America's falling carbon-dioxide emissions: Some fracking good news - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/05/americas-falling-carbon-dioxide-emissions <comment><USER2> I totally understand the fears behind fracking as well as nuclear power (I'm living in Japan and my family lives in upstate NY) but often the progressive approach to energy policy has been to jump from the pan into the fire. Absolutely the worst offender is the coal industry (and the so-called 'clean coal' movement is just not feasible) and it has to go to zero. If gas and nuclear have to grow to fill the vacuum, then so be it.

The anti-nuclear movement here in Japan is flawed in a similar way. It certainly would be nice not to have nuclear plants but they're replacing them with coal imports. They should be talking about regulating and replacing the nuclear operators, and put replacing the nuclear power itself on the long-term track.

<comment><USER3> It's sad that the trade off is between dirty coal and natural gas. Energy policy (and the corrupt subsidies) are so short-sighted. In 5-10 years, Europe will have moved a small but significant chunk of their powergrids to renewable energy sources. The best the US can hope for is a decrease in coal power as it is replaced by fracked natural gas. Hardly any forecasts expect an increase in the adoption rates for renewables.

However, Europe and whomever invests in renewable technologies will likely benefit most in the long term.

<comment><USER4> The US is a large place. Having just driven cross-country, I can say that there are a _lot_ of wind farms along the I-84 + I-80 route. The issue though is that those wind farms probably still only represent a small portion of the total power usage of the country.

<comment><USER2> Well, in the linked article you can see a graph showing the contribution from renewables. You can see it's even growing a bit. It's just nowhere near ready to replace coal just yet.

We absolutely should be pushing them and they represent our long-term solution but the 5-10 year plan should be shutting down coal. That means you need an alternative ready to go now.

<comment><USER4> The real question (which I haven't researched) is if (specifically) wind power is sustainable without government 'alternative energy' subsidies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's annoying that their graphic shows percent share of various electricity sources, rather than total quantity, and then makes statements like "The importance of coal in America's energy mix has indeed tumbled since 1997". The unstated implication of the words + graphic is that we're using less coal than we used to be. But if you look at their data source, first it doesn't include 1997 at all, but more importantly, in 2008 we generated more electricity from coal than in 1998, and the average electricity generation from coal in the last 5 years is higher than the amount generated in either of the first couple years. But mostly, what does it mean for "the importance in the energy mix" to "tumble"? If we stopped using coal power, the price of energy would spike up dramatically; coal is pretty much essential to our current "energy mix".

The story I see in the data is that our energy use grows on average about 1% per year, with a bit of a dip in 2009, presumably due to the recession. The amount of electricity from natural gas has almost doubled and continues to rise, the amount from hydroelectric dams has been slowly creeping downward, and the amount from other renewable sources has been increasing steadily but is still a small fraction of our total "energy mix".

<comment><USER6> Of course our energy use is growing. Our energy use will always increase, I hope. This article is about greenhouse gas emissions, and the chart is there to provide some explanation, i.e. where we're getting our energy _from_.

<comment><USER7> It's not unthinkable that the total energy consumption will shrink. Take Germany for an example: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great for CO2 emissions, not so great for climate change. Several recent studies have found that methane emissions from natural gas extraction and operations make natural gas as bad for the climate as coal, at least over the next few decades. Methane drops out of the atmosphere much faster than CO2, but is also a much stronger greenhouse gas.

<comment><USER9> Can you site these studies, please. And do any of these studies take into account the offsetting massive loss of wetlands world-wide (which now no longer release methane into the atmosphere) over the last couple centuries from destruction of swamps. (e.g. when Saddam Hussein drained the Tigris–Euphrates marshlands [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigris%E2%80%93Euphrates_river_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigris%E2%80%93Euphrates_river_system))

<comment><USER8> Sure. Here's a recent one, for example (pdf hosted at motherjones but it's from the journal Climatic Change). [http://www.motherjones.com/files/04-11shale_gas_footprint_fu...](http://www.motherjones.com/files/04-11shale_gas_footprint_fulltextpdf.pdf)

And here's a short article in Time that mentions several studies: [http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2111562,00.ht...](http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2111562,00.html)

The industry has disputed the data of some studies but also strongly resists efforts to shore up the data by better measuring methane leakage.

