skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If Rossi had a device that actually worked as advertised, the first thing he would do would be to set up multiple peer-reviewed demonstrations that would prove his claims in an undebatable way. As soon as incontrovertible evidence was provided, Rossi would become a media superstar, make history, and receive billions in pre-orders from all over the world. And if the physics was on Rossi's side, it would be very easy for him to provide the "extraordinary evidence" required by his extraordinary claims.

But years have passed and the validity of the E-Cat is still an open question. There have been some demonstrations, but results are still very much under discussion. There is no undebatable experimental evidence that the device works as advertised. So either Rossi prefers mystery over fame and billions, or the E-Cat a scam in some form or another.
At my daughter's school, they had an assembly for parents to attend that celebrated, amongst other things, the first landing on the moon.

The children boldy proclaimed that the reason the hammer and the feather hit the ground at the same time in the famous experiment was because there was less gravity on the moon.

It still rankles with me a year later.
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Thanks, I was not aware of that.

I guess "uppercase this string" goes from being a tiny loop to a big ... thing based on a lot of hardcoded knowledge, which in turn might indicate that it's not a very simple operation any more.
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Automakers are trying hard to seize back the entitlements and perquisites they reluctantly gave up when the laws around mechanical ICE automobiles were standardized: the right to look under the hood, to maintain, to tinker, to repair, to modify, and so on. What automakers in these newer markets seem to want is something equivalent to what software corporations have: the ability not to sell cars but to issue a licence to use cars under strictly determined and enforced conditions.

Renault's remote lock is basically the same as Microsoft's Product Activation DRM, and even more nefarious because it applies to a physical manufactured product.
They do not emphasize wallet security issues enough.

Before buying any serious amount of BTC user must ensure:

1. Software that he uses actually encrypts wallets (BitcoinQT by default does not!).

2. His wallet is backed up in 3 places.

3. Backups actually work and he tried them.

4. His computer is not infested with malware.

5. He has multiple wallets and money is spread across all of them.

So that if he one days makes a payment, enters a password and virus steals his coins, he will not lose everything.

Blockchain.info is a great service, but only when you enable 2-factor authentication (otherwise your encrypted wallet can be bruteforced offline) and make sure you get backups by email.

Finally, everyone should remember:

THERE IS NO "FORGET MY PASSWORD" BUTTON.

If you own your coins, be it in BitcoinQT, Electrum or Blockchain.info, you must own your password. You lose it - you are done. People are not used to it. They should be.
It might be interesting to know that Andrea Rossi has a history with "breakthrough" discoveries and inventions.

His former company Petroldragon was disbanded after they dumped over 70.000 tons of toxic waste (and probably their method of recycling oil didn't work at all).[1 -wikipedia][2- italian source].

Most of the tests that were done violated very basic scientific rules and can be considered demonstration more than anything. The paper on arxiv.org was done by a scientist who was very close to Rossi (Giuseppe Levi) and some of its methods are questionable according to [3 - german] and [4- shorter/incomplete English version].

A real independent proof of the claims made by Rossi is still to be delivered.

While I hope that Andrea Rossi has found the next BIG thing and that he is just paranoid and incredibly bad at communicating, I seriously doubt it and go with "It's a big scam" for now. With some luck history will prove me wrong.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_%28entrepreneur%29
[2] http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2004/novembre/27/Riciclag...
[3] http://www.psiram.com/ge/index.php/Focardi-Rossi-Energiekata...
[4] http://www.psiram.com/en/index.php/Focardi-Rossi_Energy-Cata...

EDIT: Typos (at least the worst ones)
Scientific community would love to test his claims, except he didn't (or couldn't) tell exactly how it works.

I understand that if he actually discovered something that HUGE, he wouldn't want to tell anybody, I know I wouldn't.

But please, don't blame it on "scientific community", that's what conspiracy theorists morons say.
I had a genuinely new idea this morning. Paying people for idleness increases idleness, which isn't necessarily good for the recipient. Why not pay them instead for doing things that make their life individually or collectively better?
* Pay them for taking and passing college classes.
* Pay them for losing weight and getting their BMI to an acceptable level that reduces collective health care costs.
* Pay them for giving up smoking, drugs, or drinking or not starting.
* Pay them to drive more safely.
* Pay them for art appreciation.
* Pay them to adopt children and make their lives better.

