Hacker News Reader

mhartlon Bitcoin is over $100k

It’s true that, due to its volatility, Bitcoin is currently not a good store of value, at least in the short term. There’s an underlying truth, though, which is that Bitcoin is a potential store of value. In particular, it has all the necessary qualities of a monetary good, among them durability, divisibility, portability, verifiability, and above all scarcity.

Buying Bitcoin right now involves speculating that others will also see this potential, which is why it’s accurate to describe it for the moment as a speculative asset. The reason buying Bitcoin is a smart bet is that its monetary properties are so good that it has the potential to store a significant percentage of the world’s savings. Once that happens, its volatility will be much lower, so it will be a good store of value. And of course its purchasing power in current U.S. dollars will be much, much higher, which is why it’s a good idea to buy some now.

mhartlon Today is Y Combinator's 17th birthday

I followed YC from the time it was just a glimmer in pg’s eye (http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html). By the time I went through YC myself, in the Winter 2008, I felt like I was already late to the game. Eventually I realized W08 was still early, early days. (For example, the weekly dinners were generally cooked by pg himself. Also, the benches would see-saw up if someone on the wrong side left their seat—I’m sure some of you fellow old-timers now recall that idiosyncrasy with a strange sense of fondness.)

Congratulations to Y Combinator on 17 amazing years. Here’s to many more years to come!

mhartlon Launch HN: MutableAI (YC W22) – Automatically clean Jupyter notebooks using AI

I’ve been following this project closely (oshams is a friend and I’m an investor in the company), and to echo Darmani’s comment both the product and the pace of development have been extremely impressive. Congrats on the launch!

mhartlon Things You're Allowed to Do

This point is explicitly addressed in the post:

I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones).

mhartlon Euler's Formula: A Complete Guide

The Tau Manifesto shows how using tau = C/r makes the geometric meaning of Euler’s formula (and hence of Euler’s identity) even clearer. Disclaimer: I am the author of The Tau Manifesto.

https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto#sec-euler_s_identity

mhartlon Learn Enough Custom Domains to Be Dangerous

This is a free resource on custom domains from https://www.learnenough.com, written by me and Learn Enough cofounder Lee Donahoe.

Free downloadable ebook versions (PDF/EPUB/MOBI) are available at https://www.learnenough.com/custom-domains

mhartlon The Tau Manifesto Launched on Hacker News on Tau Day, 2010

For the latest tau updates, see this year’s State of the Tau newsletter:

https://tauday.com/state-of-the-tau

mhartlon The Anarchist Abstractionist – Who Was Alexander Grothendieck?

The article mentions Jean-Pierre Serre, with whom Grothendieck corresponded extensively, and Pierre Deligne, widely regarded as Grothendieck’s greatest student. While investigating Grothendieck recently (inspired by the interview linked in the parent comment), I came across this astonishing anecdote, relating a comment by Serre about Deligne [1]:

“Look, I can take on anyone in Math.” — don’t forget, this guy [Serre] is the youngest Fields medal winner ever, the first Abel prize laureate, etc. — “I can understand the reasoning of the greats, handle them new ideas, you name it.”

“Except for Deligne.” (WHAT ?)

“Deligne is totally out of my league. Above my head.”

“The difference between Deligne and me, is the same difference between me and an average good mathematician.”

I found this anecdote especially astonishing considering that at the time I had never even heard of Deligne. (And most people, of course, haven’t even heard of Grothendieck.)

[1]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-height-of-confidence/answe...

mhartlon The Anarchist Abstractionist – Who Was Alexander Grothendieck?

I recently enjoyed listening to this interview with someone who knew Grothendieck. It takes a while to get going, but some of the stories are quite gripping.

https://youtu.be/L--9bJApz_A

mhartlon Sundar will be the CEO of both Google and Alphabet

My read is that the parent commenter isn’t saying that Google is a failure, but rather that the “Alphabet” branding was a failure.

mhartlon Physicists simulate critical 'reheating' period that kickstarted the Big Bang

The article appears to be confusingly written, making reference to a time “before” the Big Bang:

Just before the Big Bang launched the universe onto its ever-expanding course, physicists believe, there was another, more explosive phase of the early universe at play: cosmic inflation, which lasted less than a trillionth of a second.

But cosmic inflation was part of the Big Bang, not something that happened “before” it. According to the current understanding, the Big Bang included the beginning of time itself—in more technical terms, the Universe has no boundary in time (or space)—so asking what happened “before” the Big Bang is akin to asking what’s north of the North Pole.

mhartlon The Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 6th Edition

This is the newly updated 6th edition of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial, now updated for Rails 6.

