skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> recursive descent parsing

The parser is Java, actually. And it's not recursive descent.

> tasks well suited for it

Fancy that! Using a language for things it is well suited to! :)

> compiled and JVM languages stitched together with Mathematica

A lot of stuff is still WL though. Data curation, evaluation, scanning, typesetting, formatting, and, you know, the actual computation in doing something like http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=regression+of+literacy%...

But it seems like you're complaining the backend isn't written in Wolfram Language? The JVM is great at that stuff! I don't call that ball-of-mud at all, just using the right tool for the job.
If any of this is true it just goes to show that you should hold your own bitcoins...
the only source of this appears to be the updated whois information...
People who can't manage to withdraw it when MtGox makes it painfully long and impossible to move things around.
I'd be more interested in how many of those who lost (or rather, will lose if MtGox does indeed die) cannot easily afford it. 8 people so far, for instance, have said they lost more than 1000 BTC, which would be over $600k.

I wonder how many of these fall into the following categories:

1. The mined the coins themselves back when it was cheap to mine, or bought them when they are cheap. They are not actually much worse off then before they got into Bitcoin.

2. They put a lot of money into acquiring those Bitcoins. They are going to actually end up a significant fraction of that $600k worse of than when they started. However, they have millions of dollars or dollar equivalents elsewhere, and this loss is not really going to impact their lifestyle in any noticeable way.

3. They put a lot of money into acquiring those Bitcoins, and are going to end up a significant fraction of that $600k behind where they started. That represents a significant fraction of their wealth, and it will impact future plans to live a more extravagant lifestyle, but it won't knock them down to a lower class. They'll keep living where they live, and buying the same kind of luxuries they currently buy.

4. Similar to 2 and 3, but they had most of their wealth in this. They may have to move down a class or two on the social/financial ladder.

5. Similar, but they had so much of their wealth in this that "ruined" would be an accurate description. They basically have to start over financially.
Bitcoin exchanges will have a run - they resemble fractional reserve banking, because all exchanges dont have enough USD (or other currency) to cover every bitcoin that people might want to trade thru the exchanges (that could be every single bitcoin in existence).

This obviously results in the crash of the exchange rates, and probably a reduction in the usage of the currency as well. Getting paid in something that has little use of it's own doesn't help you.

Now, on #3, you said "in a rational world"... But this isn't a rational world, so the rest of this sentence doesn't apply.

The reality is like loss of confidence is very powerful, and it could, as the document noted, destroy BTC for the near and possibly medium term.
For students, this is nice. However, in many US cities, adults with jobs who would like to have their own lifestyle are often forced to live this way because of pricing and availability.
Cash isn't really a reasonable analogy in this case, since it can't be transferred digitally and needs to remain in the custody of the owner. BTC held in exchanges is much more comparable to money in demand deposit or savings accounts.
You are ignoring the fact that he has been straight up lying the last few weeks, and in my opinion, he still is. He said that they were aware of the bug for quiet some time, and yet had enabled automatic re-issuing of failed withdrawals. Do you think that is what really happened? They just got an excuse to steal coins on a massive scale!
They had the implementation, yes. But the idea predates Mono's implementation. I can't find any references offhand but I do believe Roslyn inspired the Mono team. Roslyn has been in development for a very long time.
It would not be the first time a bunch of data points showed up on HN only to have someone on the staff of a popular newsblogazine throw it up as "breaking news" to grab some pages views from the folks who don't follow HN well into the evening ... (http://www.jonrussell.me/post/35487064154/the-value-of-hacke...) Jon wrote the Gox piece too.
>The increased productivity also releases human capital and actual capital to pursue new things and create new jobs. This leads to new jobs in entirely new industries.

Correct, but it doesn't necessarily result in an equal number of or more jobs than before.

>but we must accept that it will happen, simply by looking at all of human history.

This is where I think we disagree the most. I don't think history sets a good precedent for predicting the future, especially in this current environment. At no point in history have we had robots and AI. We still don't have that now, and there are no guarantees that we will fully achieve AI, but in many areas we are making humans obsolete and I expect this trend to continue. Using your eariler analogy, what happened to the horses after Ford introduced mass produced cars? They were turned to glue. In many ways, this is the issue we are currently facing.

I do agree that highly skilled and entrepreneurial folks will create new industries which could dramatically alter the economic landscape, but I am still not convinced that this is going to result in full employment. These new industries will still be taking advantage of the highly automated and efficient technologies that other industries use and lower-skilled and less educated people are going to find it increasingly difficult to find work.
I'm a big, no HUGE, fan of the Mac Text to speech thing. It's great for proofreading text, and reading non-code text.

