skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The OP took the elements of the original announcement—the
> pretentiousness, the naïve pomposity, the buddy-buddy
> informality—and turned them up to eleven.

That's an interesting choice of words you used. How can something be both pretentious and buddy-buddy informal?

Pretentious: "Attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed."

Greater important and talent than possessed? Meyer conveys an informal team of three people and an intern. She also admits to just having enough knowledge of Adobe Illustrator to be dangerous. You even admit that it's buddy-buddy and informal, which downplays the importance. What if you got the impression that the design session was buddy-buddy because that's what it authentically was? Should she have lied and said that it was a rigorous exercise that was formally structured as a meeting of non-equals rather than a collaboration of colleagues?

Pompous: "Exaggeratedly or ostentatiously dignified or self-important."

Perhaps I'm not seeing the "naïve pomposity" in the post. Selecting what to convey in a logo is by definition subjective. The same applies for conveying what kind of food or clothing you like. I submit that any sufficiently detailed description of the rationale behind your food and clothing choices could be similarly mocked, unless you disregard taste by eating the cheapest food possible, or disregard color and style by wearing the cheapest clothing possible.
The best way to prevent the next Snowden is to follow ethical behavior.
And due to such policies they now have a ton of fraudulent buyers.
Like VerbalExpressions, this a good idea carried out without full acknowledgement of the nature of regular expressions. There's no shortcut - concatenation, union, and kleene star. A URL operator doesn't replace any of them.

If there isn't isomorphism between the traditional symbols and the new names, then the expressions will be limited in expressiveness.
I wonder who their marketing consultants were.
Nope. that happened in my 6th grade as well. We had particular fun with "homo erectus".
It looks like you can DVDs in bulk for between 20c and 10c per disc. If you're really serious about protecting your airgapped computer, this is a very reasonable price to pay.
Ever try reading on a phone/tablet while riding on a subway car? Might be worth it there!
Whatever you want to call it, this form of government plainly doesn't represent the general population of the country.
Ugh. Here we go again.

I'm really beginning to become tired of the constant tension associated with being in the tech industry (and, by proxy, its rung on the economic ladder):

-we're driving up rent and destroying culture in San Francisco

-we're ruining Burning Man

-we blow big money at yuppie places on yuppie things

Can't we all just keep a low profile?

If Dustin really wanted to talk about his encounter with the Winklevii, did he really need to write a blog about the nature and economies of Burning Man, or couldn't he have just focused specifically on the nuances of his encounter?

The horrible PR we all collectively maintain for ourselves is a definite NEGATIVE in this industry, sometimes.

For the record, I'm an average dude, went with a camp of other average, well-balanced people, setup my own damn tent, had a average amount of average gear, spent an average amount of time and money on preparation, and didn't have an extravagant time above and beyond most people there. And it was enormously satisfying.

I also work in the tech industry, have done well for myself, make a crazy salary, and generally didn't make a big deal about it.

EDIT - Not saying there weren't parts of this post that didn't need to be said (the encounter and it's ramifications are incredible!), but a large part felt like ripping open a scab and just rubbing salt on the wound that is our presence.
This is from the Guardian:

Among the specific accomplishments for 2013, the NSA expects the program to obtain access to "data flowing through a hub for a major communications provider" and to a "major internet peer-to-peer voice and text communications system".

What could this be: "major internet peer-to-peer voice and text communications system" ?!

We already know Skype is compromised and it's not P2P anymore anyway. So what are they talking about? Which other major P2P service for voice and text is there?
Firefox as of 23+ uses significantly less memory than Chrome (in my experience - your mileage may vary though)
Windows XP migration tools ease long overdue upgrades
I may as well make one suggestion along these lines ( implemented in a similar JS library I whipped up not too long ago: https://github.com/wyantb/js-regex ).

Macros! https://github.com/wyantb/js-regex#macros

Given some named macro, whenever the user wants to use it, they use addMacro (or some analogous method).
Actually, it's just what I was looking for in this announcement from Google. We currently deploy our internal apps on phonegap, and I want the snappy and the APIs that Chrome offers over the stock webview.
Sorry for your loss: Hallmark struggles to update its card empire
First of all, for tutorials, I really liked this one:

http://jqfundamentals.com/chapter/javascript-basics

it gets jquery specific in the end but the start with Javascript basics is very good.

I agree that its though to find things related to memory use and performance - I am pretty bad at that myself :) That said, a rule of thumb is that whenever you evaluate an object literal ( "{...}") or function expression ( "function(){ ... }") then you will will create a new object/function instance that will have to be garbage collected in the future. As already mentioned, you get around this by declaring the function beforehand (assigning it to a variable) and then reusing that reference in the future.

