skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article is glib. It begins with a tragic anecdote that would soften anyone up - it certainly did me, no doubt triggering a brain reaction that caused me to read on. The author raises matters of great moral and social gravity. But what are his actual points?

1. That the biology of brain function affects behavior. Well, duh. 2. That this has legal implications. Double duh. 3. That our present legal system is one-size-fits-all. No it isn't. It may in aggregate be crude and stupid, but not that crude and stupid, as everybody knows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extenuating_circumstances) and as the article itself shows (cf the Parks story). 4. That society's concepts of guilt change over time. 5. That scientific findings are relevant here. Who is arguing against any of this?

How about particular scientific findings with particular legal consequences? Well, "This research is just beginning"... "but if it works well, it will be a game changer." Today, "neuroimaging is a crude technology", but "within the coming decades" we "will be better able to say why people are predisposed to act the way they do". And that's it. The grandeur-to-substance ratio approaches that of strong AI.

Yes, the brain is important and people are not ideal atoms of free will. It does not follow that brain imaging has turned centuries of jurisprudence on their head.
It hasn't been updated since 2003. Come back when there's an up-to-date oldest list.
Ehm, how we you know that? Maybe the salts were stored another place? Or simply the attacker didn't release them? Or maybe MtGox used a site-wide salt that's stored in their codebase somewhere?

EDIT: Okay, they appear to be unsalted (according to nbpoole): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2671714
Penalties, Penalties, Penalties. The Canadian privacy commissioner is already pursuing this strategy: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/05/04/technology-da...
The list I've seen has over 60k entries.
Technically true, but no-one can sell off 500k bitcoins without the market crashing anyway, so from a practical perspective, no liquidity is lost.
And also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password_cracking

" Graphics processors can speed up password cracking by a factor of 50 to 100 over general purpose computers. As of 2011, commercial products are available that claim the ability to test up to 2,800,000,000 passwords a second on a standard desktop computer using a high-end graphics processor. [3] Such a device can crack a 10 letter single-case password in one day. Note that the work can be distributed over many computers for an additional speedup proportional to the number of available computers with comparable GPUs."
I agree. If one ever needed an example of why Mt. Gox or Bitcoin shouldn't be taken seriously. They had a withdrawal limit of $1000 per day, too. This was simply to save one more day of that.

It makes you wonder if Mt. Gox actually had the hard currency to back up everyone's account balance.
Love games? Want to build your dream dev team? We need a Lead Game Developer
I bought your book last week, and can recommend it to anybody who wants to get a solid grip on CoffeeScript.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2671714 (Summary: Because you can Google at least some of the hashes and find they're already cracked)
No, but that's also what would happen when the stock market behaves weirdly enough. It's a good thing, though, that stock markets and foreign exchanges have more trading volume; I'm starting to wonder what happens if a random blokes with a million actual USD wants to game the bitcoin like George Soros did it with the Swedish kroner.
What source are you getting this 80 BTC / day withdrawal limit from?
Exactly. Skip lists are great for two reasons (and as far as I know, only these two reasons):

1. They're really cool and clever. This is a valid reason.

2. They offer easier concurrency than most alternatives. It's straightforward (though not quite easy, unless you have transactional memory) to make a lock-free concurrent skip list. Try that with a heap or a red-black tree, and you'll quickly run into all sorts of memory conflicts and crazy-complicated locking. The fact that a skip list only provides probabilistic logarithmic time bounds really makes coordination between threads easier.

(Note that it's possible to do some similar stuff with modified versions of other data structures. For example, you can make a good concurrent dictionary by taking a red-black tree, relaxing the invariants, and adding a periodic rebalancing thread to run in the background. But that's a topic too long to fit into this post.)
I have to admit that when you have real money behind a hobby[1] project of this size and amount you might want to hire some security professionals to do an audit of your system. It goes for all the exchanges. Heck, I hope brick and mortar banks do a 'real' audit while I'm on the subject (with all the hacking being done everywhere).

