skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> 99.5% can't mine it.

Not relevant. Mining is no longer profitable for any new entrants without some incredible innovation in computing power or electricity costs. Even the miners are unlikely to make money from mining only from holding their mining gains as investments.

> 99% of the world's population can't understand it.

That's underselling the human population. I would posit 10-20% are probably mentally incapable of understanding the basics of modern finance, therefore have no chance at a new form of currency. For all of the rest, they can understand what they need to know to use it.

BitCoin's entire proposal, including the original paper, the source code, millions of different explanations, and millions of different opinions about it are available for free. It's the most anti-elitist form of currency we have come up with. The costs of fiat currencies are hidden: central banks adjusting the money supply in real time at will, transactions aren't all visible to the globe on a single ledger, etc.

I'm not even very bullish on BitCoin. But I don't find it remarkably elitist -- at least no more than previous currencies.
> The days of pure/basic research are dead, especially with funding from the public sector drying up.

I have been wondering, could pure research work well with a crowd-funding model? In addition to applying for a grant, the PI would post a similar or identical application to Kickstarter & co. Stretch goals could be used to commission media-rich presentations that are true to the research, rather than leaving the original scientist-oriented study to be interpreted by rushed journalists.
Your application code shouldn't have sharding concerns in its logic. To achieve this, you should introduce an abstraction layer. One such example is vitess[0], which is used at YouTube.

If that's too much work, then an easy preliminary step is to add the abstraction layer in your application code. That gets you most of the benefits of a proxy for the purpose of having clean application logic, and makes it easy to switch over later, but is less powerful and feature complete.

[0]: http://vitess.io/overview/#features
You get a heck of a view from above the 10th floor. I'd live there. Opposing dense development near transit seems close to the ultimate NIMBYism.
Agreed. The NYC JS scene is huge, entertaining, and very nicely knit. I've visited offices and been to meetups all around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (and even Jersey). We have our own conferences (EmpireJS and EmpireNode). There are great companies here in a variety of spaces. I believe that NYC, as a city, is extremely conducive to the "startup life".
Well, it's saving Social Secuity billions as well. Not to mention the shift in some of the public worker pensions. California, alone, is between a 214 billion and a trillion dollars UNDERFUNDED already (depending on the studies and their estimates) and that's in addition to the $3.4 billion that will be funded just this year.

The article also ignores the steeper increase in mortality in the early 1990s than the 2015 one. Maybe 2015 is just another anomaly.

Interesting that the 2007-8 economic downturn didn't affect the mortality rate. With so many people losing jobs or (reducing hours) with their medical coverages and the foreclosure rate spiking it wasn't raising the death rate.
I agree that we need to build in the city as well, but many major cities have good transportation inside and outside of the city too.

Currently it's almost an hour to get to downtown from Ocean Beach to Financial district with a bus, and its only 7 miles away. That is 7mph, almost a walking speed.

For example, back in Helsinki (where I'm from) you could easily get to the downtown anywhere in the 12mile radius in 10-20mins with a bus, light rail or train. I know the numbers are similar in many European cities.

Generally in Europe public transport is usually the easier and faster option than driving or at least the same time. If driving in a city is multitudes faster then you're not doing to public or other transportation systems very well.
Ughhhh... what?
Designing Zachtronics' TIS-100 (2015)
Yes and no. I guess the more "fair" way to compare them at trivia would be to have a format where all 3 give an answer to every question, and whoever gets the most points wins. That's obviously not really jeopardy, and I'd be curious to know how Watson would perform purely on the trivia knowledge vs clicking speed. I'm guessing it would still win though.
Diffusion Matters
Bigot! Are you saying women can't have rational discussions regarding controversial topics that affects them?!?! grabs pitchfork

/s
Would not actions per second be a better limit tho?
Technically you can. You can run a SSD array in RAID5, 6 or 10, and lose a little bit of performance but get the capacity needed.
I've noticed this about Bitcoin. It's not hard to understand at all, but everyone attempts to dive into the technical details right from the start and this loses most people.

The core conceit that people gloss over is the fact there is no such thing as a "wallet" that "stores" bitcoins. The only thing that exists is a public record of numbers saying they're giving bitcoins to other numbers.

When you create a "wallet", you're choosing a private number that nobody knows and nobody has already picked. You use this private number to create another number, the public number, the "wallet address".

Since this number doesn't exist anywhere in the public record, we say you have "zero bitcoins."

Then, you get someone to claim "I am giving x bitcoins to your number". If you can get this claim (a transaction) into the public record (the blockchain), we all decide to agree "This happened." And now we say you have x bitcoins. Why? Because now you're allowed to make a transaction saying you're giving those bitcoins to another number!

