skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I LOVED reading the culture. I'm still working my way through the books. They're eminently quotable. Here are some of my favourites:

> “Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot,”

> It would have helped if the Culture had used some sort of emblem or logo; but, pointlessly unhelpful and unrealistic to the last, the Culture refused to place its trust in symbols. It maintained that it was what it was and had no need for such outward representation.

> Just as it could not imprison itself with laws, impoverish itself with money or misguide itself with leaders, so it would not misrepresent itself with signs.

> So it had effectively frozen its primary memory and cognitive functions, wrapping them in fields which prevented both decay and use. It was working instead on back-up picocircuitry, in real space, and using real-space light to think with (how humiliating).

> Originally Damage was played on such occasions because only during the breakdown of law and morality, and the confusion and chaos normally surrounding Final Events, could the game be carried out in anything remotely resembling part of the civilized galaxy; which, believe it or not, the Players like to think they’re part of.

I hope this coveys the texture of the books. I have more quotes collected at my blog.http://bollu.github.io/quotes-from-the-culture.html
Governments want you to think of crypto primarily as an asset and not a currency, because they don't want to give up control over currency creation. The fact that you have to file capital gains for every crypto will be the giant silent hurdle that stimies wide spread use. The only way to overcome this is if so many people ignore the law that it becomes unenforceable. Only time will tell.
In the industry the other ingredients are called “pixie dust”.

The heavy lifting is done by the caffeine.
Correction: we need to solve climate change in a short term, not long term.
The fact that all of these require explanations is evidence against an obvious/immediate association in the minds of likely readers.
Yeah the bottom of the article has a list of times his likeness has been used in an attack. Yikes, the downsides of being a public figure.
I can at least light a dollar on fire for some small measure of warmth!
People are willing to follow religions because of society, family and peer pressure,I take it they will be willing to do so under the same pressure and for something that can at least be scientifically proved to exist.
I don't see how this is "without the downside". A refund could end up being more expensive to Tesla in the long run (in terms of # of BTC). If BTC has a temporary dip they have to give you more BTC to equal the $ amount. BTC has demonstrated, while volatile, to be quite likely to keep nudging upward.

In addition, just because it is priced relative to USD doesn't mean it is accurate to say the transaction takes place in dollars. That is absolutely not true.

Lastly, as someone who has only bought 2 cars in my lifetime - who refunds cars? Is that common? I've never heard of such a thing. What is the return rate on Teslas?
What's dehumanizing is having your trustworthiness reduced to a single number at all, not the fact that it is done in a semi-automated manner.
> And finally, taxes. Imagine owing capital gains tax on top of sales tax? When you buy something in Bitcoin, it’s as if you’re liquidating an asset. In this case, you’ll pay whatever capital gains tax applies to the Bitcoin you liquidated on top of sales taxes for your purchase.

The author seems to misunderstand how the transaction happen and how laws look in a lot of countries.

In many places, the only time you have to pay taxes related to Bitcoin is when you convert it to another currency, be it Euro, American Dollars or Ethereum's Eth, you pay when you change it, and it's usually capital gain tax that gets paid.

By allowing you to buy a Tesla in Bitcoins directly (since Tesla runs their own nodes as well, apparently) you can avoid having to pay those capital gain taxes, as you're not actually realizing any gain, you're using it as a currency and in it's current form. You're not converting your Bitcoin to USD and then use that as purchase, you're purchasing it with Bitcoins directly.

All this is very early though, and I don't know of any court cases so both my opinion and everyone elses are just guesses at this point. Gonna be interesting to see what happens in the future.

Disclaimer: since I'm writing "how laws look in a lot of countries" I'm obviously not putting forward a US-centric view that many replies seems to assume I mean. And also, obviously don't take random advice on the internet regarding tax laws, check your own countries.
That's a fair point, Starbucks coffee has more caffeine than an average cup of coffee. I'm sure many people (including myself) are not aware of that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-caf...
Have we truly been ready for any of humanity's technological developments? They tend to be very messy, and lead to all sorts of consequences few could predict.
I was making a settlers 2 reference whats the Burma shave one?
Show HN: Stock-Trigger
A Windows App which will give you triggers on any number of STOCKS that you want!
I don't think it's a bit strange if they're heavily invested in Bitcoin. You may be assuming it's a good-faith argument.
Your sentence is insidious. What you call "harassing someone neuroatypical" were requests by colleagues and friends to exhibit less behaviors perceived as harassment. You can not conflate the two. Is it harassment to ask to not put a mattress in your university office?
Many people who win a lottery manage to spend it all, and often have a psychological meltdown while they're at it.

Something similar seems to happen to those who are born rich. They can have the perfect Instagram life - but they're more likely to do nothing much of interest except develop some addictions.

