skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"But none of these systems, with the possible exception of some fanciful science-fiction technologies, can ever bring that dishonest minority down to zero."

This is a concept that is very useful to internalize. In systems its the 'no subsystem will operate 100% correctly all of the time' in social justice scenarios its 'there will always be people who are poor'.

While the first part of that "things break" or "shit happens" to be colloquial, is accepted easily the latter 'there will always be poor people' is less easily so. But as Schneir has eloquently pointed out in his thesis statement humans are just another system composed of independent actors who are nominally out for the collective good.

Understanding this core systems concept can really help you understand where you will need to focus systemic processes or tools which will maintain the systems primary function.
> How about the people in the NSA who spied on their wives, and listened to strangers talking dirty?

However, we know that the folks in HHS will not do such things, right?
So what exactly is not open about this? I don't recall open source ideals claiming you can't try and do business when a competitor encroaches on your territory.
Finding out whether an address can spend a coin is just a hashtable lookup.

Trying to follow your perspective. You likely assume that every node has a dossier tracking every single coin. That dossier is summarized as a hash table. Right?

there is a chain of 6 blocks verifying the transaction

Does it mean a transaction needs 1 hour to settle or I'm confusing something for something? (1 block is created in 10 minutes)

everyone will switch to the winning branch

Well... suppose I'm an attacker who briefly mobilized some significant CPU resources (a GPU cluster, a million zombie PCs). I make nodes face two chains of equal length. Once new block arrives and nodes rush to the "winner" branch, I help the other branch win, so they rush back.
You see, it is far more serious than "using it to defraud people by stealing back his payments" (Sec 6, last paragraph).
The strategy of "alerts" (Sec 8) might be open to attacks as well. "Bad" nodes might also do alerts. etc etc
...and that is just off the top of my head.

In very general terms, I also don't like the approach on the following reason. With strong crypto, I may encipher something, so even the biggest Google cluster will not be sufficient to break it any time soon. So, it is mathematically strong, in a sense.
BitCoin weakens it to a majority vote in terms of CPU cycles uselessly burnt. That appears really weird to me.
Cool to see you on here then - if you aren't still involved in the community you'll be pleased to know that, while Tek9 hasn't had any teams since we bought it a couple of years ago, Steven joined the company with the site and is still here managing it.

As to gameplay, I can't really give any personal experiences with CoD, but ultimately in esports, with multi-version titles, the version played by top players is whatever version tournaments use. After the move to CoD4, before CoD:MW came out, the community got pretty organised and together managed to take control of their scene, meaning that they managed to resist moving to newer CoD titles which are far worse for competitive play than CoD4.

Actually, iirc, there was a bit of a fight back when they first started getting organised between the "stick with CoD4 and screw future releases if they suck" and "screw CoD4 too, we should all move back to CoD2 and pursuade the tournament organisers to follow us" groups. CoD4 won, presumably as a decent middle ground between suitibility for esports and not being as out of date as CoD2.
> I suspect many law enforcement people take the attitude that if someone hasn't done anything wrong, they have nothing to hide, and if they have done something wrong, they should be brought to justice. Also, the use of electronic surveillance doesn't normally inconvenience a law-abiding person, but it can help catch dangerous criminals.

I wonder what defenses the HHS people will use.
Oh, boy! I was actually looking for a good book aimed at a beginner. And this one looks to be EXACTLY what I need. Many thanks!
Ridiculous Things To Do With CSS3 Box Shadows
Can someone explain why I'm STILL "hellbanned?"
A week or two ago I realized my comments/submissions no longer counted. Everything I was submitting immediately went "dead." I posted a few topics on the matter, e-mailed pg, and received a snarky reply from naner. As far as the response I received from the community here, people basically told me to shut up and create a new account. So I did. And it turns out that account was immediately "hellbanned" too - I'm assuming because I'm using the same IP address. Everything on HN still loads painfully slow unless I'm using a proxy or I'm not logged in as my original or new account.

