skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
'President' is proper and correct.
One article I read said that there is a 30% Republican voter base that is covered by 76% of the congressional maps. They redrew the maps so they would have 10 seats and Dems would have 3. In the past I've read the Democrats have done similar things.

As a software engineer, isn't there some way to draw maps which balance out demographics programmatically? While taking into consideration population, rural, suburban, urban areas, etc. Shouldn't there be a national policy/process that is followed?

It would make some sense to abolish recording what party people affiliate with. It really serves no purpose. Let people vote in both parties primaries.
So I’ve got a question for you legal scholars. If it’s unconstitutional does that mean the people behind it broke laws or is this simply the court citing why the map was rejected?
Not true. Millennials love the suburbs too!

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-25/millennia...
"as soon as" will be a long time. There is nothing viable on the horizon to replace carbon fuels in many applications. The energy density of batteries is still far lower than oil.
CoinBase wire transfers considered harmful
Or how I lost $7k - hopefully only temporarily. Just a warning to the masses that wire transfers to coinbase/gdax should be considered harmful.

The wire transfer instruction page says that they should be deposited same day if done before noon PT (mine was at 2am ET which afaik is a little before noon) and I haven’t seen the money for days. I’ve submitted a support ticket and received absolutely nothing back. I called their support number and was told 1) that phone support can’t help with wire transfer issues and 2) wire transfers can take up to 10 days - contradicting the info on their wire transfer page.

Searching the web and reddit shows that many others experience the same issues. I highly recommend not sending wire transfers to coinbase until they’ve resolved these issues.
Affine transformations are also cost functions used in taxis and nightclubs. You pay for an entrance and then a fee per drink.
What jumps out at me is this coming out so shortly after the change in Nvidia's licensing for datacenter usage [0][1]. I've seen discussions along the lines of "If you don't update drivers then the new terms don't apply" but now along comes what may be a fairly important reason to update... Or arguably depending on the speed impact and your usage, an even better reason to not update.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16002068

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983587
Yeah I remember reading that around 80% of the world's currency is now digital. Although I think the key word in the original comment was "true". As in, it is the first currency that is entirely digital, which before bitcoin wasn't possible. Regardless of how valuable you think that notion is, it's still a very interesting technological development.
You can say that it can change to be something other than a currency, but unless you actually have something interesting to say about how it actually will become something else then you're really not saying much. It could become a hedge against inflation. Do you have any evidence that it acts as a hedge against inflation at all? Do you have any logic why it could? You may as well say that stones act as a good hedge against inflation. You need reasons to actually argue it.
Paradoxically, reading Buffett's essays on investing was one of the major inspirations for me to invest in crypto in the first place. Buffett typically only invests in things he understands well, that produce a solid return, and that are undervalued. These are good principles for anyone to follow.

But when he buys, he either buys all of a company, or enough of it to have some level of control over it, and that's only possible these days if you're wealthy as he is. The rest of us are pretty much just betting on horses.

I think I would agree with him about crypto if I was an older person who already had enough wealth to purchase a significant stake in a real business. For investors like that, the world is their oyster. For people who are young, familiar with technology and largely without any wealth, Bitcoin is much more attractive. It's risky, sure, but to many of us, the entire economy looks just as risky, and with lower growth potential. This statement would sound insane to someone like Buffett, but it's the reason why Bitcoin exists in the first place.

Edit: I'm not advising people make any investments in Bitcoin. Just providing a counterpoint. Invest in what you know.
It's not clear that the Venezuelan case is due to inherent property of Bitcoin, or merely that Bitcoin just has good timing and is the most conveniently available alternative to cash out of a tanking currency.

Basically, saying that bitcoin can (at the moment) function as a better currency than one that is completely failing is valid and interesting, but not exactly a ringing endorsement.
I'd be happy to give one to anyone from HN who wants one. Just email me; I'm (unsurprisingly) my usual handle @stripe.com

(If you want it immediately, I'm up for next ~30 minutes or so.)
The scope was just way too large. Think about it. You could ask M for anything. How many services do you use or pull data from on a day to day basis? Now how many of them have an API?

Until nearly everything has a publicly accessible API I don’t see how something like M could ever happen without extensive human interaction. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. I pull information from a few intranet sites routinely for managing travel for my job. It’s almost exclusively online and because of the scattered sites it can be annoying to manage at times. It’s perfect for automation and an AI assistant but without any kind of programmable interface how would an AI assistant ever work with the sites?

I think Alexa and Google Assistant ultimately have the right idea, privacy issues aside. Start with a small enough scope and attract so many users that eventually services are compelled to support the devices. Over time the scope covers almost everything.
This article focuses on the high city rents forcing low-income earners to the suburbs - not sure how this fits in with your comment?
Crypto market oddities – whales, pumps, and ICOs
A completely biased report. Yes, gerrymandering is insane in NC, but it's actually pretty well distributed between both parties. Raleigh is gerrymandered to the Republicans and Charlotte and Fayetteville are for rigged for the Democrats. The rest of the state is pretty much full-on red, so the majority Republican legislature truly reflects the state as a democratic-republic.

