skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Moot" is one of those words whose meaning has evolved to contradict itself [1]. Certainly its primary dictionary definition is "open to debate" [2,3]. Plus the word derives from Old English for "meeting" and is cognate with modern English "meet" [4]. So the Finns do have a case.

But it's a weak case, because (as you imply) that original meaning has been obsolete for a long time, and in modern English people only use "moot" to mean "not worth debating". According to [4], "moot" began its pivot in the 16th century when law students used the word for practice debates where they would argue about mock issues—things that didn't really matter—in order to hone their skills.

Hmm, but then it is internet forum software, isn't it? "Arguing about things that don't matter" might be a perfect match!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym

2. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/moot

3. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moot

4. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&s...
>The cost of regulating any network actually goes up exponentially with the number of nodes that must be monitored (you need a hierarchy of systems to perform ‘guard labor’ to make sure systems are behaving within declared parameters).

This is at the core of the argument and doesn't make any sense. Worst comes to worst, the cost of monitoring all interactions between n nodes is O(n^2) even when adding monitors on top of monitors etc. The way banking is organized, it's even less. Alice doesn't transfer money directly to Bob: she talks to her bank, who talks to Bob's bank, who then talks to Bob. The banks have to monitor one-on-one interactions with their customers and the government monitors interactions between banks. This all is well within O(n), where n is the total number of customers.

I'm not saying Bitcoin doesn't have any advantages, but easier monitoring of fraud is not one of them. How do you even know the coins were indeed stolen?
It's a shame this article was written by someone with no fucking clue. It was obvious that it was going to be a tedious, trudging, steaming pile of bovine fecal matter from the very beginning: when it was suggested that PHP5 was a Zend company product.

This "author" is a buffoon.
175,000 lines x 40,000 columns of a 16x20 pixel image.

That's a pretty impressive optimization in the browser, I'm fairly sure I don't have that much RAM.
What are some reasons it does/doesn't work for SMBs?
I can't remember the last time I needed a replacement part for something and it was just a monoblock plastic piece.

As the father of two young boys, I could make a full-time job of printing replacement plastic pieces for broken toys.
Free-market believers assume there must be somebody in the system with the incentives to help those less sophisticated investors. Or that the market will eliminate con artists, because their investments must be weak.

That's how you get Alan Greenspan, thought by some to be a sophisticated thinker, flabbergasted that the events of 2006-2008 were even possible.
Have you ever read an eula? Have you ever heard of someone winning a lawsuit against a software vendor? Have you even heard of someone getting any kind of monetary compensation for mishaps caused by software bugs?

The suing part is purely fictional.
Thank you for building this. I'm learning Clojure right now, and it is my first foray into functional programming (outside of using map type functions in Python, JS, etc).

1) Light Table makes Clojure's (and really Lisp's) beauty jump out at me.

2) It is a true pleasure to use the InstaRepl, and I'm looking forward to doing more with it as I learn to apply Clojure's basics to doing stuff in my day to day job.

I frickin love this thing.
Would love to find the citation for that one...
7GB is/was your entire dataset?
I know several people who make a lot of money in trading, and I hear the liquidity argument constantly as the justification for their behavior. They describe the millions that they make as payment for all the 'value' that they've given to everyone; But, as an ignorant, I can't see how those millions could have come from anywhere than other (less informed) peoples' pockets.

To me, the worst part (again, as an ignorant), is that the argument seems practically untestable. They say that if we prevent or regulate these complex trading instruments and schemes, then the sky will fall. But, to me, it just smells of religion.
Exchange rates: Inside the Bitcoin economy
What's up with inDinero?
Culture matters. Don't screw it up.
If you're investing over the long term and can afford to ride out the shocks then historically speaking stocks have always out performed bonds. That's not gambling.

It's not a zero sum game between you & Goldman. In a growing economy everyone can win by investing.
(1) NaN is not an error code. It is a value added to the system to make it closed under all the usual operations (thus eliminating the need for error codes).

(2) Adding values of varying magnitude does not produce NaN results in IEEE-754 arithmetic. The only addition that produces a NaN is +Infinity + -Infinity, which have equal magnitude.
When were you diagnosed with Asperger's? Was pursuing meditation a choice you made primarily due to the clinical diagnosis? (I'm just curious)
I personally don't care what AppGratis does, whether it's good or bad, because, as far as I understand it, that's not what any of the "outrage" was all about.

It's the fact that a popular app, downloaded millions of times, existing for years, can suddenly be yanked by Apple, without any kind of reasonable "due process", or even reasonable warning. At a whim.

It's the arbitrariness of it, and the fact that it could happen to any developer, that's scary. Talking about whether or not AppGratis is a good/bad company is a complete distraction from the part that actually matters.
I "ignored" that because it's total speculation, invented by the person above. It wasn't included in the source article at all.

