skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When people search for my name (relatively rare), they get my Stack Overflow profile, my LinkedIn profile (which I don't use), my G+ profile (which I don't use), my Facebook profile, my Github profile, and my blog (alongside various other stuff).

As long as you're not an idiot (herp-a-derp here's a public picture of me getting shitfaced in Vegas), I think you can control your online persona fairly well. I'm always amazed at those people (that presumably work in the tech industry) that aren't aware of what their online persona consists of and get fired/in trouble over online stuff.

Seriously people, Google yourselves (hopefully not to death)!
Wikipins.org - A visual wikipedia navigation experience
The fungibility of money and nature of speech makes this hard to do without limiting free speech in some way.
Where did the master of public speaking go? I don't recognize Obama here. He's nervous and lost at words. Almost guilty.
Interesting Papers (Graphics)
Tech Companies Working with NSA are Making a Faustian Bargain.
Interesting.

So self-serving Congressional insider-trading on privileged information is kosher, but performing the People's business with information which is now public is not.
Why don't they focus their energy on making satellite access more affordable? Looks like Google is trying to make its own emerging niche demographic to profit from. You've got to be kidding yourself if you think a floating balloon has anything to do with sustainable, lasting infrastructure. Balloons are cheap, and that's the end of the story.

Another thing: satellites don’t pop.
Basically you don't reference "leaked" material at all. That would be confirming its accuracy and lending provenance. The last thing you want to do is verify it.

Other things you don't want to do is acknowledge that you are also privy to such information. These things are actually tied together bit by bit. While it might be assumed that a senator on the armed forces committee has access, it could be unknown which of his aides does his classified work.

Some of this is the origin of the "can neither confirm nor deny" phrase. While it may be obvious to everyone that the CIA won't tell you who the spies are, they also won't tell you who isn't a spy, even when it is completely obvious.

Some of the classified stuff may be at the very edge of marginal speculation, but it adds up, like a logic puzzle or a giant game of Clue.
Just because it doesn't look like the job of the most likely agency of the USG to do doesn't mean that it wasn't some other part of the USG that did it. The oversight and internal motivations of the USG (indeed, any government) aren't uniform. Not by a long shot.

Case in point: JSOC developed their own intelligence capability that was a rival to that of the CIA and used it for their own purposes. That was one of the things that the DoD did that seems to replicate a capability available elsewhere in the USG and almost entirely for the purpose of escaping oversight.

BTW, Jeremy Scahill (author of Blackwater and Dirty Wars) reported that HIS laptop was hacked. When you combine this with the surveillance of AP reporters and it does seem that certain parts of the USG seem to feel that journalists are worthy and legitimate intelligence targets.
PGP uses CFB mode. To my knowledge there is no implementation that would let you use ECB.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4880
It has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site
"tapping overseas cables is NSA's stated mission, and so it
doesn't follow that they're tapping domestic
communications".

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/secret-prism-success-even-big...

Deep in the oceans, hundreds of cables carry much of the
world's phone and Internet traffic. Since at least the
early 1970s, the NSA has been tapping foreign cables. It
doesn't need permission. That's its job.

But Internet data doesn't care about borders. Send an email
from Pakistan to Afghanistan and it might pass through a
mail server in the United States, the same computer that
handles messages to and from Americans. The NSA is
prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the
United States. That's the FBI's job and it requires a
warrant.

Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush secretly
authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic cables that
enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give
the government unprecedented, warrantless access to
Americans' private conversations.
I personally interpreted it as choosing his words very carefully to avoid inadvertently implying any capability beyond what had already been leaked.
Tangent or not I'm interested. I think its less settled than you think. In fact I was always on the opposite team; its "NSA/DoD/DoE did x" just like it is "IBM did x" and not "the IBM did x."

I did enough research to conclude that it was not a settled issue. Its clear that if the initials were lower case and referred to a generic agency that deals with national security it would be "the national security agency" similar to the "the fishing tackle section of a sporting goods store." On the other hand a gander at DoD's style guide[1] makes it clear that they do not like the "the."

I'd love to see why you think its opposite. That's not dickish, that's a desire to answer a question that's been nagging me for a long time.

[1] http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/writing/Writing_St...

From the english.SX:

"Is it proper to use “the” before the name of a government organization?"
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/76976/is-it-prope...

"Using the definite article with acronyms and initialisms"
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/30596/using-the-d...

"Definite article with proper nouns, titles followed by a common noun"
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2327/definite-art...

"The definite article usage with objects that have names"
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16988/the-definit...

"Capitalising the definite article in names"
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/84288/capitalisin...
I like how the rag cropped a screenshot of the embedded video to lead with to make sure you scroll all the way down.
VP9 codec bitstream finalized, soon enabled in Chrome
To me this is one of those weird things. Basically all of this is an act of faith on our part. We either believe he's legit or we don't. We can't know what kind of weird psy-ops the government is pulling on us. I choose to believe that this is real but I can't know for sure and for all I know I could be part of some bigger, darker plot orchestrated by who knows who.

