skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I feel like this is a rather porous plan for privacy.

> 1. Sign up to relevant pressure groups

Ok, I like this one. No reason not to. Support the EFF.

> 2. Install HTTPS Everywhere

Since I believe that the NSA likely already have all of the relevant private keys, I'm not sure about this one. HTTPS is still better than no HTTPS, but don't overestimate it.

> 3. Install Adblock Plus

Yep ok. Making it harder to be tracked across the internet is good.

> 4. Review my browser use

Sure. Use Chrome + best practices.

> 5. Review web services I use and switch if necessary

Suddenly this appears: a catch-all "change everything I do on the internet". Stop using Facebook, Skype, Gmail, etc. Probably not going to happen. I'll come back to this in a second.

> 6. Download and Use Tor

Given my belief that the government is probably running enough nodes to reconstruct Tor identities, I'm not convinced that this helps much.

> 7. Use the Onion Browser on my mobile

See #6.

> 8. Run "host-proof" Web applications

This is an extension of #5. I like the idea, but this is hard. Startups like Ciphercloud and Social Fortress are ostensibly working on it; I look forward to when they're available. I imagine that if any significant percentage of people start using, say, Social Fortress on Facebook, Facebook will make it against the TOS.

I do think that the NSA has probably broken RSA. It's notable that they haven't approved it for securing classified data, despite the fact that it would significantly simplify the DOD's current pains around key distribution. This, of course, takes SSL with it, but importantly takes PGP, too. Running GPGMail on a desktop isn't enough.

###

My privacy plan will involve learning more about politics. Who are our representatives? What districts play disproportionate roles here? How are the oversight committees formed? Who's on them and why? What can we do to be involved? This is a much longer timescale play -- it's a lifetime of being involved, rather than a quick technological fix now. I'm not confusing a personal interest here with having influence -- I'm just one person, and not a high-profile one, and alone I won't have much impact. But, I don't believe that there's any substitute for a politically engaged constituency.

I don't believe that Washington is fundamentally corrupt or irreversibly damaged. In the Snowden video he spoke about how these decisions are viewed as policy and not law -- so a future president may decide to go off the deep end into despotism. But since it's still policy, there are systems for this. It's not ok to simply complain that the system will defend itself and there's nothing you can do. Apply the same mindset that drives you through the multiple brick walls that are a startup to changing Washington.
I attended lecture by one of founders of Waze.
If i'm not mistaken he said their pitch deck had only 1 slide, something like:

Nokia bought Navteq for $6B.
Our users create map data for free.
The question that I guess I have is how effective is outing yourself after you have performed the leak?

If the leaker had any chance of remaining secret, then I think I would say that the leaker should choose to remain secret, and in doing so live to fight another day. On the other hand, if the leaker suspects that they will be uncovered regardless, it is probably best to choose the circumstances of your unveiling.

They aren't leakers or really protestors, but it is for the best that the Dread Pirate Roberts remain anonymous. If they had to go public though, it would be better for the headline to be on CNN: "Silk Road Founder [Whoever] Says/Does [Whatever]" rather than, on local news: "Local drug kingpin arrested today. Then later: How little Timmy rescued a kitten."
Anyone else bothered by the fact that the font size is only 11px? Being on a 27" iMac the article was hard to read.

TSDR (Too Small Didn't Read)
In a sense, however, this is egregious. Since 10.6 OS X has been about abandoning developers and professionals and catering to consumers. The removal of 2-dimensional workspace management, inconsistency in NATIVE application look and feel (this is ridiculous, I can understand when there's inconsistency in third party applications, but to have in-house apps look and feel completely different is absurd) and the inability to easily remove unneeded or unwanted "features" in the OS has made OS X a pain in the ass for many, including me.

I've vacillated on switching back to Ubuntu for quite a while now. I always end up making a Linux partition, installing Ubuntu on it, but I come back to OS X, just because

1. Less worry about configuration
2. Greater OS-wide service communication and integration
3. Laziness

I've been considering creating a GNU+Linux distro with an OpenStep-compatible toolkit at its core (http://gnustep.org/) so that I can get the famous Cocoa look and feel, but with the modularity of Linux.

Still haven't done it yet.
The 4th Amendment is dead. Long Live the 4th Amendment!
Well, I don't think I've ever felt so paranoid. Thanks President Obama, this is the exact opposite thing we wanted you to do when we voted for you.
Its interesting that much less fuss was made about basically the same story back then. Why the difference? Perhaps:

(1) the definite proof was missing, it was just 'a source' said something

(2) in 2006, it was G W Bush, so people weren't that surprised

(3) it was just 5 years since 9-11 so people accepted it more easily

(4) it was before everyone understood the geo-data that phone calls include

(5) General public (beyond IT professionals) have a better understanding of data and privacy now, after years of facebook and targeted ads
How To Bounce Back From Trading Losses
Trading is an interesting profession and has no peak as in other occupations. It is, in fact, an endless journey of discovery of oneself and trading itself. Trading for me at beginning was very tough not that I was not successful in other endeavors, but I took it like every beginner thinking that it was easy. With this perception, I approached trading without a plan or proper trading education on how the market works. What do you expect? Your guess is as good as mind. It was a total disaster after taking many losses; I was almost psychologically blown away. At this stage, two important things happened to me, my P&L was in the red, and I was down emotionally.
Nice! Just bookmarked that.

