skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you believe in crypto-anarchism, you will invent political technologies or be part of a community that revolves around such inventions.

Such is the case called bitcoins, a cryptocurrency. In two years or so, we will find if my fellow hackers and ciphergeeks and me will find ourselves fools or fricking rich pioneers.

Moreover, we believed that money and free market can be a positive social order. If we do not believe it is so, bitcoins wouldn't have a thriving community, much less an entrepeneural one.

It also raise and illustrate issues about such a voluntary market economy where there is no police and courts to enforce order. For example, we found out that paypal dollars are bad money. They lack the crucial aspect of irreversibility. It even cause a bank run, a rush to bitcoins. We found out that bitcoins doesn't have that negative aspect and can expect bitcoins to hold value. Unpredictable regime like Paypal cause risk-aversion and effort to find much more predictable ability to transfer from one currencies to another.

Bitcoin offer us unique insight of how a new emerging economy might deal with thieves, cheaters, with no guns and no police. Bitcoin show us how a group of political radicals think about problems, and the future at large. It is out of the box, and at time foolish, but sometime brilliance emerge.

All of these things wouldn't be possible without the culmination of technolibertarianism and anarchism. All of these wouldn't be happening if hackerdom didn't emerge as it has.

Where do you get progress in our society in the conventional sphere of democractic government, parliamentary politics, and such? If you believe power and violence are necessary to achieve goals in society, would you have come up with and invent bitcoins?
Where else can a person with bad/no credit get a short term loan? I'm not disputing this, I'm just curious.

As far as selling convenience, I wish a 24 hour convenience store would open up close to my house and exploit me by overcharging me for products available at less convenient locations/times.
Deleting all of a kind will definitely be handy for those in the early "hypothesis testing" stages of their apps.
How many people you don't know washed dishes or cleaned pipes all their life and never went beyond that, though?
Thank you, I'll be looking forward to the release of the electronic versions of the book.
Can we make a list of places poor who don't have any friends with cash can get quick loans?

I'm drawing a blank, but there must be other options, like you say.
I know Doug Merrill personally and he's one the smartest, most forthright guys you'll ever meet. You're dead wrong to judge him otherwise on his picture or anything else.
Oh, of course it could work in the US. But it will never happen - national and state bar associations have far too much political clout.
Yes! That is simply the biggest problem with EC2 right now.
I too, have had discussions with people who run pawn shops. The customers (who pawn objects to borrow money) are notoriously unreliable, bad credit risks. The banks/credit unions/credit card companies won't touch them. If they need money fast, they pawn something, and often don't return to pay the money back. The guy I have spoken with (who owns the pawn shop and is a tenant) is not a nice guy. In fact I find him a bit creepy. But he is a legitimate businessman providing a service for his customers, who, mostly, are happy with what they get for their money.

The point I'd like to add to the above post, is that this business is going to exist in some shape or form anyway. By allowing pawn shops/payday loans to exist as legal businesses, at least the proprietors operate (generally) within the law, in plain view, and pay taxes.

If you outlawed payday loans or brought in some type of regulations or maximum interest rate, the legitimate businesses would close. The lending would still take place, but instead of colorful shops on street corners, it would be taking place in back alleys. The lending conditions for the customers would get worse, and the penalties for not paying would extend past penalty fees and seized TVs and enter the leg-breaking scenario. It makes no sense at all to try and regulate the profits of payday loans and pawn shops.
i just got MixPanel patched into analytical

http://github.com/jkrall/analytical
Make Ideas Happen.
I agree actually, I kind of look at Obj-C as "Native Ruby"; it's a good language for sure, but I think it's faster and easier to write C#, especially with C# 3.5/4.0 (where I can think in a functional programming paradigm with map/reduce/filter/etc)
Program Or Be Programmed
Ask HN: Tips on (mind) hacking programming interviews?
Hi HN,

I've worked for several years as a developer at a company that most would consider to be a top-tier tech company. I also got a degree from a top-notch CS program and did well in school. I've done well at work and have hacked on various projects on the side. However, none of this really matters when it comes to applying for jobs, since the most it gets me is a quick response from recruiters and my resume at the top of the pile. Like all other mortal developers, I still have to go through the interview process.

This is where I'm having problems.

Lately, I've been interviewing with various startups and tech companies with high hiring bars. For some reason, I just don't seem to be doing very well in the initial phone interviews. The questions are not hard, but the combination of having to think, write, and talk at the same time is causing me problems. I can usually only proficiently do one or two of those things at a time. Some of the companies use web-based collaboration tools for the phone interviews where the interviewer can see responses in real-time. This seems to only make things more difficult. I find it hard to strike a fine balance between talking out loud to verbalize my thought process, taking time to think solutions through, and getting code out so the interviewer sees that I'm doing something.

