skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Blockchains don't have a concept of a "current undisputed state". If you managed to create a longer (and valid) Bitcoin chain on your own than the longest one there is at this very moment, and publish it, all other clients will start using it as the new longest chain. And if two equally long chains are published at about the same time, and clients get split, things will probably get resolved in the next block. So, most of the time, the current longest chain won't probably change, and if you discount, say, the 6 newest blocks (using bitcoin as an example), then it will definitely not change. So, the "undisputed state" and the "current state" are actually separate concepts in a PoW blockchain.

Regarding storage, you argument that transactions shouldn't matter, since the important thing is the state. But then we're back to the fundamental problem. Why should we trust a state created from thin air that has no proof of how it was created? That's just a distributed database, which has is uses, but it's not a distributed blockchain.
> I grew up in Arkansas too

There are dozens of us!
There was a time when the app store had higher quality apps, but the time when they’d be held to higher standards is long gone.

Just like the internet, it’s now flooded by crap.
You're missing the point here. From cold boot to either desktop or password prompt I do not want that time to be less than 10 seconds. Hence why I have to hinder it by extending the BIOS by enabling all checks AND I make my Windows show me the entire list of drives it loads.
Shady stuff including psychological experiments definitely went on during the Cold War (with a lot of EB support for that general sort of thing if not explicit approval of every program) but one of the main results of the Church Commission and subsequent legislation like Title 50 updates, etc, was the implementation of severe limitations with regard to what intelligence agencies can do involving US civilians.

To the extent that there's anything "blacker than black" it's the decisions that intelligence officers and the contract employees who support them do on their own initiative - that, and things that are done under the aegis of foreign governments.

It's an ugly world out there and the US does ugly things in its citzens' name, and many of them are openly reported, e.g., killing children with hot shrapnel via drone strikes. Shady clandestine paramilitary operations do certainly happen, most of which never see the light of day. But even the SAPest of SAPs will run into big problems if it messes with US citizens in any capacity without very high-level authorization, which is more or less never given. The Awlaki sanction was a big, big decision for example. I'm pretty darn sure that psychological experiments on everyday Americans without their consent is not a thing that's happening.
> That’s an obviously false comparison. You are comparing against a perfect world, not against the real world.

No I'm not, I'm comparing against a world where Apple allows sideloading, and this privacy issue exists in both.

> because they have told us in public that they would.

Source? Apple's new add tracking opt-in thing is on the OS level the same way this location tracking issue is. It would still work if the Facebook app was sideloaded from what I understand.
Writers keep doing 'but it was all a dream', sometimes even thinking they are clever. And for decades we have just rolled our eyes and feel let down by their shoddy craftsmanship, because it is the traditional cop out at the end of a child's bedtime story when we need the tale to end.

The strange thing is the executive producers and money men signing off on this stuff, lowering the value of the franchise, so I guess they know little of the craft of storytelling either. Am I the only person who never bothered with Lost because of opinions of its ending?
They are focused on the users - not the developers. We already have a sense of the insane dark patterns developers can deliver on the web. Pop up and under ads with unhittable close boxes, recurring subscriptions that can only be cancelled in narrow windows by calling a UK phone number.

Seriously - look at the coalition Epic put together for their trial. Almost everyone on there has some sort of abusive billing process / history.
That's a perfectly valid argument IMHO. The argument equating smart phones with consoles however, is downright silly.

Can I ask, how does letting me have the option of occasionally purchasing songs, books, movies and character skins direct from vendors hurt your ability to enjoy the benefits of purchasing everything direct from Apple?

I just don't understand how that would ruin the system for you. If anything, wouldn't it force Apple to improve their store in order to be more competitive? Would that not be a benefit to you?
> Pricing is $8/mo billed yearly ad $9/mo if monthly. Should I make this clearer on the home page somehow?

Yes. Regardless of how common it is or how many other companies do the same thing, "$X per month billed yearly" is a really stupid way to say "$12X per year".

Cut the bullshit. $96 per year. That's what the subscription costs.
“While the Jesus question can have several forms, the most common one is this:

What is your greatest weakness?

The Jesus question, you see, has nothing to do with believing in Jesus. The question is designed to determine if you think you ARE Jesus.”

“With a bit of planning, this type of question can be the easiest one in the whole interview. First, you know that it’s coming. Second, it’s often one of the last questions asked, meaning you’ve already had an opportunity to set up your response by tracing your education, experience, and career path. Third, there is a right answer, and executed correctly, it can be a great finish.

