skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Given that now we are all suspects in waiting, use of anything to protect privacy is going to be evidence of, well... something. Governments, for some weirdo reason, think that no one should have need for privacy, if they are decent lawful people. Despite individuals in government insisting on personal privacy for them selves.

What bothers me is that the more we use systems to protect our selves, the more governments will become paranoid because they may not be able to monitor us to reassure them selves that we are not up to no good. This could well make them react by telling the mass population that "terrorists" and "criminals", might as well bung "pedophiles" in there too, are communicating "securely". We will prove their paranoia, give them the evidence they can twist and use. It will become more and more twisted, with the whole thing artificially ratcheting up. This seems to be how governments do things these days.

However, perhaps the severe danger government face is that privacy may catch on. Imagine if people begin to default to the most secure methods they can get. Simple add-ons that enforce using HTTPS where available, browsers that block tracking, more secure email, and so on. Might not be robust and perfect, but the internet would see more and more traffic definable as "secure". As this goes on, these secure services will become faster, easier, and more secure, enabling more and more people to be easily secure. Worse still, the software would become independent and open sourced for verification. In the end, even the NSA should have difficulty keeping up and cracking the security. The more data that is encrypted, the more data they will feel they have to keep.

Dunno quite where I am going with this, but I reckon that by aggressively spying on mass population government is making their own job much harder in the long run. It could force the internet and communications in general to become secure beyond their capabilities to crack. Then all that is left is blackmailing people to give up keys with threats of prison, or worse.
Its important to understand that from some people's perspective, the whole point of Federally funded education is indoctrination. In which case it would be very important to identify those who are, "frustrat[ed] with co-workers or the organization."
This is an interesting point:

the Minister fears that if he will be granted asylum, Iceland might have to show humanitarianism in action by transforming its poor treatment towards asylum seekers who seek shelter in Iceland

While Iceland is generally liberal on social issues, they've traditionally been quite closed on immigration. That's partly been helped by their geographic isolation, but in recent years there has been an increase in refugees attempting to claim asylum in Iceland (e.g. fleeing the Syrian civil war), and Iceland has generally not granted those requests. So perhaps they are worried that if they start granting some kinds of political asylum they will have to grant others to be consistent.
Ellsberg has been saying that things were in fact better back then. He was arrested, released on bail, and spent the next couple years able to tell his story to the media. Manning was arrested and kept in solitary for almost four years before his trial, isolated from the outside world.
Let's deploy via Git
He is a bellwether even whether he was created or not.
I cant wait for the movie!
Git hook plugin system built using python
Snowden leaves Hong Kong, may head for Venezuela
> I'm not talking tab characters, I'm talking indentation of whole paragraphs with plain spaces, as seen in the article.

Ah, okay. You're right, indenting an entire paragraph is hard.

--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---

This is the kind of thing they'd do on Usenet.

---END BLOCK QUOTE ---
Actually he said he would go to Sweden if they promised not to extradite him to the USA and they refused.
NSA chief: Snowden ‘betrayed the trust and confidence’ of the US
"In light of the recent leaks about the NSA's illegal spying, I've decided to go back to using M-x spook output in my email signatures."

http://lwn.net/Articles/554941/
>>not because he is some champion of human dignity (he lost that when he fled to China and revealed a whole lot more that was unrelated to surveillance)

He didn't lose shit. He revealed the fact that the USA targets and wiretaps non-military targets (universities, civilians, etc.) in China and Hong Kong. This is still whistleblowing, and these revelations make me think even more highly of him.

Now, if he had told them which military targets the USA was spying on, he would have stepped into traitor catagory. But targeting non-combatants is illegal under multiple international treaties that the USA has signed. As such, the USA is breaking the law and Snowden has the duty to reveal that.
Mustache - Logic-less templates
Ideal paragraph width is not a function of device display size. A line of text should contain about 12 words, give or take. Long enough to not feel choppy but short enough to not feel like a "wall of text."

Deviate too much from this and readability suffers.

Edit: adequate whitespace in the margins is important too.
The jobs leaving the country argument is one that I used with some friends who didn't see anything wrong with "record everything" government programs in the USA. When I explained the potential for hurting the USA tech industry then that made sense to people.
This is why VCs mock lifestyle businesses
uh looks like they went down hard
You took the words right out of my mouth.

Remember that the Russians killed Litvinenko in the middle of Mayfair, London, UK.

The Israelis killed Mahmoud Hamshari in Paris.

Remember that these were all nuclear nations.

I'll leave the research of any possible US involvements as an exercise to the reader.
You could turn the problem around somewhat. Have a small but powerful enough computer on your LAN that's connected via HDMI to your TV. Now log in from your laptop over your LAN to the small PC and have the TV be (one of) the small PC's display device.

