skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As with any risky investment, please remember: Don't bet an amount that you can't afford to lose.
Welcome to minimalism my friend

Now delete your medium account.
Sydney’s screwed-up smartcard, or why I wrote “Opal or Not”
You mean with that $25B that FDIC has to insure $10T of deposits? That insurance? http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/...
Bailouts, plus a regulatory apparatus making fraud and deception harder to get away with, plus criminal and civil liability for illegal financial activity.

But what's the state good for anyway?
Well, I know it's in use in a few places now (I personally know someone using it at Google's engineering as a tool to retrieve and collate information, utilizing the newer async features), but of course there are still many rough spots. Whether it fits the bill for that person will be highly dependent on what they need.

I'm of the opinion the only way to solve the chicken and egg usage problem is to convince a few people to be chickens. That's not going to happen without them trying it out. (I'm aware you've thought quite a bit on this issue).
I had downloaded RedPhone and TextSecure. My contact list was a glorious zero people (everyone I know uses WhatsApp).

A few months ago I thought about using Threema and the like, but realized nobody's gonna switch with me. So I stayed. Didn't even try to convince anyone.

The day after FB bought WA my non-tech, not-concerned-about-NSA friends started to switch to Threema. On their own. Because Facebook.

Heck, they were even discussing all that on Facebook, as far as I know... that's irony.

So now most people I regularly chat with are on Threema.

And while I don't trust them (especially their competence -- although using NaCL is a good start) nearly as much as I trust Moxie, this issue is closed now. Nobody is going to move again without a very good reason.

The two people I regularly chat with still on WA can't use Threema, because they are still on Android 2.3.

But Threema really needs multi-device IDs. And the ability to change a group's composition. Other than that it's cool. You feel right at home, the emoticons look the same (from the same lib, I guess). And this whole "scan the other guy's public key" is not just a good idea, it's even close to gamification ("only two more people until everyone's green!").

And that's why I don't believe in some meaningful market share for Whispersystems. They are virtually unknown in non-tech circles. They still don't have an iOS app. Yes, I know, there were more important things up to now.

Still, the window of opportunity is closing. In three weeks no "normal" person is going to switch messaging service anymore. Everyone either stays at WhatsApp, or has already agreed with their whole circle of friends on another service.
(I'm not programming this kind of thing so please forgive my ignorance.)

Is that loose of a search not actually desirable in "find in page" instances?

In other words, are there many words where 'e' matching 'é' would actually generate a false positive? This is the only case I could see that would be problematic.

And even then "find in page" is usually used as quick navigation to the minimum matching search (high recall) and not about excluding all possible mismatches (high precision).
Very sure, since I had to report this on Thursday last. Was just about to lob in a Raspberry Pi and show you, but the World's Lousiest Ecommerce Site bounced me out completely, sent me to cpcireland.farnell.com, logged me out and now wants me to reregister there solely to show you a GIF. Sorry, but not worth it. You're just going to have to believe me.
Marketing for Engineers (aka Growth Hacking)
I'm very into flow-based programming because I use a fair bit of it for audio DSP and that's how I think. So these days when I look at code-as-text I often find myself thinking about how I'd like to see the functions, branding etc. abstracted out into a flow chart diagram automatically. I was just struck during the Demo (and from some previous explorations) at how good M. is at developing graphs from structural information, and I think to myself 'why not from code?'.

On a tangential note, this latest demo looks very very close to the sort of thing Bret Victor has been talking about over the last year or two (http://worrydream.com). If you haven't checked it out I think it might be interesting to you.
Care to share what your startup was and what the interview was like? Where you thought you went wrong?
That mechanism is called "liberal democracy". It's been fairly effective so far.
By "civil liability," do you mean fining a company $10M for stealing $100B? And let's not pretend that bankers go to jail often.
I could probably write a good blog post on it. But most people seem to think this entrenched history is irrelevant. So I see little reason at this time to put much effort into laying it all out.

I'm not sure how easy it is to get ahold of ebooks in your current situation, but if you have a chance take a look at Matt Yglesias's The Rent Is Too Damn High, in which he addresses similar themes albeit from a different perspective.
Wouldn't we rather remove the ability to make those unfair decisions? I don't see the data as being enabling here, because for most of the cases you are describing, it's the inaccuracy of the data that is causing the harm, not the data. Some of the classes of behavior you describe, we can outright make illegal, like health insurers discriminating among the people they insure. (Like the affordable care act just did.) Similarly, we could make it illegal for an employer to request access to any private information before hiring someone. That seems reasonable. Credit ratings are terrible and that whole industry needs reform, but I don't think the problem with it is that they have too much data.

