barmstrong

I also wish we saw more AI leagues and gameplay

One of the best games of all time.

Here are a few notes that came to mind though...

1. For NFTs, some keep their data in IPFS (decentralized file storage) or in the smart contract itself for procedurally generated images. We (as a community) should probably move more to solutions like this over time, since it is indeed more decentralized to build them that way.

2. I agree with the overall point that clients don't behave like full nodes. However, there has been quite a bit of discussion about "light clients" in the crypto community even going back to the early days of Bitcoin/Ethereum, so i wouldn't say it hasn't been an area of focus.

3. I agree there is an overall move toward using platforms. But there is a big difference between using a platform that also owns all the data also (web2) and a platform that is merely a proxy to decentralized data (web3). In the latter, if a platform ever turns evil, people will switch. Not owning the data counts for a lot.

4. There are more options than Infura and Alchemy. Access to simple blockchain data will be relatively commoditized. Which is good for decentralization.

As Moxie points out, it's still difficult to build things in a decentralized way (nascent tools), so you are seeing various apps/companies revert to using more centralized web2 techniques when they run into a hairy technical problem. As a result, there are a lot of "hybrid" web2/web3 apps during this phase of web3 development. That doesn't mean the overall trend is bad though. I think it's great that more and more web3/decentralized technologies are being developed.

I do agree that all networks tend toward centralization over time. Great book on this https://www.amazon.com/Master-Switch-Rise-Information-Empire...

I don't think crypto is anywhere near this end stage though. We are still seeing a lot of new technology and players enter the space. It's not "already centralized" as much as it is "still using some web2 components".

These points aside, the post is great and I basically agree with the overall premise.

I've known Patrick since 2013 or so, and I have found him to be nothing but the highest integrity. Same for John. We are semi-competitors (not a ton of overlap) so you might find it strange for me to stick up for him like this, but I just think this description is wildly inaccurate. As one small example, Patrick has proactively told me when wanting to build competitive products, even when he didn't have to (very positive sum thinking).

He has direct control over reporters and YC? I'm sorry but this sounds like conspiracy theory.

People are living all over due to covid - so what. Remote is the future of work.

There are plenty of more reasonable Occam's razor explanations for some of what is being reported in this thread (and from the OP). You always have to assume ignorance over malice first. For example:

- companies often look at startups they may want to acquire, and decide to pass for various reasons (saying no more than yes is a good process), they then launch their own products (this is why they were looking at acquisitions in the first place), pretty normal

- any time you have thousand of interviews going on, you are bound to get some bad candidate experiences, I know for instance these happen in Coinbase periodically, and we try to minimize it for sure, but you will not get it to zero (especially when growing quickly)

- most rational explanation for OPs issue is that references were checked and came back luke warm/negative, so more were done which delayed it etc (they may not tell you this was the reason to protect sources btw), this is one of many potential reasons, i'm guessing, but benign explanations are more likely

- also, "discussing details of an offer" is not the same as receiving an offer

Anyway - if people had negative experiences, then feedback is great. I just hate to see HN jumping into tear downs and wild conjecture like this. Patrick and John are great founders we can all learn from, and yes human like all of us (not perfect). Let's all help each other improve here, and assume positive intent.

This is an early release from us and I would expect there to be a few quirks. Please keep sharing any feedback.

The study has this line which caught my attention:

> The incidence of any psychiatric diagnosis in the 14 to 90 days after COVID-19 diagnosis was 18·1% (95% CI 17·6–18·6), including 5·8% (5·2–6·4) that were a first diagnosis.

So only 5.8% of people got a first diagnosis, and the remainder of the 18% were people who had been previously diagnosed with one of these conditions.

This seems to contradict what is written in the linked article:

> In the three months following testing positive for COVID-19, 1 in 5 survivors were recorded as having a first time diagnosis of anxiety, depression or insomnia.

So it seems like the linked article has a bit of hyperbole in it.

I love using sci fi as inspiration for new products.

I feel like we need a new way to do peer review, that is more real time - so that papers can be upvoted/downvoted, flaws can be pointed out - and we have some way to assess the truthiness of what the paper is claiming. Your comment is a step in this direction (but we're not capturing the wisdom of the crowds quantitatively around papers today - arxiv is great, but 1990's era web design).