It's all made up. This is what currency is, it only exists because of collective trust.
I don't see how that does anything except force logic to the server and guarantee page-by-page update and view semantics. At least some large percentage of the code for some of these "modern" web apps is on my computer: that means a lot; and anything we can do to discourage code running in the cloud with data stored in the cloud--which absolutely implies giving complex turing complete control over local behavior and expansive state--is a fundamental win for users of the World Wide Web.
Can Video Game Playing Cost You Gray Matter?
> Are you telling me that a Rust code base with over 100 devs won't have any problems

If you've had 100 problems writing c++, rust will reduce 99 of them. No data races, no SEGFAULTS - yes its impossible, no pointer mathematics, no bad (nullptr) state of pointers and much much faster than c++. Just see the benchmarks here - https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/regexredux.htm...

Rust is 2.73 seconds and c++ is at 17 seconds LOL. C is ahead but not too much. ( 1 sec difference and who cares about a second when c++ is ....). Btw, have fun with your spray paint ;)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14972540
because that is nearly a synonym for sharding?

or did you mean just use a large capacity RAID setup? that will probably work fine for a lot of situations but it can expensive and introduce more latency for certain types of operations (but that might not matter, depends on context).
Would radio be a good indicator of what people are actually listening to, though? All that would tell you is what the station is playing, not how many people are listening. Plus, stations have their own motives to play (or not play) what they do.

From what I've seen if people don't have access to their "own" media (be it a Spotify subscription, iTunes, loose MP3, CDs, whatever) and they want to listen to a song, YouTube is where they go.
Yes.

- There are fewer white men in the NBA because they are biologically unsuited to it.

- There are fewer tall fighter pilots because they are biologically unsuited to it.

- There are fewer women as pitchers in the MLB because they are biologically unsuited to it.

These are descriptive statements about reality. The world in which we find ourselves. You may not like that world, you may think we should change the rules of that world, but it is the world as it exists today. Calling it out as such can not rationally be considered offensive.
Vaccinations generally work, so as long as your kids are vaccinated, I fail to see how sending them to a private school will endanger them in any way...
Have you played against the updated AI in Aoe2 HD?
These 3 Things Will Change the Way Your Store Approaches Tomorrow’s Customer
I can already see some APIs that were missing in 1.6 that I need. Extremely exciting and will definitely making transitioning to .NET core so much easier.
I wish more effort were being made to make it a first class citizen on non-Apple platforms. With the popularity it has enjoyed, it could easily challenge the likes of Go, Python or even Java for server side programming.
The big 4 are already using rust in various internal projects (including Microsoft). This comment just shows that you're afraid your job will be taken up by one of the rust devs in future..
If you were creating a new general purpose language language today would you target WASM? And what's the latest on garbage collection for WASM?
As said elsewhere in this thread:

Anyone who wants to use "science" in this way needs to read "The Golem" by prominent sociologists of science Collins and Pinch. It's a short, enjoyable read. One of the things you'll learn is that science can only ask the questions humans want to ask, and science often says exactly what people want it to say.

https://www.amazon.com/Golem-Should-About-Science-Classics/d... online link: http://cstpr.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/collins_the_gol...
I don't dismiss it because I have no idea what it's about.

The church he founded was one of the major annoyances of the latter half of the 20th century. If you're interested in the general history of Really Bad Ideas (and how they draw otherwise warm sensitive, intelligent people into their fold), you might want to look into it.

Let's just say I've considered the works of a lot cranks and crackpots, over the years - and a lot of viewpoints that, while not quite in that category, are just muddled and inflammatory and don't have a lot to offer to the discussion.
Enough to develop a pretty reliable sense of "smell" as to whether a given piece of work merits further exploration beyond a few paragraphs or so.

So whether or not one thinks he should be fired for it -- his "manifesto" definitely does not pass that smell test.

That's my view. If you view his work differently, that's fine for you.
I know how is the process from the external point of view, but, what is the feedback they submit? Here is where the bias of the hiring process could be (like only considering skills more likely to be in men).

> Would the diversity program at Google encourage the committee members to looks for biases against female/minority candidates and compensate accordingly?

I don't know, and I would want to know how the really work. One girl here commented she was hired by one of this programs, so at least I know the candidate know he/she is in on of this programs when they apply. Other girl commented that she heard in one of her interviews (I don't know the company): "+1 point because you are a girl and diversity make us pay less taxes". I wouldn't be surprised if something like this also happens internally at Google. A googler also said the hiring process is the same for everybody, but giving the evidence of the document I don't think is exactly the same.

I cannot say more. I do not have more information. If you find it, let me know.
5 Times Bribes Were the Cost of Doing Government Business // FCPA
California HSR goes to San Francisco, Millbrae, San Jose, Gilroy, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Hanford, Bakersfield, Palmdale, Burbank, Los Angeles, and Anaheim. It provides frequent single-seat rides between every origin-destination pair of these cities. Many of these routes don't currently have any similar commercial air service (or the air service that does exist has very high fares due to low competition and scale), so HSR is providing new connectivity that didn't exist before.

