skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You could keep the blockchain and run with vastly reduced difficulty, but with one alteration: the next block needs to include a specific magic secret number. This magic key is unknowable in advance of a specific time, preventing workers from doing the hash work until the key is 'published'. This forces the miners to pause and not do any hashing for a set time.

Now, this gets to the real issue: We need a source for these magic numbers, it needs to be trusted and available and verifiable by everyone, and it needs to be unpredictable and unknowable until a specific time.

What possible sources are there? You could imagine a centralized system, where some computer on the internet spits out a random number for the next 'magic key' every minute. But of course, you have to trust the owner of this computer and so we'd lose all the decentralized features of Bitcoin.

Another possibility: Tie the magic key to some public knowledge, e.g. the value of the NASDAQ at a specific time. Again, this still has problems as 1) there's a limited range of possible values, so miners could pre-compute various versions, and 2) the value could be gamed by market traders.

Anyway, I don't have an answer for the ideal source of these 'magic keys', but if someone could come up with one, you could keep all of bitcoin's mechanisms while vastly reducing its energy waste
Ask HN: Freelancing for family?
I wrote a static site for my sister who runs a small business from her home. Overall, it went pretty well. We launched the site a few months back. Then it came out that she was pretty much expecting free support afterward via the good ol' family discount.

Have any of you done work for family?

Did you give them any kind of discount?

How did you handle support after launch?
You will notice that almost all the cables are laid out in a ring shape. For example, check out the TAT-14 cable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TA...

If only a single cable break occurs, every point is still reachable from every other point -- the worst thing that happens is that ping times might increase because the packets will have to travel a longer route.

This layout is called a self-healing ring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring
> Obviously, this has massive flaws.

You just answered your own question on why bitcoin was deliberately made difficult. Security and fairness.

There has yet to be a proposal that has come close to offering a better solution without massive exploitable flaws.
Know Your Investment Philosophies to Improve Deal Flow
People said that Facebook overpaid for Instagram at 1B valuation. In hindsight that was extremely good deal that will pay many times over now that Instagram has 200M+ users and is still growing.

The bet is that Oculus will be used in many areas (not just gaming) and will become multi-billion business in the future. It a big bet and it could go wrong. Keep in mind that $2B is 1% of FB stock price - placing 1% bet on new promising technology is not unreasonable.
I explained how I pimped my Bash prompt there: http://pempek.net/articles/2013/10/27/pretty-elided-shell-pr...

At the time I didn't know oh-my-zsh.
Conrod – A Rust GUI Library
That's absolutely brilliant!
It's amazing how many people forget (or ignore due to convenience) rule #1.

My credit card company once called me up on some matter and the rep at the other end tried to verify my identity using the usual method (asking me about my mother's maiden name etc). I had to actually say "Wait, you called me. You should be verifying yourself to me". It actually turned out to be a legitimate call, but if I wasn't aware of this rule, a scammer might have easily got me.

P.S. I knew this rule because most of Kevin Mitnick's exploits (as he explains in his book) were based on this one vulnerability.
I mean this by way of comparison to applications that were distributed on floppy such as WordPerfect, dBase, FoxPro and so on, where the data format was proprietary.

It's only relatively recently that we've seen open-source and open-data applications. These are arguably better but relatively rare.
Women as Background Decoration (in Video Games)
What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know
Are we in a tech bubble? (a public pol.is conversation)
RSTTA: A Rosetta Stone for WebDev Tools
Yes. If you're a programmer, even lists with zero elements shouldn't bother you.
Governments have given up control before... small governments, where after running their existing currencies into the ground with hyperinflation they adopted the US dollar.

Currencies can only be political instruments up until a point -- and then people get tired of it and start looking for other mediums of exchange, units of account, and stores of value. Bitcoin is theoretically something people could turn to for one or more of those, though it would have to be a pretty bad situation to make Bitcoin's volatility look good.

(Disclaimer. The overall likelihood of this happening at a large scale is not something endorsed by this post.)
You're forgetting that it's Russian rockets that constantly refuel and resupply ISS, without any problems. It's just a selection bias.

> Also, I wouldn't put it past the Putin regime to do a black-ops on these Soyuz designs to weaken Galileo to give their GLONASS system a huge competitive advantage.

I wouldn't put it past him anymore that I would put it past Obama. The US would have exactly the same reasons. Believe it or not, Putin is not some sort of evil monster from hell the western propaganda tries to paint him recently, and the US is not some white knight following superior morality. One could actually reasonably argue that the US is more evil than Russia on the international scale. Anyway, the most probable explanation is still "space is hard".
I get what you are saying. And I think primes research may be a good thing. But to say, all the heat and power and physical hardware waste of Bitcoin/altcoin mining is offset even somewhat by the helping primes research is kind of silly.

