Resources are being utterly and completely wasted on mining bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://www.colorfulwolf.com/blog/2011/05/31/resources-are-being-utterly-and-completely-wasted-on-mining-bitcoins/ <comment><USER3> Any system of checks and balances will have its price. Look at what we do with gold: we dig it from a hole in Africa, we transport it in other countries, we dug holes or build vaults and throw it there. Like Warren Buffett said, it has no utility, if Martians were to look at the process they would scratch their heads.

Except for the guarantee of uniqueness. Which is one of the most powerful invariants against corruption and government-sponsored inflation, goals which are worth these effort.

<comment><USER4> Bitcoin is not quantum-hard. When quantum computing reaches a certain threshold, bitcoin will lose its uniqueness and collapse.

There are post-quantum algorithms that are computable on ordinary computers, but they're still under research and they'd make Bitcoin's data set considerably larger.

<comment><USER5> _Bitcoin is not quantum-hard. When quantum computing reaches a certain threshold, bitcoin will lose its uniqueness and collapse._

Could you elaborate which aspect of bitcoin has efficient quantum algorithms? The proof-of-work system requires you to invert hashes and quantum algorithms only give you a quadratic speed up (brute force takes time O(\sqrt{size of range}) rather than O(size of range)). Right now there is no quantum attack on SHA-256 (which is what Bitcoin uses).

 _There are post-quantum algorithms that are computable on ordinary computers, ..._

This sounds interesting, but could you elaborate? What does it mean for a post-quantum algorithm to be computable on ordinary computers?

<comment><USER6> _Could you elaborate which aspect of bitcoin has efficient quantum algorithms?_

BitCoin uses public key cryptography for its digital signatures. That in turn relies on the difficulty of factoring large numbers, for which there are efficient quantum algorithms.

<comment><USER7> Bitcoin actually uses ECDSA for its digital signatures, which relies on the difficulty of calculating discrete logarithms rather than factoring. However I believe that there are efficient quantum algorithms for that, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author misses the point. The security of the Bitcoin network (at least in terms of double-spending) is tied to the level of work required to generate a block. If everyone decided to use only 1% of their computing power, they'd use less electricity, but the Bitcoin network would then be 100 times less secure.

When people talk about "wasting resources", it's an indication they don't understand how Bitcoin works. One might as well complain about wasting resources on SSL when you could just send data in plaintext.

<comment><AUTHOR> The trick lies in changing the bitcoin protocol. If the majority of clients can agree on a way to use less resources, then that's what will be enforced by the network. If a new bitcoin client enforced a mandatory delay of one hour and invalidated blocks that were made before that one hour, we would effectively have added one hour of idle time to the network. This is not a solution, but it is a demonstration of how the protocol can be altered, as long as the majority agrees on it.

<comment><USER9> The problem is that it is easy to simulate that you are waiting.

      1) Save current time
      2) "Precalculate" the current block
      3) Wait until the 3601th second
      4) Publish the block that you "calculate" in just 1 second
      5) Profit??

<comment><AUTHOR> If the calculation for the next block requires the (network's validation of the) current block then you can only always calculate one block ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't the waste also present even without bitcoin, too? Governments make complex laws and regulations in different industries. They do 'magic tricks' to make fiat currency appear and disappear. Banks do complex things to make a profit that largely do not correspond to creating real value for society. Competing companies do the same things, duplicating effort, mostly to make a profit. (e.g. Do we really need so many social gaming companies?) Companies also do other things that do not create real value (e.g. lobby politicians to gain political advantage).

A large part of human endeavor is not about increasing value in the world, but rather increasing value for oneself, possibly with the side-effect of decreasing value for others. It's just the way we are.

I don't think bitcoin's purpose is to aggravate or ameliorate this pervasive problem. To me, the point of bitcoin is to shift economic power from the circles of people who presume to rule the rest of us with complex economic policies and regulation that ostensibly keep the economy stable and growing.

With or without bitcoin, the 'waste' from competition still going to be there, and I have no reason to think that the adoption of bitcoin is going to increase the total amount of 'waste'.

<comment><USER11> > A large part of human endeavor is not about increasing value in the world, > but rather increasing value for oneself, possibly with the side-effect of > decreasing value for others. It's just the way we are.

It's not just the way we are, it's the way we are under capitalism.

But I agree that the wastefulness of Bitcoin is nothing compared to the waste caused by capitalism as a whole.

<comment><USER12> "It's not just the way we are, it's the way we are under capitalism."

What line of reasoning makes you think that humans are naturally unselfish and are made so only by an external economic system (which is itself created by humans)?

Judeo-Christian thought says that humans are naturally sinful and selfish. Evolution says that the fittest survive at the expense of others (though this may involve cooperation with related creatures). Who says we're all basically nice?

"But I agree that the wastefulness of Bitcoin is nothing compared to the waste caused by capitalism as a whole."

What system would you have instead of capitalism? If socialism or the like, can you give an example of when that has ever worked well? There are many counter-examples in history, you know. Workers sitting down doing nothing because the government quota said to only make 250 pairs of shoes today, etc.

<comment><USER13> > What system would you have instead of capitalism? If socialism or the like, > can you give an example of when that has ever worked well?

At the risk of getting into a political debate, Spain in the 1930's?

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spanish_Revol...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spanish_Revolution)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > There is a solution to this problem. If someone releases a new Bitcoin > client (and miners) that run on only 1% of the available processing power, > and gets more than 50% of the network to adopt this new client, then total > electricity costs drop would drop hugely

No, because you can't cryptographically enforce that all compatiable clients use only 1% of their available processing power.

If such a client took over the bitcoin network, somebody would use a patched version of that client that pretended to use only 1% of the computing power, but actually used all of it. There's no way the other clients could know, so the whole spiral would start anew.

<comment><USER15> Or just use VMs, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My magazine have a two part series that argue the opposite that bitcoin mining is not wasteful:

1\. [http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/the-wasted-electricity- obj...](http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/the-wasted-electricity-objection-to- bitcoin-part-i)

2\. [http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/the-wasted-electricity- obj...](http://bitcoinweekly.com/articles/the-wasted-electricity-objection-to- bitcoin-part-ii)

<comment><USER17> That's actually quite interesting, thank you for posting.

So at a guess, the network is doing now around 7MW of electrical power, although there is room for a lot of efficiency improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was worried about this so I worked out the math. It wasn't as bad as I expected.

Let's say it's 20 years from now, the total size of the bitcoin economy is $1 trillion, and there are 10 million bitcoins in existence. (We could find the number of bitcoins exactly, but 10 million makes the math easy and it's within a factor of 2 of the ultimate limit. There are about 6 million coins right now.)

$1 trillion / 10 million coins = $100K per coin, so we can expect people to spend almost that much money to generate a coin.

The rate of coin production is currently 50 per 10 minutes, dropping in half every four years, giving us 9 coins per hour in 2031.

That's 78K coins per year, at $100K per coin, or $7.8 billion in computer time and energy spent per year.

Let's say half of that is energy, call it $4 billion, including the energy to make the dedicated mining computers. At ten cents per kilowatt-hour, we're talking 40 billion kilowatt-hours per year. Divide by the number of hours in the year and we get 4.5 gigawatts.

In other words, a $1 trillion bitcoin economy can be run on the output of roughly five typical nuclear power plants (assuming it's 20 years from now).

If we get to $1 trillion in only 12 years, energy usage will be four times higher, since coins will be worth about the same but four times as many will be generated per hour.

If people use custom ASICs to generate coins, they'll be costly but more energy-efficient, weighting expenditures more heavily on hardware than energy.

People can grant transaction fees to miners to make their transaction go through faster. If transaction fees become prevalent, resource usage will be higher, since there will be additional reward for completing blocks. But $7.8 billion is already almost one percent of the bitcoin economy. If the average bitcoin changes hands once per year with a one percent fee, or ten times per year with a 0.1 percent fee, we add $10 billion to mining rewards and approximately double our resource usage.

