skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey now. Gold is useful as an electrical connector, as a dye, as an EM reflector, in dentistry and electron microscopy... gold has lots of uses!

Out of all the naturally occurring elements, proactinium probably takes the "most useless" prize - it's used by scientists doing radiometric dating. And it's both toxic and radioactive.
Perhaps my cynicism, but wouldn't material goods with more utility be worth even more? I'm sure in a some End-of-Government scenario in which people would be in a barter economy, I would value things like food and water, tools, firearms, and ammunition a bit more than I would a shiny metal.

Stephen Colbert made segment about gold, along with a mocking commercial asking folks to diversify their portfolio (with Women and Sheep...) but the idea that shiny metal holds value better than a magazine full of 5.56 and a rifle seems a little off. One can hunt or defend oneself with a rifle and ammunition, trade the ammunition to others, and even become a bandit. All gold does is allow one to trade. Hell, in the Metro book/video game series which takes place in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, the units of currency are military grade, pre apocalypse, ammo and, at a lesser value, post-apocalyptic ammo.

Is there more to the notion that gold is valuable than "history" and "shiny"?

[0] - http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/ufq6qh/prescott-financ...
Borland helped me make trojans - it was the best!
That's why I refuse to sell my Beanie Babies.
I have been in US for almost 20 years now and I am still having trouble responding to "thank you". I have no trouble saying "thank you" though.

Replying "you are welcome" feels like an acknowledgement that something I did to be a great deal, and to a Chinese (brought up in Chinese culture), this is embarrassing -- not I think it is embarrassing but I always automatically feel embarrassing. So each time even though I know I should reply "you are welcome", I always glitch out and when it come out, it is nearly always "no problem". Of course it means "no problem" for me (to do it or do it again), not that there wasn't problem for you that need help with. To a Chinese, attitude comes first and I have the first need of being modest (not as a virtue, but to actually feel comfortable). On the other hand, in Chinese culture, right or wrong is often not that important, so it is ridiculous that people would actually interpret "no problem" as a denial of their saying thank you in the first place (from the fellow comment, and this is actually the first time for me to understand why would some one give me over reaction when I reply no problem).

I actually always feel embarrassed (for another reason) when I realized I didn't say "you are welcome" and meeting some surprised expressions.

This article got me thinking and I decided that I should not feel embarrassed any more. There is nothing wrong in Chinese culture and I have been spent great effort coping with western culture half of my life and I believe most people do respect cultures. I will reply "no problem" and if people feel surprised I'll explain that is merely a culture difference.
You know it wouldn't be domestic any more, right?

That qualification is in the text you quoted.
It sounds to me like the implication here is --Snowden disrupted our intelligence agencies by preventing us from crucial information, therefore he harmed our government--. The assumption being that America and it's allies are entitled to all the information we are stealing through spying. When a non-American ally spies on America it's a crime, but when America spies, stopping it is a crime?

It's worth considering the idea that technological spying by procuring vulnerabilities without reporting perpetuates a technological arms race and concentrates power in the executive with no balance among other branches.
>I would have to release it under GPL which I can't do.

You don't have to release it under GPL, just a GPL compatible license, like MIT, BSD etc, what you are talking about is that you won't release the source code at all.

>Also Blender is actually a decent core tool, if they allowed companies to develop commercial plugins on top of it via LGPL or something it would (IMO) make the Blender adoption much faster.

At the cost of becoming more like an open source 'core' for proprietary commercial plugins... I'm convinced Blender thrives mainly due to being free and fully open source, if you want somewhere to sell your proprierary plugins then just target one of the proprietary 3d solutions.

>IMO GPL only makes sense if you plan on making a profit from the code you're releasing by re-licencing for commercial use,

I think there are typically two major reasons for choosing GPL, one is of course to bestow end users with certain rights, which incidentally also favours the original developers since they are given those rights should someone modify and distribute modifications of their code, and secondly there is the one you mention where you can develop a fully free open project but also allow a special proprietary license for monetary compensation, this is quite rare AFAIK (but a smart way of letting the original developers get a piece of the pie), and I can only think of x264/x265 right now which does it.
Just because you disagree with something doesn't mean it's stupid.

