sinak

I'll add my personal favorite from the last few years: "A Murder Foretold" - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/04/a-murder-foreto...

The TomTom founders definitely didn't "just kill the postcode."

> Mapcodes were developed in 2001 by Pieter Geelen and Harold Goddijn, soon after the GPS satellite signals were opened up for civilian use. It was decided to donate the mapcode system to the public domain in 2008.

Can we get an update to the click-baity title?

That's a good call, we'll add a link to the amendment now. The amendment was only made public this morning so we didn't have it when we were making the site last night. The whole site was made in about 16 hours, so apologies it's not more fully-baked.

Edit: Link added.

Edit: Just re-reading your comment. We definitely don't think you're sheep-like or feeble-minded. In fact, quite the opposite. It was simply an accidental omission.

My feedback: I'd love to see some examples of the kinds of workouts the service sends before signing up.

Great post. I wonder whether organizations like YC might consider offering compensation for seeing a therapist during and after their batch, and even perhaps going as far as recommending a particular local therapist.

I've experienced depression while running a startup, and seeing a therapist was immensely helpful. A therapist who regularly sees founders as clients would have a stronger-than-usual feedback loop on what sorts of advice and recommendations can help.

Edit: While I think the advice of talking to other founders about depression is really excellent for those who have that option, I think back to when I've experienced depression and wonder whether it would have helped. Specifically I'm not sure I was even in a state to be able to act upon that advice. Generally my sense of self-worth was so deflated that it was very difficult to discuss it with anyone, and particularly anyone who I wasn't close friends with. Beyond my co-founders, few of my close friends were entrepreneurs.

OpenSignal - London, UK (Full time, permanent)

At OpenSignal we're using mobile apps to tap into the smart phones we're all carrying around with us to build up global crowdsourced sensor networks. Our first [1] is for wireless signal where we are building a global database on the coverage and performance of wireless networks (both mobile + WiFi) on a scale that has never before been possible. Our second sensor network is WeatherSignal [2], which uses the barometers, thermometers and hygrometers on smart phones to crowdsource weather data and we have already published a scientific paper [3] showing the potential of this approach. If the concept of crowdsourced sensor networks appeals to you too then please get in touch. We are hiring for all manner of different roles right not (backend, frontend, UX/UI & data science) but most of all we are just looking for smart, like minded people rather than people with specific, existing skills.

More info: http://opensignal.com/jobs/

Email us: join@opensignal.com

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.staircase3...

[2]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.opensignal...

[3]http://opensignal.com/reports/battery-temperature-weather/

Thanks Craig, but I was barely involved: all the credit should go to Sunlight Foundation and their partners (Govtrack, NY Times) who started the project and did the painstaking work to build the datasets over the course of 2 years.

I helped with a tiny tiny piece (the contact-congress repo), and even that was worked on for months before by the folks at Sunlight (in particular Dan Drinkard and Eric Mill).

Somewhat relatedly: http://fontello.com. Helps you generate your own icon fonts using a smaller selection of icons instead of using the entire Font Awesome library, which can be up to 253kB depending on your browser.

There's a great gem for using it with rails [1], a cli [2] and grunt task [2].

[1] https://github.com/railslove/fontello_rails_converter

[2] https://github.com/paulyoung/fontello-cli

[3] https://github.com/jubalm/grunt-fontello

I've gotten far more value out of my Metafilter subscription than the $5 I originally paid for my account. It really is an excellent (and very well-moderated) community.

If you're interested, you can donate to help cover Metafilter's ongoing costs using this link:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_b...

It's a Gmail feature called "Actions" and was launched back in 2013:

https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/actions/actions-...

I'm actually surprised so few companies have implemented it thus far.

The full text of the FCC's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was just put online here:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-14-61A...

This was just released - I imagine there'll be a surge in articles once journalists have had time to digest the full document.

It's important to note that the FCC is avoiding dealing with the peering issue (so, for example, Netflix's issue) with their current proposal. Wheeler specifically said that they want to delay that part of the net neutrality debate until later. In my view that's a mistake.

The title and post are both quite misleading. The commissioners didn't approve Tom Wheeler's plan (to regulate the Internet under Section 706), but voted to go ahead with the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and commenting period. Tom Wheeler stated multiple times that Title II classification is still on the table.

