skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The difference is that the opinion has political and economic outcomes.

That is the crux of why this is a huge deal, and Linus changing the Linux scheduling algorithm is not a huge deal. People are afraid that Bitcoin is going to break, or meet an obstacle that prevents them from making massive ROI on their speculation, and they have a lot of stake in the game in protecting Bitcoin.

> It took me about 2 months from not knowing how Bitcoin worked to implementing my own cryptocurrency with a novel PoW approach.

"It took me about 2 months from not knowing how cryptographic hashing worked to implementing my own hash with a novel sponge function."

The hard part is not making a cryptocurrency that works when people use it normally. The hard part is making a cryptocurrency that works when people around the world can profit tens of millions of dollars by breaking the cryptocurrency (either abusing the mining, spending coins that don't belong to them, DoS'ing competing miners, etc.)

I don't know which cryptocurrency you made (I tried to look it up via your HN profile, but didn't find anything), but if you get it peer reviewed I imagine that experts will quickly be able to find a reason or two for why it is either broken or uninteresting.

Anyone can make a cryptosystem that they themselves cannot break. Bitcoin is among the most complex and cutting edge cryptosystem we have today. Even in the past few months, several important and severe flaws in Bitcoin have been discovered and fixed.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015...

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_devlist/comments/3bsw60/upc...

Decisions as seemly small as updating the blocksize limit are enormously nuanced. It changes the entire game theory behind the mining, affects how people will be running validation nodes, and requires a strong understanding of how blocks propagate around the world, and what a nice 'average' block looks like vs. a block that was made maliciously.

> better follow it up with links to a list of the academic papers that one would need to get up to speed

This is a very difficult thing to do, especially because Bitcoin is so new. Much of the important discussion that has happened resides only in mailing lists, blog posts, irc logs, github issues, and forum posts.

But here is a good set of papers to get started:

http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/

A smaller, more focused list:

http://bitcoin.ninja/

It will also help if you read the full #bitcoin-wizards log, dating back to around 2013 I believe. There you will find lots of highly technical discussion with links to more discussion and research papers. It's probably got the highest signal to noise ratio of any public discussion.
SpamAssassin is an Inadequate Technology
I wonder what other old 90's tech we can reinvent to make trendy again. Text based terminal RPGs? Warez groups? Demoscene?
Would love to hear more about your experiences if you'd care to share. My email is in my profile.
Link to actual paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v524/n7564/full/nature1...
Similar ruby library. not as extensive since ruby has more shell-like features built in http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.2.1/libdoc/shell/rdoc/Shell.htm...
Never forgetting those times when each file was truncated over and over again at like 99% each time it was transmitted.

Couldn't find a reference right now.
I prefer to categorize them as "absolute past", "absolute present", and "absolute elsewhere". This is because for any event in one of your light cones (past or future), there'll be a reference frame that places it at your location (i.e. the same spatial coordinates, just at a different time). But for events outside your light cones, no reference frame will have it at the same location; it's absolutely elsewhere.

BTW, if you also want to talk about the present, you can only talk about it at a particular location. If you want, you can define 3 "thin" boundary regions: the surface of the future light cone (boundary between absolute future & absolute elsewhere), the surface of the past light cone (similar), and the "here & now" (the single point in spacetime where all 3 regions meet).
The URL query suffix is pretty humorous.
Bonus points in this case, thank you :)
There's the shell language and the shell interface. The design of those things influence each other, but they're fundamentally separate even though bash/zsh/fish often make changes to both.

The original article is really about languages, and I think that even with the best interface in the world, we want a better language.
Antique Microscope Slides from the Victorian Era C. 1830s – 1900
does anyone have the .tex source of the notes? I like the style and I would like to get inspired. thanks
What does your software do?
"Most real-world products face new requirements on a weekly, sometimes hourly basis; as a result, most fast-growing startups have oral cultures where the way to learn about the software is to ask the last person who worked on it."

The weakness of this approach is that the last person who worked on some piece of code may be that guy who quit last week.

Also, once you have a big code base, there may be parts of the code that are critical (e.g., low-level APIs), but that nobody has worked on in a year.

Also, while startups may have smaller code bases and thus have less problems with these issues, successful startups eventually do become larger, established businesses with huge legacy code bases (think Google or Facebook). At some point, lack of accessible knowledge about how the code works can grow into a massive technical debt. (Been there, done that, regretted it.)
C# has var now?
Don't be silly. Hop a flight some day and you'll find no shortage of Plumber's Mates dirtbagging along on a few hundred bucks a month, picking up hostel desk & bartending jobs every few months to squirrel away some extra savings. Head down to Peru and you'll run in to gap year kids from Uraguay who are traveling around on their own savings. Uraguayan highschool job savings, which I hope we can stipulate doesn't fall in to the category of "wealth display"

You're thinking of "vacations", which are in fact expensive. Traveling in the fun parts of the developing world is really quite cheap.
Since you are doing stage 1 and 2 on a computer system, you could go on, and write the code of stage 3 in that very same wiki too!

