skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find the coverage by Wall Street (well, one analyst on Wall Street) funny, actually. While I agree with the method by which he's assessing the current value, I think it's also amusingly conservative, which isn't surprising.

There's a long history of old business leaders viewing the technology that destroys them through the lens they view all of their traditional competitors, and vastly underestimating what it's impact will be. Innovator's Dilemma is one way of looking at it, but in this case I think that's woefully inadequate of an explanation (i.e. comparing a new tech company against an old tech company).

Here's the thing about Bitcoin, and the reason I've become really excited about it: If it succeeds, it means an end to banking and money as we know it.

You can't compare that to Western Union, or PayPal, or Visa, or MasterCard, or even gold, or silver. It'd be like comparing the Internet to Time Warner Cable or Clear Channel or book publishers or books, in general. It doesn't make sense. They're wholly different levels of abstraction.

If Bitcoin really succeeds, it is nearly impossible to predict its value, because it will change the entire financial world (and it will look like it happens overnight, even though it'll be 10-20 years before we see all of its effects). So, if this analyst is predicting what will happen to Bitcoin in January, he's probably right. If he's predicting what will happen a year, five years, and ten years down the road, he's gonna be in for a big surprise.
did you actually read that article, i did?
I get that, which makes me wonder about somebody who claims that Mandela was a terrorist. What does choosing that terminology say about them? What side they are on?
Yes!

Most software I've seen can be dramatically improved by removing exception handlers. (And then fixing the underlying problems).

On the server side I prefer one exception handler which is the OS, it will kill your process, release and free all memory, file handlers, etc. Then I wrap it in a bash script / other monitoring tool, and have it immediately restart whenever it fails.

As for the server itself I'll also add an automatic reboot to the server to ensure nothing out of the ordinary persists for very long (like that PATH modification that someone forgot to add in the appropriate place to get set on restart). If it's virtualized I prefer to destroy the entire server if possible.
Blame Your Product Manager
We felt that without violence there would be no way open to the [African] people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of [white supremacy]. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence. But the violence which we chose to adopt was not terrorism. We who formed [Umkhonto] were all members of the [African National Congress], and had behind us the [ANC] tradition of non-violence and negotiation as a means of solving political disputes. We believe that [South Africa] belongs to all the people who live in it, and not to one group..."[1]

Interesting, and as always, relevant words.

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/nelson-mandel...
Hue 3.5 and its redesign are out
Google hasn't ever sued anyone for infringing any patent at all unless they've sued Google first. At least, I can't find a single news report in the fifteen year history of the company about it.

If Google put out a free license for all their patents, they'd be unable to strike back when unethical companies sue them over garbage patents. If you're big enough to get on their radar, you can ask for a cross-license agreement.
I'm a go fanboi, but to be fair, goroutines are now more preemptive, but not completely.

In practice that means that if you call a function somewhere in your infinite loop, you'll get preempted. It's still possible for a single goroutine to steal an os thread.

Practically speaking though, I feel like nobody should be scared away from go due to it's lack of full pre-emption. Seriously, don't write an infinite loop with no function calls.
Already have Prime. No way I'm paying another $220/yr. Another $80/yr would be pushing it. But my neighbors in LA certainly do seem to be adopting it quickly, and it's helping me because a Fresh truck delivered one of my packages recently.
Is it perfectly secure? No, but nothing is. Is it worse than what we have now? No, it's not.

This is the question I'd like you to address: How is it less secure than what we have now?
I think that's the issue here too. I would divide things in three. Casual games are often quick or pick-up-and-play. Angry birds, Bejeweled, even things like Peggle or Plants vs Zombies. Most flash/FaceBook games fit in here.

Then there are the hardcore games. Eve Online, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter 4, etc. These games often require lots of skill or dedication, and are often big budget titles.

But there is a ton of stuff in between. Games that you might be able to play fast but are very difficult (like Spelunky), that the player can choose how to play (Minecraft or Terraria), that just aren't designed to be highly competitive and difficult (Sly Cooper series, maybe Ratchet and Clank series), aren't hardcore ultra-deep sims (SimCity, Game Dev Story), and many sports games (Madden, NBA2k, etc).

Some people go really deep on some games and play them in a 'hardcore' way. The lines aren't easy as I know many people think World of Warcraft has been dumbed-down throughout the expansions to where it may not be 'hardcore' for many people.

But that's my general taxonomy. Casual, 'normal', hardcore.
this looks really interesting. should be a Show HN?
Who says "international Jewry" any more?
This was around already. The relevant news story is that this service may be announced for San Francisco next week: http://allthingsd.com/20131205/online-retail-giants-grocery-...
> Digital currency gets investment bank coverage, and the assessment is largely bullish.

