skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think this essay is top heavy: the conclusions can't hold given the assumptions.

Take the first argument: for transactions to remain cheap one of three things has to happen, then those three things are painted as almost impossible.

But the second one; "At the same fee level, transaction count must increase 250 folds." Seems completely possible.

If transactions remain relatively cheap then bitcoin can be very useful for microtransactions. And if they are useful for microtransactions then, by there nature, there will be many more transactions.

Then the author is all over the map in the second section. At one point saying decentralized entities are useless, then that they don't provide value compared to traditional centralized entities, then than they /are/ real competition for those traditional services but the only real beneficiaries of trustless decentralized transactions are people engaged in illegal activity.

They close out by saying since cyberpunks, drug dealers, and gamblers use bitcoin now, it will never find a place in the public sphere. But the blockchain idea is a good one and will find some sort of use.

TL:DR The first point was interesting but flawed. The rest was garbage.
> It seems the objection to this practice is that government email is supposed to be insecure by design in that anyone should be able to access it by making a FOIA request. To me, that seems kind of silly. I can imagine there a lot of legitimate reasons the Secretary of State would not want their email to be publicly accessible.

Security doesn't mean everything is inaccessible, it means you control who, when, and where the data can be utilized. Obviously not all of the Secretary of State's email should be publicly accessible, but 1) the law as implemented by the government, and not a private individual, should control access, 2) someone needs to ensure control is maintained and prevent unauthorized access, and a private individual probably doesn't have the resources to do it.
I think you might like tig - https://github.com/jonas/tig - it provides a more interactive version of your showtree command
(without knowing anything about this stuff) it sounds like the difference is that they must fire you if they don't continue your "award" or give it all to you immediately. This takes away the possibility of bluffing on your part / calling your bluff.

You can honestly say, "sorry, not my decision, I can't stay if I don't get all my options (now or on schedule)". That could be a somewhat stronger negotiating position.
I really hate the fact that this is a technical discussion or its an attack on her or a smear campaign.

The underlying fact is, she broke the LAW. That means she should be dragged through the punishment of the law.

Stop supporting her or making excuses. The society of today really stops caring so much about the rule of law, but rather what they have for an opinion. But I ask you if you if murder is against the law, do you support it?

We shouldn't be supporting this either way. It was plainly against the law and she broke that law. If you have a problem with it, then change the law. Stop sticking up for someone that blatantly broke the law.
Was a record keeping law broken or not? Real question; I don't know.

Obviously there are political motivations. But any time a law is broken by a candidate or official, it's hard to argue that it's not honest news. May be blown out of proportion, etc., but still legitimate news.

If a law wasn't broken, it might look like she's hiding something, but I agree that it's probably going to be quickly forgotten.

Also, the political motivations might not be partisan. Partisans would choose timing carefully for maximum effect, and this doesn't seem like bad timing for Democrats. If the story blows up huge, they can nominate someone else; and if not, they nominate Clinton and this is forgotten by the time of the general election.
This wouldn't happen in a phone screen. This is for the on-site interview after I've already gotten a positive feel for it.

Maybe I didn't word it perfectly, but it is partially out of a desire to know how they think I would benefit the company. Am I just another redundant cog in the machine, or am I really going to play a key role? I guess it is a good point to still make it in hypothetical language.
What do you mean by "third party content manager"? That sounds quite a bit like a database. Is this a static site or not? :)
"video games" (read "world simulator").

The important thing about their work is that it is deliberately marching down the path of more and more complex world simulations.

We experience the world at one second per second. To learn to walk we must first fall, and we fall at 32 feet/second^2. There's a hard limit on how fast we can make mistakes (like tripping) and so there is a hard limit on how fast we can learn.

Computers can experience a simulated world at many hours per second. When they're learning to walk in a simulated world they can fail, and learn, thousands of times before we've finished our first step.

This ratio of simulated experience to real world time is also going up. Eventually the minimum amount of time it takes to grow a toddler like AI in simulation will be just under the time an AI researcher is willing to wait for results. When that happens we'll see a real improvement in the quality of AIs.
Scalable Microservices at Netflix
To build a bit more context, there are a lot of talks about how Bitcoin will:

- Replace youtube in the form of a decentralized video platform
- Decentralized Spotify
- Decentralized Uber

A google search of DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) and you will find many many people talking about that. The thesis is that, no Bitcoin won't decentralize all these intermediaries, instead what is more feasible is that maybe future blockchain technologies could lower barriers to entry.

As for comparison payment processing space, this is more in point 1. Bitcoin is not cheaper. Bitcoin is extremely expensive to use and intended to be expensive.
AT&T pushes ahead on toll-free data plans
Student Understanding of Relationship Between Recursion and Iteration (2005) [pdf]
Obama is upset that China wants tech companies to undermine their own security
Found 2 typos while setting up a contest.