The direct greenhouse effects of methane vs. CO2 are not seriously in dispute, being a matter of basic physics. So I don't see how the level of methane emissions 200 years ago is relevant to the question of whether coal or gas is causing a greater greenhouse effect right now, per unit energy.

I'll mention though that while we may have less swampland, we've also got new methane releases from melting permafrost and clathrates.

<comment><USER10> Also, the loss of wetlands is a huge environmental negative in other ways. The oceans are in serious trouble, and that trouble often starts at the margins between land and water.

Also, cheap natural gas is helping fuel recovery of tar sands, which brings its own raft of problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


John Goerzen on Why You Should Learn Haskell - <AUTHOR> http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/01/why-you-should-learn-haskell.html

<comment><USER2> I thought you were supposed to learn you a Haskell for great good.</comment>


Bitbucket down? - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/

<comment><USER2> <http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Our Redis service crashed. We've disabled our newsfeed feature temporarily while we investigate further.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not from here. Italy, not logged in, 12:15.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes it is. From delhi@india.</comment>


Sidekick kicks back - <AUTHOR> http://uk.news.yahoo.com/16/20091013/ttc-t-mobile-stops-sales-of-sidekick-aft-6315470.html

<comment><USER2> In what way is this article about SideKick kicking back? You appear to have invented an entirely new headline, which I believe is against the guidelines.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I sure my blog will live after I dead, forever? - <AUTHOR> Is there any service provide my blog and post will live forever after I dead?
How it can be done?
Is there any solution? <comment><USER2> Write something worth reading, then let other people worry about preserving it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree with you. You can't know which post how effect for someone life. This isn't realistic point of view.

<comment><USER2> Well I guess it's safer not to write anything then.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) You are really funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't the Internet Archive have it stored?

See what the Archive says and perhaps if you get your licensing right, your blog will live on long after you've left the world.

<comment><USER4> Yes. If its publicly accessible and your robots.txt file doesn't block the archive's crawler, it'll live on forever in the wayback machine.

Disclaimer: ArchiveTeam contributor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes but in this case, people try to find it in archive.

When I first write, I think about how my blog site up and post accesible.

<comment><USER3> Well if you want it to live on long after you are gone and on the original blog, then you should host it on some free blogging platform like Wordpress.com (their hosted option) or Blogger/blogspot or Tumblr (or some other option)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It might be a few years too early for this to be an easily accessible option, but if you are worried about mega-term storage you can encode your text in DNA. If stored properly, this method is far more persistent than magnetic plate or (current) solid state storage.

This will potentially preserve the information for millions of years. Plus, you'll save on hosting.

<comment><USER6> >This will potentially preserve the information for millions of years.

Not true. Outside the body, DNA has a half-life of about 500 years. If you want your writing to last for millions of years, carve some stone tablets.

<comment><USER5> > Outside the body, DNA has a half-life of about 500 years.

Who said it had to be stored outside the body? :) You could create a modified copy of an organism's genome with the information inserted.

But let's assume we mean outside the body storage:

The ~500 year number is an estimate based on the half-lives of DNA found in paleontological discoveries. Of course, since these samples were discovered in nature- no effort was made to prevent degradation over the post-death timeline. Some estimates say that a DNA strand could still retain useful information for as much as 1.5 million years.[1] We have amplified and sequenced information preserved in nature for 80,000 years.[2]

That half-life estimate is based on samples that were not always in solid state, which is an empirically more stable preservation state for DNA.

Specifically, the samples were usually not protected from water and oxygen throughout the entire storage period.

It is important to keep in mind that despite the _observed_ half-life of DNA (which is still far longer than _any_ existing/practical high density storage medium), it still retains useful information as it degrades for thousands (theoretically, millions) of years.

Also, you won't be storing the information on just a single strand, but on billions of strands. This redundancy affords you the ability to reliably amplify and sequence different non-degraded segments after many half-lives.