This is an alternative to the model where everyone works for a living. It produces non-work social good that is to the benefit of the recipient and the society they live in.
The obvious next question is "can't you achieve the same thing with gzip":

time curl http://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.0.3.js > /dev/null
236k bytes
real	0m0.432s

time curl http://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.0.3.min.js > /dev/null
83612 bytes
real	0m0.323s

time curl http://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.0.3.js --compressed > /dev/null
87509 bytes
real	0m0.273s

time curl http://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.0.3.min.js --compressed > /dev/null
34066 bytes
real	0m0.215s

I think that people should be more skeptical of the complexity introduced by things like minification, but the advantages are pretty clear, even with compression.
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Most likely it gets upvoted to the front page since most HN visitors have not yet read a post about it. I know that I hadn't.

Also, stating "this is old news, don't upvote it" has been done hundreds of times before, so your contribution is not better.
RGBDToolkit (DSLR + Depth Filmmaking)
Mymo: 3D printed letter-intersection necklaces
Is showing errors and not checking inputs a good point for a "PHP master" ? -> http://www.wildhives.co.uk/honey_jar.php
Besides the freedom and privacy, there are a few more advantages.

Bitcoin transactions are very cheap, and can be free. (however most clients usually require a minimum miner's fee of about 5 microbitcoins, which will probably go down in future versions if the USD/BTC price goes much higher).

For example, a few days ago, someone sent about $140 million (USD) worth of bitcoin, and paid no fee.

Another advantage is that transactions can be as small as 0.00000001 BTC (called a satoshi), which when combined with little or no fees, makes online micro payments viable.
In a country with it's own currency, wouldn't this just raise prices until finally the effect would be being back to step 1 but with huge inflation.
I.e. I'm selling bread for $3. Now I get $1500 free money every month and I know you do too. I'm selling bread for $6 because I know everyone has extra money lying around and since I have extra money I don't really care if people buy less from me.
The article says that the exact nature of the reaction (e.g. the catalyzer used) remain secret. At the same time, Wikipedia claims that an Italian patent was granted for E-Cat.

However, isn't the point of the patent system that the discoveries are made public? Does this mean, since the catalyzer was apparently not patented, that someone could (independently invent and) patent it instead? Or do I understand patents and law in a wrong way?
If I understand correctly, it's either bologna or baloney.
;-)
I haven't studied economics long enough to be an expert in the field, but doesn't a universal income drive inflation up?

It's basically the same as a minimum hourly wage that keeps going up to follow the inflation, it's always a catch up game and organization fighting for minimum hourly wage always say it's insufficient.

Maybe an economic alumni could enlighten me?
I have a history of building stuff that nobody's interested in, so I'm trying to cut down on that... Don't give me ideas ;)
This is a big scam. Note that Rossi has previous experience with similar scams [1].

Note that basically any and all information on ECAT is distributed through a big spam network of SEO sites. I have been following this campaign (along with Steorn) loosely from the very begining.

All the usual telltale signs are there. The project is alway bound to be released in the next 4 months.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Rossi_%28entrepreneur%29...
Isn't this model inspired Communism and is a well known fact ?
Actually, we don't put them on the front page, they get upvoted until they land here. That means there is some interest for to this post and may lead to great discussions.
Is this the most risky yet effective campaign content marketing ever?
This was a pretty entertaining read. First I thought I would sense a smug sense of superiority of natural science over the humanities, but then I realized he performed the same test on his physics students.
Jesus, Firstly I wasn't saying that I was a PHP master, what I'm interested in is how to turn into one, where does the journey lead to and how would I know when I'm there.

However, a BIG thank you for pointing that page out to me
Veritasium [1] often interviews people as part of his videos, and the results are consistent with what's being described in the post: somewhat distressing [2]. To the point where you might think he was purposefully making fun of them [3].

1: http://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium/videos

2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQxeutcYP6I

3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY_o4A1wzsg
Interesting thought! But then we are back to the huge bureaucratic system that needs to reinforce all those rules. Also, several of those ideas sounds very exploitable.
Rather than these posts discussing universal basic income in abstract, I would like to see someone go through a back of the envelope scenario for a real country that might try it. Switzerland or some other European country.

Presumably there would need to be major changes to income tax brackets (especially for the lower income tiers) & dismantling of various existing welfare programs in order to fund a basic income. I think Friedman included public services like schools, public transport, health services, etc in his definition of welfare. I doubt Europeans would go this far.

Then we can discuss the more speculative parts like who will be more or less incentivized to work.

Is there something like that on the internet?
It's not a silly idea at all but I like to think of myself as progressive and I think it is a very bad idea in reality vs on paper.