First off, let me clarify what I'm advocating for so we aren't talking past each other. I would like for the public to be less skeptical of organizations collecting large amounts of data, and storing it to analyze in aggregate for a variety of purposes. Particularly, if access to the data is controlled, and if it is only used in a sufficiently aggregated form. Society will reap tremendous benefits from enabling things like this.

I don't think of most of the cases you are describing as being related to this.
The tendency of institutions to deny, cover up and conceal systems exploitation is one of the major failing of contemporary culture.

This is how we lied ourselves into thinking that the iOS SSL stack was trustworthy and it applies equally to the Mt. Gox situation.
Perhaps, however I suspect bit-coin is going to be forced to increase the long term cap at some point in the future as they keep being destroyed. Which might not seem like an issue but it adds a lot of instability as nobody knows how many bit-coins are still in circulation.

PS: Don't forget holding bit-coins does not get you a vote it's the miners that decide how things evolve.
Show HN: CoinsManager, Free Open-source multi-address multi-currency Portfolio
Can Event Machine or Celluloid give me reactive updates from my database made by a different process or service (like some background task with message queue)? Or are you bringing those as alternatives to EventEmitter of node.js?
What Does It Mean that Nokia Launches 3 Smartphones on Android, Now?
On the general point my original parent was trying to make, I totally agree. People throwing away their lives over a business fuck-up is a waste.

I just wanted to search on the story and saw that point was made in the article I linked, and thought it was an interesting point to that specific case.
That answerer[1] was also one of the close-voters[2]...

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/157247/t-j-crowder

[2]: http://stackoverflow.com/posts/21947452/revisions
any chance of you guys open-sourcing them?
Moving was the solution for me. After a while irritating noises weight heavily on me and set me right on edge. Our 'new' house is unrenovated, old, draughty, damp, leaks and it very run down. I love it to bits and its problems are slowly being dealt to. Unlike problems caused by others, the other stuff is within my power to change.
Care to share the cljs source?
prove solvency periodically

Solvency, the ability to pay what you owe people when it falls due, is easy to prove at any point in time. The state of insolvency occurs the first time you have an obligation to pay, which you cannot satisfy.

The thing is, if you're a de facto bank (by virtue of holding customer demand deposits) then your future expectations of solvency could turn out to be wrong because everyone wants their money at the same time (i.e. there's a bank run).
This looks really good. Having checks like this integrated and automated is the big win. Like data backup, if it's not automated then it doesn't really count.
The person I replied to suggested it wasn't negligence. Maybe you should argue about what words mean with him, first?
Everyone I explain text secure to loves it and starts using it immediately. Its a dropin text message replacement app. It's main competition is android owners who can pick between text secure and the Hangouts app that had replaced the default SMS app.
I think we should make a new list of laws. Basically, a list of laws that still apply to the US Government. The "does not apply" list is getting a little top-heavy.
Thanks for answering. I hope you're able to find a situation that works best for you as soon as possible; it sounds like you're making the best of what was dealt and setting an amazing example for your son.
People aren't hating Mark Karpeles because he messed up, but because of the completely absurd response to this situation.

Optimal response: A message to the customers as soon as the issue is noticed: "Due to a technical problem we lost X amount of Bitcoins, which means we currently can't cover all of the deposits. Trading has been disabled while this issue is investigated. [Some external financial company] is in charge of coordinating withdrawals of existing customer funds."

Actual response: Blaming the issue on the Bitcoin protocol. Trading stays active althought the price tanks. Customers can still deposit funds although it's clear that they won't be able to withdraw it. Released announcements try to hide information about insolvency and try to give hope to the customers.

I didn't have any deposits at MtGox. As a customer I would probably have forgiven them losing the funds (if it was a technical issue), but I wouldn't have forgiven them they way how they handle public communication. Such a behavior is not acceptable.
> There are plenty of entrepreneurs on HN alone who given the resources Gox had could manage to not (unknowingly) lose half a billion dollars due to broken programming in the timespan that Gox did.

Easy to say. Nobody sets out to fail.
Most people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox since circa 2011 when their stunning incompetence was at it's height. Sadly there were plenty of media shill articles when Btc skyrocketed to $1,000 last year who were promoting them as the "Biggest Bitcoin exchange" without pointing people to relevant bitcointalk threads on what a nightmare that site has been over the years.

If you read MagicalTux's personal blog you'd know to never trust anything he's coded too. http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-wh...
In dubio pro reo.
Interesting. One thing that struck me is I would like a small pause on full stop or comma.. to digest that thunk before continuing on and allow for blinks.
...and if you decided to use Lua, you could also use LPEG, which is amazingly well suited to tasks like this...

[LPEG is also a dependency of course, but pretty small (just include its source code along with your own) and super portable in the same way Lua is.]
1) agreed, but that run doesn't necessarily cascade to another exchange. If the value of btc collapses and people make a run on it, those other exchanges will likely be able to cover the bid/ask spread in any case because by and large they are merely mediating exchanges of $/btc that other people are holding.