Notice that I said "...if stored properly...", granted, I wasn't clear, but it is certainly theoretically possible to preserve information for millions of years in DNA.

DNA is already the highest density storage medium that we use to store human produced information, such as a book. [3] Right now with current storage methods (room temp, dehydrated) we have an archival storage medium reliable for thousands of years.

If we can crack two things: extremely high speed sequencing, and ultra-long term solid state storage of DNA; it will be the ultimate high density long term storage medium short of sculpting code into metal at the atomic scale.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2013/01/24/170082404/shall-i-encode- thee-...](http://www.npr.org/2013/01/24/170082404/shall-i-encode-thee-in-dna- sonnets-stored-on-double-helix)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half- life-1.11...](http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555)

[3] [http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf](http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't really think you can guarantee for it to live forever unless you are paying someone to do this service for you. If you are just hosting it on a big site like tumblr you can hope that it stays up, but you never know if something will happen where they go under.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can pay for it totally and it can be show some ads, and can be collect donation. I imagine it more than a community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can encode it in the Bitcoin blockchain. Lots of people will not like what you've done.

You can also try to get it in some popular torrent, and have it live off with as many people as possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> www.posthaven.com

<comment><USER10> Thanks Charlie! Posthaven cofounder here. In the short term we will run your blog go $5 a month. We've taken a pledge not to get acquired and to run it for as long as possible. Right now we are building it out but in the future as we grow we would like to make a foundation that will fund it in perpetuity out of the profits. The site is profitable and self sustaining now. Definitely a work in progress but a blog that lives forever is our goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Garry, in your service provide forever living?

<comment><USER11> From their FAQ:

What happens if I stop paying?

Permanent URLs are a powerful idea, and it's a feature of using Posthaven we think you should get even if you stop paying. We'll keep the site online, but you won't be able to edit content or add to it. If you want to renew, start paying again and your account will be restored.

When will something qualify for permanent storage? Let's keep it simple initially: If you pay for a year's worth of service, your content is safe and we'll keep it online.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you man!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Everyone Missed the Most Mind-Blowing Feature of Cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/why-everyone-missed-the-most-mind-blowing-feature-of-cryptocurrency-860c3f25f1fb <comment><USER2> "It's a stealth feature, one that hasn't activated yet. But when it does it will ripple across the entire world, remaking every aspect of society."

Nothing about cryptocurrency will remake every aspect of society. That is just over the top garbage. The rest of the article is of similar low quality nonsense.

<comment><USER3> Although I agree, I think the point people are trying to make when they say that is this:

Cryptocurrency breaks down financial barriers usually erected because of geo- political relationships. Other sectors might benefit from the same kind of egalitarianism.

I don't know what the future holds, but there could be interesting applications, but probably not as world changing as people think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really dislike articles that start off like this one, where every sentence has to be on a new line. Why write this way?</comment>


House Votes to Renew Surveillance Law, Rejecting New Privacy Limits - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/us/politics/fisa-surveillance-congress-trump.html <comment><USER3> As Wyden[1] points out, Congress has nearly no information on what impact the FISA program has. How many Americans are targeted already? The military refuses to answer Congress. How many emails & other collections are swept up? The military refuses to answer to Congress.

This bill explicitly allows it's use directly against Americans and declares which circumstances the FBI & other agencies need to use warrants and where these agencies will now be permitted warrantless access to FISA collections.

"Abouts" collection has a direct means to being permitted again. Ever use the word Benghazi in an email? Ok, all your communication might be wiretapped from now on. If the FBI ever wants to investigate you for something non terrorism related, something totally unrelated to Benghazi? No problem. Maybe- in some cases- they MIGHT need a warrant.

Just Security had a great writeup[2]. This bill is a travesty, especially given that Congress has again and again asked for some information to inform them about how FISA is being used already, and the military has stonewalled and stonewalled and stonewalled. That congress would radically expand these powers, let them now directly target Americans, and would allow the FBI & others access to this program, after being continually rebuffed, AND would make this program unable to be challenged in court- it's the pinnacle of madness. It's complete dereliction of duty by congress, and one of the saddest moments of cowardice in the US Governments history that we'd stoop so low.