Then write a spider to scan this wiki, extract the code blocks, and assemble a compilable program, and you're done, wiki literate programming!
"the contents of mathematics is far from arbitrary -- while an infinite number of mathematical objects might potentially be envoked [sic], the few that prove interesting develop a very small number of core concepts. These core concepts are not arbitrary -- they are elaborations of structures which are discovered during the study of nature. There are four of these core concepts: number, geometry, algebra and logic."

It could be as well argued that there is only one core concept: computation. (Or maybe "symbol".)

The interesting question is: of all the myriad possible things that are computable, how is it that we are able find the unfathomably small subset whose behavior corresponds to (what we perceive as) physical reality? That was the question Wigner was asking, and I don't think Smolin answers it at all.
I had a similar realization as you. Sort of a cultural "wherever you go, there you are."

I do hate the elitist aspect of travel though. In a way it's sort of like experimenting with drugs, you really can't have a say on the experience unless you've actually done it.

I've had to be very careful about who I talk to about my travels because I've noticed that even the kindest people can become apprehensive. They act like I'm questioning their knowledge/experience/worth if they are less well-traveled than me. If anyone has any tips for dealing with this please let me know. Note that I'm already very sensitive to the subject and never bring it up unless asked and even then keep the details to a minimum.
I second Hammerspoon. It fits perfectly between being barebones enough to not get in your way and having enough features to do just about anything you want.

Here's my configuration file.

https://github.com/Linell/hammerspoon-config
That's not biasing the coin itself though, it's rigging the whole flipping procedure.

If I toss a fair die and catch it in mid air with a robotic arm and high-speed camera so that I always catch it with the two face on top, it's still an unbiased die.
So what letter are they now? B? D? R?
The irony here is that I agree with down votes on my parent comment, unfortunately that does not mean it is false.
The Astronomer Journey: A chronicle of our efforts to build a product
I'm trying my hand at getting back into some C# coding and found that apparently the language now has var. My first thought was why would a professional, statically typed language have var. Checking out the page I linked to in the submission, you can also do this cool if not slightly funky looking thing where it looks like an SQL predicate just reading from an ordinary array.
The first command is distinguishing between broken links, and changing the -e to different letters, it can differentiate between 23 different attributes, and act differently depending on each. Your hypothetical examples do not do not have that ability. And, to do what your commands would imply, usually you really can do "some_command *.mp3", it's not hypothetical!
Thank you. Any particular reason you decided to lead with the exploit and not this patch?
"As we do not believe in timeless Platonic realities, we do not want to say that chess always existed-in our view of the world, chess came into existence at the moment the rules were codified."

Okay, but when were the variations of chess invented? For example, instead of playing on an 8x8 board, you could play on an x*y board for any natural numbers x and y. Do we need to set x and y to specific values for that variation to "come into existence". Does it make sense for us to say that a game exists when it's never been played?

How specific do we need to be about imagining a game? If we just say that chess can vary in many possible ways by changing any of its rules, does checkers come into existence? Or suppose we write a computer program to generate variations on board games. Do I have to run the program for these games to "come into existence", or just write it, or just think about writing it? If the program has a bug so that it won't generate a particular board game, does that game come into existence when I document the bug, fix the bug, or verify the fix?

I don't think any philosophy is all that good at distinguishing between explored and unexplored concepts in the general case. But that's a problem mostly when you try to do philosophy. If you have a practical purpose in mind, it's much easier to come up with a useful working definition for the particular domain you're interested in.
I wonder if this result holds if the coin is given an "unusual" moment of inertia such that it does not spin about a single axis.
Maybe to get the wiki closer to the code, you could put links to relevant wiki pages in your code comments. Some editors even recognize URLs in the code and allow you to click on them for instant access. And if your code repository is HTTP-accessible, you could put links to your code on your wiki pages.
I added it, hoping you don't mind.
We've overwhelmed it. Instead: https://web.archive.org/web/20150811151807/http://mywiki.woo...
Or car window stickers which are hard to remove and designed to be permanent stating the risks of driving a car. Also, the warnings printed onto the interior visors about child seats.
A fixed 943px width page in 2015? That hurts.
Buy & get an extended warranty. Then get back to working on whatever it is that you do, that you're good at.

If you're good at woodworking, build it. You can be better than a warranty- be your own repair guy. I've never checked, but I would imagine there's a community online which can point you to guides & plans/prints.

