skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'll probably get downvoted for this, but let me tell you - Please don't use R in production. Please don't use R for any serious work.

Over the years, I've come to learn to appreciate the fact that languages are just tools. You simply use the right tool for the job. If you let your personal bias, love/hate get in the way, it will cause you a lot of pain in the long run. In the same token, R is one of the most fucked up languages to work with if you use it simply because you assume it's good for all analytics-related projects. It's not.

In one of my previous companies, we had a hipster, always used everything that's on trend. Against all advice, he decided to use R for many of our internal and client facing projects.

For what would have taken a week if Rails were used, he'd write everything in R Shiny. Yes, he used a statistical programming language to write a web application and serve APIs(!). Performance was terrible. There were lot of break downs. Development prolonged, even his own team members lost morale. I unfortunately had the ill luck of having to maintain some of his codebases and those days were the worst in my life. Worse yet, he didn't have a formal software engineering background, so he loved the idea that you are able to code everything inside of this blackbox called R Studio. Fuck tests, there were no tests written because he didn't understand the importance of tests. The projects he worked on lasted for nearly 1.5 years without completion. Almost every project had an instance on the cloud running an R server and it also costed a LOT simply because it was eating a lot of memory. Even our Ruby projects didn't consume as much.

Eventually most of the projects failed, we lost lot of customers. Many team members quit. All because of one singular mistake of choosing a language that's not right for the job. Eventually, one of our competitors came up with a working prototype in production using Python, Flask and with much better analytic capability at scale in less than 3 months. Python can do a LOT that R can do and cannot do and the code is much, much easier to read.

For example, string concatination:

Python:

hello + world

R:

paste("hello","world",sep="")

If you're really interested in data science and/or analytics, I sincerely urge you to start with Python and Pandas together rather than R. It is much, much performant, easier to reason, and much, much easier to maintain and scale. Please consider this as heartfelt advice based on my mistakes rather than a rant. Thank you.
>1. Could this business be built without blockchain as a technology?

For the vast majority of use cases, the answer to that question is 'yes'. I'd say recognizing this and avoiding the places using blockchain just because it's trendy should be a priority.
You can buy/sell at subsecond speed using GDax (part of Coinbase) or one of their competitors.
Can you describe what this data is you're sharing? As is it's not clear what phenomenon you're describing.
Because nothing has changed about gold, whereas bitcoin is new. Any investor putting 2% of their value into gold is already doing it. Investors putting 2% into BTC couldn’t do it before it existed, or matured to where it is now.
iron, can be made in to plows or swords.
Why is divergence across exchanges "scary"? It just indicates a chaotic market.
What's the likelihood here that someone is in the middle of running off into the sunset with a giant ɃɃɃ bag?
You either have to hold gold, which is dangerous and again contingent on avoiding nation-state failure risk, or you have to trust someone else to hold gold, which is perhaps as risky but the risks have a different profile.
Can any computer chess/stockfish experts comment on the choice of 1 GB for hash size? I have no chess or computer chess domain expertise whatsoever, but it strikes me as a suspiciously low setting for a memory-related parameter on what was probably at least a 32 core machine. It makes me wonder if they simply dialed down the hash size until they got a nice convincing win.

Update: took a look at settings used for TCEC. Looks like they used 16 GB in season 7, 64GB in season 8, 32 GB in season 9, and 16 GB in season 10. Two observations: (1) interesting that they've decreased hash sizes in recent years (2) definitely seems like 1 GB is not reflective of how an engine would be configured for TCEC.
> I believe the merge has already started, and we are a few years in. Our phones control us and tell us what to do when; social media feeds determine how we feel; search engines decide what we think.

I think this is a misunderstanding about human nature. Humans are thinking and feeling beings who are responsible to others. They are only slaves and automatons if they choose to; most aren't. Many who are have hints and feelings that what they are doing is unnatural.
Agreed; probably upwards of 90% of the uses of shared_ptr I've seen (and 70% or so with unique_ptr) are by people who clearly don't understand the C/C++ memory model and are trying to write Java in C++, and half the remainder are by people who've lost track of ownership and lifetimes and paper over it by randomly sprinkling smart pointers throughout the codebase until it sort of works.

I'm not against smart pointers where they make sense, it's just whenever I see them I start bracing myself for the horrors that seem to inevitably follow.
I called 16k couple of hours ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15869803

If some listened they might have made some profit. /s

That said, another fluff piece upvoted. Can we get another section like SHow/Ask HN just for these?
Then the floor drops out and you're back to zilch. Easy come, easy go.
It sounds reasonable until you parse it. Neutral internet is a cash cow until a bigger cow shows up.
Thoughts on Intuition and Gut-Feeling
The issue is never about sounding reasonable.

If people acted only on what sounded reasonable...

Let’s just remind people that America invented the internet and the telcos invented embedding postal code data in auction bids to keep competitors out.