I love javascript! The main thing: offloading the computing directly to the end user.

The best cocktail...mix some JS with some CSS3, maybe throw a little HTML5 in there....yup, the only thing I find bad about JS is bad memory management, but that (like most times), comes down to code structuring.
If you like this, look at lcamtuf's "Strange Attractors" visualizations of TCP sequence numbers (old, but great use of visualization).

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/oldtcp/tcpseq.html
I completely agree; in my time as a PhD student and looking at my friends who did and did not finish, the only ones who made it through had a fantastic relationship with their supervisor; except for one, who was extremely driven to finish despite neglect on the part of her supervisor.
I'd be interested to know which mainstream touchscreen device really impacted society before the iPhone.

Whether or not you like the iPhone, it's rather hard to claim that it didn't revolutionize the cell phone market.
The IP you're using to send email is not authorized
Nope, it's available anywhere. The pickup instructions are free-form text. It's not localized to any language other than English though.

Thanks for the bootstap themes. Those will come in handy.
Is there a linky? Or is this just something you're organizing yourself? Either way, see you at noon tomorrow!
I'm pretty sure that's not how copyright works.
The pseudo ambiguities: Unix, Linux, GNU/Linux
I agree with click event (and others) are real pain. But absence of _missing is more personal preference. Major problem of javascript it the time that it takes to implement new features into the language that can sometimes converge to infinity.

Also I would be grateful if articles about javascript would feature javascript instead of CoffeeScript.
Don't be so sure about balancing the budget on the back of drug users: http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/10/smallbusiness/marijuana-taxe...

I've always thought that the tax argument was less than stellar. Are we really wanting to convince government that it should legalize drugs because of the money it could make, rather than having a society with more freedom? Is the purpose of a government to make money?
It's time to bring this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264237 back to the front page...

> Cyberwar Doomsayer Lands $34 Million in Government Cyberwar Contracts [2010]
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/booz-allen/
Radicale - CalDAV and CardDAV Server - A Simple Calendar and Contact Server
If I was him, I'd move to Iceland.
I doubt he is really where he claims to be
Obama has publicly acknowledged that phone records are being collected en masse.

In his own words: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/06/07/transcript-what-oba...
The problem with modern, case-sensitive filesystems is that old software (and frameworks) don't like them. IIRC, case-sensitive HFS+ still isn't the default because Adobe software breaks if installed on it. Apple's not willing to say "sorry, you millions of Photoshop users, we're going to be technologically pure"
Playing Devil's advocate here.

The government position is that it isn't a search until they subject the data to analysis. Nor is it a seizure when you still have your data. Thus they draw a line between collecting data (making sure they have it) and actually searching it. Therefore broad data collection does not violate the 4th so long as they always get specific warrants before actually searching that data.
I was surprised by Rand Paul's proposed bill "To stop the [NSA] from spying on citizens of the United
States":

http://www.paul.senate.gov/files/documents/EAS13699.pdf

The effective body is fairly direct: "The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States Government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause."

What really surprised me was that it used the word "search", rather than, say, "collect". Given that we don't know what happened to the records gathered under Stellar Wind/RAGTIME, it's possible that the activity would still be legal under Paul's bill.

I'm curious whether this choice of wording was intentional or accidental.
Bear in mind the USA's pressure on other countries to "harmonize" their drug laws. Some of this is purely political, but consider what happens when some regions have looser regulation on a given drug. Suddenly the drug is cheaper there, and criminal exporters take notice.
The Quantified Man: Will we all be like this one day?
Since you are doing crypto, chances are high you are doing it wrong the first approaches.

Considering this, my choice would be to start with a believable pseudonym and generate a gpg- and/or rsa-key to sign stuff and tie it to that psudonym.

If something goes wrong you simply revoke and nothing happend. For the rare occasion of success you can still prove your are that person.
But the same can be applied to copy&paste. We are not talking about rocket science....
>But if people are refused jobs, education, passports, government assistance, etc. due to a criminal record, how are they supposed to recover their lives? How are they supposed to feed themselves or their families?

I think the answer is basic income. We're at a point right now where the demand for labour is so low that people's lives are subject to the whims of fickle employers. This problem will continue to grow as automation makes more and more people redundant. It will take the economic pressure off the less fortunate and open the doors to their future.

