skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think kids can be reliable tech predictors, but you have to look at the service and why the kids like it. Is it something that also translates reasonably with adults?

Facebook started with college kids, and the value seemed obvious to me at the time. I was not surprised at all that people continued to use it after college and that other adults joined when it opened up.

Snapchat on the other hand, doesn't seem to have the same kind of value proposition. The thing it seems to be used for is teenagers sending things they don't want adults to see. As a general rule, this is something they will grow out of, and not something that will spill over. I have no use for snapchat, and I'm quite confident that I never will.

Now, obviously Snapchat has a lot of users and they are sending a lot of messages, but that doesn't mean it will grow into mainstream adult usage. Lucky for them, we keep making new teenagers every day.
No, this is an implementation issue. Not all Python implementations suffer from this.

While language semantics do influence the quality of what is possible implementation wise, they are not the same thing.
Interesting but deriving anything from this one is near useless. For example, this completely fails to list any of my current open source project because I created them under my organizations name.
methinks osrc.dfm.io doesn't actually look at what you contributed. In my report, it looks a lot at stuff that I starred but I never sent pull requests for.
No, the early adopters are actually usually 30+.

It actually took Twitter a long time before reaching a younger audience.
To Bitcoin owners out there: out of curiosity, what kind of stuff do you buy using Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is gaining demand as a store of wealth. Given that BTC is limited in quantity, the value of 1 BTC is equal to the amount of wealth people want to store / # of BTC and the later is capped at 21M at least in the intermediate term as I understand it.

If there's demand to store $1 trillion of wealth in BTC, and let's say BTC supply is 20M at that point (keeps that math simple, LOL) then the price per BTC would be $50,000.

Is $1 trillion high or low? Well, as a point of comparison, there is about $8 trillion of wealth stored in gold. The largest bank in China has assets of just under $3 trillion. The largest US bank, $2.3 trillion.

So $1 trillion stored in Bitcoin is a lofty but attainable goal, IMHO.

Thus I think we may see price stabilization in the tens-of-thousands of dollars per bitcoin.

While $1M+ seems enticing, it would imply something like $20 trillion of wealth stored as bit coin which would dwarf any bank or even gold, so I think that is unlikely.

One of my favorite charts/metrics is to look at the "market cap" of Bitcoin (not the price per coin). This gives you the read of how much wealth is stored in BTC. It's worth sanity checking that vs. other things.

https://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap

Right now it feels like there's a long way up, but again I'd probably peg the $50K range for a long-term target.

I've publicly tweeted a price target for 1 BTC to be worth more than 1 oz of gold within the next two years though. But at the rate it's growing, I'm tempted to revise the BTC / gold crossover point to within the next year.
It's the British press. They do puns for a living.
Because you are one of those rare HN creatures that enjoy using it, after using most consumer OS since the early 80's, and need it for coding/system administration.

I am one of those.
given the crazy rise in prices I doubt anybody is spending any, apart from people who maybe want to, uhm, clean some money.
I can second this opinion. Not only that, but personally I like the new interface, even the classification that they are doing because you can customize it - I just got rid of the "Updates" tab, given that emails classified as such are usually important and everything is fine for me.

What I don't like about GMail is the complete disregard for digital signing and encryption with S/MIME and/or OpenPGP.

Therefore, on my Android right now I'm using K-9 and on the desktop I use Thunderbird. Thunderbird is actually pretty cool once you customize it a little (it even works with Google's Calendar and Tasks). There's even a cool Chrome/Firefox extension called Mailvelope, for making PGP work in webmail interfaces [1] and so it works straight in GMail, though in Firefox, due to a current limitation that probably won't get fixed until 27, it's very slow and also the extension currently doesn't support PGP/Mime and can't sync with key servers, although the author told me these features are planed for the next versions. And since I'm a Firefox user, I'll just have to wait for now.

Note - I'm a Google Apps user, which means I have my own domain. I can always switch without losing my email address. If you're using a @gmail.com email address, then you should really stop doing that.

[1] http://www.mailvelope.com/
It's pretty interesting how this comment can also be said for equities as well.
"Imagine if instead of being able to buy shares in Pets.com or Altavista in 1995, you had a chance to buy a share in the Internet as a whole."

That's a really striking, and almost frightening, way to look at it. I felt my chest tighten when I read that analogy, actually. It is tempting to go overboard...but, if my gut instinct is right, there's no way to go overboard (aside from going bankrupt buying BTC). Which makes me think I'm probably missing something.

Nonetheless, I'm long BTC, and I intend to go more long as the days go by and I have more disposable funds.
> What's your experience as a "startup developer" that you feel justified in making that claim?

A lot of my peers work in startups and small companies. Most of them cannot make a schedule that they can meet. Many of them use the waterfall method. Most of them love to use this New Tech, because it's cool (NoSQL dbs in particular). Most of them work so much that they're less productive than I am with 40 hours a week.

