skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It might be slightly more comforting if anyone, including the NSA, was denying it.
Everything we learned at Apple's Press Event: iPhone 5S, 5C, iOS 7, etc
If I understand your proposal correctly, it would be found out almost immediately, as file checksums would be altered and quite a few places do check them.
You don't need to invent a new phrase, "Climate Journalism", journalism will suffice. It's like the phrase "reverse racism", the reverse adjective is unnecessary.
Going at your premise and skipping over the fingerprint conversation: we have no evidence that the iPhone is backdoored. The NSA documents referred to scripts that were used on compromised computers that the phones were synced to, which indicates to me that they target unencrypted backup files.
Who are "tbreak.ae"? That's not a very insightful review.

Many better known sites like DPReview.com think that the Lumia 1020 has the best smartphone camera:

http://connect.dpreview.com/post/5234892048/nokia-lumia-1020...
Whenever you hear there's a "shortage" of a particular job, that usually just means wages are higher than the employers would like them to be. You can really think of that relationship either way around. e.g. – there's a huge shortage of butlers because they're just way too expensive.

One way to compensate for the suffering caused by economic dislocation is to reduce the hardship of not having a job. More unemployment and welfare aid, with less degrading means testing would help. Better would be a basic income, with income earned from working always a bonus on top.
The point (or at least one of the points) is that you cannot be permanently trapped without insurance, and thus essentially unable to access the American healthcare system, if you acquire an expensive pre-existing condition, which many people do as they age from being young, healthy people to older, unhealthy people.

Moreover, your premiums may go up, but if your income is low, those premiums will be subsidized.

Merely banning health plans from excluding those with pre-existing conditions doesn't work, as you may know if you've ever had the displeasure of purchasing insurance on the individual market in New York State.

Another 'point' of the law is to decrease the rate of increase of healthcare costs, and preliminary indicators are good:
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/daily-reports/2013/july/30/h...

There are very few young, healthy, high-income people in the United States buying health insurance on the individual market, and, quite frankly, they're able to take care of themselves.
And I am happen to live in the UK where we have CCTV. ...you are right, we have woken to a truly disturbing reality.
Well now you are backtracking into a semi-legitimate interpretation of your comment as not snarky. If you didn't mean to snark you could have just originally said

"We should expect comments about the NSA and spying to become a part of the common dialog regarding technology and personal information. Asking them to go away is just asking people to stick their head in the sand and ignore it."

That is a useful comment that would further the discussion. So I will now respond to that, since I don't want to debate what snark means.

I don't mind useful or constructive comments about technology and the NSA, but most of the comments I see are very reactionary and misinformed and painfully naiive. They are similar to all the old comments on stories about Microsoft where people would say things like "Micro$oft is obviously evil" and such.

So if a comment is interesting and useful, and happens to be about the NSA, then great. I haven't seen many of those.
I have just had a look on the Apple UK store's website. The 5C starts at £469, the 5S at £549. I am not sure if there is any price differentiation going on?
Lots of disappointment on iphone 5c pricing, here is my theory.

I think iphone 5c was never intended to match prices of android phones, it was created to allow Apple to expand its market share in Chinese market. From what is suggested in media, one of the reason Apple had a hard time getting China Mobile on board, was the high cost of subsidizing flag ship iphones. By creating a mid tier phone Apple may have been able to convince China Mobile to carry iphone.

Tim Cook has been very bullish about Chinese market, and this move may turn out very well.
But if Apple Computer, other countries and anyone who cracks a system containing the same data has your fingerprints - that's A-OK, obviously.
If they don't already have your fingerprints on file, which depending on where you live happens as a kid in case you go missing, get a drivers license, etc.

If the NSA wants to target you specifically, you're fucked no matter what unless you move to a cave. No point in being needlessly worried. I'm more worried about this causing someone to cut off my finger while stealing my phone than I am the NSA coming after me.
I think more countries' immigration controls require it for guest entry than departments of state require it for gaining a passport.
You are still going with that "it's just a powerpoint, it means nothing" line? I thought we dispensed with that notion months ago.
You aren't giving them a "fake" password, you're just not giving them all of your passwords.
At most schools, you can just take courses without a competitive admission process until you intend to enroll in a degree program.
Were you watching the same keynote?

“It’s tough if you’re poor, it’s tough if you’re middle class. It means you have to have the right education to work at [the tech giants]. If you’re not like us, it’s tough

The key point of data factories is that they are economically disenfranchising the vast majority of the population. The 'new paradigm' isn't for organizing work, its getting your consumers to do the work for you. If we weren't so wrapped up in the VC/HN/Web Tech echo chamber it would probably be easier to realize that this mode of economic growth is at best unsustainable and at worst destructive to the longterm health of a modern economy.

