skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Bitcoin is not dead, it will come back. Technically, it won't even disappear.

Bitcoin has many fundamental uses as an exchange of value (note the vernacular) that is not done properly by anything else. It is the reason that markets like the Silk Road can exist. The "fundamental" flaw of bitcoin is that it is deflationary. This causes mass speculation, which causes instability.

It's instability means that it is not a good store of value. It is good for exchange of value under certain conditions (anonymous, distributed, trust required, cryptographic, etc.). Bitcoin is taking a hit right now because all of the speculators are cashing out (or panicking, or whatever). Most of the people who use bitcoin for it's fundamental strengths only hold on to bitcoin briefly. This is one of the (perhaps unintended) features of the commodity.

Bitcoin is not good for measuring value. You would never set a price in terms of bitcoin. You would set the price in terms of dollars or euros and then use a conversion to figure out what the price in bitcoins should be. This will probably always be the case for bitcoin transactions, because that's just how bitcoin is.

But as long as bitcoin does 'distributed, anonymous, and cryptographic' better than everybody else, it will be used for those strengths, and this will keep it alive. Bitcoin is not dead until there is something to replace it. A market crash does not count.

It just makes for some sad speculators.
Bitcoins stability is enforced by the market, not a single controlling party (large holders manipulating the market excepted, but their ability to do so has a hard limit). This is a mathematical fact that can be proven with a scientific proof. Contemporary currencies on the other hand are veiled in secrecy in process, and the market simply accepts them as stable for the benefit of society, which is taken advantage of regularly by those who control those currencies.
Spoken like an engineer! I have similar sentiment but surprised to learn how much LinkedIn is valued by those outside of software. It's like the GitHub for MBAs when it comes to professional networking/reputation
You just made me realize that my girlfriends get me to go shopping with them not for the novelty of "shopping with a guy", as I dimly suspected, but because I do this with them.

They care more than enough to pick out their own clothes, but I imagine they like the idea of "being dressed" in the sense you're speaking of.
Is there no way to get the direction vector of the ship? You have rotation in radians, but no way to convert that.. not even cos/sin to roll it yourself. Am I missing something?
It's the 2013 version of Netscape's "What's New" and "What's Cool" buttons.

Holy shit, nothing HAS changed. It just has a different skin on it.
Yes, there is a byte limit to the size of a block. If blocks become infrequent enough due to decreased mining power, it's conceivable that a backlog of transactions would build up. At the next difficulty adjustment, though, speed would pick back up again.
I would like to point out that there aren't even 13 million bitcoins in circulation.
>You will get paid the same 70% revenue share

Guess it sounds better than 'We will take a 30% cut of everything you sell!'
So don't joint. No need to be rude about it.
So my first job after high school was a start-up where the founder had three kids, ranging from about 5 to 12. He worked pretty much all the time, but on the weekends he'd come in wearing flip flops with one kid or another who would sit quietly playing for a few hours before mom came to take them home. Nobody ever complained nor were they anywhere close to the biggest distraction in the office.

I remember him once telling me to properly install the IEC receptacle in some equipment I was building, because "(5 y/o) is going to be helping me plug and unplug stuff when we do field tests."
I don't know if people know this or not, but all of these "social" features invade our privacy without us having to install an extension. The social javascript embedded into the web page automatically communicates with each service it's from.
What do you call a volatile commodity used as an ephemeral financial instrument for the (anonymous) transfer of value, which is immediately converted into a more stable commodity (e.g. a currency) after it's received?

"Non-fiat cheques", perhaps?
> Your central point is without merit. The "victim" is a victim, not of MtGox, but their own poor decisions.

Their decisions may have made themselves vulnerable to the attack, but (based on the information provided) they are a victim of a third-party that is neither the MtGox nor themselves -- that is, the people that actually used the malware to steal the BTC.
I must have missed all of this outrage over Android, Chrome, GMail, Docs + Drive, Adwords, Analytics, etc, etc.

