skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree and disagree. Venture capital has become somewhat more risk-averse in recent years, mainly because the costs of building software products has become so low. But there is a lot of innovation to made in the physical world, which is currently underrepresented in investment portfolios.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the hyperloop is a good fit for a VC investment. Maybe someone out there will be willing to take a huge risk with limited upside, but it does not fit VC theory, which is still a business at the end of the day. It seems like the appropriate funding channel for something like should be the government, at least in a perfect world. Otherwise, major players in the industry are the next most relevant, perhaps companies that already manage toll roads and infrastructure.
Australia is a regulated market that abolishes the high interchange fees that power the reward programs in the U.S. This is specifically for the U.S. market.
Henry Blodget's "colossal mistake"
I have an alternative theory. It's because important real things are heavily regulated. Government sticks its nose into everything. The internet was an exception, because they didn't realize its potential fast enough (China, on the other hand, had some time to do the homework). Whatever industry is regulated - transportation, healthcare, protection, drugs - you have high prices and a high entry barrier. By pretending to care about consumers, governments simply rob both entrepreneurs and consumers. If they truly cared, they would allow multiple consumer protection agencies on the market each helping consumers navigate the said market, but with no power to prohibit or regulate anything. Right now a government is a monopolist in consumer protection business with an ultimate power to kick anyone out of the market. That can't be good for consumers. And don't tell me people would die if there was no regulations - every day thousands die because it takes years for the FDA to approve an experimental drug, but no one seems to care.

As a side note, don't be surprised that tangible businesses with a lot of real assets make less money than some chat application. In airline industry, whose margins do you think are the lowest? Airlines. Whose margins are the highest? IT companies that run ticket reservation systems.
Can you share with us the statement of that theorem?

What is "UniversalStyleCompaction", and why is it capitalized and missing spaces?

How does a Bloom filter for range scans work? Standard Bloom filters (as you know) are for existence only.
True, but at least Snapchat already works and has users. I like Elon Musk but I LOLed when I saw his estimate of $6 billion.
Lagos Nigeria
Really? You think that spending 6B on an absolutely untested idea with great risk is somehow comparable to a 3B acquisition of a mature startup that will immediatly bring business value to a company?
This idea really looks neat...
The rule existed due to uncertainty. We have now eliminated that uncertainty.
This sort of thing is why porting naive x86 code to the GPU programming model (scalar programs aka 'kernels' streamed through on the device using a configuration) often results in amazing 15-20x speedup over 6 core, while the expected speedup is only 5-7x. x86 compilers often don't get the pre-fetching right in loops, only using their heuristics, so you have to talk to them. Then you you begin to doubt the compiler more and more, carving out a few percentage points here and there by adding vector intrinsics, loop unrolling and so on. And before you notice, your codebase is now bigger, more complex and more error prone than if you had ported it to GPU from the beginning.

Please note - of course this insight doesn't apply in your case since your algorithm is meant for general purpose usage, not HPC programming meant for systems where you have the hardware under your control. I'm simply urging people where the latter applies to think about whether their algorithms might be suitable for GPU instead - doing lots of prefetch instructions and loop unrolls is a sign of that.
Capitalism works to tackle such things, it gives you exactly what you want. Which is extremely powerful and dangerous at the same time. If people want free services to share pictures and not low priced long distance travel. They will get exactly that.

I'm not saying that people don't want cheaper long distance travel, or better medical electronics equipment etc. But sharing cat pictures seems to be a more immediate need which people want in the next 30 minutes, 15 times a day.

This is a hypothetical situation, but imagine if there is major global diabetes pandemic in the next 10 years. You will see a major demand for glucometers, and you will see tons of innovation go around it.

Plus there are other dynamics at play here like ROI, barrier to entry etc.
You forget the value of impulse when someone is bidding :)

This would maximize intrest, but not maximize value (money).
Mullins may need a mulligan: Here's a look at Intel's Cherry Trail-T
He endorsed Bush in 2004.
And he wished settling an argument with a duel was still around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuBnlNjZq24
Actually, the federal government passed a law in 1998 for the specific purpose of limiting the taxability of internet services specifically in order to grow the the industry, which kind of negates your whole theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Tax_Freedom_Act
Yes, because your charming wit is sure to draw out a second thought about this abomination of a product...
Torch icon, didn't read.
I love this idea. I just used Passbook for the first time recently. I got to the airport and my Delta passes were on my home screen. It was great.

I'm thinking an integration with CoinMap, where if you walk into a store that accepts Bitcoin, it shows up on your home screen (if this is possible).
I'm actually worried about security here...

