skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "That's like saying, water is dangerous, lets require a swimming licence from anyone who wants to swim."

The problem with your analogy is that a potential swimmer's total knowledge of the water, the difficulty of swimming and so forth isn't held by someone who materially benefits from their ignorance and could materially benefit from exploiting that ignorance.

Caveat Emptor is a fine base-line. But practical experience has shown us that in certain sectors it's not sufficient. Snake oil salesmen can ruin a market by destroying the public's trust.

So it is with investments. SEC rules are generally [1] built on the practical experience of how the market operated without them.

We threw Glass-Steagal away -- an expensively won bit of knowledge about the shortcomings of the 'invisible hand' when it came to people gambling with others' money -- on the assumption that intelligent self-interested experts wouldn't do exactly what they -- almost to a person -- then did. I can't fathom being so eager to repeat that mistake while we're still knee-deep in its debris.

[1] I won't dare use a universal; but I've yet to see a rule that wasn't created as a reaction to a problem in the market. That said, I'm far from an expert on the matter.
Written as a marketing piece. But the technology seems impressive.
It's not really $500,000 though is it? As soon as you exchange a small amount of that into dollars you crash the exchange and the value drops significantly. I'd estimate it at about $30,000 worth.
My understanding is that Austrian economists do watch numerical data, but reject the idea that the Government should try to mess with any of these numbers, like trying to rise or lower inflation, or unemployment, or GDP, etc. They want the market to be left alone.
Very cool. Something like that for GPG encrypted emails would be great.
"if you want to view a compressed file, you’ll have to go through the trouble of finding a site where you can submit your RAR file, then wait for the file to be decompressed and sent back to you."

According to Google, file systems are not necessary.
According to Apple, it's all about native apps and syncing files between devices via. icloud.
Simple and pretty laggy for me on chrome - even moving the mouse seems to lag a little.
You are correct. It is better to email their customer support or webmaster if available. Still, many websites have horrible reporting features and even worse response rates.
As someone pointed out elsewhere in this thread, people choose their A Levels at age 16.

I had a vague idea that I wanted to study medicine at age 16. I ended up doing CS. 16 year olds tend to have very fuzzy ideas about what they want to do with their lives.

Excluding them from entire fields of study based on poor A Level choices seems a bit harsh to me.
Along with the massive amount of bitcoin hoarding by early adopters, as well as the difficulty of obtaining bitcoins from a country other than America. I won't be surprised to find bitcoin exchange rates plummet after a few weeks of no media attention.
Web IPO Boom Splits VC Haves From Have-Nots
Ah, I didn't know this was available for Chrome - thank you!
I don't think a general CS degree makes sense for most people. What you need are more specialized degrees such as game development, social software, computer graphics, information retrieval, etc.
And they have been moving in this direction.

Here's configuring the middleware: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/rails_on_rack.html

Here's a stackoverflow question on how to disable ActiveRecord: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2212709/remove-activereco...

Have you seen ActiveModel? It gives a common interface for orms to interface with so swapping out ActiveRecord doesn't break half of the view helpers.

Rails 3 is far, far easier to extend and modify than 2.3 was.
Ancient Fossils Have Evolution’s First Shells
The themes you can get for eclipse now were an actual factor in my decision to not move to InteliJ
"Even in a worst case scenario, if a government or some other anti-Bitcoin faction gets a hold of greater than 50% of the processing power (an extremely expensive feat, and hardly worth it unless you're really determined to destroy the network), the rest of the network can be reconfigured to reject that block chain."

At this point the author shows that he does not have much technical background in regard to the Bitcoin network. Once an adversary gains >50% of the processing power you have basically lost. Yes - you can manually blacklist a single "fork" of the blockchain, but the adversary can fork as often as he wants and you cannot immediately tell if a new block has been generated by the adversary.
Amazon doesn't pay the tax, their customers do. Connecticut requires Amazon to collect the tax from consumers then give it to the state.
This is great, I was just thinking the other day that it should be possible to encrypt gmail messages. Now you should make it possible to encrypt GChat messages automatically when I hit Send, and then decrypt them when they are received, that way they are encrypted end to end, instead of just between my browser and the server :-)
For those with Chrome, you can try Resolution Test: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/idhfcdbheobinplaam...
This was already announced during the Google I/O 2011 keynote. It seems prudent now that Chromebooks are going to be shipping.
Andrew Warner and James Altucher on ThisWeekInStartups
losing interest means exactly that. switching to a social site that serves a different purpose.
I found this review interesting and more balanced: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/13/wot-i-think-duke-...
I have both and they work perfectly well together.
So, if I'm in the US, and I buy an unlocked phone, my options for national carriers that have at least UTMS data service are?

* AT&T

* T-Mobile

* Simple Mobile

Any others that are worth looking at?
Unless your general audience are hackers.

