skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Slim pastebin with client-side encryption
Many pastebins out there but i found this rly nice. Has also vim and sublime plugins.
Has anyone thought through how mut and &mut interact with each other in terms of aliasing (since they could definitely alias f(&mut x as mut u8, &mut x)), and also how this interacts with things like TLS and global variables?
How would they encourage "internal" blogs though - asking directly would most likely raise flags, or a flood of insincere blog posts that would counter the desired result.

What I'd be more interested in is how much this issue is being discussed internally. If these discussions are allowed, or even surreptitiously encouraged, then I'd take that as a possible internal propaganda push, subtle as it may be. What's in the conscious mind gets written about, hence you'd see these kind of "justification" posts.

If there was very little internal discussion, or it was frowned upon, then I would expect much less of these blog posts, as it would potentially undermine your career...
The dossier exists in the form of all the collected communications. Moores law and Gustafson's law will allow your entire life to sliced, diced and trolled for breaches of the law in seconds. Lazy, deferred evaluation of the police state.
Google’s racing robots give Amazon’s drones a run for their money
Ebay Remote Code execution
The author makes really good points about Bitcoin's viability right now as a day-to-day currency. The conclusion at the end, that "What Bitcoin really needs is a central bank to stabilize its value" comes out of left field. No matter the difficulty, the goal most consistent with those of Bitcoin would seem to be to create a cryptocurrency that has a reliable built-in inflation/deflation mechanism. I suppose such a creation would amount to the perfection of money, for whatever that's worth.
"When prices fall, people put off buying things"

So I'll never go on vacation, cause next year it will be cheaper. So I won't do the surgery now, cause next year it will be cheaper. etc, etc. This "common knowledge" means no one will ever buy anything if prices fall. That's patently wrong. It may be true for fads, but not for things people really want.

"This self-perpetuating cycle of doom [..] is what has been sinking us since 2008, though this time central banks have at least kept prices from falling, just barely."

I live in a crisis stricken country in europe. Prices are NOT falling. That's a generalization and a lie. Prices fall for your property, what you have, and what you don't need, and prices are the same or spiking for things you need. Taxes also are spiking 2x 3x+. So, for example, you pay more and more taxes for your home, which is falling in price. (Owning it, not on debt.) But oil, food, electricity, etc, are rapidly increasing. Deflation and prices are falling, is a lie. They just destroy people, in order to pick up cheap on properties.

"What Bitcoin really needs is a central bank to stabilize its value."

lol. I remember seeing a graph of how much the dollar has lost it's value since the fed was created. Something like 90+%. I remember how much a coffee costed before entering the euro, and how much it costs now. Something like 15x more. It's bubbles, money printing, lies, and pure stealing. Central banks steal from all of us through inflation, and also give a competitive advantage to whoever they give the newly minted money first. (Their pals, big banks, etc.)

" See, the technology of Bitcoin really is revolutionary, but the currency of Bitcoin is holding it back. [..] So who's the perfect person to run Bitcoin? [..] Someone like ... Ben Bernanke."

This seems like a propaganda preparation piece. It seems that big players will introduce electronic money soon.
Am I going to get my Name on a List because I've said that we need to stop allowing the NSA to build more data centers? That I think that Dianne Feinstein needs to be removed from office?

Beyond the monitoring, the deeper point of Big Brother in the book "1984" was the worry about whether what you were doing made you subject to punishment. Foucault also covers this in his discussions of the panopticon, where it is one thing to have a mechanism for constant and pervasive surveillance, and quite another when the windows of surveillance are tinted so you can never know whether the collection is being aimed at you.
> When prices fall, people put off buying things. And when people put off buying things, companies put off investing. And then the economy slumps—and keeps slumping. Even worse, people are stuck trying to pay back debts that don't fall with wages that do. So bankruptcies pile up, and so do bank losses. That makes people too scared to borrow, and banks too scared to lend, which only makes prices fall even more.

> This self-perpetuating cycle of doom is what sunk the global economy in the 1930s, and what, to a lesser extent, has sunk Japan since the 1990s. And it's what has been sinking us since 2008, though this time central banks have at least kept prices from falling, just barely.

Oh good, I'm glad that the causes of the business cycle, the great depression, and the recent global recession have all been discovered with absolutely no question or debate.
Understanding economics does not necessarily provide insight into understanding cryptocurrencies. That's been evident by the wildly varying posts about the topic over the last few months.

Regardless of the nice graphs, Bitcoin is currently NOT deflationary. Every 10 minutes 25 new coins are minted and placed into circulation. The rate of new Bitcoin creation will be halved every four years until there are 21 million BTC in circulation. Additionally, there are a slew of other cryptocurrencies with varying degrees of mining rates - some have a constant rate of inflation built into them. Time will tell which ones are adopted.

