skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sort of surprised that, rather than seizing them, they don't just put an IMSI catcher there and listen in on inmates' illicit calls.
Why didn't they release these documents a long time ago when everyone was racing to judgement that Google, Yahoo, et al were secretly in cahoots with the NSA helping to build drag-net surveillance extranet stuff for them? These are very important revelations!

I mean, when Greenwald/Snowden/Guardian released the original PRISM accusations, these slides would have provided a much much more important set of evidence, instead of months of speculation and parsing of meanings of "backdoor", "frontdoor", "side door", in the corporate communications of the tech companies who were struggling to say "we've never heard of PRISM, da fuq is this shit?"

Is the slow dripping out of these slides because they are trying to be responsible in not releasing stuff that is too damaging (e.g. not trying to be a Bradley Manning dump), or is it to preserve traffic by keeping the click-gravy-train going?
We check a request's IP address for blocks owned by GitHub as a form of authentication for service hooks to consume commits and implement continuous integration/delivery on a project.

They list these blocks in the service hooks configuration page. Are these address blocks also due for change/deprecation?
While this another angle, I was referring to the fact that many people will see these engineers as immoral and spineless. I know that I would not hire the person who drew that smiley face or any of their accomplices.
If you would use one-time-pad before storing to the cloud you'd either need to store the very same pad on the cloud, then effectively not needing encryption, or you wouldn't need the cloud, as the amount of the encrypted data would match the amount of the pad data one to one.

And homomorphic encryption is still far from being practical.
It's worth saying that some states make having a television mounted in your dash illegal. (Some states are a bit more lenient, only making it illegal for the driver to watch TV) The sensibility of those laws aside, if they exist, application to Glass isn't much of a stretch.
Speaker.js: Bookmarklet speaks any webpage out loud
Those phone records are a great example of visualization without insight
Handmade Pianos have souls.
The soul of the technician that built it.
This is why the best Pianos like Bösendorfer and Steinways are still built manually.
Off-topic observation: I like Bruce Schneier, really. But now I dread the sense of déjà vu that accompanies most of his posts on HN, because each one gets reposted multiple times. Mostly because Schneier himself reposts all his columns that appear elsewhere on his own blog after a few days or weeks, and those reposts get reposted to HN.

For instance, this piece originally appeared at The Atlantic on 24th Oct:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ba...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6604967

Of course the original post never got a single comment, so I guess this repost added more value to the HN community :-/
Did you make this? It is very engaging from the start.
I have not worn one, but somebody has: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6640895
If you are interested in a slightly less heavy-handed approach. I wrote this to steer me away from the distractions. Just click the browser button to "block" new domains. You can unlock a page, but you only get a 5 minute window. This works well for me and most of my colleagues are using it as well.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/focused/kjlinclboa...
We Got the Team Right But We Still Failed
I can't really comment on what Objective C development is like on it as I don't do any, but I think that the limiting factor on the 13" is the screen size and not the processing power. Xcode has a lot of panels, and the 13" rMBP is effectively 1280x800 in its "best for Retina" resolution. This can be increased to a virtual resolution of 1680x1050 that works pretty well, but is quite small on a 13" screen.
The Game You Win If Someone Tells You “No”
Yep. I created a system that addressed 3 or 4 out of these 6 points a few months ago, but struggled with adoption and monetization simply because it's hard to find a tangible use/benefit from seeing these trends as an individual. One thing I am/was considering is the value of comparing your data to that of others.
I hate java, I hate javascript, I hate node.js, so basically, I just leave a comment here, and you can make a conclusion about what I think about all this.
I'm assuming that since you bring up Rachmaninoff, you know that he reportedly had freakishly large hands, and was in the habit of writing things he could play, but others considered "impossible". To me, that's significantly different than black MIDI, which just seems silly, albeit vaguely amusing.
VLC uses libavcodec, which has an LGPL H.264 decoder written from the spec, which is available for free.
Ahh, good example, Alex. I've used your product before. Coffee Meets Bagel uses a similar one-per-day approach. Smart.
People talk about "getting to an a-ha moment". I think this is really relevant here. It's one reason services focus on visualization: it looks like you have something right away.