Either way, I wish you the best.
Show HN: Hello World
Branding for Startups – Don’t forget how people perceive you before
I've seen a few octopus while scuba diving in tropical waters. They are the most interesting species underwater. You can look at them for five minutes and it's absolutely fascinating. The way their skin changes texture and color is mesmerizing. It really feels like an alien life form because nothing else looks or behaves like that.
This seems to be what you're looking for: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21409. But I can't find an ungated version.
I'm an i3 Linux user, and it's always sad to see the state of tiling window management on OS X. I use OS X on my work machine, and while I'm able to mimic some of i3's behavior on OS X, it's never quite the same, and I always find it frustrating.

There are a number of tools that provide some subset of the functionality, but they always lack some critical piece (oftentimes FFM, multi-monitor support, or window containers).
Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10068976.
The village where men are banned
There is trolling happening here, however, it's not coming from sigmar who offered a terse criticism and moved on. In that light, this will be my final post on this thread.
A fun read.

Does anyone know of a practical use for a very fast, parallelizable shuffle algorithm that uses few random bits? All the shuffling I've done has used small enough N that Fisher-Yates was just fine.
Show HN: Sway – i3 for wayland
This was posted twice. We kept this thread as the earlier of the two, but changed the URL to the more explanatory post. The other URL is http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~sturm/research/RNNIrishTrad/inde... and actually plays the music. The other HN thread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10069007, but we moved the comments here.
A little article I wrote about branding your startup. Thanks for reading :-)
Younger people are just hungry for new experiences in general. Nothing wrong with that.

That most of your peers can afford traveling is curious - I guess they're ok with living with their parents or leeching off of them for quite some time.

That's the one dirty secret of travel nobody seems to talk about - how are you able to afford it exactly?

That's what I find hilarious is that the people I know who have travelled a fair bit - are still living with their parents or have gotten significant support from them.

So yeah, spoiled brats if you ask me :) Being broke would teach them more than travelling.
I was wondering about the amount of hardship it would take for a person to reject the social contract. That is not psychopathy.
I am a huge fan of octopuses. I recall many a day spent in my youth on Australian beaches, looking through crack and crevice for these delightful - and sometimes dangerous - creatures. (Blue Ring Octopus: delightful, and deadly.)

I've seen them doing all sorts of things, and learned a few tricks for how to deal with them. One very important thing for an octopus lover to understand is that they are absolutely entranced by the bright and shiny - I have yet to meet an Australian octopus I couldn't entice out of its shelter with the flash of a gold coin .. just get the sun angle right, shine the coin in the hole, and out they come .. be prepared to leave the reef poor, because once that coin gets grabbed, its all over! Somewhere in the holes of Yanchep, there's a small pile of coins .. I'm quite sure. (At least $5.)

I've seen octopus fishing! That is to say I've seen them using tools! I once spent hours watching a small reef specimen sitting in its little hole, one long tentacle stretched out, the carcass of a crayfish held lazily at the end, swaying in the current gently, tempting those stupid whitefish to come just a little closer for .. one last little feed on the crayfish before .. WHAM .. out comes another tentacle like light, to drag the stupid whitefish in .. a few minutes later, back comes the crayfish shell, and on it goes. I spent almost a whole day watching this process, it was fascinating .. and I dare say the little octopus even knew I was there and put on an extra special show for me - it really felt like it. (Okay, I'm projecting, but .. wow. A fishing octopus, using a lure!)

I hope one day we get a chance to understand these awesome creatures better - and it certainly seems like we're closer now than ever to understanding just how intelligent they can be.

There's an octopus I visit regularly at the local aquarium, here in middle-Europe .. it looks so sad. I like to talk to it when I visit, and I've gotten a response a few times .. out it comes, swimming from its little spot, to saunter all over the glass of its tank, looking me right in the eye. That is a delight, as sad as it is to see. I know how it feels, so far from the ocean, so that's why I like to tell it nice things.

Definitely my favourite creature. Anyone got octopus tales to tell? I'd love to hear them. I'd also love to hear from anyone who has managed to keep one in captivity - much as I understand it to be a cruel exercise, the idea of having a pet octopus appeals to me greatly. I'd never do it though - to take such a delightful being from its ocean is beyond my means.
Konami's Terrible Work Culture
Dumb smoke + CO detectors aren't going anywhere, but neither are smart ones. Networking the devices together is a huge boon in larger homes where a few closed doors and space can make an alarm less likely to be heard (such as when you're sleeping, and it's even worse if you're a heavy sleeper). They'll improve with future generations and the price will continue to fall. They'll still cost more than the hunks of plastic, but that's OK: consumers can decide for themselves whether the increased cost is worth it for them.
Thanks. We've now merged the threads.
Why Go Out?
Tales of Gorluth II – New Amiga Game – Official Trailer
> The interesting question is: of all the myriad possible things that are computable, how is it that we are able find the unfathomably small subset whose behavior corresponds to (what we perceive as) physical reality?

