mistermumble

Worthwhile article. But please correct the typo in the HN headline. (Even though it is in the original, it grates).

I have had a half-dozen gmail accounts over the past 10 years and all are active with no problem.

I have many pleasant memories of living in France many years ago: great food, strong respect for ideas, great ambiance. And, no, I did not speak French and never encountered any bias from the Parisians, despite my California way of speaking.

Berlin and Stockholm sound good too, have never been. But I would respond first to the nation that is proactively reaching out.

I don't view it as "cashing in on the Trump situation" as much as throwing a lifeline to those of us who are drowning in a sea of hate and anti-science.

Population control would have to begin with the US, which on a per-capita basis has more than double the emission than any other nation or region (China, European union, etc). More than 8 times the rate of populous nations like India and Indonesia.

How likely is that to happen, especially in Trump's America?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

See the section in the article with the heading "Dependency Injection". It talks about a specific scenario where there is one component that needs to show the state of the entire system (an activity light turned on, for example), where any component can trigger this, but the last component to become inactive turns the light off.

I agree that Assad is "stomping on innocents". But so are the rebels he is fighting, namely ISIS and Al Qaeda and similar groups in a smorgasbord of terror. Shall we bomb them too (and thereby strengthen Assad)? Mideast politics are horrendously complicated and need to be untangled carefully, as one would untangle the wiring in a bomb. Unintended consequences are the norm, unfortunately.

I think Kilo is a great little project, well-structured and very educational.

Another useful resource I've relied upon in the past, dates back to the 1990s: Freyja, which is Craig Finseth's emacs-like editor written in C.

Here is a list of features:

  * deletions are automatically saved into a "kill buffer" 
  * ability to edit up to 11 files at once 
  * ability to view two independent windows at once 
  * integrated help facility 
  * integrated menu facility, with help on all commands 
  * can record and play back keyboard macros 
  * supports file completion and limited directory operations 
  * includes a fully-integrated RPN type calculator 
 

It was designed for MS-DOS with the Cygwin terminal library.

I found the architecture to be very clean, and it is well explained in Finseth's classic book ("The Craft of Text Editing"). The book is worth reading even if you never touch the code: http://www.finseth.com/craft/

It uses a multi-buffer architecture roughly similar to Walter Bright's text editor (see sibling posting). (I knew about Finseth's editor years ago, but was not aware of Bright's work until now, thanks Walter!)

The Freyja source can be downloaded from: http://www.finseth.com/parts/freyja.php

Look for the link to "freyja30.exe" which turns out to be freyja30.zip (not an executable).

64 and still coding, although not full-time.

8 years ago I learned Objective-C and physics engines and published a number of mobile apps for IOS.

Nowadays I am learning Go, Solidity & Viper and writing blockchain-based dapps. Big fun.

If one wanted to overthink this, one could say there is a "calculus of privilege" that depends upon context.

In many contexts (geographical and social contexts), being white, male and America adds up to maximum privilege.

But in other contexts, white and male usually add up to a positive -- but being American can subtract (which is why backpackers are returning to the habit of sewing the Canadian flag patch on their gear, even if they are from the US).

In the era of Trump, the attribute of being American has turned negative, in many places.

I suppose the bottom line is that if you are placing yourself in different contexts, don't assume that that calculus of privilege works the same way on the Russian border as it does in Virginia or Indiana.

And if you are a Sikh in the United States, that calculus, which was at best neutral, has now turned sharply negative, sad to say.

Minor correction: it was Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame) who said "Information wants to be free". Paul Graham may have quoted it -- along with a multitude of others, since it was first uttered in 1984.

Actually turns out the original quote attributed to Brand is not quite right. There is a qualifier ("Information almost wants to be free"), but that qualifier dropped off along the way.

See http://www.digitopoly.org/2015/10/25/information-wants-to-be...

Solidity is the most widely adopted language, but there are other choices including Serpent (Python-like)and LLL (lisp-like).

A few developers I know use Serpent because it is simple and stable (meaning it has not been changed or updated for a while, unlike Solidity which they say is continually being tweaked in a manner that can be aggravating).

Interestingly, Vitalik's preferred language (say for prototyping Casper algorithms) is Python. He created Serpent and is now working on Viper, which sounds like a next-generation Serpent. Viper is being implemented in Python3.