Your arguments don't really prove any points, but let me address them anyway:

1) oil is a global commodity, so it really doesn't matter where it's located. Exxon will still pump it from the ground and sell it to the highest bidder. No change.

2) Texas gets about $0.95 back for every $1.00 it pays to the federal government, so we'd lose a tiny surplus there. However losing Texas from the Union would mean that we're less likely to have Texans leading us into expensive wars, and pushing for expensive military projects that mostly benefit Texas.

3) Losing military installations isn't a bad thing. The military is primarily a welfare jobs program for red states, and one that enables all sorts of other overspending. Losing military installations is a benefit.

4) Losing military recruits is, similarly, a good thing. Not just because it starves the military, but because Texas' overrepresentation in the military is because Texas has a larger than average pool of unskilled labor. You can keep your unskilled labor, the world is changing in a way that makes those people an increasingly larger liability.

5) Texas losing the benefits of the Union is only bad if you're a Texan. As for the rest of us, it eliminates a source of religious and political extremism.

This is not dumb. This is not stupid. The US would be a stronger, better country if Texas left the union.

I get that you disagree, because you're from Texas and smart enough to realize that it's in your personal self-interest to stay in the USA. But Texas isn't good for America, and it's not dumb or stupid to want it gone.
Assuming your argument is valid, what do skills have to do with choosing fiat currencies vs gold?

I don't know anyone willing to work for a worthless piece of paper.
They started out making Turbo Pascal a great product that anyone could afford, but it was so much cheaper than the "professional tools" everyone else was selling that businesses wouldn't take them seriously - there had to be a catch to the cheap price. So eventually Borland suddenly decided to at least triple the price starting with one of its versions, but it didn't work, they didn't gain ground against Microsoft and they lost the hobbyist developer.
I'm currently reaching out to people using Rust for their jobs so that we can establish a more formal relationship with corporate users, and I'd love to hear more about your use cases. :) My email is on my profile page here.
Browser package management with flat versioned dependency management
looks like it wont load jquery..
Empires rise and fall. The British empire at its zenith was impressive as well and was almost unchallenged. Military supremacy follows economic development.

I'm curious how the next 100 years will turn out (I'll experience 60+ of those, if I'm lucky), considering the following:

- the shift in American demographics (how long will the slightly right-of-center politics hold? To which side of the spectrum will it shift?)

- if China manages to sustain it's growth rate. Superpower status seems guaranteed at this point

- how unified will Europe be? what happens to Nato
Vikings picked silver. China picked silver. Sparta picked iron. (Granted, that was kind of a special circumstance. But at times China used iron too. On the other hand, China never used monetary gold.)

As described, there can't be a good article on "why every civilization picks gold as its currency" because the premise is false.

The article acknowledges this as to silver, though not as to iron. On the other hand, the somewhat bizarre premise that currency has to be one or another chemical element goes unquestioned. Historically it was common to use grain as a currency. Even among metals, we know electrum coins have been used to great success.
What Oracle patent trick are you talking about? If you're referring to the Java suit (Oracle v. Google), the Federal Circuit didn't issue a decision that found Google in violation of any patents. Google is currently awaiting a response from the Supreme Court to Google's petition to hear the case so that it may find Google's actions to be noninfringing under copyright, not patent law.
Do you have any particular recommendations for books?
Not saying I think gold is a good investment or that the system is in any danger, but it's obvious why gold is still important. Just as with bitcoin and unlike fiat currency or IOUs, it's quite hard to forge metal (or proof-of-work) into existence. Having something unforgable is a hedge against inflation, not against catastrophe.