All these discussions assume that the marginal advantage is in improving delivery of services for telecom players.

That offering the same service over the same pipes but just degraded or compartmentalized is not the winning move.
I suppose that could be an insult, if you were actually right
How can we explain this recent surge? what's the profile of people buying BTC now? would numerous "small actors" be enough to cause this bubble?

I've also been wondering what would happen if this crashes. Could it have any impact on the real economy?
Great comment and brings things a lot more to light when viewed from this angle.
I am desperate to fuel this bubble, but finding it a complete bugger to buy bitcoins.
Just make that part of the court challenge

along with calling your private keys a form of speech, and forced disclosure chills that speech
Not more than current fiat currency volatility (say, USDEUR or EURCHF). If I transfer 1000 USD to my bitcoin (or LN) wallet at the beginning of the month, I want it to remain roughly stable till the end of the month, so I can easily pay for stuff throughout the month without worry about loosing half of it.
> Who's getting robbed?

Is it the really the case that anyone is being robbed?
The entire investment community moving 2% of their wealth would be an incredibly massive exposure to bitcoin.
>Note that before Bitcoin it was impossible to diversify away from all nation-specific risks.

Except for gold and tangible capital. How did Germany get through hyper inflation and Zimbabwe didn't? Germany had a real economy and an industrial base.

A person who owns a tractor owns a tractor regardless of the money printing going on. Sure, the State can seize the tractor but the United States can (and has) seized bitcoins - go tell the folks with bitcoins in the Silk Road that there's no nation specific risk exposure.
Strange, the price data from coinbase never stopped working on tradingview.com. I wonder what was affecting the price changes when the order book was down?
It'd be a bit complex, but why not spin the lens with a motor at high speed, like a clear view screen on a ship?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen

Actually, maybe it would be simpler than I first thought:

1. Mount the lens using v-shaped rollers on the edges (three would be sufficient)

2. Along the edge of the lens, attach permanent magnets - a ring of magnets with alternating polarity, NSNSNS...

3. Coils along the edges (might even be able to do it with printed circuit coils) energized, interacting with the magnets to spin the lens.

Essentially, you're making the lens operate as the rotor of a high-speed brushless rotor. One could probably trivially implement a prototype of this using hardware store parts over the weekend.

In fact, this seems like such a simple solution, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a patent already out there describing it.

If not - consider this submission of mine "prior art" I guess - anybody at YC want to fund a startup? /lol
Recently I've been getting into cryptocurrencies (too little, too late, right?) and it's actually improving my life by making me money. It feels like the more I learn about them and the more I gamble, the better my life is at least while the value keeps climbing. I get close to zero value out of HN/Instagram/Twitter, but I may be using them wrong.
Honest question out of technical curiosity, not trying to de-value the product: is this output/end product significantly different from writing your book in markdown and using something like pandoc to create an e-book?
I've heard a few different things.

The cynical part of me wants to think that it's because by hurting it in WebViews and in a desktop-shortcut they can "support" these technologies without fear of them cutting into their app store sales/numbers.

But I have heard that there are some shitty technical problems with it.

Safari is not the same as a WebView when it comes to the code, and apparently a desktop-shortcut app runs in a WkWebView. So while they were able to add these features to Safari, the process of adding them to a WebView is much harder since it's intertwined with the OS so heavily.

According to someone I talked to a while back, WebViews and Safari in iOS are different enough that sharing code isn't exactly easy or straightforward.

But then the cynical part of me kicks back in and thinks that they shouldn't be following into the footsteps of Internet Explorer which hit the same traps and potholes (the integration with the OS meant new feature were extremely difficult to add, and the browser lagged behind because of it).
Stored procedures in PostgreSQL
My joints were hurting, and things like carrying around my backpack would leave me with a little pain.
People are willing to pay for all of these things.
Its likely NI/HCI are necessary to get to General AI.
The more I read about this, the more I think we should stick to narrow AI. If you don't want your cancer research bot to take over the world, don't give it general reasoning capability. Goal alignment seems incredibly fragile in comparison.
Gold can't be used in the digital space.
That's the opposite of what chatmasta asked for.
GDAX is up for me.

Edit: Just been force logged out?
Most stock markets stop trading when prices change too much. If this was the case with bitcoin, we'd be limit up each day after a minute or so. The exchanges implementing it would lose out vs. others. So not sure they want to implement that now.
magnesium deficiencies have been known to cause depression and anxiety as well, so make sure to eat plenty of leafy green vegetables and pumpkin seeds.
> What makes YouTube different from TV or radio or newspapers?

This is a good question. TV, radio, and newspapers all need to cater to the lowest common denominator(LCD) in order to obtain the greatest amount of viewership as possible, because distribution is expensive. A focus on the LCD combined with data analytics is why channels like The Learning Channel(TLC) and History Channel only show reality TV nowadays: They don't want to offend, they just want to maximize revenue on their single channel.

