betterunix2

148 ms·

1111.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Actually, "its" would be gender-neutral in English, but using "its" to describe a person is considered very rude (because people actually have genders, so "its" implies that you are talking about something ra
1112.
by betterunix2 9y ago
How are software patents protecting or encouraging innovation? I have seen patents cover algorithms that had not been proved feasible at the time the patent was granted . I have seen patents granted on academic research that do not recog
1113.
by betterunix2 9y ago
I always loved the end-run around the limits on patents: just say it is "on a computer" and suddenly it is not a patent on math. Never mind what sort of computer is covered.
1114.
by betterunix2 9y ago
It is worth remembering that DS had claimed that Cloudflare's management secretly supported DS ideas/worldview/etc. There was a reputation problem brewing for them, so they decided to drop one customer to keep a lot of other
1115.
by betterunix2 9y ago
There is also the alternative: telling everyone that someone is a deadbeat (i.e. a delinquent debtor's credit rating is harmed). If you are operating at a small scale e.g. one involving a notebook, presumably you know all your custome
1116.
by betterunix2 9y ago
In the interest of being fair, let's compare bytes: 日日是好日 (15 bytes) Every day is a good day (23 bytes) It's not just how one counts "characters;" some languages are written more compactly than others. I would not be su
1117.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Multiple tweets or attaching an image of a block of text are both annoying for users. If in one language users are more likely to be annoyed than in another, why not fix the problem?
1118.
by betterunix2 9y ago
数千字で書く方が、二十六字だけで書く方より効率的だ。(26 characters) Writing with thousands of characters is more efficient than writing with just 26. (82 characters) I admit my Japanese is not so great, and the comparison is somewhat unfair because of the subtleties
1119.
by betterunix2 9y ago
"practical private information retrieval" For single-server PIR that is almost certainly an impossibility, since no matter what sort of techniques you use you must scan the entire database on every request (there may be some batch
1120.
by betterunix2 9y ago
The verifier learns the NIZK itself; i.e. the verifier could not have computed the NIZK independently.
1121.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Technically that is not "zero knowledge" since the definition of ZK requires interaction (so there is no "publishing" of a proof). What you described sounds like this construction of "non-interactive ZK:" htt
1122.
by betterunix2 9y ago
"Zk proofs shouldn't leak knowledge to cheating provers or verifiers." It is trivial to show that ZK proofs leak nothing to the prover: the verifier has no secret input to leak. This is somewhat technical but it comes down t
1123.
by betterunix2 9y ago
The definition of "zero knowledge" is that for any verifier V, there exists an algorithm S that outputs the same distribution as V without any interaction. Since S has no interaction with the prover, its output has no dependence
1124.
by betterunix2 9y ago
The effort to maintain copyright is strategic. Hollywood is less concerned about the latest technological fads (streaming, apps, etc.) than about the longer-term impact the Internet will have on their entire business model. They have no i
1125.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Sounds like you are referring to the gold standard. A few things: 1. The dollar itself was created two centuries before the US left the gold standard. "Created" being the operative word. Created by Congress because America ne
1126.
by betterunix2 9y ago
What stops a totalitarian government from blocking Bitcoin at the national level?
1127.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Fiat currency was the first currency, developed in Mesopotamia as an accounting system run by the temple-governments of their city-states. Accounts were recorded in clay ledgers, and withdrawals could be made in the form of clay tokens tha
1128.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Personally I would argue that the price of Bitcoin is driven by the same supply-demand relationship as anything else. Supply is obvious. I personally think the demand for Bitcoin is driven by its use to make payments in fiat currencies; m
1129.
by betterunix2 9y ago
No different from the situation 500 years ago where a fire could destroy important records and leave countries in chaos. All banks need to do is keep track of how much money is in everyone's accounts and allow people to transfer money
1130.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Someone has always been able to "create money out of nothing." At some point there was no money; some time later there was. Someone or some group of people had to create the first money. People have actually "initialized&q
1131.
by betterunix2 9y ago
Keep in mind that the past actions of the NSA also include strengthening DES and strengthening SHA-1. The NSA also designed Skipjack for public use (in the Clipper chip), which was eventually declassified, and which was apparently desi
1132.
by betterunix2 9y ago
There are various forms of decentralization. Bitcoin tries to be as extremely decentralized as possible but you can greatly increase energy efficiency by centralizing a few aspects. Here is a thought experiment: Imagine a system where the
1133.
by betterunix2 9y ago
> In the end money is just a commodity, same as bread, so we should let the market decide which currency to use, without any monopolies, state-owned or other. Is there some reason to believe that markets can exist without government inte
1134.
by betterunix2 9y ago
By my memory the web BECAME relevant before DRM, before streaming video sites, before media companies started pushing their DRM on us. Remember how in the late 90s media companies were ignoring the web? Remember how webmail, web search, a
1135.
by betterunix2 9y ago
> DRM is also how you get media companies to publish on the web. Forgive me not really giving a hoot. > Media companies couldn't give any less fucks about the web. They can go 100 years without > publishing on the web, since