skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> In the case of Bitcoin, the "core" developers, in addition to the highest-volume miners, have been elevated to the sovereign position.

I'm far from being a Bitcoin expert but from understanding:
In the end Bitcoin is just a piece of Open Source software.
Every user (including the miners) decides which version of the software
(and ultimately which version of the blockchain) they like to use.
Everyone can write his or her own version of a bitcoind and publish it.

The miners ultimately decide which blocks to accept so they have some special power but only as long as people use the same blockchain.
The core devs have the power to persuade and influence the community but they can't force no one to use their client.

Bitcoin is more like a democracy where currently some citizens want to leave the current system and build their own democracy with different rules.
I miss the failwhale, this silly robot is just... silly https://abs.twimg.com/errors/robot.png
That's me alright, but I think my comment in this instance didn't warrant the claim about "religious dimensions." Having a firm opinion and using (OMG) the word "shit" when stating it does not mean it's a religion, and I'm very secularly using much of C++11 as I said, and I was among the people pushing for the upgrade where I work.
There's a recent study [1] that shows that outcome for cardiac emergency patients are better (way better) when they're treated at a (good) hospital while the top cardiologists were away (at a conference).

That is, patient outcome is better for patients who go to a hospital with a good reputation, that has outstanding doctors (a teaching hospital) -- but the outcome is best when the top doctors are NOT present in the hospital when the patient checks in.

After controlling for many variables, the only explanation the authors of the study came up with to explain this apparent paradox, is that top doctors want to try anything, esp. the latest procedure/drug, while non-top doctors are more conservative.

At least in the short term, being conservative saves lives.

1. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/startling-benefit-cardiology-me...
Why would a customer need real-time data and analysis from a bulk cargo shipment? That doesn't make any sense.

I think most customer just want to know when their stuff is going to arrive - they don't need 'real-time data and analysis' (or if they do, they don't expect the guy moving the cargo to provide it for them).

Also, those DOS\cobol systems already made shipping so cheap you can get a 40 foot container (full of stuff) from China to LA for $1300.

They can't scale? They currently handle the whole world's shipping needs. That sounds like it scaled just fine.
The thing being inflated in inflation is prices. If a currency becomes more valuable, things cost less in that currency. An appreciating currency leads to deflation, all else being equal.

(This assumes you are treating BTC as a currency, which appears to be the OP's intent.)
Ask HN: Again: Why can't we have collapsable comment threads?
Seriously, address this!

I searched before submitting and many others have requested this in the past. Yet no response to the contrary, apart from some snarky jerks commenting "Hmm, well maybe you should go over to Reddit then".

No, I don't want Reddit. I want to be able to easily browse the comment section without scrolling through pages of textbloat, usually created by one expert trying to one-up another expert about some small aspect of the article. This all but stalls any meaningful discussion, and makes it difficult to find the real gems in the comments.

It's just annoying as there's some really smart people here that often make the comments better than the original article, which is made even better by the fact that we cannot see scores.

So, once again to the HN powers that be, why stick with this design decision that many people have evidently asked you to scrap?
Not really true, if you move to Finland as EU citizen, you won't get Finnish social security right away. You have to work here to apply for it.
This story also strikes me as being a post-facto justification for state-monopolized fiat currency.
> There's another angle to it that I think is more important to many - not having access to Google apps you're used to is fucking annoying, to say the least.

For some Google Services there are annoying but functional workarounds, for others.. not so much:

My Galaxy S6 fingerprint scanner acted up and locked me out of my phone. I didn't really remember the backup password (I was too clever by making it very unique - somehow forgetting to put it into Lastpass). I thought - no problem, I can use the Google Account password reset mechanism that I used before, right? Wrong! When you are locked out you can't change WiFi networks either, so connected to an Astrill router or corporate network that is on a VPN wouldn't have been an option. So the only option was a factory reset. Turns out that a US Galaxy S6 immediately tries to phone home to some servers blocked by the GFW during the reset process. You can't skip that step! So this is where I had to find some folks with an Astrill VPN router and connect to their private WiFi network that was tunneled to the outside world.

Lesson learned: Know your backup passwords and don't rely on fingerprint scanner functionality.
If you are bothering the user with a modal, popup, post-install screen, etc., then why not ask your customers TO promote the product providing Email and Social sharing options? Then you can measure how many people ACTUALLY promoted your product, instead of how many said they would (but mostly probably didn't).

