Hacker News Reader

virtuexruon Show HN: API to check where a TV show or movie is available

Good lord I've been wanting/waiting for someone to do this and you've finally delivered! Huge kudos. I'll definitely be using & keeping an eye on this.

I'd much rather find what I want to watch on a legitimate streaming service rather than using other ways...

virtuexruon Bitcoin has crossed $6,000 USD for the first time

I always recommend this article to anyone interested in Bitcoin, it's a great read: https://fee.org/articles/what-gave-bitcoin-its-value/

virtuexruon Bitcoin just passed $5,000

Absolutely not true. I paid $0.40 cents on a $5.00 transaction yesterday that was confirmed within an hour. I could've easily paid the same $0.40 cents to move $50,000,000.00.

virtuexruon Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

> So what happens when the last block is mined?

The best estimate is that the last block will be mined around 2140 based on the block reward halving frequency of four years. According to math and knowledge that there are 32 halving events, in 2136, the block reward will yield 0.00000168 BTC per day, which is 0.00000042 BTC per block.

We will all be dead ;) but to answer your other question yes transaction fee's will continue to incentivize miners but who knows where the protocol will be by then. It could be completely changed.

virtuexruon Show HN: The Million Dollar Homepage as an Ethereum Smart Contract and DApp

> I do know, however, that Bitcoin is undergoing a cooling of sorts on account of the block difficulty getting higher and higher. As a result, transactions now take forever to verify and fees are going up.

Completely untrue. Difficulty is proportional to the hash rate. Transaction time varies as a result of multiple factors.

Some reading and historical difficulty/confirmation time data:

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespa... https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation#Confirmation_Times

virtuexruon Running Bitcoin uses a small city’s worth of electricity

> So we've created an "industry" where you are essentially paid by comverting energy to waste. Paid to perform extremely intense difficult (ie wasteful) operations to back a useful technology (digital currency).

https://hackernoon.com/bitcoin-doesnt-waste-electricity-6496...

virtuexruon Bitcoin ‘More Than Just a Fad,’ Morgan Stanley CEO Says

I second this; have been using Coinbase for a few years with no problems.

virtuexruon Software Engineer, Machine Learning

I've never met anyone who voluntarily enjoys working 70-90 hours a week.

virtuexruon Software Engineer, Machine Learning

Nowhere near enough.

virtuexruon Monopoly Without a Monopolist: An Economic Analysis of the Bitcoin System [pdf]

> people don't buy bitcoin for its use in transactions

I'd beg to differ.. sure there is definitely a percentage of HODL'ers but to say people don't use it in transactions is straight up lunacy.

https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/trade-volume?timespan=all

virtuexruon Monopoly Without a Monopolist: An Economic Analysis of the Bitcoin System [pdf]

From the conclusion which I thought was really interesting:

> Bitcoin is not regulated. It cannot be regulated. There is no need to regulate it because as a system it is committed to the protocol as is and the transaction fees it charges the users are determined by the users independently of the miners’ efforts.

> Bitcoin’s design as an economic system is revolutionary and therefore would merit an economist’s attention and scrutiny even if it had not been functional. Its apparent functionality and usefulness should further encourage economists to study this marvelous structure.

virtuexruon Show HN: eth-private-net – Tooling to run a private Ethereum network locally

> eth-private-net is a simple tool that allows you to quickly setup a three-node private Ethereum network running locally on your personal computer. The tool makes initializing, starting, and connecting nodes fast and easy. The network comes with three pre-made identities (Alice, Bob, and Lily) and a tutorial that walks you through simple actions like mining and transferring Ether, and culminates with the deployment and execution of a simple smart contract called FreeBeer.

> I wrote this tool because I found a lot of the Ethereum tooling opaque and difficult to understand. A lot of the information that I needed to know was scattered through the documentation, and there wasn't a single place that wrapped together the most instructive examples to build my understanding. Moreover, I wanted a tool that would allow me to repeatedly reinitialize a network from a known, clean state to help me experiment with building, deploying, and running smart contracts.

Exactly the kind of thing I've been looking for! Thank you tons.

virtuexruon Why the German elections matter to the rest of the world

> If the 62-year-old Merkel wins, it'll be her fourth term in the post. And if she were to serve a full term, she would tie with Helmut Kohl as Germany's longest serving post-war chancellor (16 years).

Very interesting; is there no limit to consecutive terms in the German government? Wonder what the pros and cons are to this approach (I'm posting from the US where the limit is two consecutive terms).

virtuexruon Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree

I really hope you make that post highlighting your favorite parts of the C++ Bitcoin codebase; it is super interesting! Keep up the great work.

virtuexruon The Interface font family

Very very clean. I love it. The easier read the better imho.

virtuexruon Bassel Khartabil: Missing Syrian-Palestinian 'executed'

He was routinely denied access to his family and lawyers, rights groups and his wife said. He disappeared from official records in October 2015 when he was transferred from the Adra prison in northeast Damascus.

That's next level terrifying.

virtuexruon Summers Are Getting Hotter

I like the graphic; it's very scary. But why were they not inclined to put actual units in the x-axis. Kind of hard to compare what is "cold" vs "normal" vs "hot" without having some kind of basepoint reference.

virtuexruon Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

> Facebook’s formidable ad business, along with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, soaked up 99% of the online ad industry’s growth last year, according to Pivotal Research.

Does that seem crazy to anyone else?

virtuexruon Ask HN: How to tell someone they are not doing well at work?

Maybe it's because you come off as a pompous prick? Instead of acting like a know it all you should perhaps come at the situation from a more diplomatic perspective.

virtuexruon How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US

The fact that fentanyl (which is 100x more powerful than morphine) is so readily available/mixed with common drugs across the United States is excruciatingly horrifying.

virtuexruon As Workouts Intensify, a Harmful Side Effect Grows More Common

> Over the next two days, her legs throbbed with excruciating pain, her urine turned a dark shade of brown, and she felt nauseated. Eventually she went to a hospital, where she was told she had rhabdomyolysis, a rare but life-threatening condition often caused by extreme exercise. It occurs when overworked muscles begin to die and leak their contents into the bloodstream, straining the kidneys and causing severe pain.

Terrifying.

virtuexruon The World Bank’s Broken Promise to the Poor (2015)

This page links to a portal looking landing page; is there supposed to be an accompanying article?

virtuexruon Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Tokens, ICOs: Why Should Anyone Care?

I don't think #3 is spot on. Bitcoin solves the double spend problem does it not?

virtuexruon Facebook Hits 2 Billion Users

I wonder how many of those users are legitimate real people?

virtuexruon An all-in-one beginner's guide to modern React application development

Incredibly well done; with screenshots and everything. Really excited for this as it completely relates to what I'm doing. Thanks a million!

virtuexruon Think Twice Before Ordering Coffee or Tea on a Plane

No wonder my immune system is so strong; I love airplane coffee.

virtuexruon Coinbase is down

Not only are they usually down when abnormally high traffic hits; they are down for a good number of hours as can be seen by the age of this post.

virtuexruon Stripe and Coinbase apparently can't find my Bitcoin

This is amazing :D

virtuexruon The Slow Criminalization of Peer-To-Peer Transfers

How wrong you are sir

virtuexruon Yandex’s on-demand taxi service debuts its self-driving car project

Too bad most roads in Russia are a joke. This will never happen until Russian infrastructure improves; albeit this tech will stay in the huge provinces, Moscow & St. Petersburg.