skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab."

Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up.
What a terrible example by the TechCrunch author. Maybe he was ironic?
Social critique isn't the same as "gratuitous negativity". I got a lot out of reading the projects that came out of last year's hackathon.
I find it gratuitously awesome. How's that for positivity?
Why?
Its the ancestor of all organism, including single celled bacteria.
The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations[pdf]
Actually, hiring people who are 'passionate' about the field would be a one way hire them with lower costs rather than people who are just very good in their chosen career. As a pathological example game programmers generally are not well paid because they are so eager to work in games that employers can use this as a leverage for lower pay.
Show HN: Never Forget to call, Email, Message, wake-up on time
http://lwn.net/Articles/615341/
Hutton's Programming in Haskell covers that.

I'm not sure if it works as a good intro to modern Haskell, though.
Ask HN: Does regularly changing passwords of the same entropy help?
Does changing passwords regularly using randomly generated passwords of the same entropy actually help for account security?
the rate at which a black hole eats matter...

...it’s not even close to being as small as the
lifetime of our planet.

So the duration of time in which any given black hole might eat an amount of matter takes a lot longer than the age of the earth?

I think it's important to note that these things being discussed would potentially be micro-singularities, smaller than anything that might be visible to the naked eye.

Otherwise, it's pretty obvious that a planetary-scale black hole could handily destroy the earth in short order, by way of mere collision, whether consumes all of the earth's matter beyond its event horizon or not.

...anyway, yeah, the LHC's capacity for stranglets is otherwise negligible, and not very worrisome at all.
Without another speculative bubble, running a bitcoin exchange is likely to be a terrible business. Competing with Coinbase in that terrible business in that terrible business is potentially disastrous.
That's not a "nit pick," it's a political opinion, one contradicted by the customs of international law, the foundations of the United Nations, etc.
And I'm sure that you can provide sources backing those claims. Right?

EDIT: And yes, advertising is immoral. By its very definition, it is a form of manipulation for own benefit.
> It is not difficult to find discussions that spans more than one decade, where the official consensus is "web authors: get screwed, we would rather die than to add X feature".

And yet, this doesn't appear to be the case here:
> People, people. We already know what the solution is to be -- binding XBL to pseudo-elements. There is no point commenting here. We all know you want it. If you're not volunteering to fix it, please don't comment at all.[0]

Rather, nobody seems to have stepped up to actually implement the feature for the past decade, wich isn't all that surprising since implementing this seems to be quite the effort:

> (1) this is a pretty involved bug; it would take weeks to months of work for a full-time engineer[1]

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77790#c125
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77790#c173
How can 'Stupid Shit No One Needs' be classified as a social critique by any respectable semantician?
In what sense? In the sense that it's sad that real people lose jobs, or specific to them?

Seems like they had top notch investors. I wonder what went wrong.
"Delighting The Designer" is my favourite I think
If you want such a button, search for bookmarlets. I usually install one that makes all fonts the same (large) size and one that forces all texts to B/W. Can't live without it.
I'll never feel bad about hurting an industry that is responsible for things like "advocate marketing".

The only problem I have with ad blockers is that they don't cause enough suffering for marketing companies. I'd like to see more projects like this one pop up.

http://adnauseam.io/
> Most people

Really? Have you got any numbers for this, or are you actually saying "this is how I use it, and I presume most people are like me"? Because what you're saying simply isn't true for me.

When I'm reading a long block of content, I'll often click the scroll thumb and keep it clicked, using either the mouse or trackpad (or trackball, for that matter) to seek proportionally through the page. You don't get that proportionality of motion with either the mouse wheel or the two-finger trackpad gestures which mimic it.

The "most people" argument you're making is what leads to broken ideas like infinite scrolling, which appeals to one subset of the population who assume that everyone else uses their UI in precisely the same way that they do.
If you took a moment to think of use cases other than your own, you would realize that there's a lot of us that ONLY use facebook messenger. I haven't checked my newsfeed in ages.
What made competing with Coinbase so hard? the fact that Coinbase was so well funded?
Show HN: Youlist – create YouTube video playlists together with your friends
No, using that rationale, I should be blocking any work done by anyone I choose to block

You were complaining above that you were presented with content from a third party that you hadn't consented to, and didn't have a contract with.

I'm not the one arguing ad-blocking is an ethical position.

If you're not arguing about the ethics of it, why have you been talking about consent and the structure of contracts between parties? Nothing in your first, largest comment has anything to do with aesthetics, it's all about consent. Why, in the same paragraph as this statement, do you demean advertisers quite heavily about issues other than appearance? (deservedly or otherwise)

I'm still interested to hear your opinion on walking out on a bill because you don't have your own contract with the third-party EFT vendors.
Minimalist Living: When a Lot Less Is More
> what made js popular

What made JS popular is that it is the only language available to do client-side development in the browser.
Many start-ups in their infancy could be classified using that list.

