skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From his Benghazi hearing testimony

"I'm glad that you're accepting responsibility. I think ultimately with your leaving that you accept the culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11. And I really mean that. Had I been president and found you did not read the cables from Benghazi and from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it's inexcusable."

- his obsession with drastically cutting social programs at a time when so many Americans need them

- his obsession with balancing the budget when interest rates are so low and the so many things point to the problem being a lack of spending / almost nothing pointing to the deficit being a problem

- his backwards social views

I forget how easy mainstream American media goes on him. He makes some interesting points but overall he seems very much like a dogmatic and unimaginative libertarian conservative.
This is news? Your IT people have to have privileged access to your computers; they maintain security policies, they issue smartcards, they reimage hard drives. They have physical access to the machines. Of course they are your biggest risk.
It's like capitalism gone mad, isn't it?

I believe the UK is heading in this direction as well. Thatcher started it, but it's really gone up a few notches since then.

It's a sorry state of affairs when the schools, the fire service, the police, the prisons, the hospitals, the soldiers of war, and even the spies are all controlled by for-profit corporations.
At least he is now in a halfway house and is due for release in September. Given that few in the US care about their rights, I guess that people who stand up for them should be grateful when they don't get locked up permanently.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22918125/former-qw...
Privacy is a human right. Not something a government can grant or take away.

And certainly not something CNN can declare dead. Mine is alive and well and I'm keeping it that way.
Let's not forget that by default, Windows 8 now stores even your personal documents in the cloud. Basically everyone around the world is being directly spied upon by the NSA. We need a strong offshore tech community with real choices ASAP.
He has probably considered that and knows more than we do about what his strategy is. He probably hasn't shown his whole hand either. He might not even be in Hong Kong.
Do they have a "responsibility" to do so? No. Should they find a replacement when they burn out / get bored / etc? Yes. I think so.

But they are under no obligation to do so. If it's popular enough, someone will pick up the reigns.
This sums it up well. Some other quick points:

1. Great power management and battery.
2. Nicely made Mac apps (TextWrangler/BBEdit/Transmit).
3. Tight integration of iCloud ecosystem.
4. Seamless backups.
5. Interest in Objective-C development.

I can't find the link but a well-known Linux developer switched to a MacBook because Linux didn't play well on his laptops. Poor power management, audio stops working, wifi doesn't work, etc.

If I had to get a PC laptop, it would be a Thinkpad T-series with Ubuntu, though I'm not sure how good driver support is.

Aside from great hardware engineering, their software ecosystem is their most secret weapon: Cocoa/Objective-C.
I will never, ever, understand why I would like to delegate something so trivial and marginal to a distant server, for example:

Todo: change password from XXX to ZZZ.

I can imagine only procrastination as a valid reason to do so, because you can state that your todo-list isn't available to you, and its not your fault.
Well, Booz Hamilton Allen is now a dirty word in Europe, Asia, and probably even in the US now. WHo the hell is going to want to contract out to them now?
The trick about using DDG is their !bang [1] notation, which you can use to pipe searches directly into the search of another site. ( At least for many large sites.) Especially, if you prefix your search with !g you will get the Google result page for that search. This is of course a privacy vs usability trade off, but Google still sees only a few searches. With this, I actually think that DDG beats Google as search engine, since quite often I want to just search Wikipedia (!w) or Stackexchange (!se) and in this cases DDG takes me directly to these sites.

[1]https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
So true. The real danger here is that it's now easier for foreign governments to justify censoring the web, to "protect us against US invasion of privacy" or something.
I don't think it will have that big an impact.

The thing is that the grassroots organizers in other countries who care most about government spying tend to live in countries with much more meddling than that which the US government has demonstrated through PRISM. So compared to a locally-run service, keeping data in the US cloud is likely still much safer. I don't see Google handing over an activist's email logs to the Turkish government, whereas an email service based in Turkey could be strongarmed into it.

A legitimate, non-rhetorical question: does an activist in Turkey care whether the US government reads his/her emails, as long as they don't share them with Turkey?
Wrong Question. A better Question is :

If the Government trusted the NSA with our every phone call and email, why should we trust the Government?
Let me throw a concept out there: there is not objective "correct" position to take in this case.

Who are we to say that this level of surveillance is not worth it? We know very little if anything of what it has achieved. Consider for a while that the population is not "pliable", but that it is possible to have a differing opinion on this topic.
Want to run iOS 7 months before public release?
a well-known Linux developer switched to a MacBook because Linux didn't play well on his laptops

You mean well known linux inventor Linus Torvalds?
Vagrant works by describing a machine or group of machines. It hands off to Chef or Puppet, which then do the job of bringing the naked machine up to something nearly identical to your production environment.