You can see the work in progress at: https://github.com/ethereum/viper

The article is sensationalist, especially with regard to the "fall" part of the "rise and fall of Ethereum".

The reality is that Ethereum as a platform has gained strength, credibility and market traction over the last six months. There have been 3 hard forks and 1 soft fork, partly in response to the system being under almost continuous attack (mostly denial of service). The effective response by Vitalik and company has increased trust, not decreased it. As the saying goes: "What does not kill you, makes you stronger."

More and more developers building applications on top of this platform. The MelonPort token sale ICO (on the Ethereum platform) sold out in 2.5 minutes yesterday.

It's not just independent Ramen-fueled startups, but "enterprise Ethereum" has become a thing. JP Morgan, Santander, Microsoft, Redhat, Cisco, Accenture, etc -- for better or worse -- are joining the Ethereum bandwagon.

I think it is still way early to call a winner in the blockchain platform wars. There are dozens of well-funded competitors trying to gain dominance over established platforms like the Bitcoin technology stack and the Ethereum platform -- including IBM-led Hyperledger Fabric and the bluechip banking consortium led by R3CEV.

But if there is one dog at the top of the blockchain platform heap right now, it is Ethereum.

See:

http://www.coindesk.com/jp-morgan-santander-said-join-enterp...

https://media.consensys.net/the-birth-of-enterprise-ethereum...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5u6uhb/melonport_...

I created my yahoo account many years ago, using my real first name and lastname, and using my real birthday.

Now I know better, and never use any of my real information in my online accounts. Meaning not just birthday, but also a fake name for my first pet, for my first teacher, for my favorite food, and other challenge questions. Just in case.

The only problem is that some online services send me a Happy Birthday message on my fake birthday, which can be a surprise in my inbox.

Thanks for the pointer to the video ("E to the Pi for Dummies" by Mathologer). It is definitely worth watching. Much more understandable, imho, than the one referenced at the top of this thread.

Your text summary of the video is accurate and likely makes sense to some people but not so much for others (namely, me).

Tour words are hard to grok until you see the visual depiction --- until you see the sequence of n transformations become a spiral arrangement of triangles that ends up approximating the (-1, 0i) point in the complex plane.

There's a startup called Flywheel that has been selling shovels to taxi cab companies -- in the form of electronic dispatch, payments, navigation and GPS-based metering.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/22/flywheel-expands-uber-like...

In addition to created diamonds, there are other stones that are different from and in some aspects better than diamonds.

The best one seems to be Moissanite, which also has the rather pedestrian name of silicon carbide. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moissanite

Here's a strong opinion about why diamonds suck and you should go with alternatives: http://diamondssuck.com/

Lastly, a more dispassionate analysis: http://www.doamore.com/diamonds-vs-moissanite/

Moissanite can be 90% cheaper than equivalent diamond, not just 30%.

The content in this article about anti-spam techniques is fascinating. But the title should be edited to indicate its vintage: 2014.

Also, by the by, there is some interesting context about the author (Mike Hearn) and his recent activities that are not related to the topic of spam.

Warning: off-topic digression below.

Mike Hearn became one of the most visible Bitcoin core developers, working in that community for 5 years, until a well-publicized departure where he declared Bitcoin a failure[0].

He then joined R3CEV, a startup venture that is building a private blockchain platform for a consortium of 70 of the world's largest banks. Hearn's departure was criticized by members of the cryptocurrency community, such as Bram Cohen, who famously called his exit a "whiny ragequit" [1].

Regardless about how one feels about the internal politics of the bitcoin dev community, the R3 project is technically interesting (to me, at least) because it uses Kotlin [2], a JVM-based functional language, and also because it has some interesting design approaches that depart from the established bitcoin blockchain model [3].

I still think that private blockchain platforms have an uphill battle if they want to compete for developer attention with rapidly evolving broad-based platforms like Ethereum and Bitcoin, but the R3 Corda platform is nevertheless worth tracking.

[0] https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin...

[1] https://medium.com/@bramcohen/whiny-ragequitting-cab164b1e88

[2] https://twitter.com/hhariri/status/790077263572299780

[3] https://gendal.me/2016/10/25/r3-corda-what-makes-it-differen...

