skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> As a related part of this move, the government has already arranged with the six largest Wi-Fi hot-spot operators in the country to have porn filters turned on by default.

> I haven’t personally tested these networks, but they’re apparently using the kind of lazy keyword filters that are already blocking access to newspaper reports about Cameron’s speech.

That's a good thing, it'll demonstrate just how lousy the idea is.

> Censorship, in the name of “protecting the children” is already happening here in the UK.

Is it really censorship if it doesn't stop anything from being published or read? At the moment it's an optional filter.

We already have stricter controls over what children can see in the form of film ratings. Except even then parents can rent / buy films and allow their children to watch them.

I don't want to say "It's not censorship unless you're being beaten up by police" (see, eg, Egypt (http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2012/egypt)) but, well, I'm not bothered by poor quality filters that I can turn off being put on my Internet. There's plenty of stupid things that ISPs do already that are more annoying.
And yet in the first paragraph he claims he had worked there for 4 years?

>In March of this year, as close to 5 months ago as makes no difference, I quit my job. It was my first full time job, and I had worked there for all but 4 years.

Huh? Am I failing reading comprehension here? I think I have a sinus infection but I don't think my brain is THAT off today...
We've just taken the beta wrappers off http://bigv.io/ after two years (we've been in business for 11). It's hosted in Manchester, UK - £10 / month for 1GB RAM, scale to 180GB, real actual humans on the phone for support, console access, choice of disc grades (SATA, SAS, SSD), command line interface... OK I'll stop selling. It's really very good though.
Originally reported and published by Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/09/us-usa-security-ns...
Dear worthless drone. In order to improve our national security, you have the honor being sacrificed for a greater cause. Remember that your experience with us is secret, and due to the necessities of the state we expect you will continue to do your protective duty in silence. As protocol dictates, we gratefully extend your $1432.67 severance for your 12 years, 5 months, and 3 days of effort. Thank you for your service. Goodbye.
The Man Who Turned Rejection Into A Career
> and that I was to never say anything about the company
> in public.

This remains the case to a large extent. This makes working with Apple and Microsoft in standards groups a bit challenging at times, since they won't actually comment on whether they're even thinking about implementing a standard, or whether they would be willing to implement it as written, until they suddenly ship it.

And if they're _not_ shipping it you have no way to tell whether that's because they never will because of some fundamental issue they perceive or whether they're basically fine with the idea bu just haven't gotten around to finding resources to implement yet.
It's already in the business plan, albeit in a vague way. One of the big advantages of SaaS is that I can practice Continuous Delivery and be constantly improving the product while I sell it. Besides PITA customers (a problem that can be mitigated with an install process that Does Not Suck), there's a problem of supporting increasingly obsolete versions in the field.
Thanks, I'll look into it. This is a serious issue.
"I've been feeling guilty about my job at tricking the people as a systems admin for the NSA, but the money is great, so i keep my mouth shut... wait... i'm fired?... ctrl+a, ctrl+c.. ctrl+v.... send"
HN folks. I think ck2's response and pearjuice's response are both inaccurate as they represent an extreme view. It might be useful to read about celebratory and the attractions and psyche of those that are drawn to it. Many of you here share Snowden's feelings but none of you did what he did. Was it simply his sense of justice that made him do this? Or something more? If he'd stayed in the US and immediately faced the music it would be much more apparent that he's a true hero willing to sacrifice everything for his beliefs. Once he plotted the whole thing and moved to a safe place before releasing it and has looked to avoid any punishment for his actions by trying to get to or stay in safe countries it's apparent that it's not a black and white case. So I don't understand why ck2's kind of dreamy eyed quote is treated differently to anovikov and pearjuice who are in downvote hell. The answer is Snowden is neither hero nor vilan.
I discovered this when going to a Target in Seattle after two decades of going to Targets in Virginia, and was pleasantly surprised when I could more or less find everything easily.

It's, in a way, a similar value proposition as Starbucks/McDonald's: you trade quality for consistency. The fact that Aisle 17 is for dishwashing and cleaning supplies becomes a core principle of your company.
Difference is walmart is actually making money, amazon isnt. So Walmart can continue what they are doing forever and thats ok, if it were clear that amazon intends to continue what they are doing forever investors would bail and the remaining investors would force amazon leadership out if possible.

As far as when the Amazon endgame starts, my guess is when they are doing as much business as walmart
Macy's keeps itself upfloat with Bridal and Baby registries. If there is a registry (which by the way, registries are rude), it's with at least Macy's. Seriously, why does everyone register with Macy's overpriced garbage?