There'll now be a 120 day commenting period; 60 days of comments from companies and the public, and then 60 days of replies to those comments from the same. After that, the final rulemaking will happen.

It's likely that the docket number for comments will continue to be 14-28, so if you want to ask the FCC to apply common carrier rules to the Internet under Title II, you can do so here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display?z=r8e2h and you can view previous comments here: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment_search/execute?proceeding=1...

It's probably best to wait until the actual text of the NPRM is made public though, which'll likely happen very soon.

Edit: WaPo have now updated the title of the article to make it more accurate: "FCC approves plan to consider paid priority on Internet." Old title was "FCC approves plan to allow for paid priority on Internet."

100 people, 760 commits, 43k lines added to the YAML files in 13 hours. Thanks all those taking part - we were expecting this to take a month and it looks like it'll get done in a day :).

Still plenty more to do if anyone else is interested in dropping by and helping close up issues.

If you have suggestions on fixes, please feel free to submit a pull request. theunitedstates.io/contact-congress is on the gh-pages branch [1]. I wrote the instructions page and realize there are a few grammatical errors, any help fixing them would be really appreciated.

https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress/tree/gh-pag...

Just to clarify, we're not trying to break any captchas - any system that implements the open data format in contact-congress would need to return captchas to users for them to fill out. We're simply making it possible for third parties to create simpler, unified interfaces for sending emails to someone's member of congress.

Okay, we'll remove "not very" from that paragraph :).

Full instructions on how to take part are at this link: http://theunitedstates.io/contact-congress/

And here is the Github repo: https://github.com/unitedstates/contact-congress/

Neel Mehta tweeted that private keys wouldn't be in the heap near packet data on April 8th:

https://twitter.com/neelmehta/status/453625474879471616

We've actually been wanting something like this for a project we're working on to build a new CMS for part of EFF's website. Initially we were thinking of modifying prose.io to make it more flexible, but this goes even farther.

Unfortunately we're probably too far into dev at this point to switch (we went with a rails app), but this problem comes up pretty regularly for us and I'm looking forward to giving Webhook a try.

Here's a suggestion on the video: instead of having one long recording, create multiple, much shorter ones that explain pieces of functionality.

Running the exploit and all I see are session IDs. Has anyone seen any passwords being output?

Recovery process for this seems like it would be:

- All affected sites need need to update OpenSSL, reissue certs, tell users to update their passwords.

- All users need to reset their passwords, using a unique password for each site if possible. If they can't feasibly use unique passwords for each site, they need to make sure they don't use their new password on sites that aren't fixed yet.

That's pretty crazy, and getting anything close to 100% compliance is going to require a ton of visibility.

Someone should make a browser extension as quickly as possible to tell users if they're visiting a yet-unfixed site.

Hmm, something's amiss. Archive.org's record of Mozilla's website says that Mozilla Corp only ever had 5 board members. The WSJ seems to imply they had 6. Assuming Moz's own website is accurate, Katharina Borchert only joined around the time Eich was appointed.

Either way, the numbers don't quite add up. If there were only 5 board members, and only 2 of them wanted Eich, how did he get chosen? And even if Katherina was already on the board, that's still 3 vs 3.

Mozilla is an incredible force for good. Hope they get through this quickly and get back making the web better.

Archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20140322233528/http://www.mozill...

Present: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/moco/

> Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts.

This seems really true to me. Zuck gives the impression that he's in it for the power, and not for the love of technology. That's what makes this acquisition disappointing.

Similar service that was previously on HN: https://keysduplicated.com

They now have an API too, and are targetting commercial used.

So according to the report, Obama is going to propose legislation that:

- Would end the NSA's authorization to collect bulk call records from telephony providers under §215.

- Would require the NSA to require court approval prior to every §215 call record request. Up to 2 hops worth of call records would be included.

- Won't require that telecoms maintain anything more than the 18 months of call records that they are already obliged to hold.

The devil's in the details, but it sounds like a big change from the existing call records program. If Congress passes something along these lines, it'd be a major win.

But the §215 call records program is just a very small component of the objectionable surveillance programs. Here's just a sampling of the others:

"Upstream" collection: The sort of thing that happens in AT&T's Room 641A - fiber optic cables intercepted, data captured (under program names Fairview, Blarney, Stormbrew, Oakstar). Auth'd under Executive Order 12333 and the various FISA laws [1]. Searched using the XKEYSCORE frontend. GCHQ has similar program called Tempora which the NSA has access to.

