skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> "The insurance covers..."

This statement is correct. But do we need insurance on negligence? No. The cash you carry in your pocket is not covered by insurance yet it doesn't prevent it from being reasonably useful/successful. I make the comparison to let you understand Bitcoin doesn't need insurance against negligence to be reasonably useful/successful.

> the entire network was shutdown in early 2013.

No it was not. The correct forked path of the block chain never stopped running during this incident. That's how a fork is always resolved: one path dies, the other continues to live undisturbed.

> Are they shutting down the network to force every enhancement,

No. There is a process to introduce changes without disrupting the network at all: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork This is how P2SH was added with zero disruption to the network.

> Your insistence that we only discuss the technical

You misunderstood me. It is of course OK to discuss other aspects: social, financial, etc. I was merely pointing out you should drop the personal attacks, as they make you look childish and as they degrade the quality of your comments.

> your stubbornness in ignoring how currencies and payment processors work...

Once again I don't want to ignore this. So far I have replied to all your arguments with logical counter-arguments. Let's keep the discussion civil.
> The point about religion is key. We really need to go back to basics with this stuff and reevaluate what exactly we're trying to achieve here from the ground up. We simply cannot retain first-class support for 20 years of legacy cruft and make meaningful progress.

This right here is the damn truth. I don't necessarily agree with much of the rest of your post, but this is hitting the proverbial nail on its head.
I'm not sure what you mean by "sophisticated". Languages in the 16th century were just as complex as they always have been.

The vocabularies might be bigger or smaller compared to today. Certainly no one was saying "bae" back then (for instance), but no one calls each other "thou" today, either.

EDIT: except for the older generations of Geordies, apparently.
That is something that's possible, but I doubt its practicality. The longer wavelengths can't store as much data even under ideal conditions, and squeezing them in causes interference that hurts the density you have on the best wavelength.

Plus you would need a much more elaborate disc-pressing mechanism.

Much simpler to add more monochrome layers.
That seems to be the real value in the Five Eyes network.

Each member can undertake surveillance of the domestic communications of the other members, thus absolving the own-state surveillance apparatus from claims of domestic spying. But the poisoned fruit may be (and appears to be) freely shared.
Why am I not surprised to hear that OpenGL "just works" when for years I've been wondering why the clowns at W3C keep pushing for crappy substitutes?
> their selection is great as well

Hulu gets more of my bitching when related to selection, but Netflix gets it's share.

Partial seasons, only a few seasons of shows that have long since ended, so many movies not offered.

But basically when it comes down to I want to watch something, we have both a Hulu subscription and Netflix for a reason and I still have to torrent things.

Also, their app sucks for finding things.
Had a (rebel) teacher that used to claim putting 16 year old boys in a class room is a waste of time. Given the amount of paper planes I constructed in class at that age I'm inclined to agree. Still turned into a successfull professional though so I guess something went right.
The only thing I would add to the article would be to read about your craft... Working around problems is part of the solution. Being able to think around more complicated composition, or design issues is a bigger thing. The former will get you working code that may be horrible to try and maintain, the latter will get you working code that is easier to maintain.

A great read, and kind of follows the direction I'm usually driven in myself. I may have to push a link to this as a comment in some classes of questions on stack overflow.
I sit on the board of governors of a public school in Wales, which has decided it needs to focus on math after bad PISA results.

We had an official from the local government come in to tell us that she'd gone through our testing scores and divided schools into quartiles, so she could focus her efforts. Good, I thought.

Then she said, because of how she'd done the calculation, she had ended up with three quartiles. And she hoped most of the schools in the middle quartile (like us) would be able to reach the upper quartile for math next year.

I tried gamely to point out she was an imbecile, along with a reference to Lake Wobegon, but most of the rest of the governing body seemed to think this was entirely reasonable.
How the organizer chose the door matters.
This is the right action from their side, most of the users are not security specialists, somebody should watch out for them.
This looks somewhat like the concept behind a fresnel zone plate [1] - in general these are highly dispersive (only work at one frequency) so it looks like they have done something to address this. Many (30+) years ago my final year project at university was trying to dynamically synthesise lenses using by electronically manipulating the phase response across a liquid crystal substrate - technology wasn't really there at the time but always thought that it would have been an interesting avenue to follow up on.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_plate
As you say, the secret likely is not often the idea per se, as truly original ideas (i.e. potential Nobel prize-worthy ideas) are truly rare, and often difficult to recognize as such. They are much more rare than successful startups.

So, banking on an idea alone as the route to money is not usually as smart move, unless... the idea is really innovative.
You're right.

That's really interesting and counter-intuitive.

https://gist.github.com/ecdavis/da8f67258860e9f35620

EDIT: After thinking about it for a while it seems obvious and I feel fairly stupid.

