skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think what people need to realize about cryptocurrencies is that they aren't going to derive their value from being convertible to fiat currency.

Rather cryptocurrencies are going to be revolutionary in the sense of how they can be combined with other technologies.

For example, what if World of Warcraft used a cryptocurrency based system for ingame currency? Where the ingame money was actually finite and that in theory the players in the game could suffer from an economic depression. Or a few players could hoard all the wealth in the game. etc. etc.

The game would be way different than it is now, which is to say that it just emulates an economy, not actually implements one.

This is probably a bad example to get what I am trying to say. So lets imagine a different scenario. Let's say we wanted to build a social network, where we didn't actually want everybody to just be able to say whatever they want without a threat of consequence. What we want is a social network where you have to do something to earn the ability to speak, and once you speak you lose the currency to be able to speak again until you do something once again to earn the ability to speak.

What you have to do in order to earn the ability to act depends on the service in question, but the same basic concept of a cryptocurrency is what underlying the system. In that the platform only has value when the ability to act is a limited and highly valued resource.
> made more people vulnerable to many kinds of attacks, including phone number hijacking, draining people’s bank accounts, etc. To say that it’s been an unmitigated disaster would be an understatement.

The problem is not really with Aadhar, but how people and companies use it. Bank accounts are drained because people share their OTP's with the people they don't know, when they should not. Phone number hijacking would have been a problem even without Aadhar since a lot of financial institutions across the world use to for 2FA.

Without Aadhar though, it was even easier to steal someones identity by using a false id. At least with Aadhar based biometric authentication, that't not easy now.

> Bottom line, it’s not the phone number that’s the problem, but having a unique and non-changing number and linking it to everything else (including one’s phone numbers).

A unique and non-changing number and linking it to everything is not the problem, IMO, but with treating that said number as a secret number (akin to the US SSN). With people not being educated about correctly using Aadhar, and entities just using the SMS based 2FA as the authentication mechanism for critical transactions like banking.
For anyone who wants to use spaced repetition for learning languages, I recommend Clozemaster[1]. It uses the cloze deletion technique and has thousands of sentences for most languages. Using it has significantly improved my German.

[1] https://www.clozemaster.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test
Agreed but due to the dynamic interplay between the two, balancing them well, as leaders must do, takes both high EQ/empathy, and enough tech background to be credible. (Even if that tech background is working as a non dev in technical teams)

Based purely on my personal experiences, leaders who have both boxes ticked are even more unicorn-y than the fabled 10x engineer.
I hope my projects never hurt the environment as much as Bitcoin has.
I was saying that I start skimming to see if I'm in one of those articles.
>It's really frustrating that the ECMA people didn't define class methods to always be bound just like arrow functions.

This is a huge annoyance because I never really know where to bind my events. It always ends up just being an awkwardly placed "bindEvents" call somewhere in the init function.
In the original sense, a faster/cheaper alternative to wire transfers.
The only thing that can stop a bad gamer with a gun is a good gamer with a gun. This is why games like Day Z and PUBG are so peaceful.
Fairly sure he just painted on transparent paper over a film projection and then manually digitized or something like that, no fancy equipment.
I've worked in places that required a checklist worthy of NASA to deploy software, and also had blackout periods where no changes could be made to the system without an executive team sign-off[1]. The thought of any of them deploying 5 times a day is just beyond anything they would be allowed to do. I would expect most enterprises are closer to the event deploys then rapid, multiple deployments.

In that type of "event" style deployments, week night deploys probably are safe, but anything scheduled for Friday is trouble.

1) common in agriculture during harvest season
Yes. Here in Sweden we now have a system called Swish[1] that, after some initial setup, lets people make more or less instantaneous transfers to each other and to businesses. It works quite well, is very popular and, for now, is free to use for private individuals. I think one reason we have this system is the fear of bitcoin. (The other is the banks' wish for everyone to stop using cash.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_(payment)
Wouldn't you consider AI / ML to be a specialization of data science?
You can make an argument that replacing the old set of crooks with a new set is an improvement.
Creating an application that uses Speech Recognition
You know what they say… speak ill of the dead.

You may not have liked McCain politically, but it's probably best to keep quiet about intimate things such as his romantic intentions or past relationships, your comment is sleazy and cheap, and I'm almost certain you're not an authority on those aspects of his life.
Was there a lot of legal required (paperwork and lawyers) for Tutorial Outpost for $19k?
I started Anki about two weeks ago and I've already reviewed over 1,200 cards. It's a fun way to start the day and is surprisingly therapeutic. It really makes remembering a choice.
Why texts are so long these days

When I was a child, my father and I would go fishing in summer. In summer, the fish feed on all the insects that ...