Yet, applicants—even experienced managers—frequently crash and burn on this question. That’s why employers ask it!”
Just thinking out loud here, what about having to attach a key as an attachment?
Haskell: Applicative Typeclass
I got to see the Cray Monsanto Corp owned when my grandpa retired (he was a senior engineering fellow in their old petroleum division, so he had some pull).

I can't remember specifically if it was the Cray-2, but it was definitely one of the models with that shape of coolant fountain.

Another crazy thing he showed me was the labs where they were developing the genetically engineered pesticide resistant grain strains. They were longish rectangular tunnel shaped concrete rooms about half below ground. All light was artificial.

The last big thing I remember was an autosteroscopic display, sort of like those lenticular illusion card things you'd get as a kid in that era on steroids. He said they used it for CG visualizations of molecules in his dept.

I was just 11 at the time so I was totally ignorant of the significance and controversy those plants represented. But I do remember grandpa pointing out the building the CEO and related staff worked out of. It was literally a bunker separated from everything else by big berms and security checkpoints that looked like it was securing a nuclear weapons depot.
I mean before you call it hypocritical you need to take a holistic view of the supply chain. Electronics manufacturing is incredibly wasteful, even if you're making something that can be repaired!

Apple is at least working towards more sustainable technologies than traditional manufacturing. Photolithography is fucking awful for the planet and yet foundational to many devices, just for example.
An old school RF engineer told me you can put an incandescent light bulb in the enclosure for a few hours periodically to bake out the moisture and they are fine again. I was going to re-cap a 60s heathkit tube stereo and he asked me why I thought they had been fine for half a century but suddenly might blow any second? If you used the tube amps regularly the heat from the tubes kept the caps good.
Will this open source architecture and Huawei promoting it undermine ARM in the long run? This might be a game changer for the whole industry.
Get writing superpowers with an AI writing partner
New TLDs are a money grab as well. You're hoping that big companies like google buy your domains just to make sure nobody else has them.
This happens all the time to me as well.

I think the flip side of this is that, for most of us, it's very hard to learn new and interesting stuff in our paid software engineering roles. Day to day tends to be dominated by maintaining code you didn't write, dealing with business concerns, or greasing the tiny wheels in the big machine that your team covers.
I hope it’s like the old saying: “The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.” And people will become greater hackers and so.
I think tptacek's / geofft's point is that using Tulsi as a representation of the far-left is a questionable choice.

And I think I agree with him: While the points you raise about NRA ratings are true, the perception on the ground is far from that. She is reviled by most blue outlets and cast as "one of the good ones" from the red ones (searching for "tulsi" on brietbart, nearly all results are painting her in a positive light: https://www.breitbart.com/search/?s=tulsi#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=tu... and conversely on HP, most results are painting her in a negative light: https://www.huffpost.com/news/topic/tulsi-gabbard ).

You know, if you want to have your finger on the pulse of the "real voters" out there (and I'm not being facetious here!), you should visit freerepublic once in a while as well as r/politics, just to see the tenor and positions of folks on opposing sides of political spectrum up-close.
>> Shouldn't the fact that central bankers want to ban crypto make you think that maybe there's something here more than ponzis and scams?

Note that I do not support Gov banning crypto.

I see two things:
1. That there's a legitimate threat to their power and existence which they would do anything to mitigate.

2. Also, it could be that majority of their population are being exposed to unhealthy risk.

Take the case of Nigeria for example. MMM a ponzi scheme rocked the country in early 2017. People lost a total estimate of about 18 billion Naira (or $60m as of March 2017)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_Global

The Government actually warned people, but the Government has gained reputation for stifling any form of growth. Therefore, no one listened.
I’m in a tent, and would consider going without as there aren’t many insects around here that want to eat parts of me. There are coyotes and the occasional black bear and cougar, but I’m fairly close to the house. I grew up in rural USA and an comfortable in the woods. I try not to speak for others, and I haven’t yet met anyone who regularly sleeps outside when not on a camping trip.
It's not exactly difficult to walk users through the process - Epic Games already makes you bypass all the warnings if you want to install fortnite.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-fortnite-on-andro...

Once it becomes normalized for users to click through the warnings, they become meaningless and powerless, just like any warning.
I don’t think Google uses triple byte? just apply directly instead.
Fits with the Teller quote about magic: "Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect"
If grandma ignores my advice and installs the unsafe app despite the steadily more large and screaming warnings doesn’t that become individual responsibility at some point?
But how do you know 12% is about right, and not 10%, 2%, …

Also, Apple will claim they have a better product that warrants higher margins. Data from independent parties shows that they attract more users willing to pay for apps, and developers aren’t leaving en masse for Android.
I think they didn't mean the double negative, since they continue with "both can be brought with libraries" which implies they are not included in the core language, which is the opposite of this doubly negated statment.
-Since it is a non productive investment without dividends or interests, making a profit entails someone else making a loss. It's a zero sum game. On average no money is made.

