skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I Need A Drink

I'm not sure if there's a specific term for the technique of rewriting a passage of prose to argue for the negation of said passage- I guess it's a distilled reductio ad absurdum, one that's been fractionated away to retain the spirit of the already rather palatable, crowd-pleasing reductio form, discarding the rigour in the name of intensifying the flavours and improving the mouthfeel.

The lack of rigour doesn't mean this class of analyses are wrong- it's just easier for logical errors to remain undetected, fermenting behind the devastating impression that the author's arguments can be used to prove anything, and thus prove nothing. It's hard to track these errors, flowing as they do through the unvalved, convoluted network of criss-crossing ambiguities and imprecision that is natural language and the degrees of freedom it affords when parsing a text.

The distilled reductio relies on a gestalt dissonance between superficial similarities in tone and structure, and the inverted conclusion of the two passages, while never attempting to refute the arguments themselves. Of course, for the purposes of logical analysis, tone merely helps arguments go down better, and is irrelevant to the arguments themselves. The only thing that's really retained, then, is the structure of the arguments, and once you are allowed to swap out premises at will, the infinite malleability of natural language will allow you to transform any argument to fit the structure, like liquid conforms to the shape of a glass.

We could instead engage directly with the arguments, claiming, for example, that Bitcoin is very much in the nascent stages, and aims to solve fundamental problems in the financial industry. Of course the current financial industry is better at a lot of things, we'd say. It's aged, matured, had an enormous superstructure of fixes and optimizations and safeguards built over decades and decades. It's equivalent to arguing grain alcohol is a better tech than battery-powered cars will ever be, while ignoring the enormous entrenched infrastructural advantages afforded to ethanol. And then we'd argue that comparing Bitcoin and the entire financial industry misses the point- you should be discussing decentralised vs centralised currencies.

That's probably a more meaningful (albeit less entertaining) way of arguing against the OP. Of course, if you disagree with me, you could rewrite this comment, changing the content completely while carefully retaining all the supererogatory references to alcohol and drinking, and it would seem superficially comparable, especially if the post began with an anchoring catchphrase like "Why Do Decent People Accept Dollars", or "I Need A Drink."
The author of the piece can be reached in these ways:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zpmo8/the_face_beh...

If you think this article is a dangerous invasion of privacy, tell her and her employers (Newsweek).
Yes - for some reason I instinctively grouped it with culs-de-sac and mothers-in-law.
Unless I've missed something, it also seems to be news to Professor Troy Shinbrot of Rutgers University.
Same origin: friction (just like the balloon and your hair) causes the particles to charge up. Where it earths itself is the only difference.
What, pray tell, is the difference between a real word and a new word invented?
http://www.file-upload.net/download-8686500/satoshi.pdf.html

stupid paywall.
The article doesn't mention it, but does anyone happen to know where he got his resources?

I'd be very interesting in reading the materials he used to create this project.
Forget Dangerous... it's down right irresponsible They list the guys entire family including kids and where they work etc.

Beside that the article has very little content other than "he's a little bit weird" an observation that is not exactly original, it's almost a stereotype that really smart people are often a "little bit weird" .
Contains some content that might be NSFW.
Why and how embargoes work in tech blogging (2008)
"Following your link : "This list indicates the number of, and per capita cases of recorded rape. It does not include cases of rape which go unreported, or which are not recorded""

And unreported rapes will be higher in India - much higher - than Botswana (92.9), Panama (28.3), Jamaica (24.4), Belize (6.7) because?

"Your statistics cannot be used for international comparisons."
Glad I was able to bask in your unabashed superiority, testos. Btw, they are not 'my' statistics, which show that Canada has several degrees higher rape incidents that go 'unreported, or which are not recorded' than USA. That data point was left in the comment just for your argument.
It seems to work much better in german, when they are joined and feel much more like a new word.
As for English allowing the same thing though with spaces, isn't concatenating words to join their meaning a feature of pretty much every language?
Shouldn't those be static then? Not that Apache or nginx are safe to keep around for years without update...
This feels like a mashup between "If the moon were only one pixel" and Spritz.
I was referring to the Scientists describing their findings. They are clearly not already members of the granular community as I know it.
How we failed?
That's exactly my point. It's dangerous because she's made his address, car registration and all his family's details public. I'm saying we should raise it with the people responsible if we think it's a problem.

edit: now you've edited for clarity, it's clear we're saying the same thing.
This is a fantastic anology for what is happening to the fabric of British society as the current government guts 20-30% from the budget of every public service.

It is interesting to contrast this situation with the influx of pay-day lenders offering APR in the 1000's % for small loans, while the government performs a complete dismantle of the welfare state under the cover of fiscal responsibility.
> You can use an ACID compliant database and run into this problem, it's a classical race condition.

