skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're dancing around the heart of the issue, because none of your examples involve the bank looking at the contents. Google doesn't just "make some guesses about what might be in" your e-mail. It reads your e-mail to figure out what kind of ads to target to you. AT&T inspects your traffic to do traffic shaping. Facebook has full access to the contents of your profile. Numerous employees at all of these companies have access to the contents of your accounts, not just what's on the "outside."

Imagine if the bank had the lock to your lock box, and bank employees had access to the contents of your lock box, and bank employees regularly rifled through the contents of your lock box. Also, the bank had no obligations as to your lock box. You couldn't sue the bank if they lost the box, or if someone stole the contents, etc. To me, all that would make the box seem a lot less "private."

The 4th amendment doesn't extend to say the stuff you store in your friend's garage. Google, Facebook, etc, accounts resemble that a lot more than they resemble bank safe deposit boxes.
>It's truly a sad state of reporting and public discourse.

I think your problem is that you're seeing one article as the indicator of the state of public discourse. Heres a bunch more:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0...

This article is a brief update on Snowden's asylum status and it conveys just that. Not every article on the matter needs to discuss the full depth of the issue.
I agree with the sentiment, but this is an important development. If whistle-blowers get protection, we will likely see more of them.

I'm OK with some news about Snowden from time to time as long as the number of stories about surveillance largely outnumber the ones about Snowden. I think HN has a healthy ratio.
In case you wonder why you are being downvoted, it’s because you are, yourself, denying recent (and less recent) news regarding federal monitoring; engaging in HIV/AIDS denialism; reversing HIV and AIDS; conflating weather prediction with scientific understanding; and ending with a non-sequitur.
Show HN: Bayesian Bandit Explorer
> CppDB on the other hand is MIT or Boost. It is the best DB library I found so far for C++.

Have you evaluated Code Synthesis's ODB?
There was no risk of that, Argentina has too much to lose.
>> "And maybe the CIA wouldn't dare forcibly take Snowden out of Russia or China, but who's to say they wouldn't do so to a smaller, less powerful country?"

I think this is more to do with the publicity than the power/size of the country he is in when they do it. Extracting Snowden from another country forcefully would have huge repercussions. I think that would be the step too far that would unite world leaders in rebuking America.
It looks like the README is accurate. A number of child processes are forked off and then event processing is done with kqueue on the BSD platform and epoll on Linux.
I think the concrete conducts heat into the garage. Also the cars are hot when they drive in, and the sheer number of cars also expends the heat into the space. As they leave, new hot cars come. So over time the place itself heats up.

As for the cars, they heat up outside because the sunlight is able to pass through the windows and heat the seats faster than they the air can dissipate heat through the windows.
I don't see that his personal drama detracts from the NSA story at all. If he was being painted as a liar or a Chinese pawn, or mentally ill, or a sociopath, that would be sheer distraction -- but what happens to him is of great importance, especially to those who might follow in his footsteps.
Ah, that would makes sense. Happens to me all the time when I leave HN pages open for a while then try to use them later. I imagine the bots try to follow links they picked up earlier a long time later as well at times. Kind of funny a bad session system on a site can kill your search rankings, though. It would be fatal for sites that live off Google traffic, and tough for people using off the shelf software to deal with.
I clicked the links and every link on the frontpage is to different Hacker News pages. I see nothing wrong here.
And your response to the death penalty?
corylouie is on Dropbox's security team.

(I work for Dropbox but don't speak for it in this capacity)
Oh geez, can we get any more off-topic?

Stop being so damn pedantic and nitpicky, both of you. All of you.
Maybe jobs have non-session/continuation based perma-links? That would allow them to work even for things like the Google Crawler.
If his goal is sign-ups, why does it matter how irritated those who don't sign up may be?
You're kind of implying that being advertised to means you automatically end up buying more than you want it need. I think that can be true but not necessarily. I see tons of advertisements but buy very rarely. For example, I see tons of advertising for tablets. As a developer and the owner of the iPad 1 I don't feel the need to upgrade at all. Mine still does what I want it to. When I find it becomes a nuisance then I'll be glad for the ads. Clothes are another example. I happen to buy somewhat expensive clothes. But I've found what I like (via advertising) and I stick with it. I don't buy more when I see there's a sale, only when they get worn out.

My point is that I don't relate to the stress that people feel from advertising. I'm definitely swayed by it but only when it lines up with a real desire I have. The desire comes first and the advertising shows me the way toward fulfilling it. It doesn't both create and satisfy my desires. Well, not always. For example, after I saw iOS 7 I totally wanted it. Luckily I will but if I had to pay for it I might. Now, I'm wondering - did the advertising create the desire for that or did I just see something I liked and it happened to be a good match? Is there always a difference?
I also think he has the moral obligation to fight extradition. The US Government wants to make him an example to scare whistle blowers, like it's been done with Bradley Manning.