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19516.0
Show HN: HN Trends - like Google Trends, but for Hacker News
As usual, solid startup advice from VentureHacks, unlike a lot of amateurish bloggers who think they know what they are talking about :-)
You're being downvoted because you neither understand the Bitcoin system nor the mechanics of how Mt. Gox works, as evidenced by your post.
NO early adopter leaves his wallet.dat file unprotected on a known compromised computer.

Now that's making claims without proof.
my first thought: ultimate captcha!
Doesn't look as if passwords were salted, though :-( (Edit: just read in another comment that there seems to have been a global salt)
knowledge I guess, I think it's an important period in ones life. safety.
It's public. I have the db loaded in mysql right now, and have confirmed its validity (my account is in there).
$0.01 is still a profit if you stole the coins.
Did you know him? I don't, and I would be hesitant to condemn his character based on a couple of brief anecdotes.
Hackers?

Cliched argument; but every time I see such a misuse, I get a little sadder.
The real question is if mtgox can actually reverse trades like they claim they're going to do as a result of this situation.

In a regulated exchange it's certainly possible. Is it possible with bitcoin? Once the block is away...it's away.
I'm a little annoyed that MtGox effectively is bitcoin. I've been spending my mined coins on goods from various merchants and it has been working great. That's what bitcoin is designed to be, a currency. Recently there's so much speculation and people buying, holding and selling that so much focus has shifted away from the real use.
Why is it so difficult to make a private copy of this spreadsheet ? There are no download links, or an easy way in Google Spreadsheet to copy a document via URL !?!!
The hacker wasn't trying to get money. He was trying to undermine the system. And it's working.

The $1000 was a bonus on top of all the doubt he has now instilled in anyone who has bitcoins.
Software Wars
"Work is the process of exchanging your time for money."

I never want to "work" in an organisation where this is true.
I wanted to see if I could buy some on the cheap, but I wasn't already set up to do so. I would never take this currency seriously, but I'd be willing to put in a bit of money to speculate a bit.

I looked at bitmarket.eu but they have a manual verification process, which I'm sure would not complete until after the price recovers. Oh well.
Don't get me wrong, but this question is too naive.
So the honest answer to your question is "C".

But let me tell you why I still like you asking this kind of question, sir. You've tracked down that your shoes don't to your roadmap anymore. And you've tried out new shoes. But it looks like you are looking for boots.

So the simple fact that you don't get blinded by a trademark of shoes is making you 'sympathic'.

Shouts
.X4
It is not possible to write any software without infringing one or more software patents. This is getting truly absurd.
Erlang and First-Person Shooters in online games [pdf]
Very sloppy. When you're dealing with actual money, industry-standard practices like this shouldn't be considered optional.
Tart 0.1
I bet if that eyelash were on the stable equilibrium point, you'd now have two stable equilibrium points (one on either side of the eyelash, basically), and possibly an additional unstable point (balanced on the eyelash).
inb4 http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=bitcoin
Awesome work!

Can you normalize it against total text volume? Number of mentions always goes up with time as HN grows, % of posts mentioning will be a better measure of mindshare.
... and considering the audience and the amount of free GPU hardware out there, it's not out of the question that someone might try and turn all that parallel computing muscle toward more nefarious purposes. Not that this all seems necessary, of course, given the woefully insecure state of MtGox these days...
Keep hoping: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2656837
I don't see an Internet wide login and identity service as related to the entertainment industry any more it is to many others. Furthermore, I'm fairly certain that facebook's business, while it facilitates entertainers, is not actually engaged in entertainment. To argue that its different from Ma-Bell in its basic feature, connecting people, I feel is a complete misunderstanding of the service.