I'm working with a team that is trying to build better tools for science at https://www.researchhub.com/about

Rethinking peer review is one item on the roadmap.

Basically - build in a little bit of time to do it into your daily routine somehow, and make it a habit. In a year you'll wake up and have made great progress.

I wrote about how scientific research is broken earlier this year, and what you're describing is one of the most pernicious. https://medium.com/@barmstrong/ideas-on-how-to-improve-scien...

https://www.researchhub.com/about is a project I'm helping get off the ground which hopefully can help this problem, by eventually replacing the traditional journals. Still early days (just beta launched).

I certainly wouldn't say we are treating it as a "shitcoin". I tweeted out a few thoughts here to share how I think about it:

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/89248668753155686...

Hope it helps. Thx!

The other reason you see so many complaints there is that there are many scammers trying to buy digital currency with stolen credentials, and a common scammer tactic is to appear angry (via support channels, or any public forum) in the hopes that we will approve their purchase.

We do deal with visa/mastercard networks. They have rules, as do other financial institutions we work with.

As you can imagine, things may have changed a bit 120 employees and thousands of interviews later.

I think you'd find the experience quite different today.

There are some companies which operate purely in the digital currency world, and never store people's money. They are not regulated businesses. I'm glad these exist (and it sounds like this is what you are looking for) but this is not Coinbase.

Coinbase is an exchange that integrates with the traditional financial system to help people convert their local currency into and out of digital currency. I wrote a post about this here which may help: https://medium.com/the-coinbase-blog/coinbase-is-not-a-walle...

When you say Coinbase tarnishes what Bitcoin stands for, I have to disagree. We are enabling millions of people to get access to digital currency so that it can succeed. We do this successfully by playing by the rules in the existing ecosystem. You may not like these rules, but if you want millions of people to have easy access to digital currency (so that a new economy can develop etc) we are the greatest ally you have on that mission.

One company can't play both roles, of integrating with the existing financial ecosystem, and creating the brave new world that you want to see. That role probably needs to be filled by separate companies.

We are much closer to Stripe and other businesses which don't allow adult businesses either. https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed

Further reading: https://medium.com/the-coinbase-blog/building-the-bridge-why...

The work trial is no longer required, but it is an option since some candidates really enjoy working with us to get a better sense of what it is like before deciding.

I think it served us really well in the early days but you're right it doesn't work for all people (especially more senior folks). And of course we offer to pay people for the time.

In terms of overall comp, we pay more than 7 out of 10 comparable companies (sub 200 employees, tech, in the bay area) across both cash and equity according to http://conneryconsulting.com/ who we hired to help us with this.

Overall, our hiring process (especially in the early days) was weighted toward not making a bad hire, so this means we missed out on some good people occasionally, but ended up with a stellar team. Given the chance to do this over again, I'd make the same choice.

Finally, I'd suggest reading some of Paul Graham or Sam Altman's advice on this topic, for example: http://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-hire

"Have people audition for roles instead of interviewing for them" "A single bad hire left unfixed for long can kill a company." etc

We definitely didn't have it perfect early on, and still don't, so apologies if you had a negative experience. It is something we are always working on.

For example, Stripe also prohibits adult content which is largely (I would guess) a result of input from Wells Fargo https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

To offer this service, we (Coinbase) work with those bank rules and that is why you are seeing our service act much like the traditional financial world. You might not like this, but we didn't make those rules, and it is the only way I know of that works if you want to exchange bitcoin in the traditional financial world. (John's answer from the support thread you linked also explains this).

Accepting purely bitcoin-to-bitcoin payments would be one solution that might work for this if that is what you want (there are plenty of other solutions other than Coinbase for this). I should mention that we are probably at fault for marketing it more as a bitcoin wallet vs an exchange which has different implications to people (I think this is part of the reason for the confusion).

Finally, I believe you may be mistaken that you can't access the $5k in funds. Are you sure? This page describes our policy on that topic: https://support.coinbase.com/customer/portal/articles/190568...