Poor whites in America seem to identify with rich whites more than others from different races who are working (or unemployed) right next to them.

To them, Trump is like the star NFL quarterback that everyone wishes to be, and wears that star's jersey on their back. Even if the fan is overweight and can barely waddle across the parking lot.

Except that in reality Trump does not have the skills necessary to do the job. (He is a great candidate, but will likely be a terrible president). Someone observed that Trump is a poor person's idea of a rich person. He is unfortunately likely a disenfranchised person's idea of an effective president.

I don't understand why you were downvoted. Your question is valid and relevant. There are problems with the current election process, that were evident in the primary elections. There are many manufacturers of e-voting machines, but these are opaque, proprietary and possibly hackable (as has been demonstrated in past years by security researchers). With current wave of interst in blockchain technology, there are several new ventures that are exploring blockchain as an immutable, authoritative record or log that cannot be hacked. The problem is that it is too transparent (people may see who you voted for, not just that you voted). But I think this problem can be solved, and will likely be solved. It may take a few years.

Here's an answer from Quora that I found helpful: https://www.quora.com/Can-blockchain-technology-be-used-in-s...

A relatively small circle in SouthEast Asia, with center in North Vietnam will include the majority of the world's population: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07...

Karma, culture, governance.

Actually the "thousand flowers" metaphor is part of Silicon Valley culture going back 30 years.

At least I have heard this any number of times in relation to technology innovation, entrepreneurship, "lean startups", etc. I bet a lot of the people who use the term have no idea of its origins in Mao's China.

See for example, this article from Inc magazine in 1984, which begins as follows:

"Not too long ago, fortune 500 companies looked at small-scale entrepreneurial companies as fodder for acquisition -- if they were big enough to make the effort worthwhile -- and little more. The executive who dared to suggest that Goliath might learn from David was likely to be trampled by a herd of MBAs waving printouts on the economies of scale that flowed from a centralized and rationally managed organization... Then something happened...The micromillenium was born in a Cupertino, Calif., garage."

[excerpted from "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" http://www.inc.com/magazine/19840401/2895.html]

R3 is now emphasizing the smart contract aspect, and is building their system on Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

If blockchain technology is all about adding trust in a trustless environment, what are the trust implications of using Oracle JVM?

But if you can accept centralization, then why not just use a conventional DBMS? (This is a real question, not a rhetorical argument.)

Of the 3 possibilities for granting pardon (Obama, Clinton and Trump), the only real chance for Snowden is Obama.

I think many American Republicans would consider France to be socialist.

And would view many other countries as socialist, if they have things like national medical insurance and free college tuition. Except China. China for some reason is viewed as comfortably capitalist, despite the pictures of Chairman Mao on the currency and at Tienanmen Square. And except Russia, whose authoritarianism is admired.

Talking perception here, not reality. The perception of people who used to be a marginal group of extremists but now have many people in positions of Governor, house of representatives, etc.

And unfortunately they now have a real shot at the White House in the personage of their tribal Duce (a pathological egomaniac whose politics are unclear and span all ends of the spectrum within any given time period).

I've been in China three times in the past year. I agree that it is creepy not to be able to access Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. But in terms of personal safety and freedom to walk around and see things, I felt very free. I feel more nervous walking around most North American cities' downtown area (LA, NYC, SF, Chicago). And also Mexico city.

Nervousness with regard to both police and local citizenry.

The good ones come to the US to get better paying jobs. I ran a team of 25 software engineers. I tried to hire the most talented programmers in a tight job market. All but one of the engineers I hired were born outside the US.

I was in Beijing two weeks ago, with 3 phones (AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile). I could not get Gmail on any of them. No Facebook, Twitter, Google search, Google translate, etc. I had to fall back to Yahoo Mail (and WeChat and QQ).

In Shenzhen, there was a moment in the hotel where Google worked for about 10 minutes. I was elated but then disappointed when that brief window of openness ended.

At my local university, there is a salsa dancing group that meets every week, and goes on outings to clubs regularly. There seem to be 4 girls for every guy. The guys have to timeshare across different girls, and of course girls end up dancing with each other much of the time.