cloakandswagger

There are many private forums still out there that are invite-only or have an entry fee, and some of them have communities as large and "healthy" as SA during its hay day

SA was the first forum I really got involved in and I posted there for years. When I was there I thought it was the pinnacle of comedy; I'd never been exposed to that brand of humor before it, and I thought it was genius.

When I look at SA today it just seems juvenile and try-hard. Really, painfully unfunny.

I think part of it has to do with the stricter moderation; SA in the early 2000s was 4chan before I knew there was a 4chan, and I appreciated the raucous, sometimes offensive humor.

Moreover though I think you're right, SA is still SA. My ideas about what is funny have changed, but SA is still the same.

Have you seen the movie this topic is about? If not I highly encourage you to watch it. Blind nationalist attitudes like yours are what will cause the disaster it depicts.

You're getting downvoted but what you said is the truth.

All of this marketing around the miracle of investing small amounts (if you invested $100 into the market 20 years ago it'd be worth $1M today!) is just that, marketing. It's a way for brokerages and mutual fund salesmen to get more people into the game.

The brutal reality is that you need at LEAST $10K to ever see an appreciable return from the market. Investing $500 is a waste of your time unless you go into it with the understanding that:

A) You might make $50 a year from it

B) You're going to make an effort to actually learn about the stock market, fundamental analysis, etc with the aim of better knowing what you're doing when you have a bigger bankroll to invest.

"Do as we say, not as we do"

Doubling down on or simply ignoring controversy seems to be the best course of action in today's outrage culture.

Look at Trump: He never apologizes for anything, and controversies and scandals slide off of him like they were nothing.

It seems so obvious to me that I've been tempted to try my hand at the crisis management business, but I fear a strategy of "do nothing" isn't very protectable.

"Death to all jews" -crooked-v 3/27/17

"Just a sign of weak tooling."

Why does technical overhead take a backseat whenever a microservices vs monolith discussion comes up?

Yes, in a perfect world every org would have sufficient time and engineering resources to implement microservices for better scalability and code quality. In the real world, setting up and maintaining microservices has huge technical overhead, I'd estimate double that of the equivalent monolithic architecture.

If your company isn't flush with cash and the product you're building will never need massive scaling then it makes no sense to use microservices, at least from a business perspective.

IBM, JP Morgan, et al. are developing private blockchains with the aim of cheap, semi-distributed consensus and uniformity. That is what it provides over an SQL database.

Take for instance the options contract market. Let's say you have a pool of 50 trusted brokerages and financial institutions that rapidly trade these contracts. The current solution is each entity has their own custom, internal tracking system along with either a centralized service that they all communicate with, or inter-party connections. In either case, this is fragile, highly expensive to build and maintain and is often slow.

The blockchain isn't a miracle technology like these articles portray it as, and IBM, JP Morgan, et al don't see it that way anyway. It is a convenience tool for a more robust ledger that will lower costs for trusted inter-party transactions.

Slippery slope. If I tell someone on the internet to kill themselves and it turns out they're actually suicidally depressed, should I be charged with a crime?

What if I post something that's just really offensive? I feel like we've entered a time where people would gladly see the First Amendment trodden over if it means seeing "justice" doled out to nasty people.

I'd argue the game doesn't really have that either. Combat feels really simple and hasn't changed for me over the course of 10 hours of play; swing, jump back, dodge, swing..

On what grounds do you dispute the figure?

Pharmaceuticals are only about 10% of all healthcare costs [1].

The vast majority of healthcare spending goes to hospitals and doctors, yet the political environment hyper focuses on drugmakers. Why isn't there a larger focus on reducing the costs of hospitals and healthcare professionals?

[1] http://www.pfizer.com/files/about/Position-Role-of-Pharmaceu...

I'm sure someone savvy enough to use end-to-end encrypted communication channels will switch to less secure methods based off of a headline /s

RTFA. They didn't release the tools.

Just like they committed to revealing exploits to the tech industry instead of hoarding them?

This is what made me hold off on preordering.

