lukifer

92 ms·

781.
by lukifer 8y ago
There are reasons to go to war that transcend macroeconomics. Our instincts to tribal violence are ancient, and I suspect the social bonds of shared fear, danger, and trauma are far more potent than most of us peacetime civilians understand
782.
by lukifer 8y ago
It's actually a step up: the 2016-2018 MacBook Pro series scores 1/10.
783.
by lukifer 8y ago
Pen and paper is the objectively superior technology for the job; it's the Minimum Viable Product that is auditable by the most number of people. You shouldn't need to be a crypto expert to be able to confirm that your vote was co
784.
by lukifer 8y ago
There are (at least) three things that physical books will always do better than e-books: 1. Be single-purpose. There are no notifications, no distractions, no temptations to tab over to something else. It's a classic "less is mor
785.
by lukifer 8y ago
To the extent that speech is dangerous, it's pretty easy to pivot to defending it on 2nd Amendment grounds, in addition to the 1st. (Relevant: https://xkcd.com/504/ )
786.
by lukifer 8y ago
The more computing resources we make available, the more wasteful we become: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
787.
by lukifer 8y ago
That's genius, had no idea, thanks for the tip
788.
by lukifer 8y ago
Thank you. This drives me crazy as well. (Related: roads that have both names and highway numbers, but the map shows one and not the other, regardless of zoom level.)
789.
by lukifer 9y ago
The same tension applies to a hypothetical mesh-network Internet, compared to the telco-backbone Internet: good for freedom and autonomy, bad for usability and performance. Alas, consumers tend to vote with their dollar for the latter. The
790.
by lukifer 9y ago
This is why I think Proof of Stake is destined to outcompete Proof of Work. The costs are drastically lower in both electricity and hardware; and in practice, PoW is basically PoS with extra steps.
791.
by lukifer 9y ago
Unpack that for me? Assume we're already past the point where no new coins are being mined, and Bitcoin is appreciating value at a steady rate. (Volatility is a separate concern from deflation.) In that scenario, how is spending Bitcoi
792.
by lukifer 9y ago
Wouldn't the same logic apply with the seller and their vendor? At the end of the chain, someone ends up holding the Bitcoin, and they have an incentive to pay a little extra, assuming a reliable and consistent level of deflation. In a
793.
by lukifer 9y ago
Here's what I don't understand about the alleged ills of a deflationary currency: wouldn't the buyer's incentive to hoard the currency rather than buying, be exactly equal to seller's incentive to acquire the curren
794.
by lukifer 10y ago
Capitalism is absolutely violent, and just as concerned with with-holding value as providing it (the primary means of price negotiation is the threat of walking away). Look at how much food a grocery store throws away, or how many houses ar
795.
by lukifer 10y ago
The only way to have the freedom from being punched in the nose, is by taking away the freedom to punch people in the nose, punishing punchers with more nose-punching, but constrained by due-process (peer-reviewed violence).
796.
by lukifer 10y ago
With all the hubbub surrounding Russia and DNC's leaked emails, and who talked to who when over the last year, I wonder if we'll start to see all political players incentivized to embrace encrypted communications. While messages w
797.
by lukifer 10y ago
The quotes about "Leninist", "Darth Vader", and "Fourth Turning" are sufficient to justify this suspicion.
798.
by lukifer 10y ago
Downsides: volatility, still new-ish, non-trivial to secure for regular folk, zero recourse if hacked/stolen Upsides: Money/valuestore that is infinitely divisible, scriptable (m-of-n, "smart contracts"), reliably and in
799.
by lukifer 10y ago
I use a 5yo MBP with 16G RAM; the idea of dropping 4 grand on a laptop that will still be capped at 16G 5 years from now is laughable.
800.
by lukifer 10y ago
I don't have a link handy, but I read a piece by one of the original MVC pioneers claiming that the pattern was designed for encapsulated components, usually fairly small, not entire applications. I suspect many of the quirks and disag
801.
by lukifer 10y ago
If you're looking for another way to scratch that itch, look into Netrunner. The game and the culture are both fun and creative, and it's possible to build competitive decks for about a hundred bucks (as an LCG, all cards come as
802.
by lukifer 10y ago
For me it's simple: I wear earphones a lot, I'm sick of dangling wires, and I find earpods comfortable (I don't like the style of Bluetooth earbuds that wedge in tight). And because I'll use them 90% for spoken word cont
803.
by lukifer 10y ago
OS9's file system was actually very similar to modern OS X (earlier incarnations of HFS). So it's an abstraction of a standard directory hierarchy, albeit a very elegant and disciplined one. The major difference under the hood was
804.
by lukifer 10y ago
I can't speak to what is actually being done but here's an interesting and quasi-comprehensive write-up of what engineers, developers and designers have to offer in the climate change fight: http://worrydream.com/C
805.
by lukifer 10y ago
This creates a paradox: why would Chinese miners choose to adopt a fork that would eliminate their competitive advantage?
806.
by lukifer 11y ago
But it didn't own the software, which is still patented and copyrighted by Apple, and merely licensed to end users.
807.
by lukifer 11y ago
We already live in this reality, as eloquently described by Mike Travers: http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-... I also love this quote: "Sometimes confused with a restaurant, [McDona
808.
by lukifer 11y ago
I recommend Jaron Lanier's "Who Owns the Future" for more on this subject; the takeaway is that an ecosystem that defaults to free is a recipe for the digital feudalism that now makes up most of the tech world, as only the la
809.
by lukifer 11y ago
Good fences make good neighbors, and encryption is the only way to reliably create barriers around data and devices. Encryption deserves to be every bit as normalized as other social technologies like private property or personal space.
810.
by lukifer 11y ago
I would love this. With no disrespect to people volunteering their efforts, I was underwhelmed by the Librivox books I sampled. I'm extremely glad the project exists, though.

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