3) the 'rational world' was meant to apply to the rate at which bitcoin recovers. In a rational world it would be instantaneous, we're not. It's certainly possible that bitcoin will go to zero as a result of this, but I treat that as a separate case. If you think that bitcoin will survive in the medium-term, my point is the resulting value should be higher than before Mt Gox. In a 'rational world' everyone would figure this out tomorrow, for certain values of irrationality it takes longer for this to suss out, and for extreme values, it goes to zero too fast.
What controls? I see some empty reassurances, but nobody that I see is proposing controls. I doubt controls for existing monetary systems would work for bitcoins anyway as it requires a central organization that has power, like printing money, and enough vested interest to through good money after bad money to save the currency. Bitcoins have neither of these.
I can't even wrap my head around this.

Is there anything that can even compare to this language?
Apparent Theft at Mt. Gox Shakes Bitcoin World
Wow just watched this video of Kolin Burges from London who flew to Tokyo to find out, face to face, if he could withdraw his Bitcoins from Mt Gox. He makes an accurate prediction at the end, but this totally sucks for BTC. I was pretty optimistic about the future of it, but this is a pretty big speed bump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob9Ak1t09Ao
the big thing when speed reading is to read it, just read it. Your brain will churn on it. Then come back and read it again. Your brain will churn more. Make notations in the margin the whole time. Now finally read it again. You'll get it all done faster than one read through and your brain will churn a ton on it. It's like when you come back to code tutorials a few days later after some practice and know what's going on a bit more and get further.

Then go back and read your notations (just put ticks or dots by the stuff that's important in the margins). And now you understand it and you can summarize it in the notes. And this cements the learning.

Of course this is a lot of work. I'd rather slam it once, brain index it and maybe come back if I care.
This is very interesting (and as has been pointed out in other comments, not exactly a new idea). I think its proper application, though, is in a tool for practicing reading, not for actually reading tests.

One major thing this approach looses is the inherent non-linearity of text. If I miss a fact and want to back up a bit, or want to pause for a moment and think about something, I can (when reading) without even thinking about it. Even if this approach is faster overall, it makes reading more like listening to audio or watching a video; it's a big pain to rewind or pause.

Secondly, this is actually slower than true speed reading or skimming because it forces you to read every word. Truly accomplished readers will often read material at a very superficial level, only dipping in and reading consistently when they encounter a novel concept. Essentially, they can use semantic compression to increase their reading speed by only bothering to read what they find to be relevant. This operates on every level, from the page to the chapter to the paragraph to the sentence. It isn't perfect, of course, but it's always possible to back up if one finds crucial information has been missed.

Finally, even though this tool is truly excellent for breaking the subvocalization habit that hampers most slow readers, once you learn how to read without subvocalizing it becomes a bit redundant. For example, looking at Spritz, I cranked the speed to 500. It felt pretty good, like I was reading fast. Then I went and took a traditional reading speed test and clocked in at 700wpm, with 95% comprehension. So I'm not sure my overall speed is better with Spritz.

That said, I'll probably keep coming back to this or technologies like this, now that I'm aware of them. They seem a really good way to force oneself into the speed-reading mindset - I have a feeling that doing this for 60 seconds before a normal reading session would improve reading speed substantially.
This is amazing. Not only can I now magically read at 350WPM, but I noticed what I believe is a spelling error at 350WPM ("Integrate" was spelled as either "Intergate" or "Intergrate")
Thanks dangoor. It's a good day when someone shows me two recent projects that are very similar to my own. I started _tree a few months back because I couldn't find a project like it. Turns out I'm in good company.

_tree leans heavily on functional programming techniques, so it's not so different at all. The furthest it gets from functional is the modeling layer implementation, which is prototypal, and still just a thin layer over the core.

I haven't studied any clojurescript, but conceptually, compound operations on immutable structures, such as re-parenting a subtree or sorting a vector/list/set, would be implemented inefficiently without mutable intermediate objects. For example, imagine writing quicksort where exchanges cost O(n) instead of O(1). Performance would totally tank. It'd be silly.

That's why I expect clojurescript has mutable intermediates. I'd love for someone to prove this guess wrong, it would blow my mind. Anyway, that's what _tree's batch mode is, in essence: exposed access to the mutable, pre-finalized versions of _tree primitives.
What happened in Phoenix?
Mt. Gox goes dark
Depending on the nature of the risk, yes, that might be enough insurance.

