skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Honest question: why the wishful thinking? Why not tell it like it is? What is the potential damage that Mozilla could suffer by clearly stating that it is impossible and it will be impossible to guarantee that the government will not be monitoring all online activity? We know that the shadow-government is very good at:

1) Spying its citizens, using legal or illegal methods.

2) Cover up those operations with the use of force (indoctrination, legal threats, imprisonments, ...)

3) Change operation procedures whenever a martyr leaks the modus operandi, and improve the sealing of those activities.

This has been going on for decades. They have been iterating on this for a long time and we can assume that the shadow-government is very competent at it, so it will be impossible to control it. It is not possible to reign on the secret machine anymore.

The latest improvements on the spying machine are:

1) Better understanding of the whistleblower phenomenon: how to better indoctrinate workers so that they are less likely to talk, how to assassinate the character by using the media, how to create an example by using the full force of the law (whatever that means in this context) to make the possibility of leakages in the future less likely, how to put pressure in other governments to aid in the prosecution of whistleblowers. They have had lately several high-profile cases (Manning, Assange) for testing their machinery, and it is working perfectly.

2) Coerce companies into collaboration, and at the same time legally forbid them to neither confirm nor deny participation. I must say that this is simply a work of genius.

Mozilla could at least openly recognize this fact, as long as this is still a legal thing to do. The next iteration of the spying machine will maybe not even allow us to have this conversation. Who does feel safe talking about this things anymore? Not me, for sure.

Mozilla could still in good faith recommend Persona, while clearly stating that they are in no position to make any guarantee whatsoever about possible monitoring activities.
Linus Torvalds threatens verbal assault on developers' pets
It sounds like they don't actually know and are speculating. The key point they use to say this surveillance didn't play a role seems to be that they're only collecting metadata. I don't think anyone in government is claiming they can't then get a warrant for the specific individuals flagged as suspicious via the metadata for more in-depth surveillance.
The Silicon Valleys of Everything
Wikipedia says that Mandela co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe. I welcome correction if they got it wrong, of course.
It says "requirement to credit and link" in the article with a link to http://gallery.hd.org/terms.html
Inside an LTE Cell Site
Is PasswordBox as secure as they say they are?
It's actually bad security practice, because terrorists do not exist. I mean, there are so few of them that they are basically irrelevant. Yes, every few years a terrorist event will occur somewhere in a western country, and that is quite unfortunate. However it is very minor and I don't believe it is worth the effort to fight it with a significant part of the nation's budget. Even less so to restrict civil liberties.

This whole narrative that there is a prevalent terrorist threat against our western countries is both a product of irrational fear and general government megalomania. I'm not even sure there's malevolence behind it.

Osama Bin Laden really won the very first time the terms "War on terror" were pronounced - I don't think he could ever have dreamed of such a wide and lasting success
Good idea. This place is turning into Slashdot in the Jon Katz era.
Certificate pinning is just another attack vector, and MS/Apple/Google may all be keeping the NSA apprised of changes to browser/device certificate policies (inadvertently or otherwise).
It wasn't necessary. We all commit three felonies a day; it was just a matter of finding something they could pin on Nacchio.
Narus nSystem can analyze every interaction on a network [pdf]
With no public oversight there's no guarantee the procedure is in accordance with the law.
The bit about the flight staff tearing up his ticket is a real problem. Flight staff act like they're Border Control. I'm a Jordanian with an O1 and they usually give me hard time when I try to board a plane to the states. I once almost missed my flight because they made me buy a ticket back in the same year, even-though my visa was valid for three years.
*">I was thinking before, how in the hell is a sys admin contractor making $200k/year???"

That's not a stretch in my experience.

Unless there's something particular about a Hawaii assignment that depresses rates, I'd say your circle of friends and associates just isn't a very representative of Government IT contracting as a whole.
The article being mainly about Apple and their non-implementation seems justifiable, given the Apple just, ya know.
How to transfer your stuff to Windows 8
Gmail goes down in India
Question for those who would know: if I were to try to do this with javascript, how many requests could I make to the site at a time without being auto-banned?
What jumped the shark is constantly citing Godwin's law. What good is history if we can't learn from it or cite it?
You have HN's use of tables to thank for this one.
Ah, ok. Thanks for the tip.
Why would you hope not? I would rather people talked less in this situation. It means they've adjusted their behavior in accordance with their new, more accurate, understanding of the world.
Right after that it says ‘© Author’, which links to a Terms page, which states “If you make money from using our stuff, share it with us!” and “You acknowledge the author, including in derivative works, if possible with a caption” and “You make an effort to contribute similar material of your own creation to the Web under similar terms, if and when you can.”