Declared action is a notoriously unreliable signal.
Your taxes subsidize the highways used by commercial shipping companies too.
Node.js vs. Ruby on Rails by Will Nathan, Cofounder of Homepolish
The energy waste of Bitcoin isn't a function of its decentralized nature, it's evidence that the decentralized nature is being subverted. A truly decentralized Bitcoin wouldn't have giant mining rigs that have to figure out what to do with all the waste heat, it'd be using spare CPU cycles that everyone has and the energy impact would be minimal. The energy waste comes from people using ASICs devoted to nothing but Bitcoin mining. And those same people, according to the article being discussed, are using their outsized impact to help steer the direction Bitcoin is headed in to the detriment of the majority of Bitcoin users. Bitcoin's ethos of "one CPU, one vote" was subverted as soon as people using dedicated Bitcoin mining hardware could have more votes than all the CPUs in the ecosystem put together.
This definitely rings true to me. The company I work for has been around for ~6 years and while we have made money and grown in that time, it wasn't until the last year really that we hit on exactly what our clients love about our product and continued to nail that. It can take way, way longer than some entrepreneurial people are comfortable waiting for. But now that we've found it, and are continuing to expand our product around what we've found, growth is starting to come much more easily.
The US is a fairly poor example of this as you must be disabled, looking for a job, retired, or raising kids to qualify for long term assistance. And creating something of value is a great way to be kicked off the system and sometimes have to pay that money back.

The EU model is closer to basic income and Harry Potter is one example that does show up from that well. There are actually quite a few works of art made by people 'on the dole'.
COBOL has C linkage, has for a while. You don't have to write the new code in COBOL...
> All it would take is requiring graduated income checks so for every $1 you make more in wages you lose less than $1 of benefits.

Or just universal benefits and a progressive income tax, then you don't have to have the bureaucratic machinery of the means tested welfare state.
Silk Road was just the first darknet market though. There's plenty of others now, but anytime one gets a bit large, it tends to steal all it's users money and vanish, and if it gets REALLY large, it tends to be shut down by a government eventually.

But there's always another market. And there always will be.
If you liked the article you might enjoy this talk from last CCC: https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7196-how_the_great_firewall_disc...
As someone who sometimes feels like the only one who remembers both the world before GitHub-style pull requests and the benefits that patches have over them, I can appreciate your ode to patches and the way that Git was designed to handle them. Not really excited about your no-true-Scotsman-ing, though.
Frankly, I think the liver is a bit more exquisite.
Yes! I think you've captured the idea perfectly. It also removes much of the administrative cost of other types of welfare. Cost that's a product of highly complicated rules for who deserves how much welfare.
I don't think he's referencing welfare but programs such as disability.

It's not a knock against those with serious disabilities that prevent them from working, but the individuals who sham the system to collect $3k /month in disability pay for their diabetes, and refuse to work.
We ALL know someone with diabetes who doesn't sham, but there are lots who do.
Did we learn from any mistakes made during that last event?

http://www.alltrials.net/news/comment-from-ben-goldacre-on-t...
Perhaps related: Slack seems down, too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10911980
If you don't want to use basic C++ features such as copy constructors, then why use C++ and not C?
1. Coinbase or Circle

2. There really aren't any! Not for the average user, not right now. Adoption was only ever going to start with niche use cases, like international remittances, some B2B applications, darknet sites, etc. I think most people will start using Bitcoin without realizing it, as is the premise with 21inc. and many others. I think OpenBazaar will see some success, too. There's lots of time for this to work out, and speculators will drive the price for a long time.

3. A fiat blockchain is just expensive and inefficient fiat. Why do you need a public ledger when you're already placing all your trust on a bank or government? Just keep the private ledger that's cheap and trivial to implement. I think many people have this notion of thinking about Bitcoin like currency, but that's really not right. Bitcoin is a trustless network, and all of it's power and innovation stems from that. Introducing a trusted party to that just destroys all of that.
Yes, I would. And frankly that is a feature not a bug! It would allow people to contribute to the economy in ways that are self-motivating and not for fear of starving. And well motivated people do better work and contribute more which has been empirically validated and also common sense.
Anything else would be extremely unethical, not to mention completely irresponsible. Communism was and is a flawed ideology in making sure we had food to eat - what kind of monster would suggest we use capitalism to give us everything else, except what will save peoples lives? How many people have to be murdered waiting on a transplant list when we know that allowing the sale of organs means they don't have to wait (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidney_trade_in_Iran)?
You can live on basic income and/or welfare, but not all that well. You'll be poor. You'll be living in a bad neighborhood or a crummy tiny apartment and won't be able to buy very much.

Most ambitious people -- the people who have personality characteristics that lead them to achieve interesting things -- want more than this. As a result, most are not willing to live exclusively on the dole.

The thing a basic income might accomplish is to allow people to make path changes. As it stands a person's well being is directly tied to their income and very few people make enough or can live debt-free enough to save enough "FU money" to take any length of time off without severely threatening their future (e.g. eating retirement savings). Basic income would allow people to take a step back and reevaluate whether their current path is best.