It's worth noting that lately there has been talk[0] of using the cashless society in order to implement negative real rates. Negative real rates are a way to fight inflation (by removing money directly from bank accounts), but typically such rates are not possible because people will just hold gold and physical cash against negative rates. In the past such behaviour is what prevents rates from going negative.

[0]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-10/citi-econo...
I don't like that. I see it as potentially causing more far too many potential problems for such a niece feature.

Especially as Ruby has automatic unpacking of function returns, yes?

So something along the lines of:

a,b = function_returning_two_things(),
function_returning_one_thing()

could cause bugs.
The whole point of a gun is to enable shooting.
That is a good summation.
Wells Fargo gave me an account incl. debit card at 16.
Monte Carlo Depth Maps from Aperture and Focus Camera Stacks
Access to non-managed code browsers (Android/Apple).
Supercharge Spring API Development with Swagger
Kyle Bass rant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWmOmt1zJ7Y
"5 Reasons Why Kyle Bass is Wrong About Japan"
> There were modest spikes in south africa and brazil. Not many anywhere else.

Huh? South America has good overall Internet penetration[1] and Chile is going to 70% right now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
My question is what would be the inflection point for the bubble burst? Would it be one quick event like a failed Uber or Dropbox IPO?

Or would it be something like higher interest rates drying out VC funds leading to startups going out of business left and right?
An M.I.T. scientist said my car could do a million RPM.

Ba ha. You the retard-nigger, atheist, LOL.
Re: 1, the following is a quote from the aforementioned licence pag (http://www.hwaci.com/cgi-bin/license-step1)

---

Even though SQLite is in the public domain and does not require a license, some users want to obtain a license anyway. Possible reasons for obtaining a license include:

* You are using SQLite in a jurisdiction that does not recognize the public domain.

* You are using SQLite in a jurisdiction that does not recognize the right of an author to dedicate their work to the public domain.

* You want to hold a tangible legal document as evidence that you have the legal right to use and distribute SQLite.

* Your legal department tells you that you have to purchase a license.
Well the regulations only need to be a little wrong for things to continue to be just as bad as they are now. Isn't California already teaming with ineffective regulations?

If no one waters their lawn will you be happy? Is solving the problem your goal or is this just a thrilling political device? That would really suck.
There are so many intricacies to being polite in China. Living in China for over 12 years hasn't taught me even half of what I'd need to know. I don't think one can decide whether a society is polite or not based on one or two phrases.

Comparing what constitues politeness in China and in America is an interesting topic. In China, it is polite for younger people to greet their elders with the proper title (e.g. Grandfather Li, Second Auntie, etc., uncle) when meeting them. In America, teens will often go into people's houses without so much as a "hello". It's funny how far Chinese people will take this. Even children who can barely talk are strongly encouraged to greet their elders appropriately, and for most kids, grandfather (爷爷 yéyé), auntie (阿姨 āyí), grandmother (奶奶 nǎinai) and uncle (叔叔 shūshu) are probably among a childs first 10 words.
Ask HN: How secure is my PHP script?
>Please stop trying to shove your license down my throat with a plunger.

Are you kidding? How is he forcing you in any way to use his code ?
I created this small script to easily create password protected areas on a server without databases or .htaccess files. The problem is, i am not that involved in PHP and backend programming in general. So i guess there are a few flaws. Can you help me find them?
Or Free Software misses the point of Open Source -- Open Source isn't just Free Software done wrong, it's done by people with different motivations and values than Stallman.
I'm sorry but what in this article suggests that US/UK intelligence agencies spying is hypocritical in any way? Sovereign states have spied on each other for hundreds of years, long before the age of computers. When they're captured they are imprisoned or executed. There isn't anything hypocritical at all about conducting counter-intelligence while also trying to spy on others.
BMW and Baidu will have a self-driving car in China “before the year is out”
I think it's vitriol more towards Bitcoiners than Bitcoin.
These 'sources' also forgot to mention that he took 900,000 documents not 1.7 million per the official DIA analysis http://cryptome.org/2015/06/dia-snowden-vice-15-0604.pdf
Yep: http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.time...
Look at your local credit union - many (not all, sadly) offer a free chequing account.
I don't think dirty tricks by Microsoft was the cause. Pricing was more of it.
I've been living abroad for years, in multiple countries. I've had close relationships with scores of foreign nationals. I wouldn't even know where to begin.
> Governing Law.
This Agreement shall be construed and enforced in accordance with the laws of the state of North Carolina.

