skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
So the BBC is... weird. The majority of the operation is a taxpayer-funded public broadcaster with a remit to produce high quality programming for free; but there's a unit called BBC Worldwide whose job it is to battle it out in the red-in-tooth-and-claw world of commercial TV programming, selling BBC programmes overseas and minting money that can then be used to subsidize the public broadcasting component.

While this sounds laudable as an idea, for this to work it also means that the British taxpayer is not allowed to subsidize BBC Worldwide in any way. For example, BBCW pays rent at market rates for its office space to the rest of the BBC, even though they're in the same building, and they're virtually prohibited from selling anything in the UK. Add in the fact that the rest of the British media business is (understandably) quite pissed off about having a competitor that operates under a different set of rules, meaning they watch it like a hawk and squawk as soon as there's even a hint of unfair advantage, and you get all sorts of bizarro-world conflicts and overblown solutions like this that throw the baby out with the bathwater.

(Disclaimer: I used to work for a company owned by BBC Worldwide. This is my personal opinion.)
What is the status of an encryption algorithm that doesn't look like it's encrypted to the spies?
I'm responding to the zero-sum nature of your comment above, about how the company harboring the vulnerability should be the one penalized for security incidents. And all I'm saying is, there's no reason why we can't penalize both: companies, when they're negligent, and people who exploit that negligence.

Also: we both know there's more to the story with Auernheimer than simply sending material to journalists.

Once again, we probably agree that Auernheumer doesn't belong in prison over this particular incident. He was overcharged and oversentenced. But I find the exact philosophy that drives you to that conclusion challenging, which is why I called it out.
Lonely Planet was, until very recently, owned by BBC Worldwide.
No, that is not a typo. Thos is a typo - an error created during the mechanical act of typing. Yours was just a plain mistake, you got the units wrong. Own it and learn from the error instead of excusing it away.
I think you know I'm not being intentionally confusing; that's not who I am. I'm responding to part of your comment. I'm not writing a brief against Auernheimer. The way you know that is, my comments have repeatedly agreed with yours that his sentence is unjust.
Congratulations! I'm excited to see what you choose to do next, enjoy San Francisco!
Wow, avoided the airport because of this kind of insanity? We brought it to your house! I remember just a few short months ago, making fun of the British for arresting someone for tweeting...
You don't understand or you didn't spend ti e thinking about that. It's doing all those steps, or doing nothing and achieving the same result. Not sure what you don't understand.
Intersting! (btw: this is only read only but useful)
Regarding the wording used, "buddy" is an affective way of referring to one another between left-oriented political movements here. Extremely common in peronism but also used in several other countries from South America.

> He has the advantage of thousands of years of civilization over me. [Not sure I understood that sentence correctly.]

It refers to the bolivian/peruvian aboriginal culture from which Morales' is considered a representative so the translation is correct. It's just a political compliment, nothing more than that.
Barcelona Recebe Conferência Internacional de Engenharia Civil e Arquitetura
The more the US make use and abuse it's force, the more it will lose it, the more it will try to keep control, the more authoritarian it will become, the more resistance will grow, the more the US will get alone. Keep thinking like that.
I think that era was actually over decades ago. It's just that thanks to the internet, Americans (like me) are beginning to realize it.
So showing ads is the problem right? Then don't show adds to UK citizens and let them read the damn thing instead of blocking the article? Then BBC International can charge BBC for showing "add free content" to UK citizens and that would take care of the formalities.
No it doesn't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Corporate_structure
Mandrill pricing updates
nope, it's one of those laws that the police can use on anyone they don't like, anytime. There was a good article of how this "criminalise everyone, and then only prosecute the ones you don't like" attitude was essentially how the US operates by default nowadays - It was on HN a few months ago but I can't find it now.
Let’s not shut down the Internet to ward off cyberattacks
I won't even try to guess what's the code for Peruvian or Colombian military planes is.
It's an awesome weapon. Plant an encrypted file on somebody's computer, report to the police you saw that person was viewing child porn.
Congrats!! Hakkasan, did this exit get you enough cash for a Yacht? :-)
When I have another solution that will make them 30% more effective with only a 1% learning cost, yes!
I'm more interested in hearing what pi18n has to say, but it's a fair question:

I hold multiple degrees above my BSc in Electrical Engineering, one of which is in Computer Science. I'm also PE certified (US Professional Engineer certification).

