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bbbhn

24 karma · joined April 6, 2013

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bbbhn··on Squirt.io – Readability Meets Spritz Speed Reading
Sometimes it displays two words at a time. Otherwise, very cool!
bbbhn··on Rich-Get-Richer Effect Observed in BitCoin Digital Currency Network
It would be great if MIT Tech Review dropped its political agenda and just, you know, reported on technology.

These "rich-getting-richer" addresses may actually be held by businesses, and the reason they are gaining more links and BTC is because more people are storing their BTC with that business.

The study doesn't provide nearly enough evidence or context to justify MIT Tech Review's politically-loaded rhetoric. There are ways to report on the Bitcoin network without mucking it up with divisive classist rhetoric.

bbbhn··on Elon Musk quits Zuckerberg's immigration advocacy group
A) Your argument against H-1B's is disingenuous at best. And I'm curious, are you against expanding H-1B's but in favor of increasing the amount of low-skill immigrants and/or granting citizenship to illegal immigrants? If so, how do you reconcile your seemingly-contradictory stances?

B) Heritage is staunchly conservative, NOT libertarian.

bbbhn··on Design, and why I don't do it
Great design is art. You can master the principles, techniques, and skills, but in the end great design comes down to vision and imagination.

However that doesn't mean developers can't be really good designers. Anybody can learn how to emulate the good design of the present and create products which fulfill the design demands of consumers.

bbbhn··on News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
Are you serious? The Daily Show is no more "news" than Hannity is.
bbbhn··on News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
I don't know anything about ABC, but generally speaking, I imagine that the likelihood of a media company's internal team declaring that their own company's reporting is biased is about as likely as BP creating an internal team that reports offshore drilling creates uncontainable environmental risks.

I don't think it's surprising that the majority of established media companies lean in a certain political direction. People on one side of the political spectrum may be more attracted to journalism than the other side, which would naturally lead to media companies producing journalism more sympathetic to the political arguments that their employees are sympathetic to.

bbbhn··on News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
Al Jazeera and BBC are both solidly on the left. I'm not disputing the quality of their reporting or the value of exposing oneself to their reporting, but you're fooling yourself if you think they're neutral.
bbbhn··on News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
There's also a certain arbitrariness to what the media establishment chooses to cover and how they choose to cover it. It often seems as if the "news" is nothing more than what entrenched political and/or private interests want people to be thinking that day.

That's one of the reasons I'm really enjoying the new Vice show on HBO -- they're covering topics nobody else is touching, they don't censor or clean up the horrific aspects of the human behavior they're covering, and their presentation doesn't try to pretend that their reporters are anything other than human beings who possess their own viewpoints (rather than "objective" beings capable of transcending their own subjective perceptions and beliefs, like poor CNN still claims).

bbbhn··on News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
No such thing as a neutral news source. The closet thing is a news aggregator which will expose you to a variety of different viewpoints.

For US political news realclearpolitics.com is pretty good. They also aggregate news on other topics but I haven't explored those personally.

bbbhn··on Lost in the Meritocracy (2005)
"Rules of Attraction" was far more entertaining than this drivel.
bbbhn··on India’s elites have a ferocious sense of entitlement
WASPs in the US act similarly.
bbbhn··on India’s elites have a ferocious sense of entitlement
You're grossly simplifying things. A person may be driven to succeed and generate wealth for their family because they want to be able to send their children to the best schools possible, or they want to be able to access the best medical practitioners and technology if someone they cared about were to get sick. It may have absolutely nothing to do with owning "more than the next person."
bbbhn··on Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin
When did the notion that a currency which loses value over time is ideal become orthodoxy?

There are plenty of legitimate arguments that can be constructed against the idea of an inherently inflationary currency too.

bbbhn··on Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin
The computer cycles are useful: they secure the network.
bbbhn··on Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin
You don't need an insane amount of computing power to create new bitcoins. The amount of bitcoins generated every ten minutes is essentially set in stone. What drives people to dedicate more and more computing power to the mining process is market incentives: as you put more computing power into securing bitcoin, more of the generated bitcoins end up in your wallet.
bbbhn··on Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin
Krugman is an arrogant ass. He makes sweeping generalizations about topics he knows little to nothing about all the time.
bbbhn··on Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin
Krugman doesn't understand Bitcoin. The computing power expended on mining is used to secure the Bitcoin network.

There are many, many costs associated with securing the integrity of established financial networks too.

bbbhn··on Bitcoin Is Fundamentally Flawed
Recessions and depressions happen to economies. To critique Bitcoin for its potential to induce a recession or depression is ridiculous, because the USD -- and its influence on the economy -- isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
bbbhn··on Bitcoin Is an Existential Threat to the Modern Liberal State
Wow, the financial press is falling in love with writing about Bitcoin.

Now that it's been linked to Cyprus there's an increased probability of Bitcoin being discussed in reference to future Eurozone economic events. Which means more mainstream awareness & more potential adopters.

I have a hard time seeing Bitcoin going away in the near future. Even if it's a bubble, and I have my doubts about that, odds are we have yet to reach the peak.

It's political nature also holds a lot of potential. There are some very, very discontent people all over the world, both Western and non-Western. Segments of the Greek population have latched onto neo-nazism -- is it really that unrealistic that another desperate population might latch onto Bitcoin?