I could say that my handling and use of physical dollar bills could help microbiologists understand how organisms can spread. Technically true, but of dubious value at best.
Inside SS7, the Global Cell Network That Can Be Used by Anyone to Track Phones
I realize that, which is why I didn't believe the Bytecoin claims to have been used for years. (That and I spend a lot of time on Tor so I was skeptical I'd've never heard of it if there really was an active community using it.) But that didn't explain where the huge apparently-PoW-intensive blockchain came from.
Oh man, another place for me to waste time. This seems very cool, I'd love to see more sources added to it. I agree that the source and topic should be made more easily discernible. Once you add more sources, I could see it getting confusing.

A daily email digest would be a good idea for many users. I like to get involved in a discussion, though, but the digest would have to be sent after the discussions are over. Maybe a section for "rising" discussions if that's possible with how you've designed this?

I'll definitely try to use this next week as my time-waster.
China's Wanda, Tencent and Baidu team up for $813M e-commerce deal
I agree. When I first heard of bitcoin mining, I assumed it was some method of cracking the bitcoin security to illegitimately gain bitcoins.
Ask HN: Deciding which project idea to pursue?
Hello, friends. I've built a few small projects in my time and as a PhD student I enjoy working on smaller projects outside of my research to keep my skills honed and to keep my exposure to other programming languages, ideas, etc. up. I currently have a list of project ideas I'd like to start; I'd like to choose one that is not only fun to work on but one that may have the potential to turn into something a little longer lasting.

So I'm curious, what heuristic would you use to go about ranking a list of project ideas in terms of what to spend my time and effort on? Have you been in a similar situation? What decisions did you make and what were their results?
I appreciate anyone's help / feedback.

Tyler Bell
It makes more sense than doing it over the telephone. I'm not sure how you expect them to send URLs. If you are sophisticated enough not to need a URL emailed to you, then you won't need it, but I don't see a practical alternative for other people.
Show HN: VogServe – a capped collection service with age and count limits
No, it's just the normal language you use for those things. Anomaly means exactly "the failure of unknown origin".
This was posted by another HN member a couple months ago but received no comments. I reposted since the video has received more attention in the past several days and Anita Sarkeesian and her family have now received death threats, simply for Sarkeesian's commentary on women in video games.
The only time I've seen this is when I'm searching for more information on a topic that I've already written about and "shotgun shared" (FB, Twitter, G+...). Then it "helpfully" clutters up the search results with my own post. Suboptimal.
You are completely ignoring the issue. Just because a majority of money exists electronically doesn't mean a lot of money isn't spent on paper and metal versions.

The United States alone spends tens of millions of dollars a year on producing pennies - beyond the face value of the pennies.

So the entirety spent on mining bitcoin is not too far off from what one country spends just on minting pennies.
> They have individually less weight than a positive value, is the argument.

Yes, and that argument is quite false. The history of science shows that positive and negative results have equal weight. But for that to remain true in modern times, the negative results must be published.
Bitcoin is a free market is it not? There's no rule against mafia-like cabals in a free market, by definition.
A Service by Any Other Name
BTW I've been asked why I don't use resize-pane -Z.

The "maximize any pane to a new window with <prefix>+" feature is different from stock resize-pane -Z as it allows you to further split a maximized pane. Also, you can maximize a pane to a new window, then change window, then go back and the pane is still in maximized state in its own window. You can then minimize a pane by using <prefix>+ either from the source window or the maximized window.

See it in action: http://pempek.net/images/original/maximizing-tmux-pane-new-w...
Sadly Pidgin (https://www.pidgin.im) the library used by most alternative chat programs doesn't support Skype.
That customer rating is super impressive for an EMR,and the lack of an install fee is almost unheard of in the industry. I'll be watching these guys closely.
I wrote a small 2D game once, where the Earth is attacked by a swarm of satellites in polar orbits. Your ship is launched from the surface, but after that it's up to you to put yourself in orbit, using thrusters. Thinks Asteroids with gravity. It really taught me a lot about how an orbit's shape changes when thrust is applied in different directions, at different points in an orbit. For example, a good way to circularise an orbit from an elliptical, a small tangential thrust at apogee during each orbit would eventually place the spacecraft in a circular orbit with a radius roughly equal to the apogee distance of the elliptical orbit... or to say it another way, perigee would increase until it equalled apogee...

Anyway, the point being that I never would have understood any of this no matter how many times I read 2010, until I wrote that little game. Some things need to be experienced to really grok.
Gelman comments: http://andrewgelman.com/2014/08/28/publication-bias-social-s...
> I wonder who supplied the chips that do the mining and how much energy that facility uses.

Probably part of the reason this is in china - close to the factories where the majority are produced. The owner could walk into a chip manufacturer and make a much better offer than the cost of exporting and packing them to ship internationally.
Most mail clients won't execute javascript, though.
Best way to market and monetize my Android app?
I have created a puzzle game for Android phones (will port it to iphone if it is successful).

