skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is bound to do some serious damage to the wallets of large US tech companies.

Also casts severe doubts on the claims of innocence by other tech giants.

I know tptacek will be on my ass for this one, since clearly he has good connections with security people at Google, people that he respects, and it seems they've assured him that no such thing is going on. But perhaps Thomas should consider the possibility that those good connections were either unaware of this program because they didn't have the right level of access, or were not allowed to tell him about this due to his own lack of security clearance.
I can confirm the exact same thing happened to me.
It also only lets you download 5 "squares" at a time for some reason.
Can they do that?
I assume there is a difference in law between the somewhat passive act of giving access to information already stored and forcing somebody to actively perform some action.

For example if you have private CCTV on your premises, a court can demand access to whatever footage they have captured but I don't think that they can force you to install hidden cameras on your property.

Isn't stuff like that usually done as part of a bargain, like having somebody wear a wire in exchange for not going to jail.
This case disgusts me. It makes me sick to the stomach. What the fuck happened to this world.
cusinemakaty also dropped a comment[1] 11 hours ago on Glenn Beck's site, consisting of the unicode-disguised spam followed by a normal comment. The normal comment text turns out to be lifted from a post[2] 15 hours ago by another commenter, Pachy Serrano.

[1]http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/07/10/struggles-continue-for-p...

[2]http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/07/10/struggles-continue-for-p...
why not go the whole hog and start thinking in terms of what the whole of humanity stands for and not just America.

it's time to move past territorial / tribal groupings.

for extra brownie points we could start thinking in terms of the whole biosphere.
Link to radio transcript from 2000 about Echelon.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s103059.htm

Edit: pulled out a quote:

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: The existence of the Echelon network was only confirmed a few weeks ago when US National Security Agency documents were declassified. Essentially it's a surveillance network capable of intercepting any telephone call, fax or e-mail made on earth. Echelon is run by the US National Security Agency using satellites and ground bases in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It can sift through a million electronic messages every half hour.
So, I guess, blurred background image is not cool anymore.
NSA proof app for Apple and similar devices is oxymoron. Until you know what exactly the vendor can do remotely with your device you cannot assume security.

These devices and OS-s are provided by companies that are part of PRISM so they have a track record of collaboration with law enforcement.

So running secure software on them is like putting a steel lock on a mosquito net.
Is there any reason why privacy couldn't become an issue as big as gay marriage?

I don't think so. People just have to want it as badly and fight for it.
the Vietnam War where it took 70,000 body bags on the nightly news

I was thinking of Afghanistan (21stC, 19thC), but Vietnam would serve. It was your analogy, and the only valid comparison is tactical, not concrete.

I'm not supporting this particular app and wouldn't use it myself (I just use GPG on trust), but do think it's important we have a lot of people trying to work in this space, if only to have sufficient choice to prevent the field narrowing. The worst possible outcome from my point of view is to have just a few apps worldwide for crypto, not just for technical reasons but for political ones.

My attitude is that a handful of secure apps is infinitely better than a plethora of bad ones. I'm pretty sure the NSA would prefer the latter.

I'm not sure that's really the choice we have (a few secure apps OR lots of insecure ones, I'd have an AND in there and some grey area between secure and insecure), and how many crypto apps is too many? 200? 20? 10? 1?

Given the evidence from the PRISM program, which relies on tech infrastructure being localised in a few prominent US companies to give the NSA easy access which they have found very useful, I disagree about a handful of apps being the worst outcome for the NSA. Ultimately the security of cryptography is also dependent on things outside the cryptographers' control (politics, laws, corporate policies in a specific country), and I'd rather have too many cryptographers than too few in the world. Crappy amateur apps, as you put it, is part of that because some of those people might then learn why and how their apps are insecure and make better ones.
Nope, then good grades wouldn't be repeatable!
I'm a high school math and science teacher, in a small alternative school. I teach an intro programming class each year, which I am slowly starting to integrate into core classes.

I also want to apply what I know to long-standing problems in education. I want to bring core concepts of programming workflow, such as forking, into education. I am currently working on a project called Open Competencies, which allows:

- schools to develop and maintain their own bodies of learning standards;

- new schools to fork another school's competency system, in a matter of minutes;

- schools to define different "pathways" through the curriculum.

Demo project: http://opencompetencies.herokuapp.com

Code: http://github.com/openlearningtools/opencompetencies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) (also called complete packet inspection and Information eXtraction - IX -) is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part (and possibly also the header) of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions, or defined criteria to decide whether the packet may pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or, for the purpose of collecting statistical information. There are multiple headers for IP packets; network equipment only needs to use the first of these (the IP header) for normal operation, but use of the second header (TCP, UDP etc.) is normally considered to be shallow packet inspection (usually called Stateful Packet Inspection) despite this definition.