I would focus things around a goal, and make clear that the service will help you stick to it over time. The benefit is over time and not immediate, so I think you're point is really valid.

It also depends on the quality of the insight. Maybe you can tell from my email and social media patterns when I'm sleeping, and make recommendations a few moments after you auth.
I think there are people in the middle. I can taste PTC, but it is only slightly bitter, and I don't mind brussels sprouts (don't particularly love 'em), I can definitely taste the bitter.
Definitely, but a prevailing view amongst many HNers is that the world is the United States[1], so it was more about challenging that assumption than anything else.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6564738
> So does this suggest that Google's SSL encryption can be removed just as easily as that smiley face implies?

Well, yes, if you are Google. The removal of SSL is done by Google's own front end servers at the boundary between the public internet and Google's own network, and Google's own network (including its private datacenter-to-datacenter fiber connections) are apparently not encrypted (which saves compute overhead.)

The revelation in the article (assuming it is correct) is that the GCHQ is taking advantage of this fact to evade Google's move to encrypt user-to-Google connections by simply tapping Google's datacenter-to-datacenter connections and (as well as whatever use GCHQ itself makes of the captured data) providing the NSA the ability to provide search terms that are matched against the captured data, with matching data fed from GCHQ to the NSA.

(This neatly also avoids any US legal limits on domestic electronic surveillance by the NSA, since, first, the surveillance isn't conducted by the NSA or any other US agency, and, second, its presumably not physically conducted in the US at all.)
65 Things We've Learned About the NSA
> or, for less duplication, build a fleet of transport vehicles that could hold data centers, and piece by piece transfer their existing US datacenters into those transports.

That must be what they're building in SF bay right now! It all makes sense now. Get Apple involved with their cash hoard and you could put the datacenters in space.
> actions taken abroad aimed at non-US persons.

And there is an interesting counterpoint to that, e.g.

> "If the Americans eavesdropped on cellphones in Germany, they broke German law on German soil, and those responsible must be held accountable."

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/10/28/world/obama-unaw...
“We all know that Linux is badass. Now there’s a book to prove it. Sure to convert even the most die-hard Windows or Mac users”

I think you meant ‘OS X users’ instead of ‘Mac users’. Macs are computers – they can run a number of OSes, including GNU/Linux distributions. Mac users can be GNU/Linux users.

I hope this error is not indicative of the rest of the content.
Better to ask the source, I'd say. Per the bar at the bottom of the GitHub post:

Have feedback? Let @github[1] know on Twitter.

[1] https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=@github%20&related=git...
Lawdingo (YC W13) Raises $690K More To Help You Talk To Lawyers Instantly
A cursory glance tells me none. Jimmy Wales already had money from his investment banker career, he build wikipedia to solve a problem with his 'real' startup. LinkedIn was Reid Hoffman 3rd or 4th social startup. Marc Benioff started his first company in high school.
Previous Discussions:

(4 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5961205

(3 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5985138
I use this app literally every day, it was absolutely worth the $6 or whatever I paid for it at the time. It's a shame it didn't work out for you financially, but I think this is still a great app.

It really just makes sharing webpages and files totally seamless, but it's not as disruptive as texting, as noisy as facebook or twitter, and it doesn't flood your email inbox. Also, I know exactly who is getting what, it all lives in my Dropbox account, and the file format is totally transparent so I am able to do whatever I want with my data.

I am excited to take a look at the code. A friend and I were actually already working on a simple mobile app because we use this so often--now with access to the code things should go a lot faster.
Just out of curiosity, what are your preferred languages and server environments?
I bet Google will pull some of their lawyers on this. The precedent that will be set by cases like this is pretty important for their technology especially while it's in its infancy.
> Google was letting information flow between its data center completely unencrypted until last month. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-enc.... Last month!