[1] [https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass- surv...](https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/dont-pass-surveillance- legislation-dark#.WlX-vO2BQqo.twitter)

[2] [https://www.justsecurity.org/50801/house-intelligence- commit...](https://www.justsecurity.org/50801/house-intelligence-committees- section-702-bill-wolf-sheeps-clothing/)

<comment><USER4> > The military refuses to answer Congress.

Pedantically the NSA, FBI and CIA are not 'military'

The DIA, NRO and NIMA are.

<comment><USER5> That's not quite right, the NSA is a DoD agency and the highest ranking civilian in it is the Deputy Director. The Director of the NSA is a military officer also in charge of USCYBERCOM.

The FBI and the CIA are indeed civilian agencies (though the CIA has some caveats there).

<comment><USER6> It might be semantics but NSA being a national defence organization, under the same parent umbrella which forks to Army/Navy/Airforce/Marines, I believe it's fair to lump them in with the 'military':

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Do...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/DoD_Organization_March_2012.pdf/page1-800px- DoD_Organization_March_2012.pdf.jpg)

The NSA play(ed) a very large role in modern military deployments overseas, especially in the middle east and africa with their targeting systems.

The best counterpoint is the bill Obama passed before leaving office, expanding the data sharing between agencies and the more general significant expansion of scope of the NSAs activities in recent years to involve plenty of domestic and civilian issues (beyond politics) including supporting the efforts on the War on Drugs, DHS, and FBI activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 55 House Democrats, including Pelosi, voted against the USA Rights Act amendment that would have substantially limited the surveillance against US citizens. 65 House Democrats ultimately voted in favor of this bill and giving the Trump admin more unchecked surveillance powers.

[https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992](https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992) [http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml](http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml)

<comment><USER8> Every time this comes up, I'm again surprised how many people expect that Democrats will somehow have better policy for privacy.

Folks, it ain't so. The Democrats won't protect us in this regard any more than the Republicans will.

<comment><USER9> The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do.

125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not.

By Contrast

58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not.

By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections.

Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face during the Trump administration.

<comment><USER10> The last President was a Democrat and he sure didn't care about American's Privacy even though he used it on his campaign trail to get elected... Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this...

From my comment down thread

>Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surveillance on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama- era-1...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama- era-1496683972) [2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you- need-to...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to- know.html) [3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national- security/fbi-w...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi- wants-access-to-internet-browser-history-without-a-warrant-in-terrorism-and- spy- cases/2016/06/06/2d257328-2c0d-11e6-9de3-6e6e7a14000c_story.html?utm_term=.48131f786a8d) [4] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands- surveill...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveillance- powers-his-way-out)

<comment><USER11> The FBI did not need a warrant to search that phone. The owner (the shooter's employer) gave them permission.

Obama didn't expand surveillance on his way out (several surveillance programs stopped under his watch, including both email and phone metadata collection). You're confusing an authorization to share information, which allowed a more thorough investigation into Russian meddling, with authorization to collect new data.

Your first link doesn't support your claim that Obama quadrupled funding because that didn't happen. [https://fas.org/irp/budget/](https://fas.org/irp/budget/)

And we all know that Obama released Manning over the objections of our current President.

<comment><USER12> You're confusing an excuse with a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This has been a can kicked for many a mile. First bush, then obama, and now trump. The undocumented and largely ignored effect of FISA is that it is quietly driving cryptography to unprecedented levels of adoption. OpenPGP is part of Yubikey now, granting the average user HSM level security for their encryption for less than $50. Google has increased their cipherstrength and offers several multifactor solutions as well as foreign agent attack warnings for journalists. GPG offers curve25519 in light of just the implication of poisoned NIST primes. Signal sidesteps bugged SMS in favour of a hardened PFS channel of OTR deniable communication in video, voice and text. Letsencrypt is working to blanket the world in affordable, quick, and easy crypto for any site desired. Finally, tor's many exploits have been patched, and the protocols weaknesses have given way to more secure tools like i2p.