The San Jose to Bakersfield segment is scheduled to begin operating in 2021. It will provide 1 hour travel time between Fresno and San Jose[1]. High speed rail isn't replacing regional rail -- it's providing it over a much longer distance than would otherwise be possible.

[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/07/23/will-san-jose-to-fresn...
> the story itself is being artificially amplified by Russian social media bot accounts

Any shit (or anything that looks like shit) about US would be amplified, because the idea they are pushing is "maybe it's crappy here, but you wouldn't believe how crappy it is over there". It's a very powerful and very successful strategy, they didn't invent it (pretty much every totalitarian regime has used it) but they are surely following it.

> who wrote an internal manifesto against diversity

Useful rule: anybody who writes "manifesto against diversity" didn't read it, doesn't know anything worthy of mention about it and should be completely ignored.

> Right wing discord was amplified opportunistically.

Every discord will be amplified opportunistically. That's what they do. The right thing to do is to ignore them.

> These are stories which reasonable shouldn't be more than a "blip" but by amplifying their importance it serves the Russian strategy.

Russians didn't make it a story. Google and MSM did. Also people throwing a fit because somebody published a thoughtcrime did.

> They sow chaos & discord.

They sow nothing. Nobody in US watches them. Nobody in US cares about them. Stop blaming Russians for what Americans do to themselves.

> It's a propaganda war

Maybe. But if it is, it is a propaganda civil war.

> It is totally asymmetric and the USA is getting crushed by it.

On the contrary, USA doesn't even notice it. The rating of any Russian media outlet in USA is zero. The only way anything gets to the eyes of the public if US media amplifies it - which now unfortunately they do quite a lot, because the stupid part of Democrats thinks that blowing up the Red Scare would help them topple Trump. And they don't care about the collateral damage. Absent that, the influence of Russian media on the US is zero point zero.
You can't go browsing around VirusTotal and download other people's submissions. So... a VT partner allows you to? Because that's what's described here. Any idea which VT partner allows downloading of original files?
>I disagree that as web engineers, our goal is to make websites faster. Our goal is to make a website that suits the customer's needs.

The overwhelming majority of the time, to "make a website that suits the customer's needs" == make it faster
I watched this interview just a bit ago, and it gave me a better understanding of what James' was trying to articulate. After like 5 days of confusion about the memo, the outrage, and now the firing - I think I can come to a conclusion that he is firstly, not sexist, and secondly is a proponent of equal treatment of both men an women. And thirdly wanted an honest discussion on this topic.

I do think it will come to pass that Google will lose a unlawful termination lawsuit (or settle)

This engineer was further, exploring the question in what appears to be a very scientific manner based on the latest academic research into these questions, as best as I can discern that appears accurate.

This entire conversation is tainted by so many numerous other items that it is almost impossible to discuss without bringing in emotion, tangential arguments, anecdotes, and just random statements. This really is a category 5 hurricane of our current political/cultural battles brought to light.

I'm coming from a very liberal perspective, and I found it really hard to agree with others on how this is a very sexist memo. It appears that this young man is truly trying to explore the nature of these issues, and how it applied to his former company - who ostensibly wanted to encourage curiosity and a range of discussion.

I often find myself very upset at the fringe right for many of their ideas, but I've usually treated the far left (are they fringe now?) as more just annoying and irrelevant and harmless (the anti-vaxxers(maybe not harmless here), safe space, microaggression proponents) I really think the loose liberal group - that I self select to be a member of - really screwed the pooch on this one. This whole debacle does appear to be a rush to judgement and virtue-signaling. Ugh - I'm not usually on the side of the alt-right/conservatives, but on the merits of this issue - there is a point they are making that is important. HOWEVER and this is important - all the other awful truly sexist and misogynist things that is part of the alt-right is detestable, but as famously said elsewhere - This is not the droid you are looking for.
> First there is the marketing scam reported in the app store reviews, people who installed it because some web site told them they have a virus and they need this thing to fix it.

This is common and I am not entirely sure Onavo supports this wittingly. Most times that I have seen it, the ad redirects to the "Norton Wi-Fi Privacy" page on the App Store instead.

Agreed on point #2, they should be much more clear on what they do with user data.
Maybe someone will explain this to me. Does Swift use this confusing "rapid release" versioning? Does Swift 4 break backwards compatibility with Swift 3?

In my company people are looking for a language to rewrite some legacy Objective-C to. Swift is often discarded as "unstable" because of these major version bumps. Compare this to Go, which, seven or so years after the initial release is still 1.x and still doesn't break code.