There are multiple ways to acquire packets for deep packet inspection. Using port mirroring (sometimes called Span Port) is a very common way, as well as optical splitter.
Deep Packet Inspection (and filtering) enables advanced network management, user service, and security functions as well as internet data mining, eavesdropping, and internet censorship. Although DPI technology has been used for Internet management for many years, some advocates of net neutrality fear that the technology may be used anticompetitively or to reduce the openness of the Internet.

DPI is currently being used by the enterprise, service providers, and governments in a wide range of applications.

http://www.adax.com/products/dpi.html

http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2013/2H12-Service-Provider-DPI-...

With DPI encrypted comms can be routed to storage, from there the encrypted data can be sent to the supercomputers for further analysis.
Just what can, and can not, be cracked is open to conjecture, as I don't really know the specific capabilities of the supercomputers in use by the alphabet gang.
However, with the rapid decline of storage prices it would be safe to assume that what cannot be cracked today, may be broken in the not too distant future.

I'm wondering if there actually is any currently known encryption which cannot be broken in the unforeseeable future...

Whichever way it is, I wish this venture luck and success.
In our area the NBN has gone up recently, and we've received letters saying that the existing copper network will be decommissioned in a year so all landline phone users will need to get an NBN connection.
If the Aus govt is baking intercept points into the NBN (not hard to imagine) then they'll be able to intercept phone traffic as well, whether they get cooperation from telcos or not.
If he'd succeeded he would have done us all a great service.
People just don't give a shit. That's the sad reality. The Kardashian baby is far more important. I mean, look at PRISM. I'm honestly starting to think we deserve it.
VPN: Do you mean tinc, by chance?
Usually the word average means arithmetic mean, but the median is also an average.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
From what I understand, the government has required the telcos to sign agreements forcing them to cooperate with the transition to NBN infrastructure.
Valve's perfect hiring hierarchy has 'hidden management' clique
That is a fantastic example of "Bad Strategy". It's fluffy, it doesn't mean anything, there's no tangible policy that can be derived from the grand statement, and it doesn't say "no" to anything.

For more discussion of that, and ways to do strategy better, I highly recommend "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy".
Great looking app and all, but it assumes you have good looking contacts AND high-resolution pictures of them. I wonder what visual effect it will have without all those fancy photographs of both people and scenery.
In the early days of linux I had trouble getting things to work with other distros. Slackware just works. I also learned more, because you are closer to the configuration files.
Running a full unity desktop on your average smartphone would be dog slow. Looks like the idea is to use it to deliver thin client services.
transitioning from coding to running a business of coding.

Have never done anything as cool as every other commenter here - wondering what I have done with my life :-)
Bank of England tour app
Thanks! That's a great one.
... and by white paper you mean "marketing material"? I had Nokia PureView 808 and I agree that it is nice and helps making good photos when downscaled. Idea to use sensor in this way is really interesting but in the end that just covers one little thing from many that are important in photography. For the same (if not lower) price you can buy good compact (if it must be pocketable) or system photo camera (if size matters but can be slightly bigger) and enjoy all benefits of photography like high ISO numbers, big sensor (not in megapixels but by area that is more important than megapixels), possibility to change aperture (this one is big for me because of bokeh) and some other.

It is just a little bit bigger sensor in the end with one smart idea that is not contributing much.
did you just refer to ISS as Mir?
Really?
there is big thing comming from gnu: gnunet.org
it uses economic model in stead of waiting power on hashcash/proof of work
I was speaking of the US, but I also live in the UK, and I have first-hand experience getting a UK visa as a highly paid professional, and it was not exactly easy. Also I might add that though the NHS is set up as a human right, all public funds are not. For instance, I have to pay for my daughter's school in full, which would be partially covered by the state if I were a citizen. So it's not a question of going from "open" borders to "closed", it's a question of degree.
SEO Beratung zum Discounter Preis?
The old guys here know how the UNIX wars ended up.