54 pages of unrelated anecdotes later

Irrespective of whether or not you think texts are too long these days, what's clear is that both long and short texts are here to stay.

Fucking brilliant, mate. Five stars. Good show. And then people will link this nonsense everywhere. The question posed will not be answered, the writer will have performed some puerile creative writing exercise, and you'll be left wondering why you bother reading this stuff.
What? That's like saying it's okay if there's only 21 million US dollars, they can be divided into pennies.

Bitcoin has no intrinsic value. Gold does. There's no long-term investment there when even pizza places and Steam think the "currency" is bunk.

It's one thing if Goldman Sachs thinks the currency is worthless, but another issue entirely if the digital equivalent of Circle-K won't accept your virtual dollary-doos.

Let's see, would I rather invest in a company like Intel whose processors are in every American home, or McDonalds whose an international brand, or in Bitcoin whose sole usage is relegated to druggies and sole investment limited to grandmas and millennials who think they're going to strike it rich?

It's pogs for adults.
Ask HN: How did you first discover HN?
Oh I guess that explains why the 'break-word' word-wrapping. I thought it was an odd choice!
>Business users are the largest professional segment, by far.

I disagree. Most business segments, by large majorities are ERP, CRM, PowerPoints, Word Processing and Emails. Some spreadsheets and other fairly light computational requirements. And trust many of these people may very well work longer on the computer than what most "Pros" do. Staring long at the computer doesn't make it pro usage. Very little in the business segment are in the Pro category.

But business are very reluctant to changes.
In theory. In reality, people will sacrifice security for simplicity in these situations thereby financially incentivizing the opposite of "how it should work".
Why not use html5 video? I actually don't have a good idea of the ven diagram surrounding the layers or overlap in functionality. Is there a reason DASH is necessary?
And when the apocalypse arrives, how do we transfer our Bitcoin?
The main thing demanded by users is cheap credit, which is diametrically opposed to a system designed to optimize the ease of fraud, as you suggest.

Use all the scare quotes you want. You are one person, not several, and are accountable for your actions regardless of which pseudonym you wish to present them under.
> Programmers do not need to write much code anymore; all they need to do in most cases is wire together already available components.

As if this stops you from re-inventing the wheel in attempt to understand more. Understanding things is what distinguishes programmers.

I had exactly the same discussion with one of my friends that wants to become a programmer. His argument was that programming is not fun at all because all we do is use libraries and frameworks. My counter-argument was the paragraph above.
> Programmers have to know how to write maintainable code...

He implies that this somehow falls into “socitech” ability, which it is not. Maintainable code is precise, well-factored code — almost pedantic — which requires an orthogonal (if not counterpointed) talent to the more “social” talents. I would go further to say that a mathematical understanding or at least inclination is required to write maintainable code. (In the sense that the same is required to write a readable academic paper.)

Another assumption he seems to make here is that somehow there are all these algorithmic hackers who sit and write algorithms all day. No, I doubt this has been some kind of norm ever. Most of what we (business software) programmers write is business logic and data processing with an occasional, infrequent need — but need nevertheless — to break out a unique algorithm.

You can scale up all you want and into the future but we are always going to need to understand the difference between a O(n^2) and O(n) algorithm.

I’m sick of these kinds of pieces that are pure philistinism. The future isn’t going to save you from your lack of technical skills, education and awareness. Stay curious and develop yourself — your social self as much as your craft and profession.
I believe that quote just references Vol 1, not 2 and 3 so 'several months' it's doable.
Deepfakes for dancing: AI to fake those dance moves you always wanted
I couldn't imagine learning a language without Anki. I had to learn Coptic in a month, which required memorizing the most common ~1000 words in the language. Anki made this as easy as it can be. I don't think I would have been able to meet my deadline had I been making paper flashcards or using some more informal system.

The nice thing about Anki is that you can use it at any time without any overhead associated with beginning or ending your session. There are so many scraps of time in my day (on the bus, waiting for someone to meet me, waiting for my food to heat up in the microwave, walking to the store, etc.) that are mostly only useful for being a zombie on my phone, enjoying my surroundings, or being alone with my thoughts, which are all also sometimes appropriate uses of the time, but in all of these times, I can also just pull out my phone and start reviewing my cards, even if I get in just a few.
Extending the Browser with WebAssembly
> And how much energy is in one Coulomb. The example I like is two points each with one Coulomb repel with a force of one millions tons.

To have any meaning, you also need to consider the distance between the points. Any two charged points can repel each other with a force of one million tons given a particular distance.
Play Fiercely Our Lives Are at Stake
Ask HN: App to leverage for multiple conversations?
Not even sure the best way to ask this.

