skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The arguments made for the plan (and NYT's reporting of it) seem extraordinarily stupid. Nowhere in this article does anyone question the initial premise of "monitor everything or nothing". What exactly is the need to monitor the entire freaking internet for malware? Why can't they just deploy their security, whatever that is, on high-value targets like, say, the government networks, power plants etc? (I'll be generous and assume their software is for protection against things like stuxnet... why would these networks need to be connected to the internet in the first place?) The argument of all-or-nothing seems like complete nonsense, to say the least.

> Senior agency officials concede that much of the technology needed to filter malicious software, known as malware, by searching incoming messages for signs of programs designed to steal data, or attack banks or energy firms, is strikingly similar to the technology the N.S.A. already uses for surveillance.

The mind boggles.
Ask HN: About Apollo 11
I couldn't find any detailed sources on internet about Apollo 11.

How did they land on the moon, how did they came back to earth? What was the engineering behind this marvelous trip to moon?
Steve Jobs hated Android so much that he created Marco and Gruber to make sure his crusade is continued even after his death. They don't really exist, it's all written by the Apple puppet master.
Am I the only concerned that once a few billion of these energy parasites are deployed everyone will have to have to use more energy to broadcast the same signal the same distance?
duplicate: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6004470
We just got that last one but haven't been able to advance!
The promise itself isn't bullshit, but the execution is definitely slow.

Windows 8.1 is opening a lot back up but I will agree that MS shot themselves in the foot by making it as "simplified" as it is. It's nowhere near 1:1 with .NET or even Win32 at this point and that'll likely take quite a bit of time, likely well beyond the "mythical version 3".

I feel they absolutely have to release new version of Windows or at least the API every year. It has to get very close to 1:1 or a lot more people will start abandoning ship. I know personally I was more neutral and borderline annoyed at the WinRT change but I think 8.1 is reviving some enthusiasm I lost. I believe they're heading in the right direction it'll just be a matter of getting there as fast as possible to keep my interest. It's not a very pleasant feeling when you think that you picked a poor choice by sticking with .NET as things start to fall away. I keep looking for WinRT projects to start picking up steam but they're pretty much non-existent in the Atlanta area, save a very select few. I'm really hoping 8.1 starts to change that.
He already has a version of Instapaper for Android, so he clearly has no problem making money off the platform, whatever little it may be in comparison to iOS.
Evernote Introduces Rate Limiting
Larry Ellison: Google is evil, NSA is essential
My instinct is that labels are an afterthought, and that if you're trying to do too much with labels, you're looking for more complexity than Trello wants to give you.
Hah, indeed. I had that Aleph One article printed out and stapled, and would carry it with my books in high school!
The actor I'm most disappointed in is MIT.

Right now, the DOJ is one of the targets of a massive scared-straight campaign by Beltway technologists. One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that US cybersecurity, outside of the military and the IC, is incredibly bad. If most civilian agencies were private corporations, they would have been sued dozens of times by users for negligence in data handling.

For those that understood the dangers of this lax security posture, for many years it was a game of railing into the wind about the potential consequences of continuing to ignore this attack vector.

Then, China got involved.

Suddenly, the dangers weren't speculative at all. They were right at our doorstep. And the same Cassandras that were on the outs for so long suddenly found themselves with the ear of every CIO in Washington. What followed was a massive purchasing binge, which is still ongoing, and a huge amount of advertising and mindshare devoted to this topic.

It was amidst the height of this cyber-scare that the Schwartz prosecution was brought. For Mr. Heymann, Aaron Schwartz was a huge target. A US hacker, caught in the act of stealing information worth millions, was a great prize for Mr. Heyman, his boss Carmen Ortiz, who has rather naked political ambitions, and her bosses in DC.

So why am I disappointed in MIT? Because the DOJ has never understood computer technology very well. MIT does. It was their job to educate the DOJ, to subordinate passion to reason, and to parse the difficult technological issues to explain the real lack of damage caused by Aaron Schwartz's actions.