X.
Russia isn't Snowden's final destination. Moscow is just his layover.
Ask HN: Is this Hacker News front page excessive?
http://i.imgur.com/sjNd5Z7.png

Snowden is a huge story, no doubt. But are we duplicating too much discussion/information here? Especially stories that now seem out of date (e.g. Cuba).
Godaddy DNS down?
GoDaddy DNS seems to be down for us. Anyone else noticing this?
Yes.

It would be good to see a news aggregator that automatically grouped obviously related links like these.
There is nothing to add, as it wasn't a discussion. You put forward the assertion that the entire thing is a hoax and that Snowden is a Chinese spy. You provided absolutely zero evidence. And you expect me to "add to the discussion?" What a joke.
That is one of the best benefits, that reinforces a company's culture, I've ever heard of.
I am not convinced by the explanation from the Facebook spokesperson. I am an active Facebook user and I am not a basketball fan but there have been atleast 2 or 3 instances where I noticed that I had to "unlike" the basketball page and I have no recollection of "liking" the page ever.

I don't follow basketball so its very unlikely that I would find its Facebook page and "like it".
Could we please stop with the NSA horseshit. The Democratic National Party has identified techies as a target demographic for their Media Circus and is seeding these stories to garner votes and attention.

We need to be concerned about the bigger picture, the story being covered up by the "OMG Snowden is a cyberpunk, how dreamy". The bigger picture is that Washington, D.C. has allowed the security apparatus to rot. Misplaced nuclear missiles, abysmal physical security at nuclear bomb plants, total lack of mandatory access controls on computer system, inability to close the decision loop on protecting assets on foreign soil, etc.

The DNP keeps running these tech celebrity scandal stories to distract from the catastrophic state of American security.
Yeah same here. I can't even get godaddy.com to load. I haven't read about this issue anywhere yet.

UPDATE: DNS seems to be working now...
The captain is not going to comply with such a request. An unscheduled landing is, if not illegal in a relevant jurisdiction, at least unnecessarily risky.
Haha, now that I think about it, there will definitely be a movie about this in 5-10 years. The question is how it will actually portray Snowden...
Hey, remember when a US warship shot down an Iranian Civilian Airliner? Ooopsie!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Maybe the ranking should consider diversity in addition to quality (upvotes). At least that is what Google does:

Yes, that is a part of what our algorithm does: work to
find quality diverse results [..]
--Matt Cutts [1]

In a sense HN does this already in that you can post a
URL only once. It doesn't make sense to have the same
article multiple times on the page. In the same vein it doesn't make sense to have the same content multiple times.
What is "same content" is the difficulty.

[1] http://www.stonetemple.com/matt-cutts-and-eric-talk-about-wh...
dnssy reports "No nameservers found at parent nameserver": http://www.dnssy.com/report.php?q=NS21.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
On a slightly related note, how can we detect backdoors implemented on the physical level?
50 Stats You Need to Know About Content Marketing
I'm currently using the HN Enhancement Suite in Chrome which is rather great https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...
The thread folding is extremely helpful at times
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5927820
Stories about Snowden might be tech celebrity scandal, but stories about the NSA are not. And do you have any evidence that the Democratic Party is attempting a coverup here?
Agreed. Flaggin articles that have had significant revision in line would be cool.
Right, Cuba or Venezuela is his final destination. Does this change my point at all?
If I am to assume all these things I should not use online services at all.
Satire is really really hard to do well. The Onion's been a roll, however: http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-administration-releas...
The NSA has to be given advance notice of international travel. There's no way they are going to grant him going on a vacation to Moscow.

Instead, he claimed Hong Kong had a treatment available for his epilepsy, which he used as cover to get NSA approval there. From there he knew he could buy time to figure out a full plan to get to his final destination, Iceland.

It looks like Venezuela may be another interim country before he gets there.
One artist's perspective http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/
BBC is reporting Russian media as claiming a "diplomatic car" met Snowden's plane on the tarmac and he debarked directly into it. They're speculating he might be spending the night in the Venezuelan or Ecuadorian embassy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23022926 (in video, not mentioned in text at this time)
Is GoDaddy down?
Web and DNS.

getaddrinfo(whois.godaddy.com): No such file or directory
If you're implying that the US doesn't produce drinkable beer, I'd humbly suggest you're going to the wrong bars :).
I see a propoganda machine at work. As far as I'm concerned, Obama is still the best president we have had in my adult life. He makes decisions based on reason and not belief. This is bad for politics as usual and this is why this slander campaign exists. Obama is not communist, Muslim, a dictator or anything like that. I am really surprised that even hacker news readers are being infected by right wing propoganda. When did it become cool to be a conservative? Please don't let fear enable an abandonement of logic. I operate off of proof and bottom line is, most of the allegations against Obama cannot be proven with facts but only hearsay. What I see is logical people being turned into the sheep they once despised.
Bitcoin Foundation Receives Cease And Desist Order From California
Building a Stereoscopic Microscope (1997)
That's not at all what I said. The difference is that Putin doesn't spread propaganda through every news channel about how Russia is a truly democratic country and everyone has their freedoms according to the law. Everyone KNOWS he is a tyran, and he doesn't do much to change that.

