skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This post really is less of a rebuttal and more of a DoS attack.

The tl;dr amounts to:

* author agrees with Stross that bitcoin is energy intensive.

* author says there have been improvements to carbon footprint (as if that some how address the issue of theft of other people's electricity/CPU cycles being more efficient than spending your own electricity)

* An argument about deflation that amounts to "there's no consensus in economics so it's fine if we run speculative experiments with economies"

* A non-argument assertion that bitcoin is somehow no worse than cash as a vehicle for illegal/unethical behavior.

Somehow this is suppose to amount to a take down of a dude who wrote literally an entire book about how algorithmically mediated systems which do not depend on human judgement are inherently inhuman and unconcerned about human ethical concerns.

"It’s hard to believe that an author who wrote about algorithmically run 2.0 economies and trading exchanges for personal reputations can fail to see the precursors of that tech in the real world."

wat.

Seems like the author seems to be the primary source of misunderstanding.
I still dont get DO and Linode Model. Apart from starting a small instance, once you move pass the $100 mark per instance you are much much better off with a dedicated server. With OVH you could even start with $60 or $80.

That is why i am always looking for a Hybrid, a company that offers dedicated model while providing Cloud / VPS hosting. However i have yet to see a single company that does it with a price competitive option. SingleHop offers that but at a relatively expensive price. Hivelocity does very good dedicated but their Cloud / VPS sparknode gets no love.
LimeStone Network and Incero are bothing testing their Cloud. While OVH still have absolutely no idea what it is doing although they think they do.

Back to DO vs Linode
I am still skeptic of DO. After all their problems with VM Data Left over, Backup, Data Loss etc. I still think they are more of a Beta services compare to Linode, which is rock solid. Apart from the hacking issue Linode had.

Linode offer much better CPU performance then DO at all level. And with SSD (cache?) they should be competitive with IO in 2014 Q1. The thing that i dont understand is Linode decide to have SSD + HDD solution, where 500GB HDD + 500GB SSD works together. I dont get how this solution is better then just 500GB SSD alone.

Linode are also much better with Bandwidth and Network. This could be just that DO have growth problem where their user base exceed their DC bandwidth. But in general Linode's Network are much better tuned.

Support is also better at Linode.

So basically Linode is better, but more expensive. I remember Linode does offer daily price based where they charge their client a full Mouth price and then refund it to their account on a per day basis.
This is what my CEO (we're a SaaS business) thinks about growth
Ask HN: what chair are you using for coding and how comfortable is it?
Herman Miller Embody; very comfortable and highly recommended.
I worked on the OkTrends team at OkCupid during the year before the acquisition, and I can assure you that that timing is definitely a coincidence.

The posts took a lot of work to create. When I was there, there were two and a half people working full-time[0] just on OkTrends (two engineers full time, and one founder part-time).

I can't give an average time per post, but to give you an idea, "The Real Stuff White People Like"[1] was predominantly my work[2], and it took almost two months, from start to finish.

If you're wondering why it took so long to create that, remember that we started each blog post as a blank slate - at most, we had a vague question that we wanted to explore, and it took several iteration for us to hit upon anything closely resembling the analysis that you'd end up seeing in one of the OkTrends reports.

It might be easy to create something if you have a specific destination in mind at the start, but the key to making OkTrends posts work was not having a specific result in mind - instead, letting the journey guide the process.

Anyway, I left to go back to school, and around that time, the other engineer on the data team started having to do more internal data work on top of the OkTrends research (he stayed at OkCupid for over a year after I left, but he's since moved on as well). That's what caused the slowdown in the posts during late 2010 to early 2011, not the sale to Match.com. As noted below, Christian is working on other projects as well, which have unfortunately left little time for OkTrends.

It's very unfortunate that the timing makes it look like Match.com put the kibosh on OkTrends, because that's not at all what happened, though I definitely see why people would make that mistake.

[0] By "half", I mean that we two engineers spent close to all of our time working on the data/stats, and the founder spent about half his time working with us on the projects and writing the posts.

[1] http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-real-stuff-white-peopl...

[2] I did the stats/munging/research - none of the writing. Christian is a much funnier writer than I am.
They used different CDN previously ( MaxCDN i believed it was ), now they changed to Fastly.
The poll didn't make sense to me either until I read what he was actually asking for:

>what cognitive level is bog standard, journeymen, CRUD programming in Objective-C?

He should probably have clarified it in the title
the time series for RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY is far from anything resembling linearity. Nor is a snapshot of it at any point in time usually.

RAM is equivalent of "tape" in a Turing machine. If its anything resembling linear for any amount of time, the machine would not be Turing complete ... and therefore a not very interesting programming language/model.
The chair that came with my dorm.

