skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your's is certainly a good point, within the context of seeing this as a cry against sexism.

However I see this post as more of a cry against the general culture of tech. And I think it's a culture women find they go against the grain of more often than man. But many men would agree.

I would certainly agree. We work in an industry characterized by a lot of problematic social interaction that hurts.

It hurts to get banged up over and over again and not feel you have much of a social support structure to right the boat. Female friendships tend to have a caring component that male friendships have less of. And this is therefore s component more lacking in the tech off space, and therefore a component women in the tech space will inherently notice more than men.

Nevertheless men feel it too. Men feel the negative energy and it affects them. Many of them probably internalize it and turn it against each other. The author points this out. They're unsung heros in their own right who are stuck in a tough culture.

This is a great discussion to have: so that we can get away from the army "tough it out" mentality in tech and move toward something that enables us to talk, share, and be caring (i'll even say it -- loving) people for one another.
Cars and trucks can easily be powered electrically, if the need arises (by frequently changed batteries, by induction, or as in trolley buses or trains)

I think planes, rockets and various military applications (e.g an infanterist carrying a zillion gadgets that have to be powered for hours) are the only examples of cases where this process might be beneficial.
Perl, the first postmodern computer language, turns 26 today.
Er...sorry, what? Alan Greenspan was probably the biggest proponent of deregulating finanical markets and he held the most powerful title in international finance for decades. And...he admitted he was wrong.

Sorry, but this whole "let's ignore vast swaths of economic history because I really like libertarianism" thing needs to stop.
I think this take ignores the history. After the Great Depression, a number of laws were put in place, in particular the Glass-Steagall act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legislat... ) that led to 50 years of relative financial stability. In the 80s and 90s these laws were dismantled, leading as you point out to a series of bubbles.

The point is that we have data: we know what happened with regulation, and with less regulation, and with less regulation things were worse. Suggesting that the solution is to remove even more regulation seems a very strange conclusion to draw from this experience.

(As an aside, I'm not sure why bitcoin bubbles being "short" is helpful. What is the advantage of high volatility?)
I see where you are coming from here, and I will try and answer to the best of my abilities. There are multiple scenarios that you have opened to discussion each deals with different regulatory frameworks and the laws and scope change accordingly. Frankly any industry that comes under the purview of self-regulatory organizations and special regulatory bodies have a easier time contesting wrong doing.

As this can get very lengthy I will just point you to the right resources where good information is available.

In terms of futures it is correct that the other party does not need to possess the underlying commodity. In the US commodity futures and options trading comes under Commodity Futures Trading Commission[0]. With futures contracts institutions that you would initiate the trade through are required to maintain strict margins this is usually the case for speculators and small hedging operations. Most if not all trading platforms I have come across automatically close/roll-over the futures contract, thus delivery does not usually become a problem. If delivery does arise, the definition of delivery is not the traditional definition, you can read more about it at [1],[2] and [3].

In terms of a small purchase of physical crude oil from a middle man with upfront cash it comes down to the paperwork and the terms that were agreed to. For example if you were given a delivery date of 5th December with a guaranteed latest by 10th, and they failed to deliver you'll be able to take them to court if you feel the losses and hardship suffered due to the delay justifies the lawyer and court fees you would incur.

In terms of a large shipment of crude (may also apply to a small purchase, but would be more trouble than necessary), the money is rarely given upfront but is usually on the basis of Letter of Credit(LC) issued by a financial institution that works similar to an Escrow, with the performance terms built-in. So in case of failure to deliver, damage etc. the monies released conform to the terms of the agreement. There is a ton of information available about how LCs work, start of with the wikipedia page [4], it would also help to learn how delivery works in international trade(Incoterms) [5].

[0] http://www.cftc.gov/index.htm

----------

Futures

----------

[1] http://futures.tradingcharts.com/tafm/tafm10.html

[2] http://investdaily.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/450

[3] http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/failuretodeliver.asp

----------

International Trade

----------

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_credit

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms
Setting aside the contents of the article for a moment, I find the tone fascinating. Consider these phrases:

"everything wrong with Silicon Valley"

"crypto-libertarian political agenda that smacks of nerds-do-it-better paternalism"

"intellectual sinkhole"

"near-total obliviousness to reality"

"alarmingly magical thinking"

"unchecked predatory capitalism"

"short-sighted hypercapitalism"

There are interesting conversations to have around bitcoins but I can't quite put my finger on why they tend to get so intense.
It looks like it does so long as you pair up with a CUNY school. It looks like the New York City region goes up to Westchester county
I've been living completely off of my oDesk earnings for the last year. My rates are usually between 35-50 dollars/hr

I'm pretty sure there are tons of folks out there just like me living comfortable lives with their oDesk earnings.
The killer feature of iPhone was everything about it.

