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Submission + - Snowden kills "metadata" argument during live hosted by The Guardian

An anonymous reader writes: In a live chat hosted by the The Guardian, Edward Snowden has clarified that the NSA does not simply have access to metadata, as has been the media rhetoric, and that large volumes of data relating to US citizens is frequently ingested.

Answering one question, he wrote:

If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time — and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

Answering another:

US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection — policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection — a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border.

Comment Re:Just because YOUR government is corrupt (Score 2, Insightful) 327

Trying to 'fix' the situation is unlikely to work.

A better strategy is accepting there will be failure, and building systems to cope.

A great example of this, quite fittingly, is the internet itself.

Accept that governments will work most of the time, understand they will fail some of the time. Keep your eyes open. Try and be cool. We are all in it together, despite the example set by some.

Submission + - ARM hates the Lima driver. (livejournal.com)

An anonymous reader writes: ARM management seriously dislikes the project to provide an open source driver for ARMs Mali GPU. ARM management sees no advantage in an open source driver for their Mali, and they think that the Lima driver reveals too much of the internals of the Mali hardware. ARM management believes that if they actually wanted an open source driver, they could simply open source their own code. The main developer of Lima naturally doesn't buy into ARMs views or reasoning, and states that Lima will continue and that ARM cannot do anything to stop it.

Submission + - Bitcoin Bubble: Should Fans Be Celebrating?

F9rDT3ZE writes: Due to its unique features, the economics of Bitcoin are difficult to grasp even for those with advanced degrees in economics. Following generally-accepted economic thought, though, a number of commentators have started to point out that Bitcoin's rise in value relative to other currencies means that it is experiencing deflation (its value relative to what 1 BTC purchases is going down, just as if a Big Mac cost $2 instead of $3), and that most experts believe deflation is unwelcome for currencies because it incentivizes hoarding (often followed by massive inflation when hoarders sell off, sometimes in waves produced by crashing prices). Does the price bubble in BTC indicate not its strong future as a virtual currency (as promoters like Falkvinge suggest), but instead mark the end of its usefulness as the medium of exchange for which it was designed? And are you spending your bitcoins now, or holding them?

Comment Re:Not only that (Score 1) 583

Why so sure?

I think its fair to say the bond market is pretty pumped up right now.

Consider also that $500bn volume is buying and selling. Typical price discovery action. Then also consider a chunk of that is just HFT.

China has the ability to drop a $1.5t sell order on the market. That is going to hurt whichever way you look at it. I doubt everyone else is going to sit idly by whilst the price plummets.

What is preposterous is suggesting that things like this cannot happen.

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