It's not very comfortable.
roughly around algebra.

programming has an "advantage" over math in that you can just program something and see what happens and therefore gain an intuition and craft your way around things. mathematics is much more deprived in this respect, for a variety of reasons.

overall i would describe programming as a precise form of writing, whereas math is a very pure science
Programming can require many things, but the OP specifically asks about this:

> bog standard, journeymen, CRUD programming

What do you think are the cognitive demands of that task, however defined?
I never said the GPL was a roadblock for people contributing code. I said it was a roadblock for people using it.

Pure and simple: someone works for an employer whose policy is not to use GPL'd code. Therefore, they cannot use any code I publish under the GPL license.

No such policy exists (that I've heard of) for permissively licensed code.

> Now you bring up 'use' which is different from 'contributing'.

You're the one who said "contributing"! :-) I initially said "use" several comments ago: "I want to maximize the number of people using my software."

> Oh, and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you for Wingo, really like it!

Thanks :-) Come hang out on IRC/FreeNode at `#wingo`. (Although it's kind of dead.)
Conrad, there's no obvious way to contact you on your website. Send me an email: andrew @ mavenlink.com
the controls are terrible. her hair isn't arranged the same in every pic and her breasts are more visible in the happy and pride pics than the neutral one.

all the pics are way too over-acted, the "pride" girl pic isn't a typical girl pose (it's super exaggerated for a guy, and even less realistic for a girl). these poses have little to do with real life. it's just ivory tower BS, incompetently done (quite apart from being so unrealistic, the bad controls are just incompetent even within the narrow field, just by basic scientific standards)
The description is clear, but the title of the poll wasn't.

Note that if you're doing game development, a higher level of math will be required, than if you're writing a crud application that talks to an api; in the latter, understanding linguistics and a good common sense are more important.
3DS as a console isn't a failure. But I think it's safe to say that the 3D part of it is one - and Nintendo admitted as much when they brought out the 2DS earlier this year. Officially it's just a way to create something parents are more comfortable buying for their children. But it's also an open acknowledgement that the autostereoscopic adds so little gameplay value that there was little or no incentive against shipping a version of the system that lacks it.
You will (probably) never pull out pencil and paper and do arithmetic (simple, with fractions, averaging, etc.), simplify an algebraic expression, convert to standard form, factor a quadratic, solve a system of linear equations, calculate the area of a polygon, prove something about triangles, solve an inequality, divide polynomials, take the slope of a line, etc.
This is what "math" consists of in K12 and very little of it is obviously linked to programming itself.

You don't need any of high school math unless your specific application requires it (i.e. graphics involves polygons, anything quantitative involves arithmetic and unit conversion, you may want to report percentages and averages at some point.)

Things I remember from K12 math classes that were useful for programming in general:

- What variables are

- What functions are

- You can compose functions (this was obvious because I had been programming for 5+ years before function composition was introduced)

- Very basic set theory (Python list comprehensions resemble set-builder notation)

- Introductory propositional logic (though I learned this in the context of programming 7 years before I was "ready" for it in math class)

Learning to prove things about triangles (geometry) exercises some of the same skills as programming, but I wouldn't say it teaches them. Certainly none of the theorems or facts have ever been useful, just the process of reasoning.
I've been with them since 2006 and I've generally been happy. The only problem is their coverage in rural areas is spotty, and I like being in rural areas as much as possible.
I'm confused as to why this post is suddenly at the top of HN, it isn't a new article nor does it present a new idea. There are countless of studies that show that women are more attracted to men who seem mysterious/proud/narcissist/dangerous/the opposite of your minivan-driving soccer dad. Does this imply that the HN community is generally unaware of the difference in the male-female sexual preferences and thus finds this article mesmerizing? Is there nothing else as worthy of the front page? Am I just being cynical?

Here's a post from Heartiste (at the risk of losing my credibility) that talks about the subject.

http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/why-are-men-with-d...
Disclosure: I am a mathematics teacher. (I teach prealgebra to elementary-age pupils.) I am NOT a programmer. But I think the correct answer to the question is "it depends." In other words, even though you have specified a level of programming, "bog standard, journeymen, CRUD programming in Objective-C," and even though you have laid out the usual progression through the usual school mathematics topics in the English-speaking world, you haven't given enough information to match the levels.