@achalkley what speed do you use?
This is where I have mine: http://i.imgur.com/nIO0gRw.png
It's a little quick, but it keeps thing interesting ;)
There's also no reason to keep BTC or USD at any exchange for more than the time it takes to make a trade, unless you're arbing between exchanges (in which case this type of event does suck but should have been priced into your whole strategy). Mt gox was an exchange not a bank.
Why I Left Facebook
'take the internet'? That's quite a lot of stuff you're taking with you, from layer 1 all the way up. You couldn't 'take the internet' even with a giant fleet of trucks.
I didn't realize Jeremy Allaire had gotten into the game via Circle.
I have been emailing with the former owner who sold the domain name (Andy Booth) and the broker (Joe Politzer). Andy commented at the end of the article.
Fiat currency can disappear as well. You can't get blood from a stone.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/11/us-mfglobal-corzin...
I meant re. unbraced conditionals.
Are you keeping a significant amount of BTC in an exchange? If so, why? I would expect a HN reader to know how to manage his/her bitcoins.
At Barings, Leeson was trading futures contracts and he was also responsible for accounting for his own positions. There was no segregation of duties, no mark-to-market.

At MtGox, it should be much simpler to (1) add up all customer balances, (2) add up all BTC in hot and cold wallets, and (3) compare those two numbers.

If the numbers differ by more than timing differences, shut it down, debug it, and prevent a small problem from becoming a big problem.

The Barings backstory is that the billion-dollar loss started with a 20k bad trade, Leeson tried to cover it up, and it snowballed.

It wouldn't be surprising to learn that MtGox followed a similar trajectory.
Yes! The prospect of doing that deeply and seriously is probably the single thing I'm most excited about tackling next.

There's a whole tier of previously impractical metaprogramming that would come with being able to analyze and manipulate programs (and commit histories) as easily as data.

Syntactic macros are just the teeniest tip of the iceberg!
A smoke detector contains about 0.25 μg of americium [0], which is painted on the inside of a chamber. In small quantities, it seems americium dioxide can only be dangerous if inhaled [0].

According to David Hahn's Wikipedia page[1], his reactor used thorium, purified from thorium ash used in lantern mantles, and not americium.

What's more, smoke detectors go straight to landfills in many places. I think it's unresonable to consider them a realistic threat.

[0] http://media.cns-snc.ca/pdf_doc/ecc/smoke_am241.pdf

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn#Creation_of_the_reac...
This is the very reason why Bitcoin needs to policed from a decentralized standpoint. I don't know much about the logistics of crypto-currencies but from my understanding there are public/private keys involved.

It should be possible that one can blacklist their own bitcoin address by using the private key. This way at least crooks cannot make off or use the stolen coins. Do any more technical Bitcoin fanatics have any thoughts about this?
"Bitcoin cannot fail, it can only be failed."
You're forgetting the 3 trillion the US government stole from its citizens and gave to the banks.
Lots of people in the Bitcoin community have been saying for years to not touch MtGox with a ten foot pole.
This is still better than a government bailout.
It's easy to ignore singular questions like this. It's harder to ignore such questions when they compose 99% of the content source you're interested in, without ignoring the entire source - including the 1% of signal you care about. We are certainly running out of mental bandwidth all the time, even if you aren't counting them as bits.

This sort of community moderation exists in an attempt to proactively ensure a high signal to noise ratio (SNR), by discouraging noise. While it's an entirely valid stance to say they're overreacting and that the ratio is fine, that there's no slippery slope, etc., here's another viewpoint:

I don't read from the raw Stack Overflow firehose of posts. It doesn't even have a 1% SNR to me. Higher SNR sources (searches, specific links from my communities) will occasionally take me there, but as a primary source of information I don't even think of consulting it. I took a stab at participating in one of the far more niche subtopics - gamedev, relevant to me both professionally and unprofessionally - and still found it didn't have a high enough SNR to hold my interest beyond gathering a few hundred internet points. I found myself ignoring the majority of these sorts of questions, and quickly progressed to the natural conclusion of ignoring the site entirely.

And that's fine: Not everything is for everyone. But there are presumably those who still participate in the site directly who would prefer to remain doing so, yet find the SNR low enough to be pushing their own tolerances.
Which is just another aspect of the travesty - that someone responsible for routinely trading tens of millions of dollars per transaction should feel the need to cover up a $20,000 loss.
Also keep in mind that employment doesn't guarantee a home, either. And that not having a home (namely, not having an address) can be a barrier to gainful employment. There are a lot of unfortunate Catch-22s sprinkled around our bureaucracies.