To be honest, I'm really glad Google finally pulled the plug on Reader instead of letting it rot to death. It's opened up the market for companies who will really focus on it. The same with iGoogle, which will be replaced by a much better "Google Now"-ish product.
To implement point #3 would go against the spirit of the competition, I think. Part of the challenge is to implement a good core of navigation code.

Unit testing a physics simulation could be quite tricky too.
Yeah, seems like Google is parsing the query as ((the c programming) language). It manages to map "the c programming" to the book fuzzily, and then is telling you the language of that book, which it denotes by "Original language".

Awkward.
The True Beauty of Math
The top posts seem to have a lot of comments (600+) and likes

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/whoToFollow?strategy=post...

I've been using groups a lot recently and if you post the right stuff it sparks a good discussion. Also sends a fair bit of traffic to my blog.

Agree that the site is unresponsive, badly designed and considering their valuation it seems baffling the state it is in.
They really do push you to at least create an account though. I've accidentally created and had to close an account several times. I've given up and just left an open but dormant account now.
It would be fascinating to give these creatures a very simple, evolvable nervous system: for example, a table where rows are timesteps, columns are cubes, and the cell contents are expand/contract/nothing: sort of like the old MOD trackers.
This look awesome and I can't wait to try it out. Hell, I think we'd even use it in our office (a large open room with 8+ people working, meaning we are all often wearing headphones to stay focused).

Feature suggestion: Have an "away" feature. I hit a button to say I'm going away, type a message (brb, out for lunch, etc), and that's what is displayed in my window while I'm gone. Adding a time stamp + optional field for when you'll be back would be nifty as well. This feature could just be an extension of "privacy mode" as well.
If we get down to the basics I think anything that is a medium of exchange is a currency. So in some circles cigarettes and Tide work as currency. Though these "currencies" are not legal tender.
As well as a real "APPLE ][", we had a clone which displayed "GALAGA" on boot, bought from Singapore I think. It was otherwise identical to the real one, including the rest of the EPROM image. So there really were clones "Stolen from Apple".

To get it to run ProDOS we had to reburn the EPROM on that sucker :-):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProDOS#Unlicensed_Apple_I...

There's a similar mechanism in OSX to this day:
http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1320
what an awful title. i wonder if the title was changed by someone who didn't write the article? "real money" doesn't appear in the text (which is concerned with whether it is stable, not real) and is obviously going to trigger, well, see posts here...
Two Years Ago and A Quarter Million Dollar Later
Or change the 3 moons to an expanding black hole that pulls you in. Perhaps that could be another level ;)
Most headlines are not written by the article author.
arrogant?
It might have even been written beforehand in case a Bitcoin 'crash' occurred.
You think they haven't caused outrage in the Search space? The DuckDuckGo people would like to have a word with you.

As for Google+, aside from the ever-increasing pervasive integrations with other Google properties, I actually do like the product itself. They've made sense of choosing who you share individual items with (Facebook still hasn't done this), it combines the "friend" and "follower" models nicely (it's quite nice reading posts from people like Linus there), the photo albums are very nicely presented and high in quality, and Hangouts are unmatched IMO. If I knew anyone else who used it, I would participate there more...
Looks like they're finally making my add-on - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/font-finder/ - obsolete. Frankly, all I can say is about time. This is something that I would've expected to be able to do long ago, and I welcome my new font analysis overlord.
The same thing you'd call a tulip bulb, or a share of Pets.com stock. The only basis you seem to be using to qualify Bitcoin is that it (often) has a spot price.
#FF4A00
Contraband?
Since you raised the issue, how exactly is a for profit and publicly owned company supposed to run effectively if not through a (benevolent or not) monarchy? Do you expect Google to put product decisions up for a vote?
As somewhat frequent Bitcoin user - the recent volatility combined with lag in the MtGox exchange (in the United States) - has made it next to impossible to use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, without a lot of back-and-forth refunds/top ups to make up for the rapidly changing value.

