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On the plus side, they didn't break the scrolling.

If you can create "value" by creating a market, what happens to that "value" when that market is destroyed?

When trepanation went out of style, it destroyed the market for skull-drills, and destroyed the market for hole-in-skill-drilling service providers. While you can argue that there was value to the consumer in not having a hold drilled in their head, it was still a net loss to any shareholders in companies that provided trepanation products and services.

> It's starting to seem like they had these lists made up ahead of time and have been waiting for the right time to start cleansing the ranks.

Kind of how the 342-page US Patriot Act was introduced days after the September 11th terrorist attacks?

I love how the comments reference the "users", when what's really important is Google's customers.

If allowing use of CC licensed content helped advertisers, it would implemented post-haste.

> I'm curious why there's so much node/electron negativity circulating.

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses".

--Bjarne Stroustrup

I'm pretty sure that applies to language runtimes as well.

> Although I guess asking for positivity when it comes to electron is a bit of a stretch

I like to stay current, and in this charged environment, I'd be shocked if anode runtime wasn't at the nucleus of every accelerator.

I'm sure Dijkstra is half-spinning in his grave.

> Transients living in your midst! It sounds more like you pay extra to be away from the poors.

That's an overly simplistic view of the housing market, but yes, that's a major factor in real estate pricing.

> Meanwhile, if someone builds a better search engine, all of Google's customers could switch to it in ten seconds and never look back.

Google's customers are advertisers. Someone would have to build a more effective advertising platform to get Google's customers to switch.

And that new platform would have to collect and analyze even more product (a.k.a. users) data, which would likely be an even greater perceived invasion of privacy.

My only wish is that the "no reasonable prosecutor" test would be applied to criminal cases against normal people, and not just the powerful and the privileged.

> So basically there is only mainstream benefit: removing chargebacks.

You mean mainstream disadvantage.

I think most people using VISA are happy that they won't lose all their assets to fraud or theft of their credit card. Mainstream retailers accept a certain amount of fraud as a cost of doing business, only disruptive or greymarket vendors face significant risk from chargebacks.

Removing chargebacks is a positive benefit to a tiny fraction of the participants in legitimate financial services.

> Is that really what we need? Advanced weaponry at cheap prices?

That reminds me of the high-school math teacher who brings condoms to the class when he teaches, because he's statistically less likely to contract an STD than if he left his condoms at home. While technically he's making an optimal decision, he should really re-examine his assumptions.

I don't really know if the IANA should be managed by an international body, but the fact that Ted Cruz and the President of National Religious Broadcasters are in favor of this bill automatically make me think this bill is trying to prohibit speech or invade privacy. And the fact that "President, Americans for Limited Government" is supporting maintaining government control of the Internet makes it sound like standard right-wing hypocrisy. And the fact they frame the bill as an attack on Obama makes it even more suspect.

If ICANN is intentionally lobbying people like this, it automatically makes me think that it should lose the contract, regardless of the quality of their actual stewardship.

> "Your honor, my client created and published a software library. The so-called victims here wrote code that specifically referenced my client's software library, by name mind you. My client in no way compelled or solicited the victims to do so. Now how can that be called 'without authorization?'"

The prosecuting attorney is going to tell a jury of twelve of your non-technical "peers" that it is hacking.

Your client can either go to trial for seventeen thousand two hundred and eighty nine counts of felony hacking, and risk half a million years in prison, or they can plea bargain to 5 years in prison and a felony on his record.

Or your client can hang himself, but I'm pretty sure a federal prosecutor counts that as a win too.

> It was not authorized by the card holder or a court order, so it is fraud.

Sorry, you're wrong. I've had the IRS steal money directly from my bank account to pay for taxes (and fees, and fines) I didn't owe. The bank won't help you, and I had to pay a tax lawyer $1,800 to get back $3,200 in taxes (and fines) from the IRS for a stock sale I never made.

The bank treats withdrawals by government agencies as legitimate transactions. They won't recognize it as fraud, and you won't get the money back from the bank.

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see the reason.

You are correct, you do not see the reason.

> The author has the first name "John Carlos". Why not take an educated guess and use (gasp) gendered pronouns?

Because the text of the article could have been generated by a Turing machine with the pseudonym "John Carlos". And on the internet, nobody knows if you're a man, woman, dog, or sufficiently complicated state machine.

tl;dr: Non-gendered pronouns are inclusive and never inappropriate on the internet.

> It's interesting to describe something that gets people what they pay for as selfish on the part of a third party.

It's selfish because it is done with the goal of increasing Netflix's revenue.

Now, in this case selfish doesn't mean evil. To the contrary, Netflix's success will mean happier people, more satisfied customers. Much in the same way auto manufacturers make safer cars for higher profits, or surgeons can make a comfortable living saving lives.