The stuff on everyone's Macy's registry can be purchased elsewhere for half the price or less. I've looked.
Then pretty soon you will be micromanaging me, essentially doubling your cost. At some point you have to trust me with some decisions if you want to be able to operate somewhat efficiently.
one related thing that i have been wondering about: it's been argued that the internet-based voter support was key in getting obama elected. will that same team - or similar people - be willing to work next time round?

not work for the government, but for the democrats. will hackers work for democrats in the next presidential election? if it's disappointment with obama, will switching to clinton be enough? and will we see a move to 'blame obama' near the end of his term to help clinton?
I also highly recommend reading the book, American Prometheus.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Prometheus-Triumph-Tragedy-Op...
I highly doubt the NSA has such loose policies regarding code reviews so as to make that even possible. Give the guys some credit.
Depending on how bad the government wants the data, that's essentially just charging a high premium to get all the data instead of a specific user's data.

If the purchasing party is less scrupulous, you've thwarted nothing. In extreme cases (or for smaller companies), the purchaser could even be a government front.
It was a little weird for me on clicking the back button. I wasn't at the top, and the transition happened in the middle of the page.
To step back a bit from the tech problems -- encryption is hard because not everybody uses it.

I think what we need, for email at least, is a completely new protocol that's end to end secure (as hard as that is). The problem though is that I don't think something like this can be done anymore, without "interested" corporations co-opting or talking it to death. The golden age of the internet is gone.
I think the NEXT and BACK words should be right under the body copy as well. I was about to navigate away thinking, "huh neat picture, but I sure wish there was some context," before I noticed the next button buried in the bottom corner of my screen.

Great work on the map and story.
The Concorde’s Cousins
That line could be straight out of "The Thick of It".
Alcohol and tobacco, at least in the US, are not controlled to "protect the children". Because a 20 year old man can't get alcohol either.

To your other point, there is a material philosophical difference between Google/YouTube, (private company), banning books/media, and one's government banning books/media.
Though http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/02/gchq-accused-... suggests you're not a million miles away from the NSA's taps in the UK!

You can always ask us if we have government spies in our network. If I seem to want to talk about the weather instead, it's a reasonable bet that we do :) But not yet...
at least it seems that they are slowly waking up.

No, it means that, for reasons best known to themselves, they have now decided that this deserves to be an "issue". This sort of thing has been going on for decades, and the NYT has always had sources inside the government so they have known about it.
What about the view counter on my Geocity site? I would look at it everyday to see if someone happened to stumble on my site.
I genuinely don't care about US / UK government agencies slurping my data. I wish it actually did something to lower crime[1], and I wish it wasn't so expensive, and I wish the money went to other places, but I don't care about the privacy violation of my email being on more than one cache.

I am much more concerned about other privacy breaches that I'm subjected to.

People talk about the "decrypt your data or go to jail" parts of RIPA, and while that is worrying I'm a lot more worried about the other sections of RIPA which have been abused and caused actual harm to people. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Po...)
I might be a minority here, but I honestly think that making internet porn opt-in is a good idea, I am not from UK, but I support it.

As a reader of /r/nofap subreddit, I have learned that porn have had a very negative impact on a lot of people, and it is certainly not healthy for very young people (or even kids) to have easy access to it (as the situation is now).

I am just not sure if I would support other categories to block (like "esoteric material"), but regarding porn - good idea. You can opt-in if you want, can't you? The only problem is that if there are more adults in a household, and only some of them wants to opt-in.
I wonder how much of this is related to virtualization -- one of my previous positions was obviated due to this.

Instead of having system admins maintain the software state and hardware state on a forest of servers, it's a lot simpler to have VMs that delete and reprovision themselves whenever they have a software issue.

When you add in virtual HDDs or UNC paths for data locations, then the system is completely abstracted from the underlying hardware. If one of these physical hypervisor host systems has a hardware problem, the virtual servers on it can usually be live-migrated to other hosts, and the hardware can be repaired/replaced by a low-level hardware-only tech. When the hypervisor OS has an issue, it can be automatically reimaged as well.

Changes like this have made Office365 much more efficient than BPOS, and are likely at play in AWS and other datacenters as well as the NSA's.
This should be read as: "Government agency has been wasting taxpayer money by employing 900 people that they didn't need but didn't bother care to fix because the extra people justified their ballooning budget that they could use to spy more on said taxpayers."
“What’s a Browser?” – Remembering the Non-Tech-Savvy User
It's never good when so many people lose their jobs but I can't stop thinking that if so many people can be replaced by automation, something must have gone awfully, awfully wrong in the process of wisely spending taxpayers money. Why were they using people in the first place to perform tasks best left to machines?
Lots of good answers on this thread. I think the fundamental underlying reason is that programming is difficult and so poorly understood.

A given: all software has bugs. Usually, that doesn't matter — a CRUD app will eventually get debugged enough to the point of usability. (Sometimes even maintainability.) We do not understand enough about programming to guarantee perfect execution in all cases, but no one gains any value by causing an obscure input case to cause a null pointer exception.