No it's not. It's just sloppy code and/or a misunderstanding of database transactions and isolation levels. If you use an ACID compliant database like PostgreSQL it's pretty straightforward to write proper code that would not have this issue.

The main concept to understand is that you need to lock all the rows that you'll be touching before you use them. In most case this method works fine with the default read-committed isolation level.

Code that queries your database in multiple round trips and then compares the values for validity on the app side will have this problem. Anything you read could have been modified by the time you "act on" the information you read. Heck even stored procedures running on the DB itself will have this problem if run in the default read-committed isolation level.

The high level solution is to use SELECT ... FOR UPDATE and lock everything that you'll be touching before you update anything.

> The solution is to implement double bookkeeping and bank reconciliation, but it's tedious and complex to implement.

This is a business requirement for any accounting/financial software but it's not a technical one. Having an audit trail, double entry accounting, and recon are business functions. You'd be crazy to design a system that didn't include them but it's not strictly required (again from a technical sense, not a business one!).
worst reporting I've seen. it implies this person has admitted working on bitcoin. actually that's not even true, if you read the words.

why on earth all this work, just to chose a real name? this does not make any sense. as if SN could not haven chosen a name to deflect his identity.
> With no evidence to support your claim that this is a nightmare

You want evidence for a figure of speech?

> BPI/Winkdex/etc. values

Those measure people smugly happy that they did not put their money elsewhere, or probably cut off from the sentiment that so many hacking it burying the perception. Given how easy it has proven to be to manipulate BitCoin, I doubt holding value is nearly a problem.

My point was not that people already convinced are unhappy, but that those that need convincing are not going to be with an accounting ploy that will only widen the spread, but something that address the story—whatever is the digital equivalent of a thick vault door. And the story is that BitCoin is too complicated to be tamperproof.

> The "hot/cold wallet" design is a choice that many naive but greedy people are choosing in building their Bitcoin-based systems but it is not the only choice. In banks you usually only STP low-value, low-risk transactions; in the current breed of Bitcoin-based systems, it would appear that system designers are naivly STPing everything.

STP: standard transfer protocol? Your point would be that BitCoin ‘banks’ (on-line hosting of your keys) when asked to transfer above a certain sum need to ask for escrow and wait for two-point authentification? It seems convoluted (which is too say a lot in BitCoin's case) but not a bad idea.

> There is some kind of strange unstated assumption on HN that regulation magically makes banking safe all by itself, and until that regulation is in place Bitcoin-based systems cannot be safe or effectively risk managed.

It's neither unstated, nor an assumption: it's the point of regulation. Some people claim to regulate, but actually try to cover their asses (namely, the many people whom I’ve known personally for a decade, in charge of monitoring Kerviel) it doesn’t change the stated goal.

> until that regulation is in place Bitcoin-based systems cannot be safe or effectively risk managed

Nope, greed, expensive individual verification and the fact that security is costly says so. There are plenty of options (all conveniently listed at the end of Akerlof‘s _A Market for Lemons_, a recommended read) many self-enforced, but none is: “My bank is safe because I said so. [Tug on fedora.]”

> Using a service that doesn't implement these policies is a risky choice

Then it's not a service, nor more than you’d expect to find an economy based on nitroglycerin as currency.
While I empathise withe guy and understand his discomfiture at being discovered, I don't have any particular problems with the ethics of the piece.
DX12 coming sooner than expected - bring's Mantle like featurs
You can use an ACID compliant database and run into this problem, it's a classical race condition.

Isn't it a quick fix to add an ACID-friendly clause to the UPDATE statement, e.g. some pseuosql like:

UPDATE balances SET balance = (balance - amount) WHERE user_id = input_user_id AND (balance - amount > 0)
Make magazine had a cover story about how to make one a few issues ago.

http://makezine.com/video/nuclear-fusor-star-in-a-jar/
Being labeled Satoshi regardless of truth is pretty much going to get you robbed, kidnapped or killed. This dude lives in this town and has $400M of untraceable currency? The article gives his name, face, address and relatives. You can be sure as hell that somebody will do something stupid to try and get to it.

I wouldn't wish this label upon anybody, it's exactly why the community tries to avoid speculating about it. It's extremely irresponsible of the newspaper to publish this — truth or otherwise — especially in such vivid detail.

⁢

Article sans paywall — http://archive.is/wbw97

Gavin seems to acknowledge the article — https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/441547758827474946
Or they have these complex systems in order to prevent bugs and flaws like this?
I am not a big fan of the way the article was written, but I can definitely see how some may decry it as being news worthy.

I think the author should be ashamed for posting a picture of this man's house. No need for that and it doesn't add to the story after the description.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Ling is awesome.
I'm using MailTab Pro, which does notifications as well as presenting a mobile web view of the gmail website. I actually end up doing a lot of my email writing and processing directly from the web view because it's so much faster than the full Gmail site.
Introducing Ghost(Pro)
I don't quite catch what he's doing in the middle frames?
First airborne computer virus
They basically published not only his full name and home address, but that of his whole family. What journalistic purpose does that serve?

