skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Even if you trust the coin issuer 100% to not keep a copy of the private key, these sorts of schemes only work until anyone anywhere counterfeits the first BitBill or Casascius coin.

At that point, it becomes necessary that all of the other physical tokens in the world must then be immediately destroyed on redemption and validated as a normal network spend... Which defeats the purpose of these transferable tokens to begin with.

The tamper seal doesn't help. You might as well just print out your own private keys as QR codes, the person accepting them will need Internet access to verify+transfer them, just as now with these "tamper-evident" systems.
So then organized crime could just set up its own courts and its own police force, confident that they're rich and powerful enough to outgun other forces. And after all, if mobsters paid you a visit and "suggested" that you use their court system, you wouldn't be dumb enough to turn them down would you? And if you would, then I bet the next guy wouldn't, after he heard about what happened to you.

Another obvious problem is that if you rob someone thoroughly enough, they won't have the resources to hire police to get their stolen property back. It's the perfect crime!

I haven't read all your source material, but from what you've said so far, these ideas simply don't make any sense.
Thanks for the pointer, I'll have a look at Tor software. But I find it scary the existence of a website offering highly illegal services where only a selected few can access.
The iPhone 4S’ GLONASS support may help it escape a 25% Russian import tax
I wish he'd invested the time/effort into producing something useful or cool that I could buy with bitcoins instead of these. I like the checkout system - just address and bitcoin payment.
Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?
> with N if it's a power of 2.

with N if it's highly composite. See, e.g. http://www.fftw.org/ which works fairly well even for non-powers of 2.
I've seen bots on Tumblr but far less than I've seen on the likes of Twitter. If you want to see a true botfest look no further than Tagged.
Here's a thought: Let it go. If your inspiration is the innovation at the heart of useful, life-changing technology, count yourself fortunate to have had such a meaningful impact.

Or dig in and fight like hell.

Roll up your sleeves and head to the nearest university's law library, bring some reading glasses and a tablet, dig into the germaine presiding legal code, and craft your offensive with the same fire in your belly that Erin Brokovich did when she went after the gas company.

As a matter of fact, if it's true and you find that your legal footing is indeed sound, it's a gold mine of content. Blog, book, movie. Think about it: Equifax. You couldn't pick a better black hat for a David v Goliath/ Good v Evil story. Really. The potential for intrigue and creative spin is endless. Creative non-fiction, as a genre, is one of the most lucrative in the history of story telling, publishing, theater, and film. And this story is one with an increasingly transcendent resonance at the dawn of the so-called 'contract/freelance/entrepreneur economy'. So many of us have been burned in similar ways, and it happens with such frequency, that even if a tenth of us similarly afflicted folks opted in, bought the book, and downloaded the movie, it'd likely dwarf the 13 million-dollar screwing you got.

If you go down that road, I'd ping Brokovich's consulting firm. Polish the canonball a bit, but really, get someone of that stature with that sort of direct 'man v. machine/in the belly of the beast' expertise. It could be bigger than you imagine.

http://www.brockovich.com/

Either way, thanks for the hack story. It took guts to share it, knowing that you'd likely get flamed to ashes with such a simple cheesecloth tale. Please let us know what you end up doing.

Good luck with that.
If we had this discussion about pirated movies and music, then you and I can have a reasonable discussion about the merits of one side or the other. And if you are strongly against copyright infringement, or feel that the music and movie companies have too much power in the law, there are reasonable merits to either side of the debate and a real discussion can take place.

The moment you bring child porn into it, then anyone who would "accept that building a website of the sole intention of linking to kiddie porn would be OK" is then labelled a sick, twisted individual for supporting such a thing. It's an argument designed to shut debate down before it even starts.