I am finishing it and thinking about monetizing and marketing.

For marketing I guess forcing all my friends to install it and spread is the only way to go. Are there good sites where you can spread it from? Ask to get it reviewed or something?
Show HN is one way to spread it, is there a show Reddit?

For monetization of a puzzle app, what do you recommend? I have made 45 levels. I am thinking I will release a free version first and then upgrade it with new levels and ads if it gets popular.
I could of course make people way for the new levels, is that better? Or do both...

And having a paid for app where everything is free after that and no ads.
It's a cool project but again I'm not sure what I would gain from the modes, counts and motions. Right now I use Awesome WM which is really similar to howm without changing modes, and without using the motions and counts (but I don't really find myself wanting to use counts to move windows).
You should never have been granted a trademark on a phrase this common. In the court of public opinion, trying to own a phrase that is already common parlance, not something you made up, is asinine. You're wasting your investors money on trying to own this phrase, and you're likely going to get shouted down here. GLWT.
Honestly, I don't think this trademark should ever have been granted in the first place. It's definitely way too common.
I call it "accounting". Some day, when bitcoins can no longer be mined, all of the "miners" will just be accountants collecting accounting fees and ensuring the integrity of the blockchain.
This blogpost also doesn't appear to include the entire response from Cooley, LLC. Is there more after is lists the definition of the idiom and several other major places where the idiom is used? I imagine with the way the previous paragraph concluded, there would be more.

Also, is "Spread the word" really the "most integral part of [y]our branding and marketing"? The phrase doesn't seem inherently or distinctly creative, nor can I really see a second meaning the immediately invokes your product/services. Surprised you were granted the trademark at all.
It's generating SVG charts, which would probably work, but it uses JS to generate them, which certainly won't.

If you pre-generated them with something like node.js, you might be able to.
Intex Cloud Fx is India’s cheapest smartphone at Rs 1,999
There is some information at http://gpsworld.com/galileo-5-6-operating-smoothly-despite-w....

...both satellites are in a safe state, correctly pointing to the sun, properly powered, and fully under control of the ESA-CNES integrated team...ESA teams are investigating the possibilities of exploiting the satellites to maximum advantage, despite their non-nominal injection orbits and within the limited propulsion capabilities. Different scenarios will then be assessed before decisions are taken for a recovery mission
> Perhaps the fundamental description of the universe does not include the concepts of “mass” and “length,” implying that at its core, nature lacks a sense of scale. This little-explored idea, known as scale symmetry, (...)

Isn't the word for that fractal?
Just a note: that inner voice is also a thought. A strongly habituated one, certainly, but still just a thought. You don't need to stop 'talking', just take a step back, so to speak, and watch that voice and it will gradually dissolve on its own (over time, it will get less demanding on your attention).
It's really too bad that I never archived:

http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/

which was his blog, and there are not archive.org copies from 2009 and before. He had a lot of very thought provoking and iconoclastic things to say about OSS and the OSS movement that I found very interesting.
Burp Extension: XssValidator v1.2.0 Released
> Whitewashing the whole thing by saying there was an "anomaly" during deployment seems pretty weak. I would rather they be more upfront about it and say there was a failure of unknown origin that they're still investigating.

But ... that's what "anomaly" means -- a failure of unknown origin. It's just a concise way of saying it.

> Calling it an "anomaly" strongly implies that there was some sort of unexpected natural phenomena to blame ...

No, the word "anomaly", at least as used in space science, doesn't suggest that at all. In this context, anomaly means what idiopathic means in medicine -- an outcome of unknown origin.
Wow, I had no idea there were non-aws miners at this scale.
Improve Your Social Media Marketing with Visual Content
http://imaginethatcreative.net/web-design/
The importance of social media marketing is difficult to overstate – when executed correctly, a social media post can reach and engage the public on a vast scale. However, to truly engage fans, followers, and potential customers, businesses should strongly consider including visual content in their social media posts. Whether using Facebook, Google+, or any other social media website, a post with a visual element is often more appealing, more closely read, and better remembered by viewers than plain text posts.

Whatever message your business is conveying in a given social media post, a picture can help convey it. The human brain is hardwired to respond strongly to visual stimuli, and this is a fact that can be put to good use in the realm of social media marketing.
XSLT can create client-side charts without JavaScript. For example:

http://davidjarvis.ca/world-politics/xml/resources.xml

The source code is hosted on BitBucket:

https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/src/master/xml/

Without JavaScript, the interactivity of the charts is limited.
For the downvoters: I think pron is referring tongue-and-cheek to Futurama, not a literal torture. :)
Really, I can't believe I'm being questioned on this. Hasn't everyone here heard of phishing? Just because it looks legit doesn't mean it is, especially if you are using IE or a really old browser with bugs.
Very interesting. I suppose it would only affect browser based email clients, but a lot of the non-tech-savvy people I work with use the web mail client exclusively, so that is definitely an issue.
Tell me, what URL could a bank need to communicate to me in email that they couldn't replace with instructions like "login and click on ..."?
Misleading title. A more accurate title would be: "Mac OS X hides key information from the user, here's how to work around its limitations."

