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dlinderon Employer Tipped Off Police In Pressure Cooker/Backpack-gate, Not Google

Wow, look at that. As soon as you hit the spacebar, you're a terrorist! That's nuts.

dlinderon The Door To The FISA Court Doesn't Even Have A Sign On It

Is anyone collecting a list of the surreal, absurd, or kafkaesque events surrounding post-9/11 national security?

This episode reminds me of the red warning light from ksm's gitmo trial that would sometimes light up and cut the gallery feeds on its own: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/01/secrec...

dlinderon SlidePay (YC W12) Tries To Be The “Android” of Payments

For others researching options for card-present transactions with an API, there's also http://getcardflight.com

They feature a Stripe integration of some sort.

dlinderon Purpose of a surveillance state?

Equipment to purchase, contractors to hire, subcontractors to hire, ...

dlinderon GEOS 8-bit operating system

Memory lane this weekend. First the Amiga Unix article, now this. For us lucky C=128 owners, we could run GEOS or GEOS 128 which could use the C-128's 80 column mode (640x200). That was aspect ratio hell, 640x200 on a 4x3 screen meant you had noticeably rectangular pixels.

dlinderon Amiga Unix

In my halcyon Amiga days of yore, I learned about this from a magazine article (INFO? Amiga World?) about a University (Georgia Tech?) installing a labful of 3000UXes. Owning just a well-expanded 2000 and without the funds to buy AMIX, I discovered NetBSD, though I needed to trade out a 40 MHz 68EC030 (without MMU) on my accelerator card for the MMU-enabled version. I remember it took the better part of a week, and constant retries, to get the full install sets and kernel. I ran that rig all the way to 1999, junior year of college at UIUC. Good times.

I still run NetBSD on a personal machine (and a toaster).

dlinderon How Web mail providers leave door open for NSA surveillance

The general consensus around here seemed to be that "most" webmail providers did use encrypted SMTP, interesting to see that refuted. The "fat pipes being safe" rationale has been thrown around for a long time, definitely cast in a new light post-Room 641A, fiber tapping leaks, etc. We really do make it easy, don't we?

dlinderon The NSA can store communications of US citizens for up to 5 years, sans warrant

Please call your Senators and Representative, it really does help. Every call counts for hundreds (or even thousands) of emails.

http://callday.org/ makes it pretty easy. You'll either get voicemail or an intern who will take notes on what you say. It's very low-pressure.

dlinderon The NSA can store communications of US citizens for up to 5 years, sans warrant

Call your senators and representative, it really helps. Keep it short and to the point, write out what you're going to say before you call. You'll get put through to voicemail or an intern who will take notes on what you say. It's very low-pressure.

http://callday.org/

dlinderon NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants

There seems to be some suggestion of confusion on the Representative's part about call content vs Subscriber Information, actual video here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/video-congressman-cl... So this might not be the "gotcha" it first appears.

dlinderon Ask HN: Did you delete Facebook account after the NSA fiasco?

Forget the pointlessness of deleting your account - the real value is not continuing to feed the beast.

dlinderon Protest the NSA in Silicon Valley Next Friday

How about in front of Diane Feinstein's SF office?

dlinderon Where are the protests against the Surveillance State?

When do we meet outside Feinstein's office? Let's do it.

dlinderon Former OnLive Employee Describes 'Bizarre All-Hands Meeting'

So how do all the Kickstarter backers of Ouya feel about their potential content partner's creative bankruptcy?

dlinderon CDE Open Sourced

I read this as:

"CDE open sourced..." <audience laughter, comedic pause>

"...on SourceForge" <riotous laughter, fade to black>

dlinderon $1B of TSA Nude Body Scanners Made Worthless By Blog

My absolute favorite is Oklahoma Joe's: http://www.oklahomajoesbbq.com/

But really, it's kind of hard to go wrong in KC.

dlinderon $1B of TSA Nude Body Scanners Made Worthless By Blog

You are honestly one of my heroes. Please keep up the good fight. I haven't flown in over a year, and have never gone through a scanner, and while I love having discovered so much more of my dear old USA by car, the nearly 20K miles I've driven are starting to take a toll!

ps My favorite part of not flying has been discovering Kansas City BBQ joints. I stop each way between IL and CA. Yum. Silver lining, right?

dlinderon 14 years ago: the day Teller gave me the secret to my career in magic.

Heh, I noticed that guy, too - made me look up my earliest Usenet post, July 4, 1994, when I was 15 years old. I had other Usenet, Fido, and BBS identities before that, but I can't remember what they were.

So yeah, in 1994, a 15 year old and his 12 year old brother were definitely able to figure out their way onto the "Live Internet" (to differentiate from dialup relay like Fido or UUCP)

Then came the convincing of the parents to get a dedicated line so we could leave our SLIP connection up 24/7 so that others could check our finger status, etc....

dlinderon A zsh Workshop

http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/workshops/

1999, my senior year at UIUC. I remember sitting in this workshop, and I still use zsh today. Good times, great ACM student chapter.