Some people program insightfully, or so I am told by people who program, and other people program nothing but kludges. Among mathematics learners, there are great variations in the levels of "profound understanding of fundamental mathematics" (PUFM) among people who are studying the "same" level of mathematics. It interested me that you mentioned neither number theory nor combinatorics among your list of secondary mathematics courses, because in some other countries, those courses would come well before calculus. In general, any reader of Hacker News could learn a lot about what is missing in the United States (or, more generally, in the English-speaking world) in elementary mathematics instruction by reading Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers' Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States by Liping Ma.[1] There is a lot to basic mathematics that is far from easy, if deep understanding is what you are looking for. In the countries that excel over the United States in mathematics instruction, proof is part of every mathematics course, not just part of geometry, for example.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Teaching-Elementary-Mathematic...
Model Simulation Of Long-Term Dispersal, Fukushima
SwagEasy: Embedded E-commerce
Much better. I think the animations are great and your message is clear.
I wrote a driving game in C about that age and the hardest thing to figure out was vectors and sin/cos-stuff (you have to separate speed and direction even in a simple driving game) so I guess the programming part is easier than that. Although it's just hard because I didn't know about those concepts at that time. And of course, the code was very simple.
>the AK-47 has generous clearance between its moving parts. That is bad for accuracy, but it means that the mechanism is unlikely to jam

Not only is it less likely to jam, but it probably also allows much looser tolerances for the parts, making them much easier to machine/make.
It's not what AT&T offers for the same price. Before I switched to Tmo two months ago, my wife and I had AT&T. Probably the same 23% corporate discount. 500Mb plan for her, grandfathered unlimited data for me, no text plan (Google Voice or iMessage), 700 minutes/month split between the two of us. Total bill (taxes, etc.): $121/month with discount.

Tmo: unlimited everything (well, 5GB of 4G data) with no discount, $140/month. I'll probably knock that to 2.5GB (we don't use that much) and bring it on par with what we paid on AT&T. Additionally, though not directly related to the comparison, we don't have to say "Mother, may I?" for tethering, so we can knock off another $30/month for iPad data.
Attacks against cryptographic algorithms only get better. If SHA256 is weakened sufficiently, bitcoin (and altcoins that use SHA256) will need to move. Which it can, but that makes existing ASICs worthless.
> t(45) = 3.44, d = 1.02, p = .01

I know this is probably extremely simple statistics, but what are these terms?
If there are people in the organization who are still tasked with organizing people then they are bosses (or at least, they will eventually act like bosses again).

It is possible to remove the management role, at least at a project level, by using technology. For instance, the first time I saw Trac our team effectively did this.

To be practical however, a technology solution really does require the right group of people. You can’t have people who are uncomfortable logging into web sites, or too lazy to write good descriptions for things, and so forth. You need people who are (frankly) professionals, who look at something like a giant task list and do a fair job of distributing things sensibly amongst themselves. A solution like Trac really starts to shine when people learn the little niceties, like additional formatting in wiki entries or the magic sequences that set up links between things. Again though: you need a team that is willing to work with such a tool in the “right way”. If they do then you don’t really need a manager at all.
go back 5 years; I have some IBOC that's just breaking even =)
My favorite is "Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating" from 2010-04-07. It was deleted when they were bought by IAC. Thankfully, nothing is ever really deleted from the Internet:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jhb2147/why-you-should-never-pay-fo...
On moderation in climate discussions
That's how Black Lotus does business. It's like the time when they were caught spamming and were made to look like complete fools on WHT.
The gameplay seems entertaining, but the humor is insufferable
I voted for discrete mathematics for two reasons:

(1) It has relatively few pre-requisites in comparison to advanced calculus (which I'm assuming means something like a first course in real analysis).

(2) It isn't rote. There's more creative thought involved in solving problems. Even high school calculus is often extremely rote. I think programming is rarely rote, even if it's just a CRUD app. You have to strategize about how to approach the overall architecture of the program and make predictions about how early design decisions will affect future extensibility and more.
>Non-sequitur here. To me, it's clear that I'm saying that generics are overrated and overused. Your interpretation makes no sense!

You are making the non-sequitur. His interpretation is the only one that makes sense. It is not clear at all that you are saying what you claim you are saying. You are in fact not saying anything like it. You are saying two things you don't like happen with generics, but that is completely false.
Ditto. My experience with T-Mobile in LA has been great.
Correct. nLayer used to but stopped because Juniper's implementation is buggy.
Ah, apparently I do not fully understand the hardware implementation.

Consistent, in software at least, is the concept of memory being linear; references using a start and end point, and points between.
Obviously such rules wouldn't automatically be in place; they'd have to explicitly be requested. And yes, it is a reasonable request to ask your upstream to add a few ACL lines.
2014 mobile trends: the rise of anticipatory computing
I think programming actually requires linguistic skills. When you program you are actually writing in a language, and you have to respect it's syntax and structure.

Therefore I don't think it should be compared with math. Unless you are writing a program for a very specific scientific problem that requires the elaboration of a mathematical model.

Usually the computer does all the math, all you need to do is type the operations you need it to calculate.

I'm not saying they're completely unrelated, I just think linguistic skills are more relevant in most cases
In my mind that is the only reason, because the USSR made a whole lot of them, and then shipped them out to every third-world country.

