skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> The commonality with the Ponzi Scheme is that returns are solely based on others continued investment and that the value collapses if they stop doing this continuously.

And before anyone tries to make a stock market comparison: No, this isn’t the same as stocks.

Stocks are, literally, partial ownership of a company. A shareholder owns part of the underlying company, including everything from their bank balances to their brand.

Bitcoin would be like subtracting out all of the valuable parts of a company and leaving nothing but the shares behind. You get an entry in a database (the blockchain) and nothinf else. Literally the only thing that gives this database entry any value is the ability to convince someone else to give you money in exchange for it.
You should open-source it anyways, which will help adoption a lot, and ease people past things like this:

"* The notice you see about having access to your history and website data is automatically generated because this extension runs on every tab. But it does NOT actually monitor your browsing history or require your personal information to work properly."

The world is correctly nervous about extensions that run on every page.
I expect that as the Jackpot progresses, we'll see a lot more people dying of dysexistential syndrome, even making up a substantial proportion of the death toll from climate-related disasters, crop failures, pandemics, and wars.
You just gave me a scary idea. Everyone has Metamask set to auto-update. If somehow an attacker could get a compromised update pushed out it would not be pretty.
How did Sun manage to get so much hype around Java?

There can't be many things in tech which have had that kind of PR achievement, especially if you move away from flashy user-facing things like iPhones and Playstations.
I hate to hate, but I've seen this idea tried, and fail, before.

A lot.

I think the first one was called web tribes or something, in the late 90s, I had someone pitch the idea to me since.

I get a sense that there are some good reasons why the idea doesn't take off, I'm sure someone smarter and more savvy could enumerate them.
I’ve always tried to use naming of variables and methods to make it obvious what the code is doing. Something like:

```
if service_is_disabled:
start_service()
else:
send_notification(“Service is running”)
```
That's par for the course if you use an actual framework for Property-based Testing. All the ones I've tried certainly do mix in the usual suspects (-1, 0, 1, MAX_INT, empty list, etc.) into the randomly sampled data.

The author of this piece probably chose to make the post framework-agnostic by rolling their own random generation, but left that nuance out.
They altered things in the java.* namespace [1], making it easy for developers to make things incompatible, as well as leaving out support for cross-platform enabling stuff like JNI and RMI. I can't read those actions as in good faith.

[1] https://www.infoworld.com/article/2077055/what-does-sun-s-la...
I'd like to see someone explain the amazing possiblities of crypto currency without them making money off of it.
I think this also happens to boxers who sadly die in the ring. They keep going beyond normal limits, driven by their will to win.
Underrated comment. :-D
It's probably too much of a broad trend for that to be the case. As entire countries get wealthier, their birth rates drop: it's true in the US, Japan, Germany, Sweden, wherever. If you see a GDP per capita line going up, you will also see a birth rate line going down in nearly all cases. I suspect it's more likely something else: for example, access to and usage of birth control, access to other family planning controls, abortion, etc.

Edit: or even just access to entertainment that isn't "having sex." I remember a conversation with a (very) old woman who'd had many, many children; she said that... well, there wasn't much else to do back then...
I'd be on board with "pay a little extra to rent dedicated servers", but "move to one of the big-three cloud providers" doesn't sound like a sound financial decision for the case presented.
Ohh, yeah! Supposed to be immediate mode. I swear I typed it correclty O.o
These fines have nothing to do with GDPR. GDPR introduced one stop shopping with EU for data controllers. Google does that in Ireland. GDPR is a regulation, legally binding all over EU. And for others offering services to EU residents, although that's probably unenforcable.

When they get fined in France the basis is a French law. Probably a law to implement an EU directive. The cookies directive (don't remember the official name) is older than and different from GDPR.
Smart Services: Smart Contracts' Semi-Centralized Competition
It absolutely is bizarre, even if they are military allies. Can you imagine Canada asking for US military on their own grounds to fight civilian protests? Me neither. That’s a definition of puppet state.
Citation needed. There are all sorts of measures of gross happiness out there.
The British philosopher Mark Fisher coined the term "capitalist realism" for the sense that, since the beginning of the neoliberal era with Reagan and Thatcher and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become impossible to imagine an end to capitalism. In fact, "it has become easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism". Perhaps that's why apocalyptic and dystopian fiction has taken over from optimistic futurism - we are no longer capable of imagining Star Trek futures of abundance and idealism.
> Could anyone in 1990 have predicted the smartphone

Yes. It was called a communicator in fiction of the day. Did they get the exact details right, or every use case (e.g. replacing flashlights and music players)? No. Some of them used holograms from watches or big old handsets with a screen instead of a keypad but still big ear cups. But a portable device that could be used for voice calls, video calls, information lookup, note taking, certainly existed in fiction prior to the 90s.
From top 10 blockchains by market cap eight are not energy sensitive. Ethereum will stop proof of work this year. So it will only leave Bitcoin to be the carbon monster.