Edit: $1 trillion is about equal to the amount of U.S. currency in circulation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply>

<comment><USER19> I don't know much about economics, but this seems to illustrate why bitcoin must ultimately fail. Since producing new bitcoins by design becomes exponentially (!!!) more difficult as time passes, the true cost in resources (electricity, computing time, etc.) to produce a new coin can only increase. That resource use can be justified, but only if the value of the bitcoin is also increasing.

Here's how I see it playing out: eventually it will be too costly for most people to produce new bitcoins. Since nothing forces one to use bitcoins, bitcoin holders will cash them out, and the exchange rate will plummet. Deflationary panic? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Money_supply_side_def...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation#Money_supply_side_deflation)

<comment><USER18> It will always cost about the same to produce a bitcoin as the bitcoin is worth. If it costs more, people will stop doing it and the difficulty will drop. If it costs less, people will profit by doing it and the difficulty will rise as more people join in.

It's already difficult for individuals to produce bitcoins, but people have solved that by pooling their resources, getting regular rewards of fractional bitcoins.

<comment><USER19> That's helpful, thanks. Still, it's only profitable to mine bitcoins at any computing cost if they can be exchanged for other items of value. If the value of bitcoins drop and people leave the bitcoin economy, making the last N bitcoins easier to compute won't make them more valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The way I understand bitcoins might be flawed but would certainly appreciate clarification ...

My problem with bit coins is that early people who start mining have a greater advantage than later ones. While that's not the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme (in the classic definition, payouts at each round are funded by new participants), it is a feature bitcoin shares with them. If someone started mining bitcoin when it first started, they have a significant stash created by now. As people start to assign value to the virtual currency, these people are getting a significant proportion of value for simply being early adopters.

<comment><USER21> My solution is to expire the BTC to force circulation.

<comment><USER22> If what you're suggesting is that coins can only sit in one address for a limited amount of time, then that would not do anything because people would just create new addresses to send the coins to.

<comment><USER23> The standard Silvio Gesell expiring-money scheme doesn't have anything to do with where the money is at any given time. The way it works is that for the government to accept a note, it must be up-to-date with stamps, one stamp for every month since it was issued. The stamps (traditionally, bought from the government) cost 10% of the value of the note.

Nobody wants to be sitting on a pile of this sort of cash at the end of the month, because they'll lose 10% of the pile of cash. The intended effect is to dramatically increase the velocity of the money, so that a small stock of it can sustain a very large flow.

I don't know enough about this stuff to sensibly evaluate the claims its proponents make for it.

<comment><USER24> this is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. the amount of wealth that would be destroyed is beyond all measure.

<comment><USER23> Wealth consists of things like cured diseases, tasty and nourishing meals, being dry when it rains, and seeing the people you love as often as you want; and the resources and skills we use to create those other kinds of wealth, such as antibiotics, bread mold, spices, beans, houses, corrugated steel, iron ore, blast furnaces, airplanes, kerosene, and CAD software.

Gesell's scheme does not destroy any of those things; it only destroys money. Money is not wealth. Money is just a way to facilitate cooperative ventures with people we don't know and trust. With money, I can cooperate with 200 other people to pay for an intercontinental flight, and with the hundreds of thousands of other people who drilled and refined the kerosene, aluminum, and other resources needed to keep us in the air.

But the money game has a lot of drawbacks. So it's sensible to experiment with it and see how we can improve it. Gesell's scheme was one such experiment. It was reported to be very effective at _creating_ wealth by its proponents when it was tried.

<comment><USER24> it was reported to be beneficial by its proponents. what a surprise. call me back when you have a control group.

<comment><USER21> You can hardly expect anyone but a proponent to advocate for an idea...

Also, asking for a control group in an artsy fartsy field like economics is too much. Where is the control group that guides the decisions of the central banks? There is none! OMG GREAT DEPRESSION!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think the bitcoin system is in any way designed to benefit the miners. Its intent is to create a digital currency that has a guarantee of retaining its rarity in the future. Making mining difficult and inefficient is kind of the point.

</comment><comment><USER26> The hypothetical solution is flawed: it would take not 50% of miners to adopt a 1% implementation; it would take 100%, since if only 1 defects, that one wins all the coins and all the cooperative 'prisoners' lose.

<comment><USER23> Based on my minimal understanding, you need about 0.99% to defect (and collude!) to win all the coins, not just one miner.

<comment><USER26> The defector(s) are using 2 orders of magnitude more CPU time to solve problems. So they win almost all of the time (all of the coins).

<comment><USER23> There are two mechanisms by which defectors could win coins.

First, they could simply mine more coins. For them to win almost all the (new) coins this way, they have to do almost all the mining. Say, 80% of it, although it's really a matter of what you mean by "almost all".

Second, they could collude and subvert transaction audit trails so that the Bitcoin system transfers ownership of all existing coins to them. For them to win all the (new and old) coins this way, they only have to do more than 50% of the mining.

So, if collusion is feasible, the second approach is easier; so let's forget about the first one for the moment.

The point at which the defectors, each using 2 orders of magnitude more CPU time, are doing more than 50% of the mining, is when they control more than about 0.9901% of the network's total raw computing power, because at that point, the cooperators control only 99.0099% of the network's total raw computing power, and the cooperators are using only 0.990099% of the network's total raw computing power to prevent counterfeiting.

If a single defector controls only, say, 0.5% of the network's computing power, they will get only about a third of the new bitcoins mined, and will not be able to subvert the network.

Only needing to have 0.99% of the network collude in defection to break the system is a pretty bad problem, but it's not nearly as bad as any single person being able to break the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Don't the miners provide network services as well? Like how real mines don't just take from the ground, they also co-exist with civilian infrastructure built to keep the miners alive and functioning, and in bitcoin's case, the mining rigs dually enable transactions?

<comment><USER28> Yes, "mining" is a bit misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The same argument can be applied to gold: resources are being utterly and completely wasted on securing Fort Knox, let's shutdown it and store all gold on a lawn without guarding it.

Mining is securing the bitcoin network in the similar sense, as Fort Knox secures gold.

<comment><USER30> Comparing it to gold doesn't make sense; we've been off the gold standard for a long time. What it should be compared to is minting coins, printing money, and banking. (As far as banking goes, I'm not sure bitcoin really solves any of those security issues.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here is another amusing example of resources being "wasted" creating money:

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the- isla...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of- stone-money)

</comment><comment><USER32> Why can't we tie the bitcoin mining process to some sort of useful calculation? Maybe some variant of folding @home or something? We just need some problem with a hard to calculate, but easy to verify 'right answer' right?

<comment><USER8> More than that. It needs to be a problem that takes a predictable time to solve, it needs to be a problem that we're unlikely to discover faster algorithms for, and it needs to be something we can tie to a set of data.

Cryptographic hashes are designed to have these exact properties. If we wanted to replace this with a "useful" calculation, you'd essentially need to create a new hashing algorithm that also had some practical use beyond hashing a set of data.

Given that creating good cryptographic hashing algorithms is hard enough, I suspect that creating one that is tied to a "useful" result is not feasible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is just a "prisoner's dilemma". The alternative is that we trust everyone not to use their full ability to generate blocks. Obviously this would completely defeat the point of bitcoins.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's why the only thing I could think of that would 'fix' this, is to release new miners that use less processing power, and a new client that only allows input from those miners. Even so, such a thing would be equally as difficult to introduce as, for example, a rule that would hand out 200BTC instead of 50BTC.