The impression I got from your question wasn't that homeless people were incapable of intelligence, but rather that you thought intelligence was the exception, rather than the rule. This becomes a problem when, say, a rags-to-riches story comes around and people conclude not that this one person got a lucky break, but that this one person decided to stop being as stupid as the others. This in turn suggests that nothing is actually broken and homelessness is less an indicator of societal malfunction and more a casual nuisance.
Just Do Something
Here's a more interesting chart
http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/
Fair enough I guess, but I could have an office with a secretary at the front desk and charge people money to extract their teeth, yet that wouldn't actually make me a dentist.

I meant Mt.Gox isn't a business in the sense that businesses, typically, have regulatory frameworks they have to follow, and standards to meet. Particularly when they deal with currency.

Maybe I should have said there's no reason to expect them to act like professionals.
It doesn't seem to work very well for me. I tried it in two different browsers and I get this http://i.imgur.com/cEMcR0M.png when I try to enable chunks.
Will anyone be able to get their bitcoins from MtGox?

They said the bitcoins were safe. What changed? Will they be transferred eventually? What are the chances?
You must be new here... I have seen PLENTY of situations where internal controls are weak, NO people dont cross compare assets and liabilities.
Zero here, I've been treating BTC like Paypal balances. Cash out to native currency ASAP. Godspeed others.

edit: To those polling in at over 1000, yikes. Hopefully you 13 (so far) are joking around. Business or personal? Any insurance?
Ethnologue states that there are 7105 languages in the world[0]. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that you can have x second languages, where x is any number between 0 and 7104.

[0] https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics
So the OP is down, but if black hats truly made away with 700k BTC, they control some 700000/12440000 = 5.6% of existing bitcoins. If that's the case, is the original bitcoin blockchain really worth continuing?
> This happens with dollars all the time too. But we hold people accountable.

You mean like the bank bailouts, and all the money that "went missing" from that?
It might be more impressive than Bernie Madoff's when you consider it as a fraction of the BTC economy...about 10x more impressive.
Early to say... it's their job to be nervous about new things.
Except that americium dioxide is insoluble[0], so it wouldn't dissolve in the water supply. Even if consumed, it would pass straight through your digestive system and wouldn't accumulate in the body.

[0] http://media.cns-snc.ca/pdf_doc/ecc/smoke_am241.pdf
I wouldn't compare it to existing plants but to something more like the Chicago pile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1
How do you represent queries? That's really, for me, the most interesting question.
Broadcom 5G WiFi chip promises double the speed
Will anyone be able to get their bitcoins from MtGox?
They said the bitcoins were safe. What changed? Will they be transferred eventually? What are the chances?
Wasn't that 9 trillion?
This might be a good place to demo the language, assuming it is meant to be general purpose:

http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Programming_Languages
Thank you coinbase. Coinbase only took me a few minutes to setup. Thankfully it saved me from falling for Mt.Gox. Good luck getting your BTC back! :)
Yeeaaahh regulated companies that handle vast amounts of money for their customers never get into any trouble.
This doesn't fit even the loosest definition of "Ponzi scheme."
A Mayor in the Middle of Two San Franciscos
Selling Your Startup: Tricks of the Trade
> This seems like they have essentially codified wolfram alpha's many APIs and created the biggest, baddest standard library any language has ever seen, and slapped on some functions to access everything with.

Yes! I couldn't have said it better!
How a person "[processes] on the fly" seems to be a measurement very related to intelligence. So they don't care about IQ, but they do care about mental quickness.
If your objective is to lock up control of all the energy available rather than just secure a reliable supply for yourself, then fusion probably doesn't look nearly as attractive as oil wars. Madness in that case too I suppose, but of a different sort.
While a noble pursuit, I think there are dozens of start-ups (completely free/open apps as well as for-profit businesses) trying to do exactly this. I think Trello counts as a big one.
And you can get both goxxed and doxxed.
How would any existing regulated system handle a similar situation to this? Or are you suggesting that bad things like this never happen in regulated systems?
But isn't the claim that MtGox lost like 6% of all BTC in existence?

If so, then that would further imply that MtGox has lost ~3.5% of all BTC that will ever exist.
Heh, I had only been on the internet for about 2 years when that went down and I spent that evening watching the world's gears seize up instead of finishing the book I was suppose to be writing; it was around this time that I started tog et interested in alternative currencies. I was just thinking that here I am doing the same thing 20 years later.
All the Whois details for gox.com point to Mark, including contact information and email. So if someone went through the trouble of buying a 3 letter domain to sway the market somehow, and made it look like it was now owned by Mark, they have effectively given the domain to mark as he could simply call up godaddy and use the details of the whois (his email, phone) to obtain full control.