Supporting the idea of the jour has development costs.
I agree. I've been using NVidia hardware for the better part of the last decade and switched to Intel HD4000 graphics sometime last year. The experience is really refreshing. Stuff works and I don't have to screw around with the binary drivers. The performance is also acceptable for light gaming. It is definately much slower than the GTX NVidia card I have in my big bulky box that's gathering dust but it fits comfortably in the laptop without making it a cooking oven.
Thanks for the reply, despite your choice of muffin over cupcake ;-)

Looking forward to following the storyline progress.
The data used in making this statement is utterly skewed. I defer to Kuhn to explain why - how many variables were accounted for in any study supporting this conclusion? This doesn't have to be epistemologically far removed - there are real variables I'm sure were not accounted for. For example, the DEA has been on campaign for 2 years to subvert the FDAs authority - where exactly did funding come from and by whom? Also, one has to consider the rapidly shifting economic climate we live in - certainly that would have an effect on performance if it is weighing on a student's mind... Problems with the scope and geolocation of participants are clear. And the article writer forgot to address what is placed at the end of every published scientific study - it's limitations and how the study could have been better. And then there still are all those epistemological problems (infinite variables) still sitting there, glaring....
It looks like they're shipping orders up to Oct 2012 now: https://forums.butterflylabs.com/blogs/bfl_jody/

Or am I reading that wrong?
Don't be evil: Moving everything off of Google
I'm actually secretly hoping Google (and the rest) gets found out doing the same, too (that PRISM slide seemed to imply all on the list gave direct access, not just some, I think). Because if they do that, and they get exposed, they might actually be forced to offer end-to-end encryption for their services to regain their users and their customers' trust.

My trust for all of these companies is lost anyway. I can't trust them anymore until they remove the need to trust them, by offering end to end encryption. Because even if they are "good guys", who knows what kind of stuff they are "compelled" to give and how much. And for that reason I can't trust any of them anymore, until they make it so I don't have to trust them, and remove any doubt that they can be involved in it.

You may say, but if it's such a big deal to you, why not just use an alternative solution for that? Yeah, sure, but what about the other hundreds of millions of people not doing that? That's why we need the big guys to be our allies on this, so not just me or even everyone on HN gets really secure communications, but every one of their users. Plus, these e2e encrypted services don't work or aren't practical unless you have all of your friends using them, so there's that issue, too.
Before: copy file to thumbdrive/cellphone.
Now: take picture with cellphone.
I love SQL and I love databases. It's usually where I start any debugging - "what's in the database?" is what my first mentor always used to say when I hit a snag - surprising how often the actual data is simply not being transported to the user correctly.

I notice that devs who love their ORM of choice tend to rally against SQL itself, but I for one, would rather see a SQL statement - abstraction to an ORM is great of course because it keeps you in the paradigm of your chosen language, but it sucks because every time you move to a new framework, you have to re-learn how to create those complex pieces of SQL you've been using.....
This Englishman too. Sweetened oat porridge is for children :)
It is not about leaks. It is about backdoors in hardware.
I've actually thought the opposite. I'm surprised that his personal story doesn't get talked about more in the press. He's a guy who started a company, made a huge amount of money, became the first South African in space, and now has a company that is trying to build an operating system to dethrone Windows and OSX.
That works as well. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of these huge one-liners (including the one I posted). I split mine up a bit and posted it here: https://coderwall.com/p/ha-c2w
I had an appreciation for FreeBSD. They were smart about some things. Especially circa 1996 era. It was an easy install. Pop in a 3.5" disk and do a network install. It had drivers and automagic support for obscure ethernet cards which Linux did not support at that time. It even had an easy modem install. When I needed a small server quick I'd buy a PC from a store, pop a disk in it and network install FreeBSD. Get up a DNS, mail or web server in no time. Making the install process easy can help an OS get out there a lot. The servers were sturdy and good too. A nice ports system for applications - better than dpkg or rpm at the time. It just worked. The install itself was a thing of beauty - no hassles. FreeBSD 1996 beats Gentoo 2013 in that department.

As far as bloat, some BSDs are more elegant, but I do not think Linux is that bloated. It is small enough to succeed on embedded systems and Androids. The device driver section is bloated, but the core system is not as bad.

Yes, Ubuntu is not small and simple, but Debian is if you want it to be.
Samsung makes Android cameraphones as far as I know and they do it right IMHO. 41Mp are nice, I don't say anything (I had PureView 808 until I dropped and destroyed it), but it is not the most important thing in photography.
Nicely put. SQL is the great equalizer.
Show HN: HTML5 strategy game using Canvas, Socket.io and Node.js
Adding actions to Gmail using Schemas
My trust for all of these companies is lost anyway. I can't trust them anymore until they remove the need to trust them

I'm not sure that is at all achievable as long as they have the ability to hold any significant data centrally...

So that makes services like Gmail and Google itself... all impossible. Even GDocs and GDrive (potentially achievable with some client-side encryption) would require trusting Google that it does not transmit anything to the backend.

