api

878 ms·

1. 10921.▲
   by api 9y ago

   I wish people would find organic solutions, but history shows that people reliably fall for the same scams over and over and over again. Gambling is one of the oldest economic activities and remains as profitable as ever. I've been sho
2. 10922.▲
   by api 9y ago

   Bitcoin could crash and never recover, but the tech and its descendants could indeed find uses in the future. "Cryptocurrency is a massive bubble" and "cryptocurrency and the tech behind it is a major innovation in distribute
3. 10923.▲
   by api 9y ago

   Of course not. One takeaway I have from both the 2008 crash and the cryptocurrency mania is that it's actually very hard to create a financial system that is not mostly fraud and gambling. There's a couple reasons for this. One is
4. 10924.▲
   by api 9y ago

   C++ is a language with a lot of features, and not all of them should be used in every code base. It's quite possible to write simple, portable, and relatively clean C++ code if you use only those features you need. It's not the pr
5. 10925.▲
   by api 9y ago

   Got a good link? This stuff is interesting.
6. 10926.▲
   by api 9y ago

   The assets include Dogecoin. We all died in 2000 when the end of the world came. This is a parody timeline, sort of like when shows go on for too many seasons and hack writers take over.
7. 10927.▲
   by api 9y ago

   Elon's a funny animal. Most hype artists are full of shit and never deliver anything. Elon is full of shit but then ends up actually delivering something rather amazing-- but maybe not quite as amazing as promised and never as quickly.
8. 10928.▲
   by api 9y ago

   Bitcoin is a poor store of value too. It requires a lot of power simply to maintain it. It's a dissipative structure. Gold on the other hand can be buried in the ground and can just sit there for free. There are costs associated with m
9. 10929.▲
   by api 9y ago

   I had a bit of Bitcoin back then-- maybe 10 BTC. Some I mined back when you could CPU mine. I set up a process to mine in a pool whenever my 2011-2012 era MacBook was plugged in and had Internet, keeping it alive even when the lid was close
10. 10930.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Future tunnel borers will need these to repel the Deros.
11. 10931.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Hash sigs... ok Winternitz... ok Ternary hash function ... designed by genetic algorith ... WUT? Why would you design your own hash function?
12. 10932.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Watching the crypto space has led me to realize that it's actually pretty hard to create any kind of financial system that is not mostly fraud.
13. 10933.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Another factor is that there exists a massive advertising industry in developed nations whose goal is to convince everyone they can't be happy unless they are X or have Y.
14. 10934.▲
    by api 9y ago

    > In general, undeveloped countries seem to have fewer problems with psychopaths (disregarding the ones in charge). I find this immensely curious. My pet hypothesis on this is that humans are wired to cope with extreme stress, scarcity,
15. 10935.▲
    by api 9y ago

    ... which is the opposite of what a good engineer does. A good engineer focuses first on the hardest aspects of the problem, and tends to guide discussion there.
16. 10936.▲
    by api 9y ago

    It's not complexity but combinatorics. The hardness of crypto is a type of hardness not often encountered in other programming areas, or not to the same degree. Cryptographers are modern day real world occultists and wizards. It real
17. 10937.▲
    by api 9y ago

    "Swarm Intelligence" - Okay, I stopped there. Can't throw something like that out without a link or commentary. Getting a decentralized swarm to implement transaction processing is highly non-trivial, especially when (as the
18. 10938.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Also note the extremely flashy web site.
19. 10939.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Custom crypto primitives (ciphers, hashes, etc.) is a big red flag to me unless the designers are cryptographers. I know a fair bit about crypto. I would implement (and have implemented) higher order constructions like encrypted and authe
20. 10940.▲
    by api 9y ago

    It's called SaaS. Not exactly per execution but close. Monthly license fees and per core license fees are close too.
21. 10941.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Advertising is always a race to the bottom.
22. 10942.▲
    by api 9y ago

    I don't think IT expertise necessarily correlates (either way) with something worthwhile to say about politics, economics, or art.
23. 10943.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Maybe SHA-256 itself encodes a complex ritual for summoning the old ones. Bitcoin ASICs are effectively performing this ritual billions upon billions of times per second, gradually drawing the Old Ones closer and closer...
24. 10944.▲
    by api 9y ago

    The Great Old Ones could just have their own ICO.
25. 10945.▲
    by api 9y ago

    A major barrier is the hassle of maintaining and updating your own server, or alternately the restrictions and awful UX of most shared hosting. Shared hosting is generally overpriced too.
26. 10946.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Sure. A house is not an ad. What I don't want is a malt liquor billboard in orbit.
27. 10947.▲
    by api 9y ago

    It's the precedent. We do not want space based ads.
28. 10948.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Paper money was once backed by gold, but today it's backed by "nothing." In reality that nothing is some combination of the GDP and the military might of the nation states that issue it.
29. 10949.▲
    by api 9y ago

    I've always considered BTC an alpha release and a prototype. Kind of amazing it's gotten this far.
30. 10950.▲
    by api 9y ago

    Then program a Raspberry Pi to generate this but only between midnight at 2AM and hide it behind a wall socket.