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ZirconCode

334 karma · joined April 1, 2013

www.zirconcode.com
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ZirconCode··on Half of ICOs Die Within Four Months After Token Sales Finalized
What if we make a currency where each ICO is one coin?
ZirconCode··on German foreign spy agency BND attacks the anonymity network Tor
I haven't seen much discussion in defending against timing attacks, is it really that difficult? If we introduced long delays and artificial data sizes shouldn't it be possible? A constant stream not withstanding. Of course it makes things clumsier, but that's always the price.
ZirconCode··on Artificial Intelligence Uses Videogame Footage to Recreate Game Engine
I don't have any experience in the field, but reading the paper, it seems impossibly weak and almost useless. This should only work for a very limited type of game, in which case it will never help anyone speed up game construction more than a simple sprite engine. It seems more an exercise in using openCV.

What am I missing here, because I'm positive that I am missing something?

ZirconCode··on Quadratic voting (2014)
I also thought that it was ironic. He does mention a valid flaw in the one-to-one voting system. I wonder if quadratic voting, in practice, encourages extremism. It also offers more choices, so more time spent thinking, and less easy to make a choice. Perhaps it discourages voting for those who care just a little.
ZirconCode··on Gates Makes Largest Donation Since 2000 with $4.6B Pledge
Gates doesn't simply give his money to charity.

I would argue that in terms of doing good, investing money in concrete and well founded technology causes a larger impact. We can already eradicate diseases, we can already end world hunger. We can make so many miracles come true, what good is it to create further miracles if only the very few ever get to have them?

ZirconCode··on Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot
Dirty water in the pump is bad.
ZirconCode··on Large Bitcoin Collider Is Generating Trillions of Keys and Breaking into Wallets
Or he didn't loose it and isn't motivated by money. Which seems also likely since he had the skills and decided not to cash in on the fame either.
ZirconCode··on On Proof and Progress in Mathematics (1994) [pdf]

  An interesting phenomenon in spatial thinking is that scalemakes a big
  difference. We can think about little objects in our hands, orwe can think
  of bigger human-sized structures that we scan, or we can think of spatial
  structures that encompass us and that we move around in. We tend to
  think more effectively with spatial imagery on a larger scale: it’s as if our
  brains take larger things more seriously and can devote more resources to them.
Really? I prefer imagining things in front of me, they become more manageable at a scale similar to a paper or me, rather than my house. It just seems more natural, does anyone have any insights on this?
ZirconCode··on Shutdownify is shutting down
drop the 'shut'; downly, downjoy, and eventually migrate to down.io and down.com, they would certainly have succeeded
ZirconCode··on The mosquito-repelling activity of sweetgrass
Both possibilities mentioned to be native to America seem to have coumarin. Since this is what repels the mosquitoes perhaps it was irrelevant.
ZirconCode··on Show HN: Spot the Drowning Child
Looks like this guy tried, although there really isn't much interesting detail there: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-seal-wearable-swim-mo...
ZirconCode··on UK websites place average of 44 cookies on first visit
Also interested, I've tried similar things with watir webdriver and a xvfb/headless mode but the only real 'solutions' I've come across are time-outs. Needless to say it could've been heaps better.
ZirconCode··on The Pirate Bay down, forever?
I just read through your article, I loved it, Thanks for sharing. Here's the script he used if anyone else is curious: https://github.com/runn1ng/runn1ng.github.io/blob/master/pir...

You mentioned you had to switch computers multiple times, about how many times was that? Sorry on the off-topic...

ZirconCode··on Swiss reject additional immigration curbs
There has been a lot of strong anti-immigrant/foreigner sentiment floating around recently in the media. This one was actually predicted to be closer to a 50/50 vote.

Frankly the proposal was very harsh and I think a lot of people saw through the other tactics it employed to garner favour. Switzerland is a cultural melting pot and a lot of people can relate negatively to the consequences of this proposal. I believe Cheap labour was not on many minds. This proposal seems to be the result of a very vocal minority and does not address real problems of a majority.

