leot

25 ms·

211.
by leot 12y ago
Implicit in what you've written is the idea that humanity has reached some kind of end state in contemporary modernity. Yet given the accelerating pace of change, when the humans of 200 years from now look back on us, they'll undo
212.
by leot 12y ago
This is evidence that programming has become a skill akin to literacy. The migration seems similar to the hypothetical situation in which universities and society had primarily been based on an oral tradition of communication, and then this
213.
by leot 12y ago
Founder, here Thanks for your comment. Like you, we'd be disappointed and surprised if our users viewed CleverPet as a substitute for real interaction. Our concern is for the times during the day when a dog would like to have something
214.
Show HN: CleverPet – A Console that Teaches and Feeds Your Dog All Day(kickstarter.com)
4 points by leot 12y ago|0 comments
215.
by leot 13y ago
If I was advocating teaching people to read 800 years ago, you could have said the same thing about literacy. People learn when it's sufficiently important that they do so.
216.
by leot 13y ago
Widely deployed PKI would transform humanity as we know it, and I believe largely for the better (Yelp, Facebook, and many other websites besides would be rendered irrelevant with widespread PKI). "Like" this restaurant? Sign its
217.
Sending money with Google Wallet(google.com)
5 points by leot 13y ago|1 comments
218.
Send money within Gmail(support.google.com)
3 points by leot 13y ago|0 comments
219.
by leot 13y ago
It's better that the Popcorn Time developers leave now than later. By leaving now they can take advantage of all the attention and get a great fork going.
220.
by leot 13y ago
Depending on the nature of the risk, yes, that might be enough insurance. Bank deposit insurance is fascinating: it largely exists to prevent bank runs, which are caused by people believing they won't get their money out. Having any in
221.
by leot 13y ago
Because competition from outside the oligopoly is uncompetitive (apparently).
222.
by leot 13y ago
"silently confiscate wealth from the poor" ... with inflation? That is certainly counter-intuitive, to say the least. I'd always thought that the way to keep inflation low was to keep everyone poor, thereby increasing the rel
223.
by leot 13y ago
Look, Bitcoin is without a doubt super cool; but to claim that the macroeconomics of it are known to be sound is utter folly. No one knows what would happen in an economy based increasingly around a deflationary currency, and there are lo
224.
by leot 13y ago
Any electoral fraud that relies on having bunches of people vote multiple times necessarily relies on there being a conspiracy of >100 people in order for it to be effective (this is the only kind of fraud that can be prevented by dema
225.
by leot 13y ago
Any letter that honestly describes overcoming hardship should trigger empathy. That doesn't mean one is being manipulated. The trouble with much of this discussion is that, apparently, once classified as a "psychopath", all b
226.
by leot 13y ago
There are protest-able problems, and there are unprotest-able ones. The real problem with SF is its density and the people preventing it from getting denser (its density is a third of Paris', e.g.). Unfortunately, there are no protest-
227.
by leot 13y ago
It would be great to see a cheerful launch page for a satirical startup that automatically generated smear campaigns for governments against persons of interest. "We use of the expanded information capabilities of our client agencies t
228.
by leot 13y ago
Why do we take as the default hypothesis that language is, as you seem to be implying, a monolithic "thing"? A more plausible hypothesis seems to me to be that language itself is constituted by a suite of cultural tools/ski
229.
by leot 13y ago
The Bay Area tech sector is not to blame, here. It's those opposing densification: Paris is beautiful and has a density of 21,000/km^2. San Francisco can thus clearly remain beautiful and functional while increasing its density fr
230.
by leot 13y ago
What? This is like saying that peaceniks are, in reality, the most violent of all. That after leaving Love-All-Equal Unitarian Church, the church-goers spend time studying the strategies of Hermann Goering. That's utter hogwash. For so
231.
by leot 13y ago
Why do we need a tipping point? Proposal: 1) Human progress arises from the development and improved use of tools/technology (and I'm including concepts like "if", as well as skills, as kinds of technology) 2) Our tool u
232.
by leot 13y ago
The age of this DNA reinforces just how much of what we value today about "what makes us human" (creativity, intelligence, language, etc.) has lots to do with the knowledge accumulated via our culture, and relatively little to do
233.
by leot 13y ago
This seems like "in the long run" eventually-we'll-get-to-933-then-everything-will-be-better thinking, and if so it lies at the root of the problem: market forces are non-stationary, making equilibrium-based-reasoning necessa
234.
by leot 13y ago
Wallets generate addresses and prove ownership of them. On the other hand, it's very difficult (impossible) to prove that a given address is controlled by the same person who controls another address. In other words, you don't ha
235.
by leot 13y ago
"... the way people naturally behave." How is it that people "naturally" behave, exactly? Keep in mind that the way we behave in civilized society is a product of having been raised in civilized society . We have intern
236.
by leot 13y ago
Let's see: what do we have in the world, in actual reality, when considering your comments? What do we know (from actual examples of things that really happen) when it comes to the potential for a government to be accountable to its ci
237.
by leot 13y ago
Well, for one nothing lasts forever and there's no such thing as "the long run", so it's true that monopolies can't be sustainable. But the idea that they need a government to prop them up seems to lack a factual
238.
Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self-Censor(pen.org)
3 points by leot 13y ago|0 comments
239.
by leot 13y ago
I've suspected for a while that fb tries to play matchmaker by showing to you more often those of your connections that have demonstrated interest in you.
240.
by leot 13y ago
Do guns need to be lethal? If so, why?

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