Most other operating systems display this kind of information by default and it doesn't come close to beating free apps like "WiFi Analyser" on Android. "WiFi Analyser" won't beat a "real" network surveying tool, but it is the best I've seen for both free and easily accessible.

If people are "serious" about doing this on Mac OS X then I'd pay the $3 and get this:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wifi-explorer/id494803304?mt...
We don't just list homes, we sell them in our app and let you avoid paying commission to the buyer's agent (up to 3% of the sale price is refunded from your down payment).
I'm still baffled why I was downvoted into negative territory for my original comment.
Here's another test site for something similar: http://www.informio.com

[Won't launch the project with tech though when finished]
Odoo OpenERP 8 Hospital Management System Plus
> They keep the machines cool with an evaporative cooling system. Its basically a durable paper product that looks like the wavy corrugated part on the inside of cardboard. Water is pumped to the top and flows down, and the fans blowing outwards on the other side create negative air pressure, drawing fresh air through the holes and cooling it.

The cardboard cooling system looks pretty interesting, but I wonder how durable it is: cardboard which is constantly wet doesn't sound like it'll last too long.
To be fair, while Americans at large might be considered 'heavily armed' in general, that statement is proportionally untrue for most Californians.

Historically, getting a concealed carry permit was impossible, and open carry is generally prohibited as well.

This was recently overturned in _Peruta v San Diego_ as unconstitutional, but the nut of the matter is that except for criminals and law enforcement, the likelihood of a Californian being armed for bear is minimal.
It'd be less of a waste if it was at least running some solar panels
Well it all depends on whether someone out there is trying to solve prime numbers on a computer already. If so we kill two birds with one stone.
Phishing. And a comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8243227
If the projects are amenable to that, create a landing page and have people sign up to be notified of project updates. This is an easy way to gauge customer interest.

From a personal perspective I would maximize the learning experience, e.g. choose one that you can implement with a new language/framework/stack/etc.
Google is constantly changing the way results show up and ranking and content creators are always shuffling to get ahead, I don't see how this is any different from something like say, Panda, or any other periodic change to how Google presents information.

I get your point though.
Gonna go out on a limb and assume that you're not a dev.

Yep, just an idea guy who thinks dev is just hired labor. Cool.
The word free is littered around the home/pre-questionnaire pages, but click on generate to start the process and free vanishes rather quickly to be replaced with dollar signs. Strange marketing.
Of course we've heard of phishing, but checking the actual hyperlink rules that out. Your example is an extreme edge case, and the people using those browsers have plenty of other security issues to worry about.

Besides, I was genuinely curious. I know about phishing, but I don't know if you had anything else in mind. I learn a lot from the HN community.
Hmmph! No Thanks. Coffee makes me sort of nervous when I drink it.
-Slingblade
Would you say that mining gold/diamonds is also a colossal waste of time and energy?
http://uz. works for me (Windows)
Watch a Barefoot Mark Zuckerberg Pitch ‘The Facebook’ in 2005 [video]
The valuation raises as many questions, as the Whatsapp deal did and relates to the difference between price and value. To justify a 10 billion valuation on a company that makes no revenue makes nonsense, especially when looking at the fundamentals (earnings/cash flows, growth and risk). The simplistic attempt at making sense of the price is to look at the correlation between the market's assessment of corporate values and each of the measures and you will see that: 1) Number of users is the dominant driver. The key variable in explaining differences in value across these companies is the number of users. The pricing game is not about what you or I think makes sense, but what traders care about. 2) User engagement matters: The value per user increases with user engagement. Put different, social media companies that have users who stay on their sites longer is worth more than companies where users don't spend as much time. While making comparisons across companies is difficult, since each company often has its own "measure" of engagement, there is evidence that markets care about this statistic. 3) Making money is a secondary concern (at least for the moment): Markets (and investors) are not completely off kilter. There is a correlation between how much a company generates in revenues and its value, and even one between how much money it makes (EBITDA, net income) and value. However, they are less related to value than the number of users.
Snapchat is said to have 100milion Monthly active users- Whatsapp-hit 600million monthly active users recently, but only had about 300million users at the time of the Facebook transaction.
>They're doing the experiment because they already believe things are this way and they're trying to get evidence to confirm it.

Hypothesizing is one thing, but to believe without evidence is just blind faith.
They do. If they want to give investors a lower valuation, they can. But why would they ?