The miners who are minting these new coins are helping secure the currency (adding value) are putting work into the system by way of capital expenditure on equipment and costs associated with power. They expect a return on their investments and are probably the determining factor to the current price.
Actually, I studied economics in the past and technically you can have a currency which is deflationary in nature, it just does not make it ideal. The Dollar has a similar disadvantage in many respects due to inflation.

It would actually be better to have some sort of currency which expands based on the number of transactions... There's a pretty large theory behind it and I out line some of it on my blog, where I also explain how a crypto currency can "potentially" work[1] or you could read one of Friedman[2] or Knights[3] books.

[1] http://austingwalters.com/the-currencies-of-tomorrow/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Knight

Further, economic system and in turn the manipulation of the Dollar in the U.S. is based largely off Kaynes work, which for the most part (we now know) is an inaccurate portrial of economics.
"We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard" -John F. Kennedy
That's like saying "some alternative schools of thought in biology see possibilities beyond evolution" or "some alternative schools of thought in climatology see possibilities beyond anthropogenic climate change".
Just because everyone is not making alpha releases of their products, does not mean they are not working on ground-breaking technology (which works) either. If you understand Apple, you will get my point.

I don't want to take any credit away from Google. But there is a thin line between a gimmick and something earth shattering. Unless, I practically see, the practical use of these products (by google) I am more inclined to think, they are merely cheap gimmicks.

Google at best, can replicate a feature. But sadly that trick is no longer working. read: G+ and all they have resorted to gimmicks like this.

Oh yea, I am an Apple asshole but that does not make my above point invalid.
XSS on RedHat
The idea that a small amount of inflation is better than deflation is pretty much the least controversial idea in economics. Seriously, no professional economists argue about that. (There are plenty of special cases where deflation is good, sure, but I'm talking about the general case).

I'm sure you're a very smart person, and you probably know a lot more than me in many areas. However, anyone trying to say that deflation is great for a general-purpose currency just sounds like someone trying to claim that evolution didn't (doesn't) happen.
Hmmm... where do we find out about all the CLASSIFIED blog posts? NSA internal forums? Any place where there's a summary of these reviews as metadata, hence leaving the content "CLASSIFIED" ? Who is watching the watchers?
This article is transparent propaganda.

Author is not a patriot. Author is an enemy of the people.
I like the article but I don't think the conclusion is as profound as the argument builds up to.

> "If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody is there, does it make a sound?"

If one reads the arguments in the article they may conclude that, because sound is produced in the brain and the brain only, our reality is created by our minds. I do not think that conclusion is straightforward. What we perceive as reality is nothing more than a "signal" that our brain interprets in a unique way. Just because a sound is a brain specific interpretation of a signal does not mean that the signal does not exist independent of the brain. The signal is there regardless of the observer. The only uniqueness is what the brain describes the signal as. To conclude that the tree does not make a "sound" I believe is just playing with words.
Yes. Evolution is the ultimate "three star programmer": http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreeStarProgrammer
> considering that he got a certain distance in life actually thinking in this way

Apparently we are not allowed to have differing opinions to the author.

His main point is a bit silly as well. The majority of the people we are talking about are mentally-ill and/or addicts, not laid off project managers.

Actually, they do need shelter, treatment, and a chance at work. That the second post was pandering and poorly written doesn't change that fact. It doesn't help anyone to have people shitting in the street.
> it is quite convenient already today with the currencies we have.

That's ridiculous. The friction or transferring money is a huge problem across the world. Developing nations are left out, governments shut down payments on a whim, etc.
That's not what inflation means. Inflation is when prices rise because the growth in currency outstrips the growth in economic activity. If the growth in currency is less than the growth in economic activity, even if it's still >0, prices will drop, which is the definition of deflation.
Until the advent of the Federal Reserve, the dollar itself was a deflationary currency:

http://nothirdsolution.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/cpi...
Actually, Unix was made available only under closed-source license (most notably as "Unix System V" and its commercial derivatives, including AIX and Solaris). This lead to, among other things, a nasty lawsuit against the University of California at Berkeley, who eventually did make their BSD Unix variant publicly available, after carefully excising most of the AT&T-copyrighted code.

Wikipedia has some information on the relevant history. As usual, treat with skepticism, but it will confirm the basics:

on System V: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_V

on BSD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution
I don't like this.

I prefer the freedom of platforms like LESS or SASS. They can implement changes faster and they can have full set of features without worrying about updates or platforms. They just output standard CSS.

If we relay on browser features, we will be slower, we will tie up to vendor differences and things will get complicate over time to develop something cool, in fact, there will be projects for sure that re-unify what browsers precompile, so, no to this.