1/3rd of the time your initial choice was correct. The random host always reveals a goat, you take the opportunity to switch and lose as a result.

1/3rd of the time the random host reveals a car, the game ends without an opportunity to switch.

1/3rd of the time the random host reveals a goat, you take the opportunity to switch and win as a result.
Object System (an Object Oriented Approach to the File Systems)
Part of the bump must be there because you need a finite focal length system, and that won't change even if the lens itself is flat.
I've recently attended a conference where they gave a D talk, and almost immediately after a Rust talk.

This let me compare these two interesting languages in a quite detailed way.

While Rust seems to be more safe in terms of trying to prevent as much as it can that you shoot yourself in the foot, it can be understood that the way to achieve this is maybe too extreme. I've read that programmers new to this language invariable struggle with lifetime issues that the compiler keeps arising.

I'm sure this is a good thing. But I'm not sure the ways to fix those issues, at least in a number of examples I've seen, are pretty. Most of them involved abusing the "*" and "&" symbols, which put you in a territory in which you seem to be dealing with pointer arithmetic again like in low-level C, something which I thought Rust was trying to escape from.

One thing I really liked about D is the string mixins, which could allow for what has become common these days in F#: type generation at compile time (which at the end of the day allow you to, for example, parse XML or JSON with static APIs, hence allowing intellisense/codeCompletion/youNameIt).

I'm really excited about what these kind of high&low (hybrid) level languages will allow. I hope they get into mainstream soon, and surpass other less interesting (but trendy) ones like Go.
> and traditional curved grades give you more than what you earned.

Traditional curves (mapping grades onto a bell-shaped curve based on the class average) do potentially give lower scores than standard 10% brackets (90% = A, etc.)

There is a common thing used in some places (particularly secondary -- don't know that I've ever seen it higher ed) often called a curve which just takes the highest grade in the class or the grade at a certain percentile point and calls it 100% and renorms scores based on that, and that system never gives people lower than the pre-adjusted score. That may be what you are thinking of.
This is a great write-up and a wonderful precedent for netflix to set. That being said, I feel the post is mostly promises, as Netflix is in the middle of another year-long 'content desert'. I cant remember the last time I got excited about The Matrix or Iron Man coming back into the queue.

My process is to check http://instantwatcher.com/ and then go to netflix. The thing is I've been disappointed by whats at the top of the charts for so long, I've considered dropping netflix. The top 50 is uninteresting sounding documentaries, low budget horror, and everything else that rounds out the discount DVD bin at the grocery store. Netflix excells at one thing - Television.

I get that its likely not Netflix's fault. The cut for movie studios each month from an $8 subscription cant be very much. I feel Amazon's pay-to-play model is more realistic, though less consumer friendly. I remember the deal announced last year of netflix getting first run Disney flicks (starting in 2015 I think?) and thats exiting, but the daily reality of netflix besides TV is the entertainment equivalent of hot, soupy gruel.
CocktailJS – Why Annotations?
I... am not sure what you mean.
I must say what worry me the most is what happens once 1.0 is shipped in term of language changes and compatibility with previous versions. Because I've observed and of course I understand the huge amount of changes the language has undertaken until now, but I must say I worry it will continue at this pace right after 1.0.

Currently, I'm on the verge of choosing the language I will choose for an important project I'm about to start, I have a good knowledge of Rust and I think it's a great language, but despite all of this I think I will pass on Rust for this project because I'm not sure I'm ready / be able to keep-up with this level of changes.
My Weekly Newsletter Digest
Going to the dentist isn't fun, but it's necessary.

If you visit often enough and listen to what they say, it should become a little easier as you go along.
There are asphalt trails in some side canyons of Yosemite Valley. They are asphalt because the trails are so heavily used that any normally constructed trail would require frequent significant (expensive) maintenance. Asphalt was the least worst option.

But why do the trails get so much usage? Because Yosemite Valley has experienced heavy development, which allows a ton of people to stay there at one time.

The actual mission of the National Park Service, according to the bill that created it, is:

> to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.

It's the last part where people get mad at the NPS. One cannot look at a picture of Yosemite Valley as it originally existed, and the mess it is today, and think that it's "unimpaired."

Likewise, I don't see how anyone can look at what is proposed for the Grand Canyon and say it would leave the GC unimpaired.

What makes natural experiences so valuable is that they are not shaped to the conveniences of human beings. National parks are not just about pretty scenery. They are about preserving an experience that once was common, but is almost gone.

