skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very true. [But] At least he did walk away and is doing something good, unlike thousands of other wall streeters who haven't, and who never will - that's something to keep in mind (I'm not defending him though).
Writing the Prince symbol in Unicode
Neat! If you can get your address parsing up to Google's level or anywhere close, you should do quite well.

For others looking for a solution you can play with yourself, here's a VM image with a pretty good geocoder you can set up yourself (iffy address parsing, though):
http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org
You don't have to keep your private key on a general purpose computer. See Cardano -- http://trilema.com/2013/snsa-first-product-the-cardano/
I looked into WDC's tool for this a while back and it totally didn't work. That second one looks worth a try, thank you for that.
> But fiat currencies are simply currencies that aren't backed by collateral.

That's the looser definition, the narrower one (from which the name comes) is that that it is currency not backed by collateral but backed by a government's designation of it (by fiat) as legal tender.

Given the absence of significant non-representative non-government-issued currencies prior to modern cryptocurrencies, the looser definition was essentially equivalent to the narrower and naming definition, so there was really no real reason to concern oneself with the difference. Now, though, especially in the context of discussions of cryptocurrencies, its probably better to stick with the narrow definition of fiat to avoid confusion and adopt a different term when something like the broader definition is necessary.
Yeah that is a great point. Funny enough, the original platform we launched about 18 months ago was geared exclusively for corporate wellness, but after reading the market we realized there was a significant niche here in comparison amongst friends using different tracking applications.

I say all this because I think we realized even B2B platforms need to have consumer appeal to be successful. I think once we are able to integrate more platform and build and more social hooks, it will be more appealing to users. Love your feedback though - think you have some wonderful points.
With or without numbers, the bottom line is: keep your product line simple and give it memorable lines. That's what Apple does.

iDevice N or iDevice Foo is simple enough. Sony MK200 HVK-iZD (plus 10 simbling models released throughtout the same period) is not.
My line of reasoning behind my position is complex and can't be simplified into a bite-sized form that can be defended in a HN thread. Especially considering my original point: I'm one of the 0%; there's no chance for a fair debate.
It is still that, perhaps not in such a distilled fashion, but corruption is rampant throughout the world. Those in power in the "third world" are as susceptible, if not more so, to greed as those here in the "first world." Aid does work to an extent simply because not all of humanity is evil, there are some in positions of power who actually do wish to do good. His report just appears too idyllic and utopian compared to reality.
This is a great and wise overview of some of the most important aspects of the state and trajectory of humanity today. I wish there were more widespread exposure to analysis like this.
And even 1TB, which is presumably what he meant, feels very small to me.
Yii PNotify Extension
The article was about how great Apple names things and how bad everyone else does. My point is that Apple's names aren't some brilliant miracle of nomenclature like the article makes them out to be.

Obviously if I'm going to drop $500+ I'm going to kick the tires and take the product for a spin around the block to see how it feels (and maybe even read its specs).

I think what Apple does do well, and which the article points out, is that they limit their offerings to a number I can count on one hand, the differences between each being obvious tradeoffs (e.g., performance vs. portability) which consumers can actually decide between. This empowers consumers, makes them feel good because they understand what's happening, and likely leads to increased sales.
Sure -- thanks!
DTfchx5e4BRQCGF9c9rw8frXgoEBewCaC2
Some variation of "no or very low fees" appears 5 times in this article. Marc is doing a good job (re)setting the expectation that transaction fees are not going away. a16z's bitcoin companies are just going to utterly gut the existing payment industry's 2.5%
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7096827
Except that's exactly the problem that existing payment systems solve that bitcoin fails to solve. What problem do you see bitcoin solving as far as payment system goes for people who are not using bitcoin otherwise? People can buy from untrustworthy merchants quite easily right now. And bitcoin costs more - you pay the bitcoin exchange and the payment system and your merchant pays the bitcoin exchange and his payment system.
Third point was by Melinda. (She)
Bitcoin and the biodiversity threat vector
Exactly - the Agile Manifesto came to mind as soon as I read the title. i.e. "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools"
Awesome I'm glad you're making OK money for this. Bought it and thought it was fun to have a laugh at myself for a bit and the stereotypes in the industry. Went through a phase of constantly crashing though but seems OK now
Widespread distribution of the data can also affect the process that the data are supposed to measure.

When I taught a college course several years ago, it was conventional wisdom that student evaluations were primarily driven by grades, thus encouraging grade inflation. A popular website called "rate my professors" included ratings for "easyness" and "hotness."

