skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a tension between referring to it as decentralized and saying that it has a server.

This approach is great in general, but there are some known challenges about padding and latency.

One is that you have to use padding up to the maximum rate at which you want to send data, so if you want to have some service that can use 500 kB/s, you have to send and receive that much data all the time.

Another is that you may have to make server transmissions nearly synchronous; you can't send extra data in a window even if you have a backlog. If you break this rule, then an attacker who can delay one user's traffic can use that power to confirm a hypothesis that two users are talking to one another. This probably means that you can use it for e-mail and IM, but probably not voice. There may also be a problem if a user is momentarily or permanently disproportionately popular and hence wants to receive more data than the standard padding rate allows.

You may also have to overcome users' inclination to only use the service when they're talking to each other. If not, the time windows when particular pairs of people were active may eventually show a strong correlation, especially the times when both of them disconnected.
That's an exaggeration by far: only the tiniest subset of systems can kill people if they fail. Hacks happen by the millions with headaches being the main result along with lost time and money. Even most security-critical systems are the same with the main targeting being done for espionage (data theft). High assurance security focuses on what can get people killed (esp military use) with an emphasis on tools such as these. I've never seen a mainstream FOSS or proprietary product show evidence of an EAL6+ development process, though. Even security community largely throws stuff together plus some code review.

Best to keep it real about risks so your solutions match requirements. Most companies are happy to sell patches to broken software or offer software that passed many checklist items for compliance. They have lawyers for the rest.
> In interviews he was always more real to me, more humble.

Guessing you haven't seen TLI. Watch it then come back and tell us he wasn't humble deep down inside. Steve was just really proud of his company and wanted it to excel past the norms.
Most of it is just a lengthy belaboring of the obvious - we didn't evolve on Mars or in space, so it'll be difficult and dangerous to go there.

There appears to be a well-hidden point, however. If we're trying to get away from the beasts that are destroying our habitat, the ones killing off native life, the ones spewing pollution, the ones who invented nuclear weapons that might kill us all, the ones who slaughter humans by the millions over petty arguments, etc... Well, we are those beasts. We can't get away from ourselves by taking ourselves to another planet.

It's possible that an asteroid might take us out, but that's unlikely enough that it wasn't even worth mentioning in the article. More likely that we are the greatest threat to our survival, and "Wherever we go, we'll take ourselves with us."

That's what I got from it anyway.
By all means, please share it like Amazon did. We need to see and assess every use to both understand and argue their usefulness. Way too few anecdotes from industry.
I was waiting for this since a long time. I wanted to build one like that (less advanced) at my next hackathon. Thank you
My opinion doesn't matter. Anyone who is the least bit capitalist would certainly not see it as abandoning them, of course. It is the opinion of those individuals that matters, and they certainly see things this way.

It is not just not providing a marriage, right. No job, no money, no way to be independent, no meaning in life generally ... combined with a contant barrage of commercials detailing what is important in life, and unreachable to them (think cars, what you might call "nightclub women", and the like). The marriage thing factors pretty highly.
Echoing any recommendations for 'Scala for the Impatient' - it is a fantastic beginner/intermediate book that gets you productive pretty quickly, so much so that I'm planning on having an intern who has no Scala experience go through it this summer.
What exactly is the difference, though? Isn't the expression of an idea just itself an idea, but a more specific one?

You can't mean the physical expression, for instance, because that is the area covered by laws against theft. Copyright only covers expressions of ideas which are themselves ideas.
I've been doing machine vision for many years and this is the first I've heard of it.
I'm not sure BCC qualifies as especially lucrative.
I've been texting with an astronaut
Not that I disagree, but have you tried an Apple Watch? The UI is bewildering.
"Freelance" Spies In NYC Are Publishing Private Conversations
That's very interesting, although the page itself points out that it's a breach of contract issue at heart rather than a straight copyright one.
If we somehow managed to sample 100 new side-projects created in that same week, without any selection bias, I am confident that it would be in the top few.

It also acted as a perfect breeding ground to teach the ins and outs of adword marketing and conversion in a "low-upfront cost" way, which went on to have other benefits.
It is understandable that people find this confusing. In the US, anyone can release recordings of covers--even without the permission of the creator of the original work--by obtaining a "mechanical license" and paying a fixed royalty. However, this doesn't apply to public performances. In other words, while without the permission of the creator you can still record a cover and sell it, you can't perform that same cover that you are legally selling publicly.

This doesn't really make any sense, but it has ended up this way because of how the copyrights for compositions and recordings were divided up when the recording industry came into existence.
TLI = Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
For those of you confused, it seems TLI is "The Lost Interview": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJenqhpwvlA
Signed up and donated my unused Parallella kickstarter board. Cool project!
Psychological Pricing
Starck, Eames, Dyson, Newson?
Venus with a sun shield at L1! We're technologically far from being able to do it, but the physics seem straightforward. Venus has proven, at least, that it can hold onto an atmosphere.

From Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2312_%28novel%29.
What I don't get is that the genie is out of the bottle now. Google fiber exists and the more areas they roll out to where the encumbamts only bump service after the fact only further demonstrates the point that they don't give a shit about servicing their customers, they care about charging them for speeds that don't improve until competition forces their hand.

Is their plan to literally sacrifice their reputation for a few short term profits?
Free ISO Player from DVDFab
Yes, in the book of large numbers, there is a page between 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,639 and 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,641 where it has in giant block type "This page left intentionally blank due to copyright request by the MPAA"
Top 15 sites built with Ruby on rails part 3
At least three weeks of full-time work, most caused because BCC was excessively entangled in my other businesses and disentangling them was not always straightforward. (Example: running on a VPS in the same Rackspace account used for AR's VPSes. Rackspace support was not responsive regarding account moves, so I ended up rebuilding an entire environment from metal at another provider then syncing/cutovering. Now multiply that by a sixty point checklist.)

If I had had my affairs in better order it would have been closer to one week of work spread over a few weeks of calendar time. Most of the unskippable process was due diligence, which was a real eye opener. Imagine an ex-Goldman employee quizzing you about a CC chargeback which was reflected in Stripe but not in the revenue books, which he had discovered by examining every transaction for 12 months with a microscope.

I'm told, somewhat to my surprise, that BCC was much better documented than most acquisitions handled by FEI, particularly in this price range. While the infra was lacking it was a major help to have nice clean books.

I didn't get my accountant or lawyer involved aside from a mentioning that I was selling BCC, as it wouldn't have been cost-effective. The deal was executed on FEI's standard purchase agreement with 2~3 clauses added at the buyer's request. Yes, the domains were escrowed.
A major milestone has been reached in our Brain Preservation Prize
> Remember: copyright is a legal fiction created by congress

Copyright predates Congress, they can hardly take credit for having invented it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
> awful lot of bullshit

> endless series of aspirational stories

One of the strange things about the software business is that software is an iterative process where the rate of iteration can go from linear to polynomial to exponential very fast. Another strange thing is that if you are a software guy, the whole world is your customer. The third strange thing is the constant reinvention of old wisdom, repackaged in new frameworks, languages, platforms.
These three strange things then combine in weird ways to take on a life of their own.

Had BCC been written in a prior era, it would have been some MFC code that ran only on windows 95 boxes, shipped on a dozen floppies, and purchased by atmost a few dozen people who bought a printed copy of Dr.Dobbs and looked at an ad for BCC and said, Hey, I need to make my own bingo cards.

But because he had a web app and priced it right and iterated upon feedback, the whole world came knocking on his door.
Inadvertently becoming a collector of things you really aren't all that into
Oh. I missed the sarcasm then.

Yeah, I agree that I don't think equal pay eliminated politics.
In Mac programming (pre-OSX) it was common for the OS to give you memory blocks not using a pointer, but using a 'handle', which under Mac OS<=9 meant "a pointer to a pointer" (where the direct pointer was under OS control so that it could move memory blocks around in low-memory situations. By comparison, a 'handle' in Windows is a "memory block the contents of which you don't know what they are". On Mac OS<=9, you did know the contents; you just had to double-dereference your pointer to reach them)

This meant that when accessing data through these handles, you had to write code like this:

(*handle)->field;

or

(**handle).field;

Eventually, someone coined a pseudo-operator for reaching fields from a handle without requiring parentheses:

handle[0]->field;

[0]-> was named the "sproing" operator (on the theory that it indicates the desired value popping out of a box).
Doesn't take into account the fact that FX is "last look" for the provider of the liquidity and so any one of the transactions along the way could be rejected. In fact even if the trade wasn't rejected at the time of transaction, the liquidity provider could come back later and request a particular trade be reversed or manually adjusted as it was unprofitable for the liquidity provider.

Also doesn't take into account that in FX specifically, arbitraging is heavily frowned upon and if you are caught you are likely to have your account closed down.

The reasons for both of the above is that unlike for commodities/equity/futures/etc which are traded on a market, FX is more like a "gentleman's wild west" ie no defined market rules, but a lot of unofficial gentlemans agreements in place about what you can and can't do.

Various exchanges have tried to offer a standardised FX product and they all have the same issue - because a transaction on an exchange doesn't allow "last look" provision and the market makers have to honor the transaction, once an arbitrager infiltrates the market the market makers are basically at the mercy of the exchange (and all the latencies and rules within) and are forced to widen their spreads to the point that it no longer an attractive marketplace for all other market takers.