Also, by the usage and transaction volume Bitcoin is already behind Ethereum and others, so it is no longer even top 1 and has been falling against others for the last 4 years.

https://twitter.com/evan_van_ness/status/1471643651608649728...
Just to add on to this, Russia needs support in the region. Most democratically elected governments do not choose to align themselves with Russia. This is why Putin always props up nearby dictators. Without support, Putin’s regime and power would be in danger. You see many examples of trying to strong arm support from weaker regional neighbors: Ukraine, Belarus, Syria, Georgia, and now this situation.
As a person who has been exclusively on something similar to soylent for entire 2021, it is certainly possible today albeit not via 4 pills.
Well it is not a ponzi in the sense that there is no organiser and no promise of an underlying profitable enterprise.

It has become, functionally, a decentralized pyramid scheme.

Let's look at some of the criteria reviewed in the article.

- Investment Returns: Not Promised

The promise is peer to peer: players convince each other of investment returns and almost all players (that remain) are there because they believe in that promise. Once the last dude who wanted to buy pizza without giving Visa or Mastercard a cut has left the room...

- Open Source: The Opposite of Secrecy

Yes but that the mechanism of redistribution is (partially) in the open does not invalidate that something is a ponzi or a pyramid scheme. The openness is also partial, Bitcoin is still pseudonymous enough that we know what moves but not always who and why.

- No Pre-Mine

Early mining with exponential reduction in block reward is functionally equivalent to a pre-mine: the founder(s) have a considerable advantage. A bit more open but then one can also usually do well by buying early on the secondary market an explicitly premined coin that later becomes successful (e.g. ethereum). It's effectively a more elegant way to do a premine with nice deniability (harder to get caught for doing a security offering).

- Leaderless Growth

Yes it's decentralized. A decentralized pyramid scheme remains a pyramid scheme. It's not an intrinsic property of the tech but of the social happenings around it. (Many altcoins that are other instances of the same code have failed to get traction and become pyramid schemes.)
Too many people are in the value chain at this point - chips manufacturers, electricity generators, programmers, VCs [a16z most active], charlatans, influencers, your neighbors.

I don't know where it goes from here - its almost too late for it to prove any real world value. Also note that as equity assets tank so do crypto currencies - that strong correlation reflects how the Feds monetary policy has unfortunately inflated crypto. Wouldn't it be ironic if that was how Bitcoin actually did become a reserve currency (it won't because it doesn't behave like one and have underlying value similar to USD).
When faced with the same issue (optimizing for time wrt computer setup), I moved from a thinkpad with Arch Linux to an M1 MacBook + headless Ubuntu server under my desk.

Truly best of both worlds in my experience- incredible battery life and everything ‘just works’ for normal workflows on the MacBook, and can ssh into the headless Ubuntu box directly or from anywhere with internet. Depending on your dev needs, this anecdote may be useful: I’ve exclusively used vim and VS Code with a remote server extension to target the Ubuntu box for builds and I haven’t touched the setup for 6-8 months.

Also, if you’re willing to spend some time learning, getting into Nix ends up saving time in the long run as your nix shell definitions should provide replicable user / build environments on top of whatever Linux flavor you happen to be running at the time, for the headless dev box
This isn't really the same thing, but in art form, a company called "American Multiple Industries" published pornographic Atari 2600 games in the early 80's. The most infamous of which was Custer's Revenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer%27s_Revenge (Possibly NSFW)
>Unfortunately OSS is people working for free in their spare time and you can't expect much.

The majority of Linux dev work is actually done by paid devs at tech companies who contribute to Linux. Its been this way for years now. The reason it doesn't seem that way is because almost all of that contribution is going to enterprise code with the rest going to supporting whatever technologies those companies directly use. Google isn't spending time on making x86 laptop sleep states work, they are improving Android. Same with Amazon, they are contributing code that makes Linux more useful in AWS.

The consumer side is much much worse supported than the enterprise side. And there are actually paid versions of Linux that have paid development and support behind them. But again, it isn't aimed at PCs so PC specific features aren't getting fixed.

The only software company I can think of that is putting serious resources behind improving Linux on the PC is Valve.
It is precisely this kind of ignorance this article is to disperse. Just because you don’t have the imagination to see why peer to peer, censorship resistant, non-state based electronic money might be useful, doesn’t mean we all feel that way. After all these years and you still don’t get it means you live a sheltered life. In fact, you are going out of your way to shout “scam”, meanwhile most of us just ignore you while building the future.
Off-topic but: is "Top" in this context a Dutchism? I only know it from Dutch people
For very complex business logic backend/middleware, who is beating Java?