When you can have anything you have nothing, because you have no skin in the game. You can't lose - which means you also can't win.

There's an ancient fairy tale about a table that produces infinite food on demand. If you're a starving medieval peasant that's pretty appealing. But as heavens go, it has limited ambition.

The Culture is the updated equivalent. It's a poor person's idea of a rich utopia.

And it doesn't make sense. The Minds are almost infinitely smart and kind. But humans and events continually surprise them, even though they act more like humans than the humans do.

And they have a vicious streak when angry.

Everyone is free, but only if it doesn't affect anything that matters. You can do anything and think anything, but apparently no human ever considers whether they could become a Mind, or vice versa. (It's a flattering conceit that we're so interesting that a super-AI couldn't model our behaviour with ease. But it's not a very plausible one.)

There's also a fair amount of by-the-numbers comic book violence.

So while the books are fun and quirky and intelligently written, their attempts to grapple with utopia are more at the level of lottery-winning nerd-heaven wish fulfilment than credible post-human foreshadowing.

I'd guess the reality is that any culture operating at that level would be incomprehensible and also invisible. No part of it would fit into our minds.

It's interesting to try to imagine that. But it's not much of a foundation for a popular SF series.
If we assume relatively slow travel, which do you think we'd be more successful at designing?

1) A psychological screening program to select those suited for long life, or

2) A whole society that manages to perpetuate itself long enough to reach the goal?

(Not that these are our only two options in a slow travel scenario)
"Supreme Being" is just concise and archaic language.
This is all it means.
"You must believe we may not be in the base level of reality and our universe could be a simulation"
My personal experience is that establishing a good exercise routine helps with the diet a lot. If you're pushing yourself fitness-wise, you start to notice the impact diet (and sleep) has on your performance and select for foods that won't make you miserable during your workout.
I don't think it's that we find conflict interesting in and of itself. What we find interesting to read is things that reveal some truth, especially about human nature, and especially if this truth is non-trivial.

The long standing trope is that Utopia is impossible not because of technical limitations, but because of deep truths about human nature. This goes back to the Old Testament -- e.g. the tower of Babel - the first attempt to build a utopia -- dissolved into conflict. Or perhaps the Garden of Eden was the first attempt, and that also broke down.

People have been trying to build Utopias ever since, and usually these projects become object lessons revealing some kind of human flaw that is incompatible with utopia. In every utopia there is a snake, and that snake is some aspect of our nature that destroys the utopia or forces us out of it.
Thanks for digging these up. I agree OP would have to try to avoid first looking at coffee.
From following comments, it would appear that the robots.txt file (or part of it) is editable via a MediaWiki page.

I would guess that this is what is referred to.
This is interesting. I can't think of a comparison for foreign currency where the seller would reserve the right to refund you with an alternate currency (such as USD), rather than the currency you paid in.

However, often brands like Apple incorporate currency risk into their higher foreign prices.
I could be wrong, but I think the GP was commenting specifically about time of day? At idealized midnight the vector between you and the sun goes through the center of the Earth, indicating that increasing altitude takes you away from the Sun, instead of towards it. At idealized Noon, the opposite is true.
The earlier post, if I’m not mistaken: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25063726
This past year I've been doing a lot of heavy manual labor; excavating large areas using a pick axe and shovel, hauling it away in a wheel barrow. And moving large ~200lb granite boulders in a wheel barrow ~1/3rd a mile up a slight grade from a nearby mountain.

At the same time I started drinking a strong pot of Earl Gray tea every morning to try get my butt in gear and outside in the dirt quicker. Normally I'm not a caffeine user. For the first week of this, my teeth would chatter and hands shake after finishing the pot of tea, it was very reminiscent of a cocaine bump. And it certainly worked well for motivating me to get busy.

But something I learned was my endurance went to shit on the caffeine. I was super impatient and wanting to do everything as fast as possible, while doing fundamentally slow long-haul heavy-mode operations. It turned out I got less done with the caffeine than without. I'd quickly burn myself out inadvertently trying to move everything faster than they were ever going to move with just my manpower. It was like the stimulant tricked me into operating deep in the realm of diminishing returns where I'm putting in 200% effort for 10% faster movement, while making myself frustrated with how long it's taking.

Now I don't think caffeine is particularly useful for anything physical that doesn't resemble a sprint, at least not for me. The psychological effects just increase the likelihood of burnout by mistreating an endurance task as a sprint.
Probably not. If they are not ready to flatten a city block to go after one device... The areas where they can pinpoint without getting data from device will still be tens or hundreds of meters in size...
Tesla will let you purchase a car in bitcoin (but denominated in USD). When refunding purchases made in Bitcoin, it can choose BTC or USD.