MUSCULAR: Jointly run by GCHQ and NSA, collects data as it passes between the backend servers of services like Yahoo and Google. [2]

PRISM: Auth'd under §702, allows NSA to request data from tech companies about anyone who might be "reasonably believed" to be outside the US.

BULLRUN: Various efforts to break encryption, including attempts to insert vulnerabilities into encryption standards. Snowden's security clearance wasn't high enough to get any real details on exactly what the NSA has achieved as part of BULLRUN [4].

I think the scariest of those is Bullrun. We don't (and likely won't) know to what degree the NSA has managed to break or circumvent encryption [5].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstream_collection

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-in...

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret...

[4] http://www.eweek.com/blogs/security-watch/nsa-bullrun-911-an...

[5] https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/376481848760606720

Setting a specific date for the action was wrong. In reality it was critical to getting any participation at all. If we'd have themed this as "Fight Back For The Foreseeable Future," I assure you we'd have gotten very little participation. Any large movement is made up of a series of smaller actions.

For example, in the buildup to SOPA we had Internet Censorship Day in November, the Godaddy boycott in December, and then the blackout in January. To see this on a larger scale, simply skim the timeline of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2011_Egyptian_r...

I wrote my thoughts on the New York Times's "The Day The Internet Didn't Fight Back" article here:

http://sina.is/thoughts-about-tdwfb/

tl;dr The NYT post was inaccurate in lots of ways. It's true that Tuesday was much smaller than SOPA. But judging campaign success by the most important online activist moment in history sets an almost impossibly high bar. Also, SOPA didn't just happen, it was built up to. American Censorship Day happened 2 months before and was much smaller.

We drove 80k calls and 500k+ emails to Congress without a specific vote pending. Even without any of the larger tech companies participating we generated about as fifth as many calls as SOPA (400k). We also lacked a call to action as defeating a pending bill that would jeopardize internet freedom.

Why didn't larger tech companies didn't take part? I think that's an interesting question worth a journalist investigating. As with SOPA, companies like Google left their decision until the last minute. But this time around they decided to support the protest, but not take part by adding content to their home pages. I'm not sure any one thing explains it. Larger tech has added a significant lobbying apparatus since 2011 and perhaps that's part of it. They're playing the inside political game much more so than they did a couple of years ago. If it turns out to be more effective that online activism, I'm not sure we can particularly criticize them for it.

They've also banded together on this issue under the "reformgovernmentsurveillance.com" banner. That makes participation a more complicated group decision-making process.

While we branded yesterday as "the day" (which I know some of you take issue with), this is by no means the end. It's one in a series of actions. The actual votes on bills like the USA Freedom Act and FISA Improvements Act are yet to come. We made a dent, but this is a process.

I think David Segal's comment, which were added later to the article, sum things up pretty perfectly: “To mark all organizing a success or failure by measuring it against the single biggest online activist moment ever is ridiculous.”

But this was also just a case of really lazy journalism. Nicole Perlroth failed to contact any of the organizations or companies involved before publishing her article, and it contained a number of factual inaccuracies, only some of which have now been corrected:

- "Sites like Tumblr, Mozilla and DuckDuckGo, which were listed as organizers, did nothing to their homepages."

None of them were "listed as organizers." Their logos appeared on their site, but supporting/participating != organizing. This would have been easily corrected if she'd asked.

DuckDuckGo changed their homepage logo yesterday, and Mozilla added a link and logo on the browser start page, which is visible every time someone opens a new window.

- "[List of large tech co's] only participated Tuesday insofar as having a joint website flash the protest banner."

Facebook, Google and Twitter also released statements in support, and tweeted/shared on social media.

- "Most of those [calls and emails] were directed to Senator Dianne Feinstein."

I have no idea where she got this from. Feinstein did receive 2420 calls, but saying she received "most" of them is just nonsense.

- "But on privacy forums and Reddit, significant discussions failed to materialize."

Over 4,000 comments were posted to the reddit blog post that announced their participation and contained the banner. At least another 3,000 comments were made on other threads.

You can also see a diff of changes made to the post later in the day here: https://github.com/sinak/sinak.github.com/commit/d8050c45633...