Only contenders I can think of are C# or Go.
I doubt that anyone designed this process intentionally, or that anyone involved in everyday Python development is consciously aware of it as a process; this sort of mess typically accumulates organically, through a series of individually-reasonable decisions.
Actually he may have been right - they're still there, but I never notice them because they just blend into the background now.
It feels they are trying to extrapolate history, and I feel they are using modern tools to create those sample photos, rather than just, y'know, check history :). Strip Poker was played on CGA displays, and it was released in very early 80's. As a normal curious pre-teen at the time, I can personally vouch that Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum ZX 48k had equivalent software available 0:-).
> The commonality with the Ponzi Scheme is that returns are solely based on others continued investment and that the value collapses if they stop doing this continuously.

You could say that about lots of investments:

* art

* non-voting stock shares

* coins/stamps

* etc.

Anything with limited/finite supply can increase in value provided there is demand.

Who’s to say that someone’s enjoyment of a piece of modern art is somehow more real or valuable than someone’s enjoyment of holding Bitcoin?

Bitcoin also has some utility as a transaction medium.

The debate is wether or not it’s a smart investment, but as far as investments go it’s characteristics are not unlike many other forms that have provided sustained returns for decades, centuries or more.
I find commenters on HN are desperately trying to be so rabidly anti-Bitcoin, that their opinions seem to be bitter rather than actual criticisms.
I forget where I came across it but this brings to mind an aphorism I've heard before. Basically, people in cultures that need to build fires to cook and heat their homes usually reject modern solutions saying "But then I wouldn't be able to build and keep a fire!"
Ok I will bite, what are you on ?
That's exactly it. Even if it's not a ponzi scheme, it's still entirely dependent on trust; if that trust collapses (and it will), its real money value will tank.

The advocates will of course mention that fiat money and stocks also depend on trust, but both of those have very powerful organizations presiding over them who ensure that the value of e.g. the dollar will not crash overnight, or that you will be compensated if your account gets plundered, or who will pause trading on a stock (or the market as a whole) if people start panicking and acting irrationally. Decentralized products (whether you consider cryptocurrencies money or assets) do not have these securities and guarantees. Individual players like exchanges might, but if one exchange decides to pause trading, the others will gladly take over that business.
TV/Movie scifi is mostly the last place you'd look for bold imaginings of future technology. Star Trek had a few hits with communicators, PADDs, and touch screen controls, but generally designs are very much of their time.

It's very obvious with modern scifi where controls are usually holographic projections with cyan grids and twirly animations. After a while these designs become lazy tropes - like villains who wear chunky black leather.

Compare with something like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, which is far more adventurous about possible futures.

The background problem is that the 20th century was set up for an explosion of invention by the late 19th, with Maxwell/Heaviside leading the charge and eventually leading to game changer developments like relativity and quantum theory. In math Boolean algebra fell out almost by accident from attempts to find a theory of computability which eventually led to modern computing.

These were all bedrock insights which completely changed what was possible in the physical world.

Where's the modern equivalent? There isn't one. Insights at that level more or less stopped happening after the discovery of DNA and the creation of Shannon's Information Theory.

Quantum Gravity might be the next game changer, but it also might not, and in any case it's an unknown distance away. The rest is detail work, not ground breaking transformation.
One might even argue it's still too fast, given how many cookie walls we see. People are not aware that any site with such a banner is shady and that it's usually not required, and by now everyone has it fixed in their mind that it's the politicians that are stupid and don't understand technology. If we had done a better warmup with better communication, we might have had better-informed people (at least the techies, I understand that not every grandma is going to know the details here).
I developed the same habit after working on numerical code in Matlab. `i` can sometimes be sqrt(-1), but `ii` is always a variable. For greatest disambiguation, it's best practice to write `1i` for the complex number and leave `i` unused.
And what is that history I have forgotten ?

Was java an embedded project at first ? yes

Was it then a client side universal solution ? yes

is it still any of those two ? no

Also please don't make comments on me assuming I'm parroting, that would be nice :)
His comments about the slowing pace of scientific advancement really struck me. I have felt the same thing, often. That in 1922, we were actually somewhat close to the end of discovering all the really interesting things about physics: that is, those things which really shook up our understanding of the universe, but were still somehow comprehensible to our little human brains. I'm beginning to think that it wasn't just overenthusiasm that led me to be pretty disappointed when I went to get a PhD in science - it's that I grew up reading about the results of the most interesting period, scientifically, that man has ever had, which is now over.
Scott Aaronson has always been like that.
Exactly. Moonman T5 is a bomb, highly recommended. Many other manufacturers are also very good. Ignore people trying to convince you a pen should cost $400.
Honda China JV announces 120k units-a-year EV factory
When does my local pub get to sue Google for allowing me to cheat at trivia night?
> The quality of life available on even a modest salary nowadays is far, far better.