MIT is supposed to be a guardian of our online rights and a cradle for technologists like Schwartz. It should have been on the forefront of the opposition to Mr. Heymann, demanding that charges be dropped. Instead, they threw him to the wolves. And now, in one final insult, they ask the courts for special leave to screen documents in order to hide their involvement with the prosecution.

I hope the individuals involved know that they abandoned a sacred trust, tarnished the name of a great institution, and negligently contributed to the death of a brilliant young man. I hope they know that they weren't "just doing their jobs," that they didn't "follow rules and procedures," and that no one buys their excuses anymore.

I hope that at least one of the administrators responsible has lost even one night's sleep over Mr. Schwartz's death. But, knowing the disdain and disregard for Mr. Schwartz that these hired bureaucrats expressed while he was alive, I doubt it.
Bless your heart.

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

or this

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/
Pakistani Freelancer Makes $1 Million by Selling a Single WordPress Theme
Some alt-coins have been destroyed by the in-rush of massive hashing power, which caused a difficulty-adjustment up, followed by an exit of that hashing power, leaving block-progress so slow that it would take 'forever' (impractically long) for the next normal compensating adjustment-down to happen.

Since one of the joys of Bitcoin is using it to exercise one's paranoid imagination, consider scenarios where somehow, an enemy of Bitcoin (or promoter of an alternative) can somehow disable or redirect all that ASIC power in a short time frame.

Perhaps, in cahoots with the ASIC makers, some magic input can cause them to begin malfunctioning (either temporarily or permanently). Or, a cartel controls enough SHA256 power to withhold capacity, and switch to a NewCoin needing the same hashing resources, in rapid coordinated succession. Or both.

It might be hard for Bitcoin-prime to adapt in time, while NewCoin's deep-pocketed backers from the USG, CCP, or evil lectroids of Planet-X tempt miners and Bitcoin balance holders to switch to NewCoin, perhaps via an initial endowment mechanism which requires the irreversible destruction/relinquishment of old Bitcoin balances.

Ah, good times. Good Stephensonian-science-fictional times.
Ask HN: GitHub-based spam/scam emails
Hi, I've recently received some emails and I've been wondering if they're spam/scam based on my GitHub profile or if they're actual people interested on me.

Here's the very first one I got - http://i.imgur.com/VDOJPEd.png. I'm pretty sure that one was a bot because I had this repository on GitHub called "HTML5 2D Platformer" but I had deleted it long before the email though.

And here's the second email which I got 7 days ago - http://i.imgur.com/i0Z3urZ.png. I don't really know what to think so I replied him - http://i.imgur.com/q142wP2.png.

I'm pretty sure they're bots or scam/spam, but I might be getting actual interest because of my GitHub profile[1]. Has anybody else getting these emails? What should I be doing about them? Thanks in advance guys.

[1]: github.com/davidgomes
So how's the White House response to the petition to fire Carmen Ortiz?
It was a win-win situation. Shut down the service, or get a backdoor into the emails of people who are explicitly trying to keep their communication private.

Had lavabit capitulated, we wouldn't know about it.
isn't Sizzle just a selector engine? Just seems selector + manipulation
SPA = single page app
There was, in fact, an effort to deploy those systems, during a period of time when the government was fighting as hard as possible to stop cryptography from "going mainstream." The efforts failed because:

1. David Chaum did not understand when he had won and kept trying to get more money for his startup.

2. There were (and still are) patents on the math that prevented these systems from just being deployed without waiting around for Chaum.

3. The security guarantees of digital cash are not nearly as important as people thought. It turns out most Internet users are not terribly concerned about privacy and banks are good enough at dealing with fraud that the benefit of digital cash does not outweigh the cost of deploying it.