You can snapshot to binary blob too, but having code that rebuilds from scratch is a great way to smoke out certain classes of dependency conflicts. It also provides assurance that if a hurricane turns some data centre into lego bricks, you can rebuild an identical setup somewhere else with a single command.
Who were the other four people named?
Win tics to World Premiere of NERVE - Sydney Film Festival - Australia
> Manning betrayed his country by releasing everything he could get his hands on. He is truly an enemy of the system itself.

What are your thoughts on Snowden referring to Manning as an admirable heroic figure?

> Manning betrayed his country by releasing everything he could get his hands on.

I think really there isn't a big difference between the two. Snowden is trusting Greenwald's discretion on what gets published, Manning trusted Wikileaks on what would be published (and recall that Wikileaks did go on to redact a lot of what Manning leaked). Snowden's problem was with eroding civil liberties, Manning's problem was the state carrying out immoral operations (actions which resulted in a loss of many innocent lives). I don't think the two are so markedly dissimilar. At least, besides Snowden being very astute and mature vs. Manning being a troubled, depressed individual with a sad history of personal problems (though, to Manning's credit the chat logs do reveal him to be a very morally aware person).

If you argue that Manning's leaks adversely affected America's geopolitical position, you also have to account for the business ramifications that will follow because of Snowden's leaks. Now all of Europe, Asia, etc. is going to be suspicious about Gmail, Facebook, etc. America just lost a bunch of business from non-American users.
I doubt it will have much of an impact, but I'd be reluctant to make a prediction about international growth based on an HN survey and a CS Monitor article that references American polling data.
Protocol Misidentification Made Easy with Format-Transforming Encryption
Neither of the two sides here (CEO, usgov) can fairly expect the benefit of the doubt. I welcome any expert legal analysis of his alleged crimes, but otherwise can't be bothered except to say there's a good chance his claims of retaliation are true.

Let's keep in mind that congresspeople legally commit insider trading all the time, and surely many of their DC friends and allies do so illegally, but without punishment. Or, let's remember how successful former public servants are at earning a big salary on the basis of their connections+access (at best) or as reward for their corruption (at worst).
Artist wants to print out entire Internet to honor Aaron Swartz
No worries! I'm happy to see folks working on Google Music =)
> We're told that ... the ends justify the means

There are no ends, life is just a sequence of means. Really, whatever objectives somebody have, they'll change before anybody get even near them.

Nobody ever uses that phrase to achieve something good. No exceptions, it doesn't matter if you think this time it's different, or that this one is a honest person.
Regarding the point I made on warrants for broad groups, remember that it's been leaked (or who knows, publicly admitted probably), that the NSA considers collection of data to be distinct from analysis of data. And that mere collection doesn't require cause/warrant. What needs to be leaked are how they define all those terms... and if there's any commonplace rule-bending. Who's to say that between the collection of data and the analysis, they don't then go and get warrants to analyze based on their work separating out what data they already had warrants for? What about computerized analysis (is that technically 'collection' to the NSA)? There's all sorts of room for abuse when you have this absolutely massive set of data and secrecy protecting almost every aspect of the operation.

Granted, IANAL, but I have worked as an engineer in In-Q-Tel funded companies, text analysis, and search. Nothing I'm saying is any reflection or representation of anyone I've worked for and is only my ill-informed, zany, personal opinion.
One might hope the NSA audits their contractors' security, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it.

And somewhere along the way you have to accept that your most senior admins aren't always going to be the ones schlepping gear around, which means physical access.

I'm also not entirely convinced of the practicality of building a system where there isn't at least one person who can bypass everything, especially if they're prepared to go into exile as this guy was.

Given adequate resources, I'm sure it's possible, but there's gonna be a shitton of money and ridiculously careful planning involved. I expect the operational overhead to be similarly huge.
He talked about living “comfortably” but “unfreely.” (The dystopia he seems to be obsessing about is less “1984” than “Brave New World.”)

Epictetus addressed this sentiment a few thousand years ago:

Men shut up tame lions in a cage, and bring them up, and feed them, and some take them around with them. And yet who will call such a lion free? Is it not true that the more softly the lion lives the more slavishly he lives? And what lion, were he to get sense and reason, would care to be one of these lions? Why, yes, and the birds yonder, when they are caught and brought up in cages, what do they suffer in their efforts to escape? And some of them starve to death rather than endure such a life, while even such as live, barely do so, and suffer and pine away, and if ever they find any opening, make their escape. Such is their desire for physical freedom, and a life of independence and freedom from restraint. And what is wrong with you here in your cage? "What a question! My nature is to fly where I please, to live in the open air, to sing when I please. You rob me of all this, and then ask, 'What is wrong with you?'"
OK..I am back from that link. The verbage was worse than sitting next to an insurance salesman before a flight.
Betteridge's law in action

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
He was making $200k a year, I don't think the best way to support him is to give him another $10k. If he needs money, he needs a LOT more than $10k.
Go pseudo. For the same reason you'd develop the software in the first place, so people can operate in private.