http://gallery.hd.org/terms.html
Connecting the Dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance & NSA’s Massive Spy Center
Which would give you a ridiculous caricature of what's actually going on in the US. As much as I'd like to just ignore the US, they don't seem willing to let us.
Even "origin" is a misnomer here. It's not clear if the neanderthals were wiped out, or simply assimilated. Many were already living in modern-day Europe.
About 35 to 40% were slaves in Rome.

The American Revolution carried forward slavery.
http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-...

Google already does that.
Patent US420420420: Water filled smoke cooling device.
A storage device that can hold water. A cylinder, square, or tube like structure that acts both as a pipe and transmitter of smoke and air into the water storage device. Another access/control point into the water storage for sucking. Storage device can be any water storing devise : vase, hollowed out pumpkin, yard gnome, etc. Device specialized for USPTO anxiety medication found in break room by Mario Cart.
How immigration reform affects entrepreneurs and graduate degree holders
Would simply choosing a non-US data centre location with a US company provide any kind of protection?
Quick Primer to Software Development
In the context of web applications, would it make sense to stop using the word "app" to refer to software/daemons available in the distribution repositories, and instead only use "app" to mean the products and services built on the former?
I could not agree more. I wish site authors would not waste thier time with poorly mobile optimized versions. Just serve me the desktop version, my mobile browser can handle it.
Satire: Hitler finds out about iOS 7
Mobile Safari only reflows the text in Reader mode. But reader only works on a few select websites. Sites like slashdot and HN aren't supported and force you to horizontally scroll when the text is zoomed to a comfortable level.

I'm not sure what I hate more, horizontal scrolling or not being able to zoom.
Many, if not most developed countries do this. Don't be such a jackass.

The idea is that these students enrich the university, and there's a chance they'll stay on as professors.

Billions are spent chasing foreign students that can throw a football and you chose to save your rage for this?
The majority of what you said here is right, but the key is in your last sentence. How better to get enough people to agree with our interpretation (that we want privacy and accountability) than to get everyone pissed off about what's going on (and has been for years, so what).
Oh yeah, loads, loads and loads of difference. Some of my UK friends even use proxy DNS service to get the US content (same account works in both countries) because the UK content is threadbare in comparison.
And allowing payment through crypto-currency.
No kidding. I'm surprised, and a bit distrubed, that Amazon hasn't revoked their API keys yet.

What are they doing to prevent this kind of abuse from happening?
And furthermore, they're operating based on a DoJ interpretation of FISA that they have also classified so the public cannot know how they are interpreting the law.
We have to assume that the author of the Wikipedia article is more informed than I am. I stand corrected.
I suspect that Greenwald is not nearly technical enough to understand the content - not that he's not a bright guy, but the level of technical nuance here might be significant.

So then it's all about the quality of the advisors they have access to, but given the nature of the materials, I suspect few people have been able to see them.

We just won't know till the whole thing gets released, if ever.

And to the second point, obviously I couldn't know for sure, not having seen it, but it's very very common with these types of presentations within government agencies and defense contractors to have 5-10 overview slides, the conclusion, and then behind that 20 reference slides that are more of an information dump. The idea is that the first set of slides is enough for most people, but if you want to dig deeper, there's additional detail.
Falling Flat
If CAs don't have private keys , how are they signing certificates?
From starting to working at - the story of Osom
I work at Osom. I used to say “I’m starting a company”, but these days I’m not starting, I’m working. So what’s the difference?
Data, Trust, and the Human Impact
They've given up on thinking the iPhone is something special. Rightfully so.
> Assumedly
They may have an intention. But few means, since there is no easy way from graduation to the citizenship.

A positive side effect may be more foreigners having good will towards Americans, having studied and lived here for several years. However, incidents like this one (denying visa) are not working towards developing the good will but very much in the other direction.
So does Google use a proprietary implementation, or there are open source solutions to implement the ECHDE thing?
Chromebook? You can run Ubuntu on it.
Yeah, moving from FPTP to Approval voting or Cordocet voting or something would be a huge improvement, at least in those terms. It's a tough fight though. Critics say "oooh, that's too complicated, it'll confuse the voters" blah, blah. Hell, in NC the SBOE (State Board of Elections) has used "voter confusion" as justification for policies that historically made it all but impossible for 3rd party candidates to even get on the ballot.

