alister

29 ms·

241.
by alister 9y ago
A literal comparison to paper bills isn't quite right. A small sheet of linen/cotton paper could represent $1, $100, or hundreds of millions of dollars (eg., a stock certificate of a million shares of Apple stock). You have to com
242.
by alister 9y ago
If read the article correctly, he's including the cost of mining Bitcoin, not merely energy cost to verify a coin (which is absolutely trivial). Once all Bitcoin is mined (yes, there's a built-in maximum), or it becomes prohibitiv
243.
by alister 9y ago
You can't compare Bitcoin to Visa. Visa is merely a payment sytem -- a means of transfer of money that already exists. Visa is not money. Bitcoin however is money. As well as being a payment system. The correct comparison would be to
244.
by alister 9y ago
A great observation by tacostakohashi a year ago was that "peak telephone" was the mid-1990s and its success is what kills it, following the same pattern as postal mail, fax, email, usenet, and facebook: https://news.yc
245.
Amazon recalls eclipse glasses(kgw.com)
290 points by alister 9y ago|246 comments
246.
by alister 9y ago
> An email from Google with a bit.ly link? The article clearly explains that "the bitly link was not directly visible in the phishing email, as it was an HTML-email."
247.
by alister 9y ago
> you learn of a new concept or word and then immediately see it referenced soon after It happens to me all the time. For anyone who hasn't experienced this, I offer this experiment. Pick one or more words from the list below tha
248.
by alister 9y ago
The article doesn't use the words "proof-of-work" -- it's the person who posted it to HN who gave that title. But I see the analogy. A proof-of-work currency (1) prevents uncontrolled inflation or devaluation, (2) should
249.
by alister 9y ago
> For those concerned about password managers: Leave off something, somewhere in your password. I like the idea. So what you suggest is to manually type, say, "7&>>", before or after every password entered by the pa
250.
Thieves drain 2fa-protected bank accounts by abusing SS7 routing protocol(arstechnica.com)
3 points by alister 9y ago|0 comments
251.
by alister 10y ago
What an interesting contrast in attitudes toward privacy: He makes an extraordinary effort to maintain his bash history whereas I jump through hoops to delete my history (on logout using a .bash_logout file). I also set my browser to mainta
252.
by alister 10y ago
> South American carrier (I forget which) to have significantly different prices depending on whether the website is in Spanish or English That's certainty true of Brazil's main airline TAM (now called LATAM). You often pay abo
253.
by alister 10y ago
Here's another illustration of how our intuition about compound interest can be really wrong: Futurama scene where Fry has been transported to the year 3000 and he still has his ATM card: The bank teller checks Fry's bank balance.
254.
by alister 10y ago
What a welcome shift in public sentiment. Mainstream media is starting to recommend end-to-end encryption, without back doors, for everybody. (Though the New York Times might represent the leading edge of the change in popular opinion.)
255.
by alister 10y ago
For anyone who hasn't studied a foreign language extensively, you might be surprised to learn that numbers are much more difficult than your intuition would suggest. You might think, what's the big deal? You need memorize around 4
256.
by alister 10y ago
What you and the parent say are not inconsistent. You tip taxis by "rounding up", but the parent says he never tips. By American standards , rounding up (i.e., up to 50 cents) is not tipping. Taxi drivers in the U.S. and Canada e
257.
by alister 10y ago
Oh, I beg to differ. Although airline websites are frequently awful, I always prefer to avoid a middleman if I can. There are things that can go wrong between an aggregator and the merchant. More than once in Brazil I've seen a guest a
258.
by alister 10y ago
> Recently, Uber announced that another layer of security would be added. Users who want to pay in cash must also provide their date of birth and CPF. Uber is under pressure to do something , so they did something that is both ineffec
259.
Cosmic ray added 4096 votes to electronic voting machine in Belgium in 2003(science.slashdot.org)
1 points by alister 10y ago|0 comments
260.
by alister 10y ago
> no two cars seeming to have the same configuration Have you noticed the rear brakes lights on cars? Absolutely every model of car has a different shape: triangle, concentric circles, polka dot pattern, you name it. I doubt that anyone
261.
by alister 10y ago
"Methods of meat processing include salting, curing, fermentation, and smoking. Meat processing includes all the processes that change fresh meat with the exception of simple mechanical processes such as cutting, grinding or mixing.&qu
262.
by alister 10y ago
> If everyone stopped smoking, there would be 64,500 fewer cases of cancer a year in the UK, compared with 8,800 fewer cases if everyone stopped eating processed or red meat. Even that statistic greatly overstates the risk of red mea
263.
by alister 10y ago
Nobody reads patents as a "catalogue of tools and building blocks they can use". Nobody reads patents even to learn. The only time anyone reads patents--at least computing patents--is if you're preparing a new patent and need
264.
Research suggests appendix has purpose after all: reserve of emergency bacteria(qz.com)
4 points by alister 10y ago|0 comments
265.
Giving children computers basically does the opposite of what you expect(washingtonpost.com)
2 points by alister 10y ago|0 comments
266.
by alister 10y ago
If I were to run just one of those tools, I'd pick the original article. That's because his plain English description is far better than the others. He starts off with "What & Why?" and explains what problem he'
267.
by alister 10y ago
The person they list as "founder or CEO", Jay Hoag, is an early investor and Netflix board member according to Forbes[1]. Wikipedia says Netflix was founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph[2] and makes no mention of Jay Hoag. S
268.
by alister 10y ago
> This is VC content marketing through and through There are some unexplained things like Apple founders "Steve Jobs, Markula[sic], Scott" having 35%. First, why is Mike Markkula (which is the correct spelling) included as a &q
269.
by alister 10y ago
It would be interesting to see the same data on old tech companies for comparison -- to see how the trends have changed. I noticed Apple on the list, but I also like to see Microsoft, AutoDesk, Cisco, UUNET, etc., and also really old ones
270.
Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded for molecular machines(washingtonpost.com)
2 points by alister 10y ago|1 comments

More ›