Goal: I have phone numbers in the USA that people have to reach them when travelling abroad.

I want to offer receiving SMS on that number too. I can then SMS it to them, but besides for that costing money, it may confuse them: hitting "reply" will go via the international carrier at large fees.

I can send via email, but people want push notifications...

Is there a way to leverage, e.g. a telegram bot or something similar?
The main issue is that I need the user to be able to respond, and that I know which person they are responding to.

Do I just need to make a whole app for this?
Some sort of chat/message clone might be a good start... I've only made web sites before, no apps. I don't want to waste too much time if something is already "good enough".

Thanks!!!
This is another reason why i think all these crypto based startups that are using ICOs as an alt means of funding are totally delusional and devaluing their product. You take all the value out of your platform if you take away the requirement that people must do some form of work to generate wealth. The fact that the platform acts like the Fed and can print their own currency whenever they want, proves that they don't truly get the point of why cryptocurrency is innovative.
I've been using WireGuard via algo for a few months and love it. What does PersistentKeepalive do?
From 2003-2013 I split my time with consulting. Did ~300 client projects over that time period.
It is also a very large leap from “let’s just drill it at random locations” that an actual gold dealer will try first if they suspect something like this. The drill bit not going through the bar like butter at the location will probably be the first tip-off.
> That's because the US government is not organized as a democracy, but rather as a republic. The Senate is not intended to be democratic, it is intended to be a deliberative body of representatives who come to consensus on legislative questions. It's quite a large deliberative body, so its method of consensus is superficially akin to democracy in that many questions are answered through voting, but it isn't, and was never intended, to be democratic in the pure sense. Along the same lines, it is only recently that we began democratically electing Senators.

How often is there a consensus in the Senate? It seems like almost everything happens along party lines. Who are senators supposed to represent?

I've heard this "a republic, not a democracy" so many times. Don't get me wrong. I am very grateful for a nation of laws. However, it doesn't seem that being a republic, not a democracy is what is protecting the rights of the minority or the rule of the law.

It just feels like the purpose was to prevent wild swings but I'm afraid what is supposed to protect us from abrupt, wild swings will make it near impossible to correct a slow swing.
The Free Fall Research Page
> not using any built-in regression functions

This is absolute pure silliness. So the guy down the street that can't manufacture a new carburetor isn't a mechanic? The doctor that can't create penicillin in his personal office isn't a medical professional?

More often than not, the people that create new systems are not the same people that take these concepts and apply them to practical business problem. It takes many kinds of people to help a company grow.
> Besides, how presumptuous is it to proclaim "how dare you to think your text is important enough that I study it"?

Not at all. I'm 30. I'm going to live to be 80 at best. I've only fifty years left. Fifty years of fifty weeks each. 2500 weeks of 7 days each. If I spend two hours reading every day, that's 35000 hours left. That's 70000 half-hour works.

Is this work in the top 70k that Man has ever written? That's the standard. I only have one life. And to me it is everything. What I read needs to be at the 99.999th percentile. Life's too short for anything else.
I think the idea is, rationalizing to one person, who can then represent your ideas to the many others with a vested interest, provides leverage to you as an employee (easier to convince one person than to convince every person). Of course, managers can do a good or bad job of this, and done poorly, can create more work for their employees.
This does leverage html5 video, but without some help html5 video doesn't support live streaming. The browser expects all videos to be finite. This works by stringing together a series of finite videos indefinitely. DASH can also be used to offer different streams at various bitrates.
> It's like trying to protect Fort Knox with a consumer-grade padlock, then going after the padlock manufacturer when someone cuts it open.

Well in this particular case, it's like protecting it with a consumer grade padlock, and then having someone who works for the padlock company give the thief a key to the lock. The reason he's suing is because AT&t failed to follow their own protocols for identifying the customer.
Seconded. I'm pretty sure that every minute spent making your own cards saves at least 2 minutes spent reviewing them.
To me it looks more Medium-like, not Stack Overflow Q&A form.
> If the United States introduced a national ID it, how would it avoid the same problems as the de-facto national ID, the social security number

Everyone gets a national ID number. This number is considered public and is used for signing up for public and private services.

Everyone gets a ID card, issued by the government. This ID card holds a private key, used to enter legally-binding agreements, and the card is printed with the photo of the holder. Attempts to use the card to authorize purchases online redirect to a government-managed identity provider (think SAML 2.0), where the user must provide either a password (preferable) or, if there is no password, some other knowledge proof that is not discernible from the physical ID card, either of which were set up when the card was issued. When people become incapacitated for publicly-known reasons (incarceration, hospitalization, etc.), their public certificates are temporarily added to a revocation list. When issued, the card comes with three one-time-use secret codes, each of which triggers a 24-hour temporary revocation, which must be kept secret-enough to prevent abuse. Obtaining more temporary revocation codes, or permanent revocation (in case of loss or theft), or password/knowledge proof reset without the previous password/knowledge proof, is handled in physically secure government facilities, by providing DNA and other biometrics, that were registered when the card was issued and are not used for any other purpose. Corruption is combated at the DNA-collection stage by requiring the secure facilities to actually collect fresh physical samples each time - this constitutes a biological sort of paper trail for auditing revocation requests.