So I believe the answer to your question is: yes.
I switched from Dropbox to SpiderOak recently, and they're a bit better, but feels so clunky. I'm just about fed up with all of them. I use CrashPlan for backups and they're at least good for CPU usage because they have a preference -- max CPU (%) when you're at the computer, and max CPU when you're away, which really does help.

Those who are using Dropbox may find something like cpulimit[1] useful. This limits the CPU usage of any process by repeatedly sending SIGSTOP and SIGCONT signals to your process. It's on homebrew for OS X. I think there're some other alternatives available too but can't remember off hand. But if the article's accurate, Dropbox has issues even when it's not indexing heavily.

[1] https://github.com/opsengine/cpulimit
The Spanish press is reporting that after the plane was delayed (it was expected to land in the Canary Islands) they had to confirm the permission, and it was granted as expected.

The Spanish foreign ministry said they never denied landing or requested to inspect the plane (in Spanish soil).

Apparently the Spanish ambassador asked Evo Morales to allow the Austrian police to inspect the plane, and he finally did.

All this thing is confusing, indeed.
Germany, understandably being occupied and all, but France? You twats.

But meh, same goes for Sweden, it took a phone call from a lobbyist organization from Washington to a Swedish "Justice minister" for him to send the police units, raid and seize/steal private property on Swedish soil.

Whole of EU is a puppet of USA. Manchuko.
Well played BBC.

On the Israel/Palestine topic, both sides claim the BBC unfairly represents the other. That's pretty good going if you ask me!
1. Decentralized (real p2p, no central servers)

2. Encrypted communication

3. Easier to set up than encrypted email: Install -> Exchange "certificates" -> Done.

BONUS: it's open-source!

(Which means everybody is free to inspect the source code, which means any potential backdoors can 1) be discovered 2) removed -> impossible with Windows and Mac operating systems/software)
Cant say much to that apart from congratulations. Seems like a nice product, well executed.
An Apple fan complaining about Google not being "open" enough. Wow.

Remember everyone: "Open web" is very important! But your browser itself doesn't need to be open source. Use Safari instead of Chrome. Your OS doesn't need to be open source either. Use and develop for OSX. Use and develop for iOS. Refuse developing for Android and make iOS-exclusive apps. Buy all Apple products and support Apple. Then open a blog to advocate openness and bash companies that build open source tools.
After step 5, I was sure you were about to say that a remote operator could then activate the nearest turret and shoot the mugger.
(Just having fun analogy time as I wake up, once I got rollin it just kinda got outta control)

I don't actually use C++, not since about 2005 anyway, but like many on HN that won't stop expressing strong opinions on the UI. The semicolons dripping everywhere are a massive UI problem. Makes it look like a Perl obfuscation competition. A modern language like Intercal does not use semicolons, well, not as much. They need to get with the program and use UTF-8 so I can program in my native Klingon. I'm sure this Stroustrup character likes his language very much, thank you, but he could make a heck of lot more money, for a lot longer, if he replaced the UI with something a little more modern and polished, like a mobile iphone app where you can end your statement lines with pink hearts and smiley faces. And C++ needs social networking and multiplayer.

C++ also has a horribly inconsistent UI, look at these two ways to add one:

blah = blah + 1;

vs

blah++;

How is the average noob off the street supposed to handle inconsistency? There should only be one way to do it; just like sex. And don't get me started on those Perl heathens.

Its just a hostile UI and C++ would be more accessible to the average person with a better UI. Because the only people who matter are the average people, F those outliers.

