skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
...this, and realizing the "benefits of a well-rested mind", and fucking accepting once and for all that "laziness is (most of the time) not a defect, and in the right circumstances can be a success driving mind-set" ...but we'll probably have above-human-level-AI before we get these basic truths finally drilled into our heads and the heads of our children and having them replace the christian-morality-driven-capitalism derived bullshit that we have in our heads instead of it nowadays...
I also find the sentence Aaron faced to be excessive.

For additional context, David Headley received a 35 year sentence for his active participation in the Mumbai bombings which killed 160 people.[1] The median sentence for murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the US (effective 2000) is 24 years, 3 months.[2]

I can't help but find Aaron's prospective punishment to be far more abhorrent than his crimes. It continues to sadden me that MIT used their influence in such a hurtful manner.

[1]: http://www.propublica.org/article/david-headley-homegrown-te...

[2]: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/Fssc00.txt
You're right. Git really isn't crypto, and this news blurb does sound a bit odd. Hopefully this is just a misunderstanding in the reporting. Matching hashes is probably a pretty good sanity check, but it isn't the kind of solid guarantee that a project like OpenSSL needs.

Fortunately, one great thing about decentralized source control systems is that everyone has a copy of everything. Hopefully someone has simply located a repository which hasn't been updated since before the breach, and done some direct comparisons.
MIT's report on their involvement in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz: http://swartz-report.mit.edu/
I work in the corporate world. The reason it's frowned upon is because employers rather see complete projects that you did rather than a bit of random code here and there in an open source project.
Unused files: there are always plenty of files in a source distribution that aren't actually being used during a compile, for example a README file. As far as I know a commit id is a sha sum of a tree of files, so you could probably put any "adjusting bits" in an unimportant file.

Md5: Just an example of how hash collisions can work in real life (not aware of any published sha1 examples)
New Year's Resolutions for SysAdmins
Uber Admits That Driver Arrested For Killing 6-Year-Old Worked For Them
A couple years ago I bought this book, read it in a few days, and was on my way. Highly recommended. Super fun.

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Lock-Picking-Physical-Penetr...
Git's hashes were not always verified all that often in the past (at least, as of 1.7.4.1):
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5585388/which-git-command...

You'll see plenty of operations do not check the sha1, and will happily hand you bad data, including checkout and clone, depending on circumstances.

I haven't checked on the latest version, but at least previously, you'd have to run around using git fsck specifically to get it to notice some sha1 mismatches.

So at least trivially, the idea that "it uses sha-1 so it's safe" is silly even without considering the implementation, because it doesn't always check the sha-1 :)

(I'm not even going to argue it should, just pointing out it didn't)

You can also GPG sign git commits (see http://mikegerwitz.com/papers/git-horror-story.html for a long explanation of what does and does not get checked)
CDC Zombie Preparedness Guide
By "90% accurate", you mean "10% false positive rate and 10% false negative rate", correct?
Proprietary software, firmware and hardware ultimately means you don't own the stuff you use. Goes on at all levels and people interiorise it to the point that they will take it as a given and justify uses that are not truly justifiable. ISPs do not need this kind of policy to operate, regardless what you'll read in this thread.
Margaret Thatcher had secret plan to use army at height of miners' strike
Uber statement: http://blog.uber.com/2014/01/01/statement-on-new-years-eve-a...

Local coverage: http://sfist.com/2014/01/01/7-year-old_girl_struck_and_kille...

> In addition, the driver was a non-taxi, for-pay driver. Certainly this incident raises questions regarding the driver training and selection process for the increasing number of ride share drivers on our city streets. While emerging driver service apps fulfill an important need for flexible on-demand transportation in San Francisco, we must examine a universal baseline of scrutiny and safety oversight for these services.

Techcrunch examines the question of insurance company liability given the claim that the Uber driver was not "doing a trip": http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/02/should-car-services-provide...

> People have scrutinized Uber’s approach to insurance in the past. But this terrible accident on New Year’s Eve brings a specific question into focus. Should app-based taxi and ridesharing should provide insurance to cover drivers while they’re between rides but actively looking to pick up passengers?
I find Google Books ruling particularly insane... they have undeniably been copying books illegally and for a profit motive (even if they don't yet make money directly off the copies), but this is okay because they've provided a valuable service.

What?!

If it's such a valuable service they could have given a cut to the authors instead of illegally copying their books. Allowing somebody to break the law because you believe they are morally good is textbook legislating from the bench and it's wrong.
> But 99.9% of their users won't know or care

Exactly. Getting individual users to care about privacy or security is ultimately a cultural thing. In the US (which probably has most of Snapchat's users), the attitude of the general public to this seems to be pretty gung-ho, leading to this being a non-event.