It also doesn't help not knowing what the interview wants to see. Should I draw everything out on paper then type out the code? Should I just blast out code then fix it as I go? Should I talk while I'm thinking or brainstorming or coding? It's all very distracting.

At times, I find myself not actually thinking about the problem at hand, but thinking about how the interviewer thinks I'm doing. The less feedback or response I get from the interviewer, the worst off I think I'm doing, and I lose focus on solving the problem. It also doesn't help that I've been on the other end of the phone as the interviewer, dozens of times; it's even more distracting when I realize that I'm making some of the mistakes that so many candidates I've interviewed have made. For me, it's not really a lack of knowledge or preparation. I need to figure out how to balance thinking/writing/talking in a manner such that the interviewer can see that I'm not a complete n00b.

So, I'm reaching out to the HN community for ways to hack the interview. Especially any "mind" hacks.

* How do you approach interviews mentally - especially phone screens?

* Do you draw things on paper before implementing a solution? How do you progress from conceptualizing a solution to implementing it?

* How do you verbalize your thoughts or let the interviewer know that there's progress being made and you're not just bewildered and completely lost?

* What are some psychological ways to hack the interview? How do you stay focused on solving the problem and not get distracted by having to express your thought process and worrying about the interviewer's perception?
very much agree with you :)
For the benefit of future generations of hackers reading this, I'm not opposed to alcohol or the producers of alcohol at all. I'm in college myself, and drink to excess as often as I can get away with.

Furthermore, I love casual sex (although I can't get away with that at all these days), and I absolutely do not believe that having sex while drunk makes it "date rape".

However, I feel that modern alcohol marketing which emphasizes that getting women drunk is the only way you are ever going to get laid is despicable, and does bear at least some very real responsibility for the uncounted thousands of very real rapes of intoxicated women that take place every year.

And if you disagree with me about that, but can't bring yourself to use your words to say it in public, yes, that makes you a dick.
McKinney News Selects whichbox Platform to Launch New Hyper-Local News Site
> Or get rid of civil rights laws. "Reason" is a libertarian publication, so that would probably be their solution.

I agree with the rest of your post, but this is not accurate in the slightest. You might as well write "liberals want tax cuts for people making >$200k," and "conservatives love social security."
Has anyone done any recent memory benchmarks with PyPy?

I'd like to see magnitude of the memory trade-off for using a JIT compiler. As a web developer my programs are mostly IO-bound, not CPU-bound. I'm also bootstrapping and trying to squeeze as much as I can out of my 512MB linode.
What's wrong with oDesk search?
Sweden is an exception then, the various ombudsmen can sue in your name if you have a case, and at no cost for you.
How do I know if I am good enough?

You never will. Ever. That's the difficulty: doing well despite constant uncertainty.
It's very easy if you Do it.

Don't think too much. Just start. Everything will fall in place.

Most people fail because they don't do it.
PyPy's objects are smaller than CPython's, however the steady state interpreter is larger, and the JIT adds some additional overhead due to bookeeping and generated machine code.
This might actually be a place where Wal-Mart using its clout to drive profit margins down is an unequivocal good. Weird.

Well, apart from the whole shutting down other profitable services thing :P
Change Windows XP Login Screen 2010 Trick | Tricks Window
You can always ask your questions online (StackOverflow and other forums).

People are always ready to help.
Upvote. At least in Australia, it's pretty hard to actually get fired (generalisation, but holds up pretty well). There's no harm in jumping into something, taking a hit with the learning curve and busting ass to get up to speed. If a year down the track you're embedded into the process / team and performing, nobody will give a shit that you spent the first three or five months building up your skill / role.

It's a better model then getting into something you know you're fully capable of and having no incentive to perform like hell. Comfortable but mind destroying.
This advice is hard earned. Great write up.

We're on the opposite side of the spectrum as a company in that we're not well known, we're not well connected, we don't have outside capital, and we're not creating the next generation of search. We do, however, have similar goals of finding and retaining the best people, building an enduring and rewarding culture, and continuously exploring better ways to do things. We actually blogged today about what we've learned as a startup in trying to find the best people who are also the right cultural fit.

http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/inside-braintree/re...
Is this going to be using Lisp bindings for cross-platform graphics libraries like SDL? ( http://code.google.com/p/lispbuilder/wiki/LispbuilderSDL ) Here's to hoping you get to build 2D/3D games and not 1970s style terminal games you will never show anyone.
I hadn't read the HN comments yet when I left the following, similar comment on the original article:

The interest rates are high because the risk is high. Many borrowers simply don’t pay the money back.