Tesla's support for cryptocurrency seems morally in the same ballpark as that politician who was wearing a cloth "masks are stupid I'm just wearing this because I have to" mask over an N95.
It's very cool that this is catching on. $2500 is expensive but if demand can be spread outside of the existing commercial market then a virtuous circle may result - falling product prices combined with lowered energy use and increased utility. This could pair very well with a simple voice-controlled interface; besides newspapers it seems like it could be great for maps and dashboards/instrumentation displays. I really hope this follows the same track as 'digital photo frames' that preceded LEDs becoming cheap, ubiquitous, and of excellent quality. Great as they are, I also like E-ink for its lower power use and lack of luminance.

Re the blog page, I would have liked larger photos including close-ups; it looks great in the video but with a cut every few seconds it's hard to really study the quality.
Think like an educator about code quality
>The value of bitcoin is driven by speculation, and in turns that increases the incentive for the miners, not the other way around. There's no value created by crunching random SHA-256.

So you are saying increasing security, uncounterfietability, censorship-resistance, and decentralization of money distribution has no value?

The central banks/treasuries spending $$$$ yearly to secure their money and governments spending $$$$ on militaries, intelligence, LEO, etc... to add layers of security would disagree with you.

Increased hash rate leads to higher prices and increased prices lead to higher hash rate. Both are true here, this loop is a key component of the NGU (Number Go Up) technology in Bitcoin.
Yeah... and I'd also add that a pro could make Pianotek 7 sound awesome.

I'm not an audio engineer, so I just use Abbey Road's Yamaha VST - its default settings sound great, no extra work for me.
> For some of us

I suspect it's a small enough minority nobody is too worried about it from a policy point of view.
Amphetamine and methamphetamine are actually approved as treatments for morbid obesity by the FDA in America. AMP is actually still used in some cases today, though much more sparingly than historically. The side-effects and potential dependency make their use often very problematic. Still, between increasing the base metabolic rate and energy levels, and suppressing appetite, they do work.

While caffeine has a very different mechanism of action, it does appear to indirectly work on the same dopamine-adenosine system. So it's not too surprising it'd work much the same way for weight loss. And fortunately caffeine seems to be mostly self-limiting in its compulsiveness.
There is a product, called Joan Home that is meant for home use and can display a single Google calendar https://getjoan.com/shop/joan-home/. If you share the calendar, it can be perfect to show family events.

Disclaimer: I work for the company that develops the Joan product and the e-ink display, mentioned in the article.
Use of Weapons is a masterpiece, but (or maybe therefore?) is definitely not an easy read. Like most stories with a nonlinear narrative, its true greatness only becomes apparent on a second – or maybe third – read. But to make it easier to grok, realize that there are two timelines that alternate: one goes forward in ”present time” and drives the main plot; the other goes backwards in time and describes how the protagonist ended up the way he does.
This is basically saying, don’t buy a Tesla with bitcoin if you have any thought that you might return it, because that will make things super complicated with such a volatile currency.

If it wasn’t this way, people would return their vehicle if they saw bitcoin value jump up 100%.
it's a waste for 99.9% of the World population, assuming that bitcoin's 6 million wallets represent 6 million different people.

So yes, it's arithmetically a total waste.
Since they can choose how to refund, they can refund in USD as long as BTC is appreciating, and refund in BTC if BTC depreciates below the spot price at the time of purchase. On the backend, they can just convert BTC to cash if they're worried about currency risk.
With the Culture series, Banks has made a very decent attempt at answering the question "if you could do absolutely anything that's physically possible, what would you do?"

It is a deeply philosophical work that has the potential real-world implication of guiding advanced AI research, once we get to that point. The books explore the motivations of humans. What we value, what we aspire to, what we do, the crazy ambiguity and uncertainty in our moral aspirations.

Free will, freedom to choose, diversity, tolerance of views that we disagree with. While at the same time maintaining values that are in many senses absolute. "Your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins".

I suppose in one sense it's a very Western democratic view of ethics and morality. But if any moral code was to be the starting point for a vastly more powerful society, it should be one that's both open to change and also embodies humanity.

I absolutely adore this book series, and it's a tragedy that Banks died far too young.
Seems like online twitter mobs and callouts are actually counterproductive to the "-isms" that employ them. Too bad but expect more of the same as we've basicslly given a global megaphone to any hyper-purist or power-tripper with a social media account. This stops when people have to pay a price for engaging in a cancel action.
Huh, I actually think Consider Phlebas is the best I've read so far, but it seems that view is in the minority and my own high opinion is mostly on account of the latter half of the book, once they get to Schar's world. Your friend could be right that you might prefer one of the other books.
This is a common propaganda talking point propagated by the Hutu Power movement both during and after the genocide - that what occured was "spontaneous political violence" and not "targeted or planned". Demonstrably false.

