skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Reminds me of US $100 bills:

As of June 30, 2012, the $100 bill comprised 77% of all US currency in circulation. Federal Reserve data from 2017 showed that the number of $100 bills exceeded the number of $1 bills. However, a 2018 research paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimated that 80 percent of $100 bills were in other countries. Possible reasons included economic instability that affected other currencies, and use of the bills for criminal activities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_one-hundred-doll...
i like the wardrobe change between instruments. did he just get too tired to play the other 2 tracks on the same day, or did the mrs. need the honey-do list before he could get back to it, or just changed shirts to make it seem like it was so time consuming it required multiple days in the studio
yeah, it's a reasonable probabilistic inference, not a guarantee
Computerized Rifle Sights to Be Tested by Navy and Marines for Drone Defense
I couldn’t describe this any better. Especially the visual chunking and abstraction.
One way people have of affording these fees is by working for people outside the country who can pay a salary that would cover the fees alongside being a living wage. After building enough wealth in crypto, they can choose to leave the regime in better terms than as a refugee. This has happened many many times already, this is the most valuable use case for crypto in practice.
I think bitcoin is a ponzi scheme, but the article (and so far I haven't seen it mentioned in the discussion) doesn't mention the following reasons which capture value in bitcoin:

As long as you don't steal the electricity you need to pay for it in fiat. And you not only need electricity to mine new coins, but also for transactions

Ransomware creates demand in bitcoin and this demand keeps the value up.
Are you talking about Bitcoin or capitalism?
This method of debugging is unique to Clojure.
It relies on data immutability and a powerful REPL.
Are there other languages where such an approach is applicable?
> 5. the operators take away a large portion of this money.

What operators?
In a Ponzi scheme, a fraudulent perpetrator takes your money (and the money of many others), gives some of that to early dropouts but takes the rest for himself. Ponzi schemers profit from lying to you where your money goes.

With a decentralized digital asset there is no sole person or company that profits from just lying to you about where your Dollar goes in exchange for digitals. Sure, miners and exchanges make profits based on fees when Bitcoin is created or sold, respectively — but they are only being rewarded for their legitimate efforts required to maintain and sell a digital currency. They do not pretend making your money work for you by some magical scheme.

This whole confusion stems from a rather vague understanding of what the subjective theory of value means: Goods and services provided by humans have no intrinsic value but become precious simply there being demand by other humans. Gold can become worthless if nobody wants or needs it anymore. A stupid trading card may cost thousands of dollars costing pennies to make but is sought after by enough collectors. Edit: Yes, Bitcoins are just numbers stored in a computer memory around the world but so is software. And software ain’t cheap.

While Bitcoin‘s value might be grossly overestimated due to rampant speculation but even then, these speculators are no victims in an investment fraud but they truly believe that Bitcoin will become much more useful in the future. They may be wrong but, currently, nobody knows. Only the future will show.

Edit: Typos.
Its all because RMS decided to eat that thing from his foot that one time. The world just couldn't stomach GNU/Linux after that. :P
Beyond the implicit admission that the power plant did indeed operate, and that there is a “disagreement” about the legitimacy of its operation, saying “it’s just a big misunderstanding” is not self-incrimination. I think that’s a weak argument with some large logical leaps, and it certainly does nothing to indicate this article was clickbait.
I wouldn't assume they have a good legal team, its a penny stock with a market cap that is almost eclipsed by the fines they are facing from Alberta regulators.
I was being sincere! I absolutely hate rebooting, even laptops. These was a time when Linux was better about downtime-less updates too.
The requirement only applies if one can create the account in the app. At least here in Finland that is not an option in any of the local banks apps I have used.
Cool resume, you know what's weird? I saw this post earlier while working and tonight I was randomly looking at an old DOS game compilation video on Youtube. One of the clips was of a pink and blue cat game called Alleycat that I decided to find a longer video of because I liked the style. I came back here because I swore I just saw that cat earlier today and now saw your comment further down to confirm. I've never heard of the game or seen your resume until today, fun coincidence, or my unconscious mind noticed the cat.
Connecting learners to leaders – Higher education rankings
We are a team of academics and data scientists working to provide an objective, non-gameable influence-based ranking for the people, schools, and disciplinary programs that make up higher education.
Welp. I guess that's my daily dose of 'oh god everything is actually worse than I thought and I don't know why I'm surprised again.'