And it's also completely irrelevant. Some of his peers on Wall Street got a bonus not of $2 million but of $20 million. If you can't emotionally handle that, then yes, you should definitely get off of Wall Street. You will never be the guy making the most money there.

The only people who are compensated exactly for the value they create are the people who risk their own money.
I find it hard to believe that television or other advertising for a product like Coke or Pepsi makes a big difference in sales. I'm already aware of the products, I already have my opinions on them, and they aren't going to change them.

I feel the same way about beer. I love beer commercials... they are usually absolutely hilarious, and I often literally LOL at them. During football season, when I'm hanging with my friends at the sports bar watching the Dolphins play, I look forward to the commercials so we can have a group laugh over the latest ads from Budweiser, Coors, Michelob, etc.

But... 2 minutes after a given ad airs, I could not tell you if it was an ad for Coors, Michelob, Budweiser or "other". Well, ok, the Keystone ones do stand out a bit in my mind. But in any case, NONE of them give me the slightest inclination to drink their respective brand of beer. I already regard all mainstream, mass-market American beers as being roughly equivalent to stale horse piss, and all the funny commercials in the world aren't going to change that.

My staple beer is Sam Adams, which I usually drink unless a given bar has a microbrew I happen to like. And I was drinking Sam before I ever remember seeing a commercial for it. How'd I find it? A bartender recommended it to me once, I tried it, liked it, and that was it.
Nearly every dog does "bite-hold-shake".
That's a leak in a way. It indicates that there is an unpatched vulnerability that is serious enough to warrant immediate work.
Direct response ads have turned out to be very successful for brands on Facebook. Once they have reached a healthy fan base size they sell actual products to their fans in their newsfeed. Example: Domino's offering a special only available to their Facebook fans. With Facebook's pixel tracking you can back out the exact ROI for every dollar spent promoting that offer to fan's & friends of fan's.
The sophisticated firms just see those regulations as another challenge.

I usually don't call for increased salaries for government workers, but the people regulating Wall Street probably need to be making near-mid-six-figure salaries. Otherwise the ones who are good at their job will just get hired away by Wall Street.
While I agree, the argument was relative to the notion that agents are valuable in general because one agent had a rare, second-hand set of knowledge.

And FWIW, I do believe that seller home inspections are a good idea. It would be better still if it were a strongly regulated, accredited industry.
I started a job recently that relied on much more Django skills than I had. I'm a senior programmer, but my Django was dusty. Purchasing "Two Scoops of Django" was a fantastic investment. The material is moderately dense, giving "best practices" to a wide range of practical topics.

For me, a technical "here's what's really important" book is the most valuable. Django docs (and the Django Book) are great, and I'm thrilled to have them plus "Two Scoops" to use for my day job.
> That guy didn't make the company all that money entirely on his own. Lehman supplied the capital, they get the bulk of the profit. That's how it works.

Capital doesn't sit there and make money by itself. The allocation between how much of the profit the bank gets versus the trader is itself a market transaction--if the bank low-balls traders consistently, they'll just go to another bank. If the supply of traders who can do that is low relative to the amount of capital available to invest, bonuses will go up and traders will take a larger allocation.
Can you link me to a layman version?
And here I am just now getting decent at beamer. :( I wonder if it is possible to compile a beamer presentation to html5 easily. Fun side project, at any rate.
Agree that we do in reality get busy, and it's a legit thing to say at times. My sense is the perpetually "I'm so busy" types are the subject of the post.
"America needs more dense cities like NYC, for economic, national-strategic, and environmental reasons. "

Not sure what you mean by national-strategic, but sure cramming people in like sardines makes it easier to make things efficient - but it's very realistic to make less dense populations efficient/sustainable too. Urban developement isn't some kind of ecological optimization problem. There are factors you are completely dismissing, like overall happiness, contribution to the community and the nation as a whole, cultural value generated etc.

The culture and appeal of SF are contingent on it staying small.
Viral Video Roundup April 12
I agree, telling someone you're too busy is just telling them they are not high on your priority list.
I don't know all the specifics, but they've pushed a patch in March for this accidental hard-fork of the blockchain with a couple months of grace period before the fix allows larger block sizes which will not be able to be processed by older clients with the bug present.

See: http://mineforeman.com/2013/03/17/post-fork-plan-upgrade-you...
What parts of the bill are you having trouble understanding?
shameless plug 2: i used deck.js for my lecture slides (www.webtech.org.uk)
...full-time job...