<comment><USER34> As other posters pointed out, someone would cheat and just get a client that used 100% and we'd be back to square one in a day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Most of the time graphics cards aren't used for anything remotely as socially beneficial as contributing to the bitcoin network. Rather than complain about the waste, find a way to do something _more_ useful with them and set up an equivalent reward system for people to respond to.

</comment><comment><USER36> What you're proposing is a cartel of users who agree to only use 1% of their computing power. The Prisoner's Dilemma still applies and thus the incentive to cheat still remains because using more than 1% can give you a competitive advantage. By assuming every one will compete as much as they can the prisoner's dilemma disappears because there is a limit of how many resources a user can expand. The main issue is whether bit coin is a valid expenditure of those resources

</comment><comment><USER37> So, when we waste our processing power on credits generated on limited supply by the Bitcoin network, it's a waste, but when we waste our time on acquiring credits created in limited quantities by the (Central) Banks it's okay.

I guess the issue here is that calculated bitcoins don't contribute anything. The grid should be used for something useful such as folding proteins or even SETI for that matter.

<comment><USER38> Really? It seems like the computational power thrown at this is way less than the latest console game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _There is a solution to this problem. If someone releases a new Bitcoin client (and miners) that run on only 1% of the available processing power..._

It's fairly easy to throttle a bitcoin client.

But if they mean run slower but do the same amount of work that's not possible unless someone makes a dedicated chip to do the needed calculation.

</comment><comment><USER40> Excellent article.

I would only add that we're using a LOT of energy to create a fake (read: virtual) resource. The best part about virtual resources is that they don't use many real resources, but this one is the opposite.

Granted, it's a 1-time cost, but as the article notes, it could be created with a much lower 1-time cost.

<comment><USER41> How much manpower and energy does it take to make a paper US dollar with nothing backing it up?

[EDIT] Since I'm getting downvoted, I'll answer my own question: $0.042 every 18 months.

<comment><USER18> I'm guessing that's the cost of printing a single dollar bill. There are also hundred-dollar bills, which presumably cost the same.

It'd be pretty interesting to get the total cost of printing, transport, and storage, and compare to the cost of maintaining a similar amount in bitcoins (which I calculated here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2602667>).

<comment><USER41> Yes, that's a single dollar bill note, quickly grabbed from here:

<http://www.enchantedlearning.com/math/money/bills/one/>

I didn't count the $100 because I don't believe they're printed/circulated/destroyed/reprinted as heavily as the $1. Who knows about the 5, 10, 20 and 50.

I also don't think this $0.042 covers the labor cost of distributing, collecting, securely shredding and tracking the movement of all these bills through the system every 18 months.

<comment><USER18> I was thinking more along the lines of what the total cost might be. There's about a trillion dollars worth of cash circulating, but since it's not all ones we can't just multiply a trillion by $0.042.

In any case, it sounds like the bitcoin cost might be in a similar neighborhood to paper costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Do you realize that BitCoins is elaborate pyramid scheme that targets computer geeks?

</comment><comment><USER43> Personally, I'm more concerned by the resources that are being utterly and completely wasted discussing Bitcoin on HN.

Hasn't it been talked to death already? Is there really anything new to say?

<comment><USER41> There's a lot to say. I personally think the Bitcoin debate is interesting because it's making a lot of people question the concept of money - <USER2> in the current state of the world economy.

It's also a new and interesting intersection of technology, economy, and personal trust.

<comment><USER43> All those things are true. But I still am not seeing any points raised in the discussion here that haven't already been made in any of the countless other discussions that have already played out here on HN in the past few weeks.

It's not that Bitcoin isn't new and interesting-- it is-- but that there is nothing new and interesting to say about it today that wasn't said (here) yesterday.

<comment><USER44> I didn't see any Bitcoin discussion yesterday.

To be blunt, you're doing more harm than good by complaining about the discussion. For every person that cries "dupe", there are ten more who are grateful for that dupe. Dupes are a good thing.

<comment><USER43> The top story for most of the day yesterday was about Bitcoin, actually.

And I'm not crying "dupe"-- it's not that people are re-posting an old article with evergreen content.

Instead, people are having the same conversation over and over again, making the same points, repeatedly. I don't think _that's_ a good thing.

<comment><USER44> If the conversation points are correct, then there's nothing wrong with making them.

As something like Bitcoin becomes more popular, people will naturally have questions and concerns. Should they search for the answer before asking? Maybe, but it doesn't really matter if they don't. People are free to downvote them for asking. But they don't, and the resulting conversation becomes interesting for those who haven't seen its variants, such as me.

You've been a member of HN almost as long as I have. Haven't you noticed the destructive effects meta-discussion has on articles? If so, why are you perpetuating it?

<comment><USER43> _You've been a member of HN almost as long as I have. Haven't you noticed the destructive effects meta-discussion has on articles? If so, why are you perpetuating it?_

Because I've also noticed the pernicious effect of waves of discussions like this that never die. Articles about Bitcoin (and other similar topics) come to dominate the front page for a while, and crowd out other, more interesting content.

I don't usually involve myself in meta-discussion, but this seemed like such an egregious example that I felt I ought to speak up.

<comment><USER41> I count more Heroku articles on HN today than Bitcoin. I just ignore them. It all depends on where your sensitivity adjustment is set today, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> imagine all that computing power being used to boinc projects. World problems would be solved

</comment><comment><USER46> Good thing we have so much coal left to burn! o.0

</comment><comment><USER47> No, you guys. You don't get it. Bitcoins are going to take over the world. We're ALL going to be part of an economy of Bitcoins, just like we all universally adopted Swatch Internet Time[1]!

[*1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time>

<comment><USER48> The future economy may not (I'm guessing will not) be bitcoin. It will probably have a few very different ideas built into the core of it. But the foundation is being laid right now as we discuss the problems of bitcoin.</comment></comment>


Whitman Senior Assessment - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.whitman.edu/countingfromzero/2019/03/12/senior-assessment/ <comment><USER2> The computer science program I went through also had a capstone project requirement. It was administered by a faculty member who was not super engaged. (To be fair, most of the students were also not super engaged.)

I have mixed feelings about the process. We had very limited support and education about the tools we were expected to use. (At that time, my program taught nothing about source control, nothing about web services.) They pretty much just said, "Go build a cool app on top of Sharepoint" and let the four of us spin for a year.

I learned a fair bit, but I also learned that in the college team project atmosphere, folks are gonna get carried and you'll be graded on the total possible output of four people.

Would I have preferred it to a massive test at the end of the year? 100% yes. Trying to build something practical was a great experience. I learned a ton that wasn't covered in my classes. I just wish I had more support/mentorship/pair programming along the way.

<comment><USER3> > I learned a fair bit, but I also learned that in the college team project > atmosphere, folks are gonna get carried and you'll be graded on the total > possible output of four people.

I think this is basically in keeping with non-college group project environments, broadly speaking. It's easier for managers in an employment environment to judge output in group scenarios because feedback is often less structured than assigning grades in an academic environment, but the end consumer (whether internal or external) of a work product evaluates that product based on its result, not individual contribution. Ultimately, that all-up judgment ends up being more impactful than evaluation of individual contribution.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A dotnet library to get the read time estimate for HTML or Markdown - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bolorundurowb/read-time-estimator <comment><USER2> Do you know if there's a good equivalent for node, or something client side in React?</comment>


Simple ad-free news service? - <AUTHOR> What I'm looking for is simple: quality current news, available online, mostly text, nothing fancy. I'm willing to pay for it, but I want no ads at all.<p>Does such a thing even exist? <comment><USER2> I created [http://tracket.com](http://tracket.com) which you might find interesting. It's a news aggregator / timeline archive. No ads and I don't plan on adding any advertising any time soon. I'd rather find a better business model than selling pageviews. Let me know what you think.