Whenever we use crypto, however, we inherently have code which protects something valuable: from forum passwords to credit card numbers to state secrets. This means that all the subtleties which break in ordinary code, but no one cares about, suddenly become important. Every interaction of input to memory to processing to storage (to network) must be scrutinized for places where a crucial piece of data may leak an encryption key, or perhaps just enough known plaintext of known cyphertext to mount an attack.
Yes, but there is a big difference (at least in my mind). While the notion of the right to bear arms is conceptual, what it aims to protect is actually tangible (Iron and Lead) and people would feel impacted (can't go hunting, or could not 'protect themselves', the latter being less tangible.)

So it would have to appeal to people differently. Psychologically, 'privacy' is higher up the hierarchy than 'security' and 'food'. I think that's one of the main hurdles.
At what point would conservatives have been happy with any of Miyazakis films?
I think Apple is pretty well set on mobile browsing as the future growth market. They don't seem to mind cannibalizing desktop sales for iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches. In mobile browsing, Safari has ~60% market share. As long as mobile browsing keeps growing, Safari will remain an important asset for Apple.

http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri...
How are these contracts usually written with regards to the event of firing?

Disclaimer:
I fully realize that's not statistically likely at all, but I want any answers to narrowly focus on the legal language in the contract around that event.
Anyway solutions for a DIY phone that has encrypted voice/chat apps?
Rumor: Amazon looking to jump into the Android game console space
Instead of having ISPs and governments with databases detailing which one of us wants to enjoy online porn, there should be a standard on how to provide adult material on the internet. If this was to be implemented it'd be easy to create simple technologies that users could use for filtering out this kind of material themselves. The use case that most people would find this good is blocking porn in kids' phones and computer accounts. The easiest solution being having a .xxx domain.
If only there was some way to securely transfer money across the internet, psuedo-anonymously, without involving PayPal or banks. Almost like transferring coins via bits?

Maybe someday someone will invent such a system. We can dream.

Can you imagine how strange it would be if such a system already existed, and we failed to use it? But that could never happen.
> machine "reading" the email to find any excuse to label you a terrorist

Is there any evidence at all that this is happening? So far They don't need to do that, they use corrupt informants (Guantanomo) or stupid videos on YouTube (US teen "rappers").
Not true in the slightest. Ancient Greece and Rome all the way up untill the Holy Roman Empire had no problems with homosexuality especially when it was citizens against members of the lower classes.

Homosexuality was quite common and accepted in Europe until the widespread adoption of Christianity.
This is useful for me. I don't really care about the social features etc but the core product seems good.

What is the business plan? I don't want it to be advertising or selling information about me.

The documentation could be better. The site looks very slick but doesn't really lay out the basics. For instance, just reading, I wasn't sure whether or not files are stored between VM runs (i.e. being able to save my work and configurations for use in later sessions).

The site (koding.github.io) doesn't even link to the main page (koding.com).

Side note: start ups have terrible names. What's wrong with using actual words?
Snake oil: The user password is stored as plain text in local storage:

http://twitpic.com/d7c4a0
Is this kind of like - http://www.promotinglinux.com/truth/ (just for fun)

Or is this supposed to be a sarcastic poke at gmail, the NSA, etc?
Russia’s Stimulus Plan: Open the Gulag Gates
>Government snooping is a separate issue, but as far as I know there are no major email providers that a non-technical person can use that aren't vulnerable.

Not to mention, uh, snail mail is run on the government rails.
Three Innovative Ways How Big Data Will Improve the Healthcare Industry
App.net to Twitter Cross-poster
ROX-Filer can do that.
PGP key as Facebook profile photo
Shout-out to social network companies (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc): If you care about privacy, then how about adding a feature where, like one's profile photo, or tagline, etc, people can also include their PGP public key?

In fact let's build into our profile photo, a QR code that includes our PGP public keys.

PGP public keys should be something absolutely everyone has, and advertises, as just a default thing (grandmothers and soccer moms, joe the plumber and the girl next door)

If Facebook did the simple thing of just adding that to the list of profile information, and next time everyone logged on, it asked them "what's your PGP public key?" and/or "don't know, click here to generate one"... think about that

OK Zuck, you can do real good here. Let's roll
Why does government or industry have to intervene in your personal life? If you don't want to view pornographic material, don't search for it. Stay away from sites where you might see something like it. If you're a parent, educate your kid.

This is a waste of time and money. Plain and simple.
Eventually Consistent
Ehh, did you just reply to yourself? :-)
Where is the 2 min intro?
Threats, imprisonment and physical violence can be used to attack crypto as well. Go after the weakest link.
What about this article has to do with his drive? It's about Yahoo paying him $81MM to retain him for the next four years.
>People should be able to use the internet without automatically getting their privacy violated, just like they should be able to go out in public without having their privacy violated.