YouTube uses a different model. Every individual can subscribe to specific media niches that wouldn't otherwise be able to survive on TV, because the cost of distribution is brought to zero. The only costs that need to be considered are the costs of media development.

In real life, most people use vulgar language. Most people don't care about diversity or gender stereotypes. They don't care about the focus on the LCD. All they want is media that they can relate to and enjoy, and almost everyone enjoys stuff a bit different from the LCD. The fact that advertisers are trying to shift focus from individualized content to LCD content just so they can control the platform leaves many people bitter, and removes the competitive edge that YouTube has over typical media.

> How is paying money to support something not an endorsement?

Companies nowadays are trying to make it an endorsement, but it doesn't have to be. All YouTube needs to do is to make it widely known that while companies can push for certain demographics, they have no control over the advertising. Companies want more control over the platform than they really need.
Language syntax survey
I think you can take off your tinfoil hat. Lots of price movement motivates more traffic to the exchanges, resulting in DDoS.

As the bitcoin market grows GDAX, Bitfinex, etc are probably going to have to borrow some ideas/talent from NASDAQ & other big electronic exchanges to stabilize things.
It could also be because of this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/technology/coinbase-bitco...
A) How is holding gold contingent on avoiding nation-state failure risk, or at least how is the relevant risk to gold as opposed to say your person?

B) It's pellucidly clear that holding bitcoin is dangerous in the same way that holding gold is -- i.e. it can be stolen. In fact, it looks like the carrying costs may actually be higher.
If you hit the Depth Chart button on this graph [1] you can see a visual representation of all the offers to buy and sell. Where they meet in the middle is where people have successful transactions and that is the current "price" of bitcoin.

[1]: https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD
cko, I am not trying to pry into your personal life but I found your comment very noticeable. Was vasectomy a choice you made to remain childless or was the surgery the result of pressures of life that removed any choice. You could have chosen not to undergo the surgery and still remain childless. You can choose to ignore this question if you don't want to answer it.
Why would you pay someone when we already have a mechanism in place here to pick up additional people for free? See http://www.slug-lines.com/ for more information.

Edit: Didn't notice the comment below, that's what I get for not refreshing the page...
I think its the amount of time taken for the price of Bitcoin to rise from the first amount to the second.
cryptowat.ch is still reporting price updates from GDAX

EDIT, as of 11:48 CST, GDAX is showing 16849 USD per BTC, while the other USD exchanges have gone down to ~15200
naive question: does coinbase really make markets in BTC??
Organization and planning are not the same as centralization and concentration of power. It would be absurd to conflate the two. So do these quotes justify your claim or not?
So I guess what you are saying is that the price of Bitcoin does actually have an upper bound, which is informed by the world's aggregate financial wealth, and is probably ~$500k per Bitcoin?
As always with Bitcoin, I'd say 50/50.
Because it means something is stopping the arbitrage trades from happening, like with MtGox and the throttled can't-ever-be-fulfilled withdrawals.
New money is coming in that's for sure. But a limited resource and a lack of sellers will also push the price.
Oops. You are right, I was thinking of calcium, which you can get from green veggies as well. I get confused because we had to deal with them all at once when my wife was pregnant.
https://www.ft.com/content/5ee5fda2-daa7-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b...
Every source I've seen clearly states tanning always increases your chance of skin cancer. Tanning does provide a small amount of protection against burning (around 3 SPF worth), but no protection against cancer.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-a...
On many linux distros, you can grab any window and move it around by: 'Alt + Left Click' anywhere on the window.

Bonus: You can resize any window on these same distros by 'Alt + Right Click'. It will allow you to resize along the closest border(s).
> AlphaZero won some games in a romantic style

The difference in style is likely influenced by the insertion of historical boards as input to the neural network.

The sequence of moves are therefore more likely to look related to one another.
The futures market will do the rest. Only settlement is once a day. But as the bitcoin price moves (which indicates that the settlement price that evening will be different), actors will buy and sell which should bring the futures market in line with the bitcoin price. So in the end you'll end up with a pretty close mirror. You only need 1-2 algo traders for that.
The 30 watt heater should also last the life of the LED bulb, saving the maintenance every year or so to replace the traditional lightbulbs.

For most climates, designing in a temperature sensor to keep the light a little above freezing would pay back in well under a year of power savings.

Update: Did a quick search for LED traffic balls… looks like about 10 watts when on, and I don't see any of them integrating heaters. Market opportunity! Make LED traffic balls but add a tiny micro controller, thermistor, and a heating element, maybe attached to the existing heat sink and you are set. (Yes, attaching a heater to the heatsink sounds counterproductive, but you will be running it when the heatsink is nearly freezing so the LEDs will still have plenty of thermal differential to dump their waste heat.)
This reminds me of my wannabe indie developer friends saying things like, "If we sell this program for $10 and only 1% of Mac users buy it, we'll make $BIGNUM!"

