droffel

16 ms·

121.
by droffel 11y ago
Money is an artifact of the state; always has been, always will. Money solves the "Coincidence of Wants", that is, it acts as a collectively agreed upon medium of exchange. Cowry shells, beads, feathers, and gold have all
122.
by droffel 11y ago
ASICs are basically it these days, GPUs and CPUs are only used by hobbyists at this point. The reduced energy requirements of ASICs over GPUs has made it basically a requirement to use ASICs, as energy costs can't be amortized over the
123.
by droffel 11y ago
Index funds. Vanguard, anyone?
124.
by droffel 11y ago
PoS has a fatal flaw: a person who wants to fork a PoS network simply needs to pay other people in the network for the private keys to their older, spent, transactions. Alternatively, any kind of security breach giving access to used privat
125.
by droffel 11y ago
This feels very similar to how the total work expended by the Bitcoin network can be approximated (not the current hashrate, but the sum of all hashes over time). Basically, you can take all of the block hashes, and find the lowest one of t
126.
by droffel 11y ago
Sure, any energy expenditure over and above what would be necessary to run a centralized database can be considered inefficient, and therefore "ecologically unfriendly". However, the hashrate isn't burning energy for no utili
127.
by droffel 11y ago
I'm pretty sure the system you're describing is similar to Proof-of-Stake. In a PoS system, an owner in control of a portion of the monetary base (their "stake") controls the private keys to that portion. Depending on th
128.
by droffel 11y ago
The size off this endeavour is starting to consume more effort than is sustainable, not only for most peoples wallets, but also for the planet generally. This is a common misconception, and only really is a "problem" in the init
129.
by droffel 11y ago
The effective number of bits of entropy are cut in half.
130.
by droffel 11y ago
Actually, the Trezor now supports passphrase-based wallets! https://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-user/advanced_settings.ht... Basically, you can memorize multiple passphrases, each of which leads to a valid set of addres
131.
by droffel 11y ago
Actually, I can recall reading about a few double-blind medical studies that were terminated early, because of this very reason. The efficacy of the treatment was so overwhelmingly positive in the variable group, that it was deemed unethica
132.
by droffel 11y ago
They wouldn't be rendered worthless, but the security would take a hit for sure. Any coins mined (and not moved) before 2012 would be at risk, in addition to any address that has been reused since then (revealing the pubkey, instead of
133.
by droffel 11y ago
Rate hikes have been "imminent" since QE1.
134.
by droffel 11y ago
I've always thought of (some forms of) HFT as a way to let liquidity flow between exchanges, with a payoff equal to the degree to which the inter-exchange spread has been decreased. If the inter-exchange spread is wide, there is some v
135.
by droffel 11y ago
I agree. I've always thought of HFT as a way to let liquidity flow between exchanges, with a payoff equal to the degree to which the inter-exchange spread has been decreased. If the inter-exchange spread is wide, there is some value to
136.
by droffel 11y ago
Two new accounts created within the same hour, with a single comment each, on a post that isn't on the first few pages of HN, both of whose comments contain two exclamation marks as their only punctuation? I think you might be right to
137.
by droffel 11y ago
An analogy: In a fictional world, an envelope costs $1, a piece of paper costs $0.50, and a stamp costs $0.50. In total, a full letter costs $2. You know that anyone on the street would be willing to buy each of those items at the component
138.
by droffel 11y ago
Well, gasoline production consumes oil, which means that the price should theoretically lag behind oil's price for a period of time at least equal to the time it takes to go from crude to a final product. In addition, most gas stations
139.
by droffel 11y ago
"This text should contain all letters of the alphabet..." Except for Z and Q. Those don't count.
140.
by droffel 11y ago
"Someone had the smart idea of having all our logging messages in a config file all the years back when the logging component was written, which is an incredibly frustrating anti-pattern. That was never needed and the messages should h