skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have been messing around with this idea for a while with a few friends. I'd love to talk more if you're interested. You can find my contact details in my profile.
Is thinking these problems are likely common across all gigantic companies really so egregious?
"All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret."

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
thanks a lot that's very useful I'll try GNGeo whenever I have some free time.
More like, it is easy to say that security is completely unimportant when you have spent your entire life in such a cocoon of security, you don't know what life is like outside of it.
I agree with your point that apathy is a threat to democracy, but there are multiple threats to an open and fair system, and a surveillance state is one of them.
Surprise: press has large effect on what people think was actually leaked. I'm sure 99% of those interviewed have no idea what he actually leaked entailed. I'd be more interested in a study that asked people if they knew what they were actually outraged about. A majority of the insinuations of the original "leak" have since been retracted and those actually following the details of the story have no belief that there is anything illegal going on.

Real opinion pieces that actually ask the hard questions like "should the government know less than Google" are all but ignored, in favor of 6 year old backdoor "zero-days", frontpage'd on HN, for applications that have been out of favor for even longer, or politically motivated 'stub' court cases that aren't expected to go anywhere. It has all the indications of a coordinated media event, not a real political scandal. Nobody really cares what's going on, we just care that there is popular support going forward. Popular support for what exactly? for general NSA outrage?
Oregon's senators are far better than I reasonably would have expected. Watch Senator Merkley question at 1:21 "exactly how did you get from these restrictions to collecting EVERYTHING, including my god-damn cellphone right here" (or something more polite, possibly). GEN Alexander decides to defer to the Feinstein classified hearing; i.e. not answering, by saying, "let me make sure I get this exactly right, because it is a complex area."
You should add that to your blog :)
Q: how to create a small fortune?

A: start with a large fortune.
A prospective future employer will likely be concerned he'll openly write about that employer too. Thus, passed over.
ESPN Killing 3D to Focus on 4K
Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
Limits on Neutrino-Neutrino Scattering in the Early Universe
I had a little trouble parsing your first paragraph. But vote third party? Now you're speaking my language :)
Why not? Notice that in "Country" they don't ask you if you've declared yourself the King of Sealand and are living on a platform in the ocean. For birthday they don't offer you anything less than 1900, even though there are people alive who are more than 113 years old. You simply can't serve all people's needs with any product.
im !american so really not backing hope and change here... but should not you/we be directing our vitriol in a bipartisan fashion?

with regards to the mass expansion of surveillance, shit seems pretty fucked up across the political divide.
Interestingly, many companies including mine are dependent on Facebook and their APIs. They do move fast and break things, and we feel the pain of it practically every day.
And a major feature of the latest OS X incarnation is...file tags.
What I think will actually happen as far as societal change goes is that we will become used to the idea that people do grow up and mature and stop holding things against them that they said 20 years before.

People should be able to say things in private yesterday (not just 20 years ago) and not have it affect them in public today.
Don't know why the title was changed to use the provocative "obsolete"; the blog post linked to reads "Files and Folders".

I do agree with the article in the general sense. That's not to say that the file system hierarchy is going away. Just that a search field is generally far more efficient when it comes to retrieving data (specific use case). Kind of like how Google does it. Does Google drill down to a folder 3451 levels deep to return a link? Maybe it does, I don't know. :)
People have been writing off IBM for decades.

If you go back to the early nighties IBM had two or years in a row where it's annual losses where bigger than some countries total income and their share price fell under the $20 mark.

That was around the time with the clone PC where taking off and everyone was predicted the end of IBM and big iron.

Move on 30 years and their share price is now back over $200.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5871332 for a rebuttal.
"The legality of this has not been tested in any court.[citation needed]"

I would imagine the kind of court that would test this concept would not be held under the eye of the public.
Frankly, and not to devalue the difficulty of that problem, it's their problem. "It's hard so we gave up" simply does not fly here.

That is the laziest fucking thing you could have written here. You demand satisfaction, but are unwilling to specify to any useful level of detail the answers you seek -- and still intend to hold the NSA responsible for failing to satisfy your concerns. You demand NSA demonstrate a fact to your satisfaction, without elaborating your standards of evidence in any way.

Completely unbelievable. You don't appear to be stupid, so I can't imagine that this is lost on you. So I have to worry if your head hasn't exploded from the cognitive dissonance.
This is true and sensible since hard links have the bad property of not making it clear you're editing a file that may be elsewhere (which really speaks to the danger of tags in many respects as well I'd say).

