skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
NSA Spied On Vatican And Top Catholic Cardinals, Says Italian Report
As someone who's about to gradute from CU in the spring, I can confirm that banks still have a strong presence here. Like you said, most of the top CS students avoid them but their events still draw a large crowd of international students.
Ordinary people like music that sounds good. They don't care how it was made. Only musicians care about that.

So whether it was made by human hands or a computer algorithm, if it sounds good, people will listen.
So now I can use one of those Java libraries that implement a JavaScript engine and finally have JavaScript running on node.js?
If that graphic - that taunting smiley face, drawn when it was assumed that no one was watching - isn't enough to outrage the general public, I don't know what it will take. This is not super technical - it's easily explained and should be easily understood by the masses. And it should cause outrage.
Is that an official document with an actual smiley face?

What ever happened to the admins / programmers standing up for what is right, or do they just gobble down a paycheck and turn the other way?
I'm trying to set up a system where I have google voice and a data plan only. Currently trying out google voice + wifi which is working fine, but I sometimes do need coverage when I'm wifi inaccessible. Any insights on data only plans?

edit: oddly enough, another alternative is to sign up for one of those providers that have free wifi hotspots all across the city (e.g. CableWifi, XfinityWifi), which could be cheaper than a data plan
Lavabit is small. Who did their shutdown directly affect? Imagine Google going down for a full day, even homeless people will raise pitch forks and match down to DC to protest.
That's correct. I updated my comment.

By the way, someone else commented further down that Apple doesn't allow third party apps to use it for realtime (video chat). But I can't verify if that's true or not.
I hope that this finally convinces everyone that it doesn't matter whether Google is "Evil" or Yahoo is more evil or whatever. What matters is that large cloud systems are fundamentally incapable of protecting data.

Even the most goodhearted and the most talented teams can't reliably defend against a massively funded adversary.

Secrets are for keeping, not sharing.
Lisp is the red pill
Now you just need to run Rhino(https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Rhino) on it and you will be totally meta.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but long before T-Mobile did away with their contracts, I was SIM swapping between Android devices (and even flip phones) with no problems.

I still do this occasionally since I keep hoarding my old phones as development devices, and even with phones T-Mobile doesn't actually support (i.e. you can't select it as your current device if you use their web portal), I have not had problems.

Perhaps this is different between providers?
A piano piece requiring 3 hands isn't impossible to play. You just need a second person to help you play it. ;)
... And years of work experience to understand organizational dynamics to setup a healthy business helps too. It's more than the idea that matters, but can you build and run the team that will make that idea a reality. I know that when I was fresh out of college I didn't understand organizational dynamics at all. I've read many examples of young startups failing because of rookie management mistakes.
From the article: "Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing."

That about sums up my reaction as well.
I just switched from Sprint to T-mobile. I financed my T-mobile 5S through the Apple store, then activated a T-mobile SIM card online, and got the $30 per month deal for 5GB 4g data and 100 minutes per month, with 10 cents per minute beyond that (prepaid). $30 per month is by far the least I've ever paid for an iPhone.
Even with everything you say, Google was still defeated by the NSA. Will Google ever catch up in this arms race? "95% encrypted" == "100% compromised"
"No golden reference for content"

Can you elaborate on this? I am not sure I understand what you mean.

"Peers may not be online at the same time that you are online."

That is already the case now with social networking, email, IM, etc. I do not really see this being a serious problem -- P2P networks are pretty resilient to people going offline as long as some threshold number of people remain connected.

"Updates are slower / content may not be fresh"

This is certainly a problem, but perhaps not insurmountable.
–Said by everyone ever caught texting while driving.

If it’s off, why is it on your face?
I like this connection between memristors and nuerons: "From an information processing perspective, this tutorial shows that synapses are locally-passive memristors, and that neurons are made of locally-active memristors."[1]

1. http://iopscience.iop.org/0957-4484/24/38/383001
There is no way an analyst only gets a bonus of $30K. This economy is great for IBers.
I reject the tradeoff that your internal customer support 'impersonate user' web app would be available via simple password on the open internet.
I think it's immediate value is in boostraping new projects.
Google appears to have been so on the ball with this stuff that the NSA literally had to send bag men to their cages in order to retain access.
Why risk it? the only real benefit -if all goes well- is the free processing, and processing isn't that expensive. If you're processing enough to max their 50k limit, then you're at much greater risk of them screwing you out of a big piece of revenue
Why GPA Is Useless
Protest Letter to CEO of Tech2000
If you want to fight for freedom, but are too busy, take some of your startup lottery money and hire some underemployed folks to raise pitchforks and march on DC.
They do a lot, but it is just iterating the same thing over and over.
Gen. Keith Alexander, asked about it at a Bloomberg event, denied the accusations.