Female teachers were advised to anticipate receiving one or two rape threats in each batch of anonymous comments.
Linked article is about bitmap sprites in native games, not CSS sprites on web sites. Your comment makes little sense in the context.
Interesting. I did something like this a few years back, sample output:

http://uguu-archive.appspot.com/misaka/replay.html

http://ioccc.org/2013/misaka/spoiler.html (mirror, in case if I ran out of quota)

I would be curious in some implementation details for this project, particularly how the intermediate deltas are stored.
B-con is confused. The behavior in question - the drive powering down right away - would actually occur less frequently if I were trying to do something "high performance." It's the fact that a single user playing mp3 or video sequentially is pretty laid back that means the drive gets a chance to shut off.

Of course, you wouldn't want to use these in a server, either. Or for anything, really.

edit: in response to your comment below, the reason you haven't seen glitching with your high-bitrate video is probably that it's high-enough quality video (lots of data) that the OS never caches enough of it to let the drive stop working and go to sleep. Or else maybe WD have altered the stock settings of these drives. They certainly should have.

edit again: if you've had them for "many years" then we aren't talking about the same hardware
Can the CIA operate overtly in Russia like this? The Russians don't mind?
Announcing the Female Founders Conference (March 1)
You haven't been around the tech scene long have you? Gates has a well-known reputation within MS as ruthless, snarky, and yes an asshole at times. See the numerous references to his (famous if only anecdotal) refrains when unsatisfied with someone else's work.

Also read Paul Allen's book -- specifically the part where Gates tried to screw Paul by diluting his stock.
Both ideas are founded on the same amount of evidence... the BSI should be open about it's sources. But they just decuded to scare people.
I can't. Not because I don't have legit reasoning (I'm convinced I do). But for a far more interesting reason: I'm one of the 0% in this community who hold this position. This means there's no chance for a fair debate. Socially speaking, I think this is far more interesting than my disagreement itself.

EDIT: Ignore this, I have already responded. See the rest of the thread.
That and spin down. Actually, the spin down might be worse.
The part I was unclear about, actually, is whether or not one is charged for the first 2500 if one were to hit that threshold.
While this letter is directed to the general public, Gates talks to many members of the global elites, some of whom may have privately voiced that concern.
> I've not seen 60+% in any grant I've ever worked with. In smaller institutions they tend to be around 10-20%. On the larger campuses, the average indirect rate was 32%.

I run a company that has won many Federal grants and subcontracted a lot of work to universities in the Boston and Cambridge area.

Let's look at the current indirect rates for universities I've worked with:

1) Harvard: up to 69.5% for Federally funded research [1]

2) MIT: currently 56%, but in 2010, it was 68% [2]

3) Boston University: 63.7% [3]

4) Northeastern University: 54.5% [4]

60% as an average is much closer to what I see than 32%. The Boston Globe says the national average is 52% [5].

P.S. On a tip from a friend, I'll add that MGH's indirect rate is 74% [6]

[1] http://osp.fad.harvard.edu/content/fa-cost-rates-federal-spo...

[2] http://osp.mit.edu/rates/facilities-and-administrative-fa-ra...

[3] http://www.bu.edu/osp/files/2012/03/RateAgreement22Feb2013.p...

[4] http://www.northeastern.edu/research/raf/files/Indirect-Cost...

[5] http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2013/03/17/harvard-mit-thw...

[6] http://resadmin.partners.org/RM_Home/Documents/2011%2005%200...
> It seems as if 95% of news stories focus on poverty, war and chaos in the continent.

That's because news stories, regardless of continent, focus on tragedy, war, and chaos; its not something special about Africa.
Within the Bitcoin community, there is a strong need for a term that means "normal money, the kind that gets printed by governments, as opposed to gold, Bitcoins, stock certificates, commodities, and other fungible stores of value".

The community has been using the term "fiat currency" for that. It is, effectively, a new meaning of the word (although VERY closely tied to the older meaning). Unless you have a better term (and can persuade others to use it) you may need to accept this new meaning for "fiat currency" in order to effectively communicate with others.
Chet Kanojia and Aereo seek to shake up television industry.
No, you haven't introduced anything, because sending money to a bitcoin exchange is exactly as hard as sending money to a merchant.

I already conceded the global bridge argument, but that's just a legal loophole. Authorities can easily legally treat depositing money into a bitcoin exchange as sending money abroad and make it just as hard.
Ask HN: What is the next opportunity as Internet speeds increase?
I would like to put this out there for you to ponder:

In 5-10 years, internet speeds around the world should be double to triple to that of what they are now. As time goes on, I believe 1GBPS will not be uncommon even for a cheap student plan. That being said, what business opportunities will come from such fast speeds of internet. I invite you to think about the size of data, and what could be possible with very fast speeds for all consumers.
It would be great if you could list power consumption numbers too next time. For me, that's also a big consideration for something (NAS) that is on 24/7 in the house.
> in which case bitcoin is just a middleman doing no work

So you're saying that, pessimistically, all Bitcoin could do is disrupt the credit/debit card companies? That's very pessimistic, and still a very big deal.
>Which iPad do I buy!? I'm thinking, maybe, the iPad 2 because it must be the most current and advanced model :P

How about doing the same with all Sony models released from 2010 to 2014 then?