Most of this stuff is implemented by toolkits and DE-specific things though, so its not inconceivable it could be substantially improved in one swoop.
Has any hacky workaround like this ever held up in a court?
They might have a LCD (least common denominator) policy -- they collect, from everyone, the kind of information they might need for (let's say) a government contract background investigation, just in case it turns out they need it for the particular contract that you'll be working under.
I've always assumed that, given the sheer and ever-accelerating quantity of data produced by people in the 21st century, the similarly increasing collectability of that data, and the massive benefits stemming from making all data more rather than less accessible, algorithmic systems capable of knowing practically everything about everyone are utterly inevitable. Attempts at camouflage are hopeless. Data collection from every avenue is only accelerating (imagine Glass, Kinect, Leap, Streetview and Fitbit recording everything, everywhere, across the whole globe, 24/7) and even the absence of a signal is a trace.

The main flipside is that I see no reason why this power should be restricted to any one sector of society, although it will flow first from those sectors which can sustain the most focus and wield the most resources (as we see currently with the primary use of these systems by governments and large corporations). So the flipside is, okay, maybe the pattern of mouseclicks, touchscreen interactions, body movements and physiological signals of incipient terrorists can be identified, but maybe so can individuals planning government fraud or cronyism. Maybe the positive and negative traces left by surveillance agencies can also be detected and wielded against them. Code has no loyalty.

In other words, equilibrium of social power will be reached not by trying to prevent these possibilities from being explored, but from following simple economic logic and endeavouring to make use of them yourself. I don't see this as the death of anything, more as a new and inevitable frontier, a radically new state of play with massive rewards open to individuals willing to relinquish the old paradigm and embrace the new.
They've moved from the original consumer facing businesses that they used to be deeply involved. Their involvement in that industry did nearly sink them in the early '90s, where they were losing money hand over fist. They cut their losses, sold off their PC divisions, and moved on.

However, in the high end markets where they can extract absolutely massive margins -- they used to dominate there historically, and they're still dominant, and raking in money hand over fist.

At this point, I'd say they got past their business problems from the early '90s, and seem to have reversed their decline. They're not the behemoth that they used to be, but they've got a very comfortable niche that is doing a good job of lining their pockets.
tptacek made it clear that there is an order magnitude difference in the size of the electorate for a Congressional rep vs the President, and that he thinks this distinction matters when making blanket attributions to the entire government/country.
So basically, whatever party is in power tends to get a pass for its bad behavior... SSND...
During development, you can just use Dartium (a special build of Chromium with native Dart support). With Dartium, you can debug directly from within the IDE. There are also source maps if you ever need to debug it elsewhere.
>They're not going to be putting them in separate folders by year or subject? Even Google Drive lets you organize files in folders.

I think the point is that this will be taken care of automatically based on the metadata. A lot of people don't take the time to sort everything into folders, instead they end up with one messy documents folder with all their documents.
Neither - the 5GHz chips were rumored for a while, and the rumors always mentioned 220W TDP.

Since the first half of the rumor came true, it's fairly likely the second half will too.
Art, Copy & Code
Shopify recruiters ‘pop up’ at downsizing IBM office
All of Your Metadata that Might be Exposed
Making Babies After Death: It's Possible, But is it Ethical?
As IBM lays off 'hundreds' in Ottawa, Shopify sets up recruiting booth
This deserves more upvotes than the 1 that I can give it.
Bank of America blocks donations to WikiLeaks
Plus, Congress serves as evidence that you can have plenty of college graduates who are complete morons.
Show HN: Easily generate a url to get paid by paypal
Unfortunately, the disclosure of information via negation will almost certainly not hold up in a court of law.
Don't Be a Fucking Douchebag Part Three
The distinction should definitely not be US vs foreign country citizens but unsuspicious vs suspicious people. Spying at unsuspicious foreigners is absolutely no better than spying at your own citizens - it's still a human rights violation.
Static Driver Verifier, one of the early flagship projects for F#!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/archive/2007/09/19/f-ocaml-job...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff552808.aspx
I spent 3 years as an sdet; loved it! Know for sure that my dev skills were superior to the senior sde's. know this coz I wrote their code on more than one occasion.

Been at msft twice - first team was shit, second was awesome. Impossible to make blanket statements, the org is just too big.
Surprised and pleased to see the NYT editorial board take this stance, considering it has traditionally supported the Obama administration.