Beginning - Price for this costest is $ 25.00. Are you offering a better reward?

End of contest - Conteatulations, you are just a step to submit the contest. Just confirm and click submit!

I submitted a contest to fly from RDU (Raleigh) to SFO (San Francisco). RDU is a tough place to fly out of because there are a limited number of direct flights. During the winter, there is only 1 direct flight a day and in the summer there are 2 to SFO. However, I submitted a contest more to see how it works than anything else.

Either way, I like the concept!

EDIT: I submitted the contest, but it sits at the Loading something awesome screen and never goes anywhere.
Git Is Efficient for (Some) Binaries
Facebook Is Said to Be Working on Competitor to Twitter’s MoPub
AFAIK, there's never been an M2.
Magic 'metamaterials' storm physics
This is likely right, it's also the reason when you start up most car you'll see the rpm stay higher than normal idle for a couple seconds. Heating up the catalyzer so it can do its job.
It's all related to emissions control. There are a number of sensors on modern cars that measure oxygen in exhaust gases, pressure in the fuel tank (to ensure vapors don't escape) and pressure in the EGR system (to lower NOx emissions).

And that's just the basic setup. Higher-end cars monitor even more.
Complexity will bite you in production
Take a look at the linked book, Why Does College Cost So Much; it appears that much of the cost increase goes to benefits, especially health insurance, and even if the superficial cost remains the same the efficiency can go down relative to other parts of the economy (which is part of Baumol's Cost Disease).

Archibald and Feldman discuss these hypotheses in-depth in the book.
> I must admit, losing a device is trickier because you wouldnt which id to use to restore on a new device.

This will happen. It will happen all the time. And when it does, people will be disappointed. People will stop using your app because they lost everything. I've seen this happen.

This system can work if the data is not important. But the nature of apps that store data or have a concept of "your data is stored" needs to account for cases where the original device is no longer accessible/usable.

> So a device migration can be done.

Relying on device migration is foolish. It will fail. And I will blame your app for losing my data.
Yeah, telling HN readers that we should spend more on science and technology is really attacking the status quo.

Saying "There's a better way..." is like saying "I've got an idea for a company." Sure, it would be better that Allen didn't have to spend $300 million on brain research but until you convince the right audience to spend the taxpayer dollars, I don't see you adding any value to the conversation.

Execution really is important. I'd love to see other ways for people to fund real science, etc in a big way.
Fantastic. Please don't hesitate to share your other use cases.

What I have found is that once you get your head around it's contextual you realize that this is how everything should work.

If you end up buying it send me a note and I will add you to the betal list so you can get acces to the new version with applescript support.
How I launched the #2 most upvoted product of all time on Product Hunt
Why worry about stock options at all? There is a spectrum of outcomes. On one end the startup flops, or is bought for so little that your share, even if paid out, is close to 0. On the other end you have Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Companies where 0.5% is worth quite a bit of money. The problem is that the majority fall in-between, where your stock options will be worth nothing, yet the company will sell for a decent amount of money.

So what you should do is value the stock options at 0. If you have the spare cash, buy them as early as you can, but don't count them for anything. They are a lottery ticket that your company is the next Google and like any lottery ticket they are likely worth nothing. If the startup is offering to pay you half of what you'd make elsewhere, waving stock options at you telling you they'll make you rich, consider if they just handed you a pile of lottery tickets and half a paycheck. If you'd still take it (maybe you really like the people, or want to work in this field), go for it. Otherwise, they are just trying to get your for a far cheaper price than you'd get elsewhere.
It's the current fad.

A few years ago, it was "Why I quit my job, and why you should too".

Then it was "Why $social_network sucks, and why you should leave".

Every now and then, you see "Why X sucks, and why you should stop using it (alternatively: X considered harmful)".

Now it's "The death of X"
Conversation with poker player turned VC
PDF without signup here:

http://www.bsrlm.org.uk/IPs/ip25-2/BSRLM-IP-25-2-1.pdf
Toddlers are little sociopath terrorists (my daughter is two). What they're trying to communicate is "I want that cookie." Absolutely nothing wrong with hauling them away while they're kicking and screaming.
This would be a good story if apple had ever made a mouse that was even passably good.
This is reporting. Fox News is the only media outlet that has any significant share of the audience in America that would even remotely consider expending an ounce of resources trying to keep a liberal democrat out of office.

If you don't believe that, then you are probably a liberal democrat.

So, to call this news story about a politician acting in a premeditated, unscrupulous/unethical manner a "hit job" shows your deep political bias.