There's no way that's a decent no-history guess for what is intended.
Ah man I love Erlang and might have to look into that first board some more. I may be able to port one of my more ambitious projects to it depending on what all it supports.
Dubai ruler hacked ex-wife's phone using Pegasus spyware, U.K. court finds
You seem to think Facebook is like UPS, passively delivering anonymous packages, and most of us think they're a tobacco company determined to push their product no matter the consequence.

They aren't a common carrier, they are the platform that decides what rises and does not. And their priorities indicate they aren't moral.
> Honestly, if a brain implant was proven to be as safe as vaccination, and could get me to be happy while working 3 jobs in a mine and eating bugs. I probably would sign up.

You would really give over so much control over your person?

> More generally though, why is it highly concerning? Are you afraid of hypotheticals? Or does that just feel like what you have to say to rationalize your existing fears about the ongoing pandemic, and societies unmeasured response?

Regarding the concern, the kind of control this technology puts upon another person is extremely powerful. I could for example imagine a torture device where it simply zaps you when you have any positive thought - how many weeks will it take to make you submissive? How long till you'll carry out that assassination attempt?

The hypothetical scenario serves as commentary on our currently eroding freedoms (whether you believe it is done for positive or negative reasons). It also shows a viable slippery path for where such a future could exist - each one of the mechanisms I suggested are not pulled from thin air, they all have basis in recent developments.
What other ways could you benefit? Imagine that you had no expectation of selling your share for a higher price in the future, then what other way is there to benefit?

You have a shareholder vote, okay but the percentage of shareholders who actually vote is roughly 9%. The only people doing the voting are large institutions, not individuals:

https://www.broadridge.com/proxypulse/reports/2013/second-ed...
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Started with a DARPA fund, we've to track academic thought leadership like no other site on the planet. We count not only publications and citations, but the overall web presence of influential scholars around the world.

You can find us at: http://academicinfluence.com
You mean 1024 right?
Screen blanking and DPMS power-off accomplish the same goals, with considerably less energy usage.
... it's basically the Thiel way of doing things... Competition is for losers, monopolies are fine, local situation does not concern, extracting wealth is key, even if we destroy the local ecosystem in the process... makes me optimistic for any eco change chance we might still have...
Holy macaroni.

> Abortion, contraception and divorce increase the net suffering in the world (especially divorce should be obvious to everyone).

What the oblivious shipping duck.

Do you really think abortion increases suffering? Think about the girl who got pregnant from rape. You’re forcing them to have that child, a permanent reminder of being raped. I assume you would also force the victim to marry their attacker?

Contraception. Do you really think suffering is lessened when teenagers don’t have access to condoms and get their girlfriend pregnant outside marriage and are forced to choose the child instead of education and vocation?

And divorce—you actually think it lessens suffering if two people who hate each other are forced to stay together and raise their children in a hostile, conflicted environment.

Take all that together and you have a family that’s based on sexual violence and men having absolute control over women and children.

Your stance makes it seem like you want kids to get in trouble so you can bash them with your good book because you get a kick out of it.
C++ is faster and safer than Rust (2020)
Running both uMatrix, uBlock and quite a few other addons isolating things further, I have enabled ads on DuckDuckGo and have allowed plausible analytics explicitly for all sites. For a browser, the right thing is still very clear: not this.
It's not finite. The supply of cryptocurrencies is effectively infinite. There's almost no barrier to entry. In the closest historical equivalent, the wildcat banking era, at least you had to have state-chartered bank. [1] But what's it take to launch a cryptocurrency these days? Is it anything beyond a tech guy, a marketing guy, and a a credit card with a little room?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat_banking
> With a decentralized digital asset there is no sole person or company that profits from just lying to you about where your Dollar goes in exchange for the digitals.

Ponzi schemes don't have to run by single individuals, but perhaps by multi-person organizations like the mafia. The mob was the reason the RICO laws came to be.

And undoubtedly, the mafia organizations would collaborate to break up their crime into regions. Mafia group A would take the West, etc. Since they're a criminal organization, anti-trust laws were meaningless. There wasn't a requirement that the different mob bosses had to compete with each other.
If I can walk in a crowded mall with my feet, why can't I drive my 18-wheeler there? Traffic laws violate freedom of movement.
If you are using custodial wallets, you might as well use USD as your unit of account.
People just trying to justify to themselves why they didn't buy bitcoin at $100.

Looking at the comments here it's almost like a political debate where they keep trying to come up with justifications.
A recent article about issues in the .NET community:

https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/05/microsoft_net_foundat...
True, sufficiently oppressive regimes can confiscate bitcoin in a lot of situations.