There is no way to improve access to that experience without also harming it. And once it is gone, it's gone forever. We have no idea how to create natural experiences. All we can possibly do is protect the few we haven't already wrecked.
The economics of this project aren't based on funding the entire MOQ, which is much more than 3,000 switches. We'll be using many of the switches for our own project, but think there will be plenty left over. The $1,000 funding goal is the amount that makes it worth going through the effort to sort, package, ship, and other logistics. I'll make this clearer on the campaign page. Thanks for the feedback!
It does seem more appropriate to have a separate module for line numbers. I would definitely understand the separation of concerns argument, but the maintainer instead makes some sort of emotional appeal about clutter and simplicity to explain why there is no line number support.
If it's like the other News Corp sites just delete the cookies/local storage for that site.
I have a hard time framing it differently, but how relevant is a politician's mission stated in any shape or form?

I'd think whatever statement is done, it first needs support from groups with actual economic or social power. What we can wonder about is, why does our most influencial groups in our society value school education so low that it won't be set as a nationwide mission statement ?
I interviewed here, and it was by far among some of the best group of people I've ever met.

I think some of the HR people are a bit rough, but the teams that contribute to the bottom line are top notch.
http://prismjs.com/ is an alternative that supports line numbers.
For most purposes, I totally agree! I think what's really needed are better standards for exposing phone functionality to webpages in a sane and secure way (this already exists for location, for example), and perhaps more seamless interfaces to the web from mobile OSs (navigating to websites, login management, etc.). I don't really buy the mobile native > mobile web > desktop narrative on a universal level. It's certainly true for some experiences but for others the opposite holds.

At the same time, the state of the browser as a graphical environment needs some help. HTML+CSS is a great interface for written content, but when it comes to dynamic graphical interfaces, it's a little insane how much we've tried to squeeze into a glorified desktop publishing engine. I'd like to think the future is something more like mutually recursive embeddings of a graphical language and HTML. We kinda sorta of have that graphical language in SVG, but I think it lacks some of the features that make HTML really friendly.
Not taking any advice is the best advice.
LOL, that seems to be the case with node projects today... there are plenty of modules that work great, and have some documentation, but when you want to use something in a different way, you have to dig into it.
Slightly unrelated, but whenever I load a page from Segment for the first time, it renders without a stylesheet. Does this happen to anyone else?
OK, a little OT and minuscule, but kind of gels with in with Netflix's overall future...has anyone else noticed that Netflix's predicted ratings seem to be a bit inflated, since perhaps last year? For previous years, I could count the number with one hand of movies/TV-shows that Netflix rated more than a 4-star for me...now there are dozens and dozens of things that Netflix thinks I would give a perfect rating to.

Maybe it's because I've become less discerning or have unconsciously changed in the way I rate things...but I don't think so...it used to be that anything predicted to be 4-stars or above --which was very rare -- was indeed something that I would love. Now I'm seeing many preemptive 4.8 to 5-star ratings for things that I know I don't like (because I've seen them before).

(I think we can agree that the effect of seeing more high-rated content is not the result of Netflix actually getting more quality content...the number of good movies has remained constant or gone down, especially since the Starz day)

The cynical user in me thinks Netflix has tweaked its algorithm to encourage me to watch more things. However, at least they don't seem to have tweaked it in favor of their exclusive content, as none of those (such as Marco Polo) are predicted to rate highly with me.
It should be a trivial patch. I'll see about getting it done tonight.
What I said specifically addresses the issue, but not just for boys, but for every group within a classroom.

The girls in my classroom work harder than the boys. I know this to be true from observation. Maybe boys just like to slack off a little more. Maybe boys don't like competing with girls. Maybe boys are less inclined to seek approval from their teachers. The fact is however, if I had fewer students to teach, I could focus more energy on those boys.

I've also tutored students on a one-to-one basis, and in such situation I see no difference between boys and girls.
I'm intrigued by the fact that this has been on the front page for hours with no comments.

Is this because there's nothing to say ("Of course they're IPO'ing, everyone doing telephony uses Twilio, this makes total sense")? Or because the haters have all taken vacation and aren't around to draw comparisons to other recent IPOs?

... or are IPOs no longer news to the HN community anymore?
In many ways this is / was flash or Java Applets.

Apple is not going to let you run on iOS, but other than that you can be low level and cross platform with a plugin fairly easily. The issue is it would take 10’s of millions of dollars’ worth of developer time and there is few obvious revenue streams to support it. Sure, open source sounds great but this is kind of tedious low level cross platform work is not going to be particularly fun or interesting to most developers.
"But does demand for software projects actually fall off a cliff between the 20k and 100k price point?"

