amirmc

It seems to me that you haven't looked into this space at all. See Table 2 in [1] for a list of other implementations.

I'm perfectly happy about how MirageOS is doing and I'm glad there are options that allow people to choose where they make their trade-offs.

[1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628

> "Mirageos is not going to drive uptake of ocaml in any big way"

Right, because Unix had no effect on the number of people working in C.

> "It makes more sense to give the people the tools they need to get the job done"

MirageOS takes a clean-slate approach and it's not exactly a secret. There are evidently significant benefits to this, as well as trade-offs. There are other unikernel implementations out there that have prioritised legacy over safety and composability.

> "... which seems something of a dead end."

Based on what, exactly? If anything 'all this effort' should indicate the complete opposite of what you state.

If any of these prompt you to think of new potential projects that's cool too. Just email the list to discuss it.

Also, a few folks raised a question about what the difficulty levels actually mean [1]. If you're new to OCaml then the suggestion is that you pick an area you're already familiar/comfortable with (eg networking, Xen, etc) so that you have some grounding. Otherwise, you're having to learn two things at once.

[1] http://openmirage.org/wiki/weekly-2015-02-25#PioneerProjects

You might find the intro to Real World OCaml interesting as these ideas have percolated out from languages such as OCaml. It's great if that helps lower the barrier for people to try it out.

https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/prologue.html#why-ocam...

> "there needs to be major force to drive useful functionality down into canonical library packages"

This tends to happen over time, as the community naturally converges on certain libraries, but it's rather opaque for a new user as to what those are. In some cases, you end up with two options and then life is a little more complicated (cf. async and lwt).

If anyone would like to do things with Cmdliner, then there are few libs that would be great to have as stand-alone executables (it's part of the MirageOS Pioneer Projects) [1].

https://github.com/mirage/mirage-www/wiki/Pioneer-Projects#c...

> "Is this time to admit we simply can't do manual memory management at this level and move to something else? I know the performance boost is tempting, but I think we can't afford the consequences."

People have built a clean-slate TLS stack in OCaml and you can read about it on the MirageOS site [1]. There's also a Bitcoin Piñata built using this stack [2].

I'm told the performance is actually pretty good (though there's always room for improvement).

[1] http://openmirage.org/blog/introducing-ocaml-tls

[2] http://amirchaudhry.com/bitcoin-pinata/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9027743

This tells me it was a poorly organised competition to begin with. The blurb clearly indicates it's for new companies/ideas (for some definition of new). However, the eligibility criteria only states that you are a US (Mastercard?) cardholder (i.e. no restrictions).

I'm not much impressed with the judges either. How the fuck is a pitch for a new idea meant to compete with one that's already a going concern?

"sign up to pitch your new business idea" and "... on the final day (3/15), the best Priceless Pitch will be awarded a $15,000 grand prize to help bring the idea to life." [1] -- emphasis added.

[1] http://mashable.com/2015/03/14/priceless-pitch-mashable-hous...

A few of the OCaml projects are showing up under Standard ML [1]. A little disappointing since anyone using OCaml would really benefit from finding out about Merlin (see the link).

This is due to a recent issue (or regression) with how GitHub's Linguist disambiguates code, which I hope will be fixed soon [2].

[1] http://libraries.io/search?languages=Standard+ML

[2] https://github.com/github/linguist/issues/2208

Sadly, this has the perverse effect of forcing otherwise happy people to act like they might be a flight risk, otherwise they risk being passed-over for interesting opportunities, raises etc. If you're not playing that game then you're losing out.

It's yet another mechanism that devalues loyalty to a firm, which I'm sure they realise is already in short supply. I'd be happier if I'd read that this was also a way to identify and reward the dedicated, productive employees — but no.

> "Open Source is a flat structure and seems to work in many awesome ways." and "... naturally occurring ones seem to evolve better and work better."

I agree that open source is awesome but successful projects are not at all 'flat' structures. Just think about all the governance processes that are necessary once a project grows beyond a certain size. These allow a project to achieve some kind of longevity. Simply thinking about who has commit access should indicate that there is clearly some form of hierarchy (at least, some form of 'in-crowd').

If you think that the 'naturally' occurring hierarchies work better, then I'd posit that you've only been in the 'in-crowd' for those projects -- of course it's difficult to see the downside from that vantage point.

> "... just for the sake of change and novelty."

I agree with the earlier comments you make (re spacing) but this change isn't happening purely for the sake of it. Folks have been asking for a mobile-friendly HN for a long time. Even though I'm not overjoyed with the version I saw today, I'm glad it's progressing.

