maxander

74 ms·

691.
by maxander 10y ago
One might object that we don't know the author is a respected financial cryptographer- we see merely that he's posting with a respected cryptographer's account, which proves nothing. : ) Regardless of his larger accomplishm
692.
by maxander 10y ago
Both Tesla and SpaceX have reasonably limited, though dramatic, product failure modes- a car crash or a rocket explosion, respectively. Both have already happened in spades without damaging either's reputation too much. A 1.5x multip
693.
by maxander 10y ago
"Step right up, step right up, ladies and gentlemen, see a genuine Satoshi coin MOVE before your very eyes! Yes, Craig Wright the Marvelous will MOVE one of the TRUE Satoshi coins! A sight never before seen, never to be seen again!
694.
by maxander 10y ago
I'd trust the brilliant mind behind Bitcoin to hold onto some backups of keys worth half a billion dollars. Since you never know, such a a thing could come in handy someday.
695.
by maxander 10y ago
I understood the important obvious parts of Bitcoin at one point, but haven't cared enough to retain that knowledge perfectly well. But I gather the key plot points of this fiasco revolve entirely around simple public-key cryptography
696.
by maxander 10y ago
If Satoshi were watching and cared, all he'd (she'd) have to do is send an appropriately-signed text via Tor or whatever saying Craig is a liar. Coming forward in any substantial sense would be unnecessary. That Craig is proceedi
697.
by maxander 10y ago
The article's starting-point is spot on- you'll find very little of culture is aimed at people above an age category loosely defined as "youth." This is not only a matter of marketing or ageist tropes, its built into
698.
by maxander 10y ago
Of course- the internet's effect (as information source) on population rise is presumably largely mediated by contraceptives, but this in itself isn't inconsiderable. With access to information, people can use contraception more
699.
by maxander 10y ago
The thing that will save the world from overpopulation- the internet. Both as a source of information, and perhaps as a way of abstracting social interactions that otherwise would have more opportunity to be acted out in sweatier ways.
700.
by maxander 10y ago
Could be great news- it rules out (within some limitations) most of the really bad paperclip-maximizer scenarios. At least if society is doomed we'll only doom ourselves, and not the entire Milky Way! One takes what cheer one can ge
701.
by maxander 10y ago
Commenters posting about how obvious this result should be- since we know living systems are a huge mess of hacks where anything could happen- have a point, but perversely, this kind of point may be harder for trained biologists to swallo
702.
by maxander 10y ago
That's probably exactly what the article was talking about- though its very short on details, aside from that the treatment was a form of "gene therapy." But my guess would be that the therapy involved the addition of a ge
703.
by maxander 10y ago
Indeed- and there's many other, separate defence mechanisms that also quash cancers before they become a problem. If a tumour has grown enough to threaten, it has evolved workarounds to at least several of these.
704.
by maxander 10y ago
Indeed, in gametes (sperm and egg cells) the cells use enzymes that rebuild telomeres. Telomeres "shorten" when DNA is copied for cell replication; the benefit of this is that it means telomeres quickly whittle down to nothing, an
705.
by maxander 10y ago
Be careful that you don't bring about the apocalypse as you try to immanentize the eschaton.
706.
by maxander 10y ago
Does there have to be? It seems more accurate to say that we like there to be.
707.
by maxander 10y ago
Its definitely nice to know (pending, you know, some actual peer-reviewed analysis of this case) that telomere-lengthening treatments are possible in humans, but that's only half of a "successful therapy against human aging."
708.
by maxander 11y ago
I'm not entirely sure what to make of this article- a bunch of anecdotes about African airline service being sub-par isn't exactly the sort of reporting one associates with the NYT. And at the same time, it just glosses over the l
709.
by maxander 11y ago
You may be able to build an elaborate system of dummy network operations to test with, but this system may wind up with bugs that mask what would be errors in the real system. And how to you test against that? A dummy network to test th
710.
by maxander 11y ago
So it sounds like we'd have a layered sequence of dialectric mirrors (themselves many layers each) each reflecting a different wavelength. The first layer lasts until the laser redshifts out of that layer's efficient reflection r
711.
by maxander 11y ago
> “What happens,” Tyson said, “if there’s a bug that crashes the entire program?” What if there's a bug in the simulation, and the whole computer goes up in flames- but then the experimenter restores from a backup, fixes the bug, an
712.
by maxander 11y ago
That method gives an answer for one possible simulation- the experimenter's own brain. But it doesn't seem to suggest a means of determining what other simulations do or don't sustain sentience, so its far from a total solut
713.
by maxander 11y ago
There's certainly been something changed, if not added- the idea is slowly getting more pessimistic. Plato thought we could get out of the "cave" simply through sustained rational thought. Brains-in-vats thinkers at least s
714.
by maxander 11y ago
The Apple Wrist-Mounted Ancillary Phone Interface™!
715.
by maxander 11y ago
Indeed, the ideal solution would be to build more housing in the places and price-points where they're so in demand- but that's a large material effort. Lifting the 4-people restriction would just require the town government to s
716.
by maxander 11y ago
Well, sure, when a low-tech catch-all solution exists, its usually better- the best form of secure communication is to whisper the message in the recipient's ear in a dark alley. But this is not always feasible, so we have a set of mo
717.
by maxander 11y ago
Part of me wants to be a loyal Bostonian and defend my hometown- most of the evils described in the article could be found in any other state, Republican- or Democrat-run alike. But the point about innovation rhetoric does strike true. The
718.
by maxander 11y ago
Its not clear to me how this would be useful for nefarious purposes. Surely, to apply this detergent and collect the resulting biomarkers in a controlled fashion, they would require fairly complete access to the target individual? As in,
719.
by maxander 11y ago
Have the Haskell gurus considered doing a Python 3-style update/fork hybrid the explicit purpose of code-breaking changes? Haskell 2?
720.
by maxander 11y ago
Its a preposterous move in a new market and borderline insulting for a $600 product, but on one level it makes sense; if there's any demographic that's worth aggressively advertising to, its the demographic of people with the mone

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