I have been the sole developer for a complete rewrite of a program that gross for over a million a year, and I'm certain, absolutely certain, that most developers, and especially those who moan at "boring" work and like to use New Tech, would never have shipped anything remotely sellable.

> have you ever stopped to consider they need someone more than that for where they are at? Someone who can be more than a programmer?

The only thing I do not have, that a startup needs, is the ability to do PR. For the actual conceiving a product and evolve it, I'm just guy.
Pig Latin: JavaScript Test Driven Development
This is a discussion, not a peer reviewed paper, which would be obvious to anyone, but anyway I wouldn't waste my time discussing with HN idiots anymore.

Here's my argument: more traffic/users/signups equals more money. It's simple.
> always felt that this industry principally serves those who are a part of it

So kinda like the Army as well? (i.e. Military-Industrial complex)
I'm not entirely sure, but based on my experience with OO in Perl i guess that it simply uses an array in a special attribute, instead of putting the various attributes into dict keys on the actual object. Possibly it even uses some kind of inside-out implementation where the arrays are stored via closure in some other scope and only visible to accessor methods.
You can do type-class tricks with it if you want...

class Username(unicode): pass
class Directory(unicode): pass

def updateUserHomeDir(name, dirname):
assert isinstance(name, Username)
assert isinstance(dirname, Directory)

update_etc_passwd(name=name, dirname=dirname)

or whatever. This only really starts to become useful when you start adding sanity checks into the classes:

class Directory(unicode):
def __init__(*vargs, **kwargs):
super(Directory, self).__init__(*vargs, **kwargs)
if not os.path.is_dir(self):
if not os.path.exists(self):
make_dirs(self)

just a bit cleverer in reality. You then move all the directory-path sanity checks into there. You can also subclass further for `class ValidHomeDir(Directory)`, etc.

The benefit of this is that you don't have to run your sanity checks more than once, you can pass the values around as much as you need and be sure that they have been initiated correctly. Use of your functions becomes at worst:

updateUserHomeDir(Username('dan'), Directory('/home/daniel'))

which isn't so bad, really.

And it's fine to be optimised out, as the code paths are what are being checked here, not the user data. :-)

I don't know how "pythonic" the idea is, but it does seem reasonably elegant to me, and solves some of the problems of python's otherwise fun duck-typing.
What is the difference between this and sending a SMS? If it isn't racy or something you need to hide, why is snapchat better than sending a text? Why does the "meh" picture need to disappear from the world and not just hide in your friends text messages at the back of the list?
Do these numbers really mean anything? Not being sarcastic, this is a legitimate question. When people talk about Bitcoin it sounds like unicorns. Can you really just buy & sell & turn a profit? How does a currency inflate so much in a short period of time?

I wish I could hear an economist's analysis rather than the inevitable chorus of "I told you so, I'm a jillionaire now!" from Bitcoin advocates.
I believe in most people's eyes, legitimacy makes a difference to them because they believe it's relevant to quality. For example, a Sears tool is superior to a no-brand knockoff because the quality of Sears' manufacture is higher. That general idea is the foundational concept behind trademark law.

I'm trying to point out that the concept doesn't apply to software (and in this sense, digital video files are "software"). The majority of people care about the legitimacy of software only because they don't realize that it has no impact on quality, that software is completely unlike physical objects in that regard.

Now, there are counterexamples in the world; a Chinese producer of sunflower (I think) seeds became massively successful by taking the innovative step of branding his product ("Idiot Seeds") instead of selling it as the commodity "sunflower seeds". But I don't think that's the main force driving fear of bootleg DVDs.
Slavery was normal for several millennia. Massive pollution and environmental carelessness are normal too.

Bad acts aren't justified by being normal. If anything, it means the problem is systemic and therefore needs to be dealt with even more urgently.
Burnout is not exclusive to software developers. Any human needs to de-stress - this is well known and documented by the medical professionals.
I hesitate to respond, only because this is becoming somewhat off-topic to the article itself.

That said, I was assuming the scenario of a counterfeit DVD that would play on any standard DVD player. Sure, there are more efficient compression algorithms now, but most aren't supported as standard on every DVD player out there. The base DVD specification is rather limited in codec support.

Those Futurama counterfeits - which compression algorithm are they using? Will they play on all standard dvd players?
Does not “correction” imply that there is a “correct” price for Bitcoin? Since it has absolutely no inherent value, what would this be? Zero? Or does its value derive from its utility as a medium of exchange (and associated transfer mechanism)? In that case, should its value be derived from the size of the global economy? (As done here: http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin...)
Donations - Bitcoin is great for it, and there are many organizations, small and big, that accept it. One of them (not mine): http://seansoutpost.com

eBay style trading - I once bought a $100 trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill for Bitcoin. Think of the irony - using hyper-deflatory currency to buy hyper-inflatory currency :)

In bigger cities you can buy drinks and food with it in certain pubs/restaurants.

