skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree with most of the problems listed here; but am just as certain of there being long-term viability for alt-coins as I was of bitcoin several years ago.

I am surprised though that the author did not make, what to me, is the most obvious and strong argument for or against alt-coins, namely; `there can only be one--per hashing algorithm`.

The problem with alt-coins that share bitcoin's mining algorithm is that they are inherently insecure; as bitcoin's hashing power can be used to 51% attack the alt-coins directly; which is inevitable if the alt-coin is profitable to mine, or if it threatens bitcoin's dominance.

Consider an alt-coin that is less profitable than bitcoin to mine; people won't mine it. Consider again an alt-coin that is more profitable than bitcoin to mine; miners will hash the alt-coin until it is less profitable (profitablility is a direct correlation between hashing power and price-per-coin; as more hashing power chases a static amount of coins, profitability drops)--this dooms any alt-coin that both shares a hashing algorithm with a more established crypto-coin and does not solve any fatal flaw.

For this reason, I think litecoin will have long term success; while feathercoin (et al) are doomed; bitcoin hashing power cannot be pointed at litecoin. Total network hashing power is very analogous to mass and gravity; like draws like in this regard, the more hashing power pointed at a block-chain, the more secure it is, the more peopel trust it, the value it will have, the more people will mine it.

There is room for infinite crypto-coins, despite the authors hand-waviness around bitcoin competing "with the dollar and paypal"; fiat currencies have shown (to the most freshman of history buffs) to be exploited for the benefit of the elite at the expense o the masses; something a well-designed cryptocoin (bitcoin included) cannot be subject to. People will choose to use cryptocoins as their benefits become more viscerally tangible; and competing blockchains will forever come in and out; and some will stay.

But, if you ever want to bootstrap your own blockchain; you must use a new hashing algorithm or it is doomed.
No, I have problems with this as well. Mind you, I don't have social media accounts (except a deleted Twitter account and a tumblelog for recording graffiti[1] from my mobile phone).

[1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8403291/meaningless-miss...
It seems to me that the fundamental difference is the "timing" and duration of what you share online with your friends. Maybe it is more important what you want to share now and not so much save everything you share in the same place to be seen for eternity. Interesting times I would say :)
My switch from Microsoft to the world of open source 8 years ago was like taking the red pill — absolutely transformation in how I thought about and now build software.
Soylent is a great name. "Soylent is people" is perfectly on-brand, given that it's a product that aims to bring perfect nutrition in staple form to everyone, even to the very poorest people on the planet. It's the opposite of a luxury brand, in a way, a people product.
> leaving friends out of conversations because they use a different platform from you is damaging, which is why WhatsApp became so popular

But WhatsApp is mobile-only, isn't it? That's why I don't use it. As you said:

> -- Web/desktop messaging. This isn't as important for the younger generation but for many others it is.

I would add "open protocols" to my requirements list, but I understand it's not something that the people in general care about.

The fact that GTalk--err--Hangouts and Facebook Messenger are standard XMPP means that I can use them _anywhere_ (with Pidgin on Linux, Xabber on Android, etc etc.) and I'm not tied to a client from a vendor.
Google has really lost its way to do UX. Google plus and youtube are not the one ones.

I have no permanent way to disable Youtube asking me to merge accounts except goat sacrifice and writing directly to Larry Page - "If I rejected you 25 time why do you think I will agree on the 26th"

I had to use Google Maps yesterday - the mobile app. Few things of notice - scale was never given on screen. Also there was not a way by which you could measure the distance between two points.

There are numerous inconsistencies between their products - why is google keep hidden when you are at drive google.com and on and on and on.

I think that this could be case of either no dogfooding or extreme dogfooding - either no one at google uses their own services or they use only google ones and have forgotten that people in the outside world are not so invested in the google ecosystem.
The point (maybe irrelevant to the larger discussion) is that as soon as we figure out how to implement intelligent behavior in a machine, it stops seeming intelligent. Chess used to be a prime example of intelligent human strategic thinking. Now it's just an item on that long list of things computers can beat us at (incidentally, I predict Jeopardy will go off-air sometime in the next 10 years due to declining interest now that we have Watson).

Once we figure out all the issues of general intelligence, it will stop seeming so special. We may even begin to think that humans are really bad at it afterall.
The issue with Home was that it was just too early to launch. They thought they could launch a beta product and get some feedback before iterating, but they severely underestimated users' needs for things like folders; which seems obvious in retrospect.

I think it will turn out to be a successful product as it evolves and integrates with more services.
Phonegap seems to be a nice idea. But how do you implement CORS for such app ?
I don't know anything about this in particular, but I can imagine that option is like Google's "show similar results" option. No matter how many times you click it, the default is to continue hiding results Google considers less relevant.
Or use Bitbucket! Free private repos :D
Is there any evidence that adding real names to a previously anonymous service substantially increases level of civility?