And maybe that's something we should be thinking about, yeah?

Indeed many of those start-up's founders come here for resources or support.

And we should be giving them resources to help get perspective on how shallow or first-world-problem their idea is, and support in finding a better way of allocating their time and energies.
It's worth noting that Firefox's scrollbars, at least on Windows, don't truly behave exactly like the native ones either:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=38467
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical - Blaise Pascal

They are necessarily conflated.
Was there a previous announcement? 4 days seems awfully short. (granted, it's fairly trivial to setup a local wallet or an address on Blockchain.info, but still)
Maybe the buttcoiners are right?
> With the dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors, we weren't able to generate enough venture capital interest to continue funding Buttercoin.

It doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think that a lot of companies hedged their investors money in Bitcoin and hemorrhaged investment when the bubble burst, leading to colder responses when other companies later went back asking for more. That would seem to fit with stories like this.
> it's common knowledge that wait staff aren't paid minimum wage because customers are expected to tip

"Common"? No it isn't. ~65% of Americans live in states where that would be ILLEGAL, and those employers would be committing the crime of wage-theft.

http://www.dol.gov/whd/state/tipped.htm

Maybe the real problem is your state's laws.
Previously, at UWaterloo...

http://terriblehack.website
Given your framework, it is obvious that humans should focus on developing AI 0 and use it to make sure that AI 1 is not created by any group (intentionally or not), since it poses grave danger to our own survival.

Also, AI 0 does not necessarily despise us for performing us that service and may be very happy being a 'slave', in your parlance. Why should we assume that an AI needs to survive and reproduce and thus do their own things? We and other animals do so because we were created by evolution. An AI developed with other means may have radically different values than our own and coexist peacefully with us for a long time.

Bottom Line: Evolution is a very dangerous mechanism that we should avoid when developing AGI.
> For starters, LUCA may not have used DNA. Poole has studied the history of enzymes called ribonucleotide reductases, which create the building blocks of DNA, and found no evidence that LUCA had them (BMC Evolutionary Biology, DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-10-383)[0]. Instead, it may have used RNA: many biologists think RNA came first because it can store information and control chemical reactions (New Scientist, 13 August, p 32)[1].

These are from the New Scientist article that wikipedia referenced. I don't understand the references here, but hopefully someone will see this that can help explain exactly how an organism doesn't have DNA, only RNA.

--

[0]: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/10/383

[1]: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128251.300-first-lif...
I'm the guy who offered the bounty, and for us (webflow.com) it's not about styling scrollbars on ordinary websites - it's about making sure application user interfaces are consistent across browsers.

Take a look at this comparison between Chrome and Firefox: https://cloudup.com/c8K9RMqPeDn

Webkit's ability to style scrollbars gives app developers a ton more control over a user interface. Some advantages of Webkit over Firefox here:

* Custom styling without hacky JavaScript "fake scroll" scripts

* Control over the width of a scrollbar

* Better usability for certain use cases by enabling Up and Down buttons

* Scrollbars actually look like they belong inside the application

* Doesn't remind users that they're in a web browser

In my 15+ years of building websites, I never wanted to change the color of the browser scroll bar either. But now I'm building a website that builds websites, so it's a whole 'nother ball game :)
Jailbreak iOS 8.2 may be release very soon
Very relevant here: http://www.textfiles.com/thoughts/advertising.html
The Stealing Economy. Stealing does need to be disrupted. For too long "Big Pawn" has given thieves pennies on the dollar for hot goods.
They had zero profile in the bitcoin community. Essentially a non-entity. So I can't imagine they had that all-important growth graph investors need to see.
Honest question: How would you solve this stark difference in UIs if you're building an in-browser application? https://cloudup.com/c8K9RMqPeDn

Disclaimer: I'm the guy who submitted the bounty :)
Good for you, and all other Messenger-only-users. But why force all other users who are using the Facebook-app to open up a separate app when they want to send or read messages?
It doesn't matter. Even if they're not keeping logs, there is no way for you to confirm that they're not keeping logs. To them, you are not anonymous, simple as that.
As sort of an aggregator of content or a commission based system? Or more like a business with employees that produce content, such as columnists / reporters for a newspaper?
Social Media Measurements – Making Sense of All That Data
I disagree with the conclusion. How about this: you should use the tool that most of your coworkers already know and which has large community support and adequate performance. In other words, stop foling around and use json library. If (IF!!!) you find performance inadequate, try the other libraries. And most of all, if optimization is your goal: measure, measure and measure! </rant>
It is absolutely not. If it were a listing, it'd list the name and nothing else. The description text is supposed to be persuasive.
The Guilt-Free Guide to Parting Ways with Your Sentimental Items
Im not in the US, so I wonder: If big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it? Maybe the BBB?

Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going. Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.
Had so much expectations seeing the backer list, when I joined late last year. It seems most VCs are being less futuristic by playing it safe or am I missing something? "dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors".
I suspect that the VC industry has pretty much anointed Coinbase as the defacto north american exchange winner.

Given how little actual consumer interest there is in Bitcoin at the moment. This is probably what matters.
I have used FLOT, it's one of the best open source Canvas based chart JS libraries. It is based on JQuery, that is the only downside (at least for my purpose). http://www.flotcharts.org/ From my experience it was more lightweight than D3 and offered compareable results to highcharts library.
They expected to add a TON of complexity to the messenger product (they announced messenger as a platform at F8) and they needed a way to decouple the already complex main FB app. It buys them a bunch of things, like easier maintenance, extensibility, and ability to push updates independently among other user experience benefits.

They also didn't want to split the user experience of using Facebook messenger on mobile and hence the forced switch.

It was only a big deal because of the surface area of the world that the main Facebook product (w/ messenger) covers. I guarantee you that if Google did something like that no one would care (at least not enough to give 20,000+ 1 star reviews)
Best Weekly Web Design and Development Resources #18
Analyse Asia #25: The Apple Watch Conundrum in Asia with Sameer Singh
> it's unkind to not tip if it means cheating the wait staff out of their wages.

Very likely "unkind", but I categorically reject your framing of it as "cheating by the customer".

The practical and ethical responsibility for a livable wage lies with the employer, even if your specific state's laws permit them to violate it.

The real culprits are (collectively) the lawmakers and their donors, who allow this "race to the bottom", followed by the employers who benefit every day from the workers' powerlessness.

Or, to put it another way: "Donate cash to my salaried employee out of pity, so I don't have to pay them for their actual work! If you don't do it, they'll starve and it'll be all your fault!"
Episode Synopsis: Sameer Singh from Tech-Thoughts is back for an interesting discussion with Bernard Leong on the three major topics which dominate the Asian technology and business landscape. Discussing in depth the Apple Watch conundrum, they explained why there are flawed misconceptions from western analysts on the Apple Watch market in Asia. The discussion also revolved around the luxury business models from prestige to “mass-tige”, and why Apple is challenging the traditional luxury market in a different kind of way. Moving from Apple Watch, Sameer offered his perspective on why Firefox should not build a desktop OS and argued that the challenge for the next billion is not just for Google but every technology company who is looking to grow their pie there. Finally, the discussion turns to the recent F8 conference and the prediction which both got right: Facebook has finally cloned WeChat, but Sameer argued that Facebook is using the LINE model more than WeChat. Lastly, they also discussed the interesting question on Meerkat and Periscope.
hi,

I habe a similar background as you. in a nutshell, I can recommend to keep your focus on how to improve your situation. You get more of what you focus on, so focus on bettering your life, be nice and gentle to yourself, and things should slowly improve.

I can also recommend some of the techniques in this book here (albeit I don't sibscribe to the whole NLP field). Take it with a grain of salt, basically try it out and see if some of this works for you or not:

Know How: Guided Programs for Inventing Your Own Best Future

http://www.amazon.com/Know-How-Programs-Inventing-Patterning...
This is awful! I just want to give a shoutout to the Buttercoin team. They really nailed the serive. I remember signing up and thinking, "well, I'll just look," but by the time it came to transfer money, it was so easy, I just had to continue. Everything after that followed a similar pattern. Even the order form was well done. I'll miss you guys!

Btw, their matching engine is on GitHub and it's a good read!
Investment in Bitcoin related companies increased in 2014 to almost $1bn, from around $300m in 2013... not sure what went wrong at Buttercoin but interest in cryptocurrencies in general has never been higher.
They had a good blog post about this, which gave a good explanation. Basically it said that some huge percentage of FB app use was messsanger, so why not optimise for that use case instead?
Actually, that would not solve the issue that led me to offer the bounty.

Check out the difference between the scrollbars in Webflow rendered across Webkit (Safari, Chrome, Opera) and Firefox: https://cloudup.com/c8K9RMqPeDn

Note that not only does Webkit give you control over colors, it gives you control over the width/height of the scrollbar - which for us is critically important.
I didn't say there weren't ethical arguments to be made around ad blocking. In fact, I offered what I thought was a pretty clear position on what I found to be the most compelling issue in that vein. I didn't lead with that argument in my original reply to you because it wasn't on point; I was replying to your specific language about contracts with an argument about my duty to honor a contract I wasn't a party to.