I suspect (but can't be sure) that if something like this happened, in, say, Germany, it would generate far more impact and press attention. Most of my US acquaintances who are college students don't give two hoots about privacy -- they are far too busy marketing themselves to the world as much as possible.
http://mark.laabs.net/alternate-theory-for-obamas-nobel-priz...
Overview of Canadian UAV regulations
"MIT was never involved in any plea negotiation, and was never asked by either the prosecution or the defense to approve or disapprove any plea agreement"

http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd...

II.B.3, last sentence. Read the whole section for a summary of that event.
There is no sensible way in the U.S. to talk about a sentence without reference to the Sentencing Guidelines. Any number not based on the guidelines is effectively fiction.

If he got more than the one or two years guideline range they would be in danger of being overturned on appeal. That's still excessive of course. The CFAA is a misdemeanor, and the provision allowing it to be enhanced to a felony in conjunction with another crime is misguided.
Very cool, I might use one of these! The email with the download link was marked as spam by gmail, so you might have to do a search in:anywhere.

Some other free themes: http://wrapbootstrap.com (I'm not affiliated, just love their stuff). They have less files and a compiled css file for their themes.
I once had to break into my own house, I used a paint roller handle. It took me about an hour and a half, and was very painful, but I managed it :)
Every Libertarian I've ever met believes in contract law, and that essentially ANY penalty can be attached to willful violations of contract.

Under a Libertarian regime, the whole thing would've been simpler, as no theory of justice or societal good would've been involved. It would've simply been JSTOR and MIT extracting whatever revenge they'd considered.
Kerbal Space Program has a sizeable community, and is single player, and real fun to play.
Because depressed, suicidal people kill themselves, usually when they're not facing prison?

In 2007 Schwartz posted what was believed to be a suicide note after being fired from reddit:
http://digitaljournal.com/article/341150
Check out the massive communities built around strategy games like Civilization - I think SP games are doing well.

That said, IMO the social and community aspects are just icing on the cake. A game gains no traction unless it's a good game first. The community that grows around it are an accelerant for future growth, but will not exist at all if it weren't for a solid game underneath.
Its not just a breach of contract, because Aaron accessed the network again after his license had been revoked. That was a distinct violation in the nature of trespass, a property law concept.

Let me illustrate. Say you belong to a private club. The contract of membership allows you to use the clubhouse, as long as you don't bring any Hindu guests. Say one day you do. That's a breach of contract. Say you come back the next day. Since you've breached the contract, your license to use the house is revoked, and now its an infringement of property: trespass. Finally, lets say you punch the owner for being racist. Any classic libertarian will support prosecuting you under three legal theories: breach of contract, trespass, and battery (a tort). Classic libertarians don't reject any of these.
Legislation aside, I think it's important to note the US's cultural distinctness here (probably in an unhealthy way.) I spent a year after college backpacking, and I was surprised to find that productivity and travel aren't mutually exclusive, nor are travel and vacation the same thing.

I think this notion is more widespread in other cultures (as you say, from many other more developed countries) and from that stems legislation. Based on my experiences, I do firmly believe that most of us would benefit by getting out of our home countries, more often and for longer.
I tried looking before to see if there were any studies done on mice, say, feeding them diets with the same caloric value, but different proportions of fat, protein, sugar. Wanted to know if there's any evidence that eating more sugar makes you get fatter. Wasn't able to find anything.
The entire GNU project is like a house that looked so mod in 1971, but now has peeling paint, stained concrete, shag carpeting that smells pretty funky, and a crazy old relative that haunts the place. "Renovation" is changing the light bulbs and occasionally washing the stucco.
Shouldn't he be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
Only for unsolved problems, and only if you can actually afford it (both mostly mean competition is limited or non-existant).

Otherwise, that won't work. It's a matter of time (decades, probably, but limited) until IT work turns into that as well. There was a time when helpdesk work was a well-paid satisfying job. Unions were merely a consequence of effectively 100% employment, and a pretty horrible one at that.