<comment> Amulet- It's interesting, but I like how google news has different topics and is a bit more compact.</comment></comment>


Is 3-D Dead in the Water? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2264927/?from=rss

<comment><USER2> Paying $5-10 extra per person for 3D is overrated, especially for movies that aren't shot explicitly for 3D. Animated films like Toy Story and Despicable Me are ideal, and possibly worth an extra few dollars. Alice in Wonderland was not.

The novelty has worn off - it's a premium experience for some films, and a detractor for others.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could it be, could it really be, that bad 3-D movies arent going to do any better than bad 2-D movies?

</comment><comment><USER4> Not to go off topic on this, but I'm quite excited about the state of the gaming industry today. There is a growing number of excellent games that as stunning visually as the most Hollywood flicks of much higher budgets movies, and are many times more immersive and addictive than any story on celluloid could ever be.</comment>


Show HN: Upload a CSV → send truly personalized outreach emails - <AUTHOR> https://arrows.to/outreach <comment><USER2> I love the premise of your product vision and landing page.

Showed this to a colleague who said "Given all of the integrated tools out there, I'd be surprised if anyone would ever use this. Am I missing something?"

What would your response be?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words! Glad you like it.

Not a problem if your colleague is skeptical, we'll have time to convince them. What type of role are they in?

Integrations will come. But for now every tool which stores contacts or spreadsheets has a CSV export. It's usually just one click to export, and uploading to Arrows Outreach is immediate.

So I'd hope they'd give it a shot if they have the problem we had, which is jumping back and forth between spreadsheets and Gmail to send personalized emails to a large list.</comment></comment>


Airbnb, Hipmunk and Socialcam launch SXSW contest: win a private island trip - <AUTHOR> http://sxsw.socialcam.com/

<comment><USER2> Good luck for Socialcam! Just got an email for from them.

But, please, never send mass mail without an unsubscribe link. Never. It is actually against US law. And its bad user experience. Otherwise, users will not trust their emails for a beta program of next YC startup.

Legal discussion here: [http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/internet- law/28768-unsub...](http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/internet- law/28768-unsubscribe-link-email-spam-us-law.html)

<comment><USER3> Sorry, that was an oversight. Won't happen again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's some nifty navigation you've got going on there.

<comment><USER3> Dustin Curtis made it!

<comment><USER5> Somehow I could tell. Also, love the jquery scroll to plugin, and the large images. Nice work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very amused they have a pull quote from Mel Gibson. (If you click through to the airbnb page for the island.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Congrats! I had a blast at the SocialCam launch party. Too bad I can't be at SXSW, good luck everyone!

</comment><comment><USER8> Great idea and contest page.

Strangely, Airdnb and Hipmunk are only briefly mentioned without even their logos or links to their sites...

<comment><USER9> WE'LL NEVER FORGIVE THEM!!!1!

Just kidding!

What do you think of this in-flight-graphic or designer Shaun Sanders knocked out? Pretty rad, eh? [http://blog.hipmunk.com/your-guide-to-a-private-island- vacat...](http://blog.hipmunk.com/your-guide-to-a-private-island-vacation- hipmu)

I can't get over how pretty Dustin Curtis' landing page is, though.</comment></comment>


The Bitcoin and the Taxi driver - <AUTHOR> http://blog.itlater.com/the-bitcoin-and-the-taxi-driver/ <comment><USER2> I noticed Bitcoin's most fervent supporters are far removed from reality. They think the regular person in the street cares that "the man" can track his purchases in the supermarket, or the beer he bought in a bar. They don't want to pay taxes. They think Cypriotic people will surely flock from shaky banks to an even more shakier currency and put all their live savings in Bitcoin, because it'll be safe.

It's so hard to actually get bitcoins, that any "1 percent" discounts you get for paying with bitcoin in regular shops or sites just isn't worth it to me. Either enter your CC# and be done in 10 seconds, or go to mtgox and wait 2 weeks until you're verified (hyperboled, but the point stands). I'm assuming less techy people will be of the same mind on this.

The reason any non techy person would get bitcoins is as an investment, that's it. They don't care about any of the advantages of bitcoin because cash works just fine for them, and has most of the practical advantages anyway. If they're using it as an investment, they sure as hell won't use it to buy things.

<comment><USER3> > It's so hard to actually get bitcoins

This is something that can change. The question is, would it be enough to make people use Bitcoin?

Also, if it is "only" used as an investment, that would still be a huge success.

<comment><USER4> How can it being used only as an investemt be a huge success ?

Lets just redo the Tulip mania (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania>)

<comment><USER3> In uncertain times, there is big demand for storing value. Whereas tulips are a horrid store of value (they rot, anyone can grow them, are not divisible, etc), bitcoins are an excellent store of value. It is divisible, transferrable and easy to hide. Very similar properties have made gold a huge success as an investment vehicle. There are other goods similar to gold. For example, there are 20 billion CHF worth of 1000-CHF bills in circulation, most of them outside Switzerland. They are not used for purchases - they are used to preserve wealth. If bitcoin becomes one of those assets used to preserve wealth, its price can easily jump to 1'000 EUR per coin, giving it a similar capitalization as Swiss 1000 CHF bills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is the taxi driver on Facebook, using Google, or tapping on an iPhone? Is he using Uber to drive passengers to their AirBnB from the airport they just flew into after booking a trip on Hipmunk? If the taxi driver is aware of it, it must be a bubble.

Over the last five years the people shorting governments/mortgages/banks, buying into gold/tech, and predicting a coming total collapse have in general made an ungodly amount of money.

Is Bitcoin's rise assured? No. But if it was then there would be no gain, no upside. There is a certain kind of person, all too common in our managed and enervated society, who does not know how to take calculated risks. Everything must be structured and approved by the New York Times, Harvard, and the Federal Government before it's safe to do. This same person often says that startup founders who make fortunes were "lucky", and will say the same thing about early Bitcoin adopters in a few years if it succeeds.

But what he never realizes is that you can't be lucky if you don't take risks.

</comment><comment><USER6> Never underestimate the power of illicit substances and activities to power adoption.

Right now I suspect the bulk of the current spike in bitcoin prices is related to currency controls or the fear thereof now that Cyprus is going down the drain.

<comment><USER2> That doesn't make sense. If the only reason is to get away from the Euro, why buy bitcoins, a very volatile, cutting-edge currency, when you can just as easily (or more easily actually) buy any other currency such as dollars, or swiss francs, and your savings will actually be safe, as opposed to bitcoin that could lose 20% of its value overnight.

<comment><USER3> Moving from EUR to USD or to CHF does not make much of a difference. Western national banks don't allow for much fluctuation and if one of them starts printing, the others follow. Bitcoin is a currency that does not correlate with them, so from a diversification point of view, Bitcoin is the better choice for you than buying USD.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can put money into realestate, gold, gov-bonds and hundred other places that don't have 3x monthly fluctuation.

And people in cyprus are not trying to protect their spare change, its their whole savings. Would you put your life savings in bitcoin ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People keep predicting that but then it might go down after a large dump of Bitcoins and rises to new heights. Don't know what to say, this article has no substance at all. It is based on a possibly made up anecdote. I guess Bitcoin is just one of those things that divides the tech community. Crazy idealistic cyberpunks and BTC skeptics.

Disclaimer: I am a believer

</comment><comment><USER8> Taxi drivers, grandmas etc; necessary but not sufficient for a bubble.

There are sustained run ups in assets values that can seem crazy but don't reverse. Consider the bane of my life, london house prices.

If bitcoin catches on as a means of exchange, e.g. cash in and out of Iran as is happening to some extent, 1 Billion market cap will seem small.

</comment><comment><USER9> The fact is BTC is a _currency_ and is _currently_ operating as such. There will be price corrections of course but it is already established and its primary trend is up.

As a currency trader of ten years I see this energy-backed means of exchange reaching astronomical levels if the network does not suffer any major catastrophe.