The government is largely focusing on iPhone at this point, and why not. Apple is an easy target to beat on for the woes of late stage capitalism and unchecked foreign policy, however any modern consumer tech company worth their salt has seen the writing for quite some time. Encrypt, and make sure you're out of the loop entirely.

<comment><USER14> I take no solace in typical cryptography as it does nothing to hide most metadata. Who I talk to, when, how often (and the same for websites visited) is _way_ more sensitive in the collective than the contents of any single one of those interactions.

Signal type apps hide both and are valuable, but without widespread adoption is meaningless to most people.

I'm not against any of the progress you cite, but so long as people can be targeted based on metadata they are at risk. Once targeted, it becomes child's play to bypass the encryption that most people employ, whether through social engineering or side channel attacks (beyond Spectre-type) or governmental requests/threats to cloud providers.

<comment><USER15> Crypto does nothing to prevent rubber hose attacks. And as you note, it is very difficult to prevent traffic analysis, that being the only thing the government really needs to find what it's looking for anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is bad news.

> "The Intelligence Committee's bill disregards the Constitution and common > sense by granting the government the authority to search Americans' > communications without first obtaining a warrant," Schuman told The > Intercept. "Not only does this turn the purpose of the foreign surveillance > law on its head, transforming it into a domestic surveillance tool, but it > places activists, minorities, and everyone else at the mercy of President > Trump and Attorney General Sessions, who have made clear their disregard for > legal constraints and democratic norms."

[https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/nsa-surveillance-fisa- se...](https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/nsa-surveillance-fisa- section-702-reauthorization-fbi/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I had a discussion with my mother regarding surveillance and privacy and how they relate to safety. I feel like she understands that surveillance when used in a nefarious manner can be detrimental to individual freedoms, but is pro surveillance regardless. This is because she believes that the benefits of keeping others safe outweighs the potential for misuse.

How can I help her understand why people fight for privacy?

<comment><USER18> When has an average American been severely and personally harmed from surveillance? If you can't answer that without caveats then you have no chance of convincing her in my opinion.

In other words, you have to prove that the harms of surveillance outweigh the nebulous sense of protection an average person already has regarding survillance.

It's trivial to come up with examples of how survillance is good for an average person in regular life - - see public camera catching criminals, dash cams, etc.

<comment><USER19> [cynic] The public camera catching a random criminal doens't really matter to me unless that criminal actually stole from me.[/cynic]

Fortunately we don't have to look to that. More than once the public road surveillance cameras have aided my decision to work from home. They have also helped me decided to take/not take an alternate route around bad traffic.

Those are real benefits to surveillance that help me. I understand your worries, and they are real. However there are also benefits that you cannot discard.

<comment><USER20> >public

This is a big part of the difference between traffic cameras and unchecked surveillance of individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The President actually tweeted two incompatible positions this morning. Guess they picked the one they wanted.

<comment><USER22> His opposition to this bill is based on nonsense, but it would be wonderfully ironic if he used it as the basis for veto.

<comment><USER23> He'd never veto anything, he'd have to read the bill to veto it.

<comment><USER24> You seem to have been downvoted, possibly for how quippy your comment is, but there's some indication that this reasoning isn't far off. Earlier this week Trump made clear during his televised immigration policy meeting that he would sign anything Congress actually sent him, which seems like a very odd position to take when you consider that immigration was Trump's signature campaign issue.

<comment><USER15> It's easy to say "I'll sign anything you send me" if you're certain they will be unable to send anything. It is risky, sure, because the unexpected can happen. The next day he also gave a summary of the meeting that was very different from what attendees thought. The meeting was a made-for-TV moment, so you should take it in with lots of salt.

<comment><USER25> The day Trump starts vetoing bills sent to his desk is the day 25th Amendment proceedings hit full stride.

<comment><USER15> Can you explain? (I don't mean the 25th Amendment.)

<comment><USER24> I believe parent post means that Republicans will stop protecting Trump the instant Trump decides not to pass their legislation, since they have control of Congress, and Mike Pence is an establishment dream president.

<comment><USER15> That seems facile. I don't believe it. I guess we'll see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Let's say a state actor decides to cyber attack the US or allies. We want every person, gobernment or economic entity to be secure.