It is for a similar reason AR-15s are so popular here in the USA, because the US Military mostly uses M16s ,which are almost the same, and therefore they are the "cool, I'm almost-for-really a soldier now" gun.
HTTP/2 doesn't prevent us from using lower-level protocols like QUIC, though. HTTP/2 over QUIC would work just as HTTP/2 over TCP
"Theft of other people's electricity" in the form of botnets, for the purpose of mining bitcoin is addressed by raising the difficulty to the point where you cannot meaningfully mine on CPUs or GPUs. This is done by prevalence of ASIC miners. In theory a botnet would still generate some revenue eventually, for any difficulty level, but there are expenses (time, if nothing else) to setting up a botnet; most importantly, there are more profitable uses a botnet could be put to if you're going to the trouble of building one.
"Participants and procedure. In this study, 184 Canadian undergraduates (50% female; age 17–49 years, median 21; 52% Asian, 48% Caucasian)..."

It would be unwise to draw any conclusions from this study since it was preformed on such a non-random, non-representative slice of the general population.
There are a variety of alternative explanations, consistent with the data. The conclusion in the title is just one of many possibilities they didn't differentiate between.

It could be, for example, that guy photos do best when they stand out instead of looking like every other guy. it could be that the best guy photo would be a happy smiling guy who stands out in a different way, but when you remove everything else from the photo and the choices are standing out or being happy, both good, then standing out is better.

this is a standard practice in pseudo "science" – get some data, make up a conclusion that doesn't contradict the data, say you have evidence for your conclusion (or say something stronger), don't carefully think about everything else you could have included instead and how to pick between them.

as usual with bad "science", there is no section titled "sources of error" or similar. nor is there a section covering alternative conclusions compatible with the data. if you aren't thinking about all the ways you could be wrong, it's not really science. (and if you think about them but don't publish that part, you're not publishing science)
Just a ballpark, how many bitcoins would be earned by such a machine per unit time?
It's not.

There are certain levels of math or logic needed for various programming tasks, but it is not 'analogous' to any level.

For example, function composition is very useful in programming and thus Algebra (or was it Algebra 2???) comes in handy for understanding that at a basic level.

However, if you're doing graphics programming, then you often need experience with geometry (composition of basic shapes to form more complicated shapes, linear algebra (matrix operations), and modern algebra (quaternions).
I use a bit of trig to do graphics programming but that's about as much Math as I've used when programming.
Bombermine is one of the best games I've played in 2013 on any platform. Well made, fun gameplay, the monetization strategy isn't great, but it's not terrible either.
Unless Flash / ads disabled ... ?
> In the countries that excel over the United States in mathematics instruction, proof is part of every mathematics course, not just part of geometry, for example.

There's room to wonder about how much of a causative role this has, and how much it reflects consumer demand. When my sister started taking algebra, my parents asked me to help her, and I was careful to provide proofs of all the algebraic properties of exponents (e.g. x^m * x^n = x^{m+n}; x^0 = 1; like that). That's not usual in the US, and didn't feature in her textbooks or supplements, but I did it basically just because it was important to me.
I wrote an e-commerce store in rails just under a year ago. I did some of the same research, and I looked into Spree & Piggyback. Spree has a talented team and I was excited to try them but I found the project buggy, huge code base, & very inflexible.

In the end, I decided to roll my own solution from scratch and use Stripe instead of using one of the pre-built solutions. In hindsight, rolling my own solution was the way to go and the time spent starting from scratch was probably quicker than having to learn something like spree anyway.
I think this was well explained in the intro to Lord of War. An amazing movie that asks interesting questions about success as a motivator.
The Untold Truth about Fukushima - 広瀬隆氏から全世界の若者への緊急メッセージ
5 year on BMO and RY:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=bmo&ei=FjDOUqiwMZGQqwHDJQ
http://www.google.com/finance?q=ry&ei=GzDOUtiwAoGEqgHvUA

Plus 3.77% and 4.34% yield, it's not a bad deal at all!
Algebra: Functions, variables, and manipulation of basic data structures.

I learned programming before I learned how to manipulate variables in math, and my prior knowledge helped me figure out how to deal with most of algebra.
So I guess entering any kind of BIOS setup is out of the question then! :O
"Slow money" in Neptune's Brood is a digital currency, and is confusingly referred to as a "bitcoin" a few times, but it's actually a really fascinating idea that's very different from BTC.

The gist of it, if I remember it right, is that all transactions are authenticated by an interstellar 2-phase commit handshake. The distances involved keep the value of the currency stable, because transactions can take decades to process, and the direction of the signal is actually used as a form of authentication, to guard against (literal) MITM attacks. The goal of slow money was to have a currency that was stable enough to finance multi-century interstellar colonization projects.
Books for Self-Directed Growth (2013)
Internals of Blowfish encryption in Vim text editor
Interesting article on the Traveling Salesman Problem