-If you follow the herd, if you buy when people are talking it up positively, you are probably buying high and making less than average (less than zero).

-Covid 19 probably made crypto investment frothy because of unprecedented amount of government stimulus and fewer places than normal to spend money. The government benefits are going to taper over the summer so crypto prices will lose an important support, and the gradual reopening of everything will give people more places to spend their money instead of bidding up digital coins. There could be a third downward force if high inflation takes hold and central banks starts fighting it. They do this by raising interest rates which literally means banks are paying people to hold fiat or government debt instead of other assets. Gold and stocks usually have lower than normal prices during periods of high interest rates, crypto could do the same. At least stocks should have accelerating dividends with higher inflation, not so for gold and crypto.

So if you really want to buy cryptocoins, wait to see what the economic conditions look like in the fall or next year, if the economy is near done working through the above dynamics, prices could be near their lows and it should be a less terrible time to buy.
> If they don't show up, it's legally your laptop.

That's the whole problem. He tries for a couple of months to contact them (calls, emails, etc) and if they don't even respond, after around 9 months they get put into the resale bin.

His policy is "no fix, no fee" so I would presume there's no deposit. If there is no transfer of money it seems difficult to make even a weak legal argument that the laptops were "purchased". That is why Rossmann found the whole situation ridiculous.
You can argue that all you like, but it is a ridiculous point. It's not perfect, but most of the time democracy works. This much is self evident.

If you are comparing the difference between having a company in charge of public health and a democratic government, you might as well compare the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy. Customers are not stakeholders in the same way that citizens are stakeholders.

When the public is angry at the government, heads will roll. When the public is angry at corporations, heads will glide down in golden parachutes.
Would hope such legislation articulates exactly what parts of a "phone" would need to be made available. There are hundreds of parts in an iPhone. It's unreasonable to expect that Apple or any vendor have the resources to make sure every single part, large and small, is available to 3rd party repair shops.
To clarify the implications for Western readers who don't know how 'Eastern' state media works - it would be expected that media like RT/Simonyan would comment only the "proper" opinion and so on sensitive geopolitical issues the news agency can express a strong opinion only when Kremlin has decided on what the proper opinion is, they don't have the authority to decide on their own, the foreign ministry decides the proper message.

In earlier cases with genuinely surprising events they have refrained from commenting for sometimes quite a long time. The fact that they congratulate Lukashenka so quickly suggests that they were able to get a rapid confirmation from officials that this should be promoted instead of condemned, and it suggests that more likely than not this wasn't a surprise for Kremlin, that they were informed beforehand or perhaps even participated in making that "brilliant special operation" happen.
Weed?

Well, thank god it was only one night.
why do you want long boot times?
It appears that we have a lot of data from the WIV lab [0]. The work there to survey bat coronaviruses was paid for by the American National Institute of Health. Duplicate samples were sent to other labs, across several countries. Genetic sequences were publicly posted, as per NIH funding rules.

(I encourage anybody interested in the lab-leak scenario to read more of the reddit post below, not just this one section. There a ToC link at the bottom of the post.)

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...
Gambling is a given...paired with oracles (e.g. Link) for real world outcome verification to decide smart contract outcomes. I think applications to supply chain manufacturing would be useful to cut down the tons of fraud that happen in manufacturing. It is already finding use in cargo logistics. I believe Egypt has recently incorporated blockchain to imports (https://theloadstar.com/egypt-authorizes-cargox-as-the-block...). There are some interesting ideas about using it for increasing throughput for video streaming (see theta.tv). Non fungible tokens (NFT)are too hyped, but will find some permanent niches for digital trading economies and games..and perhaps uses that we do not foresee. In real estate, there is some movement to adopt blockchain to streamline an inefficient and byzantine process of title transfer and centralized solutions of final authority are not likely to be accepted by parties.
"Coding" is a small part of most software engineering roles though.

I mean I think I've written more code in 2 weeks working on useless hobby projects than I have in 2 years professionally. I'm not even exaggerating
I know kungfu
It's hard to parse the graph's flow.

Maybe putting a gutter between the cells, and/or using curved lines for the connections would help.
>When we used to barter we stopped because it was sometimes unfair (convert bread to chickens?) so we invented money (gold) which is natural occurring and rare so we trust it more.

That's wrong. Debt existed before money and barter didn't exist at all without a medium of exchange like metals or spices.

