tbabb

80 ms·

331.
by tbabb 9y ago
> unless you actually think anybody wants the kind of job which is so tiresome it can be done with a machine instead This is an extremely entitled comment. Most people do not have the choice to work on whatever they want. For most people
332.
by tbabb 9y ago
> The volatility has nothing to do with the lack of a central authority distributing it If you know/believe that supply will generally adjust to cancel demand, then you have much less incentive to speculate.
333.
by tbabb 9y ago
If the crypto doesn't have a central bank to institute monetary policy and manage supply, it's unsolvable. I feel like a broken record saying this: Demand for the currency will fluctuate. If the supply is fixed, the price will be
334.
by tbabb 9y ago
This article talks in more detail about that: http://www.bzarg.com/p/what-bitcoin-shows-us-about-how-money... Bitcoin is a bad currency because it doesn't count value consistently. And it never could, because ther
335.
by tbabb 9y ago
:)
336.
by tbabb 9y ago
It's not a matter of code (though that, too, would be an enormous job). It would clash with what the artists have done. Here's a random image from TS1: [1] Look at Buzz's butt-- he has some yellowish up-lighting. That's
337.
by tbabb 9y ago
It would look horrible, because the lighting was done assuming no global illumination. Besides destroying artistic intent, the no-longer-missing indirect lighting effects would double up with all the "cheats" and clever techniques
338.
by tbabb 9y ago
You are correct. Toy Story 1 and 2 were resurrected around 2010 for 3D re-rendering. It took a team of 4 or 5 working for the better part of a year, IIRC. A 3D movie like Toy Story isn't like a Maya file; it's hundreds of thousand
339.
by tbabb 9y ago
> Asset bubbles run on the bigger fool principle, and they end when you run out of bigger fools to sell to. If folks have really started cleaning out their bank accounts and borrowing money to buy bitcoins [...] then it seems to me that
340.
by tbabb 9y ago
I've heard from visitors to Japan that groping on public transit is a real problem.
341.
by tbabb 9y ago
Agree. I suspect Musk doesn't get how efficient good public transport can be (NYC when the system is working well), and the author doesn't get how substandard most public transit systems are . I have strong doubts that single- or
342.
by tbabb 9y ago
The shortage was 560MW, and the Tesla facility provided 7.3MW, or 1.3%.
343.
by tbabb 9y ago
Yes, agree that it gets way more complicated. But the point remains that nobody has control over the supply lever with a cryptocurrency, and that causes problems for the value of the currency.
344.
by tbabb 9y ago
1) I specifically didn't want to focus on technical limitations and implementation details. Yes, scalability is very bad, but my main point was that even if it were fixed, Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies still can't be viable curren
345.
by tbabb 9y ago
> M0 quadrupled in 10 years: https://imgur.com/a/L9mDx Presumably the demand and market forces have changed for the dollar in that time. If the central bank doubled the supply in one day, don't you think that w
346.
What Bitcoin shows us about how money works(bzarg.com)
77 points by tbabb 9y ago|86 comments
347.
by tbabb 9y ago
> Isn't it ironic that the only way for a startup ISP to get around the local monopoly agreement is to not provide services which are regulated by the FCC? Isn't it telling that the FCC is repealing the consumer-protecting regu
348.
by tbabb 9y ago
Ladies and gentlemen, behold astrotrufing.
349.
by tbabb 9y ago
Actually, I'm glad you pointed to the failure of the gold standard. It's a great example of why commodity money is dangerous. The gold standard was abolished because the economy was on the brink of collapse. A dollar grossly misme
350.
by tbabb 9y ago
They weren't stable.
351.
by tbabb 9y ago
Bitcoin is not set up to ever be "stable" by any definition. Real currency has a federal reserve to balance supply against demand and keep the value steady. BTC has entirely demand-driven value-- which is precisely as steady and p
352.
by tbabb 9y ago
> The volatility wouldn't be a huge problem I am having trouble fathoming why you think that.
353.
by tbabb 9y ago
Is this a "mainstream" view in academic quantum mechanics? It seems so much more "modern" than what I learned.
354.
by tbabb 9y ago
I think this can easily be made a bipartisan issue, in that it's the common man vs. big, rich, controlling corporations. If I were the telecoms (and telecom lackeys), that's the movement I'd be scared of.
355.
by tbabb 9y ago
No. To save the internet, we have to make the most gigantic stink the world has seen since the Trump election. The solution is not "give up and let this pass, and then quietly try to work around it." It's "make the peopl
356.
by tbabb 9y ago
Because differential pricing gives you power over human behavior, allowing you to make even more money. For example, by influencing public discourse and attaining regulatory capture.
357.
by tbabb 9y ago
It sounds like you are suggesting we make forum moderation illegal. That's like the difference between saying who's allowed on the sidewalk vs. saying who's allowed in the bar. EDIT: In case it's not clear, this comment
358.
by tbabb 9y ago
Raising prices for all information: Fine (as long as you're not a monopoly, which unfortunately many ISPs are). Raising prices for some information: Exerting control over what people see and can say; exerting control over the market
359.
by tbabb 9y ago
Picture this: The "Google Search" package with Comcast is $8/month. Or, you can get "Comcast Search" for free! Comcast search is shitty and conveniently doesn't "find" results that conflict with Comca
360.
by tbabb 9y ago
A theory of Jerkodynamics: The only people who will hang around jerks tend to either be other jerks with the same problem, or people too insanely nice to set boundaries and tell the jerks to get bent.

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