As for why I voted against it, good intentions. Keep in mind this is a single data point from a Swiss who has lived in Japan most of their lives.

ZirconCode··on Mozilla Stumbler 1.0
Wardriving is also the first thing I thought off (Wigle also being my app of choice). Massive co-ordinated wardriving. I can't help but feel that this is a bad idea.
ZirconCode··on Second Graders Treated to a Seven-Course $220 Tasting Meal [video]
"Well... next time will be macaroni and cheese"
ZirconCode··on Spec-me-maybe: Introduces the “maybe” syntax to RSpec
I find it quite funny that people cannot tell whether this is a joke or not, just says something about the state of things...
ZirconCode··on Game of Hacks
The best part of this game is the leaderboard:

7e+177 - maplesyrupguy

1e+73 - Game itself was harder than to hack it

1.3999999999999998e+26 - I learned at least one thing...

1.555555682012021e+24 - Tries to teach security, fails at security.

1.4e+22 - jon

1e+22 - idiots

123456789212345710000 - Ironically it's easy to hack a game about finding security bugs!

100100000000000000000 - did i do

70000000000000130000 - alex

2800000000000251000 - frankwins

ZirconCode··on Plain text wrapping in Gmail
you beat me to it by a minute ;)
ZirconCode··on Plain text wrapping in Gmail
Many mailing lists only accept plaintext. It's a common standard in older communities (ex. linux).
ZirconCode··on Japan's Abe is the world's best leader right now?
Where do you shop? My prices have gone up by about 5%. Groceries have mainly remained the same for me. The consumption tax has also been raised, do not forget. I believe Uniqlo planning to raise prices does not reflect a failed fight against inflation.
ZirconCode··on Japan's Abe is the world's best leader right now?
> there are women who are aspiring for a career and this may be a problem for them

Steven Pinker wrote about this in his book 'The Blank Slate'. The problem is that women here do not have the choice, as you yourself even point out. Perhaps the large majority voluntarily choose a lifestyle which does not grind against the standard but what about those which choose a career? Equality does not mean that women act the same as men, it means that women have the same choice as men.

ZirconCode··on Making ubuntu.com responsive: our Sass architecture
I was a bit confuse by the title 'Sass architecture'. Here's the full list of articles:

http://design.canonical.com/2014/03/making-ubuntu-com-respon...

Still doesn't make much sense though. Perhaps they are using SaSS as a culture term.

ZirconCode··on Show HN: Updn – HN/Reddit-style site where stories, votes, tips use Bitcoin
I have the feeling that it would become a cesspool of such and similar strategies.
ZirconCode··on I'm Pissed About _____.
It's actually a common method used in psychology to deal with things requiring people to act, or exist, in your life like they never will. It gives you closure to read that letter everyday, even (especially) without ever sending it and receiving a reply. Your mind automatically does it, so goes the theory at least.
ZirconCode··on Show HN: Wesnoth – Free, turn-based strategy game
Definitely. The question of luck is always something which pops up in the forums now and again. The answer is always the same, it was a deliberate choice to have an element of luck, it keeps things interesting and forces your strategies to be more error-prone. Yes, among top-level players, luck may sometimes decide the fate of a game, but that is a price they decided to pay for the results =)
ZirconCode··on Show HN: Wesnoth – Free, turn-based strategy game
This is an amazing game. If you are interested in it's structure, there is a good chapter on it here: http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html
ZirconCode··on How I'm using Twitter to acquire 100 uniques a day for my startup
"they’re are" twitch
ZirconCode··on Show HN: Betatype - A freelance site where clients pay $3,500 for prototypes
Upon creating my account I received an account id of around 1050~. Looks like little is done to obscure the numbers. Perhaps they hope sufficient hype will solve the problem?
ZirconCode··on Show HN: Trianglify – low poly style background generator with D3.js
I still get the same error mentioned above.
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