When you give someone a chicken and the other side gives you bread you remember or even write down that this person owes you more bread in the future and you trust that this person will uphold his promise, the same way you trust that his bread is not rotten.
Do you really hate it though? What other alternatives have you even experienced to be able to say that? Also, you are posting in a tech forum, which is perhaps the epitome of capitalism.

I don't like businesses focusing on profit so much either. I'm not sure if it's sustainable to focus on something else instead. Maybe when business ignore profit they crash and burn. I'm not sure because I don't like to think about profit, I'm a technician/specialist first, and find finances very boring. I would think small business could accomplish this, by staying small and focusing on the product and not growth. However the past year has definitely favored large corporations that could handle the lockdowns.
Workona
"Not at many places" can mean most would but many wouldn't.
Tuer is a difference between closing an airspace and re-routing a plane with a fighter jet.

Not that it was right, but still quite a difference.
Reopening Texas Had No Discernible Impact on Covid-19 Cases or Deaths
Hm, I think I'm inclined to agree with the excerpt from the book, that correlation is necessary (just not sufficient) for causation. I'm prepared to be wrong, but at very least, that's not at all a satisfying counter-example:

> The correlation between pressing on the gas and the speed of the car is zero but they’re obviously causally related, it’s that the agent is optimizing speed!

Why are they 'obviously causally related'? Pushing the accelerator causes something, but only indirectly and not always a change in speed, as stated in other passages.

If I cycle home I'll probably want to have a shower, but pedalling doesn't cause me to get wet?
I could not have said it better. This apple employee (BTW - making $20/hr) didn't detect this weird thing I did to scrw up this laptop and so was going to send it to Apple tech people.

Dude, if you can find folks to work for $20 / hr with the people skills to fix stuff day in and day out for while dealing with insane repair volume - you could manage your own apple store.

Here's the bottom line as an actual customer. I have NEVER been disappointed in the reliability of my iphone. The one time I broke it I walked in an AppleCare had me out same day with a new device. They are also surprisingly waterproof (I know, just resistant supposedly).

Does any of this have to do with gluing everything down? How do I know. But my phone has kept on going through some rediculous stuff, so I don't care. Solder everything, glue on top. And USB-C on my laptop keeps on flaking out while lightning seems to seat more reliably.

AND my "non repairable" junk iphone seems to have INCREDIBLE re-sale value in comparison to whatever else is out there. So apple IS designing for the long haul, and market rewards that. My wife has an old iphone still getting updates for some reason (in android land this is crazy talk).
And then you still define them in terms of the actual primitive functions that are a hack.

This is entirely different, for, say, floating point arithmetic, which one could in theory simulate from the ground up by defining one's own float as a vector of binary states and manually implement floating point arithmetic on it.

> All the equational reasoning you can do with pure functions applies equally well to the IO monad.

Only because these primitive functions receive special treatment from the optimizer which ensures that they are not optimized in the same way and allowed to be executed in indeterminate order. — they are very much magical primitives that cannot be simulated ex nihilō.
Goal is to make it [optionally] smart, compact, modular, and ATX compatible. Hopefully with just the newer 12V standard. My original motivation for the project was lack of SMBus/PMBus support on desktops (on a laptop, it's the battery controller that allows you to see power usage).

I'll make a Hackaday page. So far I've got:

https://www.patreon.com/sidspry
https://opencollective.com/sidspryfoss

I just started putting myself out there. I have material queued up that I need to edit and I need to pick out the good parts for blog posts. I've started acquiring components for the prototypes. Sadly it's slow going, HW prototyping is kind of expensive for me right now. My design progress is way ahead of what I've actually documented and I need to start documenting so it looks better.
You're getting close to Conway's Law
This kind of ridiculousness was why I made this game -> https://termsandconditions.game
> Source?

You can trivially check this yourself.

> Apple's new add tracking opt-in thing is on the OS level the same way this location tracking issue is.

This is a complete misunderstanding of how it works. Apple provides a mechanism for apps to use to identify users who opt-in.

The only thing preventing developers from just ignoring this and using fingerprinting or other identifiers is the App Store rules. A whole bunch of apps have been banned or otherwise forced to stop doing this.

€ It would still work if the Facebook app was sideloaded from what I understand.

No. If the app were sideloaded, Facebook would just implement a fingerprinting solution or provide their own identifier, and ignore Apple’s mechanism.
>> But again, to those reading this thread, HN is not a place where you will find a lot of people who patiently defend crypto and blockchain. It garners a lot of downvotes.

Blockchain is a wonderful piece of technology. IMHO I do not think anyone really has personal beef with the technology. I think majority really want to understand, and if they're asking and posing questions it is because do not understand. There might be some that have their skin in it going south but I doubt that's the situation of many.

People really want to understand its use case as money.