Not to get all metaphysical but the more that's hidden from us the less we're able to know what in the world is ever going on. It's weird being a human.
re:9/11, the official story is basically that building 7 collapsed because of burning office furniture. You believe that? "once you get into that mindset, it's turtles all the way down", huh? But sure, why even bother to actually investigate the catastrophy such huge changes are based on, when you can just ship off the debris and constantly talk about living in a "post 9/11 world"... those conspiracy theorists would ignore and and all investigations or scientific facts anyway, for circular reasons°. So let's not have any of those, it will help. Instead let's have presidents pose on coffins wrapped in flags, shuffling our feet in moments of silence as decent citizens would.

° They're on the fringe for reasons that don't interest, not really, because they're on the fringe. Where they are because that's where they are. Not that you or anyone knows this, but this topic "fascinates" you so much that you "suspect" it. That's either hardcore trolling or awkward irony, you decide.
Hm, I think that narrowly IIA is important - changes low down the list shouldn't effect what's high up in the list, or people will be discouraged from voicing their true opinion about the options they perceive as less popular. In the full sense, which includes changes at the top affecting things lower, it may not be necessary.

I don't think I'm currently grokking universality with the depth I need to assess it. I remember it seeming reasonable when I did dig deep in all this, ages back.
"After I install Ubuntu, how come I can't immediately tell it about my schedule for the coming week?"

Personally, I install KOrganizer.

I take your point, there is a need for a fully functioning productivity desktop oriented GNU/Linux. As Shuttleworth has said, Ubuntu may not be that distribution as the goals are different.
Hong Kong is a favorite among libertarians because of the economic order there. I hear those guys praising HK all the time. For an American libertarian fleeing the US HK is a natural choice and I have read Snowden is a libertarian.

China is not an US ally, very powerful, easily offended and aggressively nationalistic i.e. no US special ops team is going to kidnap Snowden on Chinese territory. That would most certainly start a serious international conflict with China and arresting Snowden is not worth that.

There are many anti-totalitarian government activists in HK. There has already been a pro-Snowden support rally in HK: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1261433/live-upda...

English is a common language in HK so Snowden doesn't necessary need to learn a new language.

Overall HK looks like a logical choice to me.
Lets say I wanted to send an encrypted message to Poulsen. (I do NOT, just figuring out the tech) How would I find his public key? Ask him for it? Is there, like, a directory?
Now you see who they work for. It's not us.
Steve Blank, who writes a start up blog that used to get posted on HN a lot wrote a post a while back talking about how he used to work there. http://steveblank.com/2009/04/13/story-behind-%E2%80%9Cthe-s...
1. Oil rig fires actually occur with the same frequency in water without dolphins (making data up to go along with your example).
2. I can not see what motive dolphins could have for torching oil rigs
(usg has a motive)
3. I don't think they are able to do it, we have never seen evidence them being able to harness the power of fire.
(usg has access to 0days)
4. Dolpins have no record of performing other crimes or acts of sabotage before
(usg has)
Sure, but Google has the motivation and money to make it work on a massive scale, which arguably nobody else does. That's what innovative big companies are supposed to do.
This was right around the time when there were numerous other attacks on press and US industry networks by Chinese IP addresses. There's not enough info here to draw any conclusions, but I certainly wouldn't jump on the NSA bandwagon just because they're up in our netz (they probably wouldn't need to compromise her specific computer anyway).
Ask PG: Can you fix the HN RSS feed?
Until sometime yesterday (maybe a little earlier) HN RSS feed items had links to the submitted urls while there was a separate link to the comments. It was very convenient to check interesting items from an rss reader.

Now both of them linking to the comments and I can't check the submitted link without first opening the comments.

Can we go back to the earlier rss feed style?
Book Your Favorite Band at Your Next Party With Gigit
Thanks for sharing. The 6 year difference is huge, it's almost like there are two completely different persons talking.
Ask HN: Shortest path to $1 million?
I have been thinking about long term investment in real estates and mutual funds, but then I wondered why I don't leverage the technology and world I already know.

$1 million (assets or cash) or $50k/month (stable for the next couple years)

Here are a couple ideas I have:

1. Premium WordPress Themes. Looking at Themeforest author sales, some of them are hitting $100k/month and they are not seasoned (at least in ThemeForest).

2. Premium WordPress Plugins. These guys (https://tri.be/wordpress-events-calendar/) used to sell on CodeCanyon and it looks like their product took off quite well (selling $20k/month last year)

That's it so far. Some of you are going to complain about support and stuff. Cost of doing business in my opinion and $50k/month is the net profit you make. So maybe your revenue should be in the $80-60k range.