So now Ars Technica is giving financial advices? ok...
Grocery delivery in the UK is amazing! I wish it was like this everywhere. All the major chains have professional websites, nice trucks, cheap service. Delivery prices range from about £3.00 to £6.00 depending on the time of day.

Sadly, I'm moving to Canada where grocery delivery is nearly non existent. I hope amazon solves my problems there.
Norway Decided to Digitize All the Norwegian Books
Someday a Trader Joes will come to Lake City (or any grocery store other than Fred Meyer) but until then, Lesser Seattle[0] appreciates Amazon Fresh. I didn't see where the $299/$220 comes from. When I go to the link, it just takes me to the "buy things and sign in" page after I click Seattle. It looks like the Amazon Fresh Prime offering is only available in Los Angeles.

0 - It's a joke. North of 85th and south of SODO isn't considered "actual Seattle" by a lot of folks, mostly by the new arrivals who only go to SLU, Capitol Hill, and Ballard.
Your design custom items
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So he should have run the D program with dmd -run :D
I was going to resolve to stop procrastinating, but maybe I'll just do that in 2015.
Back of the napkin calculations put the cost of Prime Fresh at less than the cost of Zipcar grocery shopping.

Realistically, you can't drive to the grocery store, do your shopping, drive home, unload the car, and drive the Zipcar back to its parking spot in anything less than two hours. (And maybe fill it up with gas, if you're unlucky.) Even with a cheap Zipcar, that's $16 + tax per trip.

$220/$17 puts the equivalency at 13 trips a year. So, Prime is cheaper if you grocery shop more than about once a month. I certainly do.

If they bring this to Boston, I'm in.
President Castro, can it really be you?
When did the interpretation of history become the sole prerogative of liberalism?

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Ooh good idea. How much would you pay for a 4pm snack?
I feel for jasonfried. If you build a business and stick to it, being careful not to open a new business that might disappoint your customers if you close it, you become fodder for "disruption."

But if you have the courage to try new things in a lean way, you become fodder for criticism that you don't keep your services running.

In the end, that's the price of trying new things. You have to have the iron pants to shrug and keep going even when people are telling you to do what everyone else is doing.
I grew up using the Amiga, when having memory allocation fail was routine (a standard Amiga 500 for example, came with 512KB RAM, and was rarely expanded to more than 1MB, so you would run out of memory).

What you do when malloc() fails depends entirely on your application: If a desktop application on the Amiga would shutdown just because a memory allocation failed, nobody would use it. The expection was you'd gracefully clean up, and fail whatever operation needed the memory, and if possible inform the user to let him/her free up memory before trying again.

This expectations in "modern" OS's that malloc never fails unless the world is falling really annoys me - it for example leads to systems where we use too much swap to the point where systems often slow down or become hopelessly unresponsive in cases where the proper response would have been to inform the user - the user experience is horrendous: Swap is/was a kludge to handle high memory prices; having the option is great, but most of the time when I have systems that dip into swap, it indicates a problem I'd want to be informed about.

But on modern systems, most software handles it so badly that turning swap off is often not even a viable choice.

Of course there are plenty of situations where the above isn't the proper response, e.g. where you can't ask the user. But even for many servers, the proper response would not be fall over and die if you can reasonably dial back your resource usage and fail in more graceful ways.

E.g. an app server does a better job if it at least provides the option to dynamically scale back the number of connections it handles rather than failing to provide service at all - degrading service or slowing down is often vastly better than having a service fail entirely.
Climate change - technology is the only solution
Nah, it's confusing because Arizona (except for a Navajo reservation) doesn't do daylight savings. So they're in sync with Mountain time now, but will be in sync with Pacific time after DST kicks in for (most of) the rest of the country.
http://paulgraham.com/organic.html
This is important. I've found that 22.5 x 2^k min for any reasonable k has me waking up feeling refreshed.
you are the minority. congratulations.

I have a 3Gs so i can also be exception, like you, and keep upgrading my apps/sites and not having to add "front facing camera" just so i can be a slob and not test for the phone poor people uses.

screw upgrading phone every year. my gaming desktop is not upgraded that often.
Being "young" doesn't make anything a solid investment, and there is no tangible evidence that BTC has entered "slow'n'steady" growth, or crash to $1. Point of warning people to not exit BTC if it crashes touches on why it may very well crash. People panic, and with so many speculators out there, I wouldn't be surprised if BTC lost 90% of its value in one day. Honestly, your comments might be seen as a buy now or miss the boat sales pitch, although I suspect that was not your intent.
If one of the parties had allowed it, we could have dissolved Gitmo years ago
I'm fairly optimistic about the future of Bitcoin, and I own a few myself. However, I don't think this was a responsible post to make.

