skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The simplest procedure, with the strongest blockchain, would be just to encode each Urbit event as raw (OP_RETURN) data on the Bitcoin blockchain

I don't understand the purpose of this. What's the point of pointing people to the Bitcoin blockchain to look for public keys? Ultimately, the authority that puts the relevant information into the OP_RETURN output decides what people get. How will users know they get the right information unless a) Urbit signs the relevant data somehow, or b) points them towards a specific Bitcoin transaction ID? In either case I don't see what the advantage is of putting something in a blockchain, when that something comes from a central source of truth -- why not just consume this information directly from the central source of truth?

> And best of all, you can get your Urbit star or planet entirely through the blockchain, without interacting with any centralized database or payment mechanism.

Great! So all the slowness of a blockchain without any of the advantages?

To be clear, I'm fully aware of how a blockchain is useful for governing internal data (e.g. Bitcoin blocks excluding double spends). But I don't see the point of third parties putting data into blockchains, and pointing other people there to retrieve it, unless we're talking about some sort of proof-of-existence (which utilizes the timestamping feature of a blockchain).
Equity is imaginary fugazi. you might as well be accepting empty promises. I wouldn't want it even now
Wasn't part of the original tax reform to repeal AMT? Was that lost in the Congressional aisle?
https://www.twilio.com/
An actually intelligent person is happy to prove his thinking via truthful argumentation (and unit tests, documentation, and so on), and also happy to get his points refuted by similarly reasonable peers.

That has nothing to do with intelligence. It's a particular culture that is taught and learned.
I think parent poster is referring to this paragraph in particular:

> Throughout this period, Eben disparaged FSF staff and other free software community members in various semi-public settings. In doing so he harmed the credibility of many people who have devoted significant portions of their lives to aiding the free software community. At Libreplanet earlier this year he made direct threats against an attendee - this was reported as a violation of the conference's anti-harassment policy.

The reason I think this is because when I opened the article there were zero comments here, and after reading the post, I clicked through back here to leave a comment much the same as the one you're responding to.

A couple remarks:

I'm aware who Matthew Garrett is, and I respect him and his contributions and his overall stance, in that way where when you see someone's name attached to something, it automatically kicks off good feelings.

Having said that, we need a term for something like this. (One probably exists.) Wikipedia popularized "weasel words", but this is something more specialized. Something like "proxy words", where rather than tell someone the things that happened, you give them this sort of non-specific, pre-digested proxy for people to derive their judgment from. It operates on almost the same principle as strawman arguments. It may be a good proxy, or it may not be, but for good reason you should always favor reserving your judgment for the real issue when presented with a proxy, rather than accepting the proxy itself.

That aside, Bruce Perens's comments in the following two LWN threads are relevant to the overall discussion:

https://lwn.net/Articles/738046/

https://lwn.net/Articles/738279/
You are wrong because you are ineffective. You want a good thing: you want your environment to change for the better. But if you find yourself getting into arguments with managers, then you are probably not effectively changing minds, and you will get frustrated. You already sound frustrated.

Speaking the truth straight out can feel good, but it is rarely a good rhetorical strategy. Instead, back up, and start with this: what do the people across the table want? What do they believe is good, and what do they believe is important?

Now, how do you recast your arguments to appeal to those goals? How do you frame your position in such a way that they will want to agree with you?

This is the foundation of convincing people: empathize, understand them, learn their communication patterns. Once you see how they communicate and think, you work down those routes but send the message you believe is important.
Instead of a thousand failed experiments to invent work, minimize our impact on the environment, all of our various shortages from housing to opportunities to basic human dignity... maybe we should address the root cause?

Population. It’s one of those things we all tend to stay the hell away from because in the past attempts to address it have been so toxic, and frankly it’s hard not to see attempts today being toxic. Having said that however, it just adds to the difficulty of the problem, it doesn’t make it any less real, pressing or important. A lot of the problems we have today are the result of having geometric growth in the numbers of people for a sustained period of time.

I’m not proposing a specific solution, I’m nowhere near that bright or compassionate. There are obvious pitfalls to avoid such as eugenics and outright genocide, but beyond that I don’t have any answers. Someone had better before the issue forces itself though, because when that happens we won’t get to choose from the best of the bunch of bad options.
Blockstream (Bitcoin Core) simple gave an ultimatum (with various reasons such as the increased time needed to implement 2 mb blocks).

Adam Back and Greg Maxwell simply said that unless activation happened in this way, they would not support it.
And WebAssembly support merged into Mono master branch last week https://github.com/mono/mono/pull/5924 (not available as a release build, but soon)
A simple python3 library to convert JSON into XML via file, URL or string
> If you make something that is performance critical, and in particular if it's concurrent, the normal rule is you avoid allocating on the heap at all.