That's nice that some people have buckled down and learned all the peculiarities of the existing C++ UI, but we'll just have to abandon them with our "improvements". I have Stroustrup's latest edition of C++ and its bigger than my metro area phone book, which is far too long compared to the copy of K+R I got in 1983 or so which was so small it was mistaken for a copy of readers digest. Heck even "Modern Perl" sitting on my desk right now is only 280 pages in dead tree form.

Niches are inherently bad and we should all want to either conform or dominate those who conform, so its inherently, of itself, bad, if only a fraction of the population "gets" what they're doing. Just like art and music! Quantity has a quality all its own. Can't they just watch football like normal guys? I mean ten trillion horseflies can't all be wrong, or however that goes.
Ask HN: does Hacker News Semi-block Tor?
Does Hacker News semi-block Tor traffic? I notice this recently that when I tried to log in using Tor and it won't let me. This URL https://news.ycombinator.com/null shows up on the address bar. It could be a bug, but this has happened many times.

At the same time, all posts made using this account is not visible anywhere else to any of my friend who are NOT using Tor. Is there some kind of sensor ship at hacker news? Given that we are discussing so many politically sensitive topics, I would really like to know.
Thanks! I thought that might be what she meant, but I wasn't sure.

I'm not really sure if "buddy" is a good translation of "compañer@", but it seemed about right. "Comrade" might be an equally good translation if you wanted to prejudice people in the US against her.
This indifference of the "average Joe" is a major trait of totalitarianism.

I never thought I would say this, and I'm actually afraid of saying it out loud because it sounds like hyperbole. But the way I see it, the USA is becoming a totalitarian state. It won't look like any previous totalitarian regime, but many of the hallmarks are there.
there was a chap who had this law used against him a few years back, I don't remember what happened though but it was a big deal at the time.

It was to do with encrypting random data for physics or a game or something and the government got hold of it but because the data was encrypted one way he couldn't give them a key and he was going to go to prison for two years.

I've heard nothing about it since though with all this PRISM stuff and people encrypting their emails I'm surprised it hasn't resurfaced sooner.
It's ironic though, that this post is coming from Macro. He hates Chrome (open source and free software) and uses Safari. He hates Android (open source and free software) and uses and develops for iOS.

I sense hypocrisy.
>Has Snowden got something on Obama personally or something?

Probably yes. NSA spied on Obama in 2004

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-nsa-spied-on-barack-obama...
Google+ must be one of the most misunderstood things Google's ever done.

It's not supposed to be a social network like Facebook. The thing you see when you visit G+ - people microblogging and sharing pics etc - is just a fraction of the whole point of G+.

G+ is Google's social layer. In data terms, it turns people into "first-class citizens" across Google's estate, instead of every project just shoehorning in their own "user" structure. That's why you see G+ in Play reviews, YouTube comments, integrated into email, and so on.
>This is a reference to the President's years-long struggle against preventative injunctions put in place by Argentine courts against her efforts to break up the big Argentine media trusts that are her strongest local political enemies.

The preventative injunction are in place to put the measures on hold while the court decides if the made-to-order laws she comes up with twice a week are constitutional or not.

For those unfamiliar with Argentinian politics: don't be too impressed with Mrs Kirchner. This Us vs Them is her bread and butter and a perfect opportunity for her to leverage for some cheap points. She's not really that communicative in real life. To put it in perspective, if Mrs. Kirchner was in Obama's spot right now facing spying accusation her response to the reports would be to totally ignore them and instruct her subordinates to mention that Snowden is a liar, all the documents are forged and everything is a plot by the enemies of the American people.
Unless they only wanted to show the extent of their power over other nations. A strong signal, I might add. It could also be in the interests of US government to see which countries they control fully, and which put up a fight.
I'm thinking it's more about sending a message to other (potential) leakers: "This is how powerful we are, this is how far we'll go to hunt you down. Nobody is going to help you, and no one is going to stop us."
Well, even Tarn Adams himself agrees: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_o...
Hmm. I am curious as to why you think these two categories would think differently.
Is it because your stairs won't fit in the table?