What looks like a bubble here may well be an attempt to establish a base. $100 seems like a reasonable psychological base level after it is broken. From there, with greater adoption and acceptance, $1000 is targetable.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone knows if there is a way to "short" bitcoins ?

<comment><USER10> You can do this on <http://bitfinex.com>.

But be careful about how much you trust any bitcoin service. Bitcoinica, another margin trading platform, was wildly popular but existed for only 6 months; they had to shut down after several hacks and people lost funds.

Also, the main way to get non-bitcoin funds into these kinds of services is via mtgox redeemable codes, but those won't be available anymore after the 10th of April because of legal concerns.</comment></comment>


Stanford makes introductory coding course available for free during Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://compedu.stanford.edu/codeinplace/announcement/?sf120435661=1 <comment><USER2> This is pretty nice - along with the hardships of the #covid19 era, some organizations and people are showing the best of humanity. There are several other companies and individuals offering free training/IT/mentorship services in one form or another - kudos to them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool.

Non-MOOC, live 6 week course.

Even if just a one-off, it's moving the needle towards the Lambda School live model.</comment>


Hygieia is a devops dashboard aggregator - <AUTHOR> https://hygieia.github.io/Hygieia/getting_started.html <comment><USER2> There is also BBVA's Mirrorgate that was inspired by Hygieia. It looks like Hygieia has been split out from Capital One and more connectors are being produced to make it usable by people who have other tools beyond just what they use.

If you're operating in a financial services world with audit requirements and other large scale organisation joys this could be well worth a look.

[https://github.com/BBVA/mirrorgate](https://github.com/BBVA/mirrorgate)

</comment><comment><USER3> We gave it a try a few years back. But between the [odd-looking docker builds]([https://hygieia.github.io/Hygieia/api.html#docker-image- for-...](https://hygieia.github.io/Hygieia/api.html#docker-image-for-api)) and the amount of work it was taking to make it work, we chose to use Grafana instead to display the result of our custom data collectors.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't find any screenshots on the home page?

<comment><USER5> Agreed, very hard to find. It's a bit strange to hide it so deeply given the nature of the project but I found it eventually.[0]

They also have a decent looking youtube demo (couldn't listen so basing that solely on the visual aspect).[1]

[0] - [https://hygieia.github.io/Hygieia/screenshots.html](https://hygieia.github.io/Hygieia/screenshots.html)

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoNTA78j0tc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoNTA78j0tc)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for digging for those. And they look good. Would be nice if they were front page matter, right after hero-text

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> CapitalOne is quite exuberant about their NIH (rebranded as InnerSource) but most of the stuff they churn out isn't useful as a real open source product.

<comment><USER8> I can see this source, it even appears to be Apache 2 licensed. What is the cutoff for "real" open source?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not the smartest choice of name, to say the least.

<comment><USER10> revelant google searches give me an ancient Greek/Roman diety and an insulin pump. what's so offensive about those?

<comment><USER9> Nothing offensive, it will just be misspelt all the time.</comment></comment></comment>


Lenovo settles FTC charges that Superfish software compromised security - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/09/lenovo-settles-ftc-charges-it-harmed-consumers-preinstalled <comment><USER2> "In addition, the company is required for 20 years to implement a comprehensive software security program for most consumer software preloaded on its laptops. The security program will also be subject to third-party audits."

So basically. . .Lenovo laptops have to come with anti-virus? I'm curious what "comprehensive software security program" entails, and whether or not it'd be free for consumers.</comment>


DDNet for Mac, Windows, Linux, Web - def- http://ddnet.tw/?

<comment> def- Some of the things about this game HN might appreciate:

\- Cross-Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux, Web ( [http://teewebs.net](http://teewebs.net) ), Android (spectating mostly): [http://ddnet.tw/downloads/](http://ddnet.tw/downloads/)

\- Open Source ( [https://github.com/def-/ddnet](https://github.com/def-/ddnet) ), non-profit

\- JavaScript Map previews: [http://ddnet.tw/maps/?map=Just2Easy](http://ddnet.tw/maps/?map=Just2Easy)

\- Official servers worldwide [http://ddnet.tw/status/](http://ddnet.tw/status/)

\- Worldwide ranking system with thousands of players: [http://ddnet.tw/ranks/](http://ddnet.tw/ranks/)

We're sorely missing a tutorial on how to get started. Here's the gist of it:

\- the goal is to get to the finish, together with everyone else

\- Novice servers with 1 star map are easiest

\- move with a and d, jump with space, hook with right mouse click, shoot with left mouse click, change weapon with mouse wheel

\- pause with q, p or pause key, spectate another player with right shift

\- kill yourself with k or pos1

\- chat with t, teamchat with y</comment>


Twitch mass-bans users, including partners, doesn't respond to questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1r64e8/apology_official_twitch_response_to_controversy/

<comment><USER2> Personally defaming and harassing people? Following them offsite to social media? Users go too far sometimes.

I understand being disappointed by a company's actions, but how about a little perspective? There is a strange sense of entitlement that begins to set in among some users, which causes them to see the company's slightest misstep as some sort of grave injustice. There is always the option to stop using a service. Instead they form angry mobs, attacking people personally? It's like anything goes if a company upsets users/customers. Is it the powerlessness these people feel IRL that drives them to these extremes?

And, when you look at the _real_ injustice in the world--that frequently goes unchallenged--are emoticons on a forum really worthy of this level of intensity?</comment>


How to work out the optimum burn rate for a startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bugherd.com/getting-to-optimum-burn-a-deeper-look/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. If you replaced R(t) with a stochastic process, perhaps with a time-dependent drift, you could incorporate a degree of uncertainty into your revenue predictions. You would then be able to solve for the optimal burn rate B(t) using stochastic optimal control. Maybe that's getting a bit too extreme though.

I wonder if anybody has applied stochastic modelling to the early stages of a start-up; treating the choice of VC funding, exit timing, etc as real-options.</comment>


A crash course in just-in-time compilers (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/02/a-crash-course-in-just-in-time-jit-compilers/ <comment><USER2> One of my favorite little things about the calculus of JIT tuning is that a faster interpreter can give you a better JIT. When the interpreter is 'good enough' more often, then you compile fewer functions. If you compile fewer functions, you can budget more resources for the ones you do, giving you better performance.

Some have taken a different tack, use no interpreter at all, and instead dump the simplest, fastest compile they possibly can on first execution.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Interpreters are quick to get up and running. You don't have to go through > that whole compilation step before you can start running your code. You just > start translating that first line and running it.

> Because of this, an interpreter seems like a natural fit for something like > JavaScript. It's important for a web developer to be able to get going and > run their code quickly.

> And that's why browsers used JavaScript interpreters in the beginning.

I'm curious, is that true? How did the original JavaScript interpreter handle code like this:

      var r = test();  // not defined yet
      alert( r );  // 42
      alert( typeof result );  // "undefined"

      function test() {
          result = 42;  // local because of 'var' below
          return result;
          var result;
      }

Was there a first pass to find "hoisted" function and var statements? Or did it compile to bytecode? Or...?

<comment><USER4> I'm not an expert, but as far as I know, the first step is always to get an abstract syntax tree, which is needed to check for syntax errors and have the program in an usable representation. This means that your first pass always reads all the code and allows handling this case, possibly without getting into the hard work of optimizing, creating the variables etc.

That, or the early JS interpreters simply couldn't handle that case - I've never heard of this, though.

<comment><USER5> I don't think creation of a syntax tree is always explicit; I have read C compiler source codes that use one pass with back-patching and the usable representation is bytecode or machine code. One could reckon that the AST is implicit during code generation as functions call each other to generate the code. A valid JS interpreter could just do what the statements say using dictionaries for each scope, linked together to allow levels of scope with the right semantics.