Welfare is needs-based not wants-based. It doesn't do that.

Personally I think a minimal basic income could go a long way toward eliminating bullshit jobs. A bullshit job is any job that if (hypothetically) eliminated while the person is still paid, nobody would be poorer in any tangible way. It's a job that does not actually need to be done and doesn't actually benefit anyone.

Since our society depends on jobs to move money around, bullshit jobs must continue to exist even when those doing them know they are doing nothing of value. Basic income would allow them to make the intelligent decision to stop doing meaningless and valueless work.

I think the experiment should be done. I'm not sure if it's going to work but there's only one way to find out.
Perhaps the next "world changing" delivery startup should just start delivering bags of bubbles on demand? Or just get straight to the point and deliver unmarked VC cash in duffle bags?
> Plenty of people already receive checks from the government every month that they live on, in exchange for no real work responsibilities. Like, a whole lot of people. There should already be a not-so-huge wave of accomplishment coming from all these people.

That isn't the same as no responsibilities.

> Modern Western societies are rich enough that smart, motivated individuals can mostly rise to the level of their own ability.

Capitalism isn't a meritocracy and hasn't been for some time (if ever).

Basic income (along with other ideas intended to improve the value of human capital) helps level the field so people can focus on things like a better education, etc.

Frankly, I think we need to focus more on providing access to better education (e.g. Free community college, technical schools, bachelor degrees) with reasonable application restrictions (e.g. Fields with low demand such as many Art/soft skill majors should have caps on how many free degrees are available while fields with high demand should be uncapped).

I think that'd get us alot further than basic income would in regards to your criticism.

HOWEVER, basic income isn't primarily about improving human capital...its just one of the reasons:

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/19/5_reasons_to_consider_a_no_s...

1) Reduces poverty

2) Stabilizes aggregate demand since people who are primarily relying on it for income are going to spend it on goods/services for survival.

3) Certain social ills (e.g. Domestic abuse) are reduced as its easier to escape bad situations. Children are more likely to finish high school.

4) It is more efficient in terms of dollars spent than existing programs (except Social Security)

5) Human dignity
Yep. Growth almost never happens by continually attracting more users than you lose. It happens by not losing your current users and continually adding more.
API was not affected, so apps were still working (although tweetdeck was also unreachable).

It seems to be back up again.
It will fail. Big time. Not on ideology, but on one simple term - basic income can be used only with strong import tariffs - otherwise it becomes a huge capital outflow out of the country.
How would that work in the case of an unconditional basic income though? If you're not going to have a pre-requisite for native Finnish people to have had a job in order to receive it, can you have a pre-requisite for EU nationals to have a job before they can claim?
The conflation of arguments against wealth redistribution and arguments against over regulation or publicly managed entitlement services is everywhere. If successful then socialists and union leaders might find themselves at odds with one another. There would then be a real practical distinction between left libertarians and right libertarians. Issues of unemployment and minimum wage will become quaint as outdated means of dealing with poverty and inequality...

Or it will fail miserably.
> the general welfare (food, shelter, etc)

Those are not the general welfare, they are the particular welfare of the person eating the food or living in the shelter.
No, the US gov't was able to set taxes well well before the 16th Amendment, which as you point out, is only for income taxes. The US gov't had all sorts of taxes before the 16th Amendment and the justification for that as outlined in the US Constitution is for the general welfare.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause
> The point of basic income is not as a means to enable anything; it's a natural byproduct of and solution to a problem, the problem of ever increasing automation removing the need for human labor.

I disagree. Humans tend to create new market segments in response to this problem. Service jobs, creative jobs, people are remarkably effective at finding ways to be productive. Basic income almost seems like a measure focused on finding ways for people to be unproductive.

Do you seriously think automation means less human labor is needed? I can think of dozens of segments out there that could really use more human capital.

Automation means less labor is needed to produce certain kinds of goods. We can always find things for people to do.
I don't understand what you mean by "wind up being Just Another Government Program."

$1,000/month seems like a highly reasonable amount. It's more than Finland is proposing.
That's a fair point, I hope I'm wrong.
I suspect once people's basic needs are satisfied with the basic income, they will spend whatever discretionary income they have on VR porn and legal marijuana, and just do that for the rest of their lives.
Unemployment benefits just aren't like basic income. At all.

1. They're barely enough to feed yourself and pay for rent, if even. Nothing more.

2. The authorities keep you busy filing paperwork and sending applications for awful jobs. Don't meet your quota, miss a deadline, don't make a meeting, or refuse any job (even if quite beneath your qualification), and your benefits are cut.