Having said that, arbitragers still do exist in FX. The most (in)famous one in Japan is a guy "Arb-san" who was making a motza in the countryside in Gifu. He had a great blog where he uploaded photos of his cars and piles of cash and trading rig, and commentary of how he was sticking it to the dumb banks. Unfortunately I can't find this blog anymore, but I did manage to find a profile of someone with the same name online that has some cars that I recognise from the that blog:

http://minkara.carview.co.jp/en/userid/1956440/car/
Its last frontier will be wheelchair accessibility, surely.
Or he had somewhat passive success with some SEO/other tricks and excitedly shared them to a good feedback loop. Works as marketing but I doubt marketing was his first thought.
Expected and not unprecedented, sure. But still, a pretty big change as far as recent history goes. Certainly new in the post-industrial-revolution world.

Income inequality seems indeed like a big issue. When discussing rising inequality in China, authors describe it as "quickly approaching Latin American levels of income inequality". I am from Mexico. I can tell you that reaching that bar is not a good idea. Also, I am sure that is one of plenty of challenges, not the only one by any measure. Still, given past performance and historical precedent, developing past those challenges is, as you say, expected and not unprecedented. Also, as far as I understand, income inequality within nations is quickly rising all over, but global income inequality is in general narrowing because of the gap between developed and developing countries closing, no?
Exactly. How would interactions between animals occur across multiple players instances if they are relying on seed based synchronicity?
In the ad-based business model all the people who use Google's services aren't Google's customers, they're Google's product. Google's customers are the companies who pay for advertising. We lost the opportunity of not building the web this way.

The tracking necessary to process payments is reasonable as-is but you could also pay cash for gift-cards that work just like credit cards. Either way that's nothing like the tracking that happens for targeted advertising.
"it would be pretty weird to compete for the Bingo Card space"

I guess the only counter argument is that there's now a "product market validation" that says a Bingo Card site is "worth" $60k to someone. If I had nothing else to do and - for example - a Wordpress plugin that'd let me create one of these in a weekend, it'd be a not insane idea...
That's one of those statements that seems obviously true, but I think it probably a lot more complicated in real life. Most people don't write things that they want covered by copyright (although it might be anyway).

For example, this message is would be copyrighted by me in most countries. I have absolutely no problem with you making a copy of it (or any other message I've written on HN). To be fair, I completely forget if there is a license clause in the HN agreement that I clicked on when I got my account, but if there isn't I hereby release every message I have ever written on HN under CC0. I don't feel in any way diminished by my action ;-)

Even with software, the vast majority of things I write, I assign copyright to the people who pay me. In fact, copyright is not important to the way I work. I don't write it and then hope someone will pay me after the fact. I have a contract which says that they will pay me for my effort of writing software. Heck, as the old Dilbert cartoon showed, I could twiddle my thumbs all day and I would still get paid (for a while).

Even for the programming I do outside of work, while I usually choose the GPL, if there was not copyright I wouldn't need to worry about licenses and I would still write the code. It would affect me slightly, but I wouldn't be marching down the street trying to reinstate copyright because people were "stealing" my code.

I have had old posts on usenet (yes, I'm that old) stuck on websites even with the wrong attribution (people taking "credit" for my crappy writing... suckers). There is no way I am worried enough to send a takedown request.

I don't think I'm unusual in this respect. In fact, I think the vast majority of people operate the same way. The people who do care are the people who create something in advance (usually without getting paid) and who hope to monetize it later. I have no problem imagining that most of them would cry foul when their work is copied. Every body else (i.e. most of the people in the world)? Not so much.
In their defense, it's the default when creating a GitHub pages site with the 'minimal' theme: https://github.com/orderedlist/minimal/blob/master/styleshee...
He had something else he wanted to work on. It's not complicated.
Here is my experience getting started with TLA+ and using it in my distributed systems class.

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2014/08/using-tla-for-teach...

http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2015/01/my-experience-with-...
A colony can be selective in which ideologies it brings along. Pick the best, brightest, most level-headed colonists.
That's not true. iPad SALES are down, but that doesn't mean USE is. My mom still loves her iPad one. I know someone who wouldn't have replaced their iPad mini if they hadn't stepped on it (despite being basically an iPad two).