There are many more legitimate uses for Bitcoin, and even if most people hoard most of their stash, when you have to pay for something many tend to spend their Bitcoins if they have the possibility.
Limited supply, excess demand.

Creates an awkward situation where no one will pay pizza with bitcoins for awhile.
It lost money at first, sharply, and at the moment the Price/Earnings is sitting at ~80. Google is about ~30 and arguably in a similar industry. That's a lot of money Facebook is not making for a service which is struggling with monetization.
> It would be wasteful for a company to ignore this information.

Very. All I'm trying to say it's not something you should even look at until you're later in the process of hiring.
I appreciate the effort you have made in trying to educate me here - reflog does look like it might have helped to solve my problem although it is extremely non-obvious even after running it. (i.e. i know i need to google or read something else rather than how to solve the problem).

I have recreated the problem I originally had and documented precisely why it really is a usability problem. Now that I have done this I am pretty sure that my anti-git sentiment is warranted - even if my initial comment was massively too harsh.

http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-i-hate-git.html
"The company provides, so much, for you, for your family. You wouldn't to ever lose what you have now gotten used to, for yourself, for your family"

Ah, the infamous golden cage

At times like this I'm so glad I didn't join Google. And by join I mean I wasn't approved in their dysfunctional interview system.
If you had a Coinbase account, you could've bought up to 50 in the last week or two around $300, and now could sell them all back and make about $10,000.
Everyone using the FBA program that is reading these comments should immediately start paying to have stickers printed for their FBA account and start placing those stickers on their merchandise. It will take a while before all your current inventory turns over and you only have stickered items sitting in Amazon's warehouse, but every single item you start guaranteeing with some sort of seal is one less chance of getting caught holding the hot potato, so to speak.

Amazon should in fact change their FBA policy so that they label the provenance of every FBA item that enters their warehouse. This situation as it stands now threatens to hurt the entire FBA program. They want to keep good sellers and identify the wrongdoers, otherwise they are allowing this structural flaw to persist. Not doing anything to mitigate it now that this seller has publicly brought this to light probably opens them up to liability for negligence in future cases.
I appreciate the effort you have made in trying to educate me here.

I have recreated the problem I originally had and documented precisely why it really is a usability problem. Now that I have done this I am pretty sure that my anti-git sentiment is warranted - even if my initial comment was massively too harsh.

http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-i-hate-git.html
Take a look on https://pin.net.au/
Yes, there are many ways to buy sell bitcoins. One of YC's company Coinbase is a good place to start:
http://coinbase.com

Then there are many more such as http://bitstamp.net

http://mtgox.com used to be the biggest, but now they are slow to withdraw in USD.

You can see the pricing of bitcoin across multiple exchanges here:
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/
I don't think it is "long over due" There will probably be another correction just like there have been two or three already but if you look at each BitCoin "bubble" each is about 5x larger than the previous one so I would think we will see prices rise to at least the 1,000 neighborhood before retracting and when it does I don't see it going lower than $250 - $300 ever again unless something happens to make it worth zero.
> As a software startup owner I really enjoy when people send us their résumés and they include their github account so we can see tangible work they have done.

I sometimes feel very insecure when I read statements like this. I consider myself a good and a passionate programmer with "above-average programming skills", if there is such a thing. However, I have (so far) never been able to manage contributing to open source projects in any significant way. Sometimes I have been too busy with work projects, sometimes it has been a busy life at grad school, sometimes family, sometimes I have been plain shy, and so on. I have put together a bunch of great hacks at places I have worked, which sadly I cannot open source.
But I see dozens of people whom I know who are naturally prolific in their oss contributions, manage to attract a high number of twitter followers, etc. and I wish I were more like them.

Do startups really look at github contributions as the ultimate measure of one's tech chops or are looking for people who go that extra bit and make time in their schedules for contributing back to the community?
I appreciate the effort you have made in trying to educate me here.

I have recreated the problem I originally had and documented precisely why I think it really is a usability problem. Now that I have done this I am pretty sure that my anti-git sentiment is warranted - even if my initial comment was massively too harsh.

http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-i-hate-git.html
I agree with the headline, but the argument is crap.

Kids aren't reliable predictors because of a few fundamental lifestyle differences with adults: they don't spend much of their day working away from their friends, and their social network is usually within physically short range. For kids, everything in their lives happens within a short space of time within a small radius.

What works for kids may never work for adults, including the adults they will become, and vice versa.

So it's hard to tell whether the popularity of something amongst kids is a sign of a social change, or just a kids thing. (The latter not necessarily making it a fad, it could work for multiple generations of kids.)

