What you're really asking is "does anyone think that $19k for Bitcoin is undervalued?" And there are certainly people who think that.
So what is the fair value of Bitcoin? Well, it's a new economic idea [1], so there's not a lot of prior art to gauge here. There's no P/E ratio, no rent/price ratios, nothing of that sort to give you at least a baseline feel for "does this seem frothy?"
Indeed, its value is ultimately based on projection: whatever you think Bitcoin could do, what values it might have, that's the valuation you're going to give to it. And people have given really daft ideas of its value: I've seen someone seriously argue that Bitcoin is useful for people who lack phones or internet. Other people argue that $19k is cheap, if Bitcoin somehow replaced all fiat currency. So there's no shortage of people willing to bid prices higher, and that's not counting speculators hoping to make money on a "free" get-rich-quick scheme.
[1] I say this as someone skeptical of high valuations of Bitcoin. Just because something is new and transformative doesn't mean it's valuable--just ask CDOs.
A lot of people? People continued to buy all the way up to 19.5. The thing about Bitcoin is, almost everyone expected a drop, no one knew when or how high it would go before it dropped... or how far it will drop.
Everyone also expected it to drop at 5k, 10, 15k and it just didn't happen to a large extent. I stupidly bought in at 10k and got lucky to make some money but others stupidly bought in at 20k.
The only thing definitive about Bitcoin is that it will go up..and down. Claiming to know how high, how fast, or how low is BS.
One of the infuriating things about Bitcoin is that there's no reason 19K couldn't be the new normal. You don't have to trade in whole Bitcoins, so high prices just mean people trade in smaller fractions and low prices just mean people trade in higher numbers, unlike a stock where you might want to do a split to make it easier for people to invest.
Wrong. Bitcoin has a lot of fundamental value - value in scarcity, future price projection and potential to become better via cheap and fast transactions. Those who claim Bitcoin costs a lot to move clearly hasnt used a segwit address. Once segwit is adopted across the board mempool will clear.
In fact, Bitcoin has so much value that 5 years from now 19k will look like bargain of the century. People just can't seem to see the true potential of Bitcoin and ultimately blockchains.
USD aren't valuable because they have a fundamental value, either. Personally, I think the "you have to pay taxes in USD" argument is stupid; it doesn't factor into my daily thinking and I doubt it does to many other people's.
They're valuable because literally everyone I interact with treats them as if they were valuable. If that changed, I'm sure USD would quickly become worthless.
You can say there's no difference between USD and BTC, but there's some difference between "a million people think they have value" and "three billion people think they have value".
I wanted to short bitcoin, I predicted a price correction of -50% after the CBOE and CME futures came online, and well, here we are. Unfortunately I can't post 200% margin even on a 20k contract :(
edit: The futures markets may not have even been the catalyst for this drop, more likely it's this: "The market has also been artificially pumped up by Bitfinex and their money printing machine Tether."
I've been looking into it after hearing a few thoughts this morning. I think its even more likely that:
The timing of increased volumes and the beginning of bulk selloffs times pretty closely with the announcement of a large hack in South Korea — and exchange called Youbit. They've completely shut down. South Korea is a huge market.
> The South Korean National Intelligence service believes that North Korean hackers were behind that attack, as well as a separate hacking of South Korea’s largest exchange, Bithumb, back in February. The Korean Internet and Security Agency is currently investigating Youbit’s most recent attack.
Is there really much there is to expect though? Bitcoin's value has no real basis one way or another, since all the purported practical uses have fizzled out once the network became incapable of actual commerce due to various factors like transaction fees, price instability, processing delays, etc.
So I guess by now, Bitcoin crashing by 50% is as surprising or unsurprising as Bitcoin growing by 50% instead. So I'm not sure if you could really expect the crash, since that expectation requires understanding the unknown speculation mechanism that currently drives it. Though in the future some analysis in hindsight might tell us how to explain what market psychology is currently influencing the price.
Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15984381 (This commenter at least hedges at the end, but this kind of reasoning could be found all over the relevant sub-reddits and other corners of the internet this week. Every bubble has a "this time it's different" motivated-reasoning thing...)
Edit: Here's another from the same thread, with a motivated response to "sell when the shoe shine boy gives stock tips" on why "this time that's different" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983811
> High school debate today is basically an intellectual game, not an exercise in truth-seeking. It has been turned into something that can easily be scored. This eliminates the complexity and intricacy of real discourse about real issues. If debate is a game, then the execution of a “spread” is like a well-timed blitz in football. Convincing a judge that your opponents’ arguments would cause human extinction is equivalent to a successful Hail Mary pass.
I agree with this quote so much. I was on the debate and robotics team in high school, we did extemporary style in debate. I ended up leaving the debate team and focusing entirely on robotics because debate taught students how to argue, not how to listen. Whenever debate kids would leak into robotics, they would cause endless looping conversations talking about different designs.
The main issue is that high school debate doesn't teach how to listen well, only how to hear well. If debate was more freeform so students could actually form opinions based on what they thought about the resolution, then I believe this problem would be fixed. I have a friend who did my proposed style and said that it was extremely fun, and turned debate into a problem solving exercise.
The last thing the JS community needs is macros IMO. From what I've seen in other languages, macros are difficult to maintain and document, and they add syntax constructs to languages that aren't supported by code highlighters. The difference between this and babel, is documentation. Babel is working off of a specification of how the language should work, whereas I doubt someone will document their macros as well as TC39 does the JS syntax
If projects were shareable then that would be nice, so I could share a report with a cofounder or advisor. Also having edit/view permission for people would be good to control who can edit the budget. And if you're going to do sharable reports, then live edit would also be amazing.
This is disconcerting to hear, and certainly not appropriate. It's not okay to talk about women in that way. As a student in uni, women do just as week and are given just as difficult material as men.
Your comment is off color and mildly mysogenistic.
OP's hyperbole took it too far by saying "good programmer". But if you change it just "top one percent programmer", it might not be too much of an exaggeration. Before I also get banned, I want to clarify that there's a difference between:
- "it's hard to find a woman programmer in the top 1%" because women can't be good programmers due to their biology
- "it's hard to find a woman programmer in the top 1%" because our society failed to train and produce them
The second statement isn't inherently sexist, it's just an observation of the poor state of our world.
If you're familiar with programming/math competitions you'll know that there are not many female represented there even after taking into account their smaller population: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=AlgoRank. There are probably 500 "red" coders (which is roughly the top 1%) but with probably less than a handful who are female. All you need is a username to compete so it's pretty objective and gender-blinded.
So it seems exceptional female programmers are simply not being produced even as early as high school and college level. Google interviews are very similar to those competition so I assume their data will also uncomfortably show this.
I am the top ranked woman (in terms of karma) on HN. I was one of the top 3 students of my graduating high school class and one of the best high school students in my entire state. I was the state alternate for a gifted enrichment program one summer. That means only two students in the state outperformed me and I would have gone had one of them been unable to participate for some reason. I won a National Merit Scholarship based on having the highest SAT score in my graduating class.
Any time I try to tell people that I kick ass at anything at all, even just as an excellent mom, it is a total fucking beat down. It simply isn't okay for a woman to admit she is that good at anything at all. Ever. For any damn reason.
This means if you are a highly competent woman and you want to survive in this world, you learn to shut the fuck up about it. It also means that you are routinely denied the same opportunities as the men who are, in fact, allowed to say "Yup, I am that damn good" without it being a total fucking beat down.
Furthermore, breaking into a male dominated field tends to be a shit show where a woman has to put up with endless harassment by men who would hit that because Oh My God, It's a Girl! And she is interested in the same thing I am!!! The price of admission is just vastly higher than for men. You need far more than to just be as technically competent as the guys. You also need to be incredibly savvy about handling the endless social BS, incredibly thick skinned and so on. And then you still need to not brag lest it turn into a shit show and beat down for that reason.