I just don't get breaking the language so often. Do people enjoy rewriting code?
In the case of Google, I don't think the bar is being lowered for any candidate, since there are so many candidates to select from. If anything, it's more likely that qualified non-diverse candidate are rejected for random reasons at a higher rate than qualified diverse candidates, because interviewers and hiring committee aren't on the look out for biases.
I'd be happy just to see traffic lights that actually factor traffic congestion. One of my peeves is when a traffic light makes me and a whole line of cars waste brakes to stop then waste gas to sit at a red light just to let one car go when the efficient option would have been to let the line of cars travelling 50mph go first, THEN let the loner who's already stopped go afterwards. It's a problem I've wanted to solve for a loooong time. Imagine the savings in time, gasoline, and environment if every intersection actively tried to maximize efficiency.
I don't understand how would webassembly be worse than the way it is now.

Take a real webapp. Say something like Google Docs. Can you read it and understand it? What about gmail? Or Facebook?

Practically, they're a binary blob running on your computer. Not only that, but they could be hiding malware, and even if you viewed source you wouldn't be able to tell it's there.

Now maybe if JS was meant to be slow, and if there was no such thing as AJAX, and there would be no way for JS to send/receive data from the server (say, by modifying a GIF url), then I could see a complaint that a browser shouldn't run arbitrary downloaded code on your computer without opt-in. But that ship sailed over a decade ago.
https://github.com/vapor/vapor
It had a big effect for a short timeframe. Look at photos of Bill Gates, he aged like 15 years in just three years time. And he stepped off as CEO.

It followed Ballmer, a softer CEO timeframe. Now Gates with his strawman Nadella got back the power.
I wonder if it's come too late.

Couldn't it be the opposite? Blizzard was willing to do this release exactly because SC2 is dead?
I disagree I got into Starcraft recently and find it very much vibrant, both in the pro scene and casual. But that’s irrelevant. The point is it’s still a great ai challenge
Fidelity is testing out a new cryptocurrency service
There are already node/webkit based "server-side solutions for PDF generation" like phantomjs.

And what they showcase here is a PDF document renderer, not a PDF generator.
Rust has good IDE support, graphical debuggers are around the corners, gui toolkits are coming and compile times are improving. By the time 2017 ends, rust will improve on all these things, while .NET platform will still be stuck with a slow GC (2017 and GC in same sentence lol) while rust is going to get faster, safer and better. I suggest you to see for yourself, maybe start learning it - it ain't so hard ;)
In fact it had an extremely large negative impact on Microsoft. To know that, all you have to do is read / listen to [1] actual interviews from people that worked there through those days. It was very hard on the company and its employees.

The culture was forced to change substantially. Their behavior was monitored by the government for years after. They were no longer able to aggressively compete without chains on their strongest points of leverage. At a time when IE had conquered the browser market, they couldn't use that new monopoly point to attempt to crush Google as one example (which is exactly what they would have done in the late 1980s or early 1990s). It's the same type of restrictive blanket that was put on Intel by the US Government in exchange for allowing them to keep their monopoly.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2017-07-28/rich-barton-...
>The idea that you'd rather have children in worse conditions as long as they're not making stuff for you seems... weird to say the least.

It seems quite normal to me. I'd rather not point out the examples I'm thinking of, but I can come up with a number which I'm willing to be people would be against despite being better overall for the children involved, at least in terms of money earned per harm done, actually quantifying harm in a way that one can easily compare is itself a touchy issue. Even then money is more a generic metric itself, because there are many non-monetary things that one can earn, but which usually can be given a monetary value.
Yeah but compare the search space of Poker vs Starcraft.
It may be very hard to create such a system, but it is extremely easy to copy it. Bitcoin is a proof-of-concept for a new technology, but that doesn't mean it has value. I used to work at BitTorrent, and the extreme popularity of the protocol did not translate into revenue for the company. There is nothing special about the BTC blockchain that makes it any more valuable than any other chain.
> Do people enjoy rewriting code?

No, of course not. The way I see it, Swift is scared to go the "Java" route where backwards compatibility is valued above all else, leaving the language an antiquated mess.
You should read a little about the history and sociology of science.
I've been sort of going back and forth on what I want to work on as a side project, but server side Swift stuff is definitely an option. I love the language, and think it could end up being a really strong competitor in that space. At the moment it's just barely viable though, sadly.
To be fair, a vast vast majority of people have no idea how central banking works or Forex etc.
"Judicial independence is the concept that the judiciary needs to be kept away from the other branches of government. That is, courts should not be subject to improper influence from the other branches of government, or from private or partisan interests.

Judicial Independence is vital and important to the idea of separation of powers."[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_independence
Swift developers, how is the evolution of the programming language now? does it still have backwards compatibility issues or things are more stable now (and will be with this new proposals)?