NC has Voter ID laws, which were a huge part of the x/100 score given. Literally every other developed country (and most undeveloped countries) in the world require ID to vote, but somehow it's "undemocratic", among other outrageous things, if you try to do it in the U.S.
Go to reddit please
It did mention it, although it didn’t go into details: ”His tourgoers are among the many New Yorkers—and others with an interest in urban planning—who know that today’s decrepit facility sits beneath what used to be a gorgeous hall, inspired by the Roman Baths of Caracalla. It was demolished in the 1960s, to the dismay of preservationists. Rivers leads his flock through modern-day Penn, pointing out vestiges of the old place: an original staircase leading down to the tracks; a Long Island Rail Road waiting room; a ghostly, red-lettered sign for the long-gone Pennsylvania Railroad.”
Where's the logic in this?

- I don't understand thing ABC, therefore I won't form an opinion on it (true fact, by his own admission... conservative and reasonable).

- Thing XYZ is generally acknowledged to be more complex and harder to understand than ABC (debatable, but I'd love to see someone show me how crypto is easier to understand than Google/Facebook/Amazon/Uber/etc.).

- Even though I don't understand ABC and won't form an opinion on it, I will form an opinion on XYZ which I understand even less (... wut? Why would anyone put stock in this statement, given the prior two statements?).
Houses in 2008 where valuation was driven more by hype than some intrinsic value. Tech stocks in 2000 when the same thing happened. Or everyone's favorite tulips.

I know people hate to hear this but unless you have a target price and a rational explanation as to why it's worth that much you're just gambling.
The Odd Chemical Composition of the Hypatia Stone
Had you wired that money from Coinbase, you'd still be waiting for it months later.

Maybe they're just trying to avoid being faster than Bitcoin.
> Well of course it doesn't! It's a currency. Currencies are an abstraction for value.

This is true. However, most traditional currencies started out as something that was an abstraction for value, but was backed by something of tangible value (e.g. gold standard). This isn't true anymore, we aren't on the gold standard, but if nothing else that lack of transition from tangible to "imaginary" value never happening with bitcoin is part of what fuels the uncertainty and skepticism.

Bitcoin will likely continue to succeed even with its lack of "intrinsic" value and no backing by a traditional organization/govt simply because it was first. I don't think any of the alt-coins that don't also bring something else to the table are going to succeed long term though.
> You could simply have people use their email address (or name) as a salt. Not great, but it would help significantly.

This wouldn't work, as the attacker should know both from the database.

Anyway: If the user really wants, he can already add his email or name to one of the input fields. A salt is just another input to the hash function so this would be the same.

> Eight character random mixed alphanumeric password, hashed with say, sha256: crackable in hours with a GPU cracking rig.

Let's say by "several" you mean two. Then if

62^8 = 2 hours

that means that:

62^12 = ~3374 years

Meaning that a 12 character random mixed alphanumeric password would already take longer than the scrypt approach thanks to the way the exponential function works :)

And to do it the other way around (let's say that "years or decades" is 20 years):

62^8 = 20 years
62^5 = ~44 minutes

That's why I don't like to advertise with an "uncrackable hash function". In the end this might lead users to choose a shorter password, which is way worse!

> scrypt using aggressive settings

Keep in mind that if a breach happens, the database is also hashed. And salted! So the attacker would need to crack that first anyway.
Excuse me, but USA pays a lot. But apparently due to some cost disease, we need to pay a lot more than other countries to achieve the same goal. There was a fascinating NYT article [1] about spiraling costs of NYC subway, but you can observe the same phenomenon in other places (defense spending, healthcare spending, California high speed rail etc).

So yeah, as a taxpayer, I will be super weary of approving any bond measure for infrastructure projects unless there is an ironclad proposal to control the costs.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
I don't think "love" is the takeaway from that article. "Are forced to live in" is more like it.
Curious why you didn't wait 12 days (until Jan 1st) to save your self from one year's paperwork and fees? (assuming you're using the calendar year end as your fiscal year end).

EDIT: Oh duh I totally misread that. Sound advice indeed!
I don’t understand the legitimacy of the criticisms that this article is leveling at the former. I can’t tell why it’s saying anything more than “I don’t like this study therefore it’s wrong and stupid and dangerous.” As it stands now, North Carolina has an electoral system that gives the minority party a veto proof absolute majority in their legislative branch, which seems like the opposite of democracy. I’d think the criticism would be more honest if it engaged with the facts plainly, instead of basing itself on just the personal opinions of the author.
Stellar, NEO, Ark, Ripple, Lisk, IOTA, RaiBlocks -- all using novel variations dPoS/PoW/PoS and making different tradeoffs w.r.t. centralization.
I’d also add that buffet hates the concept of gold. Aside from a socially acceptable form of modern middle class gambling in my opinion the primary use case of crypto currency is a store of value.