I don't know much about magnetic strip card technology, so I'm curious to know whether a malicious user could capture the signal and replay it.
"that will have a sustainable competitive advantage against Intel, AMD and TSMC? My guess is NO"

Maybe, but these are not the only semiconductor companies in existence.

And there's a whole lot of (semiconductor) products beyond what those produce.

But to compete agains them, yes, you would at least have to double that value, but probably more.

Or you just design and subcontract manufacturing to them.
I am not sure why that is hilarious.

India just sent a probe to Mars at $69 Million. Musk has himself built a rocket company with a million dollar scale investment.

There is no reason to dismiss, especially when he has a track record of delivering great stuff on time and in budget.
Socially PWNED
Because the gap between current capacity, and required capacity is bit more than worth risking money. There are in short variables we yet not know, which will come in force when such a project is undertaken. Personally I would have taken the leap, if given the choice, but if people are not investing in Hyperloop, than it is mainly because they are playing safe.

The only reason besides that, which pokes me in the face, to not fund this is: economics for the common man. If the case of current trains not being built to full capacity (i.e we can do 400 kmph in Bullet trains, yet in developing countries, avaerage speed is 100kmph)is proof enough, the point can be taken from the concept itself. What is more convincing then the design is the "5th dimension of transport" thing. But where does that 5th dimension exists?

A living example is in Delhi at the moment. Metro just entered Phase 3, yet the stress on Delhi's transportation system has become so large, that even with record ridership, Metro is not being able to ease that pressure. The government is going for efficiency by modernising its bus fleet into BRT corridors, still it is a temporary fix. How can we solve this?

Its not the possibility that matters here only, but the individual need and economics.
Robert Bruce Ford, Toronto Mayor (2010 – )
Amex also doubles the manufacturer's standard warranty, so purchasing Apple gear with Amex is a no-brainer, two years of warranty, means I don't necessarily need to pay for the extended Apple Care warranty.

Amex is also exceptionally good when it comes to working with customers on its warranty stuff, mostly no questions asked which means there is almost no hassle compared to some of the other insurance plans offered by other companies.
There is also another moment: yet another CRUD job in 3rd world country vs PhD in USA. And no need to struggle for H1B.
You can't phone, but you can use the smart, the computer inside the smartphone :-)
>After someone builds a hyperloop though, and works out all the kinks, there will be investors for the 2nd one. It's a case of "the second mouse gets the cheese".

Isn't this the exact situation patents were intended to prevent?
Stopwatch in CSS
The notion that "capitalism... gives you exactly what you want" presumes that people know what they want. I don't think I buy that premise. People may know which they prefer of the alternatives presented to them, but by no means is that the same as knowing what they want.
The problem that's being brought up is that Capitalize focuses on serving selfish, individual, needs. Those may or may not also been good for society as a whole.

We, the people, have entered into a social contract that is enforced through government to allow us to co-exist. Given that situation, there are some things/processes/services that are good for society as a whole but don't really make sense individually. For example, vaccines are really good for society in that they reduce disease, thus freeing up resources for other individual medical needs. However, a single person wouldn't take a vaccine because it only benefits them in at least 80% of the population also takes it. Here is a situation in which a societal good is underserved in pure capitalism.

Often I see people arguing that "pure" capitalism solves all problems, but that's clearly not the case. It's a very good system, but outside influence can be needed to optimize social welfare over individual welfare.
It's important to remember that theories like the parent's require that the world started about a century ago.
Europe has been doing that for years!
DPM Backup schlägt bei Exchangesicherung wegen gelöschter Logs fehl
> Many early adopters use Apple products

Bitcoin is now > $400, it's well past early adoption stage. That was back in mid-2011.

( As an example, I did a technical presentation about Bitcoin to ${WORK}, a very traditional financial services company, in July 2011. Even then and in that context it wasn't a startling new concept. )

What's occurring now is the 'gold rush' stage, in which mid-curve-technology-awareness people are willing to use whatever technology is necessary to secure some Bitcoinage. I don't think the lack of iOS wallets is hindering that.
Best Buy still requires the physical card to type in the first four numbers ...
Estimated world nuclear stockpile: 5000 megatons total yield [1]

Estimated total yield of tests up to 1980: 510 megatons (418 atmospheric) [2]

It's hard to find good numbers on the total yield of all nuclear tests to date, but the ballpark figure is 10% of current stockpiles. This is actually somewhat comforting. We've all heard scary stories saying that we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world dozens of times over, but the truth is we've detonated 10% of the total current stockpile in the course of weapon testing with barely any noticeable impact. Yes, it will indeed suck much worse if nuclear bombs ever target populated areas, but the planet will likely recover and live on.