If you really think they’re too high, start your own payday loan business and offer your “fair” 36% rate. Be sure to post here again and let us know how it works out.
Lending Club? (I've invested in both Prosper and Lending Club)
Skype Gets Serious Facebook Integration
We might want to clarify here that you are a professional writer for the site in question and the author of the given post; also you post a similar comment there in response to a similar question. Also, despite having access to the alleged pre-2010 data in question that you say is well known to regular readers on your site you provide no links to demonstrate where this data might be.

By the way, on another topic, you need to check out your site in Safari, there is a fatal javascript loop. Probably a bug in Safari since it doesn't manifest in other browsers but it should still be addressed.
Prosper is still prospering, and some of us who are more choosy about our loans are still investing.
I am the WP theme @tradesalerts ( http://tradesalerts.com )... just put out the undercon page first. A few more things left to do; (1)test the email alerts, (2)setup a open forum, (3) fine-tune/automate my mostly manual updated excel based trade strategies.
"Things Users Really Want to Do" == "TURWD" == the word "turd" as said by Elmer Fudd?
Billions? What does that have to do with anything?
Thanks! Great catch. Silly typo - fixed now.
Without that car, that person can't get to work. Loans are a valuable service to people all across the wealth spectrum.
The best way to prove to yourself, potential investors and to any potential future employees that you have a killer idea, is to get a number of A-level engineers to join full-time with equity-only deals.

Um... given all the advice to never work for equity only, can anyone here actually claim to have pulled this off?

As far as I can tell, this statement is about employees and doesn't cover co-founders.
I do dismiss those.

First, ZestCash is charging a substantially lower APR than payday loan shops (280% versus 480%).

You're cherry picking one of their lowest rates and putting it against the assumption that someone's going to roll a payday loan 7 times. If you actually click through and read the CRL report they're quoting, you'll notice that they're misusing the statistics. ZestCash claims that the CRL reports that 80% of payday loans are rollovers, but when you click on that link, the CRL page you're taken to doesn't give that statistic anywhere. I've only skimmed the full report, but I haven't been able to find where they're getting that number from. I'm left highly dubious of the claim that the average payday loan is rolled over 7 times, though, given that the report does explicitly state that the average number of transactions per borrower who takes out more than one payday loan per year is only 9 (and 20% of people who take out payday loans only take out 1 per year, and aren't counted in that group).

Second, ZestCash allows partial repayment. This is critical, as requiring full repayment is a major factor in forcing payday loan customers to rollover their loans, incurring additional fees and leading to additional loans. Partial repayment is far more likely to result in a customer who can actually pay off their loan and is not trapped in a cycle of debt.

But they also require a minimum of a two month term, and I can't find any indication on the site that they let you pay off the loan early to avoid additional interest accrual.

Third, ZestCash further increases the chances of repayment by allowing flexibility in both amount and length of the loan.

That's what they claim. Hard to state it as fact just yet. And if the chances of repayment are increasing, shouldn't the APR be going down? The justification for such high rates is supposedly that these are such high-risk loans.

Anyone approved at ZestCash gets a personal representative who will work with the customer 1-on-1 for the life of the loan

A part of what makes me so mad about this site is that they're posturing themselves as a caring, responsible alternative that's going to hold your hand through this process. If you care and are responsible, you're not going to charge such usurious rates. Period.
> cell phone contracts are economically equivalent to an extension of credit

Except isn't the big way that cell phones are expanding into the poorer marketplace is through prepaid cell phones like Boost Mobile?

I'm moderately skeptical that the price of payday loans is far from the cost of making them, though willing to be convinced otherwise, and I agree with you about my likelihood of participating in that industry.
Just uploaded a working code of jsonrest asp.net mvc2 objectcontext controller
Please read this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/
"But can't this be (mostly) solved by having the lawyers take on the risk?"

I suppose the stereotype of the trial lawyer as some deep-pocketed capitalist still prevails up to the present day. It's not so anymore. There's been a lawyer glut for some time and the lawyer who makes their living suing for the "little guy" or even the medium-sized-guy has no extra equity to invest in extra risk taking, they're mostly barely earning a living.