Aside from the amount of time it’s been in existence what is the difference between gold and something like bitcoin? Only ~4 of gold is used for industrial purposes the remainder is used for jewelery and stuff like bullion. Basically stores of value. It trades at a premium above its cost to extract, store and transport.
With normal fiat currencies a government is behind both the supply of that currency (central bank) and the demand for that currency (taxes). With bitcoin, supply is controlled by mathematics and technology, and demand is entirely unpredictable. I would not venture to predict the future value of any cryptocurrency until a government or some other powerful entity adopts it.
And yet they are slightly different:

In one case, the objective is to develop a codec that fits certain parameters, one of them being cost effective.

In the other, the objective is to cram anything patentable into the standard, in order to maximize patent fees from the users for years to come. In the past, this caused the MPEG patents to be unnecessary bloated AND having to pay for that unnecessary bloat. It was far from simple exchange of goods and services for money; it was rent seeking at its finest.
I think he would worry more about counterparty risk.
The gap between the levels of abstraction that humans and machines operate is much bigger than the most AI researchers think. No amount of computation for various kinds of gradients can compensate for that. The next AI breakthrough will be a radical development in knowledge modeling and representation.
That is typical NY Times style. The first time someone is named, they are named in full. You'll notice Obama is named earlier in the article:

> President Trump carried North Carolina in 2016, but the state elected a Democrat as its governor on the same day and in 2008 supported President Barack Obama.

All subsequent mentions of someone in an NY Times article are typically "Mr./Mrs. ______".
Yes, Lightning is similar, the previous blog post covers that. Plasma is a bit different, I'm still wrapping my head around it.
It's the second time they reference him in the article. The first time he's referenced as President Barack Obama.

It's also done to involved Republican (and presumably white) politicians on their subsequent mentions in the article.
Every store of value that has ever existed has fluctuated - often significantly - over long periods of time.

Gold 'lost' 70% of its value when priced in dollars, as the dollar regained immense value thanks to Volcker's policies breaking the inflation wave. That's a critical point you're leaving off (when priced in dollars).

The point being, you have to be a lot more precise about what gold gained or lost value vs. It performed differently when priced in different currencies vs the dollar. Most currencies did not see the kind of value gain the dollar did over that window.

This is one of the properties that makes it a store of value. If you buy gold in 1980, it will lock you in at the 1980 dollar value. It's the currency that is gaining or losing value, gold is storing your 1980 dollar value (which you used to buy the gold in 1980). You then try to get back out of your gold in 1999, you're attempting to swap a 1980 dollar that has been locked-in at that 1980 value for a 1999 dollar, when the two are not worth the same thing.

Gold also then went up several hundred percent as the Bush dollar dropped from ~2002 onward.
The GPL advocates say it is FUD, but as any BSD advocate will tell you the concerns are real. Note that GPL advocates spread FUD about the BSD license

In my experience the GPL advocates completely ignore the concerns of the BSD people. The BSD people understand the GPL concerns they either don't think they are very real world (they will acknowledge some exceptions when forced to); or more pragmatically think that the GPL: concerns are outweighed by other concerns.

You need to figure out where you stand. Calling the concerns of the other side FUD is in fact not helpful.
Eliezer Yudkowsky has an extremely devoted, almost cult-like following, as does the Less Wrong rationality movement.

But I've never seen an appraisal of him or his work from anyone outside the movement that describes its value or lack thereof. Many of his ideas make sense (if you accept all of his theoretical premises), but I'm not sure they're grounded in reality.

Does anyone here know of such an outside appraisal?

Edit: To be clear, I'm talking about the work that is actually unique to the movement, such as the Overcoming Bias blog and other original stuff. Things like Bayesian reasoning are already proven on their own, but also didn't come from Less Wrong originally.
The amount of times whilst pulling out of my driveway that I've thought "I wish I had a cameras pointing left and right from about where my indicators are" is quite large.

It's always worse when large vans are parked up and down the road so visibility is obscured.
What's the One Word to Keep in Mind This Year?
The article headline especially here but also on the original article is misleading even if not actually inaccurate. It encourages you to assume there's going to be a narrative about millennials abandoning the suburbs but, as you say, it's really more about the high rents in a lot of large cities pushing people out to smaller cities and the suburbs.