You may argue that none of these apply to Bitcoin, and that is probably why Bitcoin has been so widely adopted. It remains to be seen if the economics of Bitcoin really work at scale or over long periods of time.
If you are interested in how it works, go to www.ixiplay.com tab technology or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eqQ6DtGt9o
There are those times when the device you're powering isn't supposed to be visible and would benefit greatly by the reduction in size from shucking the battery.
>All Ford's pardon did was to prevent vengeful Democrats, some holding grudges going as far back as 1950, from criminally prosecuting him.

So while we're in agreement that Nixon was a criminal, you're saying he should not have been prosecuted...because people had other reasons to dislike him beyond his criminal acts? I fail to see how allowing Nixon to escape justice allowed the country to Move On. It demonstrated to the public that in fact, there are different classes of people in this country, and the powerful simply aren't subject to the same laws as the commoners.
I wrote a version in Python: https://gist.github.com/agfor/6225437

The original code can be used under CC BY-SA 3.0 since it was posted on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/a/2468729/500584
Hey guys, use whatever products and services work best for you. There's no need to pledge allegiance to any company, nor is there a need to tear down somebody else for having an opinion.
Spideroak gives Bitcoin a shot..
Aaron was also involved in some groundbreaking software development for political activism [1] [2]. I find it extremely easy to believe that someone in the DoJ saw that and decided to make an example out of him to dissuade other "hacktivists."

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/stron...

[2] https://github.com/naomifox/mass-email-delivery-code
I was going to rephrase it when I had the time to ask you for legitimate reasons which do not already have safety nets.
Loopy Ideas Are Fine, If You’re an Entrepreneur
Oh, you're right about natural rights vs. granted powers. And I agree the prosecution went way too far, although Ortiz [edit: not Heymann] must have been shocked at the outcome since she literally got commendations for going way too far before. https://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/201...
I wonder if Ryan Dahl is following in Chuck Moore's footsteps now.

http://www.ultratechnology.com/forth.htm
I'm new to web programming but I got the impression that C++ for web work was silly ... use PHP, use Rails, use this, blah, blah, everyone said. Now it seems that Node.js is just C++ style programming in JavaScript, expect that you get "packages" that manage the HTTP headers (and other things of course) for you.

It would be cool if someone makde a Node.C++. I would have less of a learning curve.
I did an experiment a while ago on whether I could use a crystal radio to light up an LED. Short answer, yes. Long answer, only in very short pulses and that still required a fairly strong AM signal. I guess, this absorbs frequencies of a much wider range.
I don't understand. Can you not just roll in a promises library (like Q)and call it a day?
Plumfare acquired by Groupon
A Guide to Learning Online
What, so you think stalkers should not have a right to a fair trial? They are using their right, not abusing it. They don't lose that right just because the accuser is not interested in seeing them.
Spend Some Time With Me: Social Is the New TV
I dunno. When I'm going 65 in a 45 and I know I'm dead wrong, when the cop only gives me a ticket for my broken tail light I don't give them a hard time. I would fully expect that if I gave the officer the finger he'd give me both tickets. The prosecutor probably felt he was doing the kid a favor and got snubbed. I'm not saying it's right, just saying there's more than one side to the story.
Writing VBA code for users that can't is part of my everyday job, and I guess that it is the job of a lot of support/commando developers. Excel is a great tool foto implement simple investment strategies but it often ends like 'hey could you write what we are trying to do in VBA ?', and most of the time it can be done. But I have that feeling that writing VBA costs more than it should, that VBA is playing against the developer while any other language makes him feel like there's no limits.
Observing the situation when I'm in the densely populated area where I have problem in communicating with my own WiFi base because of the noise from other people's stations, I can imagine exactly two potential problems:

1) In densely packed areas, the devices first installed stop working as soon as there are more devices, due to noise.

2) In far-away places, not enough energy for devices to work.
Why a New Golden Age for UI Design Is Around the Corner
These Two Tweets Made Apple Share $17.26 Billion Increase
I've always preferred cards that were smooth white on at least one side. Made it much easier to jot down some extra info.