A state actor can do more widespread damage than what we gain by catching some terrorists.

Precisely for national security, we need good security in every entity.

<comment><USER27> FISA/702 is also used to trace/analyze cyber attacks, it is not just for counter-terrorism.

Example - A report (leaked to The Intercept) regarding Russian spearphishing: [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3766950/NSA- Repor...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3766950/NSA-Report-on- Russia-Spearphishing.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > The vote on Thursday was a victory for the Trump administration and the > intelligence community, which opposed imposing major new curbs on the > program, and for Republican leadership, including House Speaker Paul D. > Ryan, who had blocked the House from an opportunity to consider a less- > sweeping compromise package developed by the House Judiciary Committee. They > gambled that faced with an all-or-essentially-nothing choice, a majority of > lawmakers would choose the status quo — and won.

Normally if you do not like what a House member does there is not much you can do unless you are in that member's district. In that case you can vote for someone other than them.

In the case of Ryan, though, you _can_ do something even if you live in another district. The majority party decides on who will be Speaker. If Ryan's partly loses its majority Ryan goes back to being just an ordinary member of the House, one of over 400. You can indirectly vote against Ryan's speakership by voting against the candidate from his party in your district.

<comment><USER29> Except Pelosi and many Democrats voted for this as well...

<comment><USER28> So? As was mentioned in the excerpt from the article I quoted Ryan would not allow the House to consider a compromise from the House Judiciary Committee. How many of those Democrats would have gone for that compromise bill if that had been on the table?

We need both privacy and surveillance. The harm from too little privacy tends to manifest on a longer time frame than the harm from too little surveillance, so when considering a good balance between the two is off the table it is understandable one might go for the option that looks like it will be the safest short term.

Pelosi is indeed quite aligned with Republicans on surveillance issues. If she had been speaker she probably would have supported the current bill. But would she have blocked consideration of the compromise, like Ryan did?

That seems much less likely, because despite Pelosi and a few other Democrats being quite pro-surveillance the fact is that the party as a whole is quite a bit less pro-surveillance than are the Republicans as a whole. She would have had a harder time than Ryan keeping the compromise from being considered because she would be going against the majority of her own party, unlike Ryan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > Mr. Trump, who is known to watch Fox News while he is tweeting, posted his > tweet shortly after a Fox News legal analyst appealed directly to the > president during a Thursday morning segment about the coming House vote. The > analyst, Andrew Napolitano, turned to television cameras and said, "Mr. > President, this is not the way to go." He added that Mr. Trump's "woes" > began with surveillance.

lol.

But seriously we need someone in the oval office who feels strongly about protecting the privacy of Americans (and everyone else!). Trump is just another one in the line to rubber-stamp this. Not holding my breath though...

</comment><comment><USER31> OK, it passed the House. Now the fight moves to the Senate. Anybody have any insight on whether it will fly through there, or whether there is a chance of derailing it?

<comment><USER32> I could maybe see Sen Wyden trying to stop it, he's been pretty good on things like this lately, but I bet there are enough pro-surveillance Democrats (Feinstein, etc.) to overcome any potential filibuster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can someone clear it up for me. How likely is it that my google searches are being swept up and stored indefinitely, because I'm foreigner. I've disabled google search history, though I doubt it will help. Similar question - do they have a profile for every foreigner they can identify?

<comment><USER34> Google search uses HTTPS and, unless you personally is a target and/or your devices are hacked, the content of your searches is not visible to anyone except Google. Your citizenship doesn't matter.

<comment><USER33> They've tapped into google's internal networks in the past. I suspect they've already regained the access.

Another matter is whether google really deletes accounts when asked, or really doesn't store histories when asked. Because if the data is stored by Google, when the time comes and the person becomes "interesting" for the US establishment, they can rubber-stamp FISA court warrant and get this data.

<comment><USER34> 1\. Google engineers took the challenge personally and there is no evidence suggesting Prisma capabilities were regained. 2.I tend to agree in a sense that it is rather difficult to delete all the data. But no more difficult, than to find it later when requested by law enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Curiosity is getting the best of me, and I figured HN is a good place to scratch the itch.