(Sorry, couldn't resist).
The case is absolutely awful, but he was jailed for refusing to hand over the key, which is (according to the article) exactly what he did. The article is very kind to the suspect here, and nowhere does it even suggest that he had lost the key or otherwise wasn't able to decrypt the files.
Good round up of things that make me unreasonably annoyed about APIs I've used. ESPECIALLY 200 codes for errors, which means your error handlers won't fire.
Who's written anything worthy of that treatment?

Almost - not who but _why.
We Are Pioneers: the Journey to Ember.js
Good article!

> He returned to Paddington Green station as appointed on 2 December, and was re-arrested for carrying a pocket knife.

FTR, carrying a pocket knife is perfectly legal in the UK (assuming it was within a certain size).

> Officers bearing sub-machine guns broke down the door of JFL's flat. He rang local police before realising CTC had come for him. [...] JFL maintained his silence throughout the one hour time limit imposed by the notice. He was charged with ten offences under section 53 of RIPA Part III, reflecting the multiple passphrases needed to decrypt his various implementations of PGP Whole Disk Encryption and PGP containers. [...] In his final police interview, CTC officers suggested JFL's refusal to decrypt the files or give them his keys would lead to suspicion he was a terrorist or paedophile.

And my favourite paragraph:

> "There could be child pornography, there could be bomb-making recipes," said one detective. "Unless you tell us we're never gonna know... What is anybody gonna think?" JFL says he maintained his silence because of "the principle - as simple as that".

So he was jailed for remaining silent.
Assange, RSF: Why European nations must protect Edward Snowden
A brief history of the Guy Fawkes mask
The 'utterly dismissive of the possibility' people are also all over discussions like these, dismissing speculation with arguments that tend to amount to "oh, please!" and "oh, come on!"

In fact, these discussions usually amount to amateur physicists insisting that somewhat unusual phenomena are physically impossible (usually citing retired fire chiefs, their uncle who is a mechanic, and 'common sense'), and a bunch of authoritarians replying with "Oh, please - tinfoil hat!"

I'm surprised that people don't know how eager cars are to burn esp in light of this recent fire: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-06/news/chi-calif...

There wasn't even a crash and five women burned to death during the time it took to notice the fire, communicate that to the driver, pull over, and open the back door.
Thanks for the Backblaze info! That's really good to know. Do you know if CrashPlan is any saner? Resource usage was a big factor when deciding between the two, and I want to know if I've made the right choice :)
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." ―Princess Leia to Grand Moff Tarkin.
on Linux there is powertop, awesome piece of libre software by Intel
This is a real slippery slope. Just how "big" does a country have to be so that its rights will be respected?
I'm not. If you go the the site (CallForFreedom.org) that is the rallying point you get:

"America has violated its founding principles. The Constitution says government can't spy on us-- not without suspicion. But now, thousands of government employees at the NSA and other agencies track our phones and read our emails. The government is dangerously trespassing on our rights. How can free speech, free association, or a free press survive when everyone is always being watched, even in their most private moments?"

Wikipedia etc. would probably only get behind something that was not limited to providing a benefit to US citizens alone. SOPA mattered to Wikipedia because it would have affected their ability to provide the service they provide globally.
Ben Horowitz on the CEO change at Zynga
Might be able to kill the power to the line amps as well, install while it is being repaired. That could spread suspicion a little wider than the same line.
Oh my, those NSA employees sure did have a hard time justifying their work as "apolitical" in front of such enlightened students.

Very well argued by the students! This will definitely leave a mark that will last in the minds of these two NSA employees.

Highly recommended that you listen to the whole thing.
What Motivates Your Participation Online? Love, Trust, Reputation, or Money?
Valid PHP code with emojis
20 HTML5 Tools for Web Designers
The great thing about hypotheticals is we can make them without a basis in reality. Your hypothetical regarding some Gmail leak is not really reasonable.