If whistle-blowers are safe, we will see more of them. More whistle-blowers means less corruption and a healthier political system.
>> "like the one Snowden used from Ecuador to get to Moscow from Hong Kong"

AFAIK it later became clear they hadn't issued that document and Snowden was able to travel as his passport wasn't revoked until he was already in the air on his way to Russia.
This Reuters news release does not even mention the nature of the leaks that put Mr. Snowden in this situation.

Does every article need to recount all the events leading up to the current situation? Where do we draw the line, exactly?
Coca-Cola advertising isn't product advertising, its brand advertising. The intent is to keep their brand in your mind when you are shopping so when deciding between two essentially equivalent products you will lean towards the one you remember better. This sort of advertising tends not to have a strictly measured ROI in my experience since its hard to measure the "value" of wrapping a subway car in Jameson ads.

Product advertising is advertising a specific product and the ROI on it is usually closely measured when it comes to channels that can do that such as banner ads. While you are quite well informed and get information about all the new products you care about via other channels, most people are not hence the need to make people aware.

Without making "the masses" aware you end up with product usage/growth spreading virally which while it might be "better" is a lot harder to predict or model production levels or possible ROI on an initiative. For example, the Taco Bell Doritos Taco would have probably become popular after a while but that would lengthen the payback period for redesigning the menus/training staff/etc, alternatively you could do partial rollouts but that defeats the economies of scale.

While its not perfect, or anywhere near, advertising does serve a useful purpose and until the economy changes to not reward advertising initiatives we will sadly have to deal with it.
CNN, and many other liberal "news sources" whose primary charter is to support the Obama administration can be blamed for most of this. They were minimizing the importance of the scandal, relegating those who were upset over it to the tinfoil hat club, and focusing on smearing Snowden personally from Day 1. This just shows that they have been successful in their endeavor.
An Entire Exotic Island To Yourself
This trend is indeed catching up as a 'tourism' venture. The island nation of "St Vincent and The Grenadines" offers this for quite sometime now.

Popularly known as 'de-tech or digital detox holiday'
Remembering a Friend – Jeffrey McManus
I actually downloaded, installed and ran an example app - but from the other C++ Web toolkit that was on front page - CppCms. I was meaning to add this comment to that post but in between multiple open tabs, I ended up adding it on this one instead!

But which one of my points are not applicable to this particular toolkit? Sure it seems to provide XSS protection and such but the fundamental issues with secure coding in C++ still remain. So do the points about cross platform pain, compiler/library versioning issues, reinventing the wheel, availability of debugging/performance monitoring/profiling tools.
I understand what you say. I really do. But you see, the thing is that the way things are, the chance of having future revelations from new whistleblowers is -I fear- very much related to the ways Snowden finds -or not- to avoid getting caught and jailed by his government.
More details on this?
I think there is a big difference between a safe deposit box, where a bank employee would have to break the law and break a lock to access the contents of an account, and something like a gmail account where there are numerous employees authorized to access the contents of the accounts (see the recent story about the Google employee that stalked teenagers), and where the "bank" scans through the contents of the accounts in the regular course of business (to target ads). A bank typically has no idea what you store in a safe deposit box. Google and Facebook know exactly what you store in your accounts with them, and their business model depends on their knowing the contents of your supposedly "private" accounts.
Well spoken. Venezuela may not be the freest nation on earth, but I'm glad there's a few places around that stand up to US government bullying.

I say this as an American who will pledge allegiance to the US Constitution any day of the week, but not to the US government, especially not in its current form. I'm genuinely scared at how far my government has gone in persecuting lawful, nonviolent protesters and activists. Just look at the Aaron Swartz case, the harassment of Jacob Appelbaum at the border, or police actions during the Occupy protests (less related to hacker culture but just as important).

I can no longer believe that those who stay within the law have nothing to fear from the US government. This may not be true of the Venezuelan government either, but the fact that they don't let USG boss them around means at least there are options.
I wouldnt be so sure. The Gov needs more help from Venezuela than from the US.
I'd blame the building's electrical and HVAC systems. Steam pipes, AC condensers, engines, pumps etc.
wow this is so awesome for a omnivorous compulsive reader like myself. I've actually never been this excited about a show hen before! thanks for making this!
I don't dispute that what Ellsberg did was brave and ultimately the system worked. But it literally took having the Supreme Court rule in his favor and the President thrown out of office (a once ever in 237 years event).

Snowden's situation is different, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is the one who also appoints the judges to the secret FISA court Snowden has exposed. It's little surprise he didn't throw himself upon their mercy.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/chief-justice-rober...
did you have anything to offer to refute his assertions?

