My guess is the grandparent is (mis-)remembering the kerfuffle[0] around mongo shipping a copy of PG as a "BI Connector". But yeah, the timeline is off, that was in 2015.
Actually, no. I'm remembering asking myself how Mongo worked back when it launched, and reading somewhere that it was a heavily modded Postgres under the hood (like Amazon Redshift, which makes no secret about it, since).
I might be misremembering, though. And there's a possibility that what I read then was inaccurate.
That was then. Try and find a post-Cold-War instance of the US deciding to usurp free and fair elections for our own economic or security purposes. We weren't doing it for the fun of it, and in a unipolar world order, we don't do it at all.
>Scientists have long claimed that our ability with numbers is indeed biologically evolved – that we can count because counting was a useful thing for our brains to be able to do.
I would like some citations for this. This is the first I've heard of this, and I previously have assumed that it was universally accepted that this was not the case.
This article makes similar claims at multiple points, without corroboration. "researchers have concluded", "researchers often assume", "researchers have argued", for arguments that I have never heard made.
The book "Where Mathematics Comes From"[1] by Lakoff and Núñez makes a lengthy, detailed argument that numeracy is evolved, not universal. I didn't find myself agreeing with everything in it, but I no longer take it for granted that math is a universal concept.
Can you explain what you mean by evolved as opposed to universal?
Because from my perspective, they mean the same thing when applied to this context. That is, if numeracy is evolved, everyone is fundamentally numerate at some level. And if numeracy is universal, then everybody is fundamentally numerate. They're both nature, not nurture.
What do you mean by those words?
(Personally, I think that numbers are mostly learned, but that the brain has an evolved aptitude for symbolic systems, mathematics being just one of many. I don't think any innate concept of number goes much beyond order of magnitude (i.e. logarithmic) relative differences.)
I mean, universal across the universe. There is a common assumption that mathematics is a common language that we could use to communicate with aliens. The notion is that, for example, the concept of prime numbers would be discovered everywhere in the universe just as an intelligence would discover that hydrogen is the simplest atom.
To go further, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis formalizes the notion that the universe itself is math, and that we are just discovering the math of the universe as we develop mathematics.
I'm personally agnostic on the universality of mathematics. Math is a tremendous tool for describing the universe, but I am willing to consider that a different intelligence might invent some accurate and non-mathematical predictive model.
> The notion is that, for example, the concept of prime numbers would be discovered everywhere in the universe just as an intelligence would discover that hydrogen is the simplest atom.
The concept of prime numbers is a lot more fundamental than hydrogen being the simplest atom. You could conceivably have a universe where every element is an elementary particle, but you couldn't have a universe where you can put two and two together and get five. Nor could you possibly have a universe where you can take five of something, and divide it into equal sized groups, unless each group has one item or you only have one group.
Strictly staying within US law is not the only thing that the US intelligence apparatus tries to do. There are also agreements not to monitor the citizens of "Five-Eyes" citizens in those countries without due process; even if not illegal, it would violate the intelligence-sharing agreements we have with those nations and would be highly improper due to the damage to national security that risking those intelligence-sharing agreements would entail.
That being said, this story is incredibly thin.
>It aimed to explain why Dotcom and others charged in the FBI's Megaupload investigation were spied on for two months longer than previously admitted.
There's no reason this would even be improper, if the FBI had gone through due process in the US, which it appears they had. This story appears to be entirely Kim Dotcom's lawyer trying to politicize his case in order to fight a lawful extradition.
I don't even think that's particularly controversial. The concentration of tech startups in SF has been devastating for the city, and has distorted every aspect of early-stage tech startups for years. And frankly, YC bears a rather large proportion of the blame for this.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame YC. YC actually encourages founders to be smart about their funding money and not spend a premium just to HQ in SF if at all possible. Problem is a lot of founders just feel so inclined to work in SF.
Can you clarify what you mean? How are we not left with determinism at a fundamental level?
(And if it starts with a Q, then at most one can say is that it's possible that it's not deterministic. It's perfectly compatible with determinism, just not (AIUI) (and IANATP) currently known whether or not it is the case.)
It's widely accepted that QM is fully deterministic, even if the future is unpredictable in practice. Broglie–Bohm, being an equivalent and sound interpretation, is poof of this.
Quantum randomness isn't truly random. There's no free lunch for free will to be found in QM.