" That is, they risk their own time--but will do so only if they think there is a good case." Perhaps you could think about this - lawyers risk their own time because ... they have it, not necessarily having a whole lot of the business. A similar lawyer won't risk their own money because ... they have children to feed as well as offices to rent, etc...
I can tell you've typed, but all I'm seeing is idiocy and an attempted insult thinly disguised as snark.

Radiation damage, ie anything not from excess energy in the area causing injury like burns, but referring to genetic damage, is rather obviously cumulative if you consider it for more time than it took you to type that out.

Genetic damage cannot be repaired. At best, the offending cell is killed. At worst, it divides and spreads its damaged code, sometimes becoming cancerous.

Cancers frequently come from mutations. Radiation damage causes random mutations. Put 1 and 1 together, and you get an increased risk of cancers based exclusively off the sum total of radiation received, ignoring any time dimension.

Look at any studies looking for "safe radiation doses", or consider why people don't snuggle up to radium-glowing blankets every night, or take a peek at why revigators are banned, or why you don't want radon in your basement; you'll see the same information pop up every time. Radiation is cumulative. Small amounts for a long time are just as dangerous as large amounts for a short time, except they don't cause burns.
I've got FossBounty about 90% built (in Rails). Really, I could probably roll back to a version before I started integrating with RPX (which is now Janrain Engage) and launch it today.

Haven't touched the code in close to a year because I've been so busy. If anyone's seriously interested in taking my code and running with it, send me an email.

Mine focuses on getting lots of different people to put money on the same bounty (I explained it as "Uservoice with Money", ie. instead of Uservoice where you vote with points, people would vote with money.)

The idea was that usually an individual person isn't willing to pay enough to make it worth the dev's time, but a whole bunch of people might be willing to pay $20.
"I think these rich bastards are saddling poor people with loans, and they expect a good portion of them to drown in the loans."

None of "these rich bastards" are forcing anyone to take payday loans. How are honest people getting screwed if they voluntarily take on the debt?
I came here to say this. Ignore the silly title - it's one of the best marketing books I've ever read.
Saw this the other day, it's excellent. Very easy to take surface tension, hydrophobia and other properties for granted when you see them in a common setting (eg, water dispersing in the dirt, soaking into cloth).

Take the properties to their extreme and you get what are essentially unseen behaviours (outside of research), like this. This video really left me in awe.
Here in Sweden a simple legal expense insurance is part of any home insurance you get, which means that almost everyone has at least some protection if they're being sued, and some opportunity for suing if you need to drag a dispute that far.

But the biggest difference is that our society simply isn't litigious and I don't know which is the cause and which is the effect.
The interest rates are high because the risk is high. Many borrowers simply don’t pay the money back.

So we should tolerate placing the burden of compensating for that risk on the poor people who do pay their loans back? It's somehow okay that we're punishing the people who found themselves in a desperate situation who actually are responsible enough to pay their debts, because it makes business sense given that other poor people aren't?
The ABA are the last people to listen to on this subject. Their mortgage payments are inextricably linked to the status quo and thus cannot be expected to enjoy an objective perspective.
1) Do they want to hire me? Yes, hiring me is the best thing that ever could happen to them. So in the worst case it's they who fail in this interview, never me.

2) I draw only if I need to explain something to the interviewer. But I have a visually oriented way of thinking, so I don't need this for myself in most cases.
Then tell them how to implement this or that, when I know how it would work. (We will need a vector to store this data, run a search on this, have those tables in the database, linked this way, to be queried with this SQL expression). Would depend of course, if they actually expect you to show some code or just to outline the core points of the possible solution.

3) Normally I talk a lot and let them know intermediate steps (Watch their faces, you can see if you're on the right track). There is no problem in saying something that's wrong. If the interviewer knows a bit about the job, he won't expect you to be perfect on the spot. (If they send you somebody to interview you who doesn't know that: wrong company, good bye)
If I get stuck, I tell them that that's a complex problem and I need to think some time about it. Shouldn't be a problem. Maybe I give them some of the points that make me worry and line out the possible problems and solutions. (If I do it that way it will use more memory, but the other way will give me better performance, cleaner code...)

4) I just tell them what I'm thinking. I don't think what they may want to hear. They get what I have and that's it. If they don't like it, that's bad luck (For them of course, not for me)
Uh...

1. We're talking about changing laws, so it would affect all lawyers pretty much equally.

2. I don't think any supposed '"We don't get paid unless we get money for you" ambulance chasers' have a lot of cash either.
It rather destroys the supposed correlation between crappy jobs and awesome people.
Please submit that patch- that'd be hugely useful!