There is no way Google will do that, so the only alternative is: replace the Google behemoth with a million alternatives. Reverse the trend of centralisation and instead offer a myriad services that all do more or less the same thing, but in different jurisdictions, with different security protocols, etc.

Any industry player that can store a significant fraction of the world's information in one place is a danger to freedom, since eventually they will be secretly requested to hand it all over by a secret court.
This is why I only advise the use of dynamic languages for small projects.

This is specially an issue in the enterprise world where very few people care about unit testing.
Because it's not like what you do, you become, or anything.
Many blogs nowadays are rediscovering computing history.
You're not having root on my digital life, IFTTT, as much as I want to use you.
Usually, you have some additional information, aside from the correlation itself. For example, instead of just knowing "some variable X correlates with some variable Y", you may know what X and Y actually are, and some facts about similar entities.
How's that felt over the past decade?
That's a great estimate. According to http://careermash.ca/blogs/can-ontario-aerovelo-team-win-250..., Todd's power output for 1 minute is 772 watts.
Rack Servlet from Square Engineering Team
Ah, if you put the word 'legal' there, then there is no discussion and nothing to talk about: legal is whatever it says in the law of your country. I'm not in USA, so I have no idea what is or isn't legal, and don't actually care. Legal has nothing to do with ethics and whether something is right or wrong, and doing something that is ethical but illegal is always preferred over something that is legal but unethical. It would always be an ethical imperative to attempt to change an unethical law as well.

Of coarse, sometimes we put our own safety above ethics, and people have differing opinions on whether that is right or not. There is no easy answer there.
Nouveau (the reverse engineered Nvidia drivers) only work on some of the systems for some of the users some of the time(1). It is an incredible amount of work, and an incredible amount of functionality that they have. And they are constantly chasing advances in Nvidia's hardware, as well as progression in the Linux desktop world.

As an example of Nouveau not working "fully" - I get pointer trails, incomplete drawing, no vsync, monitor not doing DPMS power down and several other glitches. As a third monitor this is okay, but it wouldn't work for a primary.

Nvidia's binary drivers are generally very good providing you only want what they provide. For example it was only very recently (as in months) that they started supporting xrandr 1.4 and even then it doesn't play nicely with others.

(1) The Nouveau folks don't claim any different, and "some" does often turn out to be "a lot"
I've only been working for two years so I guess my career has pretty much just started, and I like the path I've (accidentally) taken to learning languages.

I met my first real programming language in college, Java, and I still recommend it to any beginner. It's great for grasping OOP concepts, algorithms, data structures, design patterns, and other problem-solving approaches that you can carry on to implement in other languages. I did some work in enterprise systems and Android during my first year.

Then I had to study Objective-C to make iOS apps, but I also picked up some things about C and I'm actually reading the K&R book now to know more. I think that C is a great language to learn after Java because it gives you an insight of what the Java syntax hides from you, but does anyway in the compiler level.

The thing now is that I don't know what I'm going to do next once I'm done with C. For me, I code because I want to build a product I can someday build a company with, so I don't really have a drive to learn the open web stack in depth (I already have mobile for front-end). I guess I'm just gonna go back to mastering the algorithms and some maths. Or does anyone have advice for me what to do next?
The site uses Google hosted jQuery. Guess being tracked by Google is not an issue for them. ;)
I get what you're saying, I understand it, and I agree with the pitfalls. But I really really really don't agree that one should avoid LINQ. Sure if you don't understand how it works, and how it impact the performance, you should use it less. But don't try and drag the language down because you find it difficult. LINQ is easily one of the best things that have happened to a mainstream language in a long time, and if used right it produce highly maintainable code, that is very easy to read and understand. A lot of data manipulation really is done on sets, and LINQ makes it a breeze to do.
Most companies are not startups, installing software as soon as new releases get available.

Just to give another example, our consulting company still gets requests for projects to be deployed against Java 1.4!
You can turn static typing on in clojure, bro.
Any chance you could stop asking silly questions? The employees choose freely to apply for work there was (very obviously) what I meant.
This! I personally really can't stand these apps anymore who only show us the best case scenario design on their website or screenshots. I have exactly 0 photos assigned to contacts on my phone.
Also, why is there a picture of a city at night for the 'woodwork workshop'. Makes sense, huh? We're not all hispters.
Why would they need customers, whose email they won't be bale to read? There is a reason these services don't have end-to-end encryption, without a man in the middle there is no way to monetize on peoples data.
Its a shame that they put such a ridiculous linkbait title on an otherwise good article.