The killer feature of Blackberry was keyboard and excellent corporate user support.

The killer feature of Android was openness and much lower prices.

What makes WM stand out? They need it.
It's far easier to understand the concepts piecemeal. Methods are easier to understand if you already grok functions. Integrals are easier to understand if you already grok derivatives. When learning these things, you're often fed an over-simplified explanation so that the instructor can go on to cover something more advanced. The problem is that now you're trying to learn something more advanced before you've got a solid understanding of the primitives.
Bandwidth isn't necessarily the best measurement of "what the internet is used for", for example porn may stream in lower quality on average, maybe more people hoard porn (download once, watch many times) as it's probably easier to remember the name of your favourite film than which random site to find your favourite porno on, plus the porn category includes pictures as well as video.

But I guess what the best measurement would be is subjective anyway, plus it's not so easy to measure anything like "amount of time spent doing X" or "number of people doing Y". Alternatively it's a valid opinion to have that bandwidth is the best metric, it's just not my opinion.
One time I had almost 1 million extra dollars show up in my Waterhouse Brokerage account. I thought, "huh, that's interesting." It disappeared 4 days later.
+1 for owning up that this was a bad customer experience.

-1 for the cavalier, "looks like were were performing server upgrades last week..." That is a startup excuse. I'd love to hear Chase Bank use this excuse and see how that flies with banking regulators.
So yeah guys, Pavel Durov saw your comments regarding security of Telegram messenger. Go for it.
To anyone considering or currently using coinbase: this comment (if verifiably true) should be a GIANT red flashing light warning you to tread carefully.
Google Location History let's you browse through where where you.
> Yea because regulators totally bought and sold bad assets and promoted their sale

Yes they did. That is the literal, intentional, lawful purpose of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which are the source of a bubble market for bad mortgages.
Ok, that would explain that. Thanks for the clarification.
In my own experience these "Haskelly" abstractions do a fantastic job "bringing something to the forefront". I love when I'm working with a parser and switch from Monadic mode to Applicative mode as it emphasizes a notion of application sequencing instead of procedural sequencing. When I concatenate strings using (<>) instead of (++) I emphasize that strings can be thought of as lists which are free monoids. Especially nice are the laws like

Text.unpack (s1 <> s2) === Text.unpack s1 <> Text.unpack s2

which bring to the forefront that both the Unicode safe Text type and the String type share that monoidal structure.
I had just decided against posting the following flame-bait comment until I read this... Now I can't resist:

"The problem with conspiracy theorists is that any argument questioning the existence of their pet conspiracy can and will be used by them as evidence that the conspiracy exists. They are literally impossible to reason with."

Sorry...
OLPC XO-1's were designed that way.
Average, or just wrong? I believe the quoted price is for the low end model, not the 12 core.
It's not difficult, but it makes the system unflexible, The vendors, not worried about the privacy implications, choose what makes the system more flexible.

I've heard that this was a serious flaw in Google's opinion, and they went through great efforts to ensure that the LED for the chromebook pixel was actually hard-wired into the camera's electronics. Which if true, shows that it's indeed possible.
When you're confronted with people getting rich off of other's unfettered optimism with zero grounding in reality while you see the truth of the matter, it can drive you batty.

It's like trying to explain to an 8 year old why Justin Beiber is just a fad. They have their hopes and dreams tied up in something you can't battle no matter how hard you argue.
Pardon my ignorance if it exists, but has there been an "unused idea" thread lately? I've not been able to find one.
Sigh... the same old political arguments rehashed for the nth time, but with links to Krugman blog posts and some class warfare for taste this time around!

> I’ve enjoyed the thought experiment of Bitcoin as much as the next nerd, but it’s time to dispense with the opportunism and adolescent fantasies of a crypto-powered stateless future and return to the work of building technology and social services that meaningfully and accountably improve our collective quality of life.

So... because you feel that this is what we should be expending resources on, the full coercive power of the state should be brought to bear in order to force others to do it. Neat!
Optimizely's (YC W10) so fast, Web surfers won't notice it
Hand-waving is easy, dialog is hard.
> So most gaming companies will outsource running games in Korea to companies like Nexon.

it what valve did with dota 2
This, including the XSS comment elsewhere in this thread has prompted me to move my coins ASAP.

Coinbase US understaffed, running fast and loose, and can't handle the spike in attention. This proves bitcoin isn't ready. Coinbase has a long road ahead of it.
As a New Yorker, I think this sucks.

We already pay high taxes and if somebody gets a tax break that means all the rest of us will pay even more.
Is 37signals still the majority owner in this new company?
This objection is pretty flimsy. HN is very frequently used as a customer support forum for large tech companies not funded by YC. A policy that it is okay to use HN as a customer support forum for Google, Amazon, and Facebook but not for Coinbase does not look very good.
Bitcoin. Free currency? Bubble? Or Ponzi Scheme?
If Valve wants to fight this, all they have to do is talk Blizzard into making the next Starcraft expansion a Steam exclusive in Korea.
Wait - what?