I give out so few cards I decided to hand-print a batch using a rubber stamp and a small stencil I used with some flat paint. No two are alike. Has a nice texture.

The back is blank for any additional stuff to be added.

Key info (URL, E-mail, phone) was pre-printed, though, since I do not want to have to trust my handwriting skills if I'm rushed.

I've had people hand me cards, tell me the E-mail address printed on it is wrong, and then they scribble down their correct address; later I find that I cannot read it.
So Heymann increased the apparent penalties based on Swartz exercising First Amendment rights? So much for rule of law.
Because in no way would justice have been served. The stringing up of one gang leader by another gang would not have provided the country safety, security, recompense, or even resolution - It would have started an all out war, the one we're now seeing in politics.
What podcast app was ever removed from the app store? There was some controversy before they started being accepted, and then problems with search in the app store. But I'm not aware of any apps that were accepted and then removed.
.fword:before {
content: "fuck";
}

<span class="fword"></span>
What I Have Learned: Attorney-Client Privileged and Confidential
lessons learned:
1-use a popular platform to market/develop your product instead of reinvesting the wheel and build your own CMS.
2- capitalize on that platform ecosystem such as themes market places to promote your themes for free.
3- offer great customer service and customization (what the theme offers)
what else lessons do you have?
When I used to tutor friends in writing, I'd often read a convoluted, non-grammatical, "academic" sentence and ask, "What do you mean?" and, when they would give me a simple answer, I'd say, "Write that down!" Aiming for a writing style that sounds as clear as speech is a good practice for beginners, and if you can pull it off you're way ahead of most others.

A great way to achieve this yourself is to take your first draft (or current paragraph, or whatever) and read it out loud. Don't fake it under your breath. Stand up, go somewhere private, and really read it out loud. If it sounds horrible, rewrite it.

This "as clear as speech" goal is basically the style Strunk & White are training people for. Once you've mastered it, you can decide whether you want to go for more (e.g. Faulkner-like, Derrida-like, "casual," etc. Also check out the "spoken++" advocated by _Clear and Simple as the Truth_. You could even read Joyce's Ulysses for a parody of all kinds of writing styles.). But start with just making your writing communicate as well as your speech does.
Ladar Levison On Why He Closed Lavabit
One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that US cybersecurity, outside of the military and the IC, is incredibly bad.

Not sure why you're excluding Mil/IC here, in light of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, did you mean to restrict your point to Internet-connected devices?
I'm going to focus on creating more CRUD examples now that 0.9 is out.

In the same way that JavaScript needs frameworks to have a nice high-level way to create CRUD, Elm needs libraries and frameworks too. I have been focusing on language-level details, so Elm does not have those frameworks yet. It takes time, and I'm working on it! :)
To use his language, I agree that the "whole thing fucked", but I also think it's fun. I enjoy the fact that things are a challenge and sometimes quirky.

Sure, down in the trenches it makes you want to pull your hear out. And the world would probably be more productive if software interfaces and programming languages were completely frictionless. But it would also make programming, to me, less fun, challenging, and enjoyable.

We are imperfect beings living in an imperfect world, and I don't think changing the status of either or the former or the latter would create the nirvana ry is alluding to.
Host Gator gets around this by putting a fake coupon in its signup flow to make you think coupon has been applied https://www.evernote.com/shard/s151/sh/0189a90d-cf03-426e-88...
Why We Should Fear the Tech Oligarchs
I was an early adopter of mobile web enabled devices (pre iPhone) and I remember my friends making fun of me for being so obsessed with the internet, to the point where I felt embarrassed and avoided (with great difficulty) using my web enabled mobile devices in certain company.

Fast forward to the present, and those same people who once ridiculed my obsession are themselves now obsessed with their own web enabled mobile devices...