It's like Godwin's Law. Eventually someone mentions Hitler and that pretty much ends the discussion.
heh, Just tried mentioning SEO in a tweet, but even then I attracted two followers. Twitter seems to have the bot situation under control.
Do YC companies outsource their Accounting, Bookkeeping and Payroll?
Do YC companies outsource their Accounting, Bookkeeping and Payroll?
Stop paying for crappy hw
You're spot-on with Henry Ford.

Let us not forget that the social security system, with unemployment insurance and a state pension, was invented in the late 19th century by that well-known radical leftist, Prince Otto von Bismarck.

(He did it specifically to undermine the socialists, who he viewed as an internal security threat: it was the usual game of giving 90% of the supporters enough to buy them off and then rounding up the 10% radical fringe.)

The greatest hazard for our collective future is that the wealthiest section of our societies seem to have forgotten that there's an implicit social contract in consumer capitalism: mainly because many of them are engaged in financial manipulation with the goal of concentrating wealth, rather than actual primary production with the goal of creating wealth (like Henry Ford -- or, for that matter, Steve Jobs).

Once a capitalist society switches from producing and distributing wealth (so that everyone has an incentive to pitch in and work for it) to allowing the strong to grab as much as they can, the outlook for any kind of cooperation to produce long-term growth becomes bleak.
The companies are certainly in different spots -- Apple was floundering in 1997, while Google is growing in 2011. But I do see common threads for the roles that both Jobs played then and Page is playing now.

Jobs returned to Apple after a 10+ year hiatus. So, while returning to his roots, they were not the same team he had left behind. He had to reconstruct much of the company's management structure, which he felt was fraught with engineering mismanagement. (Saw an interview with Jobs from back then, but can't seem to find the source of those comments now.)

Page, in assuming the role as head of the company earlier this year, was taking ownership of a management team and organization that had largely been put in place by Schmidt (remember when he was needed for "adult supervision"). While Page was certainly there during that duration, he also didn't have direct responsibility for the rest of the organization. It's not an exact parallel, but Page certainly had a new organization from when he gave up the reins a decade ago. (And, he quickly responded by re-aligning several key management members).

But more so than environmental, it is the state of product development in Google I find most similar.

Jobs inherited a company that was spinning its wheels on various ideas, but not doing anything particularly well. Any vision the company held was certainly not reflected in the products it brought to the marketplace.

Page inherits a situation where, outside of search, Google doesn't do anything particularly well. I don't mean they suck, just that their product offering isn't much of a differentiator from competitors, or provides a compelling experience for users. I'm sure arguments can be made to counter my subjective opinion, but there are no product or services from Google that rivals the popularity of it's web search.

Referring back to Jobs's 1997 WWDC speech, it was about setting the bar for finding exactly what they should be working on, without regard to whether something had traction or if it was a good technical idea. I believe Page has to make those very same considerations right now.
How is a + sign so much smarter than a " mark?

quotation marks mean that you are making an exact quote, so you want an exact match.

Consider:

1. Hey, do you know anything about cars? Yeah, I have a fine automobile.

2. Hey, do you know anything about "Cars"? Yeah, it was a cute movie.
I don't know what it would be like for others, but if the society was 100% equal and egalitarian, I would be bored to death.

It's the same old question as: what do people do when they get to Heaven? Right now I have something to strive for and somewhere to get to. If I got the same share of food/amenities/service as everyone else regardless of how hard I work and how smart I am, I would kill myself. Either that or I would be transformed into a pathetic measly creature which has near zero impact on the entropy of the Universe.
Show HN: App for social bookmarking of things 
itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puntter/id471721632?ls=1&mt=8

We´ve been working on this day & night over the summer.
It´s not perfect, but wth, better launching now than never...

Maybe you could take it for a spin and tell us what u think.

-Yes we´ve put a lot of time in our design. Wasted time? I don´t know, not if it makes users happy to use this tool more often than crappy designed ones. Anyway, I am not sure if we could´ve done it differently. I hope we will find ways to further simplify the designs.

-Yes, we are crazy to put a photo of us being tortured onto the about section.