I would suggest vendors to support the standard CSS spec to the max, and keep this good work instead going something really new like this.
> "Even if you are not a citizen of the Five Eyes, you shouldn't be worried about your data being viewed unless you're involved with a group of interest, such as a foreign government or violent organization."

This really is a key quote. Even if OP's assertions about the NSA are totally correct, even if all security protocols are followed to the letter, the problem still remains that they have a tremendous amount of power that can be used to target anyone deemed an enemy of the state.

I think a lot of contention on this issue revolves around how much you trust the government to appropriately designate enemies of the state. Many people believe the government is responsible about this, and that it will only go after people who a reasonable person would consider "dangerous." The problem, of course, is that the United States doesn't exactly have the cleanest track record of appropriately focusing its wrath:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

(And yes, I know COINTELPRO was FBI, not NSA... I believe it's still an instructive example of government overreach.)

Anyone who defends the NSA on the grounds that it only targets those who are worthy of targeting needs to convince me that another COINTELPRO will never happen. I would actually welcome such an argument, since it would make me feel a whole lot better about this.
This is interesting to read, but I have one very important question:

Why is a distinction made between US and non-US people? Why do some systems automatically ignore all US IP addresses?

What makes me a potential criminal, and Mr. Smith not? Why can he read my email without a court order, but not from someone from Nebraska? Why does my physical location, or proxy server for that matter, matter?

I think the only reason is because it's simply in the US law, so it doesn't really say much. It's just one of those things that are the way they are. But then...

why does he keep bringing it up as "you shouldn't be worried because we don't look at data from the US"... if I'm not from the US? Does this mean I should be worried that he is really reading my email if it has certain keywords? I could become an intelligence target because of keywords or activism in certain groups, merely because I'm not using a US-based proxy server?
5-YEAR-OLD'S FIRST COUNTRY MUSIC VIDEO SO CUTE
What community, anywhere in the world, doesn't hate the homeless? Certainly not Dhaka, where I spent a portion of my childhood, or for that matter anywhere I've. Even in Asia. Not New York or Chicago or DC. The town I grew up in Virginia even extends the hate to lower middle class people, objecting to better public transit on the grounds that less wealthy people will be able to shop at their upscale malls.
The author is wrong on several points. The great depression was caused by an overestimation of how much the currency would inflate as a result of the Federal Reserve's lending practices, along with an expectation that the gold standard would be returned. It was an overprinting and contraction of fiat, deflation of which was totally unexpected, that caused it.
If you RTFM, it states that 64% of Bitcoins have never been used. For a currency that is a problem. A deflationary currency drives people to not spend. When people do not spend and aggregate demand goes down you end up in a recession. Read the article linked at the bottom of the Atlantic article on why deflation is bad:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/200211...

If Bitcoin stabilizes in the future it could maybe be used as a currency. But right now when every purchase decision is prefaced with a 'how much is BTC worth right now' decision it adds too much friction to a transaction.
You have a great point, and the TL;DR of OP's entire post is "Unless you're doing something wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

Which is the slimmest argument I ever hear in favor of these pervasive civil rights violations.

I've never been a terrorist, never given any information to a foreign enemy, hell, I've barely ever even broken the law. But I do have a personal interest in Russia, speak Russian, and have been to Russia 14 times.

Am I on a list somewhere? Maybe I have done "something wrong" in the eyes of some automated, arbitrary algorithm that's connecting the dots of US citizens around the globe?
Have you heard of COINTELPRO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO and the Church Committee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee ?

Quiz, where did the FISA court come from?

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10262007/profile2.html
I just got back from SE Asia, and SF actually is the only place I've visited where humans shit on the main commercial streets.

I have some compassion for mentally ill/drug addicted/etc. homeless, but zero compassion for the $100-300k/yr SF city employees who are at best worthless wastes of oxygen and are given a by-world-standards huge budget, in a city with massive inherent advantages, to try to make the city a decent place to live. And fail spectacularly to do so.
I think some variety of Friedman coin would be ideal. You even have the information necessary to implement it because Bitcoin mining is already based on blockchain data, right?
This argument would only be valid if bitcoin were the only currency, or weren't easily convertible to and from dollars.

People invested in bitcoins still have to buy things. What many of them do is leave their investment in place, convert a few dollars to bitcoins and spend those.

Of course they have an incentive to save rather than spend bitcoins, but this incentive applies equally well to their dollars. If they expect bitcoin deflation to continue, they should convert their dollars to bitcoins rather than spending their dollars. If bitcoin's deflation isn't preventing people from spending dollars, it's not preventing them from spending bitcoins either.