While I disagree with the wording of OPs comment, I think it's easy to see that the problem here is that there is not enough women programmers - but I think we can both see how this in turn leads to difficulty in finding good ones?
For example - my MSc course in computer science had 30 people total, and out of them 3 were women. Of course, it's outrageous that only 10% of the students in that course were women, but that's a deeper problem that needs to be addressed far earlier than MSc level.
However, put yourself in shoes of a company recruiting programmers - you need to hire 1-2 programmers out of those 30 graduates. If you say that you only want to look at exam results and nothing else(completely blind choice) what is the chance that they will end up with a woman programmer? Very low, but it's not because women are any less skilled - it's just that there's fewer of them.
That's the problem that needs to be addressed first.
(For the sake of argument, I would say that if we looked for some predominantly female roles, like a nanny, the same would apply - "you just can't find a good male nanny" seems true, but it's not because men are any worse at it, it's just that there's so few of them in this profession)
Not only finding, but retaining. When there are very few women, organizations get... interesting. If women are pushed out of those organizations before there's a critical mass to have change happen, then hiring a few women here or there doesn't really help. If anything it just makes the women crazy.
The more balanced your team is, the more balanced your team culture is, and therefore the better chance you will have of retaining good people and the good balance.
I'll take that bet. I know several excellent women who program. Some of them in their 50's. They'd probably outclass the vast majority of the hacker wanna-be's but they have one aspect that is totally different from their male counterparts: they try very hard not to attract attention and to let on how good they are whereas any male who can hold a keyboard is off to the races bragging about their mad skills. There just seems to be much less ego involved.
well the problem is that less woman want to be programmers. (At least where I live) Which actually means that men are more present so if you have 50 programmers where 5 are good you only will have a pool of 5 woman programmers where maybe 1 is good. that actually leads to the data, which actually not says that woman can't program better or worse, it just says it's harder to find a good woman, because there are overall less woman in tech.
actually I also think that not only in germany near freiburg are less woman programmers, I'm pretty sure that MINT is still "not that cool" for woman. the number was raised the last years and still climbs but it's nowhere near a 50:50 sadly
well the problem is that less woman want to be programmers
Would you like to explain why you think that happened? And why it's such a drastic turnaround from how things used to be?
(remember: in earlier days a much higher percentage of programmers and other computer-adjacent technical people were women, compared to today. The demographics we see today are a change from that, which cries out for explanation)
Well hard questions.
I think why more woman did computing in the early days, was because men did actually do war. so woman actually fulfilled many roles that men could not do because they either were far away or came back with injuries or maybe one leg, whatever and early computing probably did not have features for disabled people.
fast forward a few years the war actually started to calm down, technology began to rise. and many more men seeked for a job, while there was a dramactic shift in jobs and that now woman did more work, it still was in a lot of men's brain that this is not typical so men did start to do the engineering jobs again and seen woman still as somebody who should do the household. this probably also meant that the whole parenting did raise their children in stereotypes (we still can see a lot of that today), which favored the social aspect of the woman and the engineering of the men. (Lego vs. Barbie, etc.)
I think that is why now men do more mint jobs as of now and a shift in that is hardly seen, a lot of people still raise their kids as back in the days, girls get barbies and puppets and boys gets lego and other stuff that favors different aspects of life.
That's why I also think that the young life of children should be way more non stereotypical. we should stop giving our children different colors and different toys because of gender, that would start to stop thinking in genders.
From my personal standpoint, I have a niche (5 years old) and she actually wished herself a friend book, and I wanted to have one that is as neutral as possible. And I can tell, that this is not that easy. a lot of them sub 60%-70% do actually favor a gender, either with their art cover __or__ worse with their question. I think such a thing is definitv one of the reason why there was a shift and why there still is a shift/difference between what man do and what woman do.
it's good that my niche does not get raised this way since my sister also helps her grow with other stuff (and she likes that stuff), like a workbench.
P.S.: I'm a guy and I hate it that a lot of people still think that girls needs to be raised with different toys. That is probably the starting point of discrimination and job inequality.