Of course the even less reliable interpreters of such signs are old school dead tree journalists...
Prediction: it'll crash down to $450-$500 before reaching $700. But I bet we'll see $1000 before December 31.

Also, we yet to see journalists screaming "insane bubble!" like in April, when it hit $100. So far media was quite positive and informative.
> I've been downmodded [...] for suggesting [...] because of hipster mentality

That's probably your problem right there. You're attempting to apply a negative label ('hipster') to a group of people with whom you disagree.

If your only counter-point to someone is to 'suggest' that they only hold a particular view because it's trendy, then you're going to run into issues.
Yeah but where is all this demand coming from? Do people really think it will just keep going up without a crash?

Personally I wouldn't pay $600 for something that someone paid $5 for in recent memory. It's like buying a stock during the peak of a bubble that's about to burst.
That's much better– I came to comment on the same thing. The people with fewer titles are the ones who need the royalties much more so than anyone else so the current pricing comes across as a hedge on one small author blowing up rather than developing an ecosystem which benefits all small authors. I imagine down the line there are many more services you could offer in exchange for royalties that would make sense– the analytics are one except they're very helpful at the base level too. Perhaps an additonal layer/finer grained analytics, a featured catalog, other promotional services, etc...
Exactly. Microsoft is still a great place to work. If anything IBM might be a boring place to work given that they're pretty much an IT company now. And Microsoft is definitely a league above Yahoo. Still has great people and where else in the world can you choose to work on quantum computation, the kernel, distributed systems, programming languages, machine learning, search, NLP, browsers, databases, CRM, BI, Computer vision, hardware..within the same company? There's a reason Google, Facebook et al have setup offices in the Kirkland/Seattle area.
Also, I'm really flattered by osrc.dfm.io. According to http://osrc.dfm.io/jakob I'm a "high caliber Objective-C coder" in contrast to http://resume.github.io/?jakob calling me a "newbie github user".
All depends on the compression. You can have a show take up less space on a disk, but be of higher quality. DVDs are usually stored as MPEG2. If you have a source of higher fidelity (e.g. BluRay), but distribute it as H264 on DVD, it's entirely possible that that copy is of greater quality than an official DVD.
n.b. the article is about why (in the author's eyes) the price of bitcoin skyrocketed. It's all very much past-tense, observation not prediction.
So.. you run your own mail server, just to have Gmail pull all of the mail down over POP?
I architected an application-specific custom processor with about 25 instructions and implemented about 20% of it on an FPGA (the rest 80% was implemented by other team members). I also created software tools for this.

While this was not a toy processor per say (it was a part of a bigger project), I consider it toy-like because of the simple instruction set. Writing and debugging was not a major pain point in this case. Generally speaking though, I have been fairly satisfied with logic design tools for ASICs, though not as much for FPGAs.

I later discovered CAD tools built specifically for designing processors. Google ASIP [1] for more if interested.

Regarding this making me a better coder, well no, since I was already a good coder. :-) OK, I learned machine code at the age of 15 years, and so already had good insights into how stuff works inside when I learned C and C++.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_instructio...
everything is a changeset, and yes there are multiple types but for the end user they have no need to know about them - from there perspective everything is a changeset and they are all operated on equally.

from the end user perspective git does have multiple types of change - and this was precisely my problem. i recreated the problem and documented it here:

http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.com/2013/11/why-i-hate-git.html

to be fair, i completely took that quote that I used about simplicity out of context because I've heard similar said in a different context more than once and I jumped to a conclusion.
Note that this is only MtGox. Other places, like https://btc-e.com/, show a much lower price
It's zero.

Perfectly substitutable currencies have an exchange rate of either zero or infinity. If there's no reason to hold one over the other, you've no reason to ever give up your holdings of one or the other...until there's a slight imbalance, at which point 1 is clearly superior and you've a huge incentive to abandon ship as fast as possible.

In practical terms, government money is backed by the necessity of extinguishing tax obligations and debts within it's jurisdiction, so it's not perfectly substitutable. Bitcoin has no such benefit - there's never a reason to hold it because everything provided by it can be provided by other currencies. Of course, the fact exchanging out requires selling to a greater fool provides some stability, but therin lies the nature of a bubble - once people want out, there's absolutely nothing that's going to convince anyone else they should want in.

Of course if you hold Bitcoin, for any reason, you need to aggressively argue against this problem - and indeed all problems with Bitcoins, at least until you no longer hold Bitcoin.
Are there any success stories of people who have done this? How easy is it to buy/sell? I heard something like "a mass sale would trash the price" so why hasn't that already occurred?
Check the other article published on HN "why the value of bitcoin is skyrocketing". The more people thing there is value in Bitcoin, the more it's going to go up. I don't think the value of Bitcoin is a bubble, rather a bet on the position of this currency in the future. A very different thing.