Because you're comparing stuff that just isn't there. When a person visits applestore.com or an Apple Store, he's only going to see the currently sold models, not the whole product history.

He might be momentarily confused that iPad 2 is older than the iPad Air, but that can be fixed with one glance at the price or specs, or a word from an employee.

The difference between some competitor names like HVZ-KM323 and HMH-23hiK? Not so much.
Parsing isn't the hard part, its the source data, which if you do the math on what Google has done (drive around the world taking 360 video and LIDAR of streets) is literally billions of dollars worth of work.

TIGER is a pretty bad starting point, geocoding based on block faces is really inaccurate if you want to zoom in to the street level. And its U.S. only.

OSM Nominatim should be a better place to start.

I'd love to see open sourced Street View data collection / processing as part of the OSM project. Then there is a chance to compete with Google.
Eh, it's stupid, yes. But once you know, it is trivial to remember:

'95 => '98 => 2000

7 => 8 => 8.1

As well as remembering the second sequence follows the first.

Really, I don't mean to say it is a wonderful naming scheme or anything. I'm just less frustrated by it than by "big cats":

Kodiak, Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks
Slick 2.0 GA - functional relational mapping made easy
I'm surprised he chose Mexico as an example as well, but because of the issues it has with corruption, emigration, and violence. Even a middle-class country with those problems seems like a bad example of progress.
Well, here's a complete analysis of the function:

http://publicclu2.blogspot.com/2013/05/analysis-of-intel-com...

Unfortunately, it doesn't show the raw assembly. But in the absence of any information to the contrary, I'm perfectly happy to trust this pseudocode. It shows a bunch of feature checks, preceded by a single "GenuineIntel" check. The code that's gated on "GenuineIntel" would work just fine on non-Intel CPUs. It might sometimes produce sub-optimal results, but overall it'll be fine. There are some CPU family checks, but my understanding is that non-Intel CPUs return the same values that Intel CPUs do for similar architectures/capabilities.

We have multiple people saying that the code runs faster if the "GenuineIntel" checks are removed, we have pseudocode for the function in question that shows a bunch of feature detection with a bit of CPU family detection, neither of which are at all Intel specific. And then we have you, who can't seem to substantiate your claims at all.

If you have actual code or other reasonable evidence to support what you're saying, I'd love to see it. But right now, I'm not buying it.
I do the same with a PHP project, it's nice because I just don't include the original JS source files when I push to staging/production
Gadget Made by a 16-Year-Old Could Decrease Your Energy Bills
> But fiat currencies are simply currencies that aren't backed by collateral.

Apparently the definition is open to interpretation, at least if the wikipedia article[0] can be believed:

Fiat money has been defined variously as:

* any money declared by a government to be legal tender.
* state-issued money which is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.
* money without intrinsic value.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
I'm comfortable with what my reaction to Barrett Brown's case says about me and my beliefs, far more than I am comfortable with what my beliefs about the Snowden case might connote.
I do not 100% trust local police departments to decide whether or not they killed someone.
> I'm having trouble understanding this point of view because it implies that someone, somewhere is always willing to buy in to BTC, no matter the circumstances.

Why does it imply that? You could also say that the existence of cash USD implies that someone somewhere is always willing to buy in to USD, no matter the circumstances. Obviously, this won't literally always be the case, and there are always circumstances where people won't accept USD.
I stand corrected - another plank of the strategy is to stop selling the product to people who will notice that the devices are under powered and flimsy.

Concentrate on consumers swayed by a new logo.

but the xkcd cartoon is spot on by the way.
No that doesn't work either because you need an existing payment system to deposit money into a bitcoin account at an exchange. You can't disrupt something by requiring your customer to use it.
It's not totally wrong about Africa. HIV hit Africa like a sledgehammer, and stopped development cold for 20 odd years. 10 years ago, people had seen Sub Saharan Africa going backwards for a decade.

Plus, that was the 20 years when everyone looking for cheap labor went to China.

Now, they're much better at preventing and treating HIV. And China is going to Africa for cheap labor. So things are getting much better.
JavaScript Engine Develops Consciousness, Hates Programmers
Well there definitely isn't when you don't even attempt to explain your position.
Coconut UI
To stand out, it often pays off to be different, especially when it comes to 'normal' things. The reasons for doing so are, I suspect, often a murky combination of on the one hand truly wanting to be different and applying that in all areas of life, and on the other hand just a need to signal how different you are.

Whatever the reasons, it can be really irritating to those close to you, but it pays off when it comes to those further away and your 'legacy'. And those close to you get used to it anyways and might even sort of like it despite the superficial frustration.