With basic income we can turn productivity gains into a force for benefitting all people. We can free the creative masses from the mundane and unnecessary. We can build a labour market that is less regulated and more competitive. Capitalism functions best when its participants are able to make free choices.
That made change.

Not necessarily the DESIRED change, but it certainly changed things!
Install the Clearly browser extension or the Readability bookmarklet.
What is the best way to toss you a few dollars to show appreciation and help you keep the lights on?
I hope this revelation continues to bring more clarity/transparency to what PRISM (and the other revealed programs) and the role of U.S. communication companies...But I have to say, it's admirable when a whistleblower puts not only actions, but their name and life behind their convictions.
I just checked my small project, and it has 111 this. and about 300 lines with plentiful whitespace. This made me think how much better would it be if it used just single dot for referencing this. Like .property
That's exactly what the article says.
I had no say in the animal they chose for my book either. Meh! :)
In what other field do people apply for work by claiming to be not only ignorant of, but hostile to the job they're applying for? Everyone is Mister Smith going to Washington now, it's manufactured cynicism, and Americans seem to eat it up.
Any malware issues on Android have more to do with differences in vetting than the intents system.
They actually were tracked by the cell phone of the man whose car they hijacked. Obviously, this was only a small part of the story and isn't the same kind of cellphone data.
Well...

You can "prove" almost anything with made up statistics as well. Which is what Yummyfajita's post is essentially.

Just trying to be fair to both sides.

In my opinion...

you are all on pretty shaky ground with what you are putting forth as "arguments".
> Consider Phelbas

"Consider Phlebas" has its merits, especially the outsider's POV of the Culture. But I'm part of the faction that feels The Player of Games is a better introduction, as it's more polished and shows off the Culture itself more.
You don't specify when the non-insane time you're thinking of is, but I suspect that at that time distributing copies of someone else's memoirs in appreciable volume without being granted permission was probably also illegal.
Money, Time, and Energy: How my spouse and I manage each together
Historically Apple software hasn't really been leaked that much as far as I can tell. The fact we don't know anything about iOS 7 or OS X 10.9 isn't anything new, that's the same as every OS release.
Maybe those prosecutors should have just sent their resumes to Enron instead, and all pacifists should join the military.
Ask HN: Is Edward Snowden a Leaker or Whistleblower?
I'd rather have a fixed JS (no BS coercion, actual hashes, method_missing, better binding rules, local vars by default, "use scrict" checks for everything, int64 arithmetic, and a non manual ad-hoc way to create prototype chains) as the next version, instead of the "backwards compatible" pile-on that the upcoming version is.

Such a JS would enable them to reuse large parts (or the entirety) of the current interpreters/JITs, just as well as the next ECMAScript, but would also fix most BS and enable further performance improvements.

That is, what I propose, would be a slightly incompatible release, say: "JavascriptFixed".

As for backwards-compatibility, this would be played out in two ways. Transpilers (like Coffescript) could convert "JavascriptFixed" to Javascript, and people could use the script tag to denote the presence of "JavascriptFixed".

Given vendor support, the familiar syntax, and the performance improvements, it could take over JS in 4-5 years. No we'll have decade or more until the whole mess that's the next version becomes popular, and we'll still have the whole JS mess, just swept under the carpet.
It bugs me an unreasonable amount when articles that have the space to explain it properly talk about hoisting as if it's an actual step compilers do rather than just a handy metaphore. They've literally _just_ talked about scope chains. It makes it seem like a crazy ill-conceived feature rather than the result of some tricky trade-offs.
Regarding using true name for credentials: For now use pseudonym , if at later point in time you need to prove yourself, you could expose your name to a limited group of people which you think are appropriate.
I mean that the secrets aren't likely to be anything out of the ordinary for Apple given the last few years.

We don't know much about the software, as usual, and we know pretty much what the hardware will be, as usual, with the exception possibly being a new Mac Pro, which I'm not sure is going to be released soon, although it might be announced.
Please sign this petition now.

Upvoting and discussion on HN is important, but if 50% of the people who read this take 30 seconds to sign the petition, it could truly help.
Booz Allen Hamilton Issues Statement on NSA Leaker
It's a White House petition on their official website. They want people to sign these petitions and interact with the site.
If it got that far I wouldn't be surprised if they claimed to have strong and compelling evidence of grave harm ... But cannot reveal it due to security concerns.
Ask HN: Framework building scalable (REST) API in GO
Hi,

I'm currently thinking about learning GO to replace our REST API server. Is there any framework available to create REST API in go ? I'm searching for a framework that have great functionality to communicate with JSON and it would be great if test are part of the framework.

Or is it better to built it with basic functionalities that go provide ?

Thanks
>> 4. Review my browser use

> Sure. Use Chrome + best practices.