Of course, my sister uses her telephone connection for entertainment as well..
Homework assignment: what's $1k in BTC at $0.01/BTC?
I've played with one. Domokos gave a lecture at Trinity College, Cambridge. Most ways that you place it, it behaves unremarkably, but there's one way of placing it such that it rocks back and forth and has almost settled down to the almost-stable point when it falls over perpendicular and ends up at the single stable point. This is the way to demonstrate it.
This was apparently on HN 14 hours ago:

Mtgox hacked database listed for sale (pastebin.com)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2670302

pointed to: http://pastebin.com/ui0nusuZ

which says:

I have hacked into mtgox database. Got a huge number of logins password combos.
Mtgox has fixed the problem now. Too late, cause I've already got the data.

Will sell the database for the right price.
Send your offers to：
gfc06@hotmail.com
first of all, very cool.

how is it normalized? every single thing I type in has an upward trend, which to me just suggests that interest in Hacker News has increased over the last few years... and I don't really need a chart to tell me that since I live in silicon valley :)
Why clean code is more important than efficient code
this is the only way to fight incompetence of some websites. those passwords are (most likely) unsalted vanilla MD5 hashes. just entered a few of them into google from that file and yes, many of them are present in rainbow tables. damn. makes me angry as a programmer how financial website can be this unsecure and easy to compromise.
Your post ran counter to internet-libertarian dogma.
LOGON TRANSFORMER FOR WINDOW 7
FEATURES:

New in this version:
- Program rewritten
- Memory improvements
- Image resizing improved
- Preview improved
Let's build the most awesome Sampler "The True Hipster"
In search for the sampler "The True Hipster", I'm searching for music proposals.
For now we have on our playlist:

* Corey Hart - Sunglasses At Night Stereo ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_HlTGzkKeE

* Dire Straits - Money for Nothing ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlPjxz4LGak

* Krister Linder - Style TVC ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utdQXb3ffB8

the full playlist here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_HlTGzkKeE&playnext=1&list=PLEEAB6283BC143864
It looks like reinvention of incron.
Thanks so much! Hmm, good idea on % of posts, though most of the value I believe is in comparing multiple terms, in which case the raw number of mentions isn't as important as the relation of the trend lines.
> If you stop being their customer, they will have just to live with that.

That's precisely the theory behind free governments the world over, to wit: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed". Except we all know in practice there are barriers to withdrawing consent from the government, just as there are surely barriers to leaving a market.
Is it possible to somehow normalize the numbers by the total number of posts/comments, so that trends across the years do not mostly reflect the user base/activity growth at HN?

Awesome work thus far though.
Lua 5.2 Released
I agree with you. Before there's a need for Django to be on Python 3, there must be a major need that Python 3 serves which Python 2 does not.
It is pretty clear that Mt Gox rolled back all trades from now to the first big unauthorized trade.
Absolutely, only it's more subtle. When you work at a company that feeds you gourmet lunches, does your oil changes and laundry for you, arranges shuttles from your apartment to the office, etc., you begin to feel like you couldn't possibly live any other way.

That is the dark side of perks.

Another way to keep people stuck is to pay them too much, much more than they could ever earn elsewhere. They will then rationalize that they are doing it just for the money, which leads them to hate their job, even tho they will not leave (because of the money). Then you see worsening politicking, squabbling, dark humor about "at least it pays well" and general "acting out."

I saw both of these in action at my last real job, at a tech co. you've heard of. The wild parties, the liquor cabinet, the gourmet kitchen, the rooftop deck in TriBeCa, and more importantly, the excessively huge amounts of profit-sharing... it was like geek summer camp, until it turned into a teen drama because of the "poor little rich boys."