For example, Canonical's Launchpad requires you to sign "code of conduct" with your GPG key before doing certain actions. And, if I remember correctly, they do send GPG encrypted emails for key ownership verification.
I think that if Bitcoin is made illegal, people will trade them like dollars and West German marks were traded in East Europe during Stalinism, or like dollars and euros are traded now in Cuba, in the black market. People never stopped using good currency instead of the bad one.
> Also interesting is the fact that the case that Amazon always leans on, Quill v. North Dakota, took place in 1992 -- before the internet era even began. Yet another instance of the government not keeping up with this whole "internet" thing and changing laws to reflect that reality.

What essential differences do you see between Quill (a mail order company with a physical catalog) and Amazon? Suppose that Quill had distributed its catalog via CD - would that make a difference?

The only thing different between the "mail order age" and the internet age is the relative amount of commerce occuring via the latter. That doesn't come into play wrt whether states can "ask" for help collecting taxes from their residents.

Which reminds me - states that have no sales tax often have stores next to their border with states that do have sales tax. Residents of the states with sales tax will cross those borders to buy things at said stores, thus avoiding the tax.

Should those stores be obligated to collect tax for the sales tax states? If not, why doesn't the same rule apply to mail order and the internet?

Feel free to assume that said stores will mail goods post-sale that weren't in stock at time of purchase.
It seems actually kind of obvious that "opinionated" software would have a higher rate of change than other kinds of software: opinions change faster than the other stuff.
I often wonder if there would be a market for appliances designed to be easily repaired and upgraded. Obviously it would be a niche market, but based on the popularity of the "Maker" movement recently, I think it has some potential. The real problem is keeping up with the pace of innovation in the more custom consumer electronics.
There's some capacity for error or crime built into the numbers as they stand. This means that the bank is more-or-less insuring against those things. All customers reap the benefits of insurance, because the benefit is the security, not the restitution.
Right. In fact, it's hard to imagine any network working if over 50% of the power rests with users who are trying to subvert or destroy the system.
I don't think the author really gets why people have a problem with what's going on with Rails, and the article strikes me as a "I like this why don't you?!" type deal vs making a reasoned argument for why the constant change in the Rails way of doing things is necessary.

> If you’re learning a new language, a strong community consensus about a right and a wrong way to tackle problems aids learning

-----------------

Right, but the problem is that there doesn't seem to be a 'right' way, That's the problem.

We were all prototype a few years ago, now it jquery ... we (well I) hadn't heard of coffeescript till a few months ago and now its a default option in rails, The way we were constructing ActiveRecord finders had been set all through Rails 2, now we've changed it, the way we dealt with gems was set all through rails 2 now its changed completely in Rails 3.

I like change, I like staying on the cutting edge of web technologies, but I don't want to learn something, only to discard it and re-do it completely to bring it up to date with a new way of doing things all the time.

> If, as coders, we aren’t constantly striving to improve the status quo, what’s the point?

---------------------------

The point is that you have to realize that Rails isn't just your personal plaything any more, people are invested in it just as much any one person or group of people.

I have 5 Rails 2 apps that I support at work and a couple more outside of that, they're all on rails 2 ... bringing them up to Rails 3 without disruption, isn't going to be trivial and I'd be nice if folks acted like they understood that and didn't dismiss similar concerns, or berate folks for having concerns.

To that end, my personal preference would be to see fewer but more substantial releases and a little bit more engagement with the community before making major decisions about the framework instead of the steady drumbeat of updates and (seemingly) unilateral decisions (that coffee script decision really irked me, can you tell?)
Maybe there's value in creating a BitCoin bank that will hold money for people, just like real banks?
Bxr is suggesting that you either move that conclusion to the end or eliminate it completely and define your argument so that the reader can figure out whether or not "he gets it". If I had to guess I'd say he would prefer the latter.
javascript:(function(){document.body.appendChild(document.createElement('script')).src='http://encipher.it/javascripts/inject.js';})();

You should consider moving to https. After all, what's the point in providing this kind of script if anyone can MITM it ?

Besides that, this is pretty cool. Could you provide a standalone bookmarlet which doesn't need to download any scripts ?
4. they deleted a bunch of spam accounts
Typo in your title - bet you didn't use the bookmarklet to submit this.

http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html
What distribution do you get from this broken random shuffle?
Does one ask more questions if and only if they know less than those who ask more questions?

Maybe young folks are more inquisitive individuals.
Will Amazon Upset The Google Shopping Cart?
Another possible reason for the decline is that Facebook recently disabled a bunch of Facebook accounts associated with non-real-life names (e.g. accounts using Second Life account names).