Note that I'm specifically excluding sites like Facebook and LinkedIn that required real names from the start. I suspect it's a matter of whether users think of the site as being relevant to their personal identity. I'd even be willing to hypothesize that a random sample of Hacker News users considers HN more "real life" than a random sample of YouTube commenters who had g+ accounts crammed down their throats.
> Then again, I come from the /. crowd, so YC isn't really my kind of people, generally.

You sound like a snob.
Yes, the name matters a great deal. Not just to your customers but to yourself. A great metaphor will act like a "concept crystallisation" in your mind. It's like a coathanger you can hang your ideas on when you discuss the business with investors, customers, recruits, etc.

The energy behind a great name will give your product momentum, it'll make it easier to evangelise, as the name will trigger off a narrative that pretty much tells itself.
There are many reasons why one would remember William Henry Gates - Microsoft, technology et al. But, I would remember Bill for his life after Microsoft via his philanthropy. He's having an unprecedented impact on global society in energy, health care, education and many more areas which are too many to list. Even his worst of technology critics (like me) can't hide away from the fact of his impact on modern society.

I was reading the 2013 Annual letter from Bill Gates as part of Gates Foundation [0]. Each word in the report is magnificently detailed and precise. Gates foundation has helped "almost" completely eradicate polio with lesser than 1000 reported cases in the world. This is pretty amazing! If and when polio would be completely wiped out of the face of this earth, it would just be the second disease to be wiped out. Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries with children affected by polio. I also see a sharp decline in child-birth cases. This report is a MUST read and if possible do your bit to support the Gates foundation.

Even if he doesn't do a single thing from now on - Bill Gates has earned his RESPECT with not only his impact in technology but life outside technology. Personally, I would always remember Bill as the philanthropist rather than the tech-wizard.

[0] http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English....
My Raspberry PI NES Project
Their first mistake was going public.
Doesn't Google use the same thing?
It's unfortunate that people are working so hard on Kotlin, when it cannot contribute anything new or interesting, by its very nature.

Maybe you can think outside of yourself for once and consider that your uses cases or personal preferences aren't what the Kotlin devs consider important.
Show HN: Free open source Shopping Cart
What a ridiculous supposition. The truth is we can't read anything into this except that is a very significant percentage of his FB holdings.
No. Me too. I sometimes feel like I should - defending privacy is like maintaining herd immunity - it only works if we all do it. But I don't especially care. I don't love Google+ but I find it easy to ignore. Easier to ignore than Facebook mainly due to the fact that no-one tries to interact with me socially on it.

But the only places I really post are here and Reddit. I email stuff to close friends and occasionally use Facebook when I'm invited to an event but that's about the limit of my use of social media.

In general - I'm quite happy to be logged into Google across all services. It makes Google Now slightly more useful and I can happily ignore all the parts of it that don't interest me.

And advertisers are welcome to profile me to their heart's content - they just don't seem to be very good at it. I've never clicked on a targeted ad so it's seems a lot of effort to no real effect.
That leaves approximately 227,250 fires since the Tesla has been introduced, of which Teslas are known to be responsible for three. Or 0.000013% of all car fires in the relevant time.

That said, the other test might be more relevant, as there were more actual Teslas on the road in the past 140 days, rather than at day zero of launch. I don't have the figures to calculate, say, fires/#miles driven.
Since you were apparently needlessly downvoted I'll add some context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig
Is your site already mobile friendly? If so, I suspect you could do a very quick and dirty HTML wrapper Android app that is simply a web browser.

Note - to any naysayers of this technique, getting an app out in the app store in this case is simply another distribution technique, even if the site is 100% identical to the web version.
Just stop reading this shit.

| I made a mistake myself when I used the label “open source tea party” to refer to the vocal non-technical critics of work that Canonical does

He's still sticking with labelling vocal technical critics as the open source tea party. Just read it carefully once again.

| That was unnecessary and quite possibly equally offensive to members of the real Tea Party (hi there!) and the people with vocal non-technical criticism of work that Canonical does

| Please accept my apologies if you have been a vocal non-technical critic of Canonical’s software and felt offended by the label

Well this non-apology apology completely insults the intelligence of anyone reading it.

Edit: Formatting
And cross-posting G+ comments makes YouTube comments worse not better because many times when people share video on G+ the text is just the video title or something like: Must watch video title or "Checkout this video on YouTube". Showing these in the YouTube comments is useless spam. Also there is lot of "empty" comments with only a "shared this via Google+" thing which is even more useless. It's turning into something like the end of Tumblr posts with page long list of likes without any comment.
مشاهدة مباراة برشلونة وريال بيتيس
I've heard that from a few people, but nobody is willing to stick their neck on the line and actually try it for a project.