They could have written exactly the same story, but without giving away exactly where he and his family lives, and it wouldn't have suffered in any way.
It's weird that some police officers would know who Satoshi Nakamoto is.
We Are All Intelligence Officers Now - Dan Geer
Microsoft-backed F# language surges in popularity
Really? From the photo of his house, people on reddit have already got his address. And the photo shows his car registration.

They also explicitly state he's got keys worth ~$400 million.

Seems like painting a target on him.
I wanted to read more of the screens, a way to pause it would have been nice.
Supertiny sensors could improve antibiotics in the fight against superbugs
Can this be real? a guy calls the cops, but admits he was involved?

"Tacitly acknowledging his role in the Bitcoin project, he looks down, staring at the pavement and categorically refuses to answer questions."

"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."
Agreed. The real value in this data is when it is grouped with 100s, 1000s or more people. One person's data is a statistical anomaly, group it in a significant sample size, then you get real insights. I agree with their page - selling data is gross, but that's where the value is.
Statista users accounts hacked
Dear Statista users,

Despite extensive safety precautions people unknown to us have illegally gained temporary access to our customer database. Bringing this to your attention is crucial to us. We can yet assure that this security breach has now been closed by our team.

However, there is still the possibility that some of your personal data may have been taken:

email address / login
Statista password (masked)
According to an internal assessment and that of external IT professionals the password data cannot be used by third parties due to masking procedures. Of course, you can still change your assigned password at any time in your profile if you wish.

We very much regret this incident and see it as our duty to inform you about it instantly. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Should you have any questions regarding this matter please do not hesitate to contact us at: customer.service@statista.com

Kind regards,

Tim Kroeger

Statista, Inc.
45 Broadway;
Suite 710 New York,
NY 10006 United States
Translating marketing texts for speaking to tech audiences
So Newsweek outed a guy who allegedly owns half a billion dollars in pseudo-untraceable, digital cash? I hope they're also going to chip in for a permanent security detail...

More seriously, I think they could have done a better job reporting on the identity without giving so much away:

* A picture of his house is posted, identical to the one in Google Street View

* The license plate is relatively clear in the high-resolution image

* His exact address has more or less already been discovered using only the information in the article

* Full names of family members were used

It's a legitimate story -- understanding Nakomoto's motivations for creating Bitcoin as discovered from his past is a worthwhile topic. (For example, would your feelings about cryptocurrency change if it turned out Nakomoto was a high-level NSA operative?) But, again, it could have been reported in a way that didn't compromise his identity so thoroughly.
The Tesla Model E Will Have a 48 kWh Battery, And Will Be 20% Smaler
There are many useful projects which run for a fixed term and which have an associated Web site.

The problem is that there isn't a formal plan for decommissioning the Web site - perhaps turning it into static HTML with an 'archived' banner at the top.
I think the solution is continuous monitoring and auditing. Keeping track of the balances is the simple part. Reconciling the balances is the complex part. Banking is inherently eventually consistent, so putting audits in place to verify integrity of the balances is critical.
Does the concept of privacy mean anything to Newsweek?
Yeah sorry about that, original wording looked like I was questioning your comment where I intended to whole-heartedly agree with it.

They just put a 400 million dollar bounty on this guy and his entire family for no apparent reason.
Heh. It was shopping in ASDA in person that made me decide that five quid for home delivery was WORTH EVERY PENNY. Also saves on dagger blades from wanting to stab every annoying person in the shop on a Saturday afternoon.

We get monthly regular stuff 'cos neither of us wants to lug the stuff back. 10 bags of cat litter? No, you have a truck to bring me that with.
The Diving Bell and the Exoskeleton: An Excursion into the Depths
Agreed - I can imagine Mr Hourigan having some fun at the PTA meetings for this one - good on him.
The Janitor visits me far more frequently when I set a 'You've spent an hour on this, hon' timer for a difficult problem.

At which point it's time for me to go take a break, talk to other people, have a cup of tea. Then come back - take a brief look at the original problem - and then, if nothing occurs, to work on a related problem before coming back to it and seeing if I can make any more progress.

Maybe it's just me, but protracted work on something I don't feel I'm making progress on seems to stop me thinking.
> So far you have no flight out of BitCoin, however. The high-profile hacks do not seem to be depressing the price. Why?

I dont’t know, and that’s my point. I have the rare ability to understand that stuff really well, and it still gets over my head, everything is still based on anonymous forum speculation, and year-old leaks… Seriously? I’m not saying it’s crumbling (evidently, it's not) I’m saying people who are not invested are not going to be convinced by another layer of obfuscation.

