Astrohacker

14 ms·

61.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
I verified it by typing in the command. The ASCII Bernanke is truly hilarious.
62.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
I've been standing for about 5 months now [1]. Assuming the research continues to stay the same (that sitting all the time, in spite of getting regular exercise, increases all-cause mortality), I will never go back. [1] not continuously, lo
63.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
> And angry mobs coming to lynch you? Give me a break, such a thing is unprecedented Maybe you've never heard of the French revolution. Such a thing is definitely not unprecedented.
64.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
> Currency is regulated into existence. Nope. Gold and bitcoins come from the market.
65.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
I agree with everything you said with one important exception: The finance industry is not corrupt because of a lack of regulations. It is corrupt because of the regulations. The fact that Federal Reserve has been regulated into existence i
66.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Maybe, but there are a number of reasons why you might not want to: 1) The US financial system is unsustainable. Specialize in it and you will find yourself out of a job eventually. 2) It's unethical. If you understand that your excess sala
67.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Fun fact: Everyone knows the finance industry is highly corrupt, but point out the mechanism of the corruption and you will be downvoted.
68.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
I understand economics just fine, I just come from the Austrian School, which makes a lot of people angry (even though it is right).
69.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
3. Be willing to work for a corrupt industry.
70.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
So he does what any good programmer does, but he earns 5x as much. One reason they earn so much is that the companies they work for have corrupt ties to the Federal Reserve and the US government, and when the money supply is inflated, they
71.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
I call this the "problem of trust" and it is something I'm trying to solve. In order to be able to send out alerts, we need some sort of decentralized broadcast system. I am developing a P2P broadcast system called Proofnet which is based o
72.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Let's not forget that, in the US, the US government gives enormous amounts of funding to private universities. So the behavior of universities is not exactly the result of a free market with no government intervention... the government has
73.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Then governments would be less forceful because people do not like to be forced to do stuff.
74.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Congress is part of the problem. Even if they fixed patents, they would just screw something else up. The checks and balances of the US government aren't working. We need a free market of governments, so that if we don't like one, we just s
75.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Is inflation tame according to the Fed calculations which ignore expenses that matter to people like oil, or according to meaningful calculations? Because it sure seems to me that the prices I pay are rising pretty quickly. Quickly enough t
76.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
That's probably the right answer, since they have the power to do this. But of course it is disturbing and unacceptable that they would violate someone's personal property with no crime or even a suspected crime having been committed (or ev
77.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
It would be terrible in the short run, but it would be vastly better in the long run. Presently, the US is on the unsustainable trajectory of acquiring debt until it defaults. Not raising the debt ceiling would immediately end this problem.
78.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
This is good advice, but of course it's pretty absurd that anyone has to take these steps to avoid the overly invasive US government.
79.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
We are clearly moving towards a world of more web-based applications, but I'm disturbed by this because it means all my data is stored unencrypted on other people's computers. We're slowly placing our lives in the hands of the essentially a
80.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
What does that matter? If people know you by your screen name, that's a real name. Legal names are just nick names that are recorded by the government.
81.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
A screen name is no less "real" than a legal name.
82.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
I like being able to create new identities for different purposes. Why wouldn't Google+ allow that?
83.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Same here. That's basically what I suggested here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2677140 Email addresses are typically controlled by a third party, so it doesn't make much sense to me that they should be equated with identity. Would
84.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Our smarts and sense are limited by our genes. What you're calling for is a whole new species.
85.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
This article makes it sound like laissez-faire capitalism is the problem, and yet simultaneously places blame on Goldman Sachs, which happens to have intimate, corrupt ties with the Federal Reserve and and the US government. I think the pro
86.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Thanks for that link... amazing how well bitcoin fits into that picture.
87.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Could they be planning on suing all the small time startups that use the word "bitcoin" in their products? Perhaps they think they can extract some money from small companies by threatening them with lawsuits if they don't pay up.
88.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
It's not a scam. You have to distribute the coins somehow. Proof-of-work is a method to ensure no cheating. You can be sure the early miners did in fact perform computational effort to get their coins.
89.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
Obviously you should back it up, like you would be doing anyway.
90.
by Astrohacker 15y ago
I don't know. It would obviously slow down database access. It would be nice if someone tested this.

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