However, as soon as they start doing that to the first few people, what's going to stop everyone else from instantly sending their bitcoin to family and friends across the border for safe keeping?
i don't think you know what the typical wage in venezuela is. i do because i live here. you can watch this video if you want to know (it's not 3$ a month): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br7aSAXcPW4

say i've happened to save 1000$ and i want to leave the country and i don't want the police near the airport to take my money as they're known to do. do you think it would be an absolute fantasy for me to find some way to sell my 1000$ for bitcoin and buy them again somewhere else?
Database insert? Ok...

You may benefit from reading about why Bitcoin works the way that it does, and why certain tradeoffs were made.

But you don't really care to know, do you?
kw/h?
To me upper class means you don't work.
How’s it bad? You have to accept responsibility when making transactions. This is tremendously beneficial for businesses and end users when making peer to peer transactions.
https://archive.is/3h797
define useless. toys are useless. playing cards are useless. what exactly is the purpose of sports - having a ball go in a round wire hole?

oh, that's entertainment and people need that. well so is this. it's quite literally playing poker.

now, as far as wasteful - cruise ships are worse. people using non-rechargeable AA batteries.
The Vivaldi UI is only source-obfuscated to the extent you can't easily unpack a webpack of a react UI. There are tools to mod it considerably at every level if that is what you are after.
If valid, this means virtually every phone call, and every email (with clients) is flagged. :P

This must be more nuanced. Maybe, it's "additional algo processing when a word is hit", eg another layer before "involve human".
https://archive.is/oRvNo
Bitcoin is backed by the same thing that backs any currency: public's trust in it, expressed via a price achieved via a market consensus.
And they're astoundingly dirty. There are more cars than leaf blowers, but all leaf blowers in aggregate pollute more than all the cars in aggregate.
WhatsApp uses the same growth hacks that Facebook (and Instagram) used to grow at all costs.
What is a company phone system? You mean, you're going to write a bot that plays music while gathering information? /s
Android Bitmap from Drawable
Enough to power 6000 homes? That’s crazy.

Probably a silly question. Does solving the complex mathematical problems provide any long term benefit? Breaking encryption or other uses?
> By that definition, real estate too is a ponzi. No. Like stocks, real estate creates value while it is being owned, namely the sheltering service it provides to those who live in it.

Bitcoin is money which provides sheltering services for wealth.
I wrote "'typical' refugees". No doubt monied folks need to migrate under duress as well, but they are absolutely a vanishing minority of worldwide refugee flows.

> It costs many thousands of dollars to cross borders illegally by the way, so you’re likely to exhaust your savings trying to escape whatever you’re running from.

...and worse, often end up in debt along the way. Where is the room in that common situation for the need for exfiltrating funds via BTC?
I loathe Bitcoin, but that’s vastly wrong. As one counter-example, the Syrian civil war didn’t only displace poor people who never had anything to begin with; it displaced a lot of middle class families, made of engineers and doctors and such, who did have assets to their name but that were almost certainly incapable of taking it out of the country with them.

It remains to be seen whether it would have been practical to move money from Syrian liras to Bitcoin. No one wants to buy hyper-inflating currency.
Ran into this problem when trying to update my passwords. I figured I might as well try to turn on 2FA while I was at it, but was unable to do so. Confirmed with their FAQ that this is apparently intentional.

For... somewhat obvious reasons, I don't feel safe giving Twitch my phone number.

Security professionals have long advised that SMS should not be treated like a secure protocol. In 2021, that advice still hasn't changed: (https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/03/can-we-stop-pretending-s...)

Not only does SMS not provide security for 2FA, as Twitch has demonstrated it also opens new security risks for users' personal data. It is arguably bad practice to offer 2FA over SMS at all, but requiring it is actively harmful; it tricks users into putting themselves into vulnerable positions because they think it will make them more secure, and it slows 2FA for security-conscious users, adding a caveat to the general advice that 2FA is secure. This harms messaging efforts around 2FA.

And in Twitch's case, it's just kind of embarrassing right now. Twitch's leak provides an object lesson about why mandatory 2FA over SMS is harmful, and why responsible companies don't use account security as an excuse to extract personal information from their users.

There is no excuse at this point for companies to keep sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that there's anything acceptable about SMS-based authentication.
Finished high school in 2003.

Was told to pickup a graphing calculator in 6th or 7th grade. My family bought me a second hand TI82. I might be the only student to have had one malfunction but the = button stopped responding that first year. My family got me a TI83 after that. I would later buy myself a TI83+ when I started working part time.