It would be great for startups to focus less on social and ads and more on how technology can be leveraged to raise the living standards for everyone.
It seems that the 5S and the 5C support China Mobile's LTE bands. Is that what will be announced tomorrow at the Apple event in China?

http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/
Actually, my gym (24 Hr Fitness) uses fingerprint scanners to sign people in. I hadn't really given it much thought before, but indeed, it would be possible for their system to be compromised and for my fingerprint data to be released into the wild...
At this point, why are you even bringing your computer along, if you have no way to log into it?
I haven't checked Dropbox t&c's but I wonder whether backups come under its 'suitable for' uses. Ie: do they consider it a highly reliable form of storage.
Personally I wouldn't trust any cloud storage with hundreds of gigabytes of family photos and movies. I have multiple disks on site and one truecrypt terabyte disk offsite which is rotated regularly.
For work/code though the vm + cloud is a good solution.
Wasn't the Nexus 4 exactly the same situation last year, also being based on the fastest phone?
Uchicago math. Can't handle non integral mantissas or when they are greater than 6. At work, I do mostly biology, where everything is 1, 2, or 5 - close enough. One sig fig is par for the course, anything else would be an overoptimistic lie.
Can we talk about the price of tea in the colonies without the discussion always being about King George and the Tea Act?
The chart Tim Cook doesn't want you to see
Why would someone learn Clojure?
I use tr all the time when I want to check $PATH:

echo $PATH | tr : '\n'
Arcade Fire Video JS Libraries
A useful way to compare countries is by revealed preference: where people choose to immigrate, given a chance. So far the United States fares well in that kind of comparison, because as much as people complain about the United States--including people like me who live here--there are many people who think the overall trade-off of living in the United States is better for them than the trade-off involved in living somewhere else, even a place where they grew up and where all their friends and relatives live. Net immigration flows are pretty strongly suggestive of where people find a good life. International surveys show a strong preference (not always realized) to live in the United States.[1] I see a lot more Hacker News threads complaining that immigration to the United States is too difficult than I see about leaving the United States being difficult. (Leaving the United States is ridiculously easy, and I have done that more than once. But even many people who leave to live abroad eventually come back.)

[1] "More Than 100 Million Worldwide Dream of a Life in the U.S."
http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-drea...
>According to Apple, half of users don’t set up a passcode on their device.

How could they know that?
Social Disruption: The Tech Industry’s New Zeitgeist
These sorts of techniques make great comments, but are nearly useless in reality.

First of all, even if you're being truthful, saying "I don't know my password" will likely not be believed. Explaining the process you went through to safeguard your password will merely elicit suspicion by a border agent. Why would you go through such pains if you had nothing to hide? And once they are suspicious of you, you will almost surely be detained and have your equipment seized.

Yes, the government might not be able to decrypt it for years, but they still have your laptop, and they are still in possession of your data, encrypted as it may be. So, I ask you, who won this little battle? It sure wasn't you.

IMHO, the only valid approach here is to host everything on an external server, and VPN / SSH into it to do your work. Don't store the connection info locally, and don't store any passwords / keys locally. Make sure no confidential files ever touch your hard drive, even in a cache. Most agents have no idea how that process works, and unless you have a shortcut on your desktop / home directory labeled "connect to home fileserver" they probably won't even think to ask you for any further info.

EDIT: Stupid spelling error. Thanks, recursive.
Every discussion on H-1B visas always misses the point that it is the only way for a non-US citizen student, graduating from a US university, to work in the US on a long term basis. For a more meaningful analysis, it is important to consider the educational background of the H-1B worker.
Certainly your comment evokes deja vu -- same old criticism of Apple that is based on tired old characterizations from 15 years ago. I don't think there are any competitive phones available for half the price (there are certainly inferior phones available for half the price).

I do think it's priced a bit high. I'm surprised it's not $50-100 cheaper. Maybe they have iPhone 4S inventory to get rid of (I don't understand why they're keeping an old phone with obsolete cables and screen format around otherwise).
I am not concerned about my fingerprint data being part of some larger database.

However, if you're using a fingerprint to unlock, it's much harder to say "I've forgotten my password" - or stop them from using your finger while you're unconscious.

Deniability becomes much lower.
As someone with an arts degree I have found that knowing how to tell a story really well; and working collaboratively with subject matter experts has made me a successful and valued contributor on technology teams. Theatre people know how to hit a deadline, to make the tradeoffs necessary to do that, and how to handle immense pressure with a spirit of humor and focus on quality.
We're talking about it, aren't we? We haven't forgotten this issue, distracted like children by the latest shiny toy. Even in the face of the things that traditionally kill news stories, we're talking about it.

Change starts by making enough people aware of and angry about the issue that the politicians can't afford to support these programs any more. If we're just distracted the next time $TECH_TOY or $NATURAL_DISASTER comes along, then nothing at all will change.