According to a poll cited in today's WSJ and LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-republicans-democ...), Democrats tend to support NSA surveillance, whereas Republicans tend to oppose it — a complete reversal of the situation under the Bush 43 administration. In other words, a majority of voters likes surveillance, as long as it is being conducted by their preferred political party.
Make Money Online. Some Crazy Ideas To Make Money In 2013
This has less to do with flat design than it does with mismanagement and communication issues. Type flat design in on dribbble and you will be hard pressed to find generic rainbow-barf gradients, and helvetica neue ultra light. iOS 7's default icons were "designed" by Apple's marketing team.This is what happens when you put an industrial designer and marketers in charge of designing an OS.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/12/jony-ive-put-apples-mark...

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/06/12/why-does-the-design-o...
I believe what he means is, SSL can help prevent unauthorized intrusion, but it does nothing for the security of your data against the government who can say "Give us tptacek's data. You'll find our paperwork authorizing the request in proper order"

I've been thinking a lot about whether a service could be created with encryption that prevents the holder of the data from reading it by offloading part of the key to the client. I think it could be done. Probably what would happen though is, as soon as it's implemented, the site would be treated in the same regard or worse than piratebay...
rsync.net has done this for quite some time, although I have no idea if it's ever been challenged:

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
A Mac is the only computer on which you can legally develop for all major operating systems, including mobile.

How is that closed?
> I don't care about flatness or skeutransmogrification or whatnot, but the damn thing must WORK.

Absolutely. I don't understand how so many people are focusing on the highs and lows of the UI but are ignoring serious UX problems like the one you pointed.

Apple says "Nothing we’ve ever created has been designed just to look beautiful. That’s approaching the opportunity from the wrong end." but then they change the perfectly readable Messages screen to a less readable one that has the only advantage of arguably looking better. And it's not the only problem IMHO.

On that screen used to be a send button that invited interaction. You look there and you know that it's "actionable". Now in the new version there is no button, only a gray text with "No Perceived Affordance" that looks more like a description than an "actionable" element. The most important "action" on that screen happens when you press a gray text on a gray background!

And the call screen? On the iOS6 one it was easier to read the name of the person who is calling because the white text is above a black overlay giving it enough contrast. On the new one the text although bigger is lighter (as in less bold) and is directly on the image. Light backgrounds (sky, clouds, etc) will make the text barely visible. Also how can I reject a call? There is nothing on that screen supporting the second most important functionality that is expected from it. Even accepting the call is now more complicated. The size and position of the elements makes more sense now but the text is lighter (less readable) and it's now more complicated to accept a call: before you only needed to touch accept, now you need to slide.

The home screen: even ignoring the aesthetics that I personally don't like, it's undeniable that the text is much more readable with iOS6. The small border and shadow made it readable with virtually any background. Also the icons were easier on the eyes, the new bright colors tire/irritate the eyes more. Also the relationship between icons and the functionality they represent was already hard in some cases. For instance for someone that didn't know Safari it was not easy to tell which was the browser and which was the compass from just the icons. Also the photos icon was not obvious at all and the Music vs iTunes Store icons are almost the same with different backgrounds but now it got worse: none of the exisiting problems got any better and at least reminders, settings and game center got worse.

Of course there are a lot of screens that got better imho. Music, contact view, the calendar, clocks, compass, weather...
PRISM-Lite: India also uses US-type cyber monitoring
This concept strikes me as really weak. It acts under the pretense that a gag order is valid. The whole concept of a gag order needs to be confronted, not skittered away from.
Verizon's official response [0] effectively confirmed the allegations. I'm not sure why Verizon "never denying" it is noteworthy in light of their tacit admission:

You may have seen stories in the news about a top secret order Verizon allegedly received to produce certain calling information to the U.S. government.

We have no comment on the accuracy of The Guardian newspaper story or the documents referenced, but a few items in these stories are important. The alleged court order that The Guardian published on its website contains languages that:

- compels Verizon to respond;

- forbids Verizon from revealing the order's existence; and

- excludes from production the "content of any communication . . . or the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer."

Verizon continually takes steps to safeguard its customers' privacy. Nevertheless, the law authorizes the federal courts to order a company to provide information in certain circumstances, and if Verizon were to receive such an order, we would be required to comply.

[0]: http://publicpolicy.verizon.com/blog/entry/from-the-desk-of-...
As is pointed out in the wikipedia article, Warrant Canaries have not been tested in a court of law.
Well, what are you trying to do? A product? A web application for enterprise? Do you need to understand design, or are you just looking for the ability to proof of concept something out, or are you looking for jobs that require front end capabilities?
Hitler was probably the most famous of all introverts who became a leader....
Perhaps they could be sued either way. If a company states on their website that "We do not do X", and then starts doing X they are left with two choices, leaving a false message up or taking it down.