FB (& Google) have reached a size where one of the ways to keep growing is to bring more people onto the Internet. If they can do that in a way that puts their product front-and-centre for those 'new' users, they can capture more of the market. I'm not saying I approve of this strategy, but I can see it as being a viable one for now (just as AOL was viable for its time).

> "What are they taking from you without your consent?"

Most people don't understand the privacy settings nor do they comprehend the ToS (because the reading-skill level required is too high). So what does 'consent' actually mean in this context?

I feel you're being completely disingenuous in your comments here, so I guess you'd probably just blame the user for not educating themselves.

> "... it's a business that needs to make money, how else is that supposed to happen?"

This attitude is what's wrong. Exxon also needs to make money so maybe we should cut them some slack around oil spills. So does Foxconn, so let's not badger them about employment practices. Etc.

To your point about how they are supposed to make money. I dunno, innovate on business models, maybe? Advertising has been a driving force for mass-consumer web services and it would be healthy to have alternatives.

> "... and have thought about all these arguments and decided it is worth it to them."

I suspect 'most people' aren't even remotely aware of such arguments. Nor of the effects that choices now will have on their future selves.

The concept of 'doing the right thing' is a matter of perspective. In other words, people may have vastly different ideas about what the 'right thing' is, in s given situation.

I had similar thoughts and wondered if Stripe had agreed to cover operating costs and a skeleton crew for the transition period. Nothing wrong with this and it speaks highly of all involved that they reached that agreement.

I did also wonder if there were some kind of regulatory requirements around managing the shutdown of a finance company (appropriate warning periods, etc).

I feel there's a lot of 'no true Scotsman' in the article and throughout the comments here.

That would indicate the presence of some kind of HR policy. Something that appears to be lacking in this case.

> "... taxes that ... keep people from investing ... in a much more distributed way ... [than] they'd prefer ..."

There's an implicit assumption in there that reducing taxes will cause people to 'invest' more -- i.e. something like the trickle-down effect. I believe there's enough evidence to show this isn't how things actually play out (people still keep their cash).

Also governments, need to set up/support entities that do figure out how to disburse funds appropriately. Like Research Councils in the UK or the NSF in the US who have established processes to do exactly this. How is that less distributed than a rich person deciding for themselves? Also, there are fundamental areas of research that would be completely ignored if we relied solely on the wealthy to solve problems.

> "Please don't thank the government unless you think they know better how to distribute this money than the people they claim to spend it for."

That assumes that people have enough knowledge about where it should be spent. I strongly disagree with that. You cannot achieve fundamental scientific breakthroughs this way.

Government is probably the only entity that can bankroll a wide swathe of basic research. That's about as 'long-shot' as it gets.

> "... if you ask people to follow the honor system, they tend to do it!"

This is great but I think the stakes are somewhat different if it's ostensibly about jobs/hiring. I don't recall the crypto challenges being promoted as a hiring mechanism (though they may have been useful for that).

> "Why worry about stock options at all?"

Because they do matter and are still part of the compensation package. There's still a significant difference between a payout that equates to two year's worth of salary vs another that pays out one year's worth.

UK wall sockets tend to have physical switches. Here's a pic.

http://m.alibaba.com/product/1462287490/UK-Type-13A-1-Gang-P...

> "... who are people of interest?"

I think you've missed the part where everyone is now (effectively) a person of interest.

There's a distinction to be drawn between James Bond-style spying ("Humint" - which is the kind you're actually referring to) and the large-scale, indiscriminate, archived, mass-surveillence of otherwise ordinary people ("Sigint" - which is what we've learned about over the last couple of years).

Thanks for the clarification.

> "...so is economically not a good idea for them."

This would imply that the trust model itself would have to undergo a fundamental shift (and likely has done). There are now entities you have to trust, rather than the system itself -- at which point the decentralised aspect is less of a defining feature.

> "The moment one becomes centralized, whether due to a flaw in the protocol or the concentration of mining power, it is no better (and probably worse in fact) than fiat money, e-gold, or any other monetary scheme which is vulnerable to capture by a minority, and therefore vulnerable to abusive seigniorage and capital controls."

Hasn't this already happened? I believe I heard something about a '51%' attack some time ago, which (I think) would mean that attacker could re-write history (I'd appreciate any corrections or clarifications).

Edit: Here's one story http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/06/bitcoin-security-gua... (not quite about rewriting history but double-spending becomes possible).