People actually accept executable, possibly backdoored code and/or assets from random-internet-site-freelancers – then install it on their production sites _without_ security auditing it?

(I know - I _shouldn't_ be surprised, I suspect significant double-digit percentages of WordPress sites have themes installed which have some mysterious "<!-- Don't remove this! required for mobile menu to work! --> <?php echo eval(base_64_decode('foobazbah')) ?> type thing in footer.php…)
It's because Bitcoin is truly a massive political issue, with the potential to completely overhaul existing power dynamics. It is Establishment Leftism vs everyone else, and the battle lines are being drawn.
Split second as in actually significantly under a second? I've never been able to get mine to take a picture without lighting up for very nearly a full second.
One of my buy order also experienced the exact same issue. It was placed on Dec 7, 2013, and it was supposed to credit last week as well. The ACH (A1TBCFQ3) was cleared on Dec 11, 2013, and the bitcoin (11UARZ7A) was just released today. Apparently, My transaction was lucky enough to be in one of your "handful" lost jobs.

The worst thing is, during this whole time, my support ticket was never answered and is still unanswered. There is no indication that it has ever been read by a human.

Since you admitted to guilt, I shall be entitled to the bitcoin credit at today's price as well.
I think the original question was more in terms with carbon footprint, which would be indeed neutral (as long as it happens to have a positive EROEI, which is not even mentioned in the article).

Of course local pollution is a concern, but it will always be wherever there are high concentration of people around.
Freedom is a terrifying thing to people who have a naturally authoritarian mindset.

I don't personally believe that Bitcoin is the road to some techno-utopia. Frankly, I expect that ultimately it will just be a blip on the radar; but there's no reason to get so angry about it unless its fundamentally a scary idea. Its a direct challenge to the authoritarian worldview and that's frightening.
I've had issues with both, but most with oDesk.

Companies / people

- saying they are from the US or EU but actually being from India, obviously lying about it to appear more credible,

- starting a project with (1 or more) seniors to get the project and trust and then switching those for the random people dragged in from the street (the worst juniors you can imagine),

- blackmailing withholding parts of deliverables,

- working (with different accounts on different sites) on 10+ projects at a time,

- disappearing without any recourse (yes this can happen in 'real life', but it's extremely rare; on oDesk it's not)

- making up the most insane lies why they are late/more expensive; most common and very morbid; cancer of close family or themselves, but so badly researched that after 3 questions you already know it's not true

and other types of scamming.

Most of these things are preventable if you are really really paranoid and are on top of the 'workers' 24/7, checking everything they deliver with a fine comb, however, that's not really what I would want to do. And for all cases reported to oDesk they just said they couldn't do anything as the screenshot tool was used and the workers 'worked' according to that.

There was an IDE open and code was typed in; random copy/paste code from the web, but that was not the point.

I have very good experiences with both as well and a lot of successful projects, but yeah; this stuff delivered a lot of pain and energy and we seem completely unprotected as buyer.

What we do these days is actually building a team at the outsourcing location, sitting there in the office, training etc; it takes more upfront effort and cost, but it's much more effective. So much more that I would never use these sites again. And we build value instead of work with and train people who will leave in a blink of an eye for a better paying client.
Actually I use a ThinkPad and an HP Z820.

I work in financial services sector and we serve desktop and web apps. Bar large businesses, we see a LOT of home built and OEM PCs.

I was involved in the family business OEM sector for the best part of 20 years as well from a hardware perspective. There are two types of professional: careless and obsessive. The latter build their own. The distribution I saw was about 40% OEM/home built to 60% big manufacturer.
A++ Recommend Dave, good guy.
Most people who are not interested or excited about bitcoin are also not threatened or offended by it. They don't write articles about it because they just think it is a silly fad.

Only people who really care one way or the other are going to be bothered to write about their feelings towards it.

(I own no bitcoin, but am not threatened by it either. It is fun to watch and read about, and I'm not getting hurt so I don't see any reason to be angry at it.)
I don't think it's appropriate to tell an 8-year-old they should be listening to better music. Why would you argue with such intensity over something that, presumably, doesn't or won't affect you in the least.
I've noticed this, too. There's often a violent rejection of bitcoin at an intensity that doesn't correlate to how much it's hurt them. In fact, the nastiest remarks about bitcoin come from people that own zero bitcoins.

My theory is that the more something challenges your world view, the more violently against something you will be.
Huh, I'll remember the "take it to HN" option if I ever run into big problems with a high-tech company.
I don't think you're giving it its due credit. Einstein's original 1905 paper on special relativity was not much more than a fairly simple combination of previously known results and ideas. Lorentz contraction is named after Lorentz, not Einstein, for a reason, after all.