<comment><USER6> It's worth noting that the scoping of names in C language is designed to be solvable in one pass: you can't use a function before it's declared. Most newer languages instead require a full pass to discover all the available names, to allow functions to not require a separate declaration before all uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I once saw an article by this author, read all the rest and then forgot where I found it. I spent days devouring the net. Thank you for posting this!

<comment><USER8> Psst…I think you may have been reaching for "scouring" ;)

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Tho now imagining myself devouring the internet sounds like some tech- god sci-fi scene.</comment></comment></comment>


Startups Surviving Covid-19: A series of Interviews - Ozzie-D https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXgmOXJohzmsYIWQSsFplC8GKU4VCWP9y <comment> Ozzie-D In a series of interviews we are talking to the key people & founders in the London Startup Ecosystem in an effort to understand how they have been effected and how they are adapting.

From a Travel Startup (Stasher) to a one that works in healthcare (Pando) their experiences can be quite diffferent. We have completed 6 interviews to date and they will be published on our channels every other day.

The rest is on [https://startupsoflondon.com](https://startupsoflondon.com)</comment>


Laptop, WiFi, wanderlust: the rise of the digital nomad - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/11/digital-nomads-work-technology-asia-cities-wifi <comment><USER2> Constant change can be exhausting. Routine is ok, it frees the mind for bigger problems.</comment>


FBI seeks to monitor Facebook, oversee mass social media data collection - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/fbi-seeks-to-monitor-facebook-oversee-mass-social-media-data-collection/ <comment><USER2> The article describes FB being stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand:

> [The FBI] is planning to aggressively harvest [publicly available] > information from Facebook and Twitter [via third-party vendors].

..and on the other:

> ..the nature of the [$5 billion settlement with the US Federal Trade > Commission] requires Facebook to prevent mass data gathering without consent > -- whether or not the information is public or set to private.

> [FB's policy includes] a ban imposed on developers for "[using] data > obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance."

I'm sure an exception can be made (by legal force) to provide a FaceBook Integration platform for all interested parties. The only loser here is the public.

</comment><comment><USER3> People claim the slippery slope argument when you complain about tech surveillance, but now it is almost a turnkey situation for a government to begin attempting to predict and control a given behaviour at a historically impossible scale.

They can just pick the thing they want to try to monitor and manipulate and most of the data and collection/analysis infrastructure is there waiting.</comment>


SEO Meets Magic: The Gathering (SEO card game) - <AUTHOR> http://SERPsandSpyders.com

<comment><USER2> What makes this like Magic, specifically? That it's a CCG?

It's just one of those silly, harmless marketing things that can start someone off on the wrong foot. Magic is a CCG, sure, but it's a _specific_ CCG, with a specific ruleset and idioms. Leaving the characteristic appearance aside, the game of Magic itself is both very accessible and of fascinating complexity, and for skilled players has at least several times the strategic depth of a more pedestrian game such as, say, chess.

Of course, it happens to _also_ be a collectible card game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. Great question.

SERPs & Spyders is similar to Magic: The Gathering because the cards are collectable, vary in efficacy and purpose, and the cards can be combined to multiply their attack strength (certain SEO tactics work well together).

It's also similar to MTG because you try and dominate the other player's played card(s) with your own, better card(s).

SERPs & Spyders is also incredibly dissimilar to MTG. Each card contains an actual SEO tactic you can use online. The cards can also be a reference tool or help you build/rethink your online SEO strategies.</comment></comment>


'Robot Dogs' May Soon Guard Air Force Bases, Aided by Starlink Satellites - <AUTHOR> https://www.technocracy.news/robot-dogs-may-soon-guard-air-force-bases/ <comment><USER2> Meanwhile Russia claims to be working on a multi-km range EMP [1] and it's a constant battle to keep foreign nation state hack teams out of sensitive, increasingly software-driven, weapons development. The scenario of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica pilot worries me.

[1] [https://defence-blog.com/news/army/russia-discloses-new- deta...](https://defence-blog.com/news/army/russia-discloses-new-details-of- electromagnetic-pulse-cannon.html#)

</comment><comment><USER3> Snow Crash here we come.

[https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Rat_Things_(Snow_Crash)](https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Rat_Things_\(Snow_Crash\))</comment>


No, Humans Will Never Achieve Interstellar Travel - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2016/07/no-humans-will-never-achieve-interstellar-travel/ <comment><USER2> Well as long as we feel that limited, I guess we will be. I would rather think that we will uncover/relearn that we do not have physics solved and we come to a new understanding of natural limits. Unless we all get stuck watching AGT and playing Pokemon GO and choose to give up on everything else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. The title is a little misleading compared to the content of the article. I was expecting to see something in the line of "interstellar travel is impossible", but it ended up being "it's the next thing after humans who will achieve it, not human themselves".

</comment><comment><USER4> I think I agree with this.

</comment><comment><USER5> see also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12046235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12046235)</comment>


All About Recursion and Tail Calls in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://lucasfcosta.com/2017/05/08/All-About-Recursion-PTC-TCO-and-STC-in-JavaScript.html <comment><USER2> What I don't understand with STCs is, how would I, as a developer, decide when to use them and when not?

As program correctness is concerned, tail calls and recursive calls should behave exactly the same (except stack use), so going by correctness alone, either the choice doesn't matter at all or tail calls are preferable. So the logical thing to do would be to always use tail calls.

The post goes on to list a number of disadvantages, but those seem to be either debugging concerns or platform-specific implementation concerns.

The former doesn't seem to be something that should be solved in the code - the document itself lists a number of solutions. The latter is not something that I as developer could judge as I likely don't have knowledge about the specific implementation of the platform the code is running on (if I know the platform in advance at all)

So it seems to me, STC shifts the problem of deciding to the developer even though the developer has no good tools to actually solve it.

<comment><USER3> You absolutely should have knowledge of your target platform and whether it does TCO (and whether it kicks in for your code).

Otherwise, you may decide to just use recursion everywhere and then your stack overflows when your N is bigger than expected.

When in doubt, don't use recursion and don't expect that you get TCO.

<comment><USER2> > _You absolutely should have knowledge of your target platform and whether it > does TCO_

If I write web apps, as far as I'm concerned, my platform is V8, Whatevermonkey, Trident and every other hypothetical javascript engine out there, any of which might or might not support TCO under different circumstances.

> _When in doubt, don 't use recursion and don't expect that you get TCO._

I think _relying_ on TCO is always a bad idea, exactly because you can't be sure your platform supports it. But STC doesn't change that. You can't expect the platform to support tail calls because you did some magic incantations.

On the other hand, it doesn't make sense to me to _forbid_ tail calls either. If you know your recursive code will work without TCO, it will work with TCO, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Until ES6 which introduces Tail Call Optimization, you can use trampolines.

Small summary code: [http://paste.ubuntu.com/24568118/](http://paste.ubuntu.com/24568118/)

<comment><USER5> Trampoline would make a nice addition to Ramda. Unless I'm missing it under an unexpected name?

[http://ramdajs.com/](http://ramdajs.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the best way to benchmark perf optimizations in JavaScript. I see lot of articles like this with no time and memory usage stats. I would like to hear an answer from someone who has experience using gdb or visual studio while studying performance. Whenever I use the chrome debugger to time anything involving async calls and recursion I have this uncomfortable feeling I am not getting it right. With gdb or visual studio C/C# I always feel like I know what is going on.

<comment><USER7> Having worked on this pretty extensively, my preferred method is: (1) make two implementations of the function I'm trying to speed up, (2) add a wrapper so half of that function's calls get sent to each version, and then (3) profile in Chrome and compare the results (particularly the time spent in the two alternate implementations, but overall as well).

I know that's not the gdb-like experience you're looking for, but as far as I've found it's the best approach. The issue is that modern JS engines achieve their speed by tracking what happens at runtime and dynamically re-optimizing hot functions - so microbenchmarks are largely meaningless, and the performance of a given function can hugely affected by code that's far away.