Any ideas? Please I don't want the overgeneralized SaaS or eBook thing. Something more concrete and with examples of people who achieved it.

Time doesn't matter as long as you believe or it's what you know to be the shortest thing.
I don't call my quad core desktop a 12 GHZ computer, and for good reason; there is no 12 GHz clock on it. Call it a X Teraflop peak capacity system, but please, don't call it a 2.5 THz computer, it's misleading and not helpful.
I use it for pretty much everything in life that I want to remember.

I use a trick Merlin Mann mentioned in one of his podcasts, where he prefixes each note title with a category. So I have life, work, snippets (for code), and a few others.

But I rarely browse, as the search functionality just can't be beat. Some example notes are

- trip planning (hotel, flight info, museums)
- meeting notes at work (tons of these)
- electricians I've called to get quotes from
- list of conferences I want to attend this year
- names and phone numbers of my neighbors
- gift ideas
- favorite wines
- favorite quotes

I have the app bound to command-shift-tilde so it's always very easy to access. Then I use the app Notesy on my iPhone which searches just as quickly.

What I like best about this system is

- super fast search
- quick synching
- plain text (not some proprietary locked in format)
- keeping (almost) everything here means I don't need to load up different apps (a meeting notes app, a wine list app, a snippet app) or think about where to store things
China will never be freer than the US. Even if the US may not be as free as it once was, and may continue becoming less free over time, and China may achieve a larger GDP (hard not to with 4x the US population), the US will never be less free than China.
Congrats to the Redbus guys. They were the team that got selected for the TiE EAP program in 2008 where I had pitched my idea too. Amazing to see that in 5 years, they've built a company that's worth 138M. Awesome stuff!
Though many users do complain about things such as overbearing DRM and other restrictions , which can be a symptom of non free software.
Jeremy Scahill says his laptop was hacked. Therefore, the USG is hacking reporter laptops?

If these were claims about the relative performance of programming language runtimes, we'd be 1000 comments deep into a massive debate thread.
IMHO we should be open to alternative ideas. Also we should know that Snowden is going to be described as so many things in times to come. Mostly bad things.
Office Mobile for iPhone available for Office 365 subscribers
Obviously I am not an economist, so I know zero about corporate finance, but do we really need to complicate the tax issue as our present tax laws have become? (I once handled accounts payable for a local government entity - I quickly transferred to an IT position so that's all I know beyond balancing my own budget)
Why won't a more simple approach be workable?

I favor a tax based on percentage of gain. If a Mega-Corp makes $30Bn a year, and I only make $30K, we each pay accordingly, at the same percentage rate.

Of course there would be a great debate about exactly what that percentage should be, but it should be equitable and not too onerous.

Why not hold corporate entities to the same standard as individuals?

Isn't the USA supposed to be about equality? (Remember, freedom & equal rights for all?)
Your response is a non-sequitur. Tptacek was specifically referring to the first line of the comment, you addressed this one: "We've also started "disappearing" people and hunting them down, locking them in isolation without due process."
Or you can use the Socilalist Millionaires' Protocol to exchange secret questions and answers that only both of you know http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/help/authenticate.php
>>> Has no one ever noticed how poorly the leadership of our democracies are treated?

While in office, US Presidents live like royalty. None of the Fortune 500 CEO cohort live like the President, especially if you throw in perks like the reverence with which presidents are treated anywhere in the world they may go.

After office they can look forward to a remainder of their lives earning tens of millions on the speaking circuit.

Hardly qualifies as poor treatment in my view.
Maybe it is clearer if we note this as proper usage: "the IBM corporation."

Similarly, "the Department of Defense", "the National Security Agency".
Les dfhb
Yes, sometimes. Google, "user assist key"
I think you meant to say "3D Printable Headphone Plastic Shell Only"
OSX, as a software, is significantly more "unfree" than almost anything out there (in the computer world) since you can't run it on custom hardware. Not because it doesn't work, as the hardware is essentially the same, but because you aren't allowed to.

http://www.lockergnome.com/osx/2012/02/24/are-hackintosh-com...
As a (related) example, consider the SHA family of hashing algorithms.

Competitions are held in which anyone can submit their own algorithm as a possible contender. Like a beauty pageant, the entries are narrowed down over a few rounds until just a few are left. Eventually, one algorithm is chosen and declared the winner!

The whole process is done in the open and, similar to RFCs, anyone who wishes to may provide feedback.

The SHA-3 competition took roughly five years. You can read about the whole process on the NIST's web site:

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/sha-3/index.html

I'm not a developer or math whiz so most of the underlying principles of crypto are over my head but read about the process (above) is quite interesting and gave me a much better understanding in general.
Numba vs. Cython: Take 2
As with the iOS 7 background, I've found that closing one eye and looking at this sort of thing really enhances the depth effect. With two eyes open, my brain still interprets it as flat.

