natrius

17 ms·

121.
by natrius 10y ago
These programs typically have a formula to set prices based on income. It's a lottery, not a direct subsidy like school loans.
122.
by natrius 10y ago
In most of Palo Alto, it's against the law to build anything but the most expensive kind of housing—single family homes with big yards. People who already bought in get to enjoy their walled-off neighborhoods at the expense of families
123.
by natrius 10y ago
Interviews with black software engineers are not routine. Even if they were, folks like you would believe that people were making up their stories.
124.
by natrius 10y ago
lol. Black people are literally getting gunned down in the streets by our government without prosecution, but you think a couple of outlandish questions in an interview are implausible. Adorable.
125.
by natrius 10y ago
It is. Establishing a new blockchain is a hard thing to do. Ethereum also benefits from network effects between contracts: any contract can call another one to use its functionality.
126.
by natrius 10y ago
Blockchains aren't plain old data structures. Their value comes from consensus, and it's way easier to use an existing consensus than to establish a new one.
127.
by natrius 10y ago
"Just move to the suburbs" is a solution that sounds fine, but it's really not. Wealthier folks feel entitled to central living because a market economy distributes scarce goods to the wealthiest. But the middle class is perf
128.
by natrius 10y ago
This is exactly what is happening. Those who own homes don't care what the consequences of preventing new housing nearby are. The consequence is income segregation, especially in areas zoned for single family homes. Single family zonin
129.
by natrius 10y ago
Blockchains aren't about currencies. They're about providing a single immutable scroll for a society to write entries on. You can use a scroll to record transactions for a currency, but you could also use it for any interaction be
130.
by natrius 10y ago
It's a lot easier to find prior art that new technology can improve on once you've found a good metaphor for it. Here's the one I use: Scribes once wrote the history that coordinated societies on scrolls. Ethereum is a digita
131.
by natrius 10y ago
I hope the product I'm building will have a big impact within a year, but I'm biased. Adoption is easy because Ethereum-based apps can be plain old websites. The hard part is building something compelling. I don't think it&#x
132.
by natrius 10y ago
Ethereum is a platform for decentralized applications. I think of it as a giant scroll in the sky that everyone can write to, but each line has to be cryptographically signed to identify its writer, and existing lines in the scroll can&#x27
133.
by natrius 10y ago
I am skeptic of electoral democracy, but as long as we're doing it, aiming for 100% turnout is the only option. The incentives in electoral democracy reward those who marginalize voters who disagree with them, and it's far easier
134.
by natrius 10y ago
Technological frontiers are no place for dogma. Sure, blockchains probably aren't a good choice for publishing, but a culture that constrains people's technology choices is incompatible with progress.
135.
by natrius 10y ago
I use plain old promises by default, but the first time I have to think about which promise results are in scope within nested then() calls, I rewrite it with async/await to eliminate that cognitive load entirely.
136.
by natrius 10y ago
Yep! At that point, the problem isn't a blockchain-specific one, it's a more general problem of reconciling conflicting truths. A common, trivial solution is to rank sources of truth.
137.
by natrius 10y ago
It's just an illustration. I think there will be far more valuable blockchain applications than digital gold, and those will be easy to fork.
138.
by natrius 10y ago
If you have a good reason to switch blockchains, the developers of the clients users actually use should have a good reason to support the switch. If you can't convince people to change, you're stuck with the status quo. That&#x27
139.
by natrius 10y ago
Fork Bitcoin to change the rules to exclude those miners, either by switching to proof-of-stake or just changing the proof-of-work hashing algorithm. Like this: https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/bitcoinclassic/pull
140.
by natrius 10y ago
You got it. Push a new client that supports both chains to users with enough time before the switch for people to upgrade.
141.
by natrius 10y ago
Blockchains won't save the world all on their own, but developers who believe our world is in peril because of avoidable issues of economic and social organization should definitely try to use blockchains to save the world. Blockchains
142.
by natrius 10y ago
Bitcoin is a special case because it's only really intended to be used as a ledger for bitcoins. Currencies are a collective delusion: they're valuable because other people think they are valuable. Any dispute over what the source
143.
by natrius 10y ago
Yes, by a consensus of miners, or by users choosing a new set of miners. The "main blockchain" is not a decision of the miners. It's a decision of the people. If everyone agrees that current miners are behaving badly in a pro
144.
by natrius 10y ago
Beyond ownership, an important class of use cases is promises. Without blockchains, it's hard to determine how well a potential trade partner follows through on their promises without a third party that maintains a reputation history.
145.
by natrius 10y ago
Miners cannot control your eyes. You can choose any record as your source of truth. If miners produce a good one, look at that one. If they produce a bad one, look somewhere else.
146.
by natrius 10y ago
Miners only mine to gain more bitcoins. The market determines what bitcoins are. The market can decide to treat a different historical record with different rules as the ledger for bitcoins. This is much easier in proof-of-stake systems. Yo
147.
by natrius 10y ago
This is untrue: "Because blockchain is consensual, after a certain point of centralization, the rules of the system depend on very few users." If a blockchain has rules that don't meet my needs, I can choose a different block
148.
by natrius 10y ago
This just isn't true. Yes, running your own blockchain node is infeasible, but a blockchain-based service with hosted nodes is better than a federated service. Proof-of-work creates an illusion of dependence on blockchain miners. Proof
149.
by natrius 10y ago
It's probably a bad gamble. Lyft wants to catch up to Uber, but they also need to grow fast enough that upstarts can't unseat them from second place. Accepting regulations that slow their growth is a bad deal for them, too.
150.
by natrius 10y ago
It was a very bad campaign, which makes me suspect that they did it on purpose. If they won this campaign, they'd have to win again in every other city that tries this. If they lose, pull out of Austin for a while, and make sure it&#x2

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