Sorry, I am reading conflicting information. The Wikipedia page seems to say the opposite.
> the result is not traditional determinism, but rather determined probabilities
> Thus, quantum physics casts reasonable doubt on the traditional determinism of classical, Newtonian physics in so far as reality does not seem to be absolutely determined.
> A critical finding was that quantum mechanics can make statistical predictions which would be violated if local hidden variables really existed. There have been a number of experiments to verify such predictions, and so far they do not appear to be violated. This would suggest there are no hidden variables, although many physicists believe better experiments are needed to conclusively settle the issue
This appears to be an open issue. With evidence pointing towards true randomness.
You mentioned the pilot wave theory. Is there experimental evidence in favor of it beyond standard quantum mechanics?
> Bohmian mechanics has never been widely accepted in the mainstream of the physics community. [0]
It appears to be proper judicial oversight of national security operations.
Unsurprisingly, having the rule of law applied even in the pursuit of those who seek to end it is smeared by those who would prefer to weaken the United States' national security and the institutions of liberal democracies the world over.
> It appears to be proper judicial oversight of national security operations.
I'm not sure how you consider a toothless, secret court applying secret law "proper judicial oversight". If the FISC ruled that left-handed people were a threat to national security, would the FBI be justified in rounding up all lefties? If not, how do the lefties appeal this ruling?
I've mentioned it before, but it seems that the mods only enforce this rule (and similar ones) very selectively: precisely those times that "grandiose ideological rhetoric" disagrees with groupthink. This comment is no more grandiose, ideological, or rhetorical than hundreds I've seen recently on a myriad of topics.
I think the very notion of "flamebait" is an Orwellian euphemism for not agreeing with popular sentiment: it's not mere disagreement, it's flamebait, so of course we must censor it!
I'm very curious: what are the statistics on times you've applied this rule to comments you agree with versus those you don't -- or do you always disagree with "flamebait"?
> "flamebait" is an Orwellian euphemism for not agreeing with popular sentiment
Well, there's also the manner in which you present yourself and your argument that counts for something. It's flamebait if it is presented in such a way to do nothing but start an argument (i.e. not constructive).
Your pro-NSA shilling is so flatly contradicted by what's in that document, that your opinions are total garbage. You should be so embarrassed at flaunting your ignorance in public that I recommend you delete your account.
Let's examine the pdf page by page.
NSA admits it broke its own rules and spied on Americans. This is no longer theoretical or a "smear" by "those who would prefer to weaken the US" (LOL I can't believe you said that).
NSA admits that it has no idea how many ways its own analysts can access UPSTREAM in order to perform the abuse mention in my previous screencap.
Think about that. UPSTREAM is over 10 years old. They had all the time is the world to lock it down, to shore up their defenses, to comply with some basic fucking rules that they set for themselves. They totally failed.
What if $MEGA_BILLION Corporation out there had no idea how its employees were logging into the ERP as root and poking around whatever they felt like for a decade? What if it was a HIPAA business? What if it was one of the top 5 accounting firms?
UPSTREAM is one of the most powerful cyberweapons ever built, and here NSA themselves tell the FISA judge that they lost control of it.
They first told FISA about these problems back in 2015. They told the judge in 2015 that they found abuses going back to 2011. Well here we are 3 years later and NSA is still telling FISA "we're working on it."
What if the National Nuclear Security Agency lost a nuke 6 years ago? You'd think the world would stop immediately, top dogs would be severely punished and the most severe remedies would be applied to fix the problem.
Right there NSA admits they have no way to audit UPSTREAM access. Remember when the Snowden leaks began? Remember The Clap and all the 17 Nazgul swearing up and down to everyone that it's not as bad as it seems, they have elaborate comprehensive compliance rules, random auditing, and log trails of everything.
"Trust Us, we're the Good Guys, Marty!"
Right there NSA admits they spy on all Americans in order to put us all on a "Master Purge List", which they share with all the other 16 SpyTels and everyone who gets access to raw, unminimized UPSTREAM SIGINT. NSA says they have to spy on Americans in order to know which IP addresses, which traffic, which connections, which metadata, which Content belongs to Americans, in order for them to filter it out of UPSTREAM.
This is the most perverted twisting of Surveillance State logic I can imagine. Like the saying in Vietnam "we had to destroy the village to save it."
NSA had to spy on Americans in order to not spy on Americans.