And is Kara better than (for example) Grails? Are we going to be stuck writing Spring MVC?
A Conversation with Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures (video)
It would be nice if someone collected/counted the actual answers. I read the whole thread and "analyzing server logs" was the only answer. If you don't have funding or have dreams/plans, you're not really _using_ the technology.
This script shows you how Facebook ranks all your friends
> Do you really think that all terrorism can be explained through mental illness solely? The IRA and ETA are both extremist movements with well defined goals, and structure. They wouldn't disappear through more mental care (maybe you're confusing this with school shootings?)

In general I think anyone who's willing to kill innocent people to make a political point is mentally ill to say the least, but mental illness is certainly not the only cause of international terrorism. It seems to be the main cause of national "terrorism", however, e.g. mass shootings (school or otherwise), anthrax letters and all that lot.

I'm not arguing that international terrorism is mostly caused by mental illness, though (even though the people who carry it out probably should be sent to a psych ward). That I blame on "foreign policy hypocrisy", which you ask about next.

The hypocrisy I refer to is repeated many times across the last 50 years or so of history. It's a pretty simple premise. The US presents itself as the champion of freedom and democracy and human rights, but tramples those abroad. It supports autocratic regimes in the middle east, selectively attacks oil-rich countries like Iraq on thin pretexts while pretending to do it "for the people", supports coups, assassinations, and other deeply disturbing things in south america, and I don't even want to get started to what they were up to in Vietnam...

Perhaps there would be less hate for the US abroad if it wasn't for this two-facedness. Don't get me wrong, I am a westerner through and through. I have no hatred for the US. However, I have also not had "the US is the champion of peace and freedom and democracy" shoved in my face while the US supported a tin-pot dictator in my country who shot half my family and gassed the other half. I can see how that might be much for some people (even relatively smart people) to bear.

The foreign policy of the US says "we're the good guys", but often acts the part of the bad guys. That's the hypocrisy I'm talking about.
The threads in response to you are fascinating and mystifying. I'm not sure whom to respond to, since everyone seems to be saying some variation of the same thing: that Facebook is simply a necessity of modern life. I think I'm a pretty normal, fairly technical, member of society, and I've never found that to be the case. I turned down the first stage of Facebook invites in 2006 or 2007 or whenever. Honestly, at the time, I probably thought I'd spend too much time obsessing about my ex. I work in a fairly computerized environment (a university) and I've never felt particularly hermetic. We have friends, live in a city, I have and make professional connections, etc.

I'm 37, so maybe I'm not representative, and I'm willing to believe that my life might be a little more wife-and-kids-and-job-centric than some here. But I'm honestly a bit surprised by the claims that it's impossible to live without it. I'm willing to believe it, because it seems unlikely that this many people would be so wildly exaggerating, but it's surprising all the same. What are the elements of life that I live without that folks can't even conceive of living without?
Exactly wrong. The response to the acts of war on 9/11 are disingenuous, and not commensurate with the impact. The costs we as citizens pay for a false sense of security are orders of magnitude more than the risk presented. It is sad these people in the Phillipines died. We should help the survivors and we should help the survivors be able to withstand future problems by building better safer infrastructure and other methods. But, this is a normal event in human culture, the comparison is not outrageous, it is simply scientifically accurate. The author's choice of the word sideshow is callous, but objectively somewhat accurate. To those involved or effected by this - it's anything but a sideshow, which is where relative perspective comes in. We should have sympathy and help - but help in all ways.
Unique Sri Rakum school for the blind
> whether you want to be a part of society.

Opting out of facebook or cell phones does not mean you don't want to be part of society.
How is this different from affiliate marketing? Does this involve offline sales too? Is this just a sales rep jobs board or a hand holding affiliate marketing site (at a flat fee)? The use of the word virtual is a bit confusing here and I am not really sure what it means. Honestly in reading the article all I saw were a bunch of buzzwords.
The article mentions education along with clean water, health care etc. too.

> The accomplishments of India's vaccinators and children and politicians will not end when polio ends in their country. Now that they have found India's children, they can bring them and their families other vaccines, clean water, education, advice on maternal and child health, and support for agriculture—all the things that people need to live healthy and productive lives.
Shotgun parsers in the cross-hairs
Why “Simple” Websites Are Scientifically Better
Thanks, I fixed it now.
Petitioning Google
Google: Change the Youtube comment section back to its original form.

http://www.change.org/petitions/google-change-the-youtube-co...

Stands at 80,445 supporters now.
I'm offended that you spelled out the N-word in its entirety. Please edit your post to correct this grievously insensitive act.
I think the main difference between the two is the intent that's being implied. "Jewish Banker Syndrome" is implying something about me as a person. It's saying that, as a Jew, I'm more likely to be greedy and corrupt. "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" isn't really blaming the Chinese for anything, it's just noting the correlation that was observed.