This is all absurd because I did nothing to deserve the "hellban." I simply defended the PHP programming language and revealed obvious truths about certain haters of the language... and a user clicked the "flag" link because he didn't agree. From then on, my account and any posts from my IP have been rendered useless. And I continued posting for 20 days afterward because I had no clue. Granted, once in a blue moon when I've had a bad day and I'm in a bad mood I may be politically incorrect and speak exactly what's on my mind, but surely nothing that constitutes a ban. And I'm sure a number of you will try to nitpick at my posts and convince yourself that "hellbanning" me was just, because surely this elite community you're a part of can do no wrong! You must defend its honor! But in all seriousness, you won't feel that way when someone "hellbans" you by flagging a comment of yours they don't agree with.

As it turns out, I just noticed that I can't post a topic (that doesn't immediately go dead) on the matter from the original "wrongfulban" account (account #3!) and proxy I had used to discuss it the first time, because a week or so ago when I posted a topic about it, someone basically told me to shut up again and flagged my submission.

I would very much appreciate it if I could have my original account (and IP) back to working status.
Short Hair Styles
If you are wondering about giving yourself a new look then short hair styles can be the perfect choice for you. Although short styles do not suit everyone ...
And the nodeconf slides are at https://gist.github.com/958556
I think that warrantless electronic surveillance very clearly violates USA Citizen's presumption of innocence and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. It's fishing, plain and simple. The FBI knows what a warrant is, they should go get one. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, that's what they'd tell a non-FBI person.

I think they are fishing for wrongdoing, and it's a waste of taxpayer money, and a shameful act.Shame on you, FBI. You're acting like perverts.
Actually there is a standardized mechanism to re-map every keyboard shortcut in any application in OS X.

It's actually one of the little consistencies I miss when using Linux-based desktops.
Create a Grunge Tribal Background with Photoshop and Illustrator
This article was badly missing the word:

'skeuomorphism'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph
On Apple's rumored ARM adoption
The article does not make any suggestions as to what to do if a tracker _is_ found on a car.
This rocks so hard. I'm definitely going to have to find a way to get these effects into my CSS editor.
Do you dissect a good day at your startup the same way you do a bad day?
Already, to some extend, Europe is not a part of the Internet anymore. At least here in Germany, I personally consider it fraud when Internet Service Provider offer "Internet access". Wrong label!

After returning from the US I got extremely frustrated that I wasn't able to listen to Pandora anymore (I'm even paying) or watch many of the best Youtube videos that happen to use popular music as background.

When I recently got access again, over my US friends University VPN, I felt a bit like a former east German, who managed to tweak his radio so he can listen to "west stations".
Yeah, that's it -- I guess my point was not very well articulated.

To be clear, I think Nokia is going to maintain an active branch of Qt 4.x for Series 40, and that work will benefit Embedded Linux as well.
I suppose if they really really wanted it you could send them the parts back.
I'm no designer (though I have put together a handful of icons in my day), but the part about too much realism in an icon seems fairly obvious. Are overly-realistic icons actually a problem? If so, a few real-world examples might have been more useful than the fully rendered house icon, which seems far-fetched.

Also, I don't really agree with the comment that the icon shouldn't include any details other than the bare minimum needed to convey function. Things like shading/shadows can give icons a more polished look. For example, I wonder if the author would argue that the red/yellow/green indicators in his home button example shouldn't have shading or specular highlights because that's just adding unnecessary detail.
Yeah, I watched it later the night. Kept me up way to long. I'm still very excited about this!
What a fine combination of typographical aesthetics and algorithmic computer science! Makes me proud to be associated (however distantly) with those professions.

As for finding peoples' names, there's a strong symbolism it making it hard. To search for a name is to honor the efforts of the recovery workers who searched for remains.

At any rate, let's hope there's no more need for memorials like this one.
i learned some great stuff, manny thanks i would love to seemore artcles like this
Bookmarked! I love maps and globes, and I love demographic data.
Technically they all (since CoD2) use IW Engine, but different versions of the engine. CoD:MW (the next IW-developed game after CoD4) did support custom maps, but the esports community never played it. As of MW2 (and possibly/probably the Treyarch CoD titles earlier than MW2), dedicated servers are no longer used, meaning no more custom maps. I'm not sure if that will still be the case when MW3 is released later this year, I don't have any marketing briefs to refer to yet, and if I have been told already then I've forgotten. (And, if I have, chances are I was also told not to repeat that information, so probably a good thing I've forgotten.)
To me, the interesting question would be, were a private citizen to build a tracking device and attach it to an FBI vehicle, would they have a problem with that? My guess is they would arrest you and figure out something to charge you with -- even though, by their own logic, since you could follow an FBI vehicle around to see where it goes, attaching a GPS is equivalent.