Having worked in software consulting for a long while, my sense is that generally 50K clients are going to have all the hoops to jump through of the 100K+ clients, but without the margins required to make them profitable, accounting for the sales time.
Rust 1.0 will be stable and will cease making breaking changes.
FDA allows 23AndMe to use its genetic kits to test for Bloom Syndrome
Thanks for the pointer to the clear Cherry housing. I hadn't seen that. I'll look into it more and update the page accordingly.

Regarding the gold plating, what's dubious about this claim?
That's actually quite common in Europe as well, especially in family hotels that can't afford to be staffed 24 hours a day. Also, the risk of someone going in there, taking the card and burglarizing the hotel room are pretty low I'd imagine.
That, my friend, is a strawman.

I didn't see anyone suggest that helicopter parenting is the "correct" alternative.

Only that it is a mistake to raise a child who is taught that they only need do what they want, and not sometimes what is necessary.
Really? If you use Windows, you should be familiar with Windows Explorer. Since Win95 with Internet Explorer 4 desktop refresh (shipped also with Win98) you have a trident (IE) web engine in Explorer. The side bar with the metadata and info is DHTML in Win95(IE4), 98, ME, 2000. And a fork of trident code is used in XP and newer. Also WinXP "Software" application to uninstall programs is basically DHTML based. The newer control panel pages, the newer dialogs, etc. The EU demanded that Microsoft has to document the new UI-engine, used in IE "addons" dialog, Vista/7/8/10 Explorer bars & shell dialogs and Office 2007+, so that there no completive advantage. One has yet to find that in MSDN.
Thanks for such a concise summary. I've also read this stuff enough times that it's nothing new but having it in one place gives a founder peace of mind. I think we're all resourceful enough to have heard each piece separately & can recognize the applications and misapplications in past startups. What this accomplishes is keeping everything top of mind before making these same mistakes too many times.

P.S. One thing people should note is the gold here regarding the non-technical side of building a product/starting a business.
You are correct. Fractional reserve banking is a myth . Banks do not lend out deposits. Deposits come from loans. Reserve requirements do exist but they do no limit bank lending. Lending is only limited by demand for loans and capital requirements.

Here is a pretty good site which explains how the banking system actually operates in detail.

http://wfhummel.cnchost.com/

Its a disgrace you are being downvoted.
Unicorns vs. Horses: Why I Want to Be In-N-Out Burger, Not McDonalds
I think it's mostly the former. Unlike some IPOs, there's just nothing controversial about it. Twilio's a great product and they've got solid financials.
I think the most unwarranted generalization is yours. The author clearly did not mean to do what you criticize him for failing to do.

But I suppose we could ask the mods to change the submission title. How about this?—"One blogger's analysis of the size of the vocabularies employed by some of his favorite French- and English-language writers, neither claiming nor achieving statistically significant insights into the question of whether French- (on the one hand) or English-speaking peoples (on the other) use more words in common usage."
Absolutely some people will adapt with this new knowledge. But I bet that many won't, as they'll have no idea. Not security through obfuscation, but security through people who're trying to cheat being ignorant of the hoops they have to jump through.
> They often are. For a great deal of students, it's a place of unhappiness.

I know this is anecdotal, but I'll pitch in with another data point: I hated it. High school (and to an extent part of my junior high experience) felt like an absolute waste of time. It was a mix of two negative experiences: 1) avoiding uncomfortable interactions with students who hated those like me because we were too nerdy/pale/learning-focused/etc. or 2) hoping we wouldn't get stuck with one of a half-dozen or so awful teachers [1]. I wish I were exaggerating.

On a positive note, those four years were tempered by the three or four teachers I deeply respected and admired. Sadly, such positive emotions were a rare retreat from the anti-authoritarian and anti-educational atmosphere present in that district.

When I went to college, I discovered that scholastic endeavors needn't be complicated with stupid adolescent politics. It was a completely different experience, not the least because I was treated like a responsible adult for the first time in my life by those who were directed to instruct.

In retrospect, if I should ever have children of my own, I don't think I could bring myself to put them through public school. I realize it depends on the district, but my own experiences were so dramatically negative that it's an option I won't willingly accept.

[1] I had a math teacher my freshman year who regularly complained that her students went on more dates than she did. During the warmer months, she'd often take us outside so she could nap in the sun while we were supposed to work on whatever assignment she'd given us. About halfway through the year, she was reigned in somewhat because this activity was reported by concerned parents when it was discovered that many of the students were leaving early (conveniently, it was also the last period of the day). She didn't come back the following year.

I also had a teacher my senior year who claimed he was a former drill sergeant and treated us in a manner analogous to recruits. He also started us off with negative grades to teach us some absurd lesson about the importance of always improving. Part of his grading regimen included measuring the margins of our papers to ensure we followed instructions, subtracting 50 points for each margin that wasn't exactly 1" from the edge of the paper. And that was before he graded the content.