Isn't that simply because of the Anthropic principle [1]? We are observing this computation simply because we are part of it. Other creatures may be observing different computations (but we will never be able to ask them because they live in a different reality).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
XPC is just a layer on top of Mach IPC. Not very familiar with the app sandbox model, but what exactly would be truly innovative about it?

Being a hybrid kernel barely has any significance when you don't exploit that fact, which XNU doesn't. Also, it's a hybrid of Mach, which is heavily anachronistic and clunky. DragonFly BSD, on the other hand, actually does through the vkernel mechanism.

I have no idea what you mean by the third one. Are you saying that the root user's privileges are segmented into multiple subsystems? POSIX has had capabilities for that. They suck and they're not actual capability-based security, but they do achieve logical privilege segmentation. Plan 9 and Inferno are the only ones from the Unix-ish lineage who successfully got rid of root entirely.

You can write applications targeting any subsystem provided there are bindings, which there are. For instance, Python and Vala are heavily used in contemporary Unix-like DEs for application programming.
For IoT you don't need higher speeds, you need lower power requirements. I am much more interested in things like LoRa networking. It allows upgrading base stations to receive sensor data directly from the sensor, while the sensor can run years on battery power. It allows retroactive upgrades of buildings with sensors without having to put in new cabling or figure out where to put bluetooth networking gear.
Another (not yet mentioned here) tool is Mjolnir. It requires some lua scripting but seems to be really flexible.

I stick with bettertouchtool combined with some keyboard shortcuts though.
Ultimate treadmill combining classic style, fine wood work, artistic statement and semi-private work space:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Hamster-Wheel-Standing-Desk/...
I get a message saying it's not ready for Hacker News yet, so I can't even see what's going on :-(
it has a lot of similarity with human made trad music, but to my ear it sounds very different from music. something is definitely missing. Inflatable dolls look like the real thing, somewhat, on the surface... still a long way to go for synthetic music to fool a musician's ear, IMHO...
BetterTouchTool is free, and strangely incorporates the same window snapping functionality as it's sister: BetterSnapTool. I've always been a little confused by the paid download for BetterSnapTool... Unless I'm missing something you can get all the same functionality and more (mouse and trackpad configuration etc) with BTT.

http://www.bettertouchtool.net/
"Hills make you strong; wind makes you mean." Not sure where I first heard this, but I always think of it when facing a headwind.
If I had an electric/motorized bike, I think it would cut the commute by about 15-20 minutes with most of the gain being on the trail. The perk of biking for me at least, is the exercise though.
crashed my browser(chrome latest,win 8.1) but there is a video capture linked .
Check out what kind of desk does Linus use :-)

https://youtu.be/HSgUPqygAww?t=1m31s
Indeed! I've had a few similar experiences out diving too, and you reminded me of the time I was out in shallow water with just a snorkel, and saw a little octopus darting around .. it seemed as interested in me as I was in it! I lost track of it and swam around a bit more, and eventually went back to the beach to get my tank on .. as I pulled the straps up, I thought there was something not quite right and reached around on my back to see what it was - it was the little octopus! It had hitched a ride on my back, which I didn't feel because of my wetsuit, and had managed to get up on the beach with me .. wow, that was great! Took it gently off my back, put it in the water, it scurried away .. but for the rest of the day as I explored the reef I couldn't help but feel it was still following me.. delightful creatures, and one of the beautiful things you should always try to see in person, in the ocean one day ..
HTML5: Persistent AppCache Injections
Why "intro"? As if "demo" wasn't confusing enough.
This is exactly my experience as well. I more or less use org mode all the time for organizing tasks, preparing document drafts, etc. I really like the HTML and other format exports for getting quick drafts.
I'm curious, what tools/configs do you use to mimic i3 on OS X? I'm also an i3 user, but currently using OS X for work.
9 Steps to Help You Conquer Your Fear of Public Speaking (Infographic)
Launching my first SaaS product in 54 hours, 20 minutes, and 5 seconds
Yeah, I had this problem a long time ago. Installed SizeUp + Divvy, but I've just used SizeUp and haven't looked back.
Barcelona: The most wired city in the world
Circling back to this for future researchers - I was again not contacted after the exchange with MrGando here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Apple iPhones can display anonymous pics sent via Airdrop
Get Idea What Business You Should Do
Note the minimum number of bits is ceil(n*log2(n)). This seems to achieve nlog2(n)+O(n).
It is standard demoscene terminology for a small Demo.
why not just install a global window manager?
http://spectacleapp.com/
Business School Learn How to Business
Making Hardware Design More Agile