I don't particularly care if people find my anger at the NSA's systemic intrusion of our privacy annoying. I care more about that particular issue than I do what a random person on the internet whom I've never met might think of me. I care more about keeping you talking about the issue than I do about you liking me.
columnar storage, compression etc
Nokia's bragging point is that Apple caught up to them on...color? Hey, how's the processing power on those industry-leading colorful devices? and the biometric security?
Don't you think the world's best distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia do deserve a special intro at public meetings? Aren't genetic endowments and natural advantages an equivalent of 'throwing eight heads in a row': http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/09/09/130...?
Here is the view from the other side - I am an Indian, and I work for a big offshoring company and I have been working for the same client for last 8 years.

If you want quality, you can do the following -
1. Insist on interviewing each and everyone personally that they will put in the team. This will help you and also help people like me, in the past I had interviewed people for my team and rejected them but the managers always overrode me.
2. Do code review.
3. Make sure you have at least one or two guys in the team who are good communicators. This is very very important. Also to be absolutely safe, you may insist on someone who has lived a bit in United States, this will help you.

Believe me when I say we want to do good work and we work hard and some of us are even competent. :-) But whatever good was there is being demoralized and strangled by management and business realities.

I hope I don't get downvoted to oblivion. :-)
Let Re-Discovery Evade Patents
So Google can't do it but the NSA can?
It was avian based influenza, birds spread it to remote areas of the world.
Inspiring Sites of the Week No. 6
Street of Walls - New York, NY (SoHo) - full-time

Headquartered in New York, Street of Walls is a rapidly expanding web-based technology company that seeks to change the recruiting paradigm model. Street of Walls is recognized as one of the largest technology based recruitment firms within U.S. financial services. We’re a well-funded, rapidly-growing start-up headquartered in SoHo NYC. We are building groundbreaking products that are transforming the way recruiting is done.

We’re looking for an enthusiastic and talented senior level developer for an active role in the backend development of a next generation recruiting company. The ideal candidate will be working directly with the strong existing development team and help lead the company’s overall engineering effort.

Senior Engineer: http://stofwalls.com/1dZl0PO
And yet, the OP's comment is the top-voted comment in the thread, which would indicate the the democratic consensus of the HN readership is that this is worth talking about.
It would be kind of ingenious to publicly reveal a false character count.

(A little paranoid, though.)
You know, you are right. It is sad to see that Apple has no new ideas. I wonder if they will ever do something innovative again ?

I also wonder if Steve Jobs would ever put a fingerprint scanner in an iPhone, make a "Gold" iPhone or keep the same hardware design for 3 consecutive iphones.
Nobody will realize this until Glenn Greenwald publishes it.
You are going to need to rely on the filesystem authors to write a tool to traverse their inode trees directly, or probably write something like that yourself.

https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....
When you use the auto-bidder you're not revealing any more information than if you increment bids by hand.

After you (or your proxy) enter a successful bid, eBay raises the price and increments the bid count. Those are market signals.

It's not a question of whether the auction uses proxy bidding or real-time bid entry... it's a question of when your bid shows up for all to see. It's never in your best interest to call attention to an auction you're interested in bidding on, yet that's exactly what you do when you bid before the very last few seconds.

Are you saying I could buy things on ebay at lower prices by manually entering bids, implementing the auto-bidder algorithm by hand?

Yes, that's what eSnipe and other services do for you. They allow you to hide your interest in an item until it's too late for anyone to rethink how badly they want to win.
I haven't studied this law in detail, but it expect it is worded to avoid precisely this sort of manoeuvre, because the implication is quite clear - you have no right to privacy. If necessary they'd just confiscate your device and detain you on suspicion of perverting the course of justice etc, etc. they can hold you for 3 months for refusing to answer any questions they ask, including questions on your encryption scheme and how they can defeat it. They can also image all your hardware for future decryption, compromise it before returning it, etc.

I think the safer solution is not to travel with hardware you intend to use again.
http://seclists.org/politech/2002/Nov/64
Thanks for the link, very interesting. But I fail to see how will this help us reduce the healthcare costs by several factors? (where they should be)

"Slowing cost increases" is fantastic but it's too late: the costs are already at 500% of normal and I just don't see how will this be fixed.

An example: a 3-hour stay at the hospital (wrist surgery) was billed to me at $44K which is what insurance company actually paid. It included a few hundred dollars for a can of apple juice.
Essentially, you are asking me to discuss my politics here, where I draw the line, etc in a thread about the iPhone 5s. I know where you stand. I heard you the first ten times.