This is a very synthetic workload, and all allocation were done by the standard library.
Right, that's IMHO the biggest problem with BI schemes, and it gets little attention: we don't have a good grasp on the dynamics behind why (certain) prices go up to gobble up every gain in income or government grant.

It's illustrated well in Churchill's story about the do-gooders who bought out a bridge and lifted the toll, only to find that rents went up by the exact cost of regularly crossing the bridge.

http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-...

(Search for "bridge".)

If rents just advance to capture the BI, all you've done is give a big subsidy to landowners.
Universal basic income is already a thing in America. Free food stamps, free public housing, free k-12 education, free government provided cellphones, free wifi, etc. "Universal basic cash" is what this article is about. No, I don't think its a good idea to give people cold hard cash for basic income
The performance is dramatically different (see TechEmpower benchmark) and the overall stability seems also a topic (the CoreCLR is pretty battle tested). Mono from it's first origin as GNOME technology till its current peak now in Xamarin somehow always played in the UI field (which has consequences on e.g. garbage collection or jitting).
Ask HN: Ideas and what to do with them
I was reading some "News" the other day that led me to an idea for a startup that I believe has a lot of potential.

It's not "the next Facebook" and it doesn't require any kind of new technology, it's bridging a gap in an existing market.

I live in the Ozark Mountains pretty far from the nearest town or city and, honestly, do not know a soul who codes. I can't even talk about what I do because everyone's eyes glaze over as soon as I tell them I code.

HN says the "team" is an important aspect of who they fund, but they also say they fund "ideas".

My experience is pretty narrow. I'm self taught and have learned on a need to know basis so I know I'm not the right person to design and code this app. I can help, and I can build a demo of what's needed, but it has to be scaled up beyond what I've worked on and I can't claim to have the expertise for that.

I do have experience with managing projects, but not huge ones. So, what I really have is an idea and that's all.

What should I do with it?
The private company Blockstream ($76 mil, VC, mostly from AXA) employs the most active Core contributors.
Well, that's the exact reference: Eben has sent threats to terminate SFC's trademark. Those are the legal threats.
Is funny that Bezos speaks about work-life balance.
I haven't read Axios before, but I really appreciated that summary. I got the gist of what the lawsuit concerned and what the ulterior motive might be and there weren't 10 more unnecessary paragraphs with no real information padding it out. It's almost exactly the right amount of concise.
Amen!

what’s wrong with confronting them directly without the careful parsing demanded by our self-limiting ideas of being well behaved.
I've had this thought as well. I call it a "Guaranteed Basic Job". I think it should be the "next rung" on the income ladder. In my opinion, we should always have a GBI safety net and then a GBJ would give you a raise as well as a path to a better job if you want it.
5/5 for Postgres. I'd chalk that up less to being any kind of Postgres expert and more to having already read through most of that site (and having taken previous versions of the test).
> I am an Alice and I need some feedback as why is it a bad thing!

Are you interested in the best outcomes, or addicted to behaving in the way you find easiest? If you are actually interested in outcomes, if you actually care you will learn that meeting people on their terms will produce better outcomes than communicating however you find easiest.

Technology is easy, people are hard.
>Mono has nearly a decade of being factored into any kind of platforms while .NET Core and the CoreCLR will stay a workhouse for dedicated use cases.

I thought the "dedicated use case" of .NET Core was to be THE cross-platform .NET implementation.
Intel to Create New CPUs with AMD Radeon Graphics
> but you have to make them think it was their idea.

The best way I've found to do this is to them you don't understand something and have them explain the solution to you.

Plus it's humility practice -- you might even turn out to be wrong!
AmeriCorps seems to be highly targeted at students, with loan deferral and forgiveness programs.

I'd like to see such a program for people who recently got out of jail, for example, or at least an addition to AmeriCorps that targets those individuals.

650,000 people get out of jail every year -- having a strong public works program could help those individuals get back to becoming functioning and contributing members of society.
This is bizarre. It's also bizarre how the reporting on it doesn't mention how out of left field this is. Why Google? why Missouri? How come a republican is doing this?

As for:
The United States has lagged behind Europe in pursuing antitrust cases against tech giants

This narrative is silly. The EU goes after "tech giants" partly because they are foreign, the US doesn't have that incentive.
That's a remarkably accurate description of events. It's the "Springtime for Hitler" of funds. Because the fund is so bad there is no one left to hold you to account. The incredible thing is that they could have kept it going indefinitely if they hadn't been so greedy. Just stick all the money in a basket of stocks to replicate an index fund, set annual "expenses" at right around replacement rate (3-4%), and go live in St. Barts.
Changes in Mac OS X Over Time: The Good Parts
That's like over a decade ago right?
"Then it sounds like everything else around what you deliver is worth at least $140-350/hr. If it's really so easy I'm sure you could offer your services for $100/hr, take a nice big raise and save your clients hundreds of thousands a year."