> When the price suddenly dives, you may want to consider buying. It's always paid off so far. It seems like a solid investment strategy

This isn't really an "investment strategy", it's just speculation - betting on the short term future and hoping it pays off. It's a fun way to gamble your money, but it's a lot riskier than the OP suggests. A "solid investment strategy" is putting a fraction of your paycheck into an index fund each month, not trying to predict the price of Bitcoin.

If you've really done your homework and you think the price of Bitcoin will go up in the long term, by all means buy a couple. Don't worry about waiting for the price to spike down; in fact, maybe stagger your purchase over a period of time to smooth out any variation (this is called 'dollar cost averaging'). Don't try to speculate on short term fluctuation; you will probably get burned.

> Consider this: If you have $10k lying around [...] your $10k will become $14,262 after fees

Or, the price could drop to $500 and you'll lose a few thousand. Can you afford to lose a few thousand dollars, even for a few months while the price recovers? Would you be better off investing it in something less risky? Do you know that you won't need that money in 6 months to pay for emergency surgery, or to fund 3 months' runway for your new startup idea?

You should try to think of investment return as compensation for taking on risk. If there's a large return in a short time, there's probably a big risk, too. Some people can afford to take big risks, but most of us can't.
Take a look at http://live.bitcoinindex.es/ and http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/
Their business, their experiment. Besides "...we're all in a perpetual state of figuring shit out."
I'm a little sad to see that there's not a black bar across the top of HN due to this story.
I had the same strategy as this but I realized one important thing: I was spending all of my time looking at the damn charts.

The opportunity cost of being constantly distracted and worried about your investment might be higher than the profits you're realizing. Especially if you are a developer and command decent hourly rates.

It's also not enjoyable to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, worrying about what the current price is.
Are you referring to Aha.io? If yes, various aspects of it have been, but we welcome your thoughts and anything that you would want to Show HN.
I don't think you have any serious evidence that this is the South Korean thinking.
$300 a year for the privilege of being able to shop with them? And there's still a $35 minimum order for 'free' delivery? WTF.

This has got to be the worst value prop I've ever seen -- online grocery delivery services are way cheaper than that, even if you make a shitload of orders. The one I use costs $7 a run for under $100 or $3 for over $100. Even if you make an order every other week that's under $100, you're still at just over half the price Amazon is charging.
Reform ECPA: Tell the Government to Get a Warrant
They're not competing with Zipcar; they're competing with existing grocery store delivery services like Peapod, FreshDirect, Safeway Delivery, etc.
Mandela taken off US terror list (2008)
Not technically, but if I recall, during the Motorola acquisition, when the terms of the deal included requiring Google's okay to do any patent lawsuits while the acquisition was pending, Motorola started several patent lawsuits non-defensively.
As a retailer they do, but they don't as AWS, so a moat may not be necessary. It would still be nice of course. I can think of some possible ideas, but I should save that convo to have with Adora.
I can generally make the entire trip in just under an hour (sample size: two out of three), but I'm blessed with twin advantages of being unusually efficient in Trader Joe's and having a ZipCar lot literally across the street from my building.
Show HN: I've launched my iPhone journal app I've worked on for almost 2 years.
Hi everyone - I've been working on this automatic journal for a long time. It takes your photos, makes them look nice, and also journals the places you go just by having your phone in your pocket. Would love your feedback!
> There is no difference in "git checkout <changeset" and "hg update <changeset>". NONE. WHAT. SO. EVER.

There is, but you seem to be hellbent on ignoring it. And you're shouting.

The difference is that a commit made there is apparently "lost" in the git UI, because it's unreferenced. After 90 days, it's actually lost, or sooner if you do a casual "git gc". This is a problem that the user needs to understand and solve.

Commits in hg don't have to be referenced if you want to keep them. Hence committing at a past location in history doesn't require a lecture in hg. There is no problem to solve when you commit at an earlir commit on hg.
That's a really interesting distinction you make between shutting down and sunsetting. Google tends to call their shutdowns as sunsetting their products -- do you think they are abusing the term?
This might help clarify, the semantics can be a bit confusing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United...
Do note that I'm making a distinction between Marxism and Marx's theory (in the sense that he was just one, although first, Marxist philosopher/sociologist/economist). So, it may be that USSR was not a test of Marx's own ideas on transition, but it was certainly a test of one, very much dominant for the most part of the last century, strand of Marxist thought. And they didn't decide they wanted to short-circuit the process "just because", or because they were lazy; they did have a theoretical analysis and rationale behind the idea.
That's exactly what I'm working on!