I'm not trying to stop you from having the discussion. Can you just label the thread "NSA can get your fingerprints off that iPhone 5S" and have at it. There is a time and a place for everything. Everyone here has heard about the NSA situation by now. The word is out.
Comments about the virtue of weight and thinness never go away, are they helpful? Comments about the importance of good UI design never go away, are they helpful? Comments about IT security never go away, are they helpful? Comments about performance never go away, are they helpful? Comments about the importance of battery life never go away, are they helpful? Comments about privacy never go away, are they helpful?

The answer to all of the above, if we assume that talking about a product is 'helpful' to begin with, is "Yes." Privacy is simply something that people are going to consider and discuss from now on. There is no reason we should treat it differently from the other things we consider.
My point was that "get roommates", or for your situation "move to Sacramento", and "live in the woods in California" should be higher on that list than "move to a foreign country that's cheaper" and "live in the woods in Sweden." The choice of those more exotic (and harder) options makes me agree with jquery that the list 'was about status and "conspicuous authenticity", not about actually living cheaply.'

When I lived in the Bay Area, during the dot-com era, people did actually camp in the state parks because it was so hard to find housing. There was a one week limit per park, so they would rotate through the parks.
"Stop making testable claims without evidence."

"Stop making absolute claims about things that may only be true sometimes."

"Stop assuming what frustrates you frustrates everyone."

"Stop thinking that other people cannot see 'obvious' design flaws like you can and didn't think through the tradeoffs involved."
As much as Asia loves gold they HATE fake gold.
I don't have a problem with the fingerprint scanner, since people can choose to use it or not. The larger problem I see for the 5S is a marketing one: while the A7 processor and internal redesign are significant technical achievements, consumers won't understand that or care. They know that their existing iPhone 5's are relatively fast, and that will be enough for most people. They needed to add features - not necessarily speed - for this phone to have the kind of success that its predecessors have achieved.
Blowup at leading biohacker space signals time to restructure DIY biology labs
and for readers age 30-40+:

Summary: man ascii, cal, xxd, ssh, mdfind

:-)
GNU tar has evolved and can use simpler syntax:
% tar cp -C /foo . | ssh bar tar xp -C /baz
iPhone 5c + 5s require 'nano sim'. What will be next? I still remember using a full size sim card (the left one here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/GSM_SIM_...)
3 consecutive iPhones? 5, 5C/5S, what's the third?
For 2, the apps have no reason to see a fingerprint hash, only an authenticated identity.
> develop[ing] a way to facilitate transfers without risk of widespread fraud...may be a tall order for eBay

No it isn't. The bitcoin seller transfers the bitcoins to a bitcoin address controlled by Paypal. Paypal sends USD from the buyer's Paypal balance to the seller's Paypal balance, and BTC from the Paypal-controlled bitcoin address to the buyer's bitcoin address.

Paypal knows the dollars and the bitcoins both exist, and can deliver them to the right party itself, so the parties don't have to trust each other to complete the transaction; they just have to trust Paypal.

There is a problem, I guess, if the USD comes from a source like a credit card that may eventually be reversed, or if the buyer claims a hacked account. But you could get around that with some waiting period, requiring a Paypal balance/bank transfer for Bitcoin transactions (credit cards can't fund Bitcoin purchases), and/or requiring 2-factor auth for large transactions / Bitcoin transactions.

Processing an eBay transaction is actually harder to prevent fraud, because it's hard for Paypal to tell that physical goods were as described, and delivered to the right party. (AFAIK eBay basically has humans reading what both parties wrote and using their judgment to deal with disputes about product delivery.)
Thanks for sharing the information. I guess you are right, it is psychological. It is possible that two reasons contribute: time investment in the sign up that increases the value of the service and feeling of having personal space on the website.
It's not much higher quality. The quality comes more from being machined instead of melted plastic, but it's still not much better.
I don't think that waving away 'global warming' with "well it had to either go up or down" is very honest. If the temperature were going up by 0.001C a year there wouldn't be this kind of debate about it.

Either way we've been burning coal and oil like mad since the middle of the 1800s, and that exhaust mass from combustion doesn't just disappear into the ether. It went somewhere. Where did it go? Add up all the spots it went (e.g. trees, chemical reactions with soil, in atmosphere, with the oceans, etc.). If you still have CO2 left over, then the Occam's answer is that it's still where you left it: In the atmosphere. Other conclusions require evidence to support.

In the meantime: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence
1. If "merit" is determined by things like SAT scores, which correlate with race and class but not with anything useful, then it is a problem when colleges divert resources from the students who do better on metrics more closely correlated with success but can't afford to attend without financial aid.

3. That's entirely your opinion. It is nonsense to assert that "no one cares" about learning outcomes or anything other than networking. Make an argument for why learning outcomes shouldn't matter if you must, but that isn't something you can just assert and expect everyone else to agree with you.