In a way that's my point - it's probably a 5 hour job to print a replacement plastic peg for some toy. 5 hours is $100 for anyone who can afford a 3D printer. Plus the printer's cost. Financially it makes no sense. As a hobby... brilliant and probably hugely rewarding, but the 3D printing lobby would have you believe we'll all have one and nothing will be landfilled any more.
SQL joins explained
I think it's explained on the Addepar site:

https://addepar.com/technology/

Looks like graph theory to analyze investments as a set of relationships, rather than bar charts just showing aggregate stats.
Will Teachers Unions Kill Virtual Learning?
I suppose if you really are convinced a poll is harmful.

Maybe a more apt analogy would have been knocking that Triple Whopper out of someone's hand before they clog their arteries? :P
I wonder if we'll see the blog post "I hacked Mt.Gox and now have 264,832 btc, how do I sell that and turn it into dollars/rubles/yen/yuan/whatever?"
It's not just running the numbers better. It's having the numbers to run. That's what information asymmetry is all about. One side of the transaction has the data at the most detailed level and have the technological sophistication to be able to operate on that larger quantity of data in a reasonable time frame. The guys on the other side don't even have the data, only aggregated summaries. Even if they figured out how to get the details it requires significantly more technical resources in terms of hardware, software and engineering to be able to compete.

My point is that it's not just that the big guys have better programs...they have better programs and better data and it's frequently the data that makes the difference.
Balls In Barrels - fun with infinity
Sites like jsfidle.net and codebin.org are the perfect solution for education, except there isn't a lot of reason they need to be run remotely. It would be great if they offered a local version, but somehow I think that's not going to happen.
Here are some: http://moot.it/forum/#!/setting-up#working-moots
I recently calculated the cost of 50% hashing power in ASICs, and it was something like $1M.

Even if the hash rate grew 10-50x it would cost less than $50M. Well within reach of governments or large corporations.

That said, as adoption and thus the value of Bitcoin increases, the incentive to mine and thus secure the network rises, so there's a nice feedback loop.
Visit Rapture - Imgur
Disagree. IAP in games can be used to offer premium fun stuff that users want to pay for like boosts, or getting ahead in the game. Nothing wrong with it, as shown in the massive success of games with IAP. Majority of games allow you to earn everything yourself over time without spending money, but if you want to spend money to get them earlier, you can. IAP being used for full version of an app from a demo is slowly dwindling down in games, in favor of the Free to Play model.

This developer added it later and it's more of a fun thing to do, so not the best way to do IAP, but there's more to IAP outside of demo --> Full version.
The most challenging math puzzle comes to iPhone - Free today for HN Readers
You propose a congestion charge to eleviate the problem of there not being enough housing?! Thats completely and utter nonsense. The only way around overpriced housing is to build more. If people move away and the prices drop, the flats become bigger and people will have a better life style (assuming they have jobs). Instead you suggest that all should cram into small housing and talk about how awesome the place is. I'm sorry to say it, but thats bullshit.

The "detroit" problem that you mention is of a different kind. What do you do with derelict areas?! Thats politics and something you can figure out later. But not at the expense of everyone who now is paying way too much for shitty housing.
Because people are different, if you're 20 year-old healthy female you'll have a completely different risk profile from a 64 year-old male with health problems.

If you work in the government you might want to avoid your pension being in your own government bonds because you don't want all your eggs in one basket.

If you're an immigrant who plans to retire back to your home country you might want to limit you exposure to currency risk.

It's not just about betting on being better than the market, it's about aligning your investments (pension or otherwise) with your personal situation and objectives.
> Sure. But you realize that reals are sometimes equal?

Of course.

> Also, comparison is also undecideable, and that's pretty certainly an operation you want to have at times.

Why?
Hebrew: the only language to revive from absolute 0 native speakers to Millions
just yesterday I wanted to repair my phone but I needed a prying tool to pry some parts off of the chip. I could've just printed something like http://daydealx-com.s3.amazonaws.com/files/images6/prytool.j...

A week ago, something broke in the toilet (the refill valve I think it's called... a long plastic tube that refills the tank after a flush). I could've just printed a new one.

I also needed a screwdriver recently, and since domestic 3D printers will eventually be able to print metal just as easily as they can print plastics, I will be able to just print one.

And these are just recent examples off the top of my head...
It was the local data that got corrupted, which with POP and deleting from the server was a big deal; not so big a problem with IMAP.
I think this will positively affect potential applicants to the company much more than potential customers.

All things being equal, we all want to do good with our time and support organizations that do good.
It might take 5 hrs to print it, but do you stand there and watch it the whole time? Plus there are several items I've printed that I could have obtained in no other way.