As for code reference, stay away from w3schools - they suck and only dominate search rankings because of aggressive SEO. I recommend sticking to MDN, or, if you are feeling adventurous, checking out the Ecmascript spec (dunno how good these are with the newfangled game stuff though)

http://www.w3fools.com/

http://es5.github.io/

For callbacks there are two things I have to say. First of all, some people used to OOP take a while to get used to callbacks instead of classes + method passing, but after you understand whats going on its hard to go back to living without first-class functions. Secondly, if you have complex code with lots of callbacks calling other callbacks then its going to be ugly no matter what you try to do (taming callback hell is a little industry of its own...). Learning about continuation passing style helps understand things a bit better though.

Finally, one thing you didn't mention but that its good to point out just in case: if you dont already know how to use the debugger in your favorite browser yet, do it ASAP. Use console.log instead of alert for when you want to do "printf debugging" and never use document.write unless you really know what you are doing. I see people doing these last two all the time and its kind of sad...
No he just said he wouldn't do something and then did it.
Not completly for free if you use that software, and if you are an expert crytpo guy, it is probable that you use that software.

I'm talking about vulnerabilities in crypto software no in email clients, browsers or office software (that probably they use too)
We are going to be integrating with Casetext (YC S13), which is an upstart competitor to Lexis/Westlaw. They're looking to revolutionize legal case research, and we're glad to be a part of it!
Here are the parts of Nokia that Microsoft ISN’T buying
This is surprisingly effective and awesome.

I created a (very hacky) style sheet to do this in calibre: https://gist.github.com/osuushi/6456804 . It gets a bit out of alignment when a paragraph wraps to a new column or page, but over all it gets the job done.

Edit: I fixed it to do one color transition per line, like the original.
"So wait. You want Paypal to require everyone who opens a PayPal account to have to write up what it's going to be used for, and wait in a queue before you can receive funds so that they can review it to ensure that it's not something like crowdfunding, and then require that you either never change what you use your PayPal account for, or submit any changes back to them, so that they can re-review it and approve your new use?"

Not at all. I want them to say up front, when you sign up for an account, which apparently-innocuous activities will likely get your funds suspended for long enough to be useless. After that, it's on you if you go ahead with it. They're obviously not communicating clearly enough right now, or this wouldn't keep happening.
The most concerning point is that transitional point where all of the old, quantum breakable, standards are in place when quantum systems roll around.

Either everything will fall apart or we'll have wised up before hand.
There's already a Chrome extension from the Box.net 2012 Hackathon:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/lca...
That those guys should have kept their heads down on that one? Much like a recent founder accent controversy? Although in the penny arcade case, any press may be good press. It was a mildly amusing comic that caused a lot of buzz.
Sure, so is using a rewriteable DVD, but neither is much more secure than formatting thumb drives before mounting them. Convenience is the only argument, and it is not all that hard to set things up so that you always format thumb drives that are plugged in.
What’s better than outsourcing? Paying developers to learn Ruby on Rails
Just replaying hands fails to take into account a lot of variables related to the other players play style. Once to start to take those into account the replaying of hands isn't needed.
128 talks about symmetric key encryption, not RSA.

I'm not sure what the crypto best practice is regarding key strength for 128 bit for symmetric crypto, but presumably it would depend on the cipher used.
I don't understand why you'd change foreground colours instead of background colours....

Either way, quick experiment shows it to be horrid for me.
Firefox uses less resources in Windows 7 than Chrome does, it runs more tabs, and it is much more stable.

I usually have more than 50 tabs open in Firefox and often go over 60 before having a tidy up. Firefox can survive that for a couple of weeks whereas Chrome would often crash in less than a day. (Flash would crash even more often.)

YMMV, but I switched back to Firefox a couple of months ago and no longer have Chrome installed....
That's ridiculous. Nokia is an excellent brand and should be retained.

It's also helping teach American students Finnish geography.
How would you feel about a "web games gallery" app in the store? It would just be a catalog and launch the native browser to play games.

Do you think that would be a good idea for someone who wanted to evangelize HTML as a games dev platform?

I'm not sure if it exists or if it would Apple's terms of service.
I've listened to this several times over the years. It shows more of the human side of GCHQ, since the BBC could never broadcast operational specifics.

My favourite bits are: 17 minutes in, an interview with an active GCHQ cryptanalyst. She's actually remarkably forthcoming.

And ~20 minutes in, a tour of the massive warehouse of computers under GCHQ, which they promise us is definitely not being used to scoop up all our communications. Sure guys. Whatever you say.

Of course, it's all propaganda of the purest form, so take it with a fist full of salt.
FSF - Free JavaScript Campaign - Too Far?
Eheh, I hadn't heard the term Toupee Fallacy before.