I don't have anything material; he's spot on.
I second this as well, as a guard against forgetting about a site that I'm really excited to use :)
I think the bigger question is when do we grant an information automata the right to survive? If we use evolutionary algorithms with survival as a selection bias (just like humans) eventually creatures that 'think' like us should emerge.

Whereas there are intelligent automata, like say a search engine, that absolutely could not care either way whether you turn it off or not. The survival selection bias is the difference, and it's seeing something struggle to survive that activates our empathy emotions to save it.

I imagine we'll know the line of when it would be 'evil' to go against our own instincts and turn off an intelligent automata that wants to survive when we see it
Can you elaborate on "the same way"? I thought most people would agree that math is not a product of human brain, it exists regardless of the existence of human race.
Here is the president's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILfbj7m6CI
You serious ? It should be clear that if you have information to share you should do so quietly without making yourself the target. Where would Snowden be without the legal and financial assistance of the Wikileaks team ? Likely rotting away for the rest of his life in a US jail.

Furthermore since Snowden's revelations has resulted in basically zero change to the status quo (no legislation, no change in policies, no change in diplomatic relations, no mass uprising by the public) you have to imagine he's wondering what the whole point of it was.
I think hot cars & their waste heat makes sense. Each car's engine is essentially a furnace.

I've also noticed that underground subway station platforms can get very hot in the summer, and it's worse when trains come by and their AC systems are spewing hot air into the station.
Yes, was gonna mention the heat coming off the car itself. The engine and body still have to cool from combustion and the sun/roads/outside air.
Your Testicles Have Taste Receptors
I don't think that is the most reasonable interpretation. I think the article argues that we do need reform, because in its current state, the system does exhibit the properties described.

It's not letting congress off the hook, it's painting a bullseye and applying pressure for them to pull the trigger. Until they do so, John Roberts has exclusive, unaccountable, lifetime power to shape the surveillance state.

While I too prefer code that compiles with -pedantic, I'm willing to forgive this author, and I don't see anything to suggest that the author believes that he is an intractable obstacle. I even think it's extraordinarily unlikely that any journalist sincerely believes that any single person is a permanently intractable obstacle in the government, so it makes the most sense to assume that was not the motivation.
it turns out that there are some perfectly reasonable use cases for a c++ web framework.
The fact you didn't take the time to find out what they might be, before expressing an opinion about the framework, is unfortunate.
Good question. Maybe it is done that way to allow light to shine thru the sample the same way one illuminates microscope slides from behind?

Maybe further project should do both to allow for making more advanced models? And when one first are taking the photo, maybe one was to do other studies as well? X-ray, ultraviolet, infrared, fluorescence, phase contrast etc. Who knows what one would revile if that data was freely available on the internet.
The CIA under GW Bush did "extraordinary renditions" routinely and no government official suffered any consequence for it.
No problem! Glad you're enjoying it!
I'm sure he's relieved to hear he's able to go to Venezuela.
If someone eventually does manage to build a functional human brain inside a computer, that first brain will raise much bigger issues. You see, that person in the computer, whoever they are, will have automatically acquired certain powers - including, in particular, self-copying, self-modification, and (with enough processing power), accelerated thought.

In other words, they'll be a motherfucking sorcerer. One who's just been through an untested brain-to-software translation, with possible sanity damage. Now, keeping in mind that we're talking about a motherfucking sorcerer with possible sanity damage, reread that list:

1. The right to not be shut down against one’s will
2. The right to not be experimented upon
3. The right to have full and unhindered access to one’s own source code
4. The right to not have one’s source code manipulated against their will
5. The right to copy (or not copy) oneself
6. The right to privacy (namely the right to conceal one’s own internal mental states)
7. The right of self-determination

This is an extraordinarily bad idea. If implemented, it would almost certainly wipe out humanity.
The Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG – suspected NSA backdoor (2007)
metapost/summary (to save you reading rest of this page): copy and paste some random selection of the reasons given in the article, prefixed with "i think". do not post maths
It can. Arguably however if you agree with the premise of the whitelist as beneficial and there is a fixed schedule of charges (ie no company is preferenced in charging) then to me it seems OK.

You can't have the whitelist without having ads/networks assessed to see if they meet the criteria. Even if you crowdsourced that [which probably wouldn't be objective enough] you'd need to administrate the whitelist and so you need some revenue to cover the overheads at least. Even automating it there's a cost in creating the code. It seems right to pass that cost on and the networks are the ones holding all the money.

You could have users pay for the whitelisting to avoid "misaligned incentives".