I knew I could never work at another place after that, because (in most ways) it was just so great. We were all spoiled rotten.
http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=android%2C+iphone
Good point. I wasn't really thinking about normalization as I was more interested in comparing trends on multiple terms, but I don't think it'd be too much work to change the algorithm to account for HN's growth.
Show HN: The Creative Commons of Privacy Policies
I feel your pain. You are in a unique position as a developer. Most of what you learn in your degree program, whatever it is, will not have direct relevance on how to run a business, create a product, build a company, or how to work with other people in a business environment. I have several friends who all either did some college and dropped out it bored them and their interests led them to successful careers in software (two of them are senior independent consultants, one is a CTO and founder of several startups). Lack of degree was only a barrier for a brief time when their experience wasn't strong enough to carry them forward. It's no such barrier now.

In your particular case, I think you should seize the opportunity to build something for yourself. Whether you succeed or fail will be immaterial compared to what you learn from the experience. Like someone said, school will always be there.

I say go for it. You're only young once.
If it wasn't for the lowercase 'e' I might have thought it was a coincidence!
No More Bitcoins
The only place I've read anything about Bitcoins is HN. Now they seem to be taking over the main page.

This is a DOA technology, just let it die.
You are being unreal, but I'd go with the startup anyway.

School will always be there, and your experience won't be that different based on age. I had friends up to about age 26 when I was in college, and I've known people that did it all throughout their 20s. The chance to found a startup with people you really respect doesn't arise all that often, though. Take advantage of it and see where it leads you, and if it doesn't work out, then you can go back to school.
Was he accepting BitCoins?
I could have bet 100$ that RoR would have been chosen simply by reading the first paragraph: "I've already used Ruby a few years ago but I'm new to Python". What else do you want?

On a side note, Django is far from being "minimalist"; http://flask.pocoo.org/ is minimalist, not django. I'll agree that Django is also less "Convention over Configuration" than Ruby.. for instance, it's a bit hard to chose where to put helper functinos in Django, whereas Rails put a helper file for you, etc.
I agree, just wanted to see a pure JS dependent solution for a JS project. Know what I mean?
Yup, this seems like an obvious improvement as I believe you're the 3rd to mention it already :)

I'll definitely do that next, since it's not too hard to implement and seems like a big win when you are just trending a single term.
Join the Forbes List of America's Most Promising Companies
Yes, but they're the only big game in town not because they held a gun to anyone's head or threatened to throw their customers in jail if they dared to start using another exchange, but because they provided the best service. They did not engage in coercion. This is the heart of the free market and of anarchy.
Your problem is entirely in the line I quoted:

"We all know that we are right, as the true value of DNF is around 65-70%. "

This makes the whole exercise total bullshit. Obviously the data is irrelevant since you assumed your conclusion.

And another thing if you had actually clicked thru to metacritic you'd realize why there are two peaks in your data. The console versions are consistently rated a full star lower then the pc version. I took me less then a minute to verify that at least 2 of the 40-rating reviews were based on console versions.
That $1K stolen represents the first trades at the starting price of the crash, i.e. 50 or so Bitcoins.

Given the profits MtGox is making, it wouldn't surprise me the exchange buys $1K in Bitcoins for the account holder so he has his 500K coins again.
I joined a start up right out of high school. It went belly up in 2001 or so, but that lead to some other jobs and what not. Though, now I'm 30 and looking for work and kind of wishing I'd done college right after high school.

Maybe it's a 'the grass is greener' kind of thing. Though I did have the same mindset that "school will always be there." I just never quite made it back to "there."

(My response might be a but jumbled, but I am agreeing with you, while at the same time looking back on my own thoughts and feelings of past decisions. Sorry for any confusion.)
Mt. Gox's security concerns are definitely troubling, but my guess is the effect on the market won't be huge as the Bitcoin community seems fairly committed to the long term.
Yes I do think they are exaggerated. However I would say do it and set yourself a timeframe to re-evaluate, regardless of money.
Hopefully they'll hire some security consultants as well.
3 Handy Apps for Digital Wizards
Presumably the same sense as meant by Leona Helmsley:

"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley#Tax_evasion_conv...
I'm a fan of Eloquent JavaScript. In my book on CoffeeScript (http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript), I recommend it as a resource for readers who want a thorough introduction to JavaScript. So obviously, I think it's pretty damn cool that someone ported his book to CoffeeScript (albeit with modified examples). The inclusion of Underscore.js as a standard library is, I think, also quite sensible.