Just look at how college costs magically rise to the availability of loans and grants. What do you think is going to happen to food and rent prices once those supply chains figure out there is much more profit to be made?

The Walton family alone has more wealth then the lower 42% rest of the USA. What do you think is going to happen when they know all their customers have a certain base income - you think prices are going to stay where they are?

So you will just make the wealthy more wealthy.
What's the advantage of XMPP? I find the one time when I don't hate xml is when it doesn't have namespaces or schemata, as then it's just a slightly more verbose JSON.
Wouldn't this impose some sort of control mechanism, akin to the "employment search" one which is already mentioned as inefficient and bureaucratic in the article?

For instance, isn't "pay them to drive more safely" similar to "make them pay fines when they drive unsafely, i.e. speeding"?
I don't understand why in the world would you spend more money on a new drive - if you only bought that drive a year ago you could have it replaced under warranty. Even if it only works for another year, it's still infinitely better(in my mind) than spending money on a new drive.
This still doesn't show that actual site performance is improved. Also, gzip is not enabled on that server, so I think it's a less realistic scenario. I'm certainly being pedantic, but I've run into similar surprises before.
Post something, Wanda. Stop complaining that the people who are doing what you're not doing are more successful at it.
But then the money has strings attached and you need to check whether people really comply (= cost). Basic income wants to avoid that by simplifying the welfare system assuming that most people do not want to simply be idle.
1. The title is misleading.
2. Are you guys talking in the context of the US, or globally?

Different implications based on the two different scenarios.

PS: Studied and study economics.
I used to wonder what would happen if everyone in the UK got £1m given to them as a one off payment. We'd all be millionaires but poor as each other.
Go links static executables only.
This really looks like the wrong layer to do that... It could be interesting to extend HTTP / etag to do something similar globally. Instead of "tell me nothing changed, or send a new version", browser could request "tell me nothing changed, or send a patch from version XXX".
Actually, Sciencegeekgirl.com adds VERY MUCH to the article, namely a highly interesting discussion of WHY students give these wrong answers. No, it's not because they're stupid or ignorant.
20. Confused me as well. My wife's grandmother was from Germany and she still has a lot of family there. They've come here to visits and we've been over a few times. Many of them (especially those over 60) speak no English at all, and only a couple of the younger ones speak anything that resembles decent English. I also found that outside of the major cities there is no guarantee that the people working in shops, restaurants or hotels speak English.
Is there an easy way to grab JUST a list of uniq domains?

That would be a great starter for all sorts of fun little weekend experiments.
pervasive monitoring represents an attack on the Internet
The IAB believes that pervasive monitoring represents an attack on the Internet in as much as large amounts of information that is intended to be confidential between sets of individuals is in fact gathered and aggregated by third parties. Such a broad scale attack can undermine confidence in the infrastructure, no matter the intent of those collecting the information.
As you can see from the other comments above; the jury is firmly out on that one, but it's still an interesting story considering the "secret" test customer (which Wired UK says was DARPA[1]).

[1] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success
I've found that taking a considerable amount of time (days even) to determine the very best solution to a problem always results in less effort and less time spent coding overall. It's also no coincidence that the code becomes incredibly simple, more readable, more efficient, more flexible, easier to build on top of, and fewer issues down the road. Plus, in the end, depending on the magnitude of the project, less time is spent on overall development.

It is never a good idea to rush any large coding project. By rush, I mean just sit down and start churning out code just so you can have something tangible within a day or two. And by large, I mean anything requiring at least a few thousand LOC. Anything less can be okay to rush though; i.e., small projects where maintainability and scalability aren't as important; e.g., some MVP to test some market.
tl;dr, you are responsible for your bitcoins.
But that's exactly the point of universal income. You don't pay them for idleness, you pay them regardless. You just don't pay them enough for their desires, just their needs.

All those things you want cost money to verify and adds massive administration costs. Another point of universal income is it's cheap to administrate.

If you want to "pay" people for taking college, just subsidize it.
Presumably a lot of the potential profit would be taxed to fund this basic income guarantee. In any case, it seems like your argument boils down to "Better not let poor people buy food, in case the price of food rises," which I think fails without significant deeper examination.
This is incorrect - see the definition of a text element in the remarks of http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization....
It's loading ok for me. But in any case, this demo is running on a free instance hosted by Meteor (the company), it would probably run much better on a production instance.
There's this side concept called competition. If you sell your bread for $6 because you think the market can afford it, but the vendor next door continues to sell for $3 you go broke.

