p.s. web graphics?
If they NSA could coerce a CA into sharing the key, they could make less detectable MITM attacks.

So when you look at the chain you see:

Verisign (lol j/k really the NSA) -> Site cert

Rather than:

Verisign -> Third party CA (suspicious) -> Site cert

If you pinned the site certs you should be able to defeat both of these.
Yes on the Aaron Swartz question.
Is Twubs the Next Big Twitter Chat Management Tool?
Corrupted in the sense "deviated from an ideal"? I am not sure, because I don't think patronage is the ideal.

On the one hand, a patron Can answer "why does she get money, while I don't?" with "because". For a government, at the least the answer has to be "because she's better", which triggers "how do you know?". That, I think, is the root of "publish or perish".

Now, to keep a patron, one might have to publish or perish, too. It's not like Mozart could spend a couple of years thinking of the great Austrian piano concerto without performing, composing stuff for various festivities, etc.

However, the back side of this is that we lost many great minds. There just aren't that many patrons around.
You are completely ignoring the negative effects of these decisions to exclude. Those decisions do not happen in a vacuum. Every one of them has an associated "negative" effect that also accumulates.
lol, the only thing Ron Paul is concerned about is being forgotten...
Surveillance is trumped by enforcement?
Of course the company would have to cooperate to make PRISM work, but I think you're missing what PRISM is meant to do on the company end.

It takes what the company was doing manually before PRISM (complying with NSLs and FISA warrants)...

and automates part of that process.

What it doesn't do is insert NSA as a wiretap into all their systems's traffic, as that's not what FISA compliance needed in the first place.
> The US has over three times more immigrants than any other country.

Which is completely irrelevant because the US is hundreds of times larger than many countries.

That's why we use percentages.
> if you use an alternative to the major services...doesn't that make it easier to find you? You've effectively joined a much smaller haystack.

No. Because the 'haystack' you are (accidentally) referring to is a ginormous indexed/searchable database. All of their data goes to the same place, so it doesn't matter where it comes from.

Your argument through analogy is not applicable but let me clarify for you: They are not watching you. They are watching the Ramada and everyone who enters, exits, and everything they do while there. All of this information goes into organized storage until they need to dig it up.

They can't watch the bed and breakfast because the windows are blacked out (encryption). So you are safer there.

Security through obscurity is an awful policy to start with and only fails harder when applied to a situation like this.
If you don't do redirects, what's the problem? If you handle desktop web links and open it in your rich RIA "app", then everyone's happy and Google won't care.

But if I click an email from your email http://you/richclient/whatever and get taken to http://m.you/ I will close the tab and never come back (and apparently Google will slap you around a bit)
If you're operating a dragnet then really you're close enough to a dumb pipe. If you're doing very targeted capture then you can filter stuff out anyway.
Breaking the Time Barrier
Breaking The Time Barrier: ebook from FreshBooks on billing for value not hours
arent the applications supposed to be judged on merit?
Irrelevant. The question is whether these programs are legal.
Interesting that someone did a nice job photoshopping the image into a logo, since he graphics on he rest of the deck are so bad.
Would love more info on this setup.... looking to do the same in our shop
We're playing a game of truths and realities. It's embarrassing to company to have this happen. It's more embarrassing and painful if the employee that made it happen was grossly overcompensated in the eyes of shareholders.

Keep in mind that Booz Allen and the NSA are different entities. Booz Allen is (rationally) defending its own assets.
Insider trading is not "three felonies a day", even if we take your assumption as truth.
I don't get this snark. Ads work because they provide some value to someone that causes them to click. If simply inundating someone with ads was enough to make "advertising" work, then Google wouldn't exist and we'd all be Don Drapers.
I think this is more about "feature creep" than specifically about code, though the OP's point is well taken. But the distinction matters: the dilemma I find myself facing is: do I write that extra library or test to make sure things work? Do I take the time to refactor? Is it worth the time?

In those situations, it isn't at all an easy question, unless you know the problem you face requires a one-off software solution with little liability for maintenance.
Every year I meet more expats working or studying here from 6 months to several years in order to build skills to take back home. Since I live close to JHU, most of them are scientists.

But yes, an economic depression causes political pressure on immigrants due to the lack of work/school for native citizens.
So use alternative services for mundane things, all the time. Make it less of an anomaly that you're using less-trackable services, and make the haystack bigger for other leakers.

(I'm reminded of a talk about Tor where it was mentioned that Tor only works if the user-base is diverse; if only the FBI used Tor, the FBI would have anonymity from using Tor, etc.)
Why is it legal for public officials to knowingly lie with intent to deceive, in a public setting? I feel like that should be a basic rule for politics. There should be legal repercussions to the things public officials intend with what they say (proportional to their claims).
I'd be curious how much work has been done to reverse engineer OS X / Windows. I can't believe that nobody has done it. And how successful these would be at finding potential backdoors?
This is the nicest redesign I've seen so far. Only issues I see is that Safari looks like a compass without the 'world' iconography, and the gradients in passbook could be toned down some. Photos and Game Center could probably benefit from a subtle gradient in their backgrounds as well.
Yes, the design of iOS 7 should have been a static mockup with slightly tweaked vector icons. Feel the burn, Jony.
No matter what you do to it, the Game Center icon will still suck.
So in order for a piece of criticism to be valid, the critic must divulge their voting record and whether it has been affected by convictions?
Ask HN: is there a marketplace for code bases, startups, etc.?
Let's say you have a nearly turn-key startup ready to go with an interesting and working product, but something might be about to happen in your life that would mean you'd no longer be as interested in seeing it through.

Is there a marketplace for such things anywhere? Is there a place where entrepreneurs who have money and are looking for another thing to try might purchase such things and take them over, and where makers could sell them?

(Imagine the idea already has some level of market validation in the form of existing but inferior competitors.)