As for your question about skipping out on my restaurant tab because I don't have a contract with that restaurant's EFT vendor, I have two thoughts:

1. It's disanalogous, and so irrelevant. If some restaurants give away their food, some restaurants charge a monthly fee and let you eat as much as you want, and some charge per plate, and I don't know which is which before entering — before ordering, even — your question might be cogent.

As it stands, however, it's pretty much universal that if you walk into a restaurant, you'll be paying for your meal. So, I guess, to move that analogy to websites, if every website always had ads, and I was making an argument about blocking them on the basis that "I didn't know I'd be seeing an ad", I'd be full of shit.

But that's clearly not the world we live in, is it? So, moot.

2. Pursuant to my point above, that we live in a world where one always (or so close to always as to be practically indistinguishable) pays for one's meals at a restaurant: if Joe's Diner only accepts payment via Whiz-Bang EFT, Inc. and I don't have the means to transact with Whiz-Bang EFT, Inc. (say, I only have cash, or I don't have their app installed on my employer-provided phone — which is the only phone I'm carrying — and don't have rights to install new apps on that phone [1], or whatever), then it's not my fault if I can't pay Joe's Diner for my meal, is it?

My contract isn't with Whiz-Bang, else I'd already have a means of transacting with them, but I do have an (implicit) contract with Joe's to pay them for the food I ask them to serve me — again, we're talking about a world where one pays for one's meals, on a per-meal basis. If Joe's imposes an insurmountable obstacle to my fulfilling my contractual obligation, they're the ones who've voided that contract, not me.

Again, however, this is disanalogous to ads and websites, so I don't think it's terribly relevant. I'm just answering the question you specifically re-asked.

[1] Yes, that's unlikely to the point of absurdity, but so is this entire argument.

EDIT: formatting, phrasing, and clarification.
The core of the attack that ryan-c is describing, is this:

> Say you have a password database with 10,000 users in it. You want to see if any of them used "Passw0rd$". Without salt, you compute the hash once and check it against all the users (perhaps with a bloom filter).

That is basically the same as a rainbow table attack. A conventional rainbow table attack looks like this:

for user in users:
for hash in rainbowTable:
(hash == user.hash)

The attack that ryan-c is describing looks like this:

for hash in rainbowTable:
for user in users:
(hash == user.hash)

They are still fundamentally the same concept.
Coursify: A Free Open-Source Online Course Platform
Ha, how ironic, not commenting on being downvoted is a community guideline. Thanks for letting me know.
These are not selfies.
I'm the founder of CloudBoost Can I please have your feedback on the API?
Learn about “the Other” Algebra
It'd be great for investors if they could just anoint winners. But in practice, consumers decide and investors follow.
Is this relevant for consumers? SSDs were a huge improvement for everyday computing; would NVMe be a similar jump?
> Btw, their matching engine is on GitHub and it's a good read!

But it hasn't been updated in 2 years... They could definitely open source parts of their current stack if they want to help bitcoin, maybe seeking a "Docker effect". It would be an AWESOME farewell. Bitpay knows how important this is, they are opensourcing a lot of cool stuff...

Edit: I've just realised they open sourced a newer matching engine built with scala (I was looking at the old node-based)

https://github.com/buttercoin/engine
In my opinion you're seeing it wrong. The beauty of FP is that from your code's point of view there is no mutation. Everything is immutable, everything is clean and beautiful. But then the compiler is able to tell that your variable that's used as an argument to a tail-recursive function is actually being redefined on every recursive call and treats it as a mutable variable in the output assembly. Similar ideas are applied throughout those languages.

For example, in OCaml you have the notion of "functional record updates". Basically you update structs by getting a whole copy back with the modified fields changed accordingly. Under the hood though, what you get is just the changes and the other fields point to the original struct.

Basically there is a difference between what your code says and what the compiler outputs, but in the end the result is the same, the compiler is just smart enough to rewrite it for you. You're right that it's further from the computer, but only for what you type in your editor. I highly recommend the book Functional Data Structures (it's on Amazon) if these sort of brilliant compiler optimizations interest you.
Look, if I don't install uBlock on my parents' (and, to be frank, every other non-technical person's I know) machine, they will be calling me next week because google.com redirects to
malwareinjector.com and facebook.com goes to fuckbook.com. On another note, the author cites some random twitter dude. Who gives a damn about what he says? He is probably just upset because he invested money in some weird ad-scheme business and it turned out bad for him.
Isn't the cheap oil the result of the Saudis arm-twisting the Russians and Iranians ?

P.S: Shell is starting an exploration of oil in the Arctic, after Obama's executive order. I don't think the bit about investment in new rigs is well-founded.
One could argue that we, as humans, are from and of Earth, and that by humans taking a photo of Earth, Earth is in fact taking a selfie. It's a narrower take on the concept of, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."