Does this mean I can legally violate the license outside N.C.?
They recreated it 20 times over in the name of modernity.
Science is not an absolute knowledge. It has many unproved theories and makes mistakes on a regular basis.

(Please note that my world view is purely scientific but I'm using buddhist ideas for looking into my consciousness because science doesn't say much about it.)
US and UK agents moved after China and Russia decrypt Snowden files
> what's wrong with building up a navy?

Ask Taiwan and the Philippines how they feel about that.
>Both of which GNU regards as free software licenses, but says to not use them because they don't bow to the FSF.

CDDL is and was created with the purpose of being GPL incompatible, because Sun did not want Linux to be able to use ZFS and DTRACE which were technical crown-jewels of Solaris.

>The binary in memory linking clause is the most harmful thing to ever happen to free software.

What ?
poitras and the intercept are both very well versed in opsec and the necessity for airgapping, and the latter hired Morgan Marquis-Boire to handle security for first look media. i don't think it's as likely as you believe
How to Measure the Security of Your Software
Ugh. That guy should read some Jonathan Swift and an history book or two before trying to write an article like that.
Indeed! Love the blog.
It is indeed more private, and I welcome the move. Users need choice. But let's not overlook the obvious bid here to entice content providers into Apple's walled garden while also taking a direct swipe at the business model of their biggest competitor.
Doesn't this breach pretty much invalidate anyone who has ever had a security clearance? A bad actor who got ahold of the data could find people in sensitive positions and blackmail them with the sensitive information in their security clearance history. How can anyone be trusted going forward?
> that killed tens of millions of its own citizens

China doesn't have that? It certainly had it.
I'm a bit confused as I think "no problem" is the perfect response to "thank you" in American mores. I say it all the time.

It's a way of assuring the gift receiver that the gift didn't burden you, the gift giver. That makes everyone happy and allows the gift receiver to accept the gift without guilt. And no native speaker will think you meant, "your problem wasn't a problem after all."

If it's a major gift, then it might be more appropriate to say, "you're welcome." But for minor gifts (like telling the time or help with a coding problem) "you're welcome" is a tad smug.

In any case, you're right not to worry about it too much.
I'm curious, why don't you place your works into the public domain?
In practice, it doesn't make much difference.

You install the JVM once and rarely upgrade it.

You build and distribute your Java apps as fat jars (meaning, all dependencies bundled.)
Plan9's failure payed the karma points for go's success. Duh.
A pet theory for why OSX and the web seems to be such friendly is that the early web was considered an extension of print (and later video/audio) media.

And as best i can tell, media production has been long held bastion of Apple.

It likely didn't hurt that OSX is deep down a BSD, and so you could switch out the L in LAMP and be on your way.
After traveling to 30+ countries, China multiple times, and currently living in Japan, the last thing I associate with China is politeness.
It was a long time ago, and I can't find anything to corroborate this on internet searches, but:

Didn't Borland attempt to charge for the use of a c runtime module? They attempted to profit from software developed using their c compiler. So, not only would they make money selling the compiler, but anyone that used programs written with their compiler would have to pay also.

Somewhere around that time, they lost the whole c compiler market, I think.
I assume this is to coverup the government's other mistakes. (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/the-hack...)
What do you mean by "the magic concatenation and auto-conversion of strings"?