Has anyone done a study or solicited information from the government that shows the impact of legislation such as FISA or better yet the Patriot ACT's post provision sunset (what's left of the act) parts? Namely - hard numbers that shows in a numerical fashion the fact based evidence to keep overt invasions of privacy in check in the name of security.

Being from New York, I always try to question politicians here - <USER2> specifically Gov. Cuomo on the quantifiable evidence that supports the SAFE ACT's passage in our state - on such things, to have a better impact on things that affect me regionally vs. worrying about broad stroke Federal things that rarely do.

</comment><comment><USER36> Turmp should be happy about this, it will be useful in cracking down on citizens and opponents who criticize him.

<comment><USER37> > Turmp should be happy about this

To be fair, Trump is hardly the the first President to seek renewal of such laws.

> useful in cracking down on citizens and opponents who criticize him.

There were multiple reports about "Dark Side" yesterday - [https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/dark-side-federal- unit-...](https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/dark-side-federal-unit-feeds- possibly-illegal-tips-to-local-cops-report-says/)

What could possibly go wrong.....

<comment><USER36> He opposed it according to the article.

<comment><USER37> [https://www.npr.org/2018/01/11/577331402/ahead-of-hill- vote-...](https://www.npr.org/2018/01/11/577331402/ahead-of-hill-vote-trump- attacks-spy-bill-his-administration-supports)

"For the record, Trump's administration supports full reauthorization. In fact, the White House issued a statement on Wednesday evening — hours before Trump's tweet — restating its call for members of Congress to vote for its continued use."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Thankfully the rules of math still apply and it's never been easier to use encryption just about everywhere.

The question for me is: at what point will people begin to reject this farce of a ruling elite that exists today?

</comment><comment><USER39> This shouldn't be any surprise to anyone. Congress gives lip service to representing their constituents. In reality, the only people (and interests) they represent are THEMSELVES.

</comment><comment><USER40> USA, the land of the monitored.

</comment><comment><USER41> Privacy in the US is dead

<comment><USER42> Privacy in the world is dead (more precisely, dying), for all intents and purposes. The technological cat that enabled its demise can't be put back into the bag. Currently the problem is that certain classes of people have more access to "private" information than others, but once that goes away society will adapt to the new normal and look back with confusion at why we were so concerned about not being able to hide things.

<comment><USER43> Agreed. But, we're missing the point quibbling about search histories and emails... That's nothing compared to what's coming. The data already exists to track your every move. It's just a matter of consolidating and organizing it. Right now, there is money to be made selling customer data for marketing and the like. This keeps the repositories of our data from sharing with one another.

But, soon, the economics will flip. And, there will be money to be made from selling privacy. For instance, assume all credit card, phone, cable companies, etc. pool their data. For a monthly subscription, this conglomerate will keep your info (or parts of it) hidden. The default will be everything is knowable about everyone, except for those who pay a fee to erase info from their records.

Far more money to be made selling privacy than selling info. 4th amendment and all the rest is moot. Our info is held by private international companies who, eventually, will begin charging you to keep things hidden from others.

<comment><USER44> It might be even worse. I actually doubt they'll allow you to get your info deleted, even for a fee, unless forced by law: it would only be worth it for them (as in, producing revenue that is a significant fraction of that they would be getting from selling the data) if enough people bother, but in that case, deleting their information would make the data a lot less attractive for the potential buyers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> someone needs to do independent audits in the form of a zero knowledge proof to say "ok I understand why the wizards and warlocks are at battle". Used to be that we would say to ourselves, "we should consider It likely Obama flipped once in office because he saw confidential stuff that would make you sick", which is a more cosmo view

</comment><comment><USER46> FFS New York Times, can you not make EVERY GOD DAMN ARTICLE about Trump and distract everyone from the main issue here?

More than half of this article is about Trump's tweets. How about naming and shaming all the Republicans and Democrats that voted to extend the surveillance law instead?</comment>


Study: You'll wolf down 34GB of data today - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10412996-17.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody

<comment><USER2> The way they're defining the amount of data you consume is pretty clumsy. I suppose playing a video game for an hour can be considered consuming n GBs, but it's not a terribly useful metric. What if I glance at a few very high resolution photos? Have I now doubled by data consumption? I guess technically I have, but it's not really useful.