Regardless: Nice!
Whole point is that you involve skilled individuals and (perhaps) long term mentors who will increase the likelihood that you become investable. Their "share" in the business is a positive vote of confidence in the idea and the founding team.

Worrying about things that just might become an issue if by some magic you make it to the stage where you have a validated idea and a pitch that VCs might go for - well OK I admire your ambition (if you are actually in the process) but most people would probably recognise they are not superman and value the input of an external group highly qualified and rooting for them. Gotta help when raising angel investment (which is what us ordinary mortals are working on).
I think this advice to Kissinger really drives home what option #3 looks like - http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...
You mean polluting rivers is a deliberate public policy in China? You have some proofs, I hope.

If not, your claims are just in the same vein as those a century ago telling the world about how those evil (pagan) Chinese hated babies and dropped them in the bins.
I can't believe I'm reading this, it's like a freakin' miracle. We've been fighting a battle about this for 2 weeks over at WMW. Nobody is listening, it's sick and maddening - it's made 10x worse by people screaming 'Google is evil' and dominating any intelligent thread about the subject.

For the love of all that is awesome on the internet. Webspam team - take a step back, listen to what engineers / webmasters / intelligent people are telling you - make some serious changes soon and fast.

This whole thing is a proper, sod-awful mess.
>looks like he's waiting for the government to lie themselves into a corner before dropping them in the limelight.

He's that good? Knows the `infinitude' of time? Chess gambit(@)?

I like him.

(@)The word "gambit" was originally applied to chess openings in 1561 by Spanish priest Rúy López de Segura, from an Italian expression dare il gambetto (to put a leg forward in order to trip someone).
Putting contractors on your cap table is not going to make you more investable.
Also, note that while AES and friends are public and designed "in the open", the government also has a number of algorithms that are developed and used internally and are not "public".
Google dares. MS and Apple compete within their domain. Googles keeps on expanding its domain to solve the problems of other industries. MS and Apple are software / hardware companies. Google is a technology company.
Unless I missed something, it doesnt - it says

>> cluster has 2,574GHZ of processing power

Which is true. It has that much processing power.
Quite so. If only we could get processor cores to behave in this way, or nine women to work together on having a baby in 1 month...
How do you solve anything when the people who are most aware of the problem also know that the problem inherently prevents the solution to the problem?

It reminds me of an immune disease -- if your very means of getting well is broken, how do you get well?
Moderate Wins Iranian Election
*its name
As someone who remembers just how dreadful search results were before google, I concur wholeheartedly. All the brilliant execution in the universe won't do you any good at all if no one wants to visit your site because your search results suck. Google was able to dominate because their far superior search results gave them lots of users to sell to advertisers.
I can't tell whether you're snarkily agreeing with me or not, because female infanticide is in fact a significant problem in China.
Reminds me of the populists who tried to enact change in ancient Rome. One of them would call for reform and end up murdered. The next one would find protection before calling for reform, but ended up murdered anyway. Each successive would-be reformer learned from the mistakes of his predecessors and changed his strategy accordingly. A couple of the reformers whose names I can remember are Tiberius Gracchus [1] and his brother Gaius Gracchus [2]. One of my favorite podcasts has an excellent six-part series on the fall of the western Roman empire, which introduced me to this very topic [3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Gracchus

[3] http://www.dancarlin.com//disp.php?page=hharchive
Processing power isn't measured in GHz.
I think the Chinese government would have preferred no such story, because in the long term it will reinforce awareness of privacy issues, increase the toolset, and it may give whistleblowing ideas to some Chinese.
How is "what a hypothetical user could do, potentially, given unlimited skill in the computing domain" the whole point of Freedom Zero? You think that someone with "unlimited skill in the computing domain" can't run Mac OS X without an non-Apple manufactured computer or replace their gaming console OS with Linux? That's silly. It's all been done before with far less than "unlimited skill."

The point of Freedom Zero is exactly the opposite: It's about eliminating bullshit restrictions that, while given enough time and effort can easily be broken by a smart group of people educated in the field, only prevent the regular user from using their property how they want to.
Right, lobby the Mafia for better percentages for the Dons, because running an extortion racket is a tough gig and wiseguys don't get no respect.
Freedom is a multi-axis thing. While it's freedom to be allowed to use the software for anything. There is also the freedom of not having to fight with your computer and go to the park instead. Sometimes those freedoms coincide. Often for regular uses, they conflict.
I wouldn't trust USA for a safe shelter. If you are used as a tool, you never know when it's gonna change.
NSA search trends
When you get a clearance, you sign certain pieces of paper that contractually waive certain rights with respect to that information you are cleared to receive.
You also obligate yourself contractually to a number of other responsibilities (some, depending on clearance, for the rest of your life).