If I send you 2 Bitcoins expecting they will be $200 USD when they get to you, but when you transfer them back to USD, they are only worth $150 - then I still need to send you another $50 in bitcoins.

I can live with 10-20% volatility in currency a year, or even a month - but within a particular transaction? It makes the currency unusable.

One thing that no bitcoin user I've talked to who uses it as a currency mentions, is the nominal value. They would be quite happy (more happy) with a $1 USD BC that never, ever, changed its value.
Man traces stolen laptop to Iran, blogs photos of new owners
"the rules built into the software already contain the seeds for the possible outcome" -- you could say the same for natural evolution, if you consider the laws of physics as 'the rules built into the software'.

Regarding selection, yes, this is artificial selection pretty much by definition, since it's simulated. Though it's an abstracted, simplified version of whatever natural selection is, it's not really very different in the end.
FDA approves software for iPhone-based vision test
Hmmm, not sure about that.

I mean, it's clear to me that their startup failed. But "nowhere near ready to found a startup"? What does that even mean? Where do I get my secret decoder badge of startup readiness exactly?

Reading through it, I saw and empathized with their mistakes--they decided they'd found validation before they really had. They kept it going too long. They ignored the writing on the wall for too long. But aren't those always the tough questions? When should a founder give up versus persevere? It's not a straightforward answer and as a business owner I find it frustrating when I see people (particularly other business owners) suggest it is.

Bottom line though--everyone needs to decide for themselves if they want to go into business for themselves. But are they "ready"? Who the hell knows? There isn't a list of required skills and credentials for this position.
Maps? Gmail? Youtube? All these are screwed up? Compared to whom? Driverless cars? Android? Streetview?

Damn I am tired of people unhappy with one product line using it to damn the entire company.
> One could make a very well-founded argument, for example, that Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and even EA or Comcast are not, strictly speaking, "evil" companies.

I'll venture to say this is the case. Most tech firms are small-fries when it comes to evil.

Cargill, Monsanto, and pretty much any oil company - now that's serious evil. And that's just in recent history. We're not even talking the East India Trading company.

Wake me when a tech firm profits billions through sweetheart contracts on an unjustifiable war or, through ineptitude or malevolence, kills tens of thousands in an industrial disaster.
Right. I have no clue what to do now, though.
You know, if they just made the titles of the explanatory elements of the card hyperlinks (so that you could click on the "C Programming Language" or, less likely to be useful "Original Language" explanations at the bottom of the card and get, respectively, a card for "C Programming Language", the book, and a page or card describing the "Original Language" attribute) this would be more useful.
So, once the modified clone(s) start to get a foothold in the market, release a new version of the OS which checks for the existence of the copyrighted marker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProDOS#Unlicensed_Apple_I...
Do a find/replace in that article, replacing 'bitcoin' with 'gold', and all the points are equally valid. This demonstrates that the reasoning used in the article is flawed, as we know that gold has not suddenly lost all of it's value due to a more or less fixed supply.

Additionally, you can replace 'bitcoin' with anything with a fixed supply, say 'us dollars pre 1950', and the logic of the article remains unchanged. Again, this demonstrates that the reasoning used in the article is incorrect.

Perhaps bitcoins will be worth a lot, the same, or nothing tomorrow. This article sheds absolutely no insight to help us figure that out.
Global WordPress Brute Force Flood
The Yen has lost close to 25% of it's value in the last few month. We are talking trillion+.

Bitcoin is like thousands of times smaller, so volatility adjusted for size/time, the two are similar.
This is nuts.

Bitcoin is doing what free markets do, fluctuate relative to demand.

The QE-to-infinity is the fake stuff.
The biggest problem with Google has been that they've been a "benevolent monarch", more or less.