<comment><USER3> I guess you should normalize for the amount of information that reaches the brain. That way you would get a useful and interesting metric.

That still wouldn't be all that meaningful because we get much more information out of texts than out of a photo or video of the same size.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The 34gb number seems a little BS in my opinion (for example, it mentions that 16GB of that value comes from video games), but the figure that surprised me most: "the average American consumes a whopping [...] 100,000 words of information per day"

</comment><comment><USER4> Repeat (ish) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=985766></comment>


Ask HN: What is your company's development process? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What methods are you considering?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dev.qa.prod. etc. what do you do during those?</comment></comment>


DHH on the pluses of PHP - <AUTHOR> http://www.loudthinking.com/posts/23-the-immediacy-of-php <comment><USER2> If anyone else had written this, it wouldn't be worth noting.

<comment><USER3> Although I definitely think you're correct, it's an important point none the less. A lot of us get so caught up in bashing PHP usage for large apps that we forget it's really great for small throwaway scripts and prototyping mini- apps.

DHH pointing this out reminds us that even someone super devoted/entrenched in the RoR world can see the utility of it for this kind of use case, and that the rest of us should as well.

<comment><USER4> If you can't maintain your large scale PHP projects, more blame lies with you than it does the platform.

Unfortunatley, the ease of getting PHP scripts up and running leads to the bulk of its poor implementation. Is the lesson to make setup just difficult enough to scare of the novices?

<comment><USER5> If PHP wasn't easy to get started with, I would have never started developing for the web, period.

Remember, everyone was a novice once. Lowering the constraints to get started can only mean that more great things will be created, not less.

<comment><USER6> Ditto. There's a lot to be said for being available on every $8 shared hosting platform on the web. In a couple weeks I had my first database driven site up and running using the LAMP stack with no prior programming or Linux experience at all.

Thank god it is now defunct so I can't embarrass myself by linking to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> DHH is the one who led the way for much of the PHP bashing that has gone in the past few years. Still, his contributions have influenced many (PHP, django, merb, some java). Its kind of ironic that he complements PHP now, but its also kind of sad. DHH probably figures (and rightly so) that so many people take his word for gospel so he has a bit of social responsibility in admitting that PHPs many benefits have a place.

<comment><USER8> I agree with you, I was confused at first that this was the same guy we saw bashing PHP b/c ruby code looked so much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the next issue of "Backhanded Compliments Weekly", Bill Gates discusses how macs are pretty good for "artsy stuff"

<comment><USER10> When I read his comment it reminded me of this:

<http://www.spinaltapfan.com/articles/tapdef.html>

And the classic last line: Though neither a critics' nor a public favorite, Spinal Tap continues to fill a much needed void.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "PHP scales down like no other package for the web and it deserves more credit for tackling that scope."

See: <http://www.welton.it/articles/scalable_systems.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> PHP apps are something that you can generally put on a $3/month shared hosting account without having to babysit and admin everything. $20/month or more plus admin overhead just to have a blagoblag you have control over is more than a lot of people are willing to invest.

I don't think anyone has ever accused PHP of not scaling down, though.

My biggest beef with the PHP community is their lack of concern for security.

</comment><comment><USER13> How weird - just today I had to program something in PHP for the first time in years. I sometimes like to go back and use languages I haven't touched in a long time - it makes me thankful for what I have now, and the code I write in the old language is always better for the exposure to more powerful languages. Not that I'll be breaking out QuickBasic anytime soon. =)

</comment><comment><USER14> I have always likened php to those old Kodak brownie cameras. Doesn't seem like much, but in the hands of a skilled practitioner, magic can be made.

</comment><comment><USER15> skillset v.s. toolset. I am quite certain in the right hands php is just as capable as any other "web" language. I agree that the average php developer seems to lack any sense of security awareness.

<comment><USER16> Correction: "...the average WEB developer seems to lack any sense of security awareness."</comment></comment>