Indeed charging the companies for assessment gives an incentive to reject them so you can charge to assess them again ... 4) profit.
We will always tend to gravitate towards the human aspect of any event, particularly individuals. This is why we donate to charities that depict a lone starving African child instead of millions of starving children in a hot country halfway around the world. He's the face of the leaks in the same way that Colonel Sanders is the face of KFC, and a single limping dog is the face of an animal charity. Without the human and individual element people lose interest entirely. Having said that, every time his name is mentioned it needs to be tied in to the worldwide wholesale surveillance by various governments. Just like businesses need both a product and a brand, the stories should be just as much about him (the brand) and the revelations (the product).

I think there's the fact that a lot of people care about what happens to someone who has delivered some vitally important information to the world at large. In a sense, by keeping him in the public spotlight he's a little bit more protected. It's also likely that this latest grant of asylum is a PR stunt, one that wouldn't have materialized had it not been for the ongoing media circus.
Have you looked at the sample code for Wt? I wouldn't describe it as beautiful, but it's closer to Java than that code.
If he was handed travel documents by Ecuador why is he stuck on a Russian airport? I assumed he did travel under his own password wich was still valid when he left Hong Kong.
It's NEVER been an issue before this time with consistent top results for years and this suggests otherwise
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com&...

Btw this is showing the pages indexed for the site HN. That its not showing in the results now for your brand WILL have devastating results on your traffic directly from Google. Though you might not care?
Pretty sure that Russia would also need to cooperate in order for Snowden to leave as well. Whether it's approving planes to land or witnessing his travel documents whilst boarding.

And be serious. Obama is not going to scramble jets to destroy a plane to catch one low level hacker. He doesn't need to. The damage has been done and Snowden doesn't have a whole lot more he can reveal that will hurt the US. They pretty much want to just set an example for other people thinking of leaking military secrets.
Have you ever been in a boiler room? Those are underground too, but we aren't surprised that they're hot.

The heat source in this case is cars, which are literally radiators. Cars are actively driving through the space and even at rest they are radiating heat. Wine doesn't generate heat, plus concrete and other construction materials retain heat moreso than a thin-walled or bare earth cave.
Ask HN: What are the best APIs you use?
We at infraprint.com are trying to make our API even better. What are the best REST API's you use and what can we do to make ours better?
At least a paragraph, for context, would have been nice.
You're absolutely right. He's already fought one of the battles; he's not responsible for fighting them all.
One thing I don't understand is why Mr. Snowden did not remain anonymous when he leaked his information? Wouldn't that have given him more options for avoiding reprisal? Or did he reveal his identity to protect himself?
It's wrong bc it's NOT bringing up the best result for the query.
Have we even answered the question, "what is consciousness"? Isn't this along the lines of "what is the meaning of life"?

Because, if we haven't answered it, then it seems that the best we could do is build a simulation which displays some or many of the properties that we associate with consciousness.
Remember, democracy means you only have to fool the dumbest half of the population to get what you want.
JavaScript object creational patterns
1) Learn the differences between creating JavaScript objects using the four invocation patterns.
2) Where, when, why to use one over the other. Performance benefits.
3) Where and when the objects "this" will be bound to for each of the patterns.
4) What happens when we accidentally omit the new prefix when attempting to invoke a constructor? How can we guard against this?
5) We go over scope and classical vs prototypal inheritance.
6) Learn about the objects prototype. How to access it. What it's good for. The pitfalls.
7) Creating private, privileged and public members.
One problem here is that Snowden is one side, and "the NSA" is the other. It's not a person. It's not a drama. There is no coverage of how the people on the other side are scrambling to explain and excuse their behavior. That's what needs to change: the wrong-doers here need to be named and a microscope put on them, their careers, and their lives.
Great reading. Have you any idea how things evolved after that with those 4 proposed methods?
Wild guess: Cars generate a lot of heat, most of the power in an internal combustion engine is lost as heat (they're something like 30% efficient). The engine block and body absorb the heat when operating, and when the cars are shut off (not to mention running when parking/exiting), the heat radiates out into the air.
In theory that could even be accomplished by the Venezuelan President's A320.
that's great! next step: get to venezuela.
Jay-Z Is Watching, and He Knows Your Friends
I would not mind spending some time on the beaches and doing a little fishing. You buy my ticket and we can have a HN meetup.
But with this case being so public globally I think things would be different - maybe I'm wrong though.
How hard can it be to get Business Credit Cards?
I think Ecuador issued a document and was studying to offer asylum, then backed off under US pressure.
This is very true. If Snowden can avoid the Bradley manning treatment, whistle blowers in the future may be more inclined to come forward.
Come on, if we are having this conversation and you've already taken the pains to add a contrary comment - I was fully expecting you will elaborate on those use cases :) Are you thinking embedded web servers may be? What else?
Maryland RB Wes Brown charged with wiretapping