Bank deposit insurance is fascinating: it largely exists to prevent bank runs, which are caused by people believing they won't get their money out. Having any insurance means that people have less reason to believe there's a chance they won't get paid back, which decreases the probability of a run on the bank, which decreases the risk associated with the insurance, which decreases the amount of insurance needed.
My family of 3 live in a basically unrenovated 1950s house. It has some inconveniences (combined small kitchen dinning, tiny bathroom) but some of the features turn out to be mostly good. The separate living room makes it more relaxing (can't see the dishes!) easier to heat and cool and quieter. Its layout, while old, is quite clever. The arrangement is such that all plumbing is close together, making maintenance easy. It is mostly efficient to heat at 90 square metres (970 square feet), although the brick walls lack insulation. And the house has character which is very important to me.
Check the plummeting price, down to $488 and sinking.
Long term it will of course overcome, MtGox was no longer the big market mover it used to be. Their constant incompetence no longer 'goxed' the price like it once did on a regular basis when they were the only major option if it did BTC would be worth pennies again like back in 2011.

Longterm things like colored coins are looking good for Bitcoin, plus exchanges not run by complete assclowns
you're basically denying the definition. echoing in the brain isn't the same as actually getting the muscles in the throat or the mouth to move. It does slow things down but the muscle movement is way slower and some people don't get rid of it.
Thank you for the sanity check, seriously.
Good for reading practice or for easy-to-digest text but I don't think it would fly when the text material's concept is unfamiliar.
Well, that's pretty cruel of you.
That's why you have to go with a microSD card adapter that doesn't protrude at all.
http://theniftyminidrive.com/
Bitcoins are very volatile and high risk. If you can tolerate an investment that can possibly go to zero then it might not be a bad time. But do seriously consider if you can maintain your sanity with owning a volatile asset!
"it shatters the barriers between analytic and numeric tools."

"and it handles the interface between the 2/3 and the 1/3 about 100x better than your typical programming language."

Thank you for that great word picture :D
Sorry for the late reply.

Recently, mostly Python and Javascript
Ramen: Where startups begin.
I actually find YAML the most annoying part of Ansible, but that's probably specific to YAML. The syntax drives me crazy.
Use a pastebin mate
If you misled people into thinking you were solvent and kept taking their money when you knew you wouldn't be able to pay it back, or if you took grossly unacceptable risks with that same money, I'm glad you were unhappy. I doubt that's what you actually did though, and you are reacting to this story out of a kind, admirable, but entirely misplaced sense of compassion for someone whose wrongs are entirely unlike your own.
I think the point is that a card game has nothing to do with a currency exchange and the same sort of skills you would need for one don't translate into another. We're talking about software we want to deal with a lot of people's money, the impact of a trading card game platform making a big mistake vs a currency exchange is much much different. I think the very real criticism is you might be willing to risk having a business that isn't necessarily super organized or secure deal with trading cards but not with your money.

The talent and quality I would want to hold each to are on completely different levels, and seeing someone pivot so frivolously from one to the other should really give you pause. A pivot rarely involves completely changing the type of business you're dealing with in the first place, the product might be completely different or the customers you're going after might change, but it usually is on some level related to what you started out doing. Because theoretically you're drawing on some experience or insight into the general sector you start a business in, not choosing something that you think might be cool but are not qualified to run or manage and potentially loose people (investors and consumers) a ton of money.
There's also Steve Losh's CLI templates:

https://bitbucket.org/sjl/mercurial-cli-templates/overview
Shared housing/flats works fine for many adults with jobs who "would like to have their own lifestyle." There are benefits and drawbacks to it, just like anything else. It's not for everybody, but it also doesn't make any sense to arbitrarily dismiss it as being "unsuitable for adults" as often seems to happen in this sort of discussion...
I planned to and actually tried today, but... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7294217

Coinbase.com ran out of coins to sell. I gotta wait until Friday and hope the price is still sub 500.

EDIT: Whoa! Coinbase.com allowed me do it just now! http://i.imgur.com/VKvNRhN.png ...I hope this actually works.
Thinking about this...

This tragic violation of the trust of users of Mt.Gox was the result of one company’s actions and does not reflect the resilience or value of bitcoin and the digital currency industry.

The best way to build trust in the 'resilience of Bitcoin' would be to leverage the blockchain technology to help document who lost what and monitor if/when any of those coins appear in the future. This is going to cost money as well as development time.

It's one thing wax pious about how and why this happened and to say it must never happen again etc. But the best thing the exchanges could do for their long-term credibility would be to each put up a chunk of cash and engage an expensive law firm to set up a trust and audit the whole affair as completely as possible. That's going to require a collective commitment of of a million dollars, or possibly a few million.

It's either that or get put under the microscope of existing financial regulators on their schedule, which (IMHO) will relegate BTC to the status of a disaffection currency that is only convertible in fringe markets.
We use Kestrel for our internal hooks delivery system also (based on jnunemaker's suggestion).