Maybe a better comparison would be "Jewish Bank Syndrome", which to me sounds a lot less harsh than "Jewish Banker Syndrome".
Does anyone know how Kotlin bridges the differences between the JVM and JS?

For example, the demo video that prints an ArrayList of Integers raises more questions than it answers, given that JavaScript doesn't have Integers or ArrayLists and has different built-in stringification (which is always idiosyncratic from language to language). Can I write portable code that uses arrays?

Some quick poking around indicates that Kotlin is pretty JVM-centric for someone who works in the web world. (I used to write a lot of Java and Scala and even wrote a mini JVM once, but these days JavaScript is my go-to platform.) There's good old byte/short/int/long and there's boxing of primitives. They don't even bother to mention that arrays have immutable size (like Java and unlike JS), presumably because they assume it's obvious.

Inexplicably, the English words "and" and "or" are used for bitwise operations while && and || are unchanged. Hate to criticize but it all just seems rather strange.
This seems to be the document he tried to link:

http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/pdf/2013_AL_English....
That's as arbitrary as saying you must have pink hair to use my website. It's a dumb decision on the companies behalf, and for that reason not a legitimate concern with reputable companies.
Interesting, thanks. I don't understand how this:

Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need

... could have been written in an unironic light. Yet many people, some of them powerful and influential, seem to have taken it at face value.
Android and iOS Demographics In The US
Indexes do not solve the locality problem (see Non-clustered indexes). Even for in-memory databases, it is non-trivial to minimize cache misses in irregular data structures like B-trees.

Now why MapReduce "might" be a better fit for a problem where data fits into one disk. Consider a program which is embarrassingly parallel. It just reads a tuple and writes a new tuple back to disk. The parallel IO provided by map/reduce can offer a significant benefit in this simple case as well.

Also NoSQL != parallel processing.
Free eBook: Design it to look like my shit (Jon Ive parody)
Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein Commencement Address at Community College
Unless you adopt a definition of the term "brand" that is so general as to be useless, building the right brand is not the core of building a successful business; that is the kind of thing a PR firm would say.

For every Dropbox, there's a Heroku.
You are assuming that social network time is fixed.
I'm deeply disappointed that Gates made no mention of a major contributor to his fight against polio, Rotary International. Besides the humongous amount of money they donated, often times it was Rotarians who traveled to these countries to administer the vaccine to children. In addition, they usually traveled on their own dime and, in the case of some countries, at their own risk.

Anyway, I founded a community service organization a few years ago, and through one of our projects we made a very paltry donation to the polio eradication cause. One of the major challenges we ran into while fundraising was getting young people to care. Older folks were very generous, since a lot of them remembered polio from their own childhood, and even had friends overseas who were victims. But people in their 20s and early 30s simply did not know. It was greatly disturbing. As a society we make a great effort to keep reminding people of the horrors of World War II, and yet we are on the verge of largely forgetting about this ancient disease.
Not really. (Disclaimer: I'm not an expert at all, much of what I say is wrong)

Consider your CPU's heat sink. The CPU gets hot, but it can transfer that heat to your metallic heat sink (thermal conduction?), which in turn can dissipate that heat to its surrounding air (thermal convection?).

If you're in space, the only way to get rid of that heat is by radiating it as light (radiation; the same way a metal glows white hot) but that's much less efficient. You can't transfer it to another mass because there isn't other mass in a vaccuum.
If you don't wish or have the time to read, at least watch this beautiful video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj6rip3G62Y .
In America, the difference between population means in IQ is quite large between some racial groups, up to a standard deviation or 15 IQ points. The relationship holds for SAT, PISA, and pretty much any other measure of cognitive ability
Saying that scala is complex is like saying lisp is complex just because you cant read it.

Scala has very little syntactic rules. Of course if you dont take the time to learn them , you are not going to understand the language.
Nigger still in denial on God and me. I wrote all 140,000 lines of code from scratch. God is God. I made God's temple.

Are you fucken deaf? How many times I gotta say this?
Are you just trying to sound smart?
Your reading just seems wilfully tortuous and unnatural.

"Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" has nothing to do with Chinese food being bad or unhealthy or dangerous. It's just that is is (was?) fairly common for there to be more MSG in Chinese Food. So it was a natural shorthand. It hadn't even occurred to me that someone would think it was racist before today.

I'm torn between finding this funny and finding this irritating. There's enough genuine problems that people face based on race, nationality, gender or sexual orientation that debates like this just make it harder to get people to take us seriously on things that matter.
If you can up with a cleaner syntax for test data tables that would be awesome, thanks Shriram.