"I don't know what the report is," Alexander cautioned, adding the NSA does not "have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers." He said the NSA is "not authorized" to do this, and instead, must "go through a court process."

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/keith-alexander-nsa-re...
No it's not. The court system, even if it is rumber stamp-y, provides way more visibility and accountibility than secret and total access to Google's data via tapping data links.
>Is that an official document with an actual smiley face?

It's only HN that pretends there is no feeling in professional work.
Google might have an easier time recruiting edge producing developers than the NSA after the leaks.
i think this is an interesting sign that we may actually not be in a massive tech bubble. twitter is one of the biggest brands in technology.

IPOs don't need massive retail interest to succeed. if institutions demand >14x the shares that are on offer, the IPO will do well.
This is incorrect. OT can indeed be implemented on the client.

The way it works in the Datastore API is that the client sends its changes to the server with an attached "parent revision." If that parent revision is the revision that the server has, then the change goes through (no conflict). If the revision doesn't match, then the change is rejected by the server, and it's up to the client to pull down the latest changes from the server, merge things (via, in the case of lists, OT), and then try again.
It's too early to talk about java versions, but i suppose he used the latest jvm specification to implement his classfile parser. Only a few methods of some classes of java.lang and java.io (screen output and some basic stuff like String methods,etc..).
To clarify, that's founders age at founding. Not curret age of founder.
I am skeptical of the 60-80 hours thing. It seems like more of a macho thing than a real requirement. The problem is that when you workaholic yourself your productivity per unit time drops, so you're spending more hours but doing as much as you might do in shorter bursts of more focused time. In some cases it's worse... you get total burnout.
After digging around on their website, it actually sounds like they see the current internet as P2P and they want to replace it (or at least have an alternative) that's concerned with routing between sources of information rather than peers/devices.

Like in the video in the article, the guy's heart rate monitor, rather than having a constantly changing IP address as he moves through different networks, would be identified as "source of information about X's heartrate" (using an anonymous/opaque identifier I'm sure), and this "future internet" would be keeping track of how to route that information to the people who have access to and are subscribed to it.

So the "future internet" routers would be kind of managing pubsub at the IP layer. That's what I gather from these pages, anyway:

http://www.fp7-pursuit.eu/PursuitWeb/?page_id=338 (prototype implementation; "Runs over Ethernet or raw IP")

http://www.fp7-pursuit.eu/PursuitWeb/?page_id=179 "Our Vision"

While a model such as in IP networking enables a stream of data between two explicitly addressed endpoints (with total transparency as to the information represented in this sent data and the communication surrounding this exchange of data), the model envisioned in our aspiration elevates information onto the level of a first class citizen in the sense that data pieces are explicitly addressed and therefore directly embedded into the network, unlike in today’s IP-like networks.
Yeah. I'm dead.
People will no doubt come on this thread and remind everyone that of course the government always had access - you must have been a fool not to think so. But I just can not get over how angry it makes me. Honestly I thought that using google products with some exploitation of the contents for advertising was an acceptable exchange. This is just a total betrayal and I cannot believe that the Google board is not aware of this! and if it is not it is because they choose to be!
This has nothing to do with the codec, the quality issues are bandwidth related, most providers no not want to fork out cash to buffer your video's anymore.
> Google had no knowledge of NSA's physical compromise of their data centers.

Are we sure about that?
In the first week that I was managing IT/Ops at our company, our security architect, msj, approached me and said that our approach towards security would be to encrypt everything at rest, and everything in flight. Even the 18" of ethernet cord hanging outside of the servers would be considered an attack vector.

I thought he was loopy at the time. Amazing how wrong I was.
Unfortunately even though its not, its soon becomes for you when others start doing that.

A few days back, I remember there was a story posted here about a fisher man living the good life, and having the best of time with family, friends and leisure. Only that later another fisher man helped by a business guy started working extra hours, sets up his own company, establishes a monopoly and employs the first fisher man. Soon the first guy sees though he didn't want any of it, he is now a part of that very system.

For philosophical sort of happiness to work, we all need to go into some sort of equilibrium without ever breaking a few rules that are necessary to preserve the equilibrium. That is neither possible, nor good for the larger fate of our society.
Mixpanel launches surveys for mobile apps
Not only has Moz not stopped looking for something better, they continue to actively develop something better (i.e. Daala)
With newer LTE phones, Verizon "world phones" (i.e. phones with a GSM SIM slot alongwith the CDMA stuff - For eg. iPhone 5, 5c and 5s) already come GSM "unlocked". This is apparently not out of the goodness of their hearts but because of some LTE spectrum agreements with the FCC. The kicker though is that the phones will favor the Verizon network while in the US.
My current research project, Doppio, can already run Rhino in the browser using JavaScript. :)