(The above is for everyday. For extreme deep-diving, one can use JS engine tools to see what kind of internal representation your code has been compiled into after it got optimized. In chrome this is done with IRHydra - [http://mrale.ph/irhydra/2/](http://mrale.ph/irhydra/2/) .)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for link. Didn't know this was possible. Also will try your wrapper approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> JavaScript TCO can't be feature detected so how do you know when tail calls are safe to use in front end or library code that can run on a variety of clients?

<comment><USER3> You don't. Assume you don't get it. Right now, chances are you don't get it anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Which js implementations currently support TCO?

<comment><USER10> Javascriptcore (so all the webkits :) )</comment></comment>


Show HN: Set up a 4 node Cassandra cluster in under 2 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://screenr.com/5G6

<comment><AUTHOR> The tool used to ssh in parallel is <http://code.google.com/p/csshx/>

<comment><USER2> Nice. For OS X users, iTerm/iTerm2 "Send Input to All Tabs" mode (⌘-I) is another way to go about that.

<comment><USER3> Terminator (<http://www.tenshu.net/terminator/> \- not to be confused with <http://software.jessies.org/terminator/>) can group terms similarly on systems with gtk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that deb and rpm packages are available, too.

<http://wiki.apache.org/cassandra/DebianPackaging> <http://rpm.datastax.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> How do you secure the ring? Should you use iptables so that only the other 3 hosts are allowed on the cassandra port? That seems like a bit much.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can either allow traffic between one or more subnets, or put gossip traffic on a private network.</comment></comment>


Remember when being a geek meant something? - <AUTHOR> http://arvindn.livejournal.com/126305.html <comment><USER2> Oh yes, I remember it like it was yesterday.

My dad used to take me to the carnival to see the geeks. I was always horrified and begged him not to, but dear old dad really just loved to see the guy with no arms biting the heads off chickens, or the bearded lady who would put a nail up her nostril.

Later in life, when the geeks I'd seen long ago were in a punk band featured regularly on MTV, I would brag about having seen them when I was a child, though. Sometimes I even invented stories about having been a geek myself. It wasn't a total fabrication - there was a period of time where I was really considering a career in unicycle.

You know what I mean?

</comment><comment><USER3> You have to ponder this picture with what people look like at that time. If you take an old picture, almost everybody look completly out of fashion today.

</comment><comment><USER4> Zuckerberg isn't a geek in my book. In fact there are almost no geeks left. I don't think people born after 1980 will understand why.

But I can't fight it, and I just don't use the word geek anymore. Like hacker and terrorist it is no longer used correctly and there is no fighting it.</comment>


Ask HN: Categories for HN? - <AUTHOR>

If a categories feature existed , what types of categories would you see Hacker News having? <comment><USER2> I'd prefer there to not be categories. There's definitely something to be said for the discovery and discussion that occurs when the only prefiltering you can really do is based on the title of the article. There's something nice about forcing everyone to coexist in the same bubble. Plus, there's already Reddit for granular discussion.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. But, hypothetically speaking...

<comment><USER2> Programming, hardware, science, business, economics, policy?</comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Kindle Singles - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=pe_132950_18514490_pe_btn/?node=2486013011

<comment><USER3> To paraphrase Alan Kay: "The eBook revolution hasn't happened yet." A particular medium carries practical limitations with it. When new media are introduced, people carry on with the outmoded practical limitations of the old medium.

This happened with vinyl and CDs. Even though artists were no longer limited to two 23 minute sides, many of them carried on in that pattern. (In part to support users of the old media technology.)

This is a good "rock" to look under: examine what the practical limitations of current media are that don't apply to new media.

<comment><USER4> IDEABOLT: It is well-known that the media constrains the creator, but (as Hofstadter so eloquently explains in _Le Ton Beau De Marot_ ) constraints lea to innovation.

AFAIK, currently we have the following new media transformations/revolutions going on (in order of how far they are in the transformation):

1\. Music: The old N songs bundles in one container is gone. Note that the replacement of LPs with CDs didn't bring in the revolution, it was just repackaging. MP3 players did it.

2\. News: N news items bundled in a paper is getting replaced by news readers that mix and match

3\. Book publishing: Natural constraints of having N words in a book (after all, it's hard to publish a book with 20-30 pages, although this seems to be the natural length of many business books)

4\. TV: The constraint of watching live has been broken (thanks to DVRs) but programs are still relatively arbitrarily grouped by channels.

In most cases, a new device brings about the major change (MP3 player, iPad, Kindle, DVR). The last frontier, I think is TV, where arbitrary sets of programs are combined into channels which are in turn bundled into sets (i.e. you can't only subscribe to a list of channels you select).

Companies that aim to transform one of these fields should understand that they need to be in the business of _producing_ at least some of the content in that field, they can't just be bit pushers and rehashers. That's why, Amazon should publish books and have short story competitions for Kindle Singlets and Google (and Apple) should buy a TV station or at least a production company.

<comment><USER5> _Companies that aim to transform one of these fields should understand that they need to be in the business of producing at least some of the content in that field, they can't just be bit pushers and rehashers._

Indeed, but as it has happened with Sony, the publishing arm of the company can hobble the device producing arm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure what " _natural length_ " is, but my workflow for something like this on my Kindle 3 is pretty simple:

1\. Subscribe to feeds from longform.org, longreads.com and givemesomethingtoread.com

2\. Open interesting articles and save for reading later in Instapaper

3\. Set up Instapaper to deliver wirelessly to Kindle

Bam! Instant periodic 'short story' subscription service.

<comment><USER7> Thankyou for introducing me to longform.org & longreads.com - both are excellent!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This should give quite a shot of adrenaline to the short story market. Especially for someone like me who never reads magazines.

I wonder if they'll move away from such a heavily curated model at some point.

<comment><USER4> Excellent idea! Read the introductions of any of the past 20 years _Best American Short Stories_ books and they always ask the question "Is the short story dead" and lament the decrease in the number of magazines that exclusively publish short fiction. I think there was an experiment in the UK where people could buy single stories printed in map-like format at tube stations.

Editors don't like short stories because you have to have a lot, e.g. at least 5-6, to publish as a decent book, and coming up with that many good short stories is not within everybody's capability (same thing with having to have ~10 songs for a CD). This new medium may just be the thing to spur story writers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I see it the problem with the search (Google) is finding trusted sources. Newspapers are dying. We have corporate garbage for news in the U.S. Over the past 4 years I've restricted my news sources to some bloggers. A number of them experts in various areas.

I think this product could be a replacement for newspapers. Instead of an article about today's events one gets a nice technical overview of, say, the events in Tunisia written by an expert. This could fill the medium between full blown research paper and dumbed down news broadcasts.

<comment><USER10> In my opinion the Economist provides some good in depth overviews of events, such as those currently taking place in Tunisia.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. Wouldn't it be nice if there was an Economist-"briefing"-style overview on dozens/hundreds of topics instantly available on the kindle? Like something between the Wikipedia article and a book?

<comment><USER12> BBC News website has generally done a pretty good job of that.

Dunno how long that'll last with the slash-and-burn situation there lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess Amazon has found a way to charge $3 for a short story.

Why not buy a copy of Analog Magazine, or McSweeney's, or any other good periodical with quality fiction, and get several short stories for the same price?

<comment><USER14> I think you're missing the point. These are more than short stories:

1\. They fall somewhere between a blog post and book. If you have 50 - <USER2> pages to write on something you either have to turn it into 50 blog posts or 300 page book. The focus here is on length appropriate works.

3\. These are non-fiction (at least most of them) works that tend to be by amateur experts. What that means is that they are amateur writers writing on topics they are experts in. This allows my dad to write an Amazon Kindle Single on Vietnam or Economic Development and publish it. This is a huge win for amateur experts!