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/05/facebook-deleting-second-li...
I see there is a recent press release about that ridiculous and poorly evidenced claim. (The haphazard survival of fossils means the confidence interval around such an estimate must be quite large.)

A more nuanced view of the relationship between brain size and brain capability can be found in a Scientific American article that quotes some of the leading researchers on the issue.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-brain-...

As another reply has already pointed out, the Flynn effect

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/flynn-beyond/

is an empirical observation that IQ scores in large, pan-national data sets that have been gathered by standardized methodologies have been rising all over the world for most of the last century.
> The whole "I'm proud to be X" would sound a bit rude or ignorant in my circles.

Of course it's rude. Everyone knows that you're supposed to say "I'm happy/proud to not be an American."
I now understand that BitCoin is actually an experiment to teach people basic economics and why many of today's rules and institutions (e.g., banks) exist. Sorry for criticizing it. BitCoin is an awesome educational tool.
It's possible that in the future I'll be complaining about changes. My point is just that climbing that first hill is fairly painless for a newbie.
I'm actually using Firefox 4. I should have mentioned that before.
Sure, but on modern browsers only (utilizing html5 file API). I am thinking about implementing RSA private key generation and online public key registry in future.
> Surely there's an easier, legal and potentially cheaper solution open to any government that wants to shut down bitcoin: buy up each and every bitcoin they can lay their hands on.

Some people won't sell. And all this would do is making bitcoins more expensive in dollars (deflation). Prices in bitcoins would adjust. No problem at all.
http://xkcd.com/538/

Really, if the government wants to shut bitcoin down it's that easy.
Completely untrue.

I've witnessed stacks of cash far in excess of that.

However, when it is done, there is usually a fair bit of armament around the cash, and the kinds of people that keep that sort of cash on hand are also not the sort you want to commit an amateur robbery against.
8 Excellent tools to get your business started
Related link:
http://m.ocregister.com/news/report-304223-nixon-library.htm...

"There is a huge significance to improving accessibility to government documents," library Director Tim Naftali said shortly after the library opened Monday morning. "We are in the business of civic literacy, of making history available to the people."
Finding your position with Geolocation
Watch,bridesmaids,online,megavideo
watch,bridesmaids,online,megavideo
with some improvisational freedom given to these talented actresses. The Coward is credit that he realizes that all he is the director, the writers of The Authors film.
I took the first MIT OCW course in electrical engineering and computer science (6.00) from Fall '08 to get my feet wet in computer science. I was not a CS major in college, but after reading through the syllabi of their courses and watching a few lectures, I think I have a feel for what they're going for.

Their intro course teaches computer science in Python, which is one of the simplest fully-featured languages to learn. It goes through programming structure and syntax without getting too much into the arcane. It piques the interest without scaring the new student off. If they decide not to continue, they now know the first bits of Python and can start learning more on their own.

If they do like it, however...the next level (6.01) is taught in Scheme, as best as I can determine. (MIT students correct me if I'm wrong) It rehashes a lot of the same programming concepts taught in the Python course but adds more on top.

I think colleges would benefit by asking if their students just want to program, or if they want to learn computer science.
How does refraining from collecting sales tax make Amazon look cheaper than Barnes and Noble? The sticker price doesn't factor in the sales tax; on an item-by-item comparison, the prices would look the same if B&N could match Amazon.

Based on this observation, I find the explanation that Amazon's not interested in spending the money to track state and local sales tax policies to be more plausible.
Probably... At least it would be more traceable, though...
I think a better word is "traceable". Presumably with CHAPS one can find out who the money went to, and other mechanisms can come into play to get it back.

Bitcoin, though, is supposed to herald the awesome future of totally anonymous, totally untraceable transactions in which once your money's gone, you're fucked.
Yes, the US gov can easily prevent financial institutions from exchanging Bitcoins: If a bank holds US dollars, those dollars are "stored" in the US (even if the bank is located outside the US). So the US gov just needs to threaten that it will freeze the banks dollar deposits in case a bank decides to exchange Bitcoins.

No, the US government cannot easily block other types of Bitcoin exchanges. Consider bitmarket.eu: The site itself is hosted outside the US. Money transfer happens directly between individual users, e.g., by wire transfer. There's no single entity that you can attack.

And even in case where bank transfers are shut down you can still switch to cash. If you have a trusted exchange you can send cash via postal mail. Or your local drug dealer changes his business from dealing drugs to dealing Bitcoins. Of course, this will prevent many legitimate uses of Bitcoin - but I'll doubt that it can stop the usage of Bitcoin for "illegal" transactions.
> Once an adversary gains >50% of the processing power you have basically lost.

Wrong. An attacker having more than 50% of the network would just stop payments until the rest of the network rejects the attacker nodes.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Attacker_has_a_lot_of_...
In order to focus on our core strengths and deliver new innovations.