If you care about your privacy your best bet is Firefox, not Chrome
Google has 38,739 employees. 90% of them are engineers? No way. When I was there, MTV campus was like 35% engineering.

From Google Q1 2013 earnings report:
"Headcount – On a worldwide basis, we employed 53,891 full-time employees (38,739 in Google and 9,982 in Motorola Mobile and 5,170 in Motorola Home) as of March 31, 2013"

http://investor.google.com/earnings/2013/Q1_google_earnings....
While I agree, these are merely the exceptions. Sure, things can go great and well (after a long period of time). However, the following needs to be taken into account

1. The fatalities and economic losses

2. The high possibility that the power goes to the wrong hand.

3. The good possibility that the power doesn't change hands and we are stuck with even less freedom.

4. Revolutions make the country very vulnerable which is an opportunity for enemies.

Small and secure changes are better in my opinion. Revolutions have a high risk of going wrong.

If you asked me 3 years later, you'll get a different response. Having lived through this so-called Arab spring, I have now a very conservative view for revolution.
Great way to start your own business
Starting your online business has never been so easy... Those free videos that I am going to show you will help you understand how you can use internet to earn an extra income.
It is a security issue, but I don't think it is what is causing the Android malware issue. The Intents system on Android is a security issue because most developers don't use it smartly and end up exposing their apps to SQL injection on the internal SQLite database they use.

Actually, the fact that Android uses a virtual machine for it's code has pretty good security benefits over running native code as on iOS.
Note also that SYJMF (along with "What Do You Care What Other People Think?") weren't actually written by Feynman. They're transcribed and edited versions of audio recordings made by his friend Ralph Leighton.

I don't recall of Leighton compiled them himself or if there was another editor involved in the printed editions, but regardless, they're probably still alive and deserve compensation for their contribution.
women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children women and children why won't someone think of the women and children women and children WOMEN AND CHILDREN women and children why aren't you crying yet

(referred to this thread -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5846391)

(i'll keep posting this, enjoy)
And here I sit, waiting for Google Music to be available outside of the United States.
I remember wondering about how could Randomness be a thing on my old calculator when I was something like 10. I talked about it later on to my friends and no one would understand me when I said that a computer couldn't give you true Rand() functions. No one would understand. So, because there was no wikipedia and I knew no one with enough knowledge I just decided that Rand() on calculators and computers was actually taken from a table that was initialized through a uniform distribution of numbers.

I guess I was wrong.
> It looks like a dog and pony show set up to make it look like someone gives a shit while they all keep getting briefed and voting for this stuff behind closed doors.

And also, this is yet another instance of where a politician has decided that only Americans have rights. At least mention a framework (reciprocity, normalized relations, something) under which surveillance of non-Americans would be allowed instead of making it a binary "You're either one of us or one of them!"
I find that having to guess at questions I simply do not know the answer to can actually prevent me from retaining the right information. Because it forces me to rationalize and objectify my guess which will now have to compete with the real answer in my head once I want to retrieve it.

I ended up clicking "No" every time and just read the information. Lots of good morsels in there. Then I went back and took the quiz to test my retention.
Obama is checking your email
Devise has a social integration plugin, I think it was called devise-social, for Rails
This freezes like crazy in iOS Safari.
>wouldn't a TRNG require infinite memory, infinite storage, infinite time to generate etc.? One number generated may be 2 but the next number may be negative infinity

What are you talking about here? Generating random Real numbers or something? First off you'd have to define a distribution of some sort or your goal is meaningless...but throw all that out. It provides random the sensible way, one bit at a time. Interpret that bit however you want. Memory requirements: zero (or maybe O(1) depending on design). Time requirement: O(n) where n is the amount of entropy you desire.
Not for its SSL certs, no.
Reminds me of those test for cyphers that test if your cypher gives you something close to a random function. If it does you're good.
I don't know if you've toyed around with CoffeeScript before, but that's something it adds in (you can use the Ruby-esque '@property' instead of 'this.property')
so what's the hypocrisy again?
The NSA is currently the largest employer of mathematicians in the US. To think they haven't found anything of use would be naive at best. http://www.nsa.gov/research/tech_transfer/advanced_math/
Wasn't that the one that introduced Robespierre and the Reign of Terror, and then later another despot? Sure, Napoleon was talented and introduced the civil code, but it was still another example of the guy with the biggest stick making the rules.
If you live in any sort of city, I'm sure that there are classes for art/math/science, etc.

I definitely think that for a relatively self motivated student, homeschooling works very well.
I would sign the petition to pardon Edward Snowden but to create an account they require an email address and I didn't want that to be tracked.
This won't do any good. White House policy is to not comment directly on pardons, but to direct such petitioners to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (http://www.justice.gov/pardon/).

See eg. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/grant-full-pardon-..., a past pardon petition.
Fonts.Googleapis.com is down in Denmark