So what's your smarmy uninformed reaction to that one? Still best buddies with Deep State? How much do you trust FBI or the Dept of Agriculture with your UPSTREAM data to abide by the honor system and obey NSA's Master Purge List and not read your home Internet traffic, the websites you visit, your emails, texts, all of it?
Remember when Snowden first leaked and all the "Infosec" poseurs and "Thot Leaders" (none of whom can code) gave TED talks and conference keynotes advising everyone to "HTTPS All The Things! 2FA Brah! E2E! Trust The Math!" then patted each other on the backs on stage when receiving their Humanitarian Awards for Fierce Intrepid Journalism, Speaking Truth to Power and all that circle jerking off to look like Heroes who stood up to the NSA and empowered the People and now everything's fine, let's go shopping Barbie, we defeated the Big Bad NSA.
Bullshit.
Right here NSA admits to FISA that FBI keeps all encrypted traffic forever. You used to use HTTP for most traffic, but now you use HTTPS and Signal and Tor and Keybase and you're a Good Cypherpunk
cosplaying at "changing the world."
If you ever believed that load of bull, you are the problem. Your idiocracy just led millions of non-coder sheep into allowing FBI to save everyone's encrypted traffic forever. At least when they spied on unencrypted traffic they would delete it after seeing that your lolcats are not steganographic messages to your ISIS sleeper cell about your next bomb plot.
Now that everyone uses encryption, everyone is a suspect, forever. FBI says they only apply their retention deletion rules after the moment it is decrypted. Which could be 5 years from now, or 20.
Great job Cypherpunk Beliebers, instead of directly challenging NSA on policy, you fucked us all with your ridiculous Larpfest about beating the Govt by using encryption.
The worst part about this declassified pdf is that NSA even admits to FISA that all of these rules and oversight and compliance are just a stage show and they don't have to tell FISA anything about what they do! Remember how John Yoo wrote the secret memoes that approved Bush to unleash NSA from rules and "Collect It All", memoes which we little people didn't even get to know existed just until 2015? The President's Inherent Constitutional Authority means his privacy to use his powers trumps every right you thought you had in the Bill of Rights.
Free Speech? Nope, not for you. The President gets that. Unreasonable search and seizure? Nope, the President trumps you. It's not a "physical search", it's an "electronic search", which you don't know yet, but this is the most important Secret Law that you still don't know about. An "electronic search" is not a wiretap, so no rules apply to it going back to Nixon's 1969 Omnibus Crime Act which established the first rules for wiretaps.
Quartering soldiers in your home? Wrong again bucko. The President can quarter the entire NSA virus arsenal on your home router and infect every computer you own and you can't do jack shit. And if you discover you have been hacked and if you talked about it, then you go to jail for leaking National Security secrets. General Warrants? The President can rendition, disappear and assassinate anyone he wants and you have no right to know, and even if you did know, you can't prove it effects you personally, so you have zero standing in any Court in the nation.
But wait it gets worse, if such a thing is possible.
You think you know what UPSTREAM is? You read The Intercept, you respect Greenwald, and maybe you glanced at a few Snowden docs to see what the fuss was for yourself. Oh, NSA is wiretapping 100's of undersea cables, 10's of thousands of Satellite uplink stations, and 800,000 cell phone towers all over the planet, exfiltrating all of your data, so the entire Internet backbone is siphoned back to Bluffdale.
You're probably a smart guy and you smirk and say to yourself "well of course, I always KNEW they did that, what's the big deal?"
Well right there NSA says there is another source feeding into 702 that is NOT UPSTREAM. Do you get butterflies in your stomach when you realize for the past 10 years NSA has lied to FISA about what 702 and UPSTREAM even is? Why are they only now telling FISA there is more access to more data outside of UPSTREAM?
"If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear"... isn't that what all the Good Germans and idiots say when they go along with whatever NSA is doing?
Well if NSA had nothing to fear from FISA, why did they hide it?
It gets even worse. Remember last month when NSA announced they were ending 702 "About Data" and everyone cheered like lobotomized vegetables, "we won against NSA! yay! our Right are restored."
Wrong.
Right there FISA tells NSA they are now allowed to spy on Americans in the US at will using 702 because they ended the "About Data."
There are too many redactions to understand what is "About Data", how far did they go with it in terms of building an automated encyclopedia of all Americans and all people, that knows everything about everyone by inference on other people communicating "about" you.
