agorabinary

Of course not. The only states that do bad things are China, Iran, N.Korea, right?

A golden age of after-work creative and productive output? If you don't have the passion to create something meaningful with X amount of free-time, what will X+1 do for you?

legitimate 1. according to law, lawful

So the difference between the mafia and government is the use of laws? Which are rules that governments abide by? Sounds very circular indeed.

No, this is where your insert social system fails to eliminate deception and fraud. Because no social system can be expected to accomplish that.

"Just where in the world are you going to find these angels who are going to organize society for us?"

I thought gavin and most of the established bitcoin devs were in favor of increasing the blocksize.. so why is this "lightning" system no one has heard about suddenly the new plan for bitcoin core? Whose clout is pushing this through? I was aware of argument about the 1MB limit but I thought the voices in favor of increasing it far outweighed those against.

A weak bill that does little or nothing to properly stymie the torrent of civil liberties intrusions. Much stronger legislation is needed. At least Rand Paul's efforts produced a symbolic if temporary rebuke of Patriot Act powers.

Yes, Airbnb's "thing" (dirty little secret) is that some widespread neighbor abuse as documented in an HN anecdote is polluting the social value of a $20B startup.

Solution? Instead of allowing building managers/owners to allow/disallow short term leases by their lessees as determined by the externality-including market value of such a policy, let's just ban it altogether. The principle of the least-elegant solution.

rm -rf /reposts ?

1. The Federal Reserve is not an acronym. Neither is it an example of a successful government program, when it is explicitly a public-private institution that only serves to guarantee government blank-check spending and easy credit kickbacks to Wall Street.

2. If the free market dictating prices causes such rampant price gouging and monopolization, then why don't we see this in industries that are relatively deregulated like technology or hospitality, as opposed to the most regulated, ie. wall street? The power of industry disruption by nascent startups is systematically more powerful than regulators that have always, throughout history, been moved more by regulatory capture than by populist idealism.

3. The Paul's tend to favor the states deciding social issues.

Is it possible to read the amount and currency type from the NFC terminal rather than typing it manually? I think that would be a sticking point for credit-card users who are used to just sliding and having the proper amount deducted without user input.

Property owners took a risk by purchasing property, just as anyone does purchasing shares of a public company for instance. The value of your asset can go up and you find yourself in an advantageous position (a seller's market as you put it), or prices can fall and recurring buyers (like renters) are at the advantage. Rent control only distorts the market and is unfair to everyone.

"Political extremist" is an empty ad-hominem --- please point out specifically what views of his are so distasteful.

Going from zero to $40 billion in a few years isn't real impact? Those silly investors. If only they'd give all those Nice Guy Inc. a chance..

I don't see why you couldn't put trackers on the blockchain (or a sidechain?). Goodluck taking that down.

live demo 502

How are the alternatives "evidently superior"? Not that I doubt this Robocoin experience, but playing devil's advocate and the bitcoin economy... is a bit necessary.

When Butterfly Labs was scamming people over so long a period, it was difficult to mention them without a flurry of negative personal anecdotes coming your way. Is this also the case with Robocoin, or is this an isolated incident?

CS professors do grade for clarity and not just "does it work/compile?" but as a matter of relative weight in a grading distribution I think it gets less attention, and necessarily so for the more challenging problems. Writing prompts have a simpler objective domain to test (grammar, word usage) so the bulk of the grade weight goes to interpretation and style, which is of course subjective.

I used to be a philosophy major at a top 10 school notorious for its rigor. Now I am a CS major at my local university after transferring (for various reasons including cost). What the author doesn't understand is that when we says, "It sounds like he wants those topflight English majors after all: graduates adept at conceiving, articulating, and supporting their own ideas—not some “specific answer” the professor is looking for", you actually get much more creative solutions to CS problems because implementations may vary, but are still bounded by the problem. In English (and potentially moreso in philosophy), you are not really bounded by anything, so it's incredibly easy to get at least a "good" grade, while getting an A is entirely at the mercy of a subjective grader with no clear grading rubric to distinguish a B+ from an A. Further, there isn't any domain to learn, so you can fairly easily skim the cliffnotes of every assigned reading and produce at least a B essay. Thus, no work ethic. CS really forces you into a discipline because there is a domain to learn as well as projects to code, and you can't BS a program at the last minute. If an essay doesn't have a coherent conclusion at 4am, turn it in and get a B. But if your program doesn't compile at 4am...

From my experience I consider CS to be far more challenging in terms of critical thinking, work ethic, and ability to solve complex problems. Also interesting is the camaraderie the students in these classes develop as we solve hard problems together, with the knowledge that if you've made it this far in the major, you're pretty capable. To echo the sentiment of another poster, you would be pretty blown away be the ineptitude of many liberal arts majors (apart from their complete lack of relevant domain knowledge) who are able to cruise through their classes for all the reasons mentioned above.

Thanks for sharing!

There's going to be a lot of developers on here who went the traditional high school -> CS degree route and think that this alternative life anecdote offers some real insights about the Other world of "passion-seekers", but it really doesn't. The take-away is to stay curious and keep learning even if, most likely, you will never find excitement in your life of corporate monotony, which is of course how many people view paths like CS. From the article, "Most people will have to choose between 'doing what they love,' and pursuing the more mundane promise of a stable paycheck and a promising career path." I think this is a false dichotomy common to a lot of college aged students.

I was like this for a while, working in restaurants and the sort before going back to school, and in these jobs you find a lot of people who are afraid to place a bet on a career so they can focus on some wholly non-unique set of "interests". I noticed that few of these people actually pursue these supposed passions to any real extent, and most of these interests were strictly of the creative, non-pragmatic category.

I figured that such jobs offered flexibility from the rigid 9-5, and would allow one to pursue these "interests" more freely. This is not the case. Working a developer job you have mental stimulation from learning new things and getting things done. This is normalized of course, and so it's important to remind that working odd jobs while you "write your novel" is entirely devoid of such stimulation, and I believe, actually and actively kills brain cells. And this is the path the author suggests many of our "undecided" college graduates will go? Say it ain't so! If you want to write a novel or learn to paint, and if these are genuine passions, you will make time after work and on the weekends.

It's less about "finding your passion" than it is developing a discipline to work on big projects that is completely absent from high school and non-STEM college education. Take your average "undecided" and finance them for a year to follow their passion. A few will make something of their time. Harper Lee did, writing To Kill a Mockingbird uninterrupted for a year thanks to donations from friends. But most will not for the same reason many of us developers (mundane corporate drones) struggle with our own interests and side projects--- because we all lack the discipline. Bukowski summarizes this "myth of creativity" well: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/10/04/charles-bu...

It feels good to solve hard problems and challenge yourself. Doing so at work acts as a momentum towards your other goals and interests, and with persistence, lead to a discipline of continued creativity.

In case you have not read PG's high school graduation talk, I highly recommend it. Very relevant: http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

This is rather apples to oranges. Blue collar manufacturing work where women run at only 25% of the workforce and men have higher than national average crime rates --- you are bound to have more problems with the men.

Not to endorse the author's view, but compare the above to your typical white collar environment with a more even distribution of men and women doing similar, non-physical work. Easier to judge the gender differences there.

I know from personal experience that Steam works slightly better on windows than linux, so I see your point there.

I don't mean to sound like a prick, I'm just genuinely curious as to why someone would use windows for some CLI work. Are you using some software that isn't available on more developer-friendly operating systems?

There is no "Bitcoin", it is not a corporation. There is no body in charge of it.

Mt. Gox alleged they were stolen via transaction malleability, so yes, it would seem they are "finding" coins that had been "stolen".

This. The author likes to fill the space between his unexplored technical points with this tasteless, dismissive tone that makes me question the value of his argument even before I scroll down to look for an appropriately brief TL;DR. Unfortunately all I find is some strange reverence for the most irreverent cryptocurrency, Dogecoin. I'm sure the billions of unbanked and poor in need of affordable remittances would prefer a currency that takes neither itself nor its users seriously, and which lacks even the economic principles to deflect its alt-coin implausibility, over an increasingly established and appropriately ambitious alternative to the current financial system.

Closing the conversation with a 9gag link. How professional.

Like regulation and oversight prevented (insert: preserved, perpetuated, safeguarded) Madoff?

They are both dead. See the statements.

It's probably more likely that many employees were oblivious to the insolvency. As long as everyone's accounts were "credited" as they should, regardless of the soundness of their cold storage accounts, it would appear as though everything was fine.

See: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ysaz2/sarahcoinbit...

So...now that mt.gox is dead, does this mean mt gox employees are free from any non-disclosure agreements and can talk freely about what the hell happened?

Insider info would be greatly appreciated.