Hacker News Reader

typedwebon OpenGenera 2.0 Virtual Machine Environment

http://www.unlambda.com/download/genera/snap4.tar.gz

Here's some instructions on setting it up:

http://www.cliki.net/VLM_on_Linux

typedwebon Has modern Linux lost its way? Some thoughts on Jessie

It's systemd: http://askubuntu.com/questions/360615/ubuntu-server-13-10-no...

typedwebon Has modern Linux lost its way? Some thoughts on Jessie

> If suspend weren't working

The irony I'm finding these days is that suspend does work, but now the options to turn it off don't.

typedwebon How many fundamental constants does it take to describe our Universe?

Yes, it's serious. But I'm sure I'll get more downvotes for saying that too...whatever.

typedwebon How many fundamental constants does it take to describe our Universe?

Obviously we haven't read the same books. You'd be suprized at how closely related to phi many of the low level physical constant are.

typedwebon How many fundamental constants does it take to describe our Universe?

1 - phi. It's quite shocking to see how many places it turns up and how many constants can be derived from it.

typedwebon Identifiable Images of Bystanders Extracted from Corneal Reflections (2013)

Enhance!

Sorry, just had to say that. :)

typedwebon The Byzantine Generals Problem (1982) [pdf]

Correct.

typedwebon The Byzantine Generals Problem (1982) [pdf]

Sometimes I just use HN as a bookmarker for interesting things. I didn't expect it to make it to the front page :)

typedwebon Fossil – Simple, high-reliability, distributed software configuration management

The title was changed to something less accurate than what I originally posted.

typedwebon [dead]

Some of it is pretty far out there, but a lot of it makes quite a bit of sense.

typedwebon [dead]

If anybody was capable of solving the Byzantine Generals problem, it would be Nash.

typedwebon Stack Computers: the new wave (1989)

Modern, many core stack computers from Chuck Moore and Green Arrays:

www.greenarraychips.com

Plus his site showing off his ColorFORTH OS that he uses to design his chips by hand:

http://www.colorforth.com/

typedwebon Gngr – A new browser championing privacy

Why not just use lynx/links/w3m?

typedwebon Why Plan 9 is not dead yet and what we can learn from it (2005) [pdf]

Here's a port of inferno (a Plan9 derivative idea) running on android phones called HellaPhone:

https://bitbucket.org/floren/inferno/wiki/Home

typedwebon That Time Buffett Smashed the Efficient Market Hypothesis

A Joke from A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market (I think):

Two Efficient Market theorists were walking down the street and see a $100 bill lying there. They both keep on walking and one says to the other "If that was real, someone would have picked it up by now."

typedwebon The death of Bitcoin (controversial)

I heard that GHash.io was reaching the 50% mark a while ago and then the community decided to split off of a lot of their hashing power to rebalance the minering to other pools. Now this article is saying GHash is intentionally trying to take over? Isn't being part of GHash a volunteer effort?

typedwebon BitXBay Distrubted Market

This or OpenBazaar (www.openbazaar.org) look to be the future of Silk Road style sites.

typedwebon Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

There are already movements to decentralize Silk Road type sites using P2P technology, like OpenBazaar: https://openbazaar.org/.

typedwebon Operator of Silk Road 2.0 Website Charged in Manhattan Federal Court

Or they were just in on it from day 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568765

The failures of modern crypto (and historical) are almost always usage bugs, not the technology itself.

typedwebon The hipster effect: When anticonformists all look the same

I think it was in 'The Century for the Self' that described research in the 70's regarding the counter culture movements of the 60's. What they found was that there were a number of alternative cultures that the people not following the standard culture would adopt into (hippies, outdoorsy people, etc) to find like minded alternative individuals. They called each of these alt-cultures 'lifestyles' and found that although a majority of people claimed to be counter culture, there was only a small set of about 12 or so lifestyles that most of these people fit into.

I think 'hipster' is just one lifestyle under the above criteria.

typedwebon Don't use online Bitcoin wallets over Tor

Looks like this person doing the transfers has been pretty active: https://blockchain.info/address/1FJxeqyAAkxjbV5ijh3CnNkbgdu8...

typedwebon BlackHalo: two-party btc-based contracts

Nice looking trailer, but where's the technical info? Where's anything about what they are releasing?

typedwebon OpenBSD drops loadable kernel module support

Loadable kernel modules have long been known to be the source of potential security risks due to the fact that the kernel now has a way to intentionally load code into itself. A project like OpenBSD to me should never have included this feature in the first place, but I hear the mechanism that is being dropped is and old and obsolete version that nobody ever used.

typedwebon Alan Cox announces Fuzix OS

I wrote 2 games on the Gameboy and Gameboy Color assembly (both running Z80s at 4 and 8 MHz) back in the day and they were great to program on. Loved the simplicity of the machine.

typedwebon The Cost of Cryptography

There's HELib for those that want to get a head start: https://github.com/shaih/HElib

typedwebon The Hypercard Legacy

The combination of HTML+Javascript+CSS+SQL+Python/Ruby/etc as required for a basic web app these days is getting to be too much for the beginner. I remember writing my first game in Hypercard in Grade 6 with no experience on the computer at all. Load up some art, make some buttons and build a 'choose your own adventure'. Easy stuff and lots of fun.

typedwebon What Does an Idle CPU Do?

I seem to recall the idle 'task' on Windows zero's empty memory pages, so there might be less of what's happening in the article on those machines.

typedwebon Mobile is Eating the World

> an iPhone is primarily a communications device

That's why I've started calling them 'personal communicators' instead of 'phones'. Sounds a bit more Star Treky as well :)

typedwebon Hints for writing Unix tools

The only character not allowed in Unix file names is the forward slash directory separator, so even that would be a pathological mistake waiting to bite someone.

Edit: my mistake, they can't contain nulls either: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8485861