But in my situation at least I'm told which schools (or lack thereof) our kids have come from.
I thought this was an exceptionally well-written, nuanced article and your comment, to me, just reads like typical Hacker News complaining.
I keep hoping that Schneier's position is going to be some kind of guiding light forward because of his longstanding position that these "revelations" should be taken for granted. Since he does seem to be freaking out, do you have another voice that's worth listening to about how to think about all of this going forward?
This is the size of the AES key. AES is a symmetric algorithm and 128 bit are still considered solid there, although the trend is moving towards 256 bit.
What we're talking about here is the key size of RSA, which is an asymmetric algorithm. If you don't know the difference, go find a basic crypto tutorial. As you can read above, 1024 bit RSA is probably borken. I wouldn't trust 2048 bit too much as well. Also, progress in breaking RSA is happening a lot faster than with AES.

In the context of SSL, an assymetric algorithm like RSA is used to exchange symmetrc keys, which are used afterwards.
I suspect that Microsoft Office uses less memory (and fewer processes) than Chrome ;-)
Braintree Is On The Block, Had Acquisition Talks With Square And PayPal
Because you can't just selectively spy on the real terrorists (if there are any). You have to gather all the information on everyone, then you can narrow it down, by searching for "bomb" in all internet traffic for example.
It's quite simple. They are collecting everything that might be of use in the future. Since you can't know exactly what you might need from an in-tel stand point then you save every bit of data you can.

Also the ability of Big data to find correlations in data gets exponentially better with the more data you have. This NSA program is the very definition of Big Data at work.
...but I wanted to offer a discussion with HyTrust, the cloud security automation company,

Most convoluted attempt at guerrilla marketing I've ever seen.
Very cool. Also check out the implementation of encapsulation in John Shutt's Kernel Lisp: http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/kernel.html
Probably AES, not RSA. IIRC a 128-bit AES key is about equivalent in security to a 2048-bit RSA key.
I know a few that loves Active Directory.

On the other hand, in my current job my desktop machine is an Ubuntu box and I still miss a lot of things from Windows. The only thing I like better in Linux is the terminal, everything else still feel like a hobby PC.

I guess is just a matter of taste
You can't have total power without total surveillance. Communist dictators and others knew that very well. To remain in power you need to crush any and all dissent, as early as possible. For that you need near perfect surveillance/spying on every one.

DHS was already giving surveillance info to the police through the "fusion centers" during OWS, and we know they were considering the protesters potential terrorists, and they were arresting a lot of people who protested against the banks. It was pretty clear on which side the government was on.

So what do you think will happen at the next potential massive protest? Start thinking stuff like "pre-crime" (which will be achieved if they continue like this), and there may never be a massive protest again, because everyone who attempts to attend one will be arrested.

I don't know what the hell is going through these people's heads, and whether they're all just psychopaths or they really want all this power, but the fact that US considers all countries "adversaries" is just another side effect, because they already consider everyone who might speak or protest against the government a "threat".
In this pdf[1] , they discuss security issues in intel chips.They mention strange responses from intel. Also it's possible, but very hard to exploit those issues , which is optimal in this case.

1[]http://pavlinux.ru/jr/Software_Attacks_on_Intel_VT-d.pdf
"Maybe you don't expect people to read the fine print, but PayPal clearly does, and frankly if you are going into business then you should be making a point out of always reading the fine print.

Money is money, so if you are dealing with people who apparently won't consider reading "the fine print" or even doing some trivial due diligence in the FAQ, you can't somehow not accept these use cases."

Fine print is an odd problem. In a world of rational actors, yes, obviously everyone should read all the fine print all the time, just like everyone should every word of the manual for every product they buy. The problem is, a typical internet power user is signing up for new services on a weekly basis, and most of them have 20 goddamn pages of fine print of which 19.5 are useless, meaningless gibberish. Corporations train their users to not read fine print, because 99% of the time it's half an hour wasted to learn nothing of value, and then exploit that training to slide shit past the radar. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a company that cares about its users' welfare to put the really notable bits up front in full-size print.

Just as an example, did you know that, by signing up for a comment account on any Gawker Media site (Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker.com, Deadspin, io9, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Jezebel), you give them explicit blanket permission to sell any positive comment you make about a commercial product for use in that product's advertising? I bet you didn't, and Gawker counts on you not knowing that when you sign up.
But the applications of this technology reach beyond gambling, into finance security and even foreign policy.
Google may well consider such low effort to get posted sites as content farms, that sounds like it might fit the definition of what they were trying to downgrade with the recent updates.
> If the NSA said, "Our super smart brain trust figured out how to own your stuff with math five years ago ... ha ha!", I think we would be Totally Fine with that. Hats off to them for winning that game, but at least they played mostly fairly. (In theory.)

I disagree. Certainly they'll be doing that too, but breaking crypto is hazardous to the populace independently of how it's broken, right?

Either way from NSA's perspective they are fighting a war, with terrorism, with other nation's crypto efforts, etc. In that context there are very few "unfair" ways to fight. And indeed, the U.S. has done something like this to a certain Soviet pipeline, as I recall.