To quote from Linda Melvern's excellent "Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi":

"The genocidaires continue to maintain that the mass murder of the Tutsi resulted from a 'spontaneous uprising' by an angry population. They argue there was no genocide of the Tutsi. With no planning or preparation, they argue the intent to destroy a human group was lacking, and so with no intent, the 1948 Genocide Convention does not apply. The idea of a spontaneous slaughter is not borne out by direct witnesses, by survivors or by the collective research of internationally recognized experts."

Case closed.
This is exactly the point. If no-one even notices without being explicitly told, then it's a completely innocuous distinction from the point of view of the non-halal majority.
I think you are right, it's absolutely there. In fact I'm not even sure the Minds adore the humanoids. I think it's fair to say that the Minds love playing games among themselves. The Minds are social, they form clicks and chat with other Minds. They also have "everything". Material possessions won't impress an other Mind. The games they play between each other and the social position they convey is what impresses an other Mind.

Imagine a society of parrot keepers. From time to time they swap pictures of their parrots. The keeper whose parrots are sickly or unkempt will be pitied by the rest of them. They will get tips on how to better to care for birds. Maybe they will even get suggestions from concerned society members that they should give up the hobby. These members would have a low rank in the society. In contrast the parrot keepers who has the best and happiest birds will have a high social rank. Other society members will ask their advice on bird-keeping matters. Everyone will want to swap birds with them. These keepers are not just taking care of their birds then, but competing with each other in this "pageant"

In some ways, the game becomes more interesting the harder it is to keep the birds. A bird which thrives in any environment is less challenging to keep than one which has complicated psychological needs. Thus a Mind who has everything and wants to dazzle an other Mind who also has everything will naturally gravitate towards keeping the most exotic "birds". The ones which require complex environments and are a true challenge to keep happy for even someone with the mental capacity of one of the Minds.

This of course all just my headcanon, but I think the Minds keep human societies around because it's hard to keep them happy. (Especially because many of the humans would go completely depressed if they were to realise that they are just beautiful songbirds in a galaxy wide pageantry.)

Of course keeping humans is not the only game the Minds play. They also play with mathematical discovery in the Infinite Fun Space. Or play with manipulating other societies in Special Circumstances. We also know that the Minds keep societies of gas dwellers on board. Who knows maybe those are even harder to keep happy than the humans?
Joan doesn’t have the 32” display though, right? I’m in the same boat as GP, but I want the giant display. Pinboard style.

Edit: since they’re the same company, can the Joan software be run on the Visionect hardware?
> I'm sure Sma doesn't recommend the destruction of Earth

That's not what the post you are replying to said.
It is absolutely unforgivable that we allow terms such as “mansplaining” to exist and be used unfettered and then on the other had deride their position because ! men not explaining things candidly !

Something has to give.

Obviously obnoxious behaviour should be curbed but the usage of mansplaing (and I would argue: the minting of the term when we have an equivalent in “condescending”)

I don’t even know what to say. I know I am rather shy to give advice to women because I’ve been bullied on Twitter for explaining things even when SOMEONE ASKED FOR CLARITY!
Not that odd if you consider science writing should appeal to as many as possible. The study itself used these workout pills you mention which were made from green coffee beans:

https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-020-...
This seems bit more special, but in general it is no different from your network admin being able to tell which WiFi station you are connected to at any time. And it's bit worse as WiFi generally doesn't use directional antennas...
Yes, because the device is "dumb", it can achieve long battery autonomy. For example, our Joan products can work up to 6 months on battery without recharging.
It sounds like you're agreeing with me:

> I've seen people who are more than 10x within a very narrow domain, but when you include the whole system and all their responsibilities, no one comes close to 10x.
You could make a similar argument about ethnics groups instead of race. Every categorization is a generalization until you get down to a single individual.

Races are just as valid as specific ethnic groups, they just have a broader definition. You don't have to list and compare each and every ethnic group separately to say that the European culture(s) are overall much different from, let's say, African culture(s).
As soon as a saw N = 15 then I realized this is pathetic empirical evidence. How does this even get published?
patio11's take on this rings the most true to me.

> So this "Look, if you treat your Tesla reservation like an option on Bitcoins, we've designed it to be literally the worst possible option on Bitcoins. Please, please, please: don't try this." is actually a quite reasonable policy.

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1375137941933027333
It makes a very nice jam, for what it's worth.
Did you think the article was deriding men for not being candid? It didn't seem that way to me. In fact it seemed like she had the opposite intention.