Without the subsidy of mobile phones people don't seem to buy new ones as fast. Doesn't mean the iPad is dying, just that the market is closer to saturated than it was 2 years ago.
This twitter exchange I had with him and the infamous Tony Morris was all I needed to know I don't want or need to have anything to do with either of them--and furthermore spending time learning from either of them may actually hurt me, if it encourages me to starting thinking the same way they do:

https://twitter.com/dubitable/status/469359776074563584

I love Haskell and spend a lot of time learning it, but I've gotten by just fine without his resources. The fact is that a lot of far more tolerant and far less self-aggrandizing folks have been patiently teaching Haskell for a long time. Check out #haskell (or #nothaskell, lots of nice folks there too) and ask for help if you need it.
Looks like close to ~30% last year (after seeing ARR fall by 30%). [1] I think higher in prior years.

He claims to have spent only a handful of hours on BCC last year. So spending less than say 20 hours on a project and having it generate ~30% of revenue, passively, seems like a pretty good deal.

Another poster mentioned focus, but that doesn't really seem to be the case here.

Of course all this is conjecture.

[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krvSnHfOOVM
> but it sounds a bit like he thinks that was a mistake:

I do and it's something I'm still working on. I don't have any illusions about being anything other than deeply imperfect. Any progress I've made so far is due to good people who were patient with me.

Much of the hostility people are seeing in my post history is frustration with the industry - not that that excuses anything. Being nice is necessary, but not sufficient, for having a productive conversation. I once contested that with pg but now think he was absolutely right about it.

Another pattern that is a problem is failing to soften delivery or being responsive. It doesn't matter if you're right or not if you're flatly reiterating your stance on something - people won't believe you anyway. It can also make sentiments seem more hostile than they are intended or need to be. I've seen this in myself and others.

I started teaching Haskell because I knew I wouldn't be able to use Haskell unless I could teach coworkers efficiently and effectively. It changed from there into a more general dissatisfaction with what learning Haskell was like for many (most?) people. I talked about this some at Lambda Conf this weekend.

I make no excuses. I'm still working on it. I've had a standing offer to make amends with people I've wronged for awhile now and that stands. Some people I've been able to catch up with, many are still out there.

I like to believe (internal narrative, no idea if it's true) that the book has harnessed my impatience into something useful.
>I wish he would do a detailed writeup about why. He makes it sound like neglect (only spending a few hours on it last year) and opportunity cost (his booming consulting work)

I think the answer is perfectly simple - he's making much more money from Appointment Reminder, launching Starfighter will take up a great deal of his time, and he has just had a baby. Selling BCC now makes more sense than just letting it wind down through neglect. According to his last Year in Review, BCC accounted for only about 15% of his income. Selling up strikes me as a classic Patio11 optimisation.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...
Did Ray DeGiorgio skip his ethics classes while earning his certified engineering degree? Did he further to wear his iron ring on the day he approved this part?

I'm trying to understand how all these safeguards failed.
Real-world applications of mathematics, by arxiv subject area? (2010)
Typically it's 3 - 3.5x X Annual Profit (+ Owner Wage)
> voice verification is easy

Why can't anyone who hears my voice spoof it? Seems relatively insecure to broadcast my password every time I talk.

I've heard in other contexts such as retinal or fingerprint scanning that biometrics are more like usernames than passwords (public and hard to change). Why shouldn't voice be the same?
Patio's street cred doesn't come from the results of BCC, which was designed to be a small low-effort business. It comes from A.) His tremendous skill as a writer-teacher and B.) His track record of consulting success.

BCC seems to have been a learning playground that gave him a real business on which to sharpen the skills he's now known for, and which produced a bit of profit on top to boot. But a small competitive market is still a small competitive market. There's only so far optimization can take you in that scenario--if you have the skills, you're better off seeking a bigger pie to apply them to.
what is the effective program for hacking..
His inflated "profile" comes from being one of few who actually put their numbers and specifics out there. And because there are still loads of aspiring lifestyle-business hopefuls for whom $30k is a fantastic goal.

Not to say I don't find it strange in some ways too - I've had passive projects make more with less effort - but I don't talk about it, thus no profile.
Spot pricing is more like $0.065/hr:

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/spot-instances...
what is the most effective program for hacking..
At $19,000 of net profit per year, I'd be startled if it was anything more than 20 percent. He was pulling in $30,000 a week[1] doing consulting.

[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/
So this is having a single (Erlang VM) process run code on as many cores as it can? Is this designed for a sequential program so that you don't have to split it up into processes? I'm still learning Erlang/Elixir, so I apologize if this is a stupid question.
No, a subscription service need only connect the presence of your login cookie with a credit card.
Meditation works wonders, there are plenty of resources online (youtube).
Now, if only it was mobile friendly... that would be amazing.
Is there a "Best Mandarin Speaker" competition in the Western world ?

If not, why not ?
What Charles Dickens said about “Money”(click the “direct links” in the article)
" Take the educational system for example: it is great if you are middle class with money, but it doesn't work well for most of the students who go through it"

That sounds very much like school systems in the US, UK and Australia.