Not everyone wants to, or is able to strike it out on their own.
Why is this being downvoted? It seems that he identify as an introvert and gives his side to the story?
There are a few places that use FORTRAN extensively. The two I am aware of being Weather simulations and ESDU[1].

[1] https://www.esdu.com/cgi-bin/ps.pl?sess=unlicensed_117111319...
I would hire a brilliant jerk. Our company has 3. 2 of them I actually like, they fit the likable jerk archetype (common in sitcoms, I think Bill Maher is a good example), and they’re good. The other one is basically not interested in human interaction. This offends people somehow, but I’d rather work w someone who doesn’t want to talk to me than someone who I don’t want to talk to.
Try the Fortran Wiki

http://fortranwiki.org/fortran/show/Libraries
Firefox is my default browser anywhere but macOS, owning an iPhone and iPad I end up using the continuity features in Safari quite heavily when I've been browsing something on my phone or tablet and want to pick it up on my iMac.

I love Firefox, and owning an iMac I'm not terribly concerned about the power efficiency difference between the two - but damn if it isn't convenient to have the ability to just pick up where I left off.
> What if Alexa was truly conversational, if you could have a back and forth dialogue?

This will make our current social media options look like childplay. Its the end game of it all: Facebook, Google, Amazon as everybody's best friend. Why talk to other people ? The person that understands you the best is always with you. Always making jokes, telling good stories, making all these good suggestions on how to live your life and spend your money...
In the comments, the author says it wasn't disclosed, so he won't disclose it. So, I have to wonder that this is something else?
Exactly, the EU and UK are soveriegns, they'll do whatever they want, lots of countries ratified EU treaties after their populations voted against it. The same can happen in reverse.

The EU wants to heavily penalize the UK to prevent others from leaving.

Similar, to how in Vancouver the federal gov't says pot is illegal, but no one will ever bust you for it.
WebRTC. Specifically Google's libWebRTC for Android/iOS mobile platforms [1]. All the major web browsers (including Safari 11+) support WebRTC. For the server, I am interested in trying Jangouts (Janus Hangouts) [2].

[1] https://webrtc.org/native-code/
[2] https://github.com/jangouts/jangouts

Update: Forget to add the reference.
Quotes aren't arguments. They are quotes, and often sound like an appeal to authority. And it is further weakened by the weasel words _essential_ and _little temporary_.
Yes I am aware of the Nude app and they launched about 3 weeks ahead of us. However, we think our app is much faster, more reliable and customizable. I am positive that you'd see a difference once you've tried both :)

p.s. we NEVER update any of your photos! All scannings are done locally on your own device.
Syfy has an Expanse show. It's pretty good, imo.
This seems like it might have some unintended consequences. First off, it doesn't help people like students who both need to pay rent and also need time to study. Secondly, if the only jobs available to a large segment of the population are low paying jobs in the employ of the federal government, which they don't have any realistic way to opt out of, it starts looking like a form of forced labor like many prisoners are subjected to now.
Are you planning on running your own service or are you looking for a SaaS/PaaS solution?
It sounds more like startups have not given them a reason to care about their fate.
Container tabs in Firefox lets you do this within a single window.

about:profiles gives you the same functionality as Chrome's profiles; it's just a bit harder to discover.
It's especially great to see as someone with several grandparents and grand-uncles who suffer from the disease. I know it's not completely hereditary, but between those 4 and the 2 cases of Parkinsons old age for myself and my family is not looking good.

One thing that's confusing and distressing to me is the amount of self-inflicted difficulty that the diseases seem to cause people to suffer from. If asking "What have you had to drink? Have you taken your meds? What have you eaten?" can cause them to feel so much better, what is it about aging, about the treatments, and about the disease that makes people neglect taking care of themselves?

It's usually hard to convince someone who is thirsty to not drink. Depending on who you talk to, the level of hydration that results from drinking when you're thirsty may not result in being completely well-hydrated, but that's not difficult or painful to do either - keeping a water bottle with me seems to get close enough. But it's not like you can blame the person with the disease. What's the systematic problem that causes so many elderly to suffer from dehydration?
It's a sad and bewildering affair.

My most innocent interpretation of the events is that Eben got seduced by "big picture" thinking: the thought takes hold that there are actions that are against ones principles, but will result in so much popularity and influence that it will be easy to undo the wrongs and still enjoy the fruits of the shortcut to success.