That was my first exposure to basic.

I would like to believe I am also still the record holder for an uncle worm high score.
I haven't met a single human buying bitcoin or crypto just for "technology" and believing in it. Everyone wants to make quick cash and that's the only reason. Maybe 0.001% uses it for some reasons that are plausible but I haven't met that one person really uses bitcoin for daily expenses.
Not exactly, no. But I wasn't the one assigning a vague description of "size" to the number of people that use it that way, was I?
Didn’t it used to be necessary to exercise the pixels to keep them from burning in, rather than just turning off the screen? Or is that a thing that started with plasma TVs.
Because you've made the oblique claim: what is the positive value that Facebook brings?
Yeah I find that I can remote pair for maybe 5-6 hours a day. Catching up on non pairing work things (email and slack and whatever) takes another hour or two, and I’m beat by 4 or 5.
Python String to Dictionary
You missed the point. That text on the wall has a major impact on people because that text on the wall turns into policy. Turns into laws. Turns into dictation on life.
> First, few if any gold investors have expectations of profits. They generally invest in gold as a hedge -- a "store of value" -- that they hope will retain its value in case other assets go sour.

Lol. Bitcoin is exactly comparable to gold. Plenty of people buy gold expecting it to appreciate...because other people use it as a hedge. Even if it were true originally that Gold's only purpose was as a hedge (protip: it's not), its very utility as a hedge would make it useful as a source of alpha for those wanting to bet on the demand for hedges.

This article is just stupid and pointless. It's attempting to take a label that has a strong negative valence, deconstruct its attributes and apply them to something else, and then port that valence over to the new thing. The negative valence ascribed to "ponzi scheme" is because it is a scam intended to defraud its investors. A ponzi scheme that is not an attempt to defraud its investors, even if it fits some "technical" description of a ponzi scheme, does not deserve to have the valence of "ponzi scheme" assigned to it.

I certainly don't believe Bitcoin meets the technical definition of a Ponzi scheme. But even if it did, this article would still be a stupid and pointless attempt at valence hijacking. An activity that the world already has far too much of.
If you had enough energy and the right equipment/process you could "alchemize" gold or any other element out of Oxygen/Carbon/Nitrogen.
If you add up all the power wasted by power supplies plugged into the wall but not charging a device, that's more energy than bitcoin.

Add to that all the devices plugged in but not in use, then you're at multiples of bitcoin's energy usage.
I personally know others that have experienced this I have had to help out. Another who simply lost all their identity documentation in a fire and was locked out of their accounts. Similar stories with many homeless people I used to worn with.

It made me realize how fragile our access to bank accounts and identity actually are.

I have as such setup a portion of my wealth in crypto-assets with a dead mans switch and recovery methods covering fire, amnesia, identity loss, or death, while ensuring the majority can't be seized by a government or rubber hose attack without the consent of myself and a quorum of people I trust around the world confident I am not under duress. As long as I have the freedom to communicate and some time I can recover.

The market value of crypto-assets may not be predictable, but I prefer to be able to count on never losing access to it, and having theft protections no bank can offer.
Space fanbois think reusing boosters is a big deal.

Note that there probably aren't enough launches per year to justify reuse, which requires extra engineering, weight and fuel - which is the real reason nobody else bothered, and why Starlink was started to justify reusability because of lack of paid launches.
By that logic, buying a piece of land or real estate or gold is a ponzu scheme.
Why are such articles constantly popping up on HN?

It's clear that the HN crowd does not like Bitcoin. So why keep reiterating similar arguments all over?

There is zero utility in the article shared. It states some anti crypto views and that's it. Even the author concedes that this is according to his own definition and not based on real life legal tests (which have of course shown that Bitcoin is not a ponzi).

Just let Crypto users be. I get it. You don't like Crypto, but at this point it's not like an opinion piece can change the their views.

Users transacted in the trillions of USD over last month. Crypto got institutions, countries, wealthy individuals, poor individuals using it every day. It's clear it has some utility to them.

It's time to reflect and consider that your anti Crypto position might be wrong.

Edit: clarity
Oh that's interesting, in my experience across the Books Org and InfoSec its being widely used.
I wonder if he invested those days because he would be a millionaire by now. Clearly he really didn't believe in crypto because he wouldn't be talking like this today. He must be a little butthurt to come up with this type of article.
What the shit?

It costs $5 to spend any amount of Bitcoin?

Is that for real? (I genuinely don't know, that just sounds so high)