Now let us observe the american media - 1)America birthplace of freedom? check. 2)America greatest country in the world? check. Despite not leading the world in a single category(besides defense spending). 3)Ideologically and officially different but pragmatically similar political parties? check. America - the birthplace of hypocrisy and the God complex.
Maybe Obama is deeply opposed to the whole thing himself, but it's so entrenched he couldn't really do anything about it. Think of how he gets blocked routinely in the public view and imagine what cut throat stuff must be going on behind the scenes. So maybe this is a way to do an end run around whoever is keeping these shenanigans in place.

This is almost certainly not the case, but that's the answer that came to mind when you asked the question.
Appearances aside, this isn't actually a spy movie.
4th amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

I don't understand this notion that you don't really understand something like the 4th amendment without understanding the whole history of case law interpreting said amendment.

The amendment is short and simple. It says what it says. It is part of the supreme law of the land (the constitution) and thus supersedes any lesser laws which may conflict with it. Any interpretation of it is just that.

If I were to put it in software terms, I'd call interpretations “derived artifacts” and the amendment the “source”. If I start getting weird conflicts and unexpected behavior, as any developer knows, I should “make clean” (clear out all derived artifacts) followed by “make” (rebuild from source).
Binging it on: putting an end to the Google bias
"But the level of duplication between those different stories is staggering."

Exactly. I don't mind multiple articles about a hot (relevant) news topic, but if the content is
essentially the same it adds no value.
anndd they're back
Just curious, do you have the same indignation that China does the exact same thing?
If anyone turned it into a Kardashian spectacle it was Snowden himself. His video interview and Q&A have only served to publicize himself. He could have easily and safely leaked incriminating documents to a journalist and achieved the same effect.
Quickmeme banned from Reddit for alleged vote manipulation
Exactly

There's probably zero flights that go from Asia to Venezuela directly. Maybe through Australia and Chile exists a possibility
Bill To Reform Computer Fraud Law Named For Internet Activist Aaron Swartz
Thank you tjohns!
> I am well aware that HK has some degree of autonomy

More like a great deal of autonomy, for the time being. Except for military and foreign affairs (and perhaps immigration? not sure) in which areas China has authority, outside of those HKSAR is highly autonomous.
This is a perfect example of the problem with test scores. The test becomes a metric to game, and any actual learning is negated in the process.
There aren't any direct flights from Moscow to Venezuela, either. He either has to stop somewhere in Europe or Miami.
Borowitz has been doing satire at the New Yorker for a long time. This one is just profoundly close to being not-satirical. The world isn't very different from last month, except that more people are becoming more aware how our government conducts itself.
He certainly betrayed the trust and confidence of certain people and entities in the executive branch of the US government, that's not in dispute.

But it is morally obligatory to betray trust when you are trusted to do a thing which is itself morally indefensible. Whether Snowden betrayed a trust is not at issue, the moral (and, subordinate to that, legal) character of the subject matter of that trust is at issue.
The authors are Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson of Plamegate fame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_plame

Joe Plame failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and was generally critical of the Bush administration. His wife Valerie was an undercover CIA officer. She was outed by Dick Cheney's office via a leak, as retribution. The leak ended her effectiveness as a CIA operative, and likely endangered or killed people she'd had contact with.

For political revenge by the administration in power.
Can you elaborate on this or offer a link?

I agree that PRISM is worse since they spy on almost all the world Internet traffic and phone calls, but I wouldn't trust Russian Government to only spy with a warrant.
During undergrad. It's not like the Engineering college at a given university is that hard to find.

And while GPA is nice, any group selective enough to care is also going to check the transcript. Getting a "C" in Diff Eq. is far different from getting a "C" in "Intro to College Math", for example.
Do you see the 4th Amendment in tatters? Is that the propaganda machine at work? It seems like there's plenty of blame for both sides of the aisle and blindly defending the Administration with platitudes seems counterproductive.
GPA really isn't all that important for graduate study. GRE score, personal statement, letters of recommendation all matter more, provided the GPA is reasonable. This is, of course, also dependent on the program you are applying to. But with hundreds to choose from, it is usually possible to find a good fit.
The coverage over at the Guardian is better at present:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-...
That is a very good point, and the result of that feeds back into the prosecutor's fallacy. If you have plotted the routes of a million people traveling through a city, and there is an incident (let's say a bombing at a stadium), then you could "cold hit" someone from that database of routes to find someone with a movement pattern that appears to suspiciously correlate with the bombing, but is in fact just one of a few hundred people with similar movement patterns (only one or two of whom were actually involved).