The fact is, many many Google services don't make money in and of themselves. But they add value to the broader ecosystem as a whole.

Whether Google wanted to shut their service down is their business, but the weird machinations that have been trotted out to justify (senior management time, legal and technical risk, reputational risk) are really bizarre when taken within the broader context of how Google does and should operate.
I haven't seen anyone elsewhere point out that maybe he is onboard.

It may not be the case, but there must have been some convincing information to convince various countries to do this, and our evidence against is the departure site and the president's word.

There is an ongoing tension between a block of south American countries (see the Argentinian tweets on github), and the USA. Non-violent aggressive acts like this, or conversely offering asylum, are part of it.

The US has strongly resisted any external influence on the rest of the continent, as a doctrine. Now a block is forming locally, they will go to great lengths to resist it. I think an explanation for why the block is upset in turn can be found in the leaked cables.
Google rolls out 'SE Asia Fires' map to track haze across Singapore and Malaysia
I don't think they do any key management.
This is the bead-chain experiment. It's about to melt your brain.
Tastes Good: FoodTech NYC
That sort of glitch sounds like the kind of thing Dropbox does (did?) from time to time because it's not aware of bundles. (For those unaware, on OS X many files are actually folders, eg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format_Directory)
Seems like this content would have been a great fit for http://storify.com.
Criticue.com - 6 months ago we launched on HN
Hi,

In December a prototype of Criticue.com was launched right here on HN and received tons of positive feedback and support (thank you!).

A lot has changed since then. We incorporated, got a little funding and launched a new fancy version with a slick look and extra functionality.

For anyone that doesn't know what Criticue.com is about grin, it's a feedback exchange site. It lets you brainstorm your web design. You post feedback about other websites and for each website you review, you receive one review in return.

I invite you to try it out (no signup required) and share what you like and what you hate about it:

www.criticue.com

Thank you,
Martin
The Next Great Social Network Will Not Put Relationships First
IZettle CEO Jacob de Geer: 'Mobile payments? They're about the experience'
(1) you can also use the GIT_DIR environment variable, which might save some typing during development

(2) another solution is to just clone the bare repository in Dropbox to a temp-directory, work there, and push the changes back to the Dropbox'ed repo. Saves you the effort to specify GIT_DIR or --git-dir all the time and is the saner approach if you have to switch back and forth between different repos.

$ GIT_DIR=~/Dropbox/my_repo git init --bare
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/chris/Dropbox/my_repo/

$ git clone ~/Dropbox/my_repo
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/chris/my_repo/.git/
warning: You appear to have cloned an empty repository.

$ cd my_repo ; touch README
$ git add README ; git commit -m "README" ; git push origin master
[master (root-commit) ada37ca] README
0 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 README
Counting objects: 3, done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 213 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (3/3), done.
To /home/chris/Dropbox/my_repo
* [new branch] master -> master
This explanation borders on the ridiculous. You are claiming that the president and vice-precident of Bolivia turned their plane around of their own volition and then fabricated a search by Austrian officials in order to create an international diplomatic scandal.
“Sorry, Password Required”
It's not clear from your original top level post whether you've played the game and are complaining about the UI quirks described elsewhere in this thread, or if you're talking about the ASCII art.

If you're talking about the interface design, keyboard commands etc, ignore this comment.

If you're talking about the ASCII art I would say it absolutely is deliberate. DF is actually a sequel (Slaves to Armok, God of Blood, Chapter 2: Dwarf Fortress) and the first game was 3D. They chose to make DF a roguelike ASCII art game because if they had tried anything else, it wouldn't be half as deep as it is now. The ASCII art enables the depth that the game has developed.

As I said, if you are primarily arguing that they should keep the ASCII art and revamp the interface, you can safely ignore this comment.
...as you can see, Argentine politics are somewhat polarized.