codebolt

Sadly, you're absolutely spot on.

Just like the stock market was never about cashing out during the 1920s. But that situation can change very fast. In fact, the only reason Bitcoin wasn't wiped out during the last panic in 2017 is because no one was stopping Tether from simply minting out of thin air and propping up the price.

The simple fact is that every dollar spent buying a new lambo by some crypto hotshot millionaire has to come from someone else buying their ticket to the carousel. Just like in any Ponzi scheme. There is no creation of value there, just an ever increasing pool of greater fools.

And now we even have companies with millions/billions of dollars worth of BTC on their balance sheet. What happens if one of those companies goes to bankruptcy court? Do you think their equity and debt holders won't want those tokens converted to fiat currency as soon as possible? How do you think that happens?

If you're truly paranoid about the government seizing your assets (which you have no reason to be unless you're already doing something stupid), you can always buy a precious metal or simply take out cash and keep it buried in your backyard.

Also, 1÷ of global emissions is already a huge number. And if Bitcoin should become as widespread as some people claim that number would still need to grow by a vast amount.

Except with Bitcoin, you're now relying on the liquidity of actors like Tether to get your money out, which is even more centralised and less trustworthy, certainly, than any bank subject to western regulations and backed by our governments guarantees. Congratulations on destroying the environment to make an act of defiance that achieves less than nothing.

Blockchain technology doesn't really do anything in practical terms that a conventional, simple ledgering system wouldn't have been able to do much better and without wasting so much energy.

These numbers are outrageous, and only solidify my already skeptic stance towards cryptos in general. In an era where people are encouraged to reduce their carbon emissions to protect the future of the planet, it seems irresponsible and stupid to waste hundreds of TWh annualy on solving completely pointless equations. Western governments need to step in and put an end to this madness.

I quit 3 years into my physics/math degree (my university had a joint 5-year masters program) with basically the same insight. Took a masters in CS instead and wrapped up the necessary credits for a bachelors in physics so I'd at least have a piece of paper to show for the effort I put in.

My thought at the time was; If I want to do physics full time, I better make it rich first. I saw that the tenure track academic route seemed very far from my naive teenage dreams of what being a physicist would mean, and it was unrealistic that I'd even get accepted into grad school not being fully straight As. Currently enjoying a pretty decent career developing software for banks, so I can't say I regret my decision, esp. after reading articles like this.

Not something done on a whim when you have a family. Might consider a remote position, though. My current job has decent benefits, and I do enjoy the work, but the pay absolutely stinks compared with the value of the work I'm performing. If openings start flying around with anything close to SV-level compensation I'd be hard pressed not to consider applying.

Physics is a set of mathematical relationships that aims to describe how things behave. The important distinction seems to be whether one believes that all behaviour of all things everywhere can be reduced to a simple mathematical model, or if there could be instances where something behaves non-computationally at a fundