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cbareon What Bitcoin Is, and Why It Matters

The question is, which will be the more stable currency 5 or 10 years from now, BitCoin or the US Dollar?

See The Future of Money: http://pragmaticpoliticaleconomy.blogspot.com/2010/03/future...

cbareon Ask HN: What background music you play while coding?

Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk.

cbareon Judge to copyright troll: your "business model" isn't my problem

Props to Judge John Kane. Take that, trolls!

cbareon Google Maps visualization of marijuana prices, with over 800+ entries so far

Nice! What other black markets could benefit from this kind of visibility into pricing? ....hmmm, OK, maybe let's not go there.

cbareon Masters in Computer Science, an option?

Combining Econ with CS, particularly if you intend to focus on stats/data mining/machine-learning will be a really strong combination. I did the professional masters program in CS at the University of Washington, which was a ton of fun.

You'd likely have to prove that you know the basics of data structures and algorithms and have at least one programming language down pretty well. They might want you to take another class or two at the undergrad level. But, if you have a compelling goal in mind, programs will probably be flexible.

cbareon P ≠ NP

+1 to that. Is there any point to Scribd other than putting ads on PDFs?

cbareon Ask HN: Best book(s) to learn about the basics of economics?

Wealth of Nations is a great read, if only to appreciate how much of modern economics Adam Smith either foreshadowed or invented and how misrepresented his ideas typically are. There's a certain amount of slogging but it's well worth the time.

cbareon Closures in Ruby

Cheers to Paul Cantrell for figuring all this out and documenting it in such a fun way. Here's a link to a helpful thread on the same topic:

http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/153876

cbareon Ask HN: How To Become Quantitative Analyst And Achieve Greatness?

Hi, There are so many cool applications of machine learning that you'll find plenty that are fascinating, good for the world, and will keep you out of the poor-house. Models of complex systems from economics to linguistics to biology are built with the same toolkit of techniques. Have fun and good luck.