It seems so ill-conceived, and I can't imagine how it will work. Does in-game audio get piped to your phone? If not, what are you supposed to do? Have two sets of earbuds, one from your phone and one from the device?

Also, what's with the console's lack of an ethernet port? Everything I've seen suggests that Nintendo did not prioritize online play when designing the Switch.

How do you counter the description of the network in this article? It seems like de-facto hubs will form out of necessity to avoid creating a channel on the fly, which requires getting a transaction committed to the blockchain.

https://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/lightning-networ...

I don't even bother with r/bitcoin anymore. The level of groupthink is insufferable, but hard for me to say whether it formed naturally or via direct influence (considering it's Reddit, both are likely)

I've been an outside observer of the block size debate for a while now, so here is my naive take on it:

The anti-block size increase camp says that increasing the block size is only a temporary fix, and that no blockchain can accommodate Visa levels of throughput.

They also posit that any increase in the block size will make running a full node more difficult, meaning Bitcoin will become more and more centralized and consolidated around the big mining pools that have the hardware to handle bigger block sizes.

However, many in the anti camp are pro segwit (segregated witness), a code change that does several things and is the first step to enabling off-chain networks like Lightning Network. These are basically pools of Bitcoins tracked by networks off the blockchain that would allow you to instantly exchange Bitcoins to anyone else in your network.

This is a big problem for miners who have poured lots of money into their rigs, because now the blockchain would be little more than a settlement network. There would be far more transactions occurring off the network, meaning less money for miners.

Again I'm no expert on this but this seems to be the crux of the debate. The Core developers seem to be OK with having the blockchain relegated to being a settlement network (similar to how Visa, your bank and merchants work together), but many people are opposed to this, partly because these off-chain networks would quickly form large central "hubs" which would obviate many of the benefits of Bitcoin (anonymity, privacy, security and decentralization).

"Disingenuous" seems fair to me. The land is suddenly sacred and inviolable when someone asks to build a pipeline near it (not on it), but the massive casinos these tribes erect on their "sacred" land isn't an issue.

I would be more amenable to the tribes if they were honest and upfront about what they're doing: a form of collective bargaining to maximize compensation from the government.

This only works if you're confident you can force every nation on earth to stop or slow down extraction from their oil reserves. Let me assure you, the resultant wars would be far more damaging to the environment than otherwise.

The debate over the pipelines seems to be largely symbolic. The oil is going to get pulled out of the oilsands and transported either way, it only seems logical (and probably more ecological) to use a giant pipe instead of trucks/trains.

Can someone elaborate on what Chef Steps business model is?

The last time I tried to figure it out, they seemed to be a premium recipe/cooking classes website (bordering more on food porn, the videos seemed more artsy than useful to me) that is also pushing a sous vide machine. Am I right in assuming that the Joule is their pivot away from the online cooking lessons?

>It's the US' problem to find what to sell. And only the US can solve it.

This is completely wrong.

China has huge barriers in place to dissuade the importation of products that compete with their own. 30% tariffs on certain items, selective application of VAT and currency manipulation all make it near impossible for the US to sell goods in China.

What would be better in this case? Should anyone be able to show up to an airport, pay for a ticket and board a flight anonymously?

I'm a pretty staunch libertarian and even I can see the benefit here. Until we reach the border-less, one-world utopia that so many people seem to be gunning for, it's valuable to know who is coming/going from your country.

Odd, I don't see a lot of blatant trolling on HN at all. Care to name some examples?

First step with any trauma is to stop the bleeding. Therapy and recovery come later and take a long time.

I propose all human beings be allocated a 10x10 meter concrete apartment (15x15 if living with a partner, and 20x20 if you are permitted to have children).

Furthermore, everyone will be given a standard monthly food ration consisting of rice, dry beans and powdered milk.

Each resident can own up to 3 "luxury" items selected from a standard catalog.

Each resident is permitted to travel no more than 150 miles from their residence each month, and personal cars are banned.

Imagine how quickly we could heal the environment if everyone could agree to these common sense restrictions!