Over their own private WAN. The analogy would be sending things in the clear over your LAN. [Citation: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/google-onrc-slide...]
easily... Relink an executable for something and throw it on rapidshare....people dl and add themselves to your botnet...repeat this process until you have a big ass botnet
More importantly, he was never asked if they had access to the information passing _between_ datacenters, and so his reply was technically correct. "We don't collect that under this program", "We don't have access to those _servers_", etc (emphasis added).

Politicians are often adept at replying very carefully to questioning by congress or courts so that they can be entirely truthful when answering your questions, all while avoiding telling you what you really needed to know because you never asked the right question.
In Canada, one of the big 3 telcos, TELUS unlocks your phone for $35 if your account is in good standing after 90 days without having to finish your contract. So you can maintain your contract and have it unlocked for travel.
Considering your early adopter audience is probably going to be highly technical, I think this matters. Having a clear benefit also makes the privacy cost more appetizing.

But frankly, requiring users to run their own nodes is a terrible idea and would doom a startup that followed this advice to failure. It would please some early adopters, but make growth essentially impossible.
Cut Down Timesheets Routine From 3 hrs To 30 Mins
Branch based workflows simplified | Bitbucket Blog
The spies tap the side where there's no encryption. SSL encryption is by Google's design removed by Google at the point marked with the smiley face.

The trick is that Google has to move a lot of data between their own servers on the different locations (even different continents) and that traffic is not encrypted. That's why "Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing." It was that easy.
Right. And on the ATT network. And only 6cents per MB. Just flip on your phone's data when you need a map or to check your email in an emergency and you could pay < $15/month. Also they have $10 for 100min for 90 days. So if you get a Voip service at home and make all your long calls there + over wifi on your smartphone, you could even pay less for cell minutes, perhaps only $3/month.

I do not work for them, just checking out the options.
I never said it was easy. I completely disagree with that.

Machine learning, simple design, scaling 100 API integrations, and mobile apps are all really, really hard.
Lavabit And Silent Circle Join Forces To Make All Email Surveillance-Proof
I love these guys. Saw them live once. :)
Show HN: League Warrior
I work in an enterprise IT shop during the day and we received 300 of these laptops which we are sitting on until Dell comes up with a resolution. It's not a faint odor, or one that only a few people will notice. It's a rudely foul room clearing gag inducing vapor released as the case heats up. We can't hand them out as they are.
Why not just concentrate on the road.
store.apple.com ? You shop apple products every day ? Wow.
Russia’s goodie bag gifts ‘bugged’ G-20 delegates
I'm on residential Comcast in the northeast US and can now access the site directly.
Yes, I tried to use Charles Web Proxy to achieve a similar MITMing and was unable to. Good job with the credit card data, Apple! :)
Try http://www.sanebox.com/ and notice how they make it social in comparing your performance to others.
We're still talking about Snowden. This is the reason.
Obligatory quote:

"If I hear one more person who comes up to me and complains about "computer music has no soul" then I will go furious, you know. 'Cause of course the computer is just a tool. And if there is no soul in computer music then it's because nobody put it there and that's not the computer's role. It's the role of the songwriter. He puts down his soul in the song if he wants to. A guitar will never write a song and a computer will never write a song. These are just tools." -- Björk

That said, I'm not a fan of those particular songs either; less would be more IMHO. But many of my all time favourite songs are chip tunes... some compositions (!) simply don't need additional "soul" added to them, they work just fine played by a robot.
It actually DoSed a small VPS I had protected behind it. Not sure how, I guess it was scraping for content a bit too fast but my site ended up being more available without cloudflare on top of it
How  Google Could Improve Security In Android 4.4 KitKat
This reminds me of the kind of stuff I made while screwing around in Scream Tracker as a teenager 20 years ago. The difference is I recognized that it was garbage that nobody would want to listen to.
Are Machines Really Taking Our Jobs?
And adding to that, I think I would have just been full of hot air if I was more aggressive at a younger age. Some people can do it and be authentic. I don't think I was one of those people. And I don't think I'm simply rationalizing.