But open source your work so if you make mistakes the ideas you have can be improved upon by others.
Also, I feel like the misunderstandings he posted are somewhat from the perspective of Ruby developers who learned CoffeeScript and not JavaScript. Which I do fall under, but I guess I quickly picked up the quirks in the language which CoffeeScript does make nicer. I guess things like `this` are a problem regardless of how you spell it but I think someone who learned JavaScript properly would learn about the scope rules directly rather than just assuming "it works like Ruby" and then being angry when it doesn't.
Answering as a newly minted PhD in Epidemiology in the US, with my thoughts and commentary on the "Correct" answers.

1. When you finished your undergraduate degree, you ...

Worked for six months as a research assistant, and realized that while I liked the work a lot, I liked the idea of asking my own questions more, and knew there was no way I was really going to be able to do that without a PhD, regardless of how very supportive and generally awesome my work environment was.

2. You think that the hardest part of postgraduate study will be ...
D. getting an appointment with your supervisor

Hard, but not the hardest. The hardest was when the "What am I doing with my life, is this all a mistake" changed frequency from once a semester to once a month, then once a week, then toward the very end essentially a rolling wave of panic and writing.

3. You like the idea of research, because ...
D. you are wholly unemployable

This one made me roll my eyes a bit. I'm employable, and more employable now than when I started (whether or not going from an MS to a PhD changed much is up for debate). I like the idea of research because I like asking questions that haven't been asked. I like planning the approach, and seeing it come together, and ushering said idea to print.

4. When confronted with a difficult problem to solve you tend to be ...

Staring at the whiteboard I bought from an office liquidator. Usually with markers of about 10 colors.

5. If faced with a challenge requiring a wholly new solution you usually ...

Make sure it can't just be simulated first.

6. If asked to write up your work you ...
D. spend a week configuring LaTex appropriately

Smirk at the math/physics/CS types who are convinced that their way is the only possible way science gets done, and go back to Powerpoint. Keynote if I'm feeling flashy.

7. Somebody criticises your discipline, you ...
Since it's a fairly small number of specific criticisms, by now I've got a pretty well developed tier of questions to help guide the conversation. Did you read X? In X, did you notice Y, or read the companion article by Z?...

8. When it is suggested that that the solution to a particular challenge might be best found within another discipline you ...

I'm not at all surprised, considering my field as a discipline has kind of camped out at an intersection and shamelessly stolen from others.

9. You have told your family and partner that you are considering doing a PhD, they are ...

They were supportive at the time, and supportive still.

10. You will be part of a research team, this will allow you to ...
Lab Happy Hour.

11. Your friends say you are ...
"in my program, he's one of the infectious disease guys."
Glad we sorted that out. Here's to not being a martyr.
Indeed.. and this guy will be crucified, for basically doing the right thing.

Such is the projection of American military power that his credit card and bank account will already be locked down, on grounds that he is a 'terrorist', regardless of which country he flees to.
This is how it starts. History proves that those who are willing to conditionally waive their rights (to privacy in this case) will see an inevitable erosion, followed by an unconditional elimination of those rights.
Not a big fan of the reasons we are supposedly not supposed to trust Snowden specifically, but the question remains a powerful one in the sense that if you can't ensure that the data and systems you're using for something this powerful can remain secure from the actions of any single person, then you have a huge problem.

I've worked at companies where the secrets behind our app signing key are held to a higher standard than being entrusted to the care of any single entity. Even ignoring how you feel about whether the PRISM system is good or bad, shouldn't we expect the NSA to have better security policies, given the huge scope of abuse these systems could allow?
It's odd, I hear people saying, "no big deal, nothing will change." But then I wonder, if you're saying it's no big deal, are you an American or not?

The point of this pst is that foreign business will be affected, AFAICT, Europeans have always held the Internet to a stricter standard than Americans and have passed stricter laws around everything from what data can be retained to the behaviour of tracking cookies.

If you've posted a "no big deal" comment, can you please go back and tell us whether you are an American or not.
Listen to the interview with him, he says he had access to the data.
Feel free to clone the repository and set it up on your own machine :)
The biggest problem with this article is that the only competitors the author can find who might supplant the US ones are located in China. Don't see US tech hegemony fading anytime soon, Prism or no Prism.
> Manning betrayed his country by releasing everything he could get his hands on

You don't even know that.
All we know is that he may have tried to release a video where innocent people were being killed for the wrong reason. Since when killing innocent civilians has become a "mission of the State" ?
I never understood the 'fun' part when people refer to programming languages since its so subjective. Apart from that I agree with your comment, in that the field of software engineering is so young and as a result one has to deal with a lot of noise, because everybody is trying to contribute which is a good thing, but it also creates chaos.
How's that hole in the sand? Seeing anything good down there?
"Privacy is a bit like oil. It's getting pricey, but I still like my SUV."