Demo: http://doppiojvm.org/

Code:https://github.com/int3/doppio
The best experience is from a Safari extension called Youtube-5. It uses so much less CPU power and is so much smoother, it really puts Flash based players to shame, and shows how good the experience could, and should be.
You know what would outrage the public? ESPN being shut down. Most people do not actually care about their privacy. Even if everyone had the technical chops needed to understand what has been happening, most people never spend much time contemplating the importance of privacy rights.
Oh yeah, it is one of the strongest, most distinctive odors out there. If you've ever smelled it, you'd know it immediately, and it is damn impossible to clean out of anything. Washing fabric in a washing machine that has been peed on by a cat does nothing for the smell.
The biggest surprise for me is that only 4 of 221 didn't use Rails. I pretty much go to Sinatra by default nowadays and I'd assumed that was more common now than it clearly is.
Now, my question is. WHY!? I might be crazy, but does anyone see a legitimate use for this?
Reminds me of Roger Penrose's assertion in Shadows of the Mind that the microtubules within the neurons might be doing the work - making each Neuron into a metaphorical computer with millions of transistors. This is a different idea but the same conclusion - Neurons aren't the lowest level of computational structure in the brain, which means we have been underestimating the complexity and power of the brain by many orders of magnitude.
hey this reminds me of the talking piano (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCPjK4nGY4)

MIDIs can do that too right?
I don't even upgrade my phone through my carrier anymore. I just go on ebay and get a used phone for around $200. Case in point: The new Nokia 928 which was released in May of 2013 is selling on ebay for $250.00. To upgrade its $99 and I get my unlimited data plan yanked and re-up for another two years? No thank you.

Also, the only company to actually reduce their price plans to account for not subsidizing their phones is T-Mobile and I figure they're going to get more customers as people start to realize the upgrades from AT&T and Verizon are a total crime.
It was canceled out by Stack Overflow and Bitbucket also being down this morning.
Why run Rhino when you can run Nashorn and Node.jar? http://kaeff.net/posts/why-ruby-and-nodejs-folks-should-care...
It's kind of shocking that they haven't been encrypting all internal inter-datacentre connections to begin with. Even if they didn't suspect NSA snooping, there's enough companies and criminals out there that'd conceivably have a lot of reasons to want to try to find ways to tap Googles links.
Agreed. He must have done it for fun, just to prove that it could be done. I don't think anyone legitimately would actually want this...
Cisco will release the source code, but according to the H264 licensing terms Cisco has to be the one to distribute the resultant binary if Cisco is to pay for the license.

It would be good for others to independently verify that Cisco's source compiles to Cisco's binary, but that still wouldn't give legal permission for those others to distribute the binary -- only Cisco can do that.
I see it as just simple power struggle between companies and government - China won the round against Google a few year back by kicking googe out completely.

The power in US government would love the same leverage.

They will get it eventually - start with NSA in secret, but slowly congress can pass the law and bit by bit....

That's why FB and google are implanting the notions of "no privacy" in everyone's mind. Good for their business and also makes it easier to hand over the data to whoever governments/agencies in the future.
Protip of the Day: Always Delay your Email From Being Sent
No it was a GSM phone (a nexus one) - should have worked on 3G
The FISC is not visible or accountable to the public. NSLs must be kept secret by law. In other words, all courts do is provide the NSA with a minor speed bump when it wants to wiretap everyone.
(Former) Flash nerd here. The problems with plackback and scrubbing are absolutely the fault of the Flash player and there's really nothing you can do about it short of hacking your own video handling into the SWF format. There are a lot of low-level network-related problems in Flash.

I have zero real proof, but I know for a long time Adobe (Macromedia) was pushing their streaming server and didn't really put a lot of effort into handling streaming/buffering without it and I suspect this just never got fixed as things were "good enough".
You should try sending OpenBSD-targetin cross-compilation scripts to Cisco.
The secrets behind Gravity's special effects
Most traditional cultures have in place laws meant for social control but rarely have centralized mechanisms for economic control. As political opinions drift, it's common for part of the population to stick to what they perceive as traditional values and part to push for something they perceive as better. Movements that catch on tend to be egalitarian. I think this sufficiently encapsulates the monarchist vs revolutionary position that the Economist uses.