To give some perspective... in NC, in the modern era, only one 3rd party has ever achieved ballot access (the Libertarian Party). And until a few years ago, the rules were rigged to force the LP to constantly recertify through a long, tedious and expensive petitioning process every election cycle.

When the LP, Green Party and others sued the SBOE, they actually argued that having "too many candidates on the ballot could confuse voters", despite their essentially never being more than 3 candidates for any given office. Further, in most election years many, many races are actually uncontested! But we'll confuse the voters if we allow the Libertarian Party, Green Party, Constitution Party, etc. on the ballot. Sheesh.
We need open source technology that auto-encrypts data before releasing it to third party service (such as emails, chats, skypes, etc...).
Although this will piss off not only NSA but all service providers as well - as they get used to like knowing your interests and subsequently spamming you.
What is a foreign graduate student in the US supposed to learn from this?

That he or she should not fall in love or marry an American while in the US?

or

That if this happens he or she should not go back to renew the visa ?
With such a low contrast, this looks like it's not intended to be read at all. So didn't read.
That's probably the most confusing way to describe that.

Why don't you just say a someone who's not American?
Can we avoid PRISM with Diasppora?
I was just thinking the whole point of the Diaspora project was that we could host all our own information so it wouldn't be controlled by one central organisation which is governed by US law or am I over looking something as to why no one seems to have mentioned this before?
Not knowing the names of prominent figures is some (quite inconclusive) evidence of insufficient familiarity. Any encouragement of the type I was speaking of should recognize that (and should be polite on other counts as well, of course) or is not entirely appropriate.
That 99% are opposed is, of course,
nearly enough but not quite: In addition,
need to get some voters up on their hind
legs, totally torqued, so that the members
of Congress can be sure about how these
people will vote at the next election.

And there are more complications: On some
'wedge' issues, it may be that all the torqued
voters really are in the other party anyway
and, thus, won't change the voting at the
next election.

But getting voters up on their hind legs
is a crude way of saying we need an
"informed citizenry". My view is that
now the Internet is by a wide margin
the most effective means of having such
a citizenry in the history of the US.

E.g., SOPA and PIPA went down likely
mostly because they had to do with the
Internet, and the Internet made it
easy for citizens who cared about the
Internet to become informed and to
make their opinions heard. E.g., it
was easy for me to become informed,
write letters, and send them to
Congress via the FAX modem in my
computer. So, with FAX I got to send
a nice looking letter, and what I
sent was not on paper and, thus,
didn't have to suffer a big delay going through some
long process in the mail room
of Congress to test for biochemical
poisons.

More generally, the legislative process
has some motivations not to be simple
or open and sometimes is neither.
Still, the Internet is one heck of
a nutcracker to pop open hidden
work in Congress.
I don't think it's Android's busy, ... unique interface that keeps Apple owners from switching. It's the hundreds of dollars in apps they've invested in that won't transfer.
That every time you leave the country, there is a risk you may not be let back in.
CAs do have private keys. Otherwise, what is the public key that I see on the Entrust Root CA related to? (The CA at the root of the hierarchy that issued HN's certificate)

But you're correct that even if the NSA got the CA's private key, they could only "forge" certificates and this would be detected by certificate pinning. (Similar to the Comodo/Digitnotar compromises)
I am not familiar with the Boston area, but if I were you I would look into finding free resources for starting a web based business. There is really no need to pay for a class when the information you are looking for is readily available. I know for a fact that your local library will have a ton of books on start-ups. If you are really dedicated I would pick up a book on financing a new business as well and go from there.

You could always ask around the web, and see how other web based business got started. From my experience talking with online entrepreneurs, most of them are more than willing to give you advice or direction.

Best of luck!
> To date, CloudFlare has never received an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. ... As part of these challenges, we always request the right to disclose at least the fact that we received such an order but we are not always granted that request.

Are you challenging orders you haven't received? It might help to be more clear. For all we know, CloudFare has been required to give all its data to the NSA. The law allows that, and the law could prevent CloudFare from disclosing it.
Here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/persona/

"Many sign-in systems carry your profile data with them; some even share that info with other sites and social networks. We believe you should control how your personal information is shared. Persona lets you get started with just your email address; you can add your profile data later, when and where you think it’s appropriate."