-Yes, we applied for this batch.

-Yes, we know our website needs a little more attention. However if you have suggestions, we are all ears.

-Hopefully to be continued below...

Thank you for your time!
There actually is a wizard to add from a predefined selection of groceries. Please try it!
Rumor: Xbox 720 to be unveiled at E3 2013
The funny thing is... I'm one of those non-alcoholic people you mentioned and on a caffeine break so I'll be taking that milk ;)
Rational people would much prefer a court inclined to rule in their favour (to a limited extent this already happens; patent trolls and other litigants tend to be selective about where they sue). Similarly, zeal for and efficacy in protecting my property will be a far more important criteria than reputation for fairness when I decide which police/defence force to pay. If I thought my kids are threatened by someone, I'd be looking for law enforcers who didn't care about maintaining a reputation for upholding the principle of innocence unless proven guilty.

Inevitably the accuser and accused are going to disagree; the logical consequence is an impasse and no trial, unless the accused is incarcerated pending trial, in which case the accused is essentially coerced into accepting the terms of the accusers representatives, irrespective of their guilt.

If parties are being paid by one party desiring a particular outcome, it's foolish to expect that "fairness" is going to be their prime motivation. One quality ultralibertarian capitalists seem to share with communists is excessive optimism about human nature.

FWIW I don't think your post warranted the downvotes even though I disagree with it.
I assure you that "Don't be evil" was not a VC concession.

Google's stated mission is "organize all the world's information", considerably bolder than "a computer on every desk".
In what sense is he "successful?"

Financially, in the same sense Mark Zuckerberg is.
I'd be more interested in knowing how Tumblr instantly knows just from my email address that I'm interested in following software developers. I didn't share that with them. I hardly use that gmail address for anything outside of google groups and github.
I have to agree with you. It seems he's promoting anarcho-capitalist garbage.

In a world where everything is privatized, what purpose would there be for providing arbitration services, especially for those who can't afford them? There's no profit in that. The natural evolution of this is that if neither party has money, nothing happens. If aggressor has more money, (s)he walks free. If accuser has more money, aggressor is executed (there's no money in imprisoning someone).

This philosophy is built on pillars made of toothpicks and elmers glue, and completely disregards human nature. Our justice system has been finely tuned for centuries to account for an incredible amount of variations and circumstances. It's not perfect, but considering how completely ape-like humans can be, I'd say it's a step up.
1. Unless it's efficient to determine where the fat is, it's not efficient to try to cut it.

2. "welfare for the upper middle class" is a perfect description of middle-management.
Good article, but I am a bit confused about how someone in 1906 (2nd page, top paragraph) supposedly did research on vestibular effects on pilots...
Not to mention that you can download the fully functional evaluation version, including several plugins in an 8mb package.

It is a remarkable piece of software.
From what I've seen, this is how most bootstrapped small-businesses hire. We find someone promising, we throw them a few smaller contracts, and then if we like them, we offer to hire them full time on a w2.

This is what I've been doing forever, and as far as I can tell, this is extremely common for businesses of my size with my ownership structure.

I think it's less common for large corporations because the definition of 'contractor' is, well, pretty unclear, so hiring someone direct on a 1099 is very risky, and hiring someone out of a body shop is usually quite expensive. (That, and most good people won't bother with you if you want them to go through a body shop.)
That's why gold and silver isn't used for coins anymore (except for special limited editions). Nowadays fiat money coins face value is much more than the material of which the coins itself are made.
Who Does Facebook Care About?
It is also why they have a tamper-evident hologram. You essentialy have to destroy your bill in order to spend it.
I just wrote a 300 line Java class to replace a 30 line Python script, so I don't think the criticism is unwarranted. (Python is not an official production language. And no, it's not a hidebound corp. Proposed changes need proof)
+1. I disagree strongly, but I don't think you should be down voted for honest explanations of your views. That's not what the button is for.
Actually only the top few are smart.
See also The River:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316372617/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=...

