rdl

53 ms·

631.
by rdl 8y ago
Humans unquestionably respond to "stories", especially those with personal impact, more than just statistics. But statistics and fair/scientific data analysis are the correct form of analysis. Maybe the right thing is some pr
632.
by rdl 8y ago
Musk has said and shown repeatedly that he'd put his last dollar into SpaceX (and probably Tesla), so he's not a great example here.
633.
by rdl 8y ago
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu (admittedly American) are in my top-10 SF authors now.
634.
by rdl 8y ago
LA has gotten a lot better over the past 10y compared to SF's rate of improvement, and is way bigger in population. I think LA has more innovation happening (especially food trucks, weird fusion cuisines, etc.) because you can take ri
635.
by rdl 8y ago
57 Michelin starred chefs, and the US's premier wine region, plus lots of cheese/beef/specialty food producers. Also, pretty amazing ethnic food, particularly Mexican and Asian (of all types). Maybe second to New York for re
636.
by rdl 8y ago
Satphones still get your location data, although by default not to quite as precise a location. Some of them do GPS on the handset to give location data separately, and all of them can be localized pretty precisely (either to a circle or a
637.
by rdl 8y ago
If it's just a voicemail box it doesn't have your location data to leak, although a DID onto a voicemail box (and maybe a SIP trunk if you really want it) is better.
638.
by rdl 8y ago
I believe it depends on how much of the network the adversary can monitor, and high a confidence Alice/Carol need in Bob’s identity to take action. If the action is “subject him to additional off-chain scrutiny”, the bar is presumably
639.
by rdl 8y ago
If you can send a payment instruction, you could send a 0-value transaction textual message. Ability to do true anonymous electronic cash implies the ability to do everything else.
640.
by rdl 8y ago
Ah, I didn't see how the blinding factor was being used (the code is actually easier to understand than the paper). This has approximately the same linkability as monero, inferior to zcash (complex) or chaumian tokens (hyper-efficient
641.
by rdl 8y ago
Why can’t you just do self to self transactions before/after each external transaction, and split/aggregate to standardized values (to start, let’s assume the entire system only allows payments of exactly 100 units each).
642.
by rdl 8y ago
“Dangerous can of worms” is the goal, although understates the level of danger and utility. https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html
643.
by rdl 8y ago
Money is speech, but financial transactions are the primary communications which actually affect the world, and the only kind which governments have gone completely insane to try to restrict at any scale historically, as well as the only ki
644.
by rdl 8y ago
The product is anonymous/private payments at a distance, without a central trusted party — ie the holy grail of the cypherpunks, although grin only approaches this ideal. The reason Napster made more sense than a single central server
645.
by rdl 8y ago
I agree grin is more philosophically pure, and that the beam approach is more effective. Neither is a scam. I’m pretty familiar with the challenges in the nonprofit foundation/decentralized model. I don’t think the monetary/inflat
646.
by rdl 8y ago
My understanding, which may be incorrect: The "anonymity set" of a monero transaction is just the number of fake values created in it. This is a fairly small number. If you're willing to put the effort in, you can trace al
647.
by rdl 8y ago
Hurts anonymity if you have to do peer to peer transfers of the file, plus you have issues around resending/etc. (payments are somewhat different from other messages). Even with IM-based exchange, I'd probably use something else
648.
by rdl 8y ago
The big privacy concern I see with MW is the exchange of blinding factor, and there are some arbitrarily good solutions to that if you make other tradeoffs. With ZCash I'm willing to trust the trusted setup (even if it was imperfect);
649.
by rdl 8y ago
I'm totally sold on privacy as a critical feature of currency long-term, and that mixes in bitcoin alone are insufficient. Pretty cool to see two mimblewimble projects launching (beam + grin) which seem to have made some different trad
650.
by rdl 8y ago
There is something diabolical about picking a group dedicated to healthy living as your living organ theft pool, too.
651.
by rdl 8y ago
Confucius Institutes are a bit more than merely promoting Confucianism. This was an interesting video by a westerner who is in China (often) and thus has to walk a fine line, but was able to subtext exceptionally well: https://ww
652.
by rdl 8y ago
(Which is incidentally approximately free if you have access to capital, since your returns from airbnbing the right property, net of management costs, will exceed the mortgage. There's risk, obviously, that the rental market could cha
653.
by rdl 8y ago
Interesting fact: you can become a resident (and then citizen) under the Golden Visa program by buying 350-500k EUR of property in Portugal.
654.
by rdl 8y ago
WWV "server" for the service could be rapidly restored from any site in the same general area. There are almost certainly spares for all the equipment, and most of it isn't even specific to the application. What matters is t
655.
by rdl 8y ago
It is reasonable to assume that a 5 year old EV will be as cheap in 2030 (2025 model) as a 5 year old EV is today (2014 model), while becoming more capable at roughly the rate we've seen so far. A 5 year old Leaf is $6-10k now, and wo
656.
by rdl 8y ago
What matters is miles driven, not number of vehicles. For someone with a 1-2h each way commute (sigh), replacing a 2010 truck with a 5-year-old 2025 EV in 2030 will make sense on a 2 year cash return basis. For someone who drives 1-2k mil
657.
by rdl 8y ago
A huge improvement (for the biggest planes) is going to twins and ETOPS (not just fuel, also maintenance cost, but also fuel). Not as relevant to domestic routes, though.
658.
by rdl 8y ago
AAA and others have good data (usually for new cars, though, so depreciation makes it $0.30-0.40/mi total). https://therideshareguy.com/is-a-toyota-prius-the-best-car-f... has a 2011 and 2016 Prius.
659.
by rdl 8y ago
India.
660.
by rdl 8y ago
That's all-in cost, including depreciation and fuel and insurance and maintenance. This is why UberX sort of works for some drivers. The rate for a new car is much closer to the federal reimbursement rate ($0.545/mi), mostly depre

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