If they leave it up, and the truth eventually comes out, could they be sued for misleading their shareholders?

If they take it down does that open them up to being sued by the government?
I built this last weekend.
A specially crafted URL opens a page where a "paypal button" form is created, with a single big button to pay.

I needed this to remind (ex) clients that I need to get paid, while being able to modify the amount quickly in case they only pay part of the total.

Let me know what you think.
Sometimes I work noon-10pm at Google. Because I feel like it. What's the problem? :-)
Within the construct of the US government, these type of gag orders are legally valid at this point in time. Whether they should be is another matter all together, but given precedent, the assumption that they are valid is rational.
Presumably the authorities in question avoid issuing gagged orders to anyone who would use such a thing: They're likely to fight the gag, or likely to leak— better to use another approach.
Bang, You're Dead. Signed, Tim Cook.
That <handwave government secretsauce> actually exists. National Security Letters come with a gag order. You are told not to tell anyone, not your spouse, not your lawyer, not anyone, and they last forever. Presumably, if someone asks if you've ever been served a NSL, you're supposed to lie and say "no."

One of the few that we know about is describe here, where a ISP provider broke the gag order to speak with his attorney, and the ACLU, and eventually the order was lifted.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/nsl-gag-order-lifte...

There have been hundreds of thousands of NSLs issued since they were created.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
Still absolutely irrelevant as it pertains to the issue being discussed.

And, if I chose to play your game, according to the same page approximately 12% of our population are immigrants. And this is very much on par and well above most European countries. And, after eliminating the top layer on that list, all of which are corner cases (i.e. Vatican City) the US and a number of European countries are in the top ten countries in terms of the percentage of immigrants as related to total country population.

So, at this point, I have no clue what your problem might be with this other than to imagine that you are just looking for a way to claim that Americans hate immigrants, which is simply not true any way you care to look at it.
I think you have a point to pose the question regarding the major Internet companies knowing more about us than the government.

Are there any articles that have stuck out to you that you'd care to share?
The Story Of Joseph Nacchio And The NSA
He's one of the people who has been in my Google Reader (sigh) for years. To his great credit, the timbre of Greenwald's criticism of the executive branch's civil liberties policies or war fighting hasn't changed much since Obama was elected. This makes sense, as the policies are largely the same, but very few liberal commentators seem to have maintained their objections at their previous level.
National Security Letters grant the recipient immunity from civil lawsuits if you comply in good faith. They think of everything!
I think that really trivializes the tremendous effort the CompCert team put into that work. You don't just need to write a C compiler, or learn a bit of a proof assistant, you need to do the actual work of proving the compiler correct.

This took person-years of time from people who already were Coq experts.
I think that Snowden making himself a part of the story was a defensive tactic. If you expect your government to not play fair - and he clearly doesn't - then getting your side of the story out into the open as soon as possible is wise. Otherwise, you run the risk of the propaganda machine spinning up and destroying the issue by destroying the man behind it. Being in the public eye also afford him some measure of protection against covert retaliation.

It's worth noting that Snowden has far greater knowledge of the score than the public does; the Guardian has many unreleased documents whose contents Snowden is obviously aware of. The fact that he's talking about things not directly backed up by what his newspaper contact has chosen to yet publish doesn't necessarily mean that he's making it about him.
Navy to Drop All-Caps Communications
How ironic that AMD are now suffering from the same thing that once gave them the edge (that is, Pentium 4's overly aggressive clock speed roadmap and lacklustre per-clock efficiency).
Lessig: It’s Time to Rewrite the Internet to Give Us Privacy, and Security
A 65 year old lady starts using words like Techno-boondoggles, and everyone bought it. It's worse than I thought.
The biggest issue of storage in the coming years will simply be the management of personal files. How should people handle the accumulation of a lifetime's worth of data as they migrate from older computing devices to new ones? Some things are generic enough that you can assume you can pull them off the internet buffet style as you need them, but there are also some things that definitely do not fit that category such as family photos, etc.
So I'm going to send you a continuous stream of 1's saying currently my blueray play is not outputting a 1 from the movie 'The Godfather'

Wink wink.
You are correct that a company could be sued for other things, such as lying. My point is that a warrant canary _does_ disclose information; specifically through implication. I am sure that in a court of law, given that an implication made by a warrant canary is reasonably obvious, it could be argued that the party in question was indeed attempting to disclose information prohibited by the gag order, and as such, is in breach of the gag order.
How does that work for international companies who end up sued in non US jurisdictions?
s/Snowden's claims/NSA documents/g