The saddest part is that for the longest time I never minded them taking that role. The evil part is that they're subsuming their benevolence under sophistry to convince people to send them all of their internet activity. They're using up all their goodwill, and I'm not sure they haven't used all of it up as far as I'm concerned.

Once upon a time, Windows 95's installation screens had a bullet point that said, "Everything you do will be easier and more fun," when now we all know that a) that wasn't their goal; and b) they weren't going to make it that way anyway, but they'd sure be happy if "whatever you do" is on Windows and that you redefine your sense of "easier and more fun" to be whatever Microsoft decided it should be. These moves by Google remind me of those days.

It's times like this when I laugh and laugh about how smart all the people at Google are supposed to be. I guess one of the benefits of that to them is the ability to twist language to convince people to go against their own interests in giving Google all of their Internet usage behavior for cheap. Keep in mind companies pay BIG BUCKS for what Google wants you to give them in exchange for...access to Google+?
Is this the successor to BitCoins?
It depends on how you define 'real money.' Bitcoin is a real medium of exchange. It offers advantages that you cannot get from any centralized currency. It is cryptographically protected, it runs on a distributed network, it's (relative to other currencies) easy to use anonymously on a global scale, and it has a large userbase.

Bitcoin's volatility is a weakness, but it's not an achilles heel. Bitcoin has many strengths that are completely unmatched by any other currency. People use it for these strengths, and people will continue to use it for these strengths regardless of how much it is worth. That's why bitcoin will not die until there is something to replace it.

Bitcoin can't be used to store value (due to volatility), but that doesn't mean that it can't be used as a medium of exchange. (USD -> Bitcoin -> Silk Road, and vice-versa)
nice, glad you like the idea. We are actually trying to build the product for teams which work together in a physical office as well, definitely some benefits there :)

Regarding away status, in the future Sqwiggle will automatically know when you are away or at your computer by monitoring input... good point about the status message though.. I bet there's a cool way to work that in ;)
Dear Mister NewAccnt

My name is Danjuma Sule, one of the sons of major Gen Gumel Danjuma Sule, The late Nigeria's former minister of mines and power in the regime of the late former Nigeria's military Head of state, Gen Sanni Abacha. When my father died he left me an inheritance of 1302422.34343422 bitcoins. Unfortunately bitcoin exchanges are not yet set up in Nigerian currency and I am in need of a young techno wizard with a bank account denominated in US dollars to assist me in gaining access to my inheritance.

It is on this basis I am seeking for assistance. Your percentage is negotiable. Please note; your age and profession doesn't really matter in this transaction. Waiting for your immediate response and bank account specifics.

Regards, Danjuma Sule
Bloomberg blogs are only slightly better than Forbes article with respect to their credulity.

(and I've read Bloomberg News practically every day for the last two years...)
More importantly though, people really didn’t really LIKE anything about our product. No one that used the service thought it was that cool. In fact, some people that participated in the sale didn’t even like our “dynamic pricing” system. They were trying to support the artist, so saving a few dollars didn’t excite them. They could easily have just gotten his music for free elsewhere.

i am one of those people. why do so many bands have such a minimal online presence that i cannot even buy a t-shirt? surely these days it should be trivial for any band to create a store with some basic items generated from a few uploaded images. there are people out here looking for something cool to buy to give back money for what we just heard... even stickers are nice.
Back up to 82 ... end of the milking machine for today.
The power of remote developers: how to convince employers it's better for them
I think you misunderstand. This isn't about actions, it's about power. Google is in a bit of an unusual position because it has a shit-load of power that it, mostly, hasn't abused for its own advantage, yet. Partly because google has been "good" many people haven't been overly concerned about their power and they haven't sought to try to limit that power (in all of the typical ways power is usually limited in the business world, through regulation, through competition, etc.) But on the flip side that means that there are very few roadblocks to google deciding all of a sudden to try to convert its power into cold hard cash, regardless of how it hurts individuals. Which may be something that could happen in the near future.
New Bitcoin Exchange - Open for Testing on TestNET
Announcing: Toronto Bitcoin Exchange - Now testing with TestNET

Reddit URL: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c5wn0/btctocom_brand_new_exchange_help_us_test_it/

Please read the following before visiting our site...