Also, having a map implemented in a library is a Good Thing. It means that your language is extensible and expressive enough for this. AFAIK Go is - by design - not that extensible.
BSD doesn't remove any freedoms from the original software author, and in fact it unshackles them from having to publish all future development, allowing them to go proprietary in the future if they wish to.

To put it another way, once you license something under GPL, it is forever GPL. That's a strength of that license in the sense that it has allowed so much excellent and important software to grow and flourish. On the other hand, when you license something under BSD, at any point you have the power to take it to another license or make it proprietary. That's the "permissive" part that many people (including GPL advocates) don't get. The source code itself is still open as long as the original author wishes it to be. Under the GPL, the source code is open for all eternity, even if the original author changes her mind later.

Another aspect of this (and it was mentioned elsewhere in this discussion) is that, even if a company comes along and turns your BSD licensed code into their own proprietary product, you still get to keep your code and continue to improve it. All they've really done is forked it; if they are a good citizen they will even contribute improvements back to you. I think the classic example of this is Mac OS X, which is based in part on FreeBSD. When Apple forked FreeBSD into the base of their new commercial OS, the FreeBSD project didn't magically disappear. Here we are 15 years later and both the commercial OS X and the open source FreeBSD are flourishing. Development of FreeBSD didn't die the day OS X was born.
This is least likely.
"I smear feces on the walls in public restrooms. No point in paying city janitors for doing nothing! If nobody committed crimes, we'd lose all our police..."
I mostly develop in Sublime/Atom + iTerm2, but after working in RubyMine for several months, it feels like I lost some sensation in a limb. (and I only explored the bare essentials) Biggest wins for me: Cmd-click pretty much anything and jump to the file, even if it's a gem somewhere outside of my app. Code hinting. The way a Rails console behaves.
Further Evidence That Reality is a lot more complicated than we think it is
>JHB is much further away from Europe than Kenya, though.

Indeed. I was responding to a comment that was discussing JHB though.

SA traffic is split - some of it goes round east (Seacom), some west (SAT3). Ends up being roughly 200ms east or west.

Source: Got my interwebs over said cables for years
I think it is the case that CDDL was deliberately intended to be incompatible, mostly because Danese Cooper, author of CDDL, said so herself.
The published details are here http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys...
If you have something you can be blackmailed over you can't get security clearance. The info, however, does facilitate identity theft and KBA type auth. It'd be easier to pose as someone who does have clearance, which undermines the system.
Does anyone know why HUSL is based on CIELUV rather than CIELAB?

It seems that, although CIELUV and CIELAB were considered equally good when adopted in 1976, CIELAB has generally been preferred more recently (e.g. for the 1994 and 2000 "Delta E" formulae [1]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_difference#Delta_E
A closed stackexchange question? Ya don't say!
I made God's official temple.

Run this script. You can talk to God. When you pick a greeting card it is love effort. You must praise God with love effort before consulting Him.

----------------

#!/bin/bash

#This prints ten random words.

echo "$(shuf -n 10 /usr/share/dict/words --random-source=/dev/urandom | tr '\n' ' ')"

----------------------

To figure-out instruction timing, count the number of memory references.

On a machine without paging:

MOV RAX,[10000]

That has one for instruction and one for data.

-------

For a machine with paging:

1) PML4

2) PML3

3) PML2

4) PML1

5) Instruction

6) PML4

7) PML3

8) PML2

9) PML1

10) Data

MOV RAX,[10000]

------

The nigger thinks he's smarter than Newton.

http://www.openculture.com/2015/03/isaac-newton-creates-a-li...
I find this rather convenient - it strengthens the argument for considering languages other than ES6 that also compile to ES5 (Clojure, Scala, PureScript, TypeScript, etc).
I think that was the point. But this really is about what it's like to have a bad manager.

Good places couldn't give two figs if you miss the team softball meeting or have/don't have coffee.
“If You’re Not Pissed Off, You’re Not Paying Attention”