It seems like their theories are slightly different, but both involve vaccination programs as the cause of the epidemic.
What If Cantor's Proof Is Wrong?
It'd need some encryption+verification like a QR code that can easily be scanned with a phone, which would open up a website, contain an encrypted key and then decrypt and run block explorer to verify without revealing the key.
I kept the original post title, but a better one, and the interesting part of this post, might be something like: What consequences would there be if the reals were countable?
CS10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing
CS10 : The Beauty and Joy of Computing [berkeley.edu]

http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs10/

Give them the "big ideas" on one hand, and allow them to "peek under the hood" (do some visual programming with Scratch/BYOB/Snap) on the other. :)
I like using service classes for things like this.

class StoryService
def self.assign_story(params)
story = Story.find(params[:story_id])
user = User.find(params[:user_id])
story.assign_to(user)
end
end

This example is fairly minimal, but with service classes handling workflow and object coordination instead of the controller, the code is easier to test and reuse.
What this implies is that the more money people have, the better justice they can afford. Justice is not afforded or bought in our current system. Yes, the rich have unusually light sentences, but they still stand in the same courts and have to answer to the same authority. It's not perfect, but it's better, I believe, than what you're suggesting.

I believe a free-market court system will degrade into, like I said, a more-money-wins system. Here's a scenario:

Company A runs a clean, respectable justice service. You cannot buy your way out of being announced guilty, and you cannot buy guilt onto another person. Company B allows you to spend more money to achieve more justice. Which court would you pick? If you're poor, A. If you're rich, B. Result? B gets more money, B buys A. Now the only court left is a money-buys-justice one. Does this system work?

+1 for providing an interesting debate ;)
Alas, even given a reasonable form of interstellar travel for human physiological constraints, the chances of finding a target planet with an oxygen atmosphere but no pre-existing biosphere is very low. And the question of human food chain compatibility with alien biospheres is ... well, there's a very good chance that they would find us crunchy to snack upon, rather than vice versa. (I'm thinking at a microbiological level. H. G. Wells hit the hammer on the nail with "War of the Worlds" in more ways than one.)
Every major Utpoia has been thought through fairly well. Including Utpoia.

Idealistic movements fail because either they are generally unpersuasive, lack a viable transition, or just don't work when implemented.

Modern democracy solved these problems, Communism mutated or proved unstable depending on who you ask. Anarcho-capitalism is where it is.

To claim a solution, you need a strategy that actually goes from the present to the goal. Otherwise it's just wishing.
> tail-call recursion is almost inconsequential---this is a very introductory course, just an overview of CS, so performance isn't important.

> What is important are the big ideas.

Go back and read section 1.2 ("Procedures and the processes they generate") again. As far as its authors are concerned, this is one of the big ideas. Basic concepts of time and space complexity and recursive vs. iterative processes are so important that they appear as soon as the basics of Scheme have been introduced. It's a core theme of the book (Why is this n-queens program slow? How can we eliminate two extra stack saves in this register machine program?), and the main questions in chapter 5 that the evaluators in chapter 4 don't answer fully (but look closely at the CPS evaluator in section 4.3) are "how do procedures return values to their callers?" and the related "how can we write an evaluator that doesn't grow the stack when executing tail-recursive procedures?"

Ultimately, the beauty of SICP isn't in the paradigms covered but the understanding of how programs execute, and the beauty of Scheme is the simpleness of its control flow . It's far easier to a understand Scheme program than one written in Python, Haskell, Prolog, or any other high-level language. Do most people understand (modulo sophisticated optimizations) how the Python interpreter actually handles, say, comprehensions, iterators, generators, or its complex object-oriented features? Can a first-year student add these features by hand (forgetting completely about macros and first-class continuations) to an interpreter herself?