It's not wrong, but that 2% figure you mention really needs to be justified, not handwaved.
Yep, been taking zinc as zinc chelate and / or zinc gluconate for years.
If it's already happening then we should enforce NN laws, not repeal them.
> Note that before Bitcoin it was impossible to diversify away from all nation-specific risks.

It's still impossible, since your (and your potential trading partners’) access to the Bitcoin network, or even your ability to retain the keys which are equivalent to the Bitcoin itself, are not independent of state-specific risks.

These present real storage, and even moreso liquidity, risks.
I don't mind the CSP approach, I was just stating that with it, the app either works, or everything breaks.

However, two things:

1. Nothing here requires a deep audit. Finding every execution point can be done with a bit of patience and "git grep". Some terrible frameworks, such as jQuery, can obscure things a bit, in which case knowledge of them speeds things up.

2. This may be a simple slip of words, but CSP does not in any way make your app verifiable secure. Coding towards a strict CSP is more about responsible coding and risk reduction/threat containment, by making foreign JavaScript execution non-trivial. There is nothing in a browser that lets you make something verifiably secure.
This guy nails it. Bitcoin payment processing is slow, expensive, and inferior to the digital form of the U.S. Dollar in nearly every way.
I wouldn't say Bitcoin is even a good example of being able to diversify from nation-specific risks. China's crackdown on the currency is a great example and if the SEC or other regulatory body decides to crack down or otherwise make interacting with these markets more difficult it would presumably have an effect on the price.

The largest risk to the long term viability for bitcoin (and probably crypto in general) are regulatory in my mind. A lot of value can be derived from regulatory arbitrage - just look at the evolution of cryptocurrency's use cases from 1) buying and selling illegal goods, 2) getting around capital controls, and now 3) issuing securities without having to go through the normal IPO process. It's a long road to people using this stuff to transact "real" goods and services. There is a very real nation-specific risk in the form of regulatory regime.
$19,697 was the high on GDAX, admittedly due to a thin order book. It'll take a bit more effort to get there again ($33m in market buys at the time of writing this.)
Agreed. Basically the bullish case for bitcoin is that it's a financial asset that institutional investors want to hold just because it has some sort of beta value that makes it useful as an investment hedge.

The argument for it as an alternative currency seems out the window. The stakeholders don't care though because the price keeps going up, which is all they really care about.
Stack traces not providing enough context necessary to trace something is an argument for attaching, more information to errors, not less.

Checking entries in my https://sentry.io installation, for example, I see the exception, the stack trace, the server the error occurred on, the release it was running, the URL being accessed, the values of local variables, etc. Having all this is invaluable for understanding what went wrong.
I bought 300 when they were $5 a piece back in like 2011.
So a currency that is hardly used to pay for things with and can handle a small number of transactions per second, with transaction fees, risk of being made illegal, competitor altcoins that are at least as good and the energy consumption of a small country will hold 2% of the value of the world's financial wealth?

Buying bridges from strangers looks completely sane in comparison.
Half the cost of lithium batteries, but just as efficient
The technical implementation of the lightning network is neat, but I swear at a high level it feels like we're just re-implementing modern money.

Once upon a time when we realized shuffling around gold bars was slow, expensive, and a pain in the ass, we created a much more liquid network on top of the gold, and called it the dollar.

How long until lightning network runs into limitations due to the fixed supply of gold, err I mean bitcoin, and abandons the "bitcoin standard"?
In some sense we got lucky with nuclear weapons because they require enriched uranium to make which is hard to get.

A self improving general AI may just be be a matter of an intuitive leap, but nothing that’s hard to turn on once you understand it. This property would make it hard to suppress.

The upside is that if we can figure out the goal alignment problem we may be able to fix the coordination issues humans have and have a much better end state than all of us burning out and going extinct on our planet.

The downside is some variant of the world turning into paper clips.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer
Technically, not much. Let's say people stopped trading except for two people that made a series of trades of .0000001 btc at $100k, then the price would be $100k.
It would make more sense to put this on a logarithmic scale. The move from $18000-$19000 is nowhere near as meaningful as the move from $0 to $1000.

Also, the move to $19,000 seems to have been some kind of liquidity issue on GDAX, the price did not get that high on other exchanges.
That's not simple. It's a very minimalistic syntax, but it is definitely not simple.
A central bank is governed by a nation state who just speculate in how they keep and expand their power.

This is the first time a truly global, decentralized and truly always on digital store of value has been accomplished.

This is a big thing and the current price is nothing compared to the future prospect of this.
I think that is their point. It would be nice if BTC would stabilize so that it can actually be used for purchasing something other than USD.