No, it's not impossible to game the system. People can be bribed to overlook the photo; DNA can be stolen and used to continually permanently-revoke victims. Paper trails are not magic cure-alls. There are serious ethical concerns with entrusting the government with a populace's DNA (particularly, the potential to re-index it for the purposes of ethnic cleansing). And yet, when compared to modern-day systems, I'm hard-pressed to complain. If you ask, quite simply, which is better, the system proposed above or the contemporary system, one or the other, I have a hard time imagining people defending the contemporary system.
Yes, right now this is true (for those with easy access to credit cards and bank accounts at least). But the same criticisms could have been made about pretty much any technology in the early days of its adoption. A lot of smart, well funded, groups of people are working hard on these problems. It will only get better.
http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf

Relevant section:

It is clear from the AECL documentation on the modifications
that the software allows concurrent access to shared memory,
that there is no real synchronization aside from data that
are stored in shared variables, and that the "test" and "set"
for such variables are not indivisible operations. Race
conditions resulting from this implementation of multitasking
played an important part in the accidents.

There's more in that paper.
I gave up reading the original article after ctrl+f'ing for it revealed it didn't mention lightning network or plasma. I've never even owned ether or bitcoin but those seem like aspects one would cover when discussing transaction improvements.
They have to know how to get help outside of an office or even a project team when working remotely and alone. Aside from Stack Overflow, which dominates the Q&A platform for programming market, there are documentation and code repositories that a professional programmer must know how to navigate. Those who previously only relied on colleagues and friends will now lose to those who know how to learn from the entire Internet.

Wouldn't programmers know how to code it themselves without req. Stack Overflow? I would be pissed spending $100k /year on programmer who uses Stack Overflow.
> For example, what if World of Warcraft used a cryptocurrency based system for ingame currency?

Why would they need a distributed system? They already have an in-game currency with a central authority (their trusted servers) and can already limit the rate of currency creation (reduce monster's gold drop rate to zero or whatever).

EVE Online shows just how well a central authority can manage a virtual game currency. No crypto or blockchain needed.

> Let's say we wanted to build a social network, where we didn't actually want everybody to just be able to say whatever they want without a threat of consequence

Cool, so like a reputation system on old forums where you have to have a certain number of positive comments to participate in other private forums, and there's heavy moderation?

Oh woah, no crypto, no blockchain. I don't see how cryptocurrencies make the fundamental problems of building such a system any easier btw. Attaching a value to someone in a database is easy, and even distributed social networks like mastodon trust the participating servers (and if you don't, you block the whole server).

Cryptocurrencies are a problem looking for another problem, and it turns out rubbing two problems together doesn't make fire.

A central database is usually better (the WoW example), and they're often orthogonal to other ideas they're shoved into (reputation system, file storage, whatever).
It doesn’t work that way. You spend a week in a cold dirty room with insects, hungry, isolated, misinformed with worst fears and perspectives. Occasionally you speak with an interrogator who can bet on the time of your mental breakdown by simply looking at you for a minute. This is a well-known procedure that doesn’t even require a knowledge of what should be revealed. Trained people can stand it if stakes are high (military high, not your extra BTC), but don’t overestimate yourself. You will break down not even being touched by a finger.
Huh, I must say I thought there was more to Elm's architecture (I've seen it mentioned in the recent negative article about Elm).

I've written an SPA[1] recently in a framework that is quite flexible and also ended up using a very similar architecture.

1 - https://github.com/nim-lang/nimforum
I've had huge success using Anki in taking required professional exams. I'm in finance, so at various times I've had to take the JSDA, the Series 56, and Series 65.

I originally signed up for a Kaplan class for the 65, thinking it was going to be a cram class. In reality, it turned out to be a review class. Halfway through the first day on Monday, I told the teacher I hadn't started reviewing the material yet for the test on Friday. He said I was essentially a lost cause, and I should sign up to take the test again in a month.

I immediately left the classroom and spent the rest of the day entering every question from the practice exams into Anki. I spent 8-10 hours the next 3 days doing nothing but running Anki questions. On Friday, I crushed the exam.

Other useful things I've learned with Anki include the Number Major System and the answers to a bunch of those useless "brainteaser" interview questions.