So yes, Gox.com probably his now
Wolfram releases first demo of new language, 30 years in the making
They do, but the very bug they're trying to patch is a flaw in the signature verification function. Meaning any bogus signature will pass the check.
To me this demonstrates how powerful first mover advantage can be. Gox was showing cracks in the hull (actually more like gaping holes) for months and months. People have been repeatedly warned not to touch Gox with their funds. Other, more professional (so far) exchanges popped up. Yet people very much still used Gox. Were they ignorant, lazy, or stupid? I wish everyone who lost could get their money back, but it's really hard to have sympathy here.
Yeah, not much.
dark side of the moon
Ruby Turns 21: 5 Major Milestones Of The Programming Language
If nothing else it would be clearly irresponsible of MTGox to remain silent
Hip Gadgets For The Developing World Won't Solve Global Poverty
I find it interesting, in this case at least, PG appears to be talking against the wisdom of crowds.

Now I'm not sure if he is correct in this instance, but it's probably a good idea to keep mindful of both sides. Sometimes a small elite can be better positioned to make the call, and other times it's the crowd.

Regarding the WhatsApp deal, perhaps Mark knows better than the tech community, given the large information asymmetry at play. However the reverse could also be true too, especially in companies with visionary leaders. IOW, one could question how much 'towing the line' happens at FB, given a leader with a large ego footprint.

Looking back, Microsoft missed the internet boat in the beginning (allowing Netscape to dominate), and as a result needed to play catchup. But, I'd wager Bill Gates's own limitations of judgement and inward focus on Microsoft, was a large contributor to this blunder.
It sounds like you're saying that having rules (as opposed to having no rules) is a good idea, but only if there is some mechanism that makes good rules more likely than bad rules.
Chrome patches "Issue with certificates validation in TLS handshake"
I dearly hope no one invested their life savings into Bitcoin.

That said, I'm sure many did, as they tend to do into any investment that has potentially huge upswings.
Thank you for helping me figure out why my eyes started burning when I was spritzing. I think you subconsciously try to avoid blinking becuase you know you'll miss a word.
That can be mitigated by having a common space outside, as well as having similar setups next door so that, while you might not see others in your own building, you'll be able to wave at people next door. And if enough people do that, and then go down to meet them in person, you'll start bumping into your own building-mates.

I'm not actually describing theory; I have a friend in Sweden who has made friends this way.
Also see: http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2013-665...

The SSLClientSocketNSS::Core::OwnAuthCertHandler function in net/socket/ssl_client_socket_nss.cc in Google Chrome before 33.0.1750.117 does not prevent changes to server X.509 certificates during renegotiations, which allows remote SSL servers to trigger use of a new certificate chain, inconsistent with the user's expectations, by initiating a TLS renegotiation.

Access Vector: Network exploitable

Access Complexity: Low

Authentication: Not required to exploit

Impact Type:Allows unauthorized disclosure of information; Allows unauthorized modification
That is a hilariously inaccurate chart.
6. They are trolls that just hit the maximum option.
Background Monitoring on Non-Jailbroken iOS 7 Devices
Yeah, you probably wouldn't get much out of GEB if you read it that way (the first time at least).
Ask HN: Given the price and the MtGox news, is now a good time to buy bitcoins?
was there no way of just transferring bitcoins to yourself?
All the transactions that go to mtgox are spread out over blocks that go back for years. It's only useful to reverse the most recent block(s). This is because blocks are made up of transactions. You can't just cherrypick them out, and each block needs the previous unchanged.

You might get some more details from this http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a51xx/. It descries a fork in the blockchain that occured a while ago.
And then paid it back with interest
It's not a criticism, it's a signal.
> Edit: http://support.mtgox.com/ now shows that their Zendesk account has been terminated (a new account can be registered at that address).

Reregistering that Zendesk account alone has to be worth something amusing =)
Start with $50 per hour, and see where it takes you. If you have more work than you can handle, slowly start increasing it.
Which client would you start with for a new mobile project?
Assume you're beginning a new mobile/tablet/rich client project targeted at consumers or enterprises in the US. What technology/platform would you target for the first client you build? Choices might include iOS/objective-C, Android/Java, web/phonegap/...javascript.
And, in this case, it's wrong. But contributing to the conversation would have been unsurmountably challenging, yeah?
When you're using GNU screen or tmux, you notice that the CPU usage of these processes is sometimes notable.

Here's another way to increase your CPU load with apparently doing nothing:

$ cat /dev/zero
4 Tips for Founders from Paul Graham
Is the price now less than you think a bitcoin is worth?