[1] http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/...

[2]http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/...
I think this is a very good point, it needs a secound button or function so coin will not be able to change the memorized card when away from the phone. Otherwise the bartender or shop owner could use the other cards without my knowledge.
> Mass transportation has always lost money

Most passenger rail in Japan is private, and profitable, including both capital and operating expenses.

In the years leading up to WWII, and during it, the Japanese government nationalized many rail lines (although many stayed private as well) to form JNR, and JNR proved to be too inefficient, and built up a lot of debt. That then of course lead to the privatization of JNR in the 1980s (which included transferring JNR's debt to the new private JR companies), which was highly successful.

> In Japan, they over-invested in trains and it produced a huge drag on the economy

Japan has invested a lot in rail, but it certainly isn't a "drag on the economy". Indeed, it's arguably a boon to the economy as it's a much more efficient transit system than private vehicles on roads, and given the business model of Japanese railroads (which builds retail and housing around railroad nodes, and builds railroads to support new retail and housing), directly contributes to much more efficient urban organization.

The rail lines in Japan that lose money are rural ones in sparsely populated areas. However these account for a very small proportion of rail usage.
So we should double tax capital gains?
Completely off topic, but you've got a lovely review over there:

> Stole all my coins

Obviously bull, but damn, some people just do damage for the heck of it, don't they?
Google reportedly tried to outbid Facebook for Snapchat with $4 billion offer
Yes, it's getting kind of old and is unworthy of this discussion.
The reason is U.S. banks have been getting creative with reward programs lately. They entice you with "5% back on gas" or "100,000 points" which all seems very grand. So naturally us nerds want to hack the system for maximum profit.

The reality though is that these programs are not sustainable if fully exploited. Interchange (the fee U.S. merchants pay when you run a card) is under 2%.* A bank can't reward you more than that without losing money. Well, they can make up for it on the interest they charge on debt, but presumably if you're optimizing cards then you're optimizing where you hold your debt too. The way banks make these programs viable is with marketing, tricks, rules, time limits, etc. that make you think you're doing better than you really are.

Smart consumers figure it out. But not everyone bothers to, and so there's enough "dumb" ones to make it possible. Kind of like how gym memberships work.

Long story short: If a service like Wallaby takes off and levels the playing field, then these programs will disappear. So if you're one of those "smart" consumers that enjoys exploiting cards to make an extra buck or two, then you're better off not rocking the boat.

*Europe's interchange is a fraction of that, which is why you don't see this rewards phenomenon there.
> In airline industry, whose margins do you think are the lowest? Airlines.

Funny, airline profits were quite good before deregulation. And even before the internet industry was like this.

> consumer protection agencies...with no power to prohibit or regulate anything.

I'm sorry, but what purpose would this server exactly? You want a free market health inspector agency without the power to shutdown restaurants violating cooking "best practices"? You mean like Yelp, where recommendations can be gamed?
I have a question - why is the guy in the video giving the card to waiter? What he is gonna do with it, he doesn't know the PIN number to charge it. Or in USA you can charge without PIN? Besides if he can just charge without PIN he also can just push button on the card to charge whatever account he wants, doesn't he?
No, it doesn't. It's a smart move: allow the industry to grow fast, then start taxing it (as far as I remember, some states, California perhaps, recently planned to introduce internet sales tax or something like it and Amazon was outraged, no?).
Ubiquitous Video: Why We Need a Robots.txt for the Real World
Dont you think that all that considerations are factored in the VC process?
Most American banks offer a debit card which is functionally identical to credit from a seller's perspective, but it is still debit (and thus does not attain rewards or build your credit history, also disappears from your bank account immediately).
Yes, it can

It's still not clear to me how the card data goes to the POS equipment, is it NFC or something else?
doesn't compile on centos 6, gcc 4.6.3 wanted to file a issue. but 404 stopped me.
It might be a step in the wrong direction, but why not let them try ?

In todays world evolution isn't linear, its parallel. Many people work on similar problems at the same time (innovators dilemma comes to mind) and some may prevail, some won't. But thats the process of moving forward to the perfect solution.
You can call me a old fuddy-duddy, but I'm just not sure that a company with zero revenue qualifies as "mature."
Football coach winning with math by never punting, always onside kicking
Many say that, in Silicon Valley, there is "no penalty for failure". I'll be a heretic for a bit, and say this is part of the reason why we don't have Hyperloop.

Software companies have huge payoff ratios. You invest $1M in 5,000 companies, and hopefully one of them is Facebook. The payoff on a big success is thousands to one. If you give $1M to some douchebag who spends it on hookers and blow, no big deal.