I didn't always see eye to eye with Milton Friedman, but I think we can give him credit that he'd thought through the obvious problems with this approach before he proposed it.
I would not be so sure of that until long term tests have been done to bacteria populations. All it would take is a random mutation which makes it harder for the polymer to attach to the bacteria.
Meanwhile, Europe apart from Switzerland is busy building thicker walls around Fortress Europa.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/01/razor-wire-divi...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/asylum-policy-and...
Could that also be because you're so used to HN's design that it's easier to identify key elements?
(Disclaimer: I am a python that found a new home in the scheme world)

Clojure is a Lisp. Lisp based languages are great.

However:

One of the problems with clojure - or rather with its home or ecosystem - is the fact that it requires a very high activation energy to get going. Grasp the concept of functionial programming, cc/call, macros, totally different syntax than your previous imperative language of choice, and last but not the giant blob that is called Java platform with all the traps regarding project management, IDEs, building, compiling, deploying etc. I know that there are great tools such an Leiningen or LightTable, but they only make the whole process of transition more manageable.

Now, I know that Java is a huge benefit for all that want to make use of its gazillion tools. But if You are not into Java, then Clojure might give you some hickups.

In comparison to Clojure, Python also allows for some functional programming, gives the eager disciple an easy going start. Most of libraries are written in Python (or exist in a fast, a C-esque implementation) and are very easy to grasp. I can not say that for the Java enviroment Clojure has been born into.

I frown at java lingo error tracebacks in the REPL, and to bring a external Java library into play is even more problematic. Any thoughts on this how to remedy this problem without getting involved into Java?

I wish there would be some kind of Index of how to use certain Java libraries from Clojure, or an index of Clojure wrapping packages. It might make life a bit easier.

Finally, I claim that for now, I am quite happy with my choice to migrate from Clojure to Chicken Scheme/picolisp. You can get quite a bunch of Clojure data types from the good package repository. It compiles without setting your hair on fire. And it is really simple, as the language basics are small.

I will keep an eye on Clojure. but I must say that Julia is as appealing to me when it comes to the choice of future language.
Who does understand what money is? We have debates it for centuries. Money is both trust (credit) AND commodity. Though most economists religiously pick one view (Keynesians) or the other (Austrians).

Being based on "math" is nonsensical. Money is based on math, that's the whole reason it evolved - to keep track of debts!

The question is one of the axioms behind the monetary system. Bitcoin's axioms are every bit as political as a fiat currency, the only difference is the entity that made the political judgement.

Users of Bitcoin must trust in the algorithm, as users of currency must trust in the central bank.
Please tell me how to correctly implement search (ideally in scala), such that "Lodz" will match "Łódź". Heck, making "noël" match "noël" is nontrivial. I don't think existing string types are adequate for this (e.g. java.lang.String.equals() gives exceedingly surprising results).
>Article is mainly just a reposting of http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~det/phy2060/heavyboots.html though...

That is an unfair characterisation, I think. The article does indeed reproduce heavyboots in its 725 words entirety (according to pages's word count for what that one's worth), but tacks a further 930 words afterwards. And these 930 are interesting indeed as they're further explorations of the phenomenon and discussion on its underlying reasons.
I could mention something about feeding the trolls here...
Good. Immigration contributes to overpopulation, both by importing new people and causing replacement breeding in the emigrant nation.
If prices == amount people are willing to pay, then your analysis would be spot on, but it's basic economics that this isn't the case. The elasticity of bread demand is high (because of the wide variety of substitutable goods, including other bread brands). So you would not expect to see the price change much.
The reason universal income works for the Swiss is because they are the Swiss. There are many countries and cultures and people for which it would not work, at the very least not until some unknown time period required for adjustment, and even then only if conditions were right.

This is why (fiscally-liberal-supported) universal healthcare (and subsequently why Obamacare has flunked so far, because they wanted to promise universal healthcare and had to settle for a crappy healthcare marketplace that only a layer and more red tape to add to the overhead and cost of providing healthcase) and (fiscally-conservative-supported) fair tax initiatives would not work in the U.S.; because much of the economy, social norms, etc. are based upon it NOT being set up that way.

Status-quo is the best fiscal option.

And to everyone complaining that universal income would add to inflation, I'd like to add that I hope you are also not a fan of quantitative easing that we've done that will royally screw the U.S. in the future. We are now in "heavy experimental mode where we don't know what will happen", according to Ivy league experts on economic matters.