You do know that outside of the US, there are lots of people who don't drive SUVs because of the price of oil?
Thought I read that the Mersenne Twister has a major vulnerability. It's possible from a small number of samples (<1000) to predict the future values. Hmmm, this is the best link I can find http://b10l.com/?p=24
Agree. V8 is one part of the equation. However, in my opinion re-inventing the wheel for fun can be argued both ways.
This was the revulsion I felt as I read this as well. I used to be a truck driver. I am no longer a truck driver. Absolutely nothing about where I was says anything about who I am, how qualified I am to be who I am, nor where I am going. Lets not forget a previous owner of Slate, MSN...founded by the richest college dropout in the world.
Which is exactly the reason why people should realize that whatever was done by Snowden is good for them. Because what Snowden did is good for them and if the government opposes it in any way then government opposes what is good for the people. Government is the enemy of the people. People should go against their government.

(Besides, I said should be rather than is. :)
> What are your thoughts on Snowden referring to Manning as an admirable heroic figure?

Just as the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend, the friend of your friend is not necessarily your friend, either.
Your use of these as evidence of Paul's irrationality does not seem rational. Instead, they appear as a complaint that he doesn't share the same values as you; and by extension he must be irrational since your values obviously must be rationally chosen.
> Oh yes, I am just quaking in my boots at these three unarmed pacifists spray-painting peace slogans! I am so terrorized!

Well, I think that news is quite terrifying. If I lived at the US, I'd probably be terrorized.

Not by the trespassers, of course.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden [Video Interview]
I don't think Slate is trying to crucify Edward Snowden. I think it was more "If a high school dropout with basic computer skills can win this contract, imagine what a talented hacker with malicious intentions could do", and just happened to attack Snowden a bit too much.
">thing: ->
> @_thing ?= new Thing

..is … irritating."

So... having one sigil to distinguish a class variable isn't irritating, but another for a variable accessed by an accessor method is. Got it.

> It’s tempting to presume that this is a ‘feature’ of prototypal inheritance

Why would this be tempting? As the author points out, there are prototype-based languages that avoid it, and you could remove prototypes from JavaScript and still encounter the issue.

> we’re not writing Java. We’re in a highly dynamic language. We want nice things. Or, we could create setters and getters using the new ES5 syntax – but that’s not available everywhere (pre-IE9, for instance), and, I would argue, is too unwieldy to apply as a rule.

You want an easy way to create accessors? OK:

function prop(name,gNs) {
function undef(v) { return typeof v == 'undefined'; }

var _name = '_' + name, get = gNs && gNs.get, set = gNs && gNs.set;

if(get && set) return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? get.call(this,this[_name]) : (this[_name] = set.call(this,x), this);
}

if(get && !set) return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? get.call(this,this[_name]) : (this[_name] = x, this);
}

if(!get && set) return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? this[_name] : (this[_name] = set.call(this,x), this);
}

return function (x) {
return undef(x) ? this[_name] : (this[_name] = x, this);
}
}

You're welcome. Use it like so:

obj = {
thing: prop('thing')
}

when you want your accessors to do something other than getting/setting:

obj = {
thing: prop('thing', {
get: function () { return foobarled(this._thing); },
set: function (x) { this._thing = unfoobarled(x); }
})
}

> What we’re really saying is ‘everything is a hashtable’. Is that a good thing?

I'm more sympathetic to this criticism. There's times when the fact that everything can have arbitrary properties is convenient, but it does place some burden on the developer to pay attention.

Then again, I think that's a general charge to which any highly dynamic language is going to have to answer on some point or another. And if you're prone to typing `[]` when you mean `{}` (understandable if you've come from a language where they have different meanings), it's possible you should do the more conspicuous thing and use `new Array` and `new Object` instead.

> Nothing is an object

No. What the author is really talking about that by default, there aren't "methods" with class-bound scope. Just functions whose `this` scope is dynamic but does live by some pretty understandable rules.

> _missing

Missing method's sometimes convenient, and there are occasions when I miss it in JS too, but it's much rarer than I once would have thought. Use cases in languages where functions are less often let out on their own tend to get taken care of differently in languages where they do.

> I’ve yet to hear anyone convincingly argue that JavaScript’s version of OOP offers anything in addition to or distinction from more traditional versions;

"convincingly"

Convincing who?
The danger is that foreign governments will recognize that the US is using gmail to spy on them. They may ban the use of gmail or other cloud providers within their national boundaries.
The entire Google Bangalore is about Maps it seems. Anyone here to comment on this?