We're almost ready to roll out the red carpet, but first we want to test our system out with TestNet Bitcoins which are Bitcoins on the testing network.

What we are hoping for is some feedback on the overall system, bugs, exploits, etc - please send feedback to hello@btcto.com - try to keep it off the forums here.

Things to know

We've seeded the exchange with a few thousand bitcoins and put them up for sale - you can also transfer yourself some using your exchange wallet address (from deposits screen) - send the testnet coins from here: http://tpfaucet.appspot.com/.

- We have not set a GO-LIVE date, we'll go live when we are ready and the site is secure and working perfectly.

- The API is being tested privately, and should be available for testing soon

- All new accounts get $100.00 play money. If you'd like more, please email us.

- We are also testing LTC (Litecoin) and a couple other crypto currencies, however they’re not ready to for this round and still on the development servers.

- DNS May still be going cloudflare, try again later if so (you'll get a certificate warning). For the first testing phase, we are not hooking up cloudflare, it should expose us to more.

I'd like to also mention, the servers are not yet hardened as we are going through a PCI-DSS scan on a separate set of servers, once that is done, they will be active, however, enjoy the lack of PCI-DSS in the meantime.

PLEASE NOTE, THERE ARE SOME THINGS NOT ROLLED OUT YET, AND YOU WILL SEE BROKEN LINKS, please ignore them.

If you see anything crazy, feel free to contact us at hello@btcto.com

And if you'd like to test with us, to make Bitcoin/Litecoin Better, the URL is: http://btcto.com
Currencies don't "stress test".
Appotpia Launches New Site with Data & Analytics [Infographic]
Twitter’s Music App Is Real
> Or the police could be required to document everything they do (by taking a full video of each shift).

These tools already exist, and do great - except when they don't. Strangely, they tend to "not work" exactly when the officer is suspected/accused of overstepping the bounds of their authority or the law.

The classic example is the 18 minute silence on the Nixon tapes [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_White_House_tapes
I think you gotta pay the original artist. As an old-school analog musician, I had to sweat for literally decades to be able to drop that perfect ten second fill effortlessly. The engineer had to invest thousands of dollars and a similar level of time to record it and make it sound amazing. And if some kid wants to use them, great, that should be allowed, but they gotta pay, because that music didn't just drop out of the sky. And if you want to sample a gigantic hit that everybody knows (which is going to make your derivative work much more marketable), then you're gonna have to pay a lot more, no? If I wanted, let's say, Jay-Z to come in and sing 99 problems on my song, what would that cost me? Probably a lot, and for good reason.

If it's really worth nothing, then all these DJ's could either produce it or record it themselves. But it's not, and they can't. This is a classic economic externality. Writing, performing, and recording really good music costs a lot of money, and sampling is virtually free. Pay obscure artists a reasonable mechanical residual and negotiate with samples of huge hits for huge money.
Increasing System Robustness with 'Let It Crash'
Patching the Internet in Realtime: Fixing a Current WordPress Brute Force Attack
do you think they are going to try to do it on a live mouse brain?
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16969015,

http://www.jointventure.org/index.php?option=com_content&... ("Today is not the first time that Silicon Valley has experienced a boom/bust cycle. The Valley experienced significant job growth, followed by job losses, in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. Each time, from these down cycles emerged the “next” Silicon Valley economy. Economic adversity helped stimulate the Silicon Valley habitat to major innovations, including the commercialization of the integrated circuit (1970s), the development of the microprocessor and personal computer (1980s), and the
application of the Internet (1990s)").
I would like to think that number was chosen on purpose. :)
I made a RubyGem for implementing this with Rails not too long ago: https://github.com/jaredonline/google-authenticator