I remember reading a prescient comment on Slashdot back in the week when the Patriot Act first passed in October 2001. They said "child porn is the root password of the Constitution."
Well here we are. The FBI invoked child porn to justify their abusing their access to NSA's raw 702 UPSTREAM SIGINT to trawl for dirt on Hillary's political opponents, any Democrat leakers, all of Trump's inner circle and anyone who opposes Soros and Barry Soetoro importing the Caliphate into White Christian Nations.
Why does it take 3 years for NSA to still not close all their holes in the UPSTREAM boat? Why does FISA keep rolling over and letting NSA data-rape them? "It's ok NSA, thanks for telling us, we're not mad at you, as long as you promise that you're trying, you can keep on abusing us indefinitely.
"
This one ought to enrage all HN readers, who are technically competent enough to understand the problem. Here NSA admits they only use a single criteria to determine if some packets intercepted into UPSTREAM belong to an American or a Foreigner: IP Address.
Now you may ask, how can NSA be so rock solid certain that an IP address is evidence enough to either process your data into their ingest system or mark you on their Master Purge List for deletion in 10 years and to let other spy agencies know they should not use your data for anything?
cough cough You still don't know what is TREASUREMAP and BONESAW. Those programs are the key to understanding why NSA is so confident in attribution of Americans. Which is hilarious, when you realize they couldn't attribute a high profile APT hack if their lives depended on it.
Remember after the Snowden leaks began, when General Alexander and The Clap desparately declassified their internal IG compliance reports that showed some questionable math stating they only "touch" 1% of Internet traffic? I bet you went back to sleep after believing Snowden was exaggerating, it's not that bad, and NSA certainly doesn't record a full copy of the entire Internet in Bluffdale, now that's just crazy talk.
Right here NSA admits they lied and they "touch" 3% of all Internet traffic via UPSTREAM.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Why should you believe NSA this time, given that they provably lied about this not 3 years ago?
Why should you believe NSA even knows how much total Internet traffic that they "touch"?
You don't even know what the NSA's definition of "touch" is, yet you're so willing to believe them and ignore their disasters, time after time after time.
Right here NSA admits to FISA that their querying UPSTREAM breaks their own rules 85% of the time.
If you care at all about the Internet, privacy and free speech, this astonishing fact should launch your fat lazy keester out of your office masseuses chair in your kushy SF office and into the streets to demand someone do something.
Right here NSA snitches to FISA and admits FBI gives their raw UPSTREAM SIGINT to Contractors who are not "assisting" the Govt. Let that sink in. We know UPSTREAM access at FBI is restricted to a very small group of less than 100 FBI personnel.
As if the horror of seeing the Matrix for yourself isn't enough, it gets worse yet.
Here NSA throws FBI under the bus to FISA by snitching that FBI abuses raw UPSTREAM SIGINT to spy on American's communications with their Attorneys.
If you've read the DNI's declassified documents post-Snowden, you'll remember this issue coming up.
According to NSA and FBI logic, until you are charged with a crime by a Court, then it is OK for them to spy on all of your communications with your Attorneys and any legal counsel.
Being charged still doesn't stop them from continuing to spy on you and your Attorneys, it just changes to another Secret Law you don't know about to let them do it.
Why would NSA burn FBI before FISA like this? NSA must know Comey and FBI abused UPSTREAM so badly, that it threatens to endanger NSA itself.
NSA doesn't give a shit about Americans, but they do care about their own self-preservation. Isn't it a bizarre Wonderland we've entered when the only guarantee we have to stop NSA abuse is others abusing NSA so badly that NSA has to step in to stop them to save their own necks?
In conclusion, I am deeply disappointed by the shills on this board. You know who you are and you are hugely irresponsible for spreading FAKE NEWS and talking down stunning NSA leaks like nothing is going on, "these are not the droids you're looking for", why not OBEY and SLEEP my fellow hacker news technically proficient nerds who might be the only demographic who can actually do something to stop NSA?
Like David BrockBots would shill on 4chan in thousands of threads to flood the narrative and make Normies ignore reading the truth for themselves:
"just went through it and it appears to be nothing substantial sadly"
On one hand, yes, our political divisions no doubt make that kind of information warfare campaign tempting.
On the other hand, it's already pissed us off something fierce, and I think the narrative in the mid-term future will ultimately be one where would-be adversaries decide they don't want to be the next poor soul to be made an example of.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10697692