Bitcoin isn't having a strong effect on dollars, because its total value is only about $10 billion. Maybe someday it will have a strong deflationary effect on the dollar economy, but it'll have to get much bigger before that happens.

But once it is that big, its rate of deflation will slow. It's high now because its usage is growing[1] so quickly. In the past seven days, the number of bitcoin-accepting merchants on coinmap grew 13%. That radical growth will eventually slow, and then we won't see such drastic price changes.

Arguably it will still be somewhat deflationary, but even that isn't a sure thing since bitcoin won't necessarily be the only successful cryptocurrency. Hayek argued that private competing currencies would result in price stability without central control, and we might find out whether he was right.

[1] http://www.bitcoinpulse.com
Then the difficulty goes up. The network is designed to create an average of 6 blocks per hour, with a constant reward per block that halves every 4 years. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_Currency_Supply
The problem with working at home is not that you never leave home. The problem is that you never leave the office. Work will consume you, and take over your life. Take it from someone who knows.
This may have some truth to it, but there are other factors. They are also bussed in, weather as well.
the creation of money in existing currencies is centrally controlled

This is a common misunderstanding. For typical fiat currencies, money creation is highly decentralized in the banking system. Most money creation happens when banks give out loans. Conversely, most money destruction happens when loans are paid back.

This is actually why our system works so well: the supply of money is not controlled by a central (and therefore fallible) institution, and neither is it fixed (which would be even worse). Instead, it adapts automatically to the demand of money (perhaps one should better say "liquidity" here) via market mechanisms.
It truly confuses me that the upgrade instructions are so obfuscated, bordering on unfindable. Can someone point me to the chapter where an upgrade from 7.1 to this version is covered?

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/in...
Again, an assumption that a magical unicorn guards the morality of being told what someone can or cannot do should be understood as a non-trustworthy system. Especially one that is referred to as the NSA in very general terms - as they have no control over employees or data dissemination / exfiltration. And, yes, the last statement is fact based on all of the supporting evidence in the public domain. If one thinks otherwise I politely redirect you back to aforementioned magical unicorns.
I guess HTML is a good substitute for LaTeX in cases where it is too much overkill.

What I do when I have to produce documents: Markdown if it doesn't require much formatting, otherwise move to LaTeX to have more customization power (without having to pull my hair off).
Specifically for writing math heavy papers (what I use LaTeX for) HTML offers:

1. (kinda.. if I want to use Google's font API and the browser renders it well)

2. Not a single file.

3. Not cross-platform - it will render differently on my linux desktop and mac laptop.

4. I don't know how to convert all of my LaTeX macros and workflows to HTML so I'd need something like htmltex (doesn't exist, I want it).

5. MathJax is good, but it ain't great. Too many compromises.

6. No typesetting and words per lining heuristics like LaTeX - again, need htmltex.

7. and 8. were a bit unclear, sorry. I mean in writing mathematical papers. HTML has a huge community but signal to noise for writing readable papers is pretty high. Mapping what I do in LaTeX to HTML requires many more lines of code.
It also failed as a currency in a very bad way. Part of the reason why the Great Depression was so bad is because most countries still used (or used the mindset associated with) the gold standard. Monetary policy is a very good way of stabilising the economy, and any currency which removes monetary policy as a tool is not likely to be stable in the long term.
This. Bitcoin is digital gold. Once it proves itself, we will probably transition into something like peercoin, or more appropriately an unimplemented proof-of-work payment scheme that calculates the payments not only on difficulty but also on the transaction rate across the last several blocks. You would want a median 1% inflation, but if exchange slows significantly (indicating money hoarding) you want the inflation rate to increase. If too many transactions are happening, you would turn down the inflation rate to compensate.

The only real "hard" part is preventing spoofing the system by moving money back and forth between accounts to fake economic activity, so you would have to put weights on idle money so that money that has been stationary longer has more impact than money changing hands, to avoid tampering.
"We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them."
I get my salary paid in bitcoin and I think it's pretty awesome.
Very cool. Needs some work but a very good start
I agree that 17985.4 MFLOPS needs very specific coding.

But the 1733.4 MFLOPS solution is a really naive one. Data locality and cache friendliness are two of the first things taught in high performance classes, with an obvious trick : iterating using row-major order like in the second case.

This trivial optimization gives a 9419.8 MFLOPS throughput. I don't think "everyday code" like that is so inefficient given the maximum result which can be obtained (17985.4 MFLOPS).
Even that is a problematic take on it, because you ignore savings and what MVPQ people call the "velocity of money".

When firms like Apple sit on hoards of cash, the amount of currency can grow quite a bit faster than the economy without inflation.
And what actions did he take? Unless Apple is willing to sell cheaper phones, they're giving up a large segment of the market, and Android will thrive. And I'm sure they know this.