Over the years, HN readers have been some of the most enthusiastic and loyal supporters of the Ruby on Rails Tutorial. Thanks—I appreciate it!

mhartlon Rails 6.0

You’re very welcome! I’m always so happy to hear success stories like this.

mhartlon Rails 6.0

Great, glad to hear it!

mhartlon Rails 6.0

Congrats to the Rails team! With this new major release, I’m planning to update the Ruby on Rails Tutorial accordingly. See here for details:

https://news.learnenough.com/ruby-on-rails-6

You can join the Learn Enough/Rails Tutorial email list to receive a notification when it’s ready:

https://news.learnenough.com/email-list/

mhartlon Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

No worries! Great to hear your perspective.

mhartlon Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

We realized the same thing—the Rails Tutorial is a little too advanced for complete beginners, so we created seven more beginner tutorials that work step by step to teach the prerequisites for full-stack web development. More info on the courses is available here: https://www.learnenough.com

mhartlon Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?

Thanks! Glad you liked it. For total beginners, Learn Enough Command Line to Be Dangerous may be an even better place to start.

https://www.learnenough.com/command-line-tutorial

That tutorial is part of a series that takes you from beginner all the way to the Rails Tutorial. You can see the full sequence at https://www.learnenough.com/.

mhartlon Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

As the author of The Tau Manifesto, I’m well aware of this (pseudo-)argument, which is dealt with explicitly here: https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto#eq-euler_tau_zero

mhartlon Mathematics all-in-one cheat-sheet (2013) [pdf]

Someday the cover will read e^iτ = 1 and all will be right with the world.

mhartlon Free Wolfram Engine for Developers

There’s a link to send him an email, and the address is s.wolfram@wolfram.com. What a strange choice to own lastname.com and then use the email address f.lastname@lastame.com instead of firstname@lastname.com.

Perhaps it’s an issue of standardization inside the organization. In that case, perhaps one might make an exception for the founder & CEO.

mhartlon Mathematical Jargon Failures

Amen, brother!

(I am the author of The Tau Manifesto.)

mhartlon Ricky Jay’s Magical Secrets (1993)

This beautifully written New Yorker profile is what first got me hooked on Ricky Jay. It was clipped for me by a kind coworker at Harvard’s Cabot Science Library, who thought I’d like it. She was right. I bought and devoured Ricky’s book Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women, and later delighted in his brilliant show (recorded as an HBO special) Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants.

A few years after the profile was published, I got curious about Ricky’s website, rickyjay.com. I discovered that not only was there nothing on the site, but the domain itself was unregistered. Concerned that some squatter might snap it up, I registered it myself.

Over the next few years, I made several attempts to track down Ricky so that I could give him the domain, to no avail. Then I had a stroke of luck: while attending a performance of Michael Moschen (whose remarkable “juggling” skills were featured in the movie Labyrinth) at UC Irvine, I happened to recognize Ricky standing in the lobby during intermission. I introduced myself and got the ball rolling on the domain transfer, which later resulted in the site you can still see today.

A few years later, Ricky himself was performing at UCI, and my father and I had the good fortune of joining him onstage for a demonstration of card control and three-card Monte. After the show, Ricky was kind enough to sign my copy of Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women, as well as give me the card he’d cut neatly in half with a pair of giant scissors.

A few years after that, I learned that a young woman I was acquainted with knew Ricky well. When I told her the story of rickyjay.com, she insisted on setting up a dinner with Ricky and his wife Chrisann. Ricky recognized me from the Michael Moschen performance, and we ended up having a lovely time talking about magic, history, and various other subjects.

The last time I saw Ricky, I distinctly recall thinking that he didn’t look particularly healthy, so when I saw his name trending on Twitter I feared the worst. Alas, it was the worst. And yet, what a joy Ricky Jay was to all who knew him and his work. RIP to one of the all-time greats.

mhartlon Videos for "Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerous"

Happy to hear it!

mhartlon Videos for "Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerous"

These are the videos for Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerous, an introduction to Ruby that's designed as a complement to the Ruby on Rails Tutorial (good either before or after).

I generally recommend getting the videos bundled with the ebook, so that you'll have them all forever, but an online version of the book is also available for free here:

https://www.learnenough.com/ruby-tutorial

Enjoy!

mhartlon The Tools I Use to Write Books

Softcover was used for all the Learn Enough books as well. In fact, Learn Enough Ruby just came out today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17919998

mhartlon Learn Enough Ruby to Be Dangerous ebook

Link is to the announcement post. Online version is here:

https://www.learnenough.com/ruby-tutorial

Please let me know if you have any questions!

mhartlon Why Discord Is Sticking with React Native

The Discord iOS app has millions of daily active users and 4.8 stars with over 240k ratings. This has all been accomplished with a team of two engineers!

This is impressive.

mhartlon GitLab sees huge spike in project imports

My first thought when the MSFT/GitHub news broke was, "This is great news for GitLab."

mhartlon Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

As [Microsoft CEO Satya] Nadella increasingly moves the company away from complete dependence on the Windows operating system to more in-house development on Linux, the company needs new ways to connect with the broader developer community.

If you told me ten years ago that someday Microsoft would buy GitHub as part of its strategy to do "more in-house development on Linux", I'd have assumed the acquisition was announced on April 1.