To turn it around, would you feel it was a "hit job" if a politician whose ideas and agendas you disagree with, set up an outside email server for the express purpose of discussing official government business so that it wouldn't/couldn't be easily tracked? I don't think you would.
Ruby vs. Python – Which camp are you in?
Not only heating up the catalytic converter, but heating up the engine in general. Efficiency is pretty low when the engine is cold.
Engines like this one can help uncover these hidden relationships: http://cymetica.com
The problem with that article is not that it makes 0 valid points, it's that it makes some terrible correlations as an attempt to prove cryptos won't be huge.

What does a scammer selling unlicensed shares in porn production have anything to do with the success or failure of cryptocurrency? Bitcoin was simply the method of payment, nothing more.

That example is immediately followed with the eBay + TicketMaster examples and the importance of centralized reputation/trust. The leap is then made to "...drug dealers establish reputation through their PGP key or BitCoin address". Ok, an objectively factual statement. The author proceeds to go off the rails with the assertion that only criminals value decentralized trust. Please.

You know why I would prefer a decentralized trustful solution like OpenBazaar? Because eBay bends me over with fees. In fact, they double dip. And there's nothing I can do about it.

It's not about illegal use cases. It's about empowerment of the individual over seemingly insurmountable institutions. The author is having the wrong discussion.
You're right. That's true the before the acquisition and after. Your employer can say you have to accept a reduced package or get fired.

The difference is the starting point of the negotiation. If the acquirer wants to keep you, the "right" language in the option plan means the starting point is your original comp package. You have to explicitly agree to a reduced package for it to change. If you have the "wrong" language, there is simply no deal in place to start the negotiation.
The Largest Helicopter Ever Built
For now real-world simulations at the complexity level of 'a toddler' run at a very small fraction of real time.
Way too much email. So you go to turn it off.

And find that there's no "Stop sending me email" button. Instead, click, click, click, TWENTY TIMES to turn off or change email notifications:

https://twitter.com/FireBeyond/status/572889977589141505

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_NQZfsVAAI3VPn.png
Definitely +1 on the "view all notes" options. Knowing full well that Ghostnote was intended for people like me that don't necessarily use structure for note-taking and need the context, I don't want to find my self in a position of not being able to find an important note because I'm not looking at that file/URL at that moment.
How to Speak Data Science – A Funny Post
Wow, next time at my first interview if they ask if i have any questions i'll ask how many more interviews i'll have to do...
I agree with the original point. In my experience, there's such a strong selection process in who even tries to get tenure that most people simply can't turn off their drive because its so fundamentally a part of them. Do they change the shape of their efforts? Sure. They might stop trying to go for many small publications and go for a longer view, try a new subfield, etc. But the base level of effort never really diminishes.

Now of course this is not for all universities but I think it applies to almost any R1 university, top teaching college, etc. Its not competition for their job that drives them, its just competition against their self-image, competition against peers for prestige, etc.
Short selling is necessary and good as a stopgap measure, but there's at least one good reason we shouldn't want it to be a go-to reward strategy. Most investments have a bounded worst-case loss. You can only lose as much money as you put into it. Short selling, however, is backwards; you have a strictly bounded best-case profit and the theoretical maximum loss is infinite.
While I do not agree with the premise of the quote, I don't find "customization" and "multi-device synch" tech-hipsterish - its exactly what happens with many phone app/webapp combinations.
The Fisherman’s Dilemma: Will closing areas to fishing lead to better catches?
The trend in measles cases is troubling, but to call it a "roaring" comeback is hyperbole.

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/29/7929791/measles-outbreak-2014

tl;dr Measles was imported to a group of unvaccinated Amish by a resident returning from a missionary trip. The Amish accounted for a large portion of those infected in the US. The good news is that many Amish opted to take the vaccine after seeing the effect of measles in their community.

Here is an older article (2024)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/health/measles-cases-in-us...

A few snippets from the article.

* There were fewer than 200 cases last year (2013); the record low was 37 cases in 2004.
* Eighty-five percent of this year’s cases were in people not vaccinated because of religious, philosophical or personal objections, Dr. Schuchat said.
* Almost half the cases were part of a continuing outbreak in Amish communities in Ohio
* In an unusual twist, over half were ages 20 or older. They may have included adults whose parents refused to vaccinate them years ago, she said.
* Forty-three of the 288 who contracted the virus were hospitalized, most with pneumonia. None died.
* There were 60 cases in California, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Orange County, where large numbers of wealthy parents refuse to vaccinate their children.

And to put it in perspective

* France, the world’s most popular tourist destination, had an outbreak of 20,000 cases from 2008 to 2011.