Then you link that to the person having demonstrated at a couple of, say, animal rights protests, get a few neighbors who say that the guy was "weird" and "acted strangely", and bam - you have what looks like an open and shut case of a radical animal liberation terrorist, but is in fact just a vegan who happened to pick up some gardening supplies at a Home Depot and a Pike's Nursery two days before going to a baseball game.
Anonymous leaks happen all the time. They tend to be ignored.

Snowden calculated this for maximum media coverage and succeeded brilliantly. That he is a visible part of the story isn't a side effect, it's necessary for attention and credibility.
NO! The often cited "problem" with American perception, and how we've even gotten to a point where this type of thing is possible, is exactly because people lose interest in a story so quickly.

You're talking about an the US government pursuing a political dissident across the planet, and doing so because he exposed them performing wholesale 4th amendment violations to every person in The United States.

That is a HUGE deal. That is so much more a huge deal than another article about IOS7, or another article about how google's reign is over.

I hope there is a Snowden story at the top of HN every day until his story reaches a conclusion, and if you care about your civil liberties, I hope that you can sacrifice the 80px of so of reading every morning.
Thanks for posting this. Am surprised to have not heard of this project before. It's a bit disappointing that it's not included in either of the Distro's that I use regularly. And even worse that the source for the project is maintained in CVS. It seems like perhaps the project is a tad neglected.
Are you implying the Democratic Party basically manufactured Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks as a cunning distraction from the state of American security affairs? Why try so hard to distract the public at large from a set of issues they're already completely unaware of?
Doesn't seem particularly surprising, and afaict the article doesn't have any actual new information about the "pursuing" angle. Some U.S. officials are just confirming that the U.S. hasn't changed its mind about wanting to extradite him, which pretty much nobody expected it would.
Everyone can be a certificate authorithy. The problem is that browsers only recognize a small number of authorities and display a scary message for others.
US has revoked Snowden's passport.
No, GPA is not generally a priority in graduate school admissions. You need a reasonable GPA, but a 4.0 is totally unnecessary. GRE scores and other factors like letters of recommendation and research projects with faculty members during undergraduate are usually more important.
I shall repeat the comment I made on the other post before you deleted it:

Yes.

It would be good to see a news aggregator that automatically grouped obviously related links like these.
Before clicking this link, I wager that it's already been closed as "not constructive" by zealot S.O. mods.

Edit: yep. Thanks Kev, good work!
Advancing a partisan perspective is poisonous to any effort to affect positive change.
I love this idea but I think it would be made a lot better by having this information available on the news websites themselves with a browser plugin or something.
Y Combinator Summer 2013 application form
Publicly available somewhere? Screenshot?
GPA is unimportant to graduate work if you have good research recommendations and skills that the grad department you are applying to needs.
These sort of tricks are precisely why Snowden went public.
This strikes me as a non-issue. This case is far too high profile for the US to risk the diplomatic and PR fallout from forcing or otherwise coercing a commercial airliner to land unexpectedly.
I think the worst case is where you have friends at Facebook and Google. I always fear those friends might peek into my account.
How To: Assemble your own privately and free Feedly with Selfoss and OpenShift
If you had asked me 5 years ago, I would have also been hyped about using a hypervisor to run Windows alongside GNU/Linux, but nowadays I am far more interested in GNU/Linux getting triple A video game titles so that I can simply abandon Windows. When you dual-boot eventually you get sick of powering on/off and you spend most of your time in one of the OSs; I never got to play my games anymore. My solution was to do development on a GNU/Linux or Mac laptop and leave Windows+cygwin on my gaming rig. I frequently use synergy[1] to share my gaming rig's mouse, keyboard, and copy/paste buffer with my laptop over WiFi.

[1] http://synergy-foss.org
Okay now I've lost respect for him. I appreciate that he told us what the gov was secretly doing, but to now go to the enemy? Come on, that's treason.
Well, it is metadata and we know what that means.
--- BEGIN MESSAGE ---
--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---
--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---
I'm not talking tab characters, I'm talking indentation of whole paragraphs
with plain spaces, as seen in the article.
--- END BLOCK QUOTE ---
Ah, okay. You're right, indenting an entire paragraph is hard.
--- BEGIN BLOCK QUOTE ---
This is the kind of thing they'd do on Usenet.
--- END BLOCK QUOTE ---
--- END BLOCK QUOTE ---
All you get is a very verbose markup language :-)
--- END MESSAGE ---
"Bugs", surely? Although you may be right...
Putting an end to the Google bias by introducing the Bing bias. Waste of time.