Hacker News Reader

polarixon Bitstamp is open for business

To me this marks a turning point in the maturity of bitcoin - major breaches may still be a cost of doing business, but end users can finally hope for some limited insulation from such failures.

polarixon In Defense of Inclusionism (2011)

Do you have any more information about partage's "overlays" concept? I can't find anything for those words...

polarixon Schwab password policies and two factor authentication

Yeah, this flow is completely nuts. After setting up 2fac, in general, though, the thing to do is probably test that you can't log in without it.

polarixon U.S. ends TARP with $15.3B profit

You may have ended your counterfactual story too soon. It's hardly a triviality that it would have destroyed trillions of perceived middle class wealth. Such a perceptual shift changes the characteristics of consumer demand in a way that would have massive worldwide impact. Not only would American businesses have suffered (many fatally), and dramatically reduced investment, but American debt-financed consumer demand is one of our biggest exports, and would have precipitated even more disastrous global readjustments. This is the kind of thing that causes loss of life (through revolutions and wars, if not simple starvation) in poorer countries and regions.

polarixon Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

What does "given the right outset" mean?

polarixon Apple Stops Online Sales in Russia Over Ruble Fluctuations

> there are other ways to grow a nest egg from $20k to $68k without gambling it

If you mean to do so quickly, and without taking some significant risk, I'll call.

polarixon Ask HN: Why do you code?

Because I'm okay at it, and it appears to create enough value for society that I can capture some to feed my real passions: contemporary art and architecture.

polarixon The Other Money Problem

For others who might be curious about the Hemmingway connection, http://petersencj14.blog.com/2013/02/15/an-essay/ seems to explain what you're referring to

polarixon Comments on the Sony Hack

They're not agnostic -- they tie the probability of proper representation directly to capital capacity.

polarixon Mozilla accepting Bitcoin donations

To me this is not an intuitive leap (and does appear off-topic at first blush), but on further rumination does indeed present an important insight into the root cause of the Eich debacle.

polarixon Youtube-dl

Probably lots of hackers want to be freed from the bondage of youtube.com while still retaining access to the wealth of content available there.

polarixon Meteor hits 1.0

Okay, I'll bite: who is "We"?

polarixon Meteor hits 1.0

"I think you should be more explicit here in step 3"

http://i.imgur.com/uvulagb.jpg

polarixon A Culture of Envy

Isn't it fundamentally just about the ability to manipulate one's environment, though?

Such capacity is the only thing I ever envy about others: the power to craft their environment and sculpt their own experience to fit their desires, regardless of content. The relative difference is entirely incidental, since I primarily notice only others who are further up the hierarchy.

Is it just me? It seems like a major fallacy to think that in general people desire power over other humans as an end in itself.

Perhaps it's the technocrat talking, but the ideal situation seems to be Unenvied Power: pure power over one's environment, with zero conscious representation of that power in others' minds.

polarixon Firebase is Joining Google

https://sandstorm.io/

polarixon Why firms don't want you to be brilliant at your job

Is it possible that this you've gathered this impression because you're interacting with them in the context of their San Francisco lifestyle, rather than the context of their professional workplace?

polarixon Why Regret Is Essential to the Good Life (2013)

Retrospective analysis is important; is regret? Is it crucial to have the emotional distress that comes with rational evaluation of past choices? Does negative emotional reinforcement really work at such long time remove?

polarixon The Toughest Adversity I've Ever Faced

> I just wished there were some way (beyond a traditional resume) that I could express how I truly would've been a great employee at Google[x].

Well, actually, there is -- the only thing that can express that would be making progress on the problem...

If you're ready for a big dose of realism (and at the risk of fueling some dangerous fires), one can dig deeper into the trust disconnect that fuels acqui-hires here:

https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/vc-istan-7-s...

polarixon Introducing GIFV

right click -> save works in chrome canary, 39.0.2163.3 at least.

drag and drop does not, yet, but perhaps with this initiative it will be prioritized.

polarixon Contact Lost with Planes One by One as FAA Fire Spread

http://imgur.com/wClCcYy

http://pastebin.com/A08VsdDs

polarixon U.S. Law Enforcement Seeks to Halt Apple-Google Encryption of Mobile Data

A big, crucial shift.

polarixon Why Clay Shirky just banned technology use in class

Guessing this is because they wanted the more exciting headline, which the Washington Post was more than happy to provide.

polarixon Rockstor, a Linux and BTRFS Based NAS Solution

> better in every regard

Can't remove raidz's from zpools, but `btrfs device delete` exists.

polarixon Apple’s dangerous game

The only really consistent position will become to treat a person's digital trace as we treat the contents of their head. The two are merging sooner rather than later.

polarixon Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

The background you provide is helpful but doesn't really seem incompatible with Simler's essay. It seems your reading assumes that the distinction between emotional inception and cultural imprinting is the level of consciousness & rationality implied, but that is not the only interpretation.

Emotional inception vs. cultural imprinting might instead be considered a partition of the subconscious "association" space into first and second order effects, which are of course concurrent, and both of which are "quick" heuristics. Cultural imprinting is then the simulation mechanism underlying self-image manipulation, as you mention.

(as an aside, more Kruglanski references would be helpful, and maybe less ad hominem)

polarixon Setting the Record Straight on Tor

Even if the details weren't entirely consistent, the fact that they made any sort of statement at all is cause for optimism.

polarixon Setting the Record Straight on Tor

It's a very good sign that Comcast is posting this kind of correction. It indicates that they perceive a broad social consensus that supporting internet anonymity is a crucial responsibility of an ISP, and lends credence to the ongoing importance of net neutrality.

It also, as a secondary effect, might incline us to look more favorably on Comcast's arguments regarding backbone capacity negotiations.

polarixon The Mathematics of Ebola Trigger Stark Warnings

Perhaps we could quarantine air & sea travel.

polarixon Books that have stayed with us

> deep philosophical reasons about not wanting to encourage any business decision that focuses entirely outside of the Facebook ecosystem

What you're proposing would be a radical expansion of the facebook ecosystem, not a departure.

polarixon Alleged leak of more than 5M Gmail accounts

If the local client could handle it, this would be a much more secure way of browsing.