You do realize that that's exactly wrong. Going out into public means that you risk being followed. Being followed becomes illegal when they follow you into your home (a private space) or when they actually hurt you/have hurt you.
Thanks! I considered KeePass but I wanted to have a 2-factor auth with a yubikey usb token so went with a LastPass Premium.

Now I see that KeePass has both TOTP TFA and also yubikey support so -- way to go -- many thanks for the heads-up!
mailto:contact@example.com

What else? :)

Contact forms suck: poor feedback, no copy of outgoing message, not certitude that the message has really been sent. Email provides a lower integration, but a stronger confidence.
> Side note: start ups have terrible names. What's wrong with using actual words?

One part "brand names have always been silly" and one part "need to find a domain name that's available".
Hetzner: http://www.hetzner.de/en/
I don't understand this. It is impossible to create anything without making a political statement. How you form the world, what consequences you have to actions, everything is a political statement. Can anyone give me an example of any film that does not constitute a political statement? I'm a bit of a film buff but I don't know of any at all. Even action movies that seem utterly brainless are backed by political notions like the virtue of the soldier or the unimportance of innocent bystanders. Childrens movies usually communicate very definite ideas about gender roles. Nearly every science fiction movie seeks to convey that intellectuals are dangerous and only follows-their-heart heroes with a gun can save us.

I think if you don't believe there is a political statement in something you're watching, you're just not paying attention... or else you agree with the ideas presented as so fundamentally true that you can not understand anyone questioning them.
Context, if not apparent from the article: written while working at Amazon.
This is a place where all the windows are embedded with a very fine copper mesh to block unwanted RF (coming or going).
The geek doesn't always get the girl: a novelist on hacking romance
Because at one point they were necessary. Welcome to government provisioning. Optimization comes only when someone's political career is on the line.
Donate to EFF
A bit. It was more of a postscript.
This whole story would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. I can just imagine a whole generation of young brits teaching each other how to avoid this idiotic pornography filter. Just like every other ineffective pornography filter has been worked around by every other group of adolescents in internet history.

The people who think it works get placated, the kids work around it, and it has absolutely no effect on violence, rape or abuse whatsoever. Efficaciously a win win.
Ask HN: What's the best domain name / DNS management portal?
Hey guys,

I'm looking for a portal where I can hold our internal domains as well as the domains of our clients. The service would need to have a decent DNS system in place, and allow easy management of domains renewals, etc.

Specifically (and here's the tricky bit) we'd like to be able to 'group' our domains by client, possibly allowing for separate invoicing or payment details, but not a necessity.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!
The implication is that Wal-Mart and Target executives have a worse idea about what's best for their business model than Costco executives, which is not necessarily correct, but neither is it obviously wrong.
I don't think these changes are about expense, but about security. I suspect there will be little cost savings, at least not immediately. Instead, you're just shifting the workload from (manual) system administration to automating the system administration.

To use an example - now a human swaps out a backup tape and has physical access to it. By replacing this with a tape robot, you've taken the insecure part - that person - out of the loop.
10MinuteMail.com is my site, so I recommend it:) It's a bit more secure, in that there are no shared inboxes, each address is 100% private.
If by "most people", you mean "most HN readers", then I agree. But if you actually mean "most people", then I'd say that issue is probably not even on their radar.
Nice representation of the data.
Maybe my analogy would also by naive, but I consider the effects of porn to be similar to effects of consuming alcohol - some enjoy it, some became addicted to it, and some people's lives will get literally destroyed by it. Therefore, alcohol is "opt-in" - you have to reach certain age, and you also need to buy it, there are not bottles of alcohol available anywhere for anybody to consume.

Similar with porn, it should be opt-in, you should read certain age to be able to access it, and then do some kind of opting for it.
Paul Tyma is a very very smart guy! And super nice! I met him when was at Hacker School several years ago.
Bloomberg spends $80000 on Ubuntu Edge
By "better" I just meant it would be "cooler", in the sense of invoking old, rarely used provisions of the Constitution. But you're right, Navy/Coast Guard would be much more effective.
hi! 1. Would it be possible to download the virtual machine onto my desktop/laptop, then, work on it for a bit, then upload it back to the virtual machine?

2. Would it be possible for the online virtual machine to access a USB debugger on my desktop? thank you.
I like this highlights that data is a separate important issue in the lifecycle. The software system is program + data. With web technologies the programs are the easy bit and the data is the bit you need to protect against your competitors.

The new software paradigm since this article was written is is machine learning, where the training set is also the most expensive development cost. Procedures for the collection and refinement of the training set needs to be properly designed for a long term service.

Good read!