3. If you're unemployed, long-term planning is impossible.

4. Higher education is not available. Job training may or may not be.

I suspect that most unemployed are by and large less educated -- so what do you expect?
Basic income would allow education. And that may, as you put it, carry us into a new age.

Disclaimer: I only know about the situation in Germany, and only from (educated, but not IT) acquaintances, not personal experience.
>Except that there are strong social incentives for anyone who is capable of getting a paying job and going off welfare to do so

Debatable. In the US, many welfare programs are designed to cut off anyone who actually gets a job...even if that job pays less than what you'd get from welfare. This problem gets even bigger as you factor in the fact that multiple welfare programs exist, making it nigh-impossible to prevent that drop from being catastrophic.

This is a major incentive to stay on welfare.

Meanwhile, with a BI, a person who seeks a job will earn more money than one who does not. That's it. No complicated math involved, not even subtraction; a guy who works will have more money than one who does not.

Assuming all the participants want more money, the second set of rules will lead to more work than the first.
Security firm sued for filing “woefully inadequate” forensics report
Well, not really.

Netflix and such need Chrome to play videos because of DRM. Well, let me see: Netflix doesn't cache any videos, so if I want to watch something more than once, it's smarter to download it unencumbered.

And then it gets to the point that pirating most of your content makes sense again. If you're going to be a scofflaw, might as well go all the way, and get the good experience from it.
On the other hand, those 5 million additional people probably aren't going to sit around doing nothing. That's not how human nature works, either - most people are happier doing something rather than nothing! Self actualization and all that.

This is really the core assumption behind Marxism; perhaps not so much the sclerotic centrally-planned dictatorship of the proletariat 'Marxism' we saw in the 20th century as the idealized communal society that Marx envisioned, but un-monetized self-motivation is still required for either.

Does that make it wrong? I don't think so; but at least we should think carefully about how we arrange incentives for work in our shining city on the hill. Even if most people aren't working, we still need for that motivated and creative minority to be putting in some hours and to be happy about it.
you're correct that it might not be the best tool for cutting dovetails, but after trying just about every method under the sun for M&Ts, this tool does have its benefits. Cutting double tenons on both ends of an 8' sofa rail would certainly have been easier with a pantorouter. (although using it for through-mortises seems at best ugly and at worst blasphemous).
Coroutines are also fantastic for scripting Game AI:

local player = nil
while(player == nil) do
yeild(0)
player = LookForPlayer(...)
end

while(WalkTowardsPlayer(player)) do
yeild(0)
end

while(!PlayerDead(player)) do
MeleePlayer(player)
yield(0)
end

Makes state management super-simple and is something you can easily teach to designers as well. This is partly why you see Lua show up in so many game engines.
My point is that basic income should be treated as a welfare program, not as a stimulus package. We are bound to be disappointed in the ROI of basic income if we are looking for it to accelerate social evolution all by itself.
Interestingly, it's an ancient form of cult called Gnosticism. Gnostics teach that the material world is evil ("gives rise to the AI"), and only through hidden knowledge ("correct thinking") can one find the true path to spiritual salvation ("become an immortal human")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism
When it is the first use in humans, and the main point of Phase 1 is safety, why is there not an exponential turn on of the trial to avoid widespread harm? For example Patient 1 gets medicine for a week (or whatever), then patients 2 & 3 start their trial, etc. Where is the economic analysis of length of test vs risk of harm by various turn on strategies?
>> I didn't say that the majority rules, just that the majority defines what is mainstream.

Sorry my friend, that is majority rules.

The problem is we already know what this form of thinking eventually leads to. It's happened several times throughout human history. The problem is one group feeling they have the power to dictate to the "other". Especially when the group dynamic and what is considered other changes frequently, leading to more and more problems.

You don't even need to read history. Just take an objective look in various areas of the world, and culture, today and you will see it.

What you consider your mainstream ideals today may be somebody else's fringe tomorrow. Such as some of these supposed "misogynistic" projects that were using age-old terms that someone recently decided was wrong because they want to somehow change the context of the usage of words. When this happens to you, and it eventually will if the pattern continues, hopefully the group in power will be nice to you.
Working fine here in Chicago. No reports of any issues on their status page either: https://status.slack.com/
Wouldn't surprise me if AMSIX is having issues
Working fine here in Chicago.
I would hardly call it an extreme. But the wealth was created by my parents and their parents before them to give the wealthy the opportunity to create wealth.

The post-work economy is coming, especially in Finland. The opportunity to create new services, digitally, with the freedom to fail but without the need for investment spent on just keeping the lights on and paying wages etc.
I imagine if the car ran into something that significantly deviated from what it expected, it would drop out of automatic driving. But google maps is pretty remarkably good at keeping up to date.