3\. This is just the start, and I expect we'll see a lot of people moving in this direction, particularly people with huge followings. Imagine if someone with 100,000+ reach can sell 5,000 of these every 2 or 3 months.

<comment><USER15> _3\. These are non-fiction (at least most of them) works that tend to be by amateur experts. What that means is that they are amateur writers writing on topics they are experts in. This allows my dad to write an Amazon Kindle Single on Vietnam or Economic Development and publish it. This is a huge win for amateur experts!_

Sometimes they're also for non-amateur experts publishing something that doesn't slot easily into the classic article / book item. I'm thinking here of Tyler Cowen's _The Great Stagnation_, which I just wrote about: [http://jseliger.com/2011/01/26/the-great-stagnation-how- amer...](http://jseliger.com/2011/01/26/the-great-stagnation-how-america-ate- all-the-low-hanging-fruit-of-modern-historygot-sick-and-will-eventually-feel- better-tyler-cowen/) primarily because the material is interesting and useful and partially because it's useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I though this was a dating site! It wouldn't be a terrible idea for one..

<comment><USER17> Singles meet and exchange their Kindles to know each other... or just use the lending feature?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Other than the size liste in KB, is there anyway to estimate the length of these items prior to purchasing them? I can't see one. (I know "pages" may be an antiquated way of looking at things now that we can dynamically reflow layout, but I would like an idea of what I am getting into before I purchase something.)

<comment><USER19> At the bottom of the Product Description, it has pagecount in parentheses (e.g. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004K1F9KG/ref=docs-os- doi_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004K1F9KG/ref=docs-os-doi_0) says (34 pages))

<comment><USER18> Thanks, I missed that totally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't get it, could someone give a better explanation than Amazon did?

<comment><USER21> Explanation 1: Imagine writing a lengthy blog post, article or something similar - and actually getting paid for it. That's what Amazon is trying here. By coming from a different angle, "books", where we have a traditional readiness to pay, Amazon is trying to create a pay-per-article business model.

Explanation 2: a Book needs to have a certain minimum length (80 pages or so). A magazine article has a certain maximum length (20 pages or so). Inbetween, there wasn't a market for selling something, so far. That's what Amazon is trying.

Explanation 3: Most business books actually have a few good core ideas, plus a lot of fluff. The fluff is to get at a minimum length and be at a position where you can actually sell "a thing" (book). It's so widespread that several companies like getabstract started selling just the core stuff. With the core stuff, Amazon gets nothing. This is a ploy by Amazon to get some of this business.

<comment><USER20> Wow, totally didn't get that from the link. Thank you very much, makes a lot of sense now and seems pretty smart too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I read the headline, my first thought is that they've come full circle, and are releasing Kindles with a single book on them. I had to check and make sure it wasn't April 1st yet.

<comment><USER22> I also thought perhaps April had come early. I thought a Kindle Single was just a tongue-in-cheek name for a book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So how do we submit stuff to be published there?

</comment><comment><USER24> I love this idea. Just reading about this brought to mind half a dozen books I've read that would undoubtedly be better and more accessible if they were shorter. Until now, those books stood no chance of getting published.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm still waiting for someone to allow me to to "scan" my books into a digital format like I can "rip" my cds to an mp3. Once that happens, I'll be 100% digital.

<comment><USER24> [http://www.amazon.com/Plustek-91N-BBM31-A-Book- Scanner/dp/B0...](http://www.amazon.com/Plustek-91N-BBM31-A-Book- Scanner/dp/B000VQWE48)

<comment><USER25> I was hoping for something similar to delicious library - <http://www.delicious-monster.com/> \- where you scan the bar code and you have access to it in your library :). (yes, there are tons of ways to abuse this, but it'd still be nice)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of the penguin great ideas series: [http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/greatideas...](http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/greatideas/index.html)</comment>


Data Science Bootcamp in South America (Data and Travel) - <AUTHOR> http://www.basecamp.ai/data-and-travel <comment><AUTHOR> Travel to Colombia and sit in the sun - while becoming a kick-ass Data Scientist in 8 weeks! BaseCamp Data & Travel will take place in Medellín, from July to September. Explore the country, find new friends and bring your career to the next level! Applications are open until 30th of April 2017.</comment>


Ask HN: What is community acquired herd immunity? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, maybe I'll make a post of this instead of posing it as a question, that might create a discussion.

Oops, looks like that has already been done heh.</comment></comment>


The LeetCode Effect - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/the-leetcode-effect-b0ccb961ce03 <comment><USER2> Leetcode inherently isn't the problem. But the reliance on leetcode for whole of the interview process is. I have taken far more interviews than I have given and one thing I have observed over a period of time is that, engs right out of college were able to code these problems much faster than older more seasoned professionals, who were a bit rusty. But they make up in real life experience. Its a huge red flag, if senior folks struggle with basic concepts like load balancing or lack know-hows of industry practices.

The interview process needs to calibrate these and balance the process accordingly. Things like Dynamic programming is very rarely used, but asking them during interview process gives you very little signal about the candidates problem solving . Since, either they can (they have seen it before) or they cannot. Its very rare that, someone figured out these by their own.</comment>


Where does music come from? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/where-does-music-come-from/63160/

<comment><USER2> As a habitual tapper of things and singer of nonsensical syllables, I agree with the conjecture that music originates with the sound of people moving, but it also originates in everything we hear as we sit still and listen to other things move. And like spoken language (I think), as the music we produce grows from its roots, it is influenced by out exposure to cultural artifacts, including other music.

An interesting area for inspection is the spectrum between organic music, technical music, abstract music, and emotional music. Is the original music we produce from simply moving tied to an emotional experience? At what point do we begin understanding music as a language that can exist in absence of physical experience? It'll be a cool book if it delves into these kind of questions.</comment>


A MILLION Chrome users' data was sent to ONE dodgy IP address - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/08/one_million_chrome_users_data_stolen_browser_extension/

<comment><USER2> A million users of one Chrome extension sent some data to the IP address of the home office of the developers of that extension, a company. Hype title.

The security researcher/Analyst quoted in the article asserts the data went to "One dodgy IP" address of a server in the US therefore he "would take an educated guess it's not going to be good news." No mention at all of what kind of data it was, or if the data was encrypted in transit.

The only thing "sneaky" described in the article is the extension downloading this functionality after a few days, ostensibly to avoid detection by a Google review board or other security auditors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why are MILLION and ONE capitalized?

<comment><USER4> Clickbait.</comment></comment>


European companies that moved from Europe to the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.informilo.com/20101207/ones-got-away-322

<comment><USER2> Clickpass made the move from the UK to the US in 2008 and wrote about how they pulled it off on TechCrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/02/coming-to- america-getting-v...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/02/coming-to-america- getting-visas-to-do-business-in-silicon-valley/)

</comment><comment><USER3> europe is terrible for startups. too many regulations, too much bs too focus on work and the biggest issue is tgat most startups stay in their country and never cross any borders. and as it says in the article it's basically impossible to find investors because the mentality is not ready for risks blocking any chance for growth.</comment>


European Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Is Broadened - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/technology/18google.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Can someone explain why the EC is so into internet companies like Google these days? Is it just the smell of money and succes they are after?

Google is a company..! Why is it wrong for them to promote their own products in the search results. Maybe I am too liberal for this, but imo the EC has nothing to do with the Google search algoritm. If customers don't like it they can use Yahoo or Bing.

<comment><USER2> Google is massively bigger than Yahoo or Bing. They have or are close to having monopoly power in search (It doesn't take 100% to be a monopoly for antitrust purposes). When a company achieves that much dominance in a market, regulators generally frown on them using that dominance to gain power in other markets.</comment></comment>