Any egalitarian revolutionary pushing for social change will have to address economic advantages that have built up over time, so they tend not to have a laissez-faire attitude toward business. The mechanisms they propose to adjust wealth and power inequalities vary. Even people pushing for less centralized control of the economy fall into this category. Government subsidized monopolies are not free market competition, no matter how much some multinational corporate advertising agencies might push the concept.
T-Mobile has a plan where it's $30/mo for 5GB of 4G/LTE data (no overages, just throttled after that), unlimited SMS/MMS and 100 voice minutes. If you have a solid LTE signal, FaceTime Voice works very well. I'm sure other services would work similarly well. It's a bit meh over 3G due to latency and T-Mobile's LTE coverage is very mediocre at best. But, you absolutely get what you pay for.
The rep I chatted with said that AT&T phones "cannot work with other SIMs." The implication was that they cannot be unlocked. Seems fishy, though, so I'm going to confirm. Anyone have experience here?
I don't think that's necessarily a major roadblock. Depending on implementation, with peer to peer you may connect to many peers, and their combined bandwidth will be good.

Another way of looking at it: if I used 100% of my upload traffic continuously, it would be a lot more total data sent than I generally download with normal use. So as long as a peer to peer system ensures QoS, the bandwidth is there. I think.
So you get $50k in waived fees and dedicated support for no equity? Sounds like a great deal to me, especially if you are wary of working with PayPal. It's a guaranteed whitelist of your account.
Kind of bizarre he goes to such lengths to save a little money and then still buys upgrades regularly. If he cares about money so much, he should be skipping upgrades as well. His plan is not reasonable for me since AT&T and Verizon are the only decent LTE carriers here in the US, so he's permanently crippled his bandwidth. LTE means I don't need a home internet connection any more, so it saves much more than he does by going T-mobile.

So anyway, he's sacrificing network speed to save money, but won't sacrifice upgrades, which seems illogical. Also he writes off skipping upgrades while on a decent network, because he says that is costing him money for free, but it still saves him the cost of the upgrade handset itself, typically $200 for a premium phone. He would be stuck paying the increased amount no matter what on the only good network options there are right now, so it doesn't matter. Saving 200 is saving 200.
Confirms what I thought. I was once locked, it was hell. Now I am free. I can switch or haggle the bastards for the things I want. And it's way cheaper.
I rather pay up front and pick what provider I want every 6 months pay a fee for a card that renews itself ever 6 month without CC or bank account involved so they can't overcharge as they are used to.
Of course the response is lukewarm, this still represents a failure of open web usage. As a practical measure this is a good move, but that doesn't make this a principled measure.
I am curious if this has any relation to their recent acquisition of Braintree Payments. If they are instead using Braintree as the payment gateway, it could work out very well for the participants.
I think we have enough information for Google to plausibly deny involvement.
Most people around the age of 40 have morphed that question into a different one to match their changing interests and needs.
Contrived example: a Puppet script that configures a VM with DNS servers, which are not otherwise provided in the image or by DHCP. You need to get that script itself somehow.
A free credit check compensation is funny. It's like getting free 8x10 glossies of your car being stolen.
I don't think this applies in Canada. For example on Telus, as soon as your contract expires, all the free bundled stuff you got like voicemail or texting plans are now $6 or so a month, so your usual $60 bill jumps to $75.
>Perhaps this is different between providers?

On the CDMA side (i.e. Verizon, Sprint), yes.

On the GSM side (T-mobile and AT&T), if your phone is locked to a carrier it will still accept any SIM from that carrier and your carrier provided SIM will work on any GSM unlocked phone with compatible frequencies.
If you have wireless network in your apartment get a google voice number. That is what I had to use for 2 years in my apartment. Forward your Google voice number to your cell phone so that it will ring on your phone, through wireless, just like a normal phone. The only reason I ever used my minutes was when I wasn't within a wireless network.
How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days
I'm hoping Google ends up buying the ECC patents from Blackberry and then make them public domain or at least say they will allow everyone to use them for free and with no consequences. I know they want to buy some stuff from Blackberry right now, but not sure if they are considering buying the ECC patents, too, or not.

I'd feel a lot better if Google bought them than say Microsoft or some other company, who'd just try to collect royalties from anyone using them, and I feel that will make things a lot worse for security on the web in the future, especially with Microsoft's long-standing relationship with the NSA.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...

That being said, I'm very disappointed in Larry Page's statement about encryption and quantum computers:

> Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google’s search engine whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went against their business plan. “They want to know everything about everybody who uses their products and services,” he joked.

It bothers me a lot that the leaders of Google would think like that, even though I knew they would because of the incentives in their business. But I just wish they found way for their business to work, so they do not have to think like that, and be more on the side of users on this issue, than they are right now.

Unless their thinking about user-privacy and security changes, we should never fully trust Google (even if they are better than the rest right now). That sort of thinking means they will never go the all the way to protect their users, which probably why you will never see OTR or ZRTP in Google's chat services. All the data collection they do will also become increasingly more irresistible to governments, especially if they keep it forever.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data...
As we get older the "attractiveness balance" shifts from the young women to the older men. One of the things I wish someone explained to me as hopeless youth.