We're returning to the middle ages, it's as simple as that. I don't mean technologically (the middle ages weren't all that primitive, they had knowledge, they just didn't have any economic application for it in a lot of places. But look at the cathedrals and trading houses they built : the problem was not that know-how had disappeared entirely, it just wasn't useful in 99% of places). I mean the employment situation : 95%+ unemployment (if you don't count subsistence farmers, and you shouldn't).
And then there are people like me, who play TF2 to blow off steam. I don't look for my friends on servers, and I only keep a list of "favorite" servers because I know they always have the map I want to play.
How about a Patent Litigation crowd sourcing. I pitched this several times, but I just can't get around to get it going. A site were everyone being threatened with a lawsuit based on a given patent can pull together monetarily to invalidate the patent or defend against the suit. If any one is already doing it, please post a link. And, if any one is interested in starting it up and needs a partner with legal background, let me know :)
I said upfront that this is not a straight up comparison. The main point for me is that I walk past the memorial for the MIT police officer killed in duty about once per week. One of these events had a tremendous impact on MIT and the surrounding community, the other had a negligible one.

Regardless, have a re-read of the article you linked to. Jennifer Granick writes:

> He could plead guilty to all 13 felony charges and the government would argue for a six-month prison term ... Some have blithely said Aaron should just have taken a deal. This is callous. There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony. ... More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. ... if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years ...

On top of that, Aaron "would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe".

Due to the obscenely high maximum penalty, it is no longer a sane option to fight to prove one's innocence, even in the case of what would be a minor crime, as the risk in case of failure is disastrous. Even if he pleaded guilty to all the crimes, there was no guarantee of a six month sentence.

Thank you for linking to the article though. It's well written and sheds a light on the complexities at play.

Small note: I didn't mention Tsarnaev in my original post, I mentioned his roommates, so your statement about Tsarnaev and a six month jail term is unfounded.
I find them too busy and too colorful for my taste. You also need a few more examples and templates. You also need to add to your pitch a bit.Granted the examples have appeal to hacker type jobs, but would probably fail in other fields.
Thanks for your kind words. There are definitely some cases where the topics could be reordered for greater clarity and I'll revisit them in the next iteration of the book based on the things people have pointed out (again, after a hiatus).

One of the challenges is to find the right balance between rigorous exposition one the one hand and keeping a brisk pace on the other (after all, writing for the web is different from writing a textbook). So I am grateful for all the input I've received thus far but it has definitely been challenging to find editors and reviewers - in particular because this is an unpaid effort on my part.
If Emacs moves to git, can we call it by its proper name: git/Emacs?
European Trademark Office Says Pinterest Doesn’t Own ‘Pinterest’ – Social News..
Facebook bots grope our 'privates', and every wronged user should get $10,000
Interesting solution! Wasn't aware Route 53 handles those types of requests free of charge, certainly makes it a cost effective solution if you're on Route 53. Thanks for the response
No, companies do not care and they have no imperative to do so (old-guard companies, at least). That's why its perfectly OK to call them out on their crap and take your holidays when you need them. If they're a big company, their cost/benefit will probably run lower than cost/benefit to your sanity (and your partners sanity, and your family, and your friends etc etc.). Being a grown up means you take what you need, because like your own life, a companies existence is temporary and (likely) meaningless. It's not a badge of honor to run yourself into the ground for some brand-x corporate. The US is way off, culturally, in this regard. Wanna screw the 1%, fight for and take your holidays, that's a really good start! :D

(disclosure: 4-6 weeks off foreigner in the US going what the hell to 2 weeks leave+no perf. bonus. Its bullshit, I don't get why people roll over and just take it. Love punishment? Validated by being victims? What the hell)
> Clusters of stateless web servers + single master. This is definitely a common setup, but you need very little if any distributed systems research to implement it.

First, define "stateless"? I would not characterized such a system as stateless at all. Even if you're not using sticky sessions (with cache servers/load balancers talking to each other for failover using fairly involved protocols), there's still state that's ephemeral (sessions) in your application server, as well as bulk of the persistent state that's provided with essentially "faith based consistency" (consider typical memcached cluster with client doing consistent hashing -- asynchronously replicated MySQL with failover, etc... -- in case of a failure, neither availability nor consistency are guaranteed).

On the level of protocols design, the whole idea of stateless protocols (REST) vs. stateful ones (sticky load balancers + SOAP, CORBA, RMI, etc...) is by itself a big distributed systems topic.

A web browser talking to a web server is by definition a distributed system. I am typing this as fast as I can, praying not to get the "your link is invalid" error from HN right now -- this a real example of distributed system and cache coherence/consistency/atomicity. Here's one paper that deals with just these sorts of question (in context of NFS): ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/sprite/papers/state.ps‎

> Re: Chubby and GFS

Original GFS doesn't rely on Chubby, BigTable does however (for metadata). I believe newer versions (Collosus) by extension rely on Chubby as they rely on BigTable.