A logical standard would be "that which isn't legal for a private citizen to do, the police need a warrant for" -- but hey, I'm an engineer, not a lawyer...
I'm not expert, but this is a good read. However, I disagree with his bullet point stating that "Bitcoins are less convenient than paper currency".

For buying a hotdog, yes. For online purchases, I don't know yet. Sending paper currency in a paper envelope isn't so great either, and we all know that Paypal isn't really fair to everyone.
Why you get ideas in the shower
Responding very late, sorry...

It does help clarify this, thanks. It does still leave the problem that you have to specify the "type" in the code and can't swap it out. That said, I think this could probably be handled easily with a yaml file (just specify the class you want to instantiate every time a user is created)? I may try that some time.
What protocol is it using to transmit the location? Is it encrypted or authenticated? (Could it be spoofed?)
ELEGS exoskeleton: startup giving disabled the ability to walk again
Radical (and very interesting, and potentially immensely profitable for the countries that implement it) copyright reform would be to impose severe limits on copyright holders (such as setting a short - eg 14 years - time limit, or even abolishing copyrights completely).

Strengthening the copyright holders' rights is not radical in any way, nor will it do anything to boost any economy.
Indeed, and Clay Shirky actually wrote an entire book called Cognitive Surplus on how the shift away from TV will unlock oceans of time for people. I wrote about it some here: http://jseliger.com/2010/06/26/progress-extra-time-efficienc... .
Wow? This is terrible advice. Probably written by someone who didn't get a real 4-year CS degree? I am afraid you don't even know what you don't know.

You don't need to know every single algorithm and data structure, but you definitely do need to know the basics, especially how to evaluate the different algorithms, how to choose the right one for your needs, how to create new ones and how to prove correctness. This is one of the most fundamental of skills for a programmer.

C is actually one of the easiest programming languages to learn, because it is so close to the hardware. It is one of the hardest languages to write real programs in, because of this closeness to hardware, but it is also one of the most important languages to know, and to learn first, because of this. Without a basic understanding of C or assembly, without a basic understanding how high-level code gets compiled into machine code, you won't understand the performance costs of classes and recursive function calls, issues like memory fragmentation, cache misses, etc. Basically unless you never plan to write fast code, you need to know something like C.

Vim and emacs have been around more than 20 years .. They are the old reliable but there are better alternatives now with less of a learning curve and modern innovations. Eclipse, IntelliJ, Visual Studio comes to mind, there are many other IDEs out there. If you are willing to put in the time, emacs is probably better than everything else out there, but if you are still learning to be a programmer there is no reason to be struggling with your editor too. Eclipse is a good free solution that most people can start out with.
Ask HN: What's Austin (TX) like, as a place to start a startup?
Austin seems like a nice place to live - from what I can tell it has a fairly liberal culture, decent weather, and houses that mere mortals can buy.

What's it like as a place to start a startup, especially compared to the SF Bay Ares?
How China Plans To Send Robots To the Moon
Download Process Hacker 2.15
Don't you guys have a Faraday cage for this sort of teardown?
Looking Back At What I Learned At College
YouTube founders buy Tap11 social media analytics platform
That book is truly excellent. We used it as a textbook for a drawing class in college.
I like to rationalize it, and think that at the least, the helpful information, contacts, advice and ideas I get from here balances the time I spend fribbling around.
Point of clarification: ActionScript and JavaScript are both dialects of ECMAScript.

Now, it isn't just that JS is easier to learn for 'artistic types', but it really is a quicker development process than traditional C++. My worry would be performance, just like everyone else. If you have already decided that a web application isn't good enough, why are you going to be okay with the JS penalty?
Yep, it's part of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) [1]. You can read the crash course [2] to get a better idea of our project, then see how you can get involved [3], or read a list of specific project needs [4].

All plans of our current and future machines can be used by anyone without restrictions.