Whatever that "profile data" is, can be requested by the government.
I think there should be a "their" in there, somewhere.
There is also NOW TV in the UK, which is a standalone Sky service. Somehow they don't get too much press, but they do have loads of recent movies (basically everything Sky).

See, for example:
http://community.nowtv.com/t5/NOW-TV-news-and-information/La...
That's a very interesting perspective, up-voted!

The current process acknowledges the fact that there will be a number of false positives, probably an order of magnitude higher than true positives - a class of people which the system aims to filter impeccably.

However, we should not forget about the sentiment this process brings about. It leaves a very poor taste and even hurts and insults a lot of people and the cost of losing those talent and taxes thereof could be manifold.
Only a landing page. Give a working url please
So if my entire website goes over ssl, could they still read or alter the secret content if they mitm by forging a certificate if the certificate is not pinned?

Could they for example present a generic login and then mitm from thereon?

EDIT: Maybe ip traffic would reveal this. But what if they were to target an individual? I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this.
IMO the US is with China a step ahead everybody else Russia included. They also have the resources for this and control over the main companies spearheading these developments. Couple with a shadow federal government with absolute power, and the most sedated, naive, "cooperative" and docile population in existence.

It's really a scary place to live. Surely IT jobs do pay well there though.
The drive to create more Linux-based mobile handset is a very good thing. It's going to benefit Linux distributions by driving a focus on design, and a consensus on UI toolkits.

However, nobody seems to be looking at what gave Android a big technology advantage even back when Android was a design ugly duckling: A common managed language runtime for apps and OS middleware.
Can you please expand on this? Does using TLS (vs SSL2v3) automatically ensure you're using ephermal diffie hellman?
Can Aardvark meet Quora+Video? the future of networking
It will keep you out of casual monitoring, but you could still be tracked by someone determined. As others have stated, you've got a lot of personally identifiable metrics accidentally leaked when browsing the web.. like OS version, screen size, plugins, browser version, IP Address, response time, etc. Incognito mode will prevent the websites you're visiting from being _sure_ it's you, but they can still infer it. It's probably equivalent to clearing your history and cookies after every use.
I've been to Shithole 4 times (I try to avoid it though). I've been subjected to the pornscanners every time.
I run a FX-8350 as package building server and it stays at 4.55 GHz on all cores during parallel builds with after market cooling for 40€.
how many non-programmers are poking around in code repositories?
NSA + VERISIGN = PRISM
Seems like FUD - How is switching from Amazon to OpenStack going to help dilute PRISM? AMZN was not listed as a cooperating entity.
However, without the full slideshow we don't know as a fact that they've committed infringement.

We're working off a broad assumption that they've never attributed the author.
What Happens to Women Who Are Denied Abortions?
Right, I'm sure that's how the decision making process went.
Not proprietary. OpenSSL supports ECDHE. Can use your standard SSL key issued by any certificate authority.
The question is not the age of the people fighting wars, but what a government chooses to "use" its youth population for.
Side Project Hacks: Don't Sweat the Details
Designers Think Apple's New Flat iOS Look Is 'Ugly' and 'Harsh' and Blinding
> How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient?

It helps users in that the "new design" is an improvement over the "old design".

A case study, the Windows file picker dialog:

Win3.1 dialogs felt foreign to 95, while XP-style apps feel foreign to Vista-style apps. There is no debate that from win3 to win7 the file picker dialog got improved each time. Easier item selection, easier reading, easier tree traversal, quicker arrival to favorites...

What is true for this dialog is true for the whole system. rundll32 tabbed preference panes survive in Win8 to this day. They felt like they came from the future back then on win95, while today they're old and crufty, alien and inscrutable.

This is not change for the sake of change. Design is how it works. Good design is thorough and holistic. If you only improve part of the system, you end up with a hodgepodge of UI versions with no conventions across the board and only results in an overall bad usability and maintainability.
There are orders other than FISA orders that we have challenged.
This is excellent, I have been helping various people with this technique for years.
AJAX - CORS from Cloudfront and S3
Just found out that when you want to allow CORS to an AJAX request for a resource from Cloudfront + S3, it’s not enough to just add the permissions on your S3 bucket. You also have to make a called to your resource using an additional parameter in your URL.
Lego faces are getting angrier