Of course, there's a fundamental philosophical difference between my book and Smooth CoffeeScript, which is highlighted on the book's front page:

> Why no JavaScript? Because it is difficult enough to learn one programming language at a time. This book does not assume knowledge of JavaScript or another language.

I, on the other hand, think that it's important to understand JavaScript in order to work with CoffeeScript, and that CoffeeScript is not well-suited to being a first programming language. The situation will improve as tools for debugging CoffeeScript become available, but even then, it's unlikely that you'll use CoffeeScript for a real project without reading documentation (and code) for libraries written in JavaScript.

But hey, I'm happy to see anything that gets more people hooked on CoffeeScript. :)
That $1K stolen represents the first trades at the starting price of the crash, i.e. 50 or so Bitcoins.

Is there confirmation of this somewhere?
I can't login at MtGox at the moment. What's the best measure to take now?

I'm assuming MtGox will reset the passwords for those with an email account associated. Not sure what they will do for those without, hopefully they have IP logs for those accounts?
This articles seems based on a misunderstanding that design is only about looking good.

I would actually say Hacker News and Stack Overflow have very good design. They have design that meets the goals of the sites. That is what design is, meeting the goals of your product.

Sure, design can look good, but looking good is only one part of design. It’s not all of design.
Not much to see when it's in private beta.
This is my fear exactly. To my understanding life has got its own tendency to unfold. The older you are, the more distractions you have. Chances are slimier to finish a degree in a well known \ respected university. This is my fear.
I like the looks of this chart of the crash, haven't seen that kind before: http://leanback.eu/bitcoin/plots/20110619195756-mtgox.png (found via @zedshaw on Twitter)
But what you are saying is - let's just have "some design". Like nice background pattern or smth. Sorry but I so disagree with this. In case of mentioned sites it would be a major fail. And btw I'm a designer too...
Ahh yes, you're correct, I got confused.
For the most part, I agree. I was thinking about services like facebook where the user has to take the initiative. But it would seem these are becoming the exception.

You're right; exploring a web of trust rolled into this would be interesting.
I think your taking my "entertainment" to mean the industry and not a category. Facebook is not an essential service of the internet. It is not the only way to communicate like Ma Bell was. It is not a dictating force in the economy like Standard Oils was.
I'm sure a gomboc would self-right when completely underwater, but what about a floating gomboc half-submerged? Different problem.
He is dead, and quite likely was an atheist.

"Now I will have to say that the great Prof. Lettvin could hardly get himself bent out of shape just because some puny undergrad had come forward with a puny work product, but I was to learn that day what he might heap upon a bullshitter."

Your heart is in the right place, but do not foul the memory of such a beautiful, insightful, and honourable individual with bullshit---metaphorical or otherwise.
These trends are fairly interesting...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=pg

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=y+combinator

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=pg%2C+tptacek%2C+patio11%2...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=2007%2C+2008%2C+2009%2C+20...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=android%2C+iphone vs. http://www.google.com/trends?q=android%2C+iphone&ctab=0&...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=show+hn%2C+ask+hn%2C+tell+...

http://hntrends.jerodsanto.net/?q=mac%2C+gruber%2C+steve+job...

Don't forget thought that these trends include the user's own comments and submissions in addition to mentions of them in other users' comments.

suking, this is truly awesome. It immediately joined my bookmark folder of favorite HN tools. I'd be curious, though, if whether or not it would be possible to filter out user names when counting how many times a word has appeared on the site. Or would that be too much of a challenge?
From what I've found with a quick search it seems like most held wealth is earned rather than inherited. Does anyone know if this is accurate, and what the typical 'pre-earnings' demographic background of the very wealthy is in the U.S.?