It amazes me that Berkeley professors don't want to teach Scheme (and worries me, as they're much cleverer than me). The whole magic of the language is that in the end there isn't any magic at all.
I hardly use that gmail address for anything outside of google groups and github.

Tumblr probably has an "invite friends" feature where it offers to suck up your address book. Maybe a few software developers you corresponded with in the past used that feature.
I don't think it's the focus on real identity for facebook, so much as the segregation of the network. Since most status updates aren't public by default, you can't use the equivalent of search.twitter.com to find all recent people posting about a keyword. This has good effects (no spam every time you mention 'iPad'), but also bad effects (no easy way to find people you don't know talking about topics you care about).
That's why you put your money in a savings account... anyway, I think we're on the same side.

To put these $1.8m in perspective, that's just a tad less than the amount of savings one in the top 0.5% might have after retirement: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/investment_m...
I still wish there are going to be some syntax improvements to Python then. Matlab's way of working with matrices is simply excellent. Formulas on paper map almost one to one to the code. Apart from that I'd take Python over Matlab any day but am forced to work with it for some of my classes.
I was referencing where his returns came from, not his capital. That's another story which I haven't dug enough researching to figure out.
Build Engineering and Infrastructure: How Unity Does It
Link should be to the actual article not Business Insider's summary.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-kadafi-m...
Yes, I guess I've always operated under the assumption that I've needed to parallelize dramatically. I usually operate on data from families of ~40 people with next-gen sequencing data, and the tools that I use generally finish within about an hour.
The idea of finding a ready-made habitable planet somewhere out there isn't science fiction, it's pure fantasy.

You don't colonize the new world by paddling across the Atlantic in a dugout canoe with a few of your friends, expecting to rent an apartment in midtown Manhattan. We have a lot of work left to do on this planet first.
No man, partying 6 nights in a row, hanging out being care free, living for the moment etc. So if someone asks you, how were your 20s, you smile and say wooh, they were good, and off record. :-)

Basically I'm saying party it up, learn a bit about everything and everyone, back pack across a continent or two, and don't be in such a rush to jump in the rat race. When you're in your late 20s, dropping everything and rolling out will most likely be near impossible. You will be more rooted like an older tree. Right now just see and feel the world you have come into and just play with it.

My 2 cents.

P.S. to me a Michael Jackson or Mark Zuckerberg are not a great life, because they were/are unidimensional. They are what they are and not much outside of it. In technology, a rounded and balanced figure I can think of Steve Jobs. He got the fuck out, then got back in. In is always there, you can always get back in, but you can't always get out.

Good luck!
I think the arguments about staying on course are poor. It seems to me the thinking is "Given we've got optional typing, it's faster to not check the types. The majority of type errors should be found during development."
Because you have a poor ISP. No proper ISP should block anything (except maybe child porn, but that's a slippery slope). Change your DNS to either Google's (8.8.8.8) or OpenDNS.

If you live in a repressive country prohibiting pornography you should get a VPN. I'm satisfied with my choice of strongVPN.com
I also had this problem. Whenever I'd need to respond quickly, I'd try to use inverted controls, then crash.. :(
I bet the wouldn't down vote Peter Thiel.

Some of us are for anarcho-capitalism.
Exactly. I remember reading an article from an outgoing editor of The Economist. He said there was an unwritten rule: 80% fact, 20% opinion, but that opinion should be clearly stated as such.

I usually find the opinions quite easy to notice and consider apart from the facts.
Google interested in acquiring Yahoo
10 tips para aumentar tu lista de suscriptores.
cant see shit.
I hope PG reads this article, my Y Combinator application is in this field.
Does this really have to be generalized to "implications?" It's not like this happens all the time, and nobody's saying "ALL RIGHT GUYS, IT'S EITHER US OR THE CRIMINALS NOW."
Are you the one like me?
Passion for web technologies but stuck working for some crappy corporate giants for huge pay-checks.
How do you manage both ? Passion and crappy day-job...