Why? I’d venture this is because whomever holds BitCoin has more to loose, namely their potential key position if the currency succeeds, than their current asset. But I don’t know these people; they only came out once, to say that MtGox was an isolated incident, crippled with cluelessness and that serious actors were not exposed, and that they are going to implement audit.

I was expecting the next news cycle to be auditors with ties boasting on their portfolio of pen-test, accounting checks, etc. I was actually expecting to send an email to a couple of friends of mine (who have the perfect skill-set for that, and are both currently rotting in a soul-crunching position) to tell them to apply. Instead… The clueless club seems to enroll members, with an alarming (and admittedly anecdotal) k-factor. I do contagion studies; I don't like high k-factors. I like people who say ‘transparency is the best disinfectant’.
Working from a client's office against short deadlines - lessons learned
Quite interesting - the concept is commonly used in natural language processing, but I've never seen it called by that greek term.
SpaceX Poised to Launch Space Missions for US Air Force, Elon Musk Says
Really cool techniques (this is the background removal one). I'm curious on how well this would work on hair color detection. My thoughts are that you could run face detection, and since detection almost always (anecdotal) find just the face, not the outline of the face, you could just grab around the face for hair.

Does someone at Lyst have a background in image manipulation? If so, I can't wait to see what else you guys are working on.
Also, note that although producing Volts means electricity it doesn't mean necessarily that you have any significant amount of energy.

You may have an incredibly large amount of volts from a source that's not even capable to light a bulb for a few seconds.
The Pirate Bay facing intermittent downtimes since two weeks
As I pointed out in the now dead earlier thread that while there's obviously privacy issues and Newsweek should have written the article without so many personal details there is clearly a public interest angle here.

If the article is accurate the bitcoin founder has a background working as a software engineer on classified US government projects, which makes it a public interest issue due to pre-existing concerns that a government could have designed bitcoin to have secret vulnerabilities/backdoors.
Thanks!
I would also recommend watching/reading Aleksey Shipilev: http://shipilev.net
"What?" The police officer balks. "This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he's living a pretty humble life."

That quote smells totally fake to me. There's just no way some random office would know what Bitcoin is, and even if he did, that's not something a police officer would say. I don't know what that says about the rest of the article, but that quote doesn't read very factual to me.
Not really – the Kentucky police chief is paid in bitcoin: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57614544-93/kentucky-police...

People don't have to be working in the tech scene to be interested.
Neah, his problem is he's way to obsessed about the problem.

You can't help where inspiration hits you, it can be anywhere but you don't need to drop everything when that happens.

Delay the gratification you seek by solving the problem.

Get a notepad write it down and continue enjoying the social event you can fix the damn thing when you get into the office tomorrow.

Then again most of us don't care much for social stuff i personally like playing that game too.

Being social is a skill like any other and it's very useful one to have. Gets you what you want a lot faster.
Gavin Andresen confirms the Newsweek article's validity
I think that might be impossible to sustain for any substantial length.

It's true, admittedly, such constraints are often embraced by authors seeking novelty; consider someone's novel written entirely without using the letter 'e'. This rule, though, seems excessive - constructions would grow increasingly baroque, English's famously large vocabulary stretched thin, meaning squirreled into obscure words, awkward transitions.

And yet, perhaps too hastily dismissing an idea is equally foolhardy. Exploring Borge's library one may, indeed, see everything in sufficient time...
No culture deserves to have its creation myths exposed or destroyed. Ironically, Newsweek's behavior makes a strong case for anonymous communication and payment systems.
How To Do Startup Content Marketing To Relevant Audience For Higher Conversions
So Newsweek hires paparazzo's now? The need to disclose everything about the guy and call several family members etc is really wrong. Which I could undo my click...., no need to invade his privacy so much, "fun to know because interesting" is not a good enough reason to write the article...
Gmail UI Redesign Concept
It is hardly untraceable.

I hear Bitcoin advocates frequently claim that government has an interest in "shutting down Bitcoin", but compared to the all-cash industry of most organized crime, Bitcoin's pseudonymity is law enforcement's dream come true. A state actor would merely have to obtain the identity of one key in a series of transactions on the blockchain, and would gain far more information than any informant could provide. Sure, mixers and other methods could obfuscate this, but it's not like 7/11 tracks serials of hundred dollar bills, so the blockchain by definition is richer source of transaction data.

Full disclosure: I believe strongly in the concept of crypto currencies and Bitcoin, but do not own any coins/alt at the moment.

(Modified repost from dead original thread)
Bitcoin is all over mainstream media. Its ups and downs are covered in the finance section of even the most old school and conservative of newspapers. Hell my father-in-law knows what bitcoin is, and he is about as far behind on the technology curve as you can get.
What would a U.S.-China war look like?