thedancollins

6 ms·

1.
by thedancollins 7y ago
Phft, amateur. I've forgotten more ways to screw stuff up than this person ever knew.
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by thedancollins 7y ago
Take two software startups. StartupA hires nothing but the stereotypical "software engineer". StartupB hires nothing but the stereotypical "product engineer". Which startup will be more likely to have a future?
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by thedancollins 8y ago
I would think the positive feelings are mostly what I've heard called "Opponent Process Theory". I mean, if you subject yourself to the violence, lyrics, melody, rhythms, of death metal it is like an assault. There is usual
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by thedancollins 8y ago
We used Jira for a year doing a "semi-Scrum" development framework ... you know the one where you throw Agile terms around like you have any idea what they mean ... it went well enough but I and my lead engineer wound up going to
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Can anyone tell us if WeChat's inability to flex to the Indian market was intentional and "arrogant" or was it unintentional? They call them "blind spots" for a reason.
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Yes, the breathless proclamations of blockchain Armageddon (or Paradise) are tiring. I agree. And it is part of my souring on the whole topic. There is potential for something like blockchain
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by thedancollins 8y ago
>Nope, no barter - exchanged goods for currency, not for goods Tomayto - tomahto amigo! I mean when the seller receives payment. And I concede that there are banks that are releasing funds on a tighter timeline. But that decision is st
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by thedancollins 8y ago
I mean that the potential impact that a blokchain-based system could have on the way we generate and exchange value - could be revolutionary. It could be one way that wealth distribution could be facilitated if you buy the idea that data i
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by thedancollins 8y ago
One of the ideas is that smaller payment amounts are viable on a blockchain - and there will be mining or transaction fees assessed but there will be fewer and smaller fees. Point-to-point transactability cuts out the ubiquitous payment mi
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by thedancollins 8y ago
>Because in the real world fiats are orders of magnitude more stable than cryptos. Yes, but if you'll allow me a little latitude - the fiat currency is under centralized control. And in that case is remarkably stable - until it is
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Ah, point taken! One of the obvious courses is that there wiull be multiple blockchains each handling various arenas. In that case we run into the interesting blockchain-of-blockchains problems where we have to engineer not only under one
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by thedancollins 8y ago
My friend, we are living in the Age of Complexity. Do you see ANY aspect of our lives that is getting simpler? Saying that the world doesn't need a realtime market for the valuation of chocolate bars - well, maybe it does. Maybe the
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by thedancollins 8y ago
This is a perfectly cromulent response (see what I did there)? I'd argue that you did not settle a transaction but more exchanged in a barter of one item for another. I am glad it worked out well for you and pray that you will experie
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by thedancollins 8y ago
And the reason for the spikes - blockchain technology struggles to handle large transaction volumes. The consensus mechanism monitors block creation time and tries to keep it at 10 minutes. Ideally, there are never more than a block'
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by thedancollins 8y ago
I would offer that the value is the distributed ledger. Where everyone would see the quality of your business dealings because you kept them on a stable blockchain for all to see.
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Yes, you have paper money in your possession that is only worth as much as a centralized bank SAYS it is. And the awesome thing about that is that centralized banks never print ridiculous amounts of money and devalue their own currencies.
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by thedancollins 8y ago
The technology cannot support millions of transactions per second - at least not in the case of a bitcoin blockchain which uses a PoW consensus mechanism. I am not sure how to respond to the second statement as there is some hand-waving an
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by thedancollins 8y ago
You are not grasping the import of being able to exchange value WITHOUT a banking system in place. As for the credit requirements comment, yes - good point. But in the case of a micro-transaction, realtime agreement. I can consume 15 minu
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by thedancollins 8y ago
A blockchain is a ledger of all transactions, yes. Son the result is transparency.
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Well ok, buit I was talking about transactability - not throughput. I have stated numerous times that the tech struggles to be viable at scale. On Bitcoin's blockchain you can transact and settle in 10 minutes. That beats 2 to 3 days
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by thedancollins 8y ago
FWIW, if a single actor could take command of more than 50% of a chain's hashrate then yes, they could take over and rewrite history. The theory was that this would be far too expensive in power and time for any such attack to succeed
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by thedancollins 8y ago
I am not that Dan Collins. And as for an example - credit card transactions. I am sure somebody else can provide more color but it is my understanding that there are 6 or 7 intermediaries that each credit card transaction travels through
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by thedancollins 8y ago
I like the Bangkok example because it highlights that one of the problems we have in the "more developed" world economies is that we have existing systems and financial institutions to hurdle. Developing economies do not and it i
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Ok, but counterpoint is obvious. Are there people using blockchain for illicit purposes? Yes. And also water is wet. There are also many people using cash for illicit purposes. And of course, you can always include as many people in you
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by thedancollins 8y ago
From a technical perspective, yes. But the case for blockchain is difficult to make from a technical perspective so I do not bother talking about it. The tech struggles to be viable. With that said, everything is impossible .. until it i
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by thedancollins 8y ago
That is a good point and it is why I am slowly moving towards gadfly - the use cases typically do not NEED blockchain. The thing that is compelling about blockchain is not the tech, which is not ready for prime time - but in the idea of ps
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Because it finally provides a mechanism by which bad actors on a network could face repercussions for their activity. Consider how different the internet would be if hyperlinks were two-way rather than one-way. Again, it is not only about
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Well, it certainly had to be said so I am glad somebody did so.
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Over the past year I have gone from Blockchain enthusiast to more blockchain gadfly. The concept is truly revolutionary but the use cases I typically see trotted out are not compelling in any significant sense and could be solved without b
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by thedancollins 8y ago
Survivorship bias/fooled by randomness. If a system can be abstracted to a model that can account for the bizarre stuff that the business throws at it, then the domain you are operating in is either Simple or slightly Complicated (as

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