It really depends on how you define "quality of life" and what one means by "better".

Material comforts and the bare necessities are ONE THING, but if you buy into the idea of "Maslow's hierarchy of needs", we have a huge and growing problem with those higher-level needs (and perhaps even the most base one, psychological) in recent times.
You mean someone can die from turning themselves into a nervous wreck?... Someone phone Hollywood I've got a plot idea!
> 0 microsoft on the web today

Wdym? TS?
Why the NFT hype will inevitably reach a (painful) normalisation point
On the Internet nobody knows you are a dog.

There is a wide spectrum of age, experience, and attitude in the programming population. Hot take: I am guessing that a lot of the noisy hating and hemming and hawing comes from the newer, less experienced cohort, we just can't tell on the Internet and so the perception skews that a significant fraction of all programmers think this way. I am basing this on having been there, done that, where I would scoff with indignation at any software not written in hand-optimized assembler with a bunch of unnecessary (to my newbie self) layers of abstraction.
You really aren’t entitled to stackOverflow so you were never “forced”
How would you compare Amazon to working at a startup? Pretty often things are on fire in small startups too, but possibly people feel more responsible for fixing things.
I don't know about the OP, but this thread is fascinating in general.
I haven't though it through in detail, but I think it has to do with the intersection of these two things. Netflix and ice cream is pure leisure, toiling in the mines is pure work, but there's significant overlap...I'm sure for many here working on a personal coding project can be both a joy in the sense of leisure and also productive work in the sense that other people would pay for it, or it brings significant economic value to them.

So...the middle of the Venn is the important part. Insofar as leisure is both joyful and productive, good. Insofar as we continue the "opiates of the masses" arms race and make ever better Netflix + ice cream, bad.
I don't think we do this because integration and specification bugs are inherently "unknowable". I think it's more cultural than technical.

I've also noticed a parallel phenomenon where teams double down on unit tests for branch conditions, coverage %, etc. when the bugs that are really hurting them predominantly cant even really be detected by unit tests.
I've heard that a few times. I wonder what the stats on the effectiveness of that are (the military tends to be great for record keeping)
But from a scientific standpoint, do you think a software can be 100% correct?
Bugs will eventually be found.

The best bet, when writing (100%) correct code, is through thorough testing, and hoping for the best, because when you are handling a million lines of code, errors, will definitely creep up.

Personally, I feel achieving a 100% correct code is impossible, since developers are always updating, and adding new features to the code.

Hence why a team, should be put in place to create patches quickly, when bugs are found.
Bolt gives all employees permanent 4-day work week
When endangered species recover, humans may need to make room for them
I’m always struck by US Grant in this regard. Suffering of debilitating cancer of throat, but convinced by Mark Twain and others his memoirs would bring financial benefit to his family after a failed business post presidency. He completed them and died a few days later, his final mission for his family.
GPU ain’t mined BTC since 2011. I think you mean eth.

Ultimately everything is a ponzi, for some definition of a ponzi. Likewise securities fraud.
Except not all stocks are like that. Non-voting right stocks are illegal in some countries but legal in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-voting_stock
Not sure if this is a joke I'm not getting, but the "variants" in the linked study refer to tiny genetic sequences, not phenotypical appearance traits.
It would be nice if the cost of rungs in the social later (housing, education, etc) wasn't so high that only certain kinds of people could achieve them.

Many of the "your not allowed to do that"s of the past are still in place for entire neighborhoods, only the words changed.
Impressively thought-out article, but given the publication date I'm also surprised there's no mention of the impacts of the flu pandemic of 1918-1920. So much ink is currently being spilled about how so many things will change thanks to the COVID pandemic, whether architecture or remote work or medical breakthroughs. I guess once the flu pandemic subsided it was no longer at the forefront of thought?
Islamic geometric patterns: Beyond the Great 96 [pdf]
added to my audible library thank you
"Cautious feminist" describes himself as:

But it is unlikely that women will have an achieved equality with men. Cautious feminists such as myself realize that things go slowly and that a brief hundred years will not wipe out the effects on women of 30,000 years of slavery.

He's definitely on point 100 years later.
I don't see anything in that article indicating that this is an unprecedented event, which is what the language suggests. And I do see a _number_ of places where they use the same "record numbers" text.

Certainly something interesting is going on, but this type of language is just a way to sensationalize something - to a journalist, "an unusual surge in employment churn" can be written "record numbers of workers are leaving their jobs" and the bulk of the readers will be like "holy cow, RECORD NUMBERS? What will we do?"

I find it interesting also that the graph you pointed me to only shows a couple years of data. If you look back further, is this a novel situation, or something that only comes up every few decades, or a situation encountered multiple times each decade? I have no idea, because the journalists weren't interested in my knowing that.
The Real WTF is the hiring process.