Edit: Well I think there are many more aspects why things are like they are, but this is probably one of the starting points and a big point that should be somewhat addressed.
well I think computing as we now of today started between 194x till 1990 and the internet grown at something like 96. and war including cold war was until the 80s and I came from germany and my father was at the army ("bundeswehr") in the 90s where they still seen the russians as an enemy. in our country woman did a lot from 54 to something like 70s they even rebuilt whole cities. while men still needed to find their way back into regular life. i'm not sure but after the 90s computing and engineering was already done by way more men.
>> that actually leads to the data, which actually not says that woman can't program better or worse, it just says it's harder to find a good woman, because there are overall less woman in tech.
The reason why I'm okay with Google, but not Verizon spying on me is because I pay Verizon but I don't pay Google. Verizon shouldn't have to sell my data for more money because they already charge money for their service. If their service is too expensive then Verizon can charge more money. However Google gives me services for free so I expect they'll sell my data to other companies.
I actually feel like I'm getting something in return for letting Google index my personal data. I also trust Google far, far more than any ISP (wired or wireless) that I have used.
I also have faith that Google won't accidentally expose my data to the entire internet - or at least, they'll only fall to vulnerabilities that affect everyone.
Verizon's ethics aside, I have no real trust in their competence to keep data to themselves. I've dealt with their website, I've read the stories of people getting their accounts hijacked because Verizon can't handle verification right, and all the rest. I don't want a side channel to track my downloads, location, and god knows what else because I expect it'll be compromised far faster.
Another good point. Even assuming that Google has lots of government ties and no real respect for privacy, I still don't expect them to roll over with no discretion whatsoever. I pretty much expect Verizon to do like AT&T and surrender all their user data unprompted.
Exactly. Your data is a currency. I cannot stress this enough. I(!) should be allowed to spend that currency however I choose. If I am already paying you for a service, you shouldn't get to have my data, too!
I don't think I understand what the exact point of this talk was. Maybe the thesis was stated at the end of the talk when he said that he wishes the internet were more like a city rather than a mall. I think the internet can be like a city, and I think a great example of a place where people with conflicting ideas talk together is HN. Sure HN can be an echo chamber at times. But there's quite a few times when people with differing opinions talk about their different opinions.
Also I don't necessarily understand Ceglowski's stance on why we shouldn't use deep learning and should avoid surveillance on the web. I don't take issue with becoming a datapoint in Facebook's web of people because nothing bad has happened or can happen from me giving Facebook my data. When most people speak out about the data that's being collected about Facebook and Google users they say they're "worried about what could happen" but then never list any bad things that they're actually afraid of. The speaker falls to this issue too. Ceglowski says:
>I worry about legitimizing a culture of universal surveillance.
But then never explains what bad could happen from legitimizing that culture. Maybe I'm completely missing the point of the talk? Please explain what I'm missing if I'm actually missing something.
The audience for this talk was a bunch of librarians and fellow travelers who are bringing large archives and collections online, often at great expense. I wanted to encourage them to find new, engaged audiences for these collections, rather than fixate on how to analyze them with computers.
With regard to the dangers of surveillance, I've made a sustained argument about this in other talks. It boils down to the data being collected having great power to harm people if it is ever put to malicious use, and a lifespan that exceeds that of institutions we know how to run. My beef is not with the surveillance alone, but with the combination of surveillance and permanent storage.
Thank you for explaining that! The context is meaningful and makes your talk make sense.
On the regard of data talking into the wrong hands, I take issue to this argument because it's not a unique problem to personal data collection. Any data could be hacked - bank information, address, whatever. But that doesn't mean we don't use the internet for banking and etc. It means we try to make systems that are difficult to hack. It seems like you'd want data collection not to happen on websites like Facebook and Google, when hacking isn't a unique problem to those websites.