[1] http://opensourceecology.org/
[2] http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Crash_course_on_OSE
[3] http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Get_involved
[4] http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Project_needs#Specific_Project_...
Schneier himself makes the same point even more forcefully. Quoting:

"The term 'dishonest minority' is not a moral judgment; it simply describes the minority who does not follow societal norm. Since many societal norms are in fact immoral, sometimes the dishonest minority serves as a catalyst for social change. Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime."
"Free market" is defined as environment of voluntary transactions. Slavery is not voluntary, so it has nothing to do with free market. The same applies to assassinations (unless the victim voluntary agrees to be assassinated).

As for your argument wrt gold, it's inconclusive to say the least. Specifically, PIIGS has failed not because they can't expand their money supply at will now, but because they could (and very much did) extend their money supply before (using ECB as a source of cheap money, which would be impossible on gold standard).

But that's a century old debate, Austrian school has made their very convincing case about fiat money w/ goverment controlled supply causing business cycles in, what, 1912? Something like that.
> I always find it interesting that one of the first arguments used against a gold standard is that people who argue for it are idiots -- something economists in the US magically discovered when, contrary to previous agreements, we moved off the gold standard in 1968.

In large part, economists are evaluated based on whether they are listened to by the "correct" people. Those people are looking for arguments to do what they want to do.

Compare Christina and David Romer's work on govt spending and tax cut multipliers http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~cromer/RomerDraft307.pdf with their recommendations while in the Obama administration.

They're far from the worst - they were just the easiest for me to cite quickly. In fact, I'd argue that they're relatively good because they're so transparent.
That's possible, but green has been the color of the Android logo, mascot, etc. since very early on, so the switch to green in the UI makes logical sense from a branding perspective.

Also, I think Samsung is the only Android phone maker still using AMOLED displays (they control the supply), so that seems like a pretty big concession to just 1 handset maker.
Can someone explain why I'm STILL "hellbanned?"
I posted this a few minutes ago but someone flagged it - STOP. This is a serious issue.

A week or two ago I realized my comments/submissions no longer counted. Everything I was submitting immediately went "dead." I posted a few topics on the matter, e-mailed pg, and received a snarky reply from naner. As far as the response I received from the community here, people basically told me to shut up and create a new account. So I did. And it turns out that account was immediately "hellbanned" too - I'm assuming because I'm using the same IP address. Everything on HN still loads painfully slow unless I'm using a proxy or I'm not logged in as my original or new account.

This is all absurd because I did nothing to deserve the "hellban." I simply defended the PHP programming language and revealed obvious truths about certain haters of the language... and a user clicked the "flag" link because he didn't agree. From then on, my account and any posts from my IP have been rendered useless. And I continued posting for 20 days afterward because I had no clue. Granted, once in a blue moon when I've had a bad day and I'm in a bad mood I may be politically incorrect and speak exactly what's on my mind, but surely nothing that constitutes a ban. And I'm sure a number of you will try to nitpick at my posts and convince yourself that "hellbanning" me was just, because surely this elite community you're a part of can do no wrong! You must defend its honor! But in all seriousness, you won't feel that way when someone "hellbans" you by flagging a comment of yours they don't agree with.

As it turns out, I just noticed that I can't post a topic (that doesn't immediately go dead) on the matter from the original "wrongfulban" account (account #3!) and proxy I had used to discuss it the first time, because a week or so ago when I posted a topic about it, someone basically told me to shut up again and flagged my submission.

I would very much appreciate it if I could have my original account (and IP) back to working status.
I'd like the option to remove my downvoting abilities, as I find it hard to control my urge to downvote in disagreement rather than for lack of quality in a comment.

Most of my downvotes tend to be in disagreement, whereas if I could disable it in my profile, I'd never be tempted to click that little arrow...

On a side note, I didn't want to do an "Ask PG" thread for such a small request, but this topic seems pretty dead. Last comment from PG in this thread was 1026 days ago. If you're still reading this but just in silence, any chance you'd reply to confirm that posting here isn't a complete waste of time? (Disagreeing with and therefore ignoring feature requests is perfectly fine, but if they're not getting read, this page might as well be deleted.)
Don't confuse power and legitimacy.
This is one of the major reasons why India isn't ruled by the British now.
British had power, Gandhi and the peaceful revolutionists had legitimacy... guns can only project so much power.