If anyone wants to help out. Message me at diran@dirango.com

To get on the list for launch, subscribe at www.checkmypics.com
"Kentucky Republican and holder of 29 patents, Thomas Massie...claims the bill will 'weaken the patent system overall.'"

What kind of of inane statement is that? The system needs to be made weaker as illustrated by the patent trolls. Does he think patents need to be made stronger?
You don't want to drive to that Trader Joe's. They have the worst parking garage I've ever seen. It's really difficult to get into and out of without hitting a post or another car. Since the parking garage is above the grocery store you have to drive up a steep ramp to park. And I've seen shopping carts accidentally rolling down that ramp more than once.

Also, I don't know if I'd say Trader Joe's is much better than the stuff you can find on Amazon. They're about equivalent in terms of quality. I'd say that the biggest benefit of your solution is that you get to pick out your own produce.
Moon Express Lunar Lander Program
Ok, had to share this. Not sure if these guys have any shot at all about getting to the Moon but they have just dumped a large amount of information about what they are going to attempt on to their web site.
The founder's shares count 10 times the voting cloud of the normal shareholders resulting in around 66% majority for them.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/12/technology/google-earnings/
They tried a bunch of different ideas. I don't remember the exact order or how they ended up doing cleaning. I remember it was a close shave though, and that they almost ran out of money.
Liquid oxygen? I don't think so. Liquid helium - yes.
Here's a map of the vote on final passage:

https://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/629

And the failed amendments:

https://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/624 (Watt)

https://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/625 (Massie)

https://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/626 (Jackson)

https://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/113/house/1/628 (Conyers)

It looks like many of those who supported Thomas Massie's amendment (which struck the customer-suit exception) voted against final passage.
The other day I was quite surprised to learn that the first version of memcached was written in Perl - thinking something like that should be obviously written in C, or else could never make LAMP systems faster... :)
You've come up with a huge grey area in what was a boolean argument.

The statement was pretty unequivocal - "Bad systems make good people act in bad ways".

If the actions (pollution in my example) are unequivocally bad (which they are) then regardless of the system the actors are bad people.

It's not clear in your argument that the worker is acting in a bad way in the grand scheme of things, he/she is basically passive which is a different thing. The manager is certainly a bad person. But I would also be the first to agree that any morality is mutable, hence the thought that systems should be adjusted on the will of society rather than individuals.

However -

>> I think you're presupposing that people have far more autonomy than they actually do in society and business.

Someone takes the decision to dump raw sewage in the river, or toxic waste or whatever. Regardless of how many layers of bureaucracy they hide behind, they are bad people.
As a Firefox user, I must say that these tests don't mean much considering web browsers are updated every day to week to month depending on the version used. Each browser wins at one point.
Congrats on the launch, Siqi and team. Beautiful app.
I've lived in a totalitarian state too. In a totalitarian state (or even many authoritarian states) you can't speak out against even mundane policies without very real danger of arrest and imprisonment. I remember my dad always closing the door and keeping volume law when listening to VoA or BBC. I can openly view websites and television programs of countries us is in de-facto state of war with. I can speak my mind to coworkers on politics topics (something, again, I can't even do in authoritarian states). Best of all, I can take concrete steps (e.g., make substantial donations to ACLU and EFF, some tax deductible, others not) to find the unnerving and dangerous tendencies.

In a way, saying "we live in a totalitarian state" sounds like defeatism to me: if it's true means there are genuine dangers to speaking out and standing up for individual rights -- which is a legitimate excuse not to do so. It also absolves the voters (and non-voters) of responsibility -- as in totalitarian and authoritarian countries individuals have no say in these policies. So stating US is totalitarian could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here's how The Economist -- for the most part, a publication with a civil libertarian bend -- saw the United States in 2007 -- the near height of abuses:
http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_INDEX_2007_v3.p...

#17 is a far cry American's own self perception, but it is an even further cry from authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Given that, e.g., Vaclav Havel has successfully stood up against true totalitarianism with not much more than a typewriter, I think there's both a chance and a responsibility to turn this trend back.
I actually agree and thought this originally. But I think it would involve more politics than what I'd feel like putting up with. However I think consulting is a really good business to transition into organically, from simply helping out multiple different organizations then just end up building a career out of it. Plus I think having founded a successful company or two (that's more innovative than not) is a good prerequisite.
Your reading of that speech is incredible -- literally lacking credibility. No person familiar with the English language could reasonably conclude that it is in any way a call to arms. "Struggle" is a word with many connotations, something that you certainly must know already. Therefore, to me it's clear that you're attempting to manufacture a narrative in spite of the facts: the man became president of a majority black nation and could easily, if he was so vengeful as you'd like to portray him, have commanded force against his former jailers.