Infrastructure companies have much lower payoff ratios. You might invest $1B in the hope of getting back $10B. But for that to be profitable, the success probability must be at least 10%. Which means you have to be pretty sure they aren't going to just blow it all on parties.

Now, from the founder's perspective, building an infrastructure company is really hard, and blowing $1B on parties is really easy. So if there's no penalty for failure - no social cost to wasting the money, and not trying very hard to build the hardware - that's what almost everyone winds up doing. Infrastructure demands large capital investment, and large capital investment demands some form of accountability.
Sure, but Google is special. We are talking about normal companies in regard what features one is allowed to use.

If you mean security and STL. Do Google developers use std::array::at() instead of std::array::operator[]() as an example?

Do they use smart pointers and STL containers instead of pure C++ pointers, arrays, strings everywhere?

Do they use references instead of pointers in function arguments for out parameters?

Do they use RAII for all types of resources?

Do they produce builds with -Wall -Werror?

Does the static analyzer run as part of the build?

Being able to use STL is just the first step for secure C++.
Compare the time a phone spends in an owner's hand vs the time a wallet does. Those that fancy the same tactile experience from their wallets usually go for money clips, or single pocket wallets.
You really need that sarcasm tag.
Note, the soviet style centrally planned economy didn't work too well for them. In the absence of market indicators you are left at the judgement of a few bureaucrats.

I'm not saying capitalism is panacea, but its best of other worst options. Market indicators are not perfect, but they get close.
I know you're snark is par for the course here, but if you ever do Windows sysadmin work and you need to do some stuff on Windows that is unavoidable, Cygwin makes it much better. Even there terminal app, which can go fullscreen with tail, is worth debugging stuff. Try doing that with PowerShell and get-content -wait YourFileName.txt. I have literally waited minutes after a program exited while PS tries to keep up.

But what do I know, I use Cygwin. Also see why Linux != Cygwin below.
I'd assume NFC, but I really don't know.

I'm surprised they mention so many people tried and failed... this approach seems fairly intuitive.
Why have the coin with "contactless" payment (as paywave etc is known in the uk at least) when the phone itself should be capable of that itself.
I've specifically said 'mature startup' to address this type of concern.
I appreciate people doing work like this. I've worked in Windows-only environments and used cygwin and some window manager (such as bblite) for my workflow. Good to know if I were still relying on that crutch that I could get tmux working.

The supplied hardware at these gigs didn't really have the spec for spinning up VMs - this also spared me from fiddly network and other shared resource setup.

I even had a "portable" cygwin install on a USB stick.
> Funny, airline profits were quite good before deregulation. And even before the internet industry was like this.

Of course. And ticket prices where unaffordable to many people before deregulation. Profits were fine though - that's the way monopolies and governments make sweet love to each other at the expense of consumers.

>You want a free market health inspector agency without the power to shutdown restaurants violating cooking "best practices"? You mean like Yelp, where recommendations can be gamed?

Yes, I want people to decide for themselves whether they want to trust this consumer protection agency or trust another agency, which standards seem closer to them in particular. Also, you can pretty much game the current system too. Even worse, because health inspectors do not directly serve consumers and have no competition, they have more incentives to accept bribes or simply do a sloppy job. If governments did their job, you wouldn't need Yelp, would you? And in all honesty, I would rather trust Yelp than a government agency.
Looks like Groovy has been embarrassed again:

> Groovy, which turned up in the 18th spot last month, slid back down to a number 32 ranking. "After a long discussion with one of the Tiobe index readers, it turned out that the data that is produced by one of the Chinese sites that we track is interpreted incorrectly by our algorithms. So this was a bug," Janssen said. "After we had fixed this bug, Groovy lost much of its ratings." The ratings slip takes Groovy from a 0.658 percent rating last month to 0.393 percent this month.

...according to http://www.infoworld.com/t/application-development/c-pulls-a...

I suspect someone was just priming up Groovy in the rankings for a month only to help win a consulting contract for Pivotal.
Jacob Wallenstein Is the Greatest Science-Fiction Writer to Never Have Lived
For what it's worth, the Netherlands was well knowm for a long time because we defaulted to midwife supervised hone birth with effective escalation in case of complications.

Up until I think 10 or so years ago we had one of Europe's best delivery success rates with that.

After that it seems that hospital deliveries became a safer choice and we've had relatively bad percentages since then because we culturally still value home births highly.
Because the cost is not just technological. There's also major land use issues, which get expensive in CA. His idea that putting it along the middle of the freeway will obviate these is not credible. I estimate $20bn to build it, minimum. Rocketry is simple by comparison.