For example, ISPs are not able to crawl your traffic if it's via HTTPS. I've worked on data sets gathered by major ISPs and it's scary how much they know about their users (especially if they also have a mobile phone with the same company). ISPs use such intelligence for personalised marketing (either for their own product catalogue or 3rd parties)
The domain isn't, the full URL is. (But content size etc probably still allow identification of an individual page on a small site, and the context of the domain is already valuable)
There's already been studies on how Google can manipulate elections just by reordering search results, or how Facebook can alter your mood by tweaking what goes into your news feed. It's not hard to imagine how bad things could get if that kind of power got into the hands of the next Mussolini or Stalin (which is a very real possibility aka Trump)
I don't understand why the commenters in this thread are being so negative towards this project. This is a fun experiment to see what the author could do with the minimal tools CSS provides. Sure there's no use for this kind of project. Not everything has to have a use. Some things can be for pure fun. The negativity in this thread isn't even productive or helpful.
I don't feel really negatively towards this project, but after reading the title and looking at the code it felt a bit disappointing. When I read "computing primes" I didn't expect so much pre-computation cooked into the code.
It's what you might call a "halfway algorithm" -- yes it needs some major fudging baked in (because from what I understand you can't do things iteratively in CSS). But it does, intrinsically, compute the primes. And the point is it demonstrates a kind of computation one normally wouldn't think was even possible with CSS (that is: not that you'd rule it out as beyond the computational reach of CSS; but it's definitely the sort of computation you normally wouldn't think to do with CSS).
I don't disagree, because I have a similar feeling. But I recognize that it comes from a bit of a 'No True Scotsman' in regard to computation.
By which I mean that looking up values in a table is actually a part of computation. That's pretty much how anything with a trigonometric function works [we've just replaced books with integrated circuits]. Back in the days of using a slide rule, there was a looking it up in a table element as well, it's just that the table was in a flexible form.
Philosophically, I don't have the same feeling querying for some nth prime at https://primes.utm.edu/nthprime/index.php but it's probably doing all its calculations for mundane things like network packets and none of it sieving natural numbers.
I see your point, and I think we share a point of view.
But when using lookup tables, I consider the computation of the lookup table a part of the algorithm - after all, a lookup table is essentially an optimization: You extract a sub-computation and store it, paying with space for better time complexity.
Philosophically, I don't think that feeling intellectually satisfying is a marker of correct understanding. I mean I don't think there's anything out in independent reality that makes an procedure that implements the sieve of Eratosthenes better than a procedure that uses lookup tables.
1. The only thing that matters about a function 'nth-prime' is that it maps 1->2, 2->3, 3->5 etc.
2. To be useful in practical applications, a function `is-prime` is unlikely to use the sieve of Eratosthenes and more likely to use something like Fermat's Primality Test [1] and hence will be mistaken over Carmichael Numbers and so hard coding the first few into the function via looking might be a good way to do what people expect...though at some point:
Numbers that fool the Fermat test are called Carmichael numbers, and little is known about them other than that they are extremely rare. There are 255 Carmichael numbers below 100,000,000. The smallest few are 561, 1105, 1729, 2465, 2821, and 6601. In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a “correct” algorithm. Considering an algorithm to be inadequate for the first reason but not for the second illustrates the difference between mathematics and engineering. Abelson, Sussman, Sussman https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-11.htm...
I see an iteration of every possible factor for the numbers given. Continuing from 999 further on to 1400, the code doesn't work anymore (It claims 1369 to be prime).
So, to be precise, the code does not compute 'primes', the code lists every number that is not devisable by any number from 2 to 32.
There is a precomputation that 32 is the (rough) square root of 1000. There is no precomputation of primes. It is true that the code will not work beyond 1000, unless you also add more selectors.
I can't speak for the others but I'm very wary of "too powerful" languages and language features. They lead naturally to technical debt and security vulnerabilities.
But it’s a completely straightforward use of :nth-child, so not really that fun or deep of an experiment (yes, just an opinion). I was hoping for something at least as interesting as prime-testing backreferences /^(..+)\1+$/.
The negativity probably comes from the fact that people expect to find high quality content on the HN front page. Pet projects like these are not impressive enough to be featured.