History has shown this hardly ever works out (Lindows, Red Hat, ESR, Ubuntu, etc) as intended.

It's probably too hard to transfer a fairly complex philosophy by attempting to temporarily raise its popularity.
This argument doesn't apply if you are suddenly locked out of your account. Then your option to switch still incurs the tremendous costs of the loss of possibly years of work. The original provider must still be accountable.
No, this refers to another (non-public) issue.
You have no idea how you just made me feel...
I have exactly opposite experience in Seattle.

Almost always Lyft's estimated time of arrival is way off the charts.
List of Wikipedia controversies
Things can be terrible because some people don't know how to act.

Things can also be terrible because some people don't know how to do the job properly.

It is a lot easier to find a yes-man/woman than a brilliant anyone. Companies are ruined by mediocrity far more than they're ruined by 'brilliant jerks' bullying the company into non-existence.

Who'd you rather have as your surgeon - a brilliant jerk the nurses have to put up with, or a nice guy/lady who screws up sometimes but will feel really bad about it afterwards and will write you a hand-written apology.

I'll take the jerk every time.
The answer to population growth is poverty reduction, healthcare, education, and free access to birth control.

Developed countries tend to have birth rates below the replacement rate for native born populations.

As much as people like to point out that humans have a problem with understanding exponential growth. There probably just as many people who have a problem extrapolating the growth of dynamic systems without understanding that growth rates are subject to feedback pressure.
For most Google SPAs I use an appify tool, that contains the site in a single app webview with no shared cookie store. Then in my main FF browser I have cookie crushing on, so that when I navigate away from a domain, all cookies that were created are destroyed.

Ok, I spend my life filling in captchas, but to me that’s a signal that it is working and Google aren’t overly sure who I am.
This reminds me of autoimmune disease like MS. They are more common in higher latitudes (where there happens to be less sunlight), and there is a connection to low Vitamin D that isn't understood.

While attempting to understand the link better, UW-Madison researchers recently produced data implying that the ingredients of some sunscreen products may provide benefit in preventing MS.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/07/28/sunscreen-ms-and-hard-b...
It is not that simple. Bitcoin fees are 2 dollars usually and merchant fees are 4%+ on credit cards on a 50 order is about 2 dollars.

As a techie I might consider using bitcoin even if the confirmation time is high.
Actually, there is a lot of amazingly detailed settings in fantasy novels -- much more than really good stories set in them. Heck, some fantasy series read like tourist guides through the world with little to no plot and original character development (I'm looking at you, David Eddings).

One advantage of worlds like Westeros and Middle-earth is that they're pretty much immediately familiar to most Western readers: they're basically just a condensed version of Europe and its immediate vicinity -- geography, history and all. There are some amazingly detailed settings which are more difficult to feel immediately connected with, and some of them also feature amazing stories with great characters -- Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea is a prime example (yes, there was a TV series based on it, but we should collectively forget about it; it got wrong everything it could).

As I've said elsewhere, one of the best fantasy series I've recently encountered -- and IMO ideally suited for TV treatment -- is the Liveship Traders trilogy by Robin Hobb. While technically set in the same world as the much better known Farseer Trilogy (and its sequels) it is a completely separate, and IMO much better written story.
So if that risk is so scary, build an e-mail service that protects someone's access to their inbox by contractual or technical means, and try to convince them to switch.

Any power that you take away from (comparatively weak, subject to competition) Google by giving it to (already terrifyingly powerful and monopolistic) USG is not a move in the right direction.
I got 5/5 as well. My only hesitations were, "Is this a trick question? Like, is there some little-know feature where they've special cased this so that something that doesn't seem like it ought to work actually does?"
I like to imagine that the Tom Bombadil Chronicles would look a whole lot like PBS's "The Woodwright's Shop."
You actually can switch off cellular access of a certain app. You can also use airplane mode while you're using our app. We actually encourage our users to turn on airplane mode while using our app, because we want them to know it absolutely does not use the internet to scan your photos :)
By all accounts I've heard from friends working at Google X, Sergey Brin is the textbook definition of a "brilliant jerk". This probably has something to do with it.
> it's like taking that money an investing it right then and there.

I disagree. This is only the case if the options are $50k in cash, or $50k in equity. With startups, the options are $0k in cash or $50k in equity. Startups can wish equity into existence, but they can't magically produce cash.
There's a book called "The War of Art" that addresses exactly that: "resistance"
Sounds like you are referring to The Gervais Principle ?

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
They wouldn't be red lights anymore, they would be organ donation lights.