My girlfriend is a staunch anti-internet type, and she often chastises me for not paying attention to her while I'm at my desk, thus I agree with the intent of the article, even if I don't always practice what it 'preaches.'
I wouldn't even be 1% surprised if they forced Swartz into committing suicide, by threatening to harm his loved ones if he didn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_suicide
The monitor everything or nothing thing is a false dichotomy. As is the assumption that the NSA needs to be the ones doing it.

That said,critical infrastructure covers a hell of a lot more than that if your trying to protect against targets in a full blown war.
What happens if I take out Visa or Mastercard's payment systems? Walmart's logistical planning and inventory systems? The container management systems at major US ports?
I am more concerned about this:

"Lavabit had complied with 'narrowly tailored' court orders for user information on at least two dozen occasions in the past"

In other words Lavabit is not any better than Hushmail. Lavabit did not base its security on cryptography, it based on it trusting the people who worked for the company. Cryptography was just a side show, just like with Hushmail, because Lavabit could get the plaintexts whenever someone working there wanted (or whenever they were compelled to do so by a government, criminal organization, etc.).
That's not how radio travels though. Instead of thinking of it as a beam that may be diverted by these, think of it as a bright light (omnidirectional) at a distance.

If there are "things" in the way, some of that light will bounce off and cast a shadow behind those things. Or they may reflect some of the light against the neighbors and you'll get some illumination behind obstacles. Some of these obstacles can be transparent to the light, translucent, semi-opaque or completely opaque (I.E. Paper, Wood, Concrete, Concrete with rebar, Steel facade).

But since the signal travels in all directions, there won't be enough attenuation caused by these that are any more significant than actual obstacles to reception.

A bigger problem may be interference from neighboring devices that function the same.
If you lost your wallet at Outside Lands, your information is now public
I disagree with the idea that "[...] every device on earth runs JavaScript makes me bet that Node will prevail."

Because Node does not strictly equal Javascript-- V8 is not Javascript, nor is spider monkey. Most node applications, without some modification, do not run in the browser. They are missing tons of libraries and cannot interact with the file system.

I do appreciate the ability to have a single codebase, but over the past few years, I've pivoted and hope to someone's god that it is NOT javascript. Mostly because, in my experience, Javascript itself, even with a great focus from the beginning, is incredibly difficult to maintain.

Even then, is having a codebase in one language the best idea? There are some things that are much better to write in Erlang than they are C, and vice versa. It depends on the problem you're trying to solve.

The bigger the project, the less Javascript I want in it.

I think ASM.js, or something similar, will be the death of writing Javascript. Then it won't matter what language it's written in, we can use source maps to debug and it'll be faster than we could've ever written by hand*

*single one off functions don't count. Try writing a webapp in pure x-86 assembly.
Welp. Brute-forced and got all the single-word answers, but some of the answers are multi-word.
Does the increase in radio receivers require an increase in the energy to broadcast to the same area?
Yes. The comment was restricted to internet-connected devices and in particular network and endpoint security safeguards.

Both Snowden and Manning got their information from systems to which they had been granted access. .Mil and IC targets are among the most hardened in the world, even if they were a bit lax about implementing fine-grained access control amongst their cleared personnel.
FotPF: How to Protect Your Privacy in the Age of NSA Surveillance [pdf]
Is mobyfy.com violating the copyrights of mobify.com 
I bought mobyfy.com and deployed a launch page, next day received an email from mobify.com about copyright violation. Is this really a violation? Here is the email :

Taha,

We have recently been made aware of your website called mobyfy.com. It is in direct violation of our copyright and trademark rights.

We hereby request that you shut down the website (mobyfy.com) immediately and stop further infringement of our rights. If not, we will be forced to take legal action.

We expect your prompt response.
Mobify
The (un)usual suspects – global fraud by country
can you share some of your reasoning behind this (quite extreme) belief?
It would be if you lied to people and told them that you made the pens.

The example you chose is deliberately one in which it would be assumed that you were not asserting authorship. Frankly, choosing that example shows you're dishonest.