The 2014 CDC MMWR report if you want

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6322a4.htm?s_cid=...
Sorry, no. We've found collocation contributes to the team's effectiveness.
> * How big is the team I would be working with?

In particular, you'd want to distinguish between the people you directly collaborate with on a daily basis and the broader organization working on the same or similar technologies.

> * Do team members socialise out of hours?

Depending on your preferences, that can be a good question or a critical one. If you want to socialize out of hours, it's good to know if the team likes to do so. On the other hand, it can be critical to know that you're getting into a company where you have to socialize out of hours to fit in. Don't work somewhere where you're going to be utterly at odds with the company culture.

> * What is the average age of team members?

That's a very strange question; why do you think that matters, or that it's reasonable to ask? As an interviewer, I'd find that question extremely offputting.

> * How long has the longest member of the team been there?

Now that's an interesting question. Good to know the turnover of the team. Goes along with "how long has the team been around?".

> * Does the company have a "no arseholes" rule (or "no brilliant jerks")?

As much as I think this is a very critical item for a good work environment, do you think an interviewer is likely to answer that question any differently whether they do or not? Sure, if they come right out and say that they're willing to tolerate such behavior, run away fast. But otherwise, they either do have such a policy, or they'd like to think they do but they really don't in practice, or they'd like you to think they do.

> * How old is the company?

You should know that before you ever go to the interview.

> * Does the company release any software as open source?

If you can't find that out before going to the interview, the company isn't doing very well at it.
There's the Arduino Yun with WiFi http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardYun
I think he means transactions per block, which is hard to increase 250x.
Yes, I'm a bit familiar with pointers ;)

You can store the "next" in a list cell if you want, but there still has to be some way to figure out, given just the object, which cell it corresponds to. Well, you could traverse the whole list to find it, but I sure hope you understand why that's a bad idea. Sure, compute a hash---but that computation is overhead.

Why do you think Java distinguishes Integer from int? If it were possible to have integers that walked, talked, and quacked like an object, but without any overhead, then we wouldn't use integers. We'd use those things instead.
> At the same fee level, transaction count must increase 250 folds. Or,

How is this not plausible, given how few transactions must occur there?
> In the corporate world, if there were a legal requirement for compliance, the auditor would verify that all work email is going over work servers

Legal compliance audits that I have been involved in tend to go beyond what is unquestionably prohibited by the law and also seek to identify and eliminate activities which might arguably violate the law (and thus create legal risk) including, but not limited to, those which violate organizations internal guidelines which are based on the applicable law but whose requirements may be (generally, should be) more strict than the law itself.

There are three different, but related, categories into which this might fall, in decreasing order of breadth:

1) Behavior that would be of concern to a compliance audit focused on the law in question,

2) Behavior that would violate administration guidance related to achieving compliance with the law in question,

3) Behavior that actually violates the law in question.

You are arguing, and I agree, that it is #1. There are reports that administration sources have indicated that it is #2 (I see no reason to doubt them, though I haven't seen the actual guidance, so I don't have an informed opinion.)

Neither of those, however, is the same thing as it being #3.
I have been interviewing a lot lately, and I have to say that Company's really expect you to waste a lot of time just so they can weed you out.

Here is a coding exercise that will take around and hour. Once you finish it you never end up hearing back anyway and when you send a followup they still don't respond. How are can you know whether you should waste your time doing a coding exercise or not?

If its not coding exercises its an excessive number of hour long interviews, or the employer requiring that you work with them for free for anywhere from a few hours to a week.

Is there any way to weed them out before you waste so much of your time?
I believe both sides of the aisle hold some responsibility for this disconnect. Detractors of cryptocurrency often like to cite the shady world of BitCoin securities, just like this article does.

However, that's not a valid criticism. BTC functioned only as the method of payment. You can't criticize the future utility of a technology based upon how someone has misused it. If that were the case, we should ban the Internet.
Right. Everything they list can be achieved using session tokens and cookies.
> Those institutions are trusted to only hand Ph.D's to those who have earned them.

I disagree. Even MIT and the highfalutin Ivey's have a lot of mediocre grad students to keep the cogs of the research machine running. This is especially true in the biomedical field because of the cheap labor supply of grad students - vs - the cost of highly trained lab techs. All of these students pass and earn PhDs.

Inside your own little field in academia you are judged by your peers on both your work as well as who you work with, not where you sit or the stamp on the letterhead. Sadly, outside of our small fields we have very poor (if any) tools to assess researchers, and thus fall back on regular consumer judgements: brand recognition, familiarity and advertising.
Here's the latest sunshine list data for York University:

http://surlyhamiltonian.blogspot.ca/2014/04/york-university-...

Shoukri is at C$478K