ADDED: This is consistent with data showing the supposed urbanization trend mostly being about a certain demographic (mostly college-educated millennials) moving into the cores of a relatively small number of popular cities.
Python Coroutines/Generators – Behind the scenes
that's my point. "Store of value" implies storing value, not losing value. Which is why I am saying there is no such thing - all you have is various types of investments which can make or lose money over time
How having a Lean-Agile Mindset benefits agile teams?
Somehow this reminds me of the previous story on NY infrastucture ( https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subw... )

We were able to both fund and construct these tunnels a century ago, but somehow they now seem hopelesly out of our reach.
Relevant:

https://youtu.be/odB1wWPqSlE
No mention of black velvet in the article -- which is famously difficult for photographers to capture because its so black. I wonder if there is a similar effect at play.
Pretty sure the OP is saying he did, after getting notice.
Any study that puts North Korea that high on a measure of democracy is going to take a serious credibility hit. Also according to the same paper, there are many states that score lower than NC on the same scale. So the first article calling out NC cherry-picked data from a questionable study.
You may or may not be able to get rid of some or all of the image processing, but you still have all the other issues of a "smart" TV, like auto updates/ads/tracking/infection and other problems that come with having too much cheap software where it doesn't belong.
... ask them? Many businesses ask for one or more of address/official ID/credit card info.
I found it a little disconcerting that the most selfish usecase (spent it on "her children") among the 5 or 6 reported got a picture. Apparently looks matter even in the genius world.
This was on the front page of HN and then vanished. Does anyone know how/why they would happen without it showing as flagged?
Yes, in Signal you for example still cannot share one photo to multiple recipients or share multiple photos. I've installed it to all my relatives and they use it anyway, just those simple things would make it a bit better for your average "share pictures of my kids" types of use.
In the old days, government issued currencies had value because you could trade them in for gold or silver. In contemporary times, they have some value because everyone that lives in a particular country is legally required to pay taxes and those taxes can only be paid in the relevant government issued currency.

Gold is just about the only thing around that acts somewhat like money but isn't premised on much of anything except social constructed value. Though even there, there are jewelry and electronic uses.

I could believe that we could could get something else like gold that would be bootstrapped into having a relatively stable purely social constructed value. But as you point out, there isn't just one altcoin that has solved (some of) the problems of bitcoins, there are lots.

There are huge incentives to issue new altcoins and for speculators to buy new altcoins in hopes of being the winner. And those speculators and creators are all hoping for this huge volatility (albeit in one direction) while what's strongly preferred for a medium of exchange is value stability.

I don't see how we get there from here. What process or trends out there look convergent and stabilizing to you?
Anyone interested in this topic should check out 'Turning Pro' by Steven Pressfield. Quick read.
The way this looks this bubble just started to gain access to way more people: There's kodakcoin and the long blockchain company (formerly long island icetea):
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/kodak-coin-ico-cryptocurrency...

Poor souls that invested/going to invest and don't manage to jump of the ship before the bubble bursts.
Something to consider is that people like Buffett stand to lose the most from a completely egalitarian financial system, as is professed by Bitcoin idealists (such as myself). Another perspective here is that Buffett does understand Bitcoin, and wants to protect his own interests by maintaining the status quo.
Prettier 1.10: One Year of Prettier
Yeah that formatting was atrocious. Scrolling while reading was causing me to see flickering white "blobs" flowing between the text. Even afterwards I'm still seeing remnants of those white blobs. Time for a computer break!
> he wouldn't like the price

For fun, let's try pricing a Bitcoin put option using the Black-Scholes-Merton model [1]. This model is a simplified version of real-life options models, but our parameter uncertainty will dominate the model's anyway.

I'll use the $14,400 Coinbase price [2] for both our S and K inputs, i.e. we're pricing a European put struck at spot. Term is 5 years. This site [3] says Bitcoin's historic 252-day volatility is 5.21%. Sure. We want the 5-year 365-day volatility, i.e. 14.0% [4].

The real shit show in this example is the rates component. If we use this 57% number [5], the put is worthless. We're using a Bitcoin-dollar price for the stock and strike, so let's assume U.S. dollar funding (since Bitcoin does not natively support rates in the way modern currencies do). The 5-year Treasury yields 2.25% [6].

BSM says...$1,037.01.

(Rho dominates tau, or in English, the rates component is about 2.5x more meaningful than the volatility component.)

Raising our rate to the call money rate [7] we get $792.84 with rates continuing to dominate volatility.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black–Scholes_model

[2] https://www.coinbase.com/charts

[3] https://bitvol.info

[4] sqrt([5 x 365] / 252) x 5.21

[5] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-09/keynes-wo...

[6] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/i...

[7] https://www.bankrate.com/rates/interest-rates/call-money.asp...
Out of curiosity, where do you live? I do wire transfers regularly and have never not paid fees (often, both on the sending and receiving ends.)

Also, I've never had a wire settle in under 24 hours. It's typically 2 - 7 days depending on destination and currency.