I wish they'd let someone know what those are.
Green Fluorescent Protein Makes for Living Lasers
That scheme would fail due to basic forces of supply and demand. The government in this case would be a de facto market maker and the price would naturally get pushed up to the maximum amount the government is willing to spend as speculators continually test the limit, which if the government has an 'acquire all bitcoins at any cost' mission, means the limits of its overall solvency.

It's actually a similar scenario to what's currently going on in the bond markets. The Fed steps in any time bonds have a weak auction. Traders, knowing this, buy lots of bonds. It's basically a free roll for them because they know the Fed will always step in to prevent a major dip in price--and this cycle will continue until the Fed itself (aka, the dollar) collapses.

So who knows, maybe they are dumb enough to try! :)
I'm a bit disappointed, because it renders relative widths according to the current window width, which would be much smaller on smaller screens.

Many of my webpages have something like

width: 80%
max-width: 80em

or so for the main text. Which ensures that on a narrow window you still see a decent part of the main text, but on this test site it looks as though you only see the margin with a narrow browser window.
My biggest problems were mysql2 (i had mysql installed and setup already from my php dev stack) and bcrypt-ruby (required for devise)
Sure! Just toss your MP3 player in the trash, and replace the whole thing with a new/upgraded model. That's the ultimate stage in integration.
wow, what an arrogant post! I hope young and old devels alike will think twice before going to work for a manager who treats skilled labor as a sweatshop commodity and totally ignores basic economics (yes, experienced devs might provide more value, but they also cost more - you have to treat everyone on an individual basis - it's risk/reward what matters, not just reward!).

P.S. also, I don't think you'll be hiring your devs to answer questions all day long on an internet message board? So Stackoverflow statistics are useless.
You don't have to keep up if you don't want to. Your apps will not stop working if you choose not to upgrade. I have apps still running on Rails 1.x and 2.x. They don't get huge traffic and they are meeting the customer's needs. There would be no business advantage for these particular customers if I had to charge them to upgrade.
I worked at Pixar from 2000-2010 and I can tell you that a really good director definitely earns his/her salary. A good director can mean the difference between a bad, overbudget film and an on-budget success. You're going to have a lot harder time cutting costs than you might think too. Salaries dominate the budget of films like Avatar and Toy Story 3 and the kind of talent it takes to make those films can't currently be had for less. Maybe you don't care if films like that disappear from the market but you should at least acknowledge that is what will happen if DVD and ticket sales continue to slide. None of the alternatives currently on the table compare.
There are major federal investments in anti-money laundering systems that monitor bank transactions

That worked really well for Wachovia...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-d...
Can you elaborate on how to came to the discount factor you used?
The thing I find more dangerous than that is anyone with your wallet.dat file can go and do whatever with your account.

There really should be additional checks. Having to sign your transfer requests and allow people to impose a voluntary delay on their transactions to allow time for cancellation would help significantly.
This is a surprise? Sony is known for making weird formats:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_formats

The do have some big winners in there, like CD and BluRay.
Some people won't sell. And all this would do is making bitcoins more expensive in dollars (deflation). Prices in bitcoins would adjust. No problem at all.

Great if it's not a problem: can you tell me why in a bit more detail please? :)

You see, I love the idea of bitcoin, but this is the one thought I can't get out of my head.

Say the government drives up the price of bitcoin, as you suggest. Every hour of every day, deflation takes place... but the government aren't selling any of theirs, and if nobody else is selling, it sounds like we rapidly head towards a stalemate where bitcoin becomes ridiculously hard to exchange in either direction.
Rovio Adding NFC to Angry Birds for Geo Gaming
No. One exchange one day.
Yeah, as I was reading the review, I was willing to give the game a rent despite Kuchera's complaints about the comedy.

But when he started going on about the checkpoints, health, shooting, chopping, loading and level design... my willingness evaporated.
Sweet! That's perfect. Thank you.
Neither the first post ("WTH is going on with Rails?") nor this one is talking about upgrading existing 2.x apps to 3.x. There's a lot of stuff to change, and it can take a not insignificant development effort to port them.

But that's not the question here -- the question is whether Rails is getting progressively easier or harder for a newbie to pick up and whether those changes are going to result in better or worse applications.
3 ideas you should steal from HubSpot
Review: Duke Nukem Forever Shoulda Stayed Vaporware
Nokia and Apple settle patent dispute
If they don't, wikileaks will make them available anyway, sooner or later
Node.js has a heap size limit. One of the biggest weaknesses IMO well before people complain about CPU cores.
Nicely done.
Roundcubemail has been struggling with email encryption for a while now. I would love to see you solution in a plugin: http://trac.roundcube.net/wiki/Plugin_Repository
Another cogent reminder about over promising and under delivering
Meizu m8? Seriously?