Yep, that's the infuriating, "catch 22" aspect of the whole thing. There are things you want to do at a certain age, in some regards, but you can't for whatever reason, but then when those reasons change, you've lost that time for good.

I feel the same way to a point... I couldn't have founded the startup I've founded, when I was 25, because I didn't have the technical knowledge, the business knowledge, the general maturity, etc. But the flip-side is, I'm getting older and I kinda look at this attempt as probably my last "at bat" with a chance of really living out the most exuberant of my hopes & dreams for life. I feel like if I fail now, I am probably done with big dreams. There just isn't enough time left on the clock, and I won't have the energy and drive and passion to start over from scratch.
No, parent comment said: "Bonus is probably 100-250% of base, and a lot of times the 100% part is guaranteed."

The plain meaning of that is that $130k all-in (100% bonus) is typical, and often guaranteed, with the top bucket being over $225k (250% bonus).

With first-year salaries at Google, etc, pushing $120k+, that's a very relevant difference. It's not accurate to imply that a first-year analyst at a bank could make up to $100k more than that.
>In theory, fully homomorphic encryption could allow the best of both worlds above. I completely encrypt my data on my machine --- nobody else has the key --- then send it into the cloud where cloud companies can do operations for me like searching, sorting, filtering, etc, all without ever decrypting the data or learning what it is.

Can you explain this to me? I don't understand how you can search encrypted data.
If someone is willing to divulge inside knowledge of his last employer you have to assume that in the future he will be willing to divulge your inside knowledge.
Show HN: Sesame, the wireless Mac lock
Who knows how many thousands of pages they need to read and understand? Also, don't underestimate the difficulty of a reporter understanding these thousands of documents sufficiently to recognize when one is really important.
It looks good. But to me, until Microsoft does something about it, it's not really gonna take off. I thought Microsoft Installer would be it, but obviously it's not :/
haha this is a really excellent callout. well done.
Why would NSA agents go through all the trouble of tapping cables when they could probably just gain employment at Google and do whatever they want. I don't think encryption would make a difference here.
Atwood's Law ad extremum.
How many have made >250K on real estate?
inter-datacentre communication most likely happens on dedicated networks "outside" the internet
Yep, and it's still just as awesome.
Seems like a law that would make driving with a GPS more dangerous for many people. When I use a GPS (either dedicated, or my phone), I place it in a pocket in my center console, down below my radio / AC controls. This prevents me from constantly looking at it, as I rely solely on it's TTS feature. I consider this to be much safer, though it sounds like in California it would be forbidden.
* Love and support my wife as she becomes a Mom for the 1st time
* Strive to be a great Dad to my child (due mid Jan)
* Achieve my skydiving C license
* Complete the wingsuit first jump course
* Get good enough flying a wingsuit to do some flocking
* Continue getting into good shape
* Juggle more than I did in 2013
* Keep motivated in my system admin day job
Sorry, meant to imply half-way through my 20's.
The voltage change (i.e., depolarization) is not strictly local.

In some cases, depending on the actual geometry of the dendrite and the particular complement of voltage-activated ion channels, the voltage change as a result of neurotransmitter release might lead to quite a distributed depolarization even without triggering a dendritic action potential.

Conversely, an action potential initiated in the dendrites doesn't necessarily faithfully propagate to the cell body (soma). This is also dependent on the local geometry and ion channel distribution. Dendritic action potentials are not all-or-nothing events like those of the axon.

To answer your question: Smith, et al., did observe dendritic action potentials (spikes) by measuring a proxy: calcium influx indicated by a fluorescent dye that changes efficiency when bound to calcium. This calcium influx, and by extension, the dendritic spike, is what was spatially-restricted. The authors are extrapolating information processing from the spatially-restricted dendritic spike.
This question implies they know what they're doing is wrong.