Netflix is simply trying to make a buck, and if some people get helped in the process, that's just collateral benefit.

> I find it hard to believe their motives are purely altruistic.

Absolutely selfish. Their goal is to make boatloads of money by pressuring ISPs to allow their customers to access Netflix at the speeds the customers paid for. Once customers can use their high speed internet, many will choose to be Netflix customers.

> Can't the ISPs just prioritize traffic to FAST to mitigate concerns?

That's the beauty of it, if they do that then Netflix will be usable for their customers, and people will actually get the service they've paid for.

> Subcontracting out work + massive federalism

I think you meant massive anti-federalism.

If we had a federal procurement system for math and english textbooks, after being put out for a nationwide bid, the per-unit cost would be about 10% over the cost of paper and printing. (the 10% premium is the bid adjustment for a women or minority owned business)

Now $8 textbooks wouldn't save a lot of money compared to the national education budget, but it would be a good start. And do we really need regional variations in math textbooks?

Tomorrow on Hacker News, Tesla remotely bricks the modified car and releases months of logs detailing every word spoken in and near the car, and every time the car drove to a liquor store or adult bookstore.

I'm not sure what the big deal here is. This has an obvious solution.

"Heap" is a word. Words have meaning to people. Different people ascribe different meanings to the same word.

Each grain added to a pile of grain measurably changes the probability that an observer will classify the resulting collection as a heap. While it's not a linear function, it's generally a positive correlation, more grains means a higher probability of any individual calling it a heap.

That is a collection of grain of size n+1 has a probability of being classified as a heap that is usually greater than the probability of a collection of grain of size n being classified as a heap.

Where's the paradox?

> I'm really liking the Gresham dollar idea. The main point is that it expires, thus forcing you to circulate it.

I like the idea as well, but in the description it said that vendors would be onboarded with a promise to allow g-bucks to be converted back to dollars at par. The obvious outcome is that issuing a g-buck is going to immediately result in depleting USD reserves by a dollar as soon as the g-buck is spent. Anything that inhibits immediate redemption for USD is going to inhibit adoption.

You need a real-world use-case that USD is less than ideal for, like being able to buy illegal drugs or pay cyber-ransoms or avoid currency controls for a cybercurrency to get real traction as a store of value.

The most blindingly obvious in-your-face tinting was the movie Hero, where different interpretations of past events were tinted with a strong primary color.

They're made out of meat.

http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html

> If people need to know or understand this stuff bitcoin will never work. Success rests on the what not the how.

Bitcoin is an inflationary private currency with $10 transaction fees that is mostly used for illegal activity. Its value and success is predicated on the ability to buy drugs and pay ransoms with Bitcoin.

> The end user doesn't care if your website was written in php or node.

The end user also gets their wallet stolen. So yeah, I'd say that not understanding the basics is critical when dealing with crypto-currencies.

> Businesses, especially consumers, are helped more by the mobility of a car than public transport

This assumes that everyone has access to a car, and that all automotive commutes are possible during "rush hour". Many businesses directly benefit from public transportation by expanding the labor pool to those who would otherwise be unable to commute.

> it is impossible to factorize big numbers. For any number, there is no way of working out if a smaller number divides into it, short of actually doing the calculation.

Yeah, the author doesn't understand the difference between the difficulty of factorizing large semi-primes and the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem.

It might be a little error, but lack of understanding of deep technical issues lead directly to specious statements that bitcoin and the blockchain are going to solve world poverty, privacy, fix the economy and neuter the surveillance state.

It almost makes me wonder if Bitcoin was a "black-flag" operation to bring out the crypto-anarchist nerds who can't look past the fact that Bitcoin is innovative to see it doesn't work for most people.

something something echo chamber.

> but the grid doesn't know who you are.

Sure, the grid only knows where you live, if you own or rent, size of your household, when you're home or away.

Heck with a bit of data mining on "smart meters", I bet you could infer the energy usage of certain appliances such as hair dryer, curling iron, stove, etc., starting to give insight into age, gender, ethnicity, eating habits, you name it. By itself that data will only generate weak correlations, but I'd certain that energy companies are finding buyers for that data who could match it with your credit report, background check, etc.

Face it, the only thing protecting your anonymity is your lack of notoriety.

> Most people in Ponzi schemes are being directly mislead. They don't think it's a gamble.

Most people are being directly mislead. This is true for the vast majority of the human experience. Politics, love, advertising, the list goes on.

Why are Ponzi schemes less palatable than being fleeced by automated scripts on a sports-betting site? In both cases, people think they will make money because they are smart, when they actually will lose money because they are dumb.