I'm not saying bitcoin is on the level of relativity. I just disagree with your assessment of the novelty of bitcoin on a technical level.
The blogger has an incredibly malicious attitude towards individual people.

Everyone is ruining everything, everybody is bad, and we ought to regulate everything to fix it. Because somehow bureaucrats are immune from whatever ails people that are seeking the pursuit of happiness.

The blog post is disconnected from reality in so many places that I couldn't even begin to respond.

Somebody who kept their thinking connected to reality would have a pretty hard time getting to those kinds of views in the first place.
or just print more of it until it's near worthless. http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=Z...
Good point. I think we're actually on the same page, but with different thoughts on how to classify the "breakthrough".

I consider the technological breakthrough to be hash cash. It couldn't have been possible in a P2P network without the economic incentives reaped from Bitcoin mining.

The analogies to Uber and AirBnB are actually pretty strong here. The tech that brought them to bear was the internet/mobile, but the payment/reputation structure is what made the P2P network possible.
Oh cool, your that guy. Someone else brought up your tool at the meetup when we were talking about this post.
Not really. Financial transactions are really almost never implemented with database transactions.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae do way more than mortgage houses, first of all. Second they are an example of a single entity among hundreds or thousands who also played a roll. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are subject to the same Regulatory and market pressures as any other financial institution.
Show HN: Django 1.6 Tutorial
First of all, there are project managers who are also devs. So you are in fact insulting thousands of hard working devs who have to take the role of a project manager.

Secondly, don't assume that kind of question is coming from project manager's voice. That's rather stupid and narrow minded. Any one can ask that question.

Whether the project is so distinct in terms of code or philosophy, it is a genuine question. Anyone should be allowed to ask question. All the downvotes are either because (1) some bigot mind can't appreciate question, or (2) people who can't get along with the other development team so any thought on merging two project must be a crime, or (3) people just hate my idea of asking Google to donate a couple machines.

You are just making the *BSD world bad because no one shall ever asked such stupid question why two teams should never think about merging into a single team.
Just found out yesterday that I'll be having my first interview for a Google Software Engineering position in about a month. This is truly going to be invaluable, thank you!
Oops! My intention was that some people have preferences to something that just works and stays out of their way. Not that any killer feature convinces someone to use a tool, but the opposite. Overall accessibility to a specific user is the only thing that matters. :)

FWIW, I'd use Sublime if all vim bindings worked but that's not possible given its other critical features nor the project's current goal.
Maybe so, but 16% is misrepresentative of ICE's as a whole.
Bitcoin, if it takes off at all as something more significant than Dutch tulips, will probably be relegated to commodity rather than currency, much as gold and silver are (with a little black market currency behavior on the side, just like gold).

As you point out, there's no obvious way to do fractional reserves, so it can't be used for debt-based capitalism unless someone comes up with a clever mechanism for that, something deeper than commodity-as-collateral. Avoiding the currency hazards of modern capitalism by not being able to perform the underlying operations of modern capitalism is kind of cheating. And if you can do lending on fractional reserves, how do you know the hazards of reserve currencies aren't a function of fractional reserves rather than a scalable money supply?
Is it feasible to burn out the LED? Those things have lifespans of up to 100,000 hours, which means it's likelier the computer itself would be broken or obsoleted before the LED itself burns out.
Yeah the wallet in this post was created around version 0.3 or 0.4 of the Bitcoin client if I remember correctly.
and this is bad, why?
Glad I found this to reiterate what I learned as my Data Structure exam is tomorrow :)
I believe you're missing Options +FollowSymLinks from your Apache configuration and is not a problem with WP actually.
Not if you assume that the client should have already backed up data on that instance, and keeping a copy for yourself is illegal.
> There are interesting conversations to have around bitcoins but I can't quite put my finger on why they tend to get so intense.

It's because it's more a religious discussion than a rational debate. You see the exact same pattern of phrasing used by proponents of Bitcoin, by American fundamentalists and spinoffs, and by atheists who are actively pushing for the complete removal of religion.

I've given up learning anything useful about Bitcoin since I don't find any of the people talking about it trustworthy.
I'm really starting to get suspicious that these types of commentary on Bitcoin are not intellectually honest. Rather, they're used as a way to induce some kind of desired market condition. Want to trigger a massive selloff? Start generating a manufactured "consensus" that Bitcoin is not viable. And vice versa. Seems like Bitcoin isn't immune to good old fashioned pump and dump.
> people are giving it serious attention and thought

I did. That's why I was wise enough to buy bitcoins very early on.

> take moral ground against a system that, whatever its flaws, protects its community from the disasters

Because the Federal Reserve fundamentally cannot and certainly does not protect people from disasters.