Besides, this at least leaves open the possibility of like-minded people to maintain countermeasures. If crypto is broken in general then we're all naked. If weak implementations are weak then we would need to be fixing those anyways.

I just wish I knew which one it is we're looking at.
Showing it to 200 people before one actually agrees to buy it and makes it through the loan approval process for starters.

Imagine you're a contractor and had to spend 95% of your time pitching and doing spec work. What would your "hourly" rate be?
A big part of the difference is that cryptanalysis weakens us against the NSA; sabotage weakens us against everyone.
Your title makes no sense. According to such agencies, there are no "innocent" people. From their perspective, there is only definite threats and potential threats.

And yes, the vast majority is doubtless completely useless. They're looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. Their rationale is that, in order to find the needle, they'd better ensure they have the entire haystack (preferably the entire farm).
> This library turns it into self-docummenting code, which is incredibly valuable.

The problem is that for anyone who knows how regexps work, this library provides an obfuscation layer. I personally prefer the free-spacing regexp support[1] found in a number of popular parsers. It lets you write a complicated regexp in small and/or indented chunks across multiple lines, including comments. This provides as much or more documentation than this "self-documenting" form and allows the full power of the regexp engine (which big regexps often seem to need). I've occasionally had to work out some pretty gnarly regexps, but when written in two-column code/comments form they end up being pretty understandable and maintainable.

[1] Example from the Ruby docs. IIRC, Python and a few other parsers have similar support: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Regexp.html#label-Free-Sp...
Is there a backdoor in Truecrypt? (2010)
Deep linking to apps: the solution
Tending Your (Open-Source) Garden
"New technology helps stop insider threat [of exposing massive systematic abuse of power]"
This post made me want to go to next Burning Man with his team...
I've just read this: Sarah Colwill Speaks Out About Foreign Accent Syndrome In BBC Documentary 'The Woman Who Woke Up Chinese' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/sarah-colwill-_n_38...)

This is the first time I heard “Foreign Accent Syndrome.” Very interesting.
s/Google/search engines/
To be fair to Paypal, their CEO claims he is trying to fix the systemic issues. In their response to this, they write: "We understand that the way in which we are complying to these rules can be frustrating in some cases and we've made significant changes in North America to adapt to the unique needs of crowd funding campaigns. We are currently working to roll these improvements out around the world."

The reason I think this might not be the typical corporate waffle is that they actually have been admitting that their market dominance made them soft and lazy, but that since Square, et al, are now kicking their ass, they have woken up to the problem: http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-h...
Aren't they doing both?
Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2381498
It was these types of capabilities that revealed Iran (IIRC) managed to break DigiCert to issue a GMail certificate a year or two ago to surveil Iranians via MITM.
Hesperbot – A New, Advanced Banking Trojan in the Wild
Basically, what we thought were the rules of the game

Er...speak for yourself buddy. If you thought that you could get proper crypto security from a boxed software product then I'd like to offer you a fantastic deal on a bridge.
In that case, you are seeing the size of the symmetric key being used. The bigger numbers mentioned above (1024, 2048, etc) are referring to the size of the public/asymmetric keys. The public keys are only used to set up the initial exchange of symmetric keys, which are then used to secure your browser's encrypted connection.
Instead of researching it or providing my own opinion, I'll simply cite your own comment as proof

>I completely fail to see, given the specific kind of flow control and resource control the author wants, how the asynchronous model is harder than the synchronous model.

well...

> it's more code to write, and the flow control is harder to write,
I talk about code that I can shrink by a factor of 2. Most often without even understanding what the code does, just applying local correctness-preserving transformations.

I'm talking about horrors such as (this was real, production code):

bool flag = true;
if (var1 == const1)
{
if (var2 == const2)
{
// quite a lot of code
flag = false;
}
}
if (flag == true)
{
// a little piece of code.
}

Clearly, someone forgot to clean up their code. It doesn't take a Master of Succinctness to realize that

if (var1 != const1 ||
var2 != const2)
{
// a little piece of code
}
else
{
// quite a lot of code
}

is much better (the code represented by the comments didn't touch the flag). Plus, such simplifications tend to compound. After a first pass, I often see more possible reductions that can be used for a second, sometimes a third pass.
Congrats to Mailpile, I guess; who knows; they chose to agree on terms and do business with Paypal; Paypal played by the book. Until next time... when we "all" play arm-chair CO and "DDoS" a business we really have no idea on what it's like to operate. If you haven't already, read patio11's comment that will stick at the top of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6333203
Show HN: Pomade - A simple pomodoro tracker
Becuse he assisted the Guardian in working on the story and must have seen some documents that made him hit the ceiling. Even if he isn't explaining the nitty gritty, I trust his reaction.
I suspect the real answer to "How to remain secure against NSA surveillance" is; go offline.