I have quite a few friends who are 'different', and without exception their 'differentness' at times crosses over into what I'd consider bullshit territory. But even the bullshit differences seem to be worth the drawback of minor irritations to those close to them, at the greater benefit of signalling their differentness in an obvious way.
This is absolutely correct. One other key point: Marc and his portfolio companies (among others) are deliberately evading regulations. Those regulations have real costs, which is why they are worth evading at all. Were companies like Coinbase to actually comply with U.S. law, they'd each have to spend $20 million on money transmission licenses and associated bonds (not including legal fees). These costs are not presently taken into account with a 1% fee structure.

Disclaimer: My company is the plaintiff in an ongoing lawsuit about this. http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=2434524
Thanks for the camel facts!

I think we should resist the malthusian overpopulation argument in any form. Resource scarcity cannot be considered a problem when waste is such a major component of our economy. Radically uneven development, maybe, but not scarcity.

For an interesting discussion of Malthus, check out Betsy Hartmann in this episode of Behind the News:
http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2013/13_06_13.mp3
Was easy money around 2002-2004. You'd get like 200:1 conversion of an OK paysite with either a 35% lifetime revshare of sometimes random promotions (usually to kickstart a new site) would offer $250 upfront PPS. Niche sites (gay, extreme fetish) would convert TGP traffic as good as 75:1 and honestly were the best place to be (to many fanboy affiliates saturating the market with mainstream "teen amateur" sites).

2005-2008, TGP's totally died to Tubes. And Tubes generally killed the value in hosted galleries (a key marketing tool for affiliates alongside TGPs). Last I heard of old contacts, they'd either tried to move up the food chain intro production (which mostly moved to eastern europe), moved into niche tube sites, or sold up (as I did) and went into mainstream web. Actually, probably the most money I made was from sale of site network and domain portfolio.
I'm really surprised Node hasn't hit 1.0 yet. What is the major stumbling block?
Doesn't matter, your "few dozen" was a complete lie.
Hey! We were just looking at you guys for our office lunch last week. We'd love to give you guys a try.

We're:
Woopra, inc.
650 5th St Ste 402
San Francisco, CA 94107

And we've got 7 hungry people who'd love to use you guys.

Thanks!
Ask HN: heroku-like service for static websites?
I'm constantly building new static sites, deployed using github pages (not enough control over my sites, goes down easily) and s3 (pain in the ass generally). I now need a better option because everything i find is FTP deploy which is lame. I want git or some other cross platform cli & gui way to deploy. Any suggestions?
Come on, try to explain. HN is biased in many respects, if you never say what you think, you're just making it worst.
I think it's fair to expect at least an attempt, given that you felt strongly enough to post your first comment. Without context, it boils down to "I have an opinion." Not surprising people would ask you to expand on that.
> Don't we have computers that can run simulations and provide answers? Inputs could be population size, current wealth distribution, socialist/capitalist/hybrid, tax rate, cultural influence etc. We don't have to be accurate, just directionally correct. Why do we keep playing this game in the real world? Is it because we don't yet have information to model the engine?

If you can figure out a good simulation model there will be someone willing to let you run it on a TOP500 supercomputer.

People already run these kinds of simulations, but the complexity is beyond the capability of today's computers. Not to mention all the random variables - wars, droughts, earthquakes, political change, technological improvements, etc..., which all affect economies.

And of course the information to model it is another problem, because much of it will have to be inferred - what's the probability of a war? What probable effect will technological advances have? Hows the weather going to be this summer? Will there be ice storms this winter?

People wonder why so many assumptions are made in economics - it's because some of the variables are simply too unpredictable.
You are correct. I should have said "nearly every one of..." instead.

(I want to avoid claiming that it's the racist claims that were proven untrue. For one thing, it begs the question: if they turn out to be true then I guess it wasn't racist after all.)
Personally, I prefer websites that take as a form of payment the riskiest tranches of securitized subprime mortgages or cosmetic surgery loans, while amplifying risk with my fundamental misunderstanding of default swaps.
Here's a quote from that section:

"In Southeast Asia and Latin America, average fertility dropped from six or seven children per woman to two or three in a single generation, thanks in large measure to the modern contraceptives available by the 1960s."

The article is talking about our world, which is one in which contraceptives are widely available. We can't really look at alternate realities in which there are rich countries with no contraceptives and see how their birth rates fared, but I see no reason to assume they would drop, because people will still have sex.

The Malthusian explosion is not a valid concern precisely because of contraception.
Just some rough internet search. Others talk about 10% , and mid year predictions we're similar.
"How Occupy Wall Street Won In One Chart"

--> "income inequality has been the #1 global risk."

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-occupy-wall-street-won-in...
"Drink more ovaltine"