So 3D printers are great for me, and now I'm on the verge of it being viable to buy rather than outsourcing the printing.
Mulberry was my mail app of choice back circa 1998. At the time, it was verifiably the most complete implementation of IMAP available. It supported server-side searching, server-side copying, shared mailboxes, and I believe partial fetch. All features that no other IMAP client supported at the time. Some of these feature were even difficult to find in server implementations.
This is awesome. Love the timeline diagram, and that you held the grocery items constant.
*business
Currently the focus of our attention is on small software companies, but we believe that the milestone-based approach would be beneficial to projects in any industry. Milestones bring visibility - the project route is explicitly defined, everyone on the team sees where the project is headed. The other advantage is flexibility - since the project is divided into smaller parts, it's easier to spot problems as they arise.

Of course, this approach is not for all use cases. For example, it won't work for very short projects - too much hassle setting up all those milestones.
The author seems to believe we should adopt a literacy about games very similar to one used when evaluating literature. I think this is incredibly misguided, because they're entirely different mediums (or at least should be). In Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, he compares video games to word problems, and says video games like word problems should be judged by their cognitive challenges not their literary merit.

If you want to evaluate games seriously by looking through a narrative lens, I don't think video games could ever surpass books in their ability to tell a story. The ability to control an avatar "normally makes a coherent interpretation of the avatar and his / her behavior in regard to the game’s story quite difficult, if not impossible. Players usually don’t enact an ideal story – at least not in the first playthrough. Take James Bond games, for example. While you learn how to be as cool, cunning and competent as James Bond, you normally act like an idiot. Not taking cover when being shot at, forgetting to reload, getting lost, driving against water hydrants and being killed – all of this is far from an ideal realization of the James Bond character (Well Played 1.0 (don't recommend))."

Perhaps the argument could be made that video games give the player agency in the story in a way books don't so can excel narratively where books can't, but first of all how many games with a narrative focus really give the player any meaningful agency? And if I have meaningful agency, I'm writing my own story; I don't need to think deeply about what the author/designer is saying like this article advocates.

This essay isn't short, but I think he makes a lot of good points about the history of the Zelda franchise and argues the next Zelda would be better if it had no story: http://tevisthompson.com/saving-zelda/ . Video games can have value and meaning that transcends narrative structures.
That's not really necessary. If you need approximate comparison/equality, just compare up to a fixed depth. You'll get an answer that is one of: gt, lt, eq or unknown.

There are some cases where your system provides better results, comparing two equal irrational numbers for example, but I can't think of a use case for that.
An interesting anecdote...when I was in middle school, an account exec for McDonald's came to speak to our class. He told us that in our local market, McDonald's Corp wasn't convinced that the TV and radio ads were having a significant effect on buying behavior. So for one day, they pulled the ads in that market. They found that sales absolutely plummeted in that day, so they scrambled to reinstate their regular ads and all was well. Of course this is anecdotal evidence, but it made a big impact on my middle-school mind :) Everyone thinks they're not affected by advertising.
ditto Newegg

"Newegg Crushes Patent Troll in Online 'Shopping Cart' Suit"

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414778,00.asp

edit: better article link:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-crushe...
Hahaha. I love the idea of Wall Street jocks vs. Internet Nerds in FOREX.

I can just imagine some lower Manhattan hedge fund guy shorting Bitcoins just because he's got 100k in fun money.
Do NOT ever trust people who try to justify their position when they are making MILLIONS from it. I mean, you DON'T need to test it. Doing whatever it takes (lying, misleading, deluding self) to get what you want (and in this case millions of bucks, not just a toy truck) is a basic life skill you learn in daycare.
Google Operating System blogger Alex Chitsu has a post removed due to bogus DMCA
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Polite Is the New Rude
about 4 months ago, when the creator of IMAP passed away, I was fascinated to read about the quality of his RFCs and far-reaching vision for IMAP [1]

IMAP has apparently always been misimplemented protocol.

While I agree that Trojita isn't yet a replacement for more featureful clients, I'm glad it's finally blazing a path of showing how to do IMAP well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4825893
What you need to know about buying a 3D printer
That's a silly argument; you don't have to be the first to do something to be the first to make a difference with it. See: the computer GUI, Google's search engine, Apple's iPod, Apple's iPhone, etc.

Google Fiber is certainly a big deal at 3-8x as fast as the fastest generally available consumer connection. Comcast only goes up to 150-300mbps in their fastest markets, for much more than the $70/month Google Fiber costs.
This doesn't actually work in Chrome, you have to also set a user stylesheet to override the -webkit- css property that forces exact pixel sizes of fonts.
I think of myself as tending toward the cynical but this goes even farther than I would. Is there any reasoning behind that belief or just general cynicism? (for example is Dom somehow involved in marketing or advertising?)
If you want to shape metal, you need a real cnc machine. "Printed" metal simply cannot have the right internal crystalline structure for a lot of tasks.