F1/Spanner, however, use consensus and transactions far more than others and is very interesting in this sense.

[Edit: more elaboration on distributed systems issues in a "stateless" cluster of web servers].
"the corporate world" is a pretty large place spanning companies that will hire people based solely upon open source contributions as well as companies that will disqualify people based solely upon open source contributions.

It's a pretty meaningless statement to say "in the real world, no one cares about open source" when your definition of "real world" is one fraction of one fraction of the real world (specific companies within the corporate world).
I was once given a boolean function, asked to implement it using logic gates. And then asked to optimize it based on a few criteria (for example: GNDs and VDDs cost a lot, reduce the gates, etc.)

The most annoying thing was, I was not expecting any gates related question so my optimizations were very... adhoc.
Indeed, but ultimately covering all of those topics would require an incredible amount of time and effort. So I need to pick and choose my battles as some topics are more important or interesting to me than others. :)
Matasano's Crypto Challenge Bankruptcy Announcement
>>The general argument is whether something that is a public good should trump the needs of land owners.

You talk like there are these super wealthy land lords with nearly unaccountable real estate not willing to yield an inch.

The reality is, its some ones home. Just like I and you have. If you are destroying that, you better pay up good compensation. Which in most cases never paid. In my country(India) compensation paid is some thing like 5% of the actual land value.

Imagine some one just walking up to your home in full police gear, bulldozers and then just asking you to leave or get killed in the process of demolition. They will have the necessary legal documents and police support. You will be given some peanuts while you watch your property razed to ground. All in the name of 'public good'.

In New Delhi, the son of a judge used his connections to first acquire a land to build a mall inside a area which had very narrow roads. He built the mall, then figures out no one wants to visit the mall due traffic and parking problems. Guess what he does next? He further bribes officials and gets them to demolish a lot of homes to broaden roads, so that traffic and parking issues go away to help his real estate grow.

There was a massive uproar, as to how the whole system works. The supreme court of India, has now said no land can be acquired unless the owners of the land give a explicit permission and agree that fair compensation has been paid.
You say so many words
Hiding behind that fact
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Here we go again: another class action lawsuit against a big tech company accused of over-stepping privacy boundaries. This one says Facebook scans private messages opportunities in search of ad opportunities.
You can view Facebook Class Action Re Message Scanning on Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/195402798/Facebook-Class-Action-Re...
No condemnation meant here. I just think it's a great (and humorous) example of how yak shaving can do us all in.

Big thanks to the Matasano team for a really cool project to work on.
It continues to sadden me that MIT used their influence in such a hurtful manner.

I don't think this is a fair description; it would be fairer to say that MIT failed to use its influence in a helpful manner. (Even then I'm not sure it would have made a difference; it seems to me that the prosecutors were intent on "getting" Swartz and weren't listening to reasonable arguments for backing off.)
Even for payments, I think Bitcoin is still missing its "killer app." So far, the only viable ideas seem to have been related to exchanges, mining, and The Silk Road. Are there other business ideas that take advantage of Bitcoin's unique properties?

I thought maybe micropayments for content, but I don't think people like to get nickel-and-dimed. Usage would probably be too low to build a real product/business around it. Ideas?
Forget about paying above market rate. In most cases the compensation paid is like 5% of the market rate.

And in most places there is nothing like the seller even agreeing to it. A court order is passed, you are paid some peanuts and asked to evacuate.
Because it's important to have a cohesive set of packages that are parts of the GNU project. It's about culture and cohesion, not just licensing.
Yes, you're right. What is making Netflix gain market share are the series. Basically most people are using Netflix instead of TV, not to get Hollywood movies. The same pattern happened at my home: there are no good movies to see, but plenty of activity around TV shows and documentaries. And from a business point of view this is even better for them, because TV series make people stick around longer than a single movie.
I think the subsequent OK'ing is unfortunate. Attracting younger hackers shouldn't be a more important goal than integrity.
Dark Souls has a similar style of community, where due to the opaque and difficult gameplay lots of community discussion is necessary and live streaming is common.
reminds me of an aphorism I quote from time to time

"no one on their deathbed ever wishes they'd spent more time at work" :)
http://quanta.ws/ojs/index.php/quanta/article/view/14
Here is an explanation that weak measurements does not contradict the Heisenberg principle.
Nobody loves monarchs more than someone who has never had to live under one.
Trespassing is the whole substantial crime in this case, and it should have ended with an arrest by the Cambridge PD and a fine.
Kleptography is the study of stealing information securely and subliminally