If they think they're protecting their country---including their families and friends---then it's easy to imagine how they wouldn't have a problem with this.
I __really__ __really__ don't get the mozilla stance here. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

Mozilla has been resisting Googles libre codecs even though they come with full source code and a patent pledge. Google has already even paid to eliminate potential threat from the evil MPEG LA. It is as free(libre) as you can get in this space.

On the other hand, the Cisco plugin is no solution at all. A binary module that has to be downloaded by each user? How can Mozilla justify recommending/requiring a binary module whose source it can not view/audit/share? This approach wouldn't be permitted under Debian Free Software Guidelines, thus ensuring that WebRTC-Firefox won't work on debian and its derivatives.

Cisco benefits from H.264 winning the standards battle. They also have patents in the MPEG LA pool. Apple, MS and Cisco - none of them are under any obligations to provide a libre implementation of WebRTC. Only Google and Mozilla have that responsibility. And they can make it happen today by just agreeing to go with VP8 and VP9 when it lands (both are covered by the patent pledge as well as under the MPEG LA agreement).

H.264 is a defacto standard already, I understand. But google, with its control of youtube and Android, can make a serious dent in that. If Moz and Google ensure that VP8 becomes the de-jure WebRTC standard, a Free software implementation of that can be released by mozilla today. No need to wait for Dwolla to come to fruition.

I'd really like to understand what I am missing here.
I think that might be the main reason I find angular attractive when compared to mostly DIY approaches with backbone.

Sure I can build a best of breed utilizing a wide range of libraries together with backbone... Well I would think I am intelligent enough to do that but in the end it feels like it's based a lot more on opinion rather than fact.

I rewrote an admin backend in half the time it took someone to do it in backbone with their choices of libraries. YMMV, but I am loathe to get into another discussion of which templating library to use, which UI widget things, etc., etc. Just let me build it already! And take care of 90% of the annoyances for me.
[Edit: apparently, the decryption does not happen real time. Instead, the encyrpted traffic is stored and decrypted later. Either NSA/GCHQ think the latency introduced by doing a full mitm with the private key would blow their cover, or they're using some algorithm that isn't fast enough for full mitm. The below is a bad interpretation.]

My interpretation is that they've acquired - either via bag job or by unpublished algorithm - Google private keys, and are decrypting and copying traffic immediately before the Google Front End, then impersonating the client to the Google Front End. Presumably, the Google Front End is on Google premises, and Google would be aware of the warrant that let NSA install such a device behind the Google Front End, whereas the peering point in front of the Google Front End (or on the fiber to the Google Front End) would be on Telco premises, and we've seen the Telco's be all to eager to cooperate. Oh, except Qwest, where the CEO found himself in jail.
Hellish exoplanet has Earth-like density and composition
While a GSM unlocked phone sounds attractive, there are market problems. Not all wireless carriers are created equal. AT&T and Verizon have the largest networks, but they use incompatible wireless technologies, so an unlocked device grants you no mobility. Yes, you can move to providers like T-Mobile, but that's not a 100% equivalent comparison. Depending on your needs, you may still be locked in to AT&T or Verizon, at which point an unlocked GSM phone nets you zero savings.

My point is that it's still not a "common sense" evaluation. It's a nuanced decision that must consider all variables.
That's a lot of math, and it might work for most of the top-notch phones. I go google.com/nexus all the way because I know that I'll be able to use my phone anywhere (I'm french and live in the US).
I've got a $30 no-contract sim-card only plan on T-mobile, with unlimited data and use Google voice for my calls. I don't think it's beatable (price wise. Quality wise it is.) it you want a last-gen smartphone.
The problem is not the diff but the "and besides that".

You should make two different commits, changing indentation and changing a feature are different changes and should be tracked independently.