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Submission + - NSA tracking IPs of people searching for Tor, read BoingBoing, love Linux

Isara writes: Search for Tor, read BoingBoing? The NSA may be on to you. According to an investigation by Das Erste, a German television and news outlet, the NSA is using XKeyscore to locate people who are searching for Tor, Talis, and other privacy tools. Additionally, according to Das Erste, "The XKeyscore rules reveal that the NSA tracks all connections to a server that hosts part of an anonymous email service at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It also records details about visits to a popular internet journal for Linux operating system users called 'the Linux Journal — the Original Magazine of the Linux Community', and calls it an 'extremist forum.'" BoingBoing has more about the XKeyscore rules and who they're targeting and suggests this information comes from another, non-Snowden, whistleblower.

Comment Re:Reverse the question (Score 1) 61

Why would Amazon want a tablet? Perhaps for the same reason that Microsoft wants Azure? Everything is converging to phone/tablet/laptop combined with branded could services to support the basics (email, calendar, music, video, shopping, app store...), so Amazon is just doing what it feels is necessary to keep up with the Joneses.

Either Apple was very prescient or just lucky to have gotten there first?

A tablet makes sense, though, given Amazon's Kindle business. Unless Amazon's looking to make something the size of a Galaxy Note, I just don't see the advantage of getting a phone from Amazon (and one that's locked to AT&T, no less).

Comment "libtards"? really? (Score 1) 372

is that really necessary? You mean to say that not going into breathless suppositions about grand conspiracies is "libtarded"? Because, y'know, even in government, it's not always a conspiracy.

Oh. Right. I forgot. Benghahhhhhhzzzzziiiiiii!!!!!

Seriously, just once I would like to see some sort of conversation about the governmental system not devolve into name-calling. It makes it a lot easier to have productive conversations that way :/

Comment correction (Score 1) 372

It's pretty rare for the IRS to retroactively reverse a 501c3 status, except when it fails to file the proper paperwork.

I've not read what I'm sure are mounds of news articles about this "scandal" but I suspect that the IRS staff involved decided to audit all partisan groups to make sure they should be 527s instead of 501c3s.

correction on my part - They were 501c4s, not c3s. (I work with c3s, so I tend to forget other types exist ;)

Comment Re:Because IRS has never heard of exchange servers (Score 1) 372

that's a good point, although it appears that the organization that was rejected during this point of time was rejected after it had already received its non-profit designation. It's pretty rare for the IRS to retroactively reverse a 501c3 status, except when it fails to file the proper paperwork.

I've not read what I'm sure are mounds of news articles about this "scandal" but I suspect that the IRS staff involved decided to audit all partisan groups to make sure they should be 527s instead of 501c3s.

Comment Because IRS has never heard of exchange servers (Score 2) 372

Actually, even knowing what little I do of federal IT infrastructure, this doesn't surprise me. I'm actually surprised they HAVE email :P

Seriously, I have a feeling they set up local email accounts, thought archiving was too difficult or expensive to implement, and called it a day - 20 years ago.

And for the record, targeting political organizations wasn't isolated to conservative groups, and the only application rejected was for a progressive organization.

Comment Re:A remember in the early 90 when I lived in the (Score 2) 314

SFO, Oakland and San Jose are the major airports in the area.

BART now runs to SFO, and they're just finishing up an extension to Oakland, so that's good.

Caltrain doesn't connect directly to SFO, but it does stop at the Millbrae BART station which is one of the two stations from which the BART-SFO extension connects.

San Jose is still pretty disconnected from public transit except for some shuttle busses.

Comment And what about those jobs that require 60+ hours? (Score 1) 343

Sure, there may be jobs that aren't filling up full-time (and, as some people noted, who can work 8 hours/day without a break?), but there are lots of jobs that take up more than 40 hours/week. Why aren't those part of the lede here?

There's also something to be said for some level of inefficiency in the economy. Too efficient, and, absent new industries to take them in, we end up with a large population of unwanted workers. Too inefficient and the economy itself gets a bit gummed up. So I can't find myself overly concerned that, taken in aggregate, we're wasting time on the job, so long as the job gets done correctly in the end, and on-time.

Comment not quite a direct analogy (Score 1) 716

Unfortunately, most software is so dependent upon other code that it's pretty difficult to find out where the problems lie before they get into a testing (or deployment *gulp* environment).

So, in this case, the wall-builder would have had to have known that the bricks at the bottom were rotten at the core and couldn't handle the strain, or that there was a cavern in the earth underneath the wall, or that the mortar was bad. One could argue that it's the builder's role to know these things in advance, but it gets more complicated if the landowner's environment is the one causing the problems.

Comment I don't care if it's a placebo effect (Score 1) 554

But I noticed after I started taking a multivitamin about a year ago, I didn't get a cold at all. Before that, I was getting a cold every 1-2 months! It's worth $30/year for me not to get sick. And I'm pretty crap about eating my vegetables, so I don't have a lot of faith I'm getting some trace elements. And what about pregnant women who have little parasites sucking up all the good stuff? I know the first link mentions the need for folic acid supplements for pregnant women, but what about the rest of it?

Comment We're #1! We're #1! (Score 1) 687

The US produces %0.11 of our electricity via solar. just over 2 TWh (source [PDF]). We have how much landmass and we don't even come close to Germany's output. Depressing... I'm curious to know what programs Germany has in place to support adoption of solar and wind energy production. Although it would likely never happen, it would be nice if we could replicate some of that here, in the more weather-stable parts of the country. Even better if we could have some decent mass storage solutions to allow solar to really support the whole grid on a larger scale (as opposed to locally).

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