Hacker News Reader

alexroon MtGox launches Bitcoins.com, an information site for all things Bitcoin

How about having your funds sliced by sort of Cyprus scenario? How about getting ill for half a year and finding out that the inflation has eaten most of your savings away?

alexroon Bitcoin price reaches a record high for the first time since April

btc-e.com processes USD deposits within 24h, great exchange to buy for the lowest price

alexroon Bitcoin now 'unit of account' in Germany

No way for now, still not clear how they gonna assign monetary value to BTC, what exchange rate they will use?

alexroon Bitcoin now 'unit of account' in Germany

It sounds more like a psychological achievement than legal. German government has no means to control BTC, that means BTC is still in the wild.

This is good for the moment, but also begs a question: when the real regulation comes into play how it will be played? But for now - relax and enjoy!

alexroon [dead]

"I always thought I might commit suicide someday"

that explains it to me

alexroon Russia may deem civil servants’ use of Gmail, Facebook ‘high treason’

http://prism-break.org/

alexroon Why we shut down Achoo

Looking just at the blog design I'd say the team has no clue of what people generally like.

alexroon US diplomat: If EU allows 'right to be forgotten' …it might spark TRADE WAR

That'd be the ideal scenario I suppose.

alexroon US diplomat: If EU allows 'right to be forgotten' …it might spark TRADE WAR

This means that the companies will not collect and maintain too much data about me to start with. There can be a reasonable amount of data - like name, DOB, address - that can stay public in any case. Other data will have to be deleted.

alexroon Keep the Internet free and open

You can improve the visibility by explaining to your friends in non-google circles the importance of this petition to them. That's how this petition is supposed to work, IMO

alexroon Keep the Internet free and open

After thousands of wars peace is understood by everybody, not so about the free and open Internet, which to most is something that just works like electricity, or black magic.

Making more people understand is definitely worth one tweet.

alexroon Yang Jisheng: The man who discovered 36 million dead

I'm from ex-USSR and have never been to the US, so my view is kind of balanced. I think the US was able to come up with the most universal product of all times: the american dream. Everything else is just execution.

There were wars throughout the history, but previously there were no ways to make another country people wish to change their believes and become the consumers of another country way of living on a mass scale.

alexroon Is human intellect on the downward slide? (debunked)

Isn't it what counts in the wild is adaptability? And looking at intellect as a by-product of adaptability, if the world and our society changing in a direction where intellect is no longer needed - say technology is taking over our daily decisions - it is natural to trade intellect for a better technological fit?

alexroon YC Rejection Emails Are Out

We've got 7 video views, no questions

alexroon 9 London VCs hosting Office Hours This Week

I've just put myself on the list and my feedback so far is that the format of booking is a bit confusing. I'm available any time during the day but I have to choose a 15 minute slot. What happens if too many people have chosen this slot as well, but there are some other under-booked slots available?

I think a more straightforward way is to just list yourself a give a preferred time, and then the VCs decide who they want to see when. If this 15 minute slots are meant to be used then it's fine.

alexroon Things I wish I knew about MongoDB a year ago

IMO there is no rational explanation to this phenomena other than: people are different. Some get bored with stored procs and want same hassle but in another form.

alexroon GroupTalent on Finding, Picking and Hiring Designers

and after 6 month of coaching those newly formed professionals suddenly realise their value on the market has increased dramatically ...

alexroon Postgres 9.2 highlight: JSON data type

and you also cannot have secondary indexes that way

alexroon Postgres 9.2 highlight: JSON data type

and that's why one reason for MySql popularity is its simplicity. Instead of having full alphabet of features it just has A and B, and its easy to learn. BTW I'm not a fan of MySql.

alexroon The science behind what motivates us to get up for work every day

Yes and no. If your autonomy, mastery, purpose is low you are just a wage slave.

alexroon Developer interest in Windows 8 is stagnant, new line of worry for Microsoft

It was used in the marketing campaigns, so kind of was public reference to the style already. Now it has no easy reference.

alexroon Developer interest in Windows 8 is stagnant, new line of worry for Microsoft

Add to it that they had to abandon the Metro name due to trademark violation.

alexroon ServiceStack: new REST API for .NET/Mono

If I'm right, the ServiceStack creator is now working for StackOverflow. Do they somehow use this framework and/or play a role in supporting it?

I think the framework is good as it is, but knowing about big names backing it would give me more faith going forward.

alexroon The Pendulum Swings, Again

If tomorrow the government suggested to licence software businesses so that if a consumer had trouble with a program or a website the responsible party would get in trouble, 99% of the population would vote it up. So much about everyone wanting to keep stuff open.

For the most education means getting a place in the vertical, not being curious. So far as everyone else is limited, 99% won't have a problem with it. iProduct and facebook are the obvious examples.

How do we keep it our way? The only answer I'm having is: by becoming billionaires and putting the money to work for the "open" ignoring any other commercial incentives.

alexroon Cloudant on Google's Spanner

The difference between NoSql and RDBMS is getting thinner and thinner with each progressive development. For most of the businesses Spanner is already covering all their needs. Going forward I'm anticipating db management systems to just have a switch "prefer consistency" or "favour partitioning" with the core functionality be the same.

alexroon My startup story

I think that herd mentality is what needs to be changed, but day-after-day we go in the other direction.

alexroon My startup story

It always saddens me to think that our world isn't capable of keeping up many great but small products.

alexroon Things I, as a designer, wish more tech startups knew

Minimal Viable Experience is what I took away. I think it serves better than MVP in the early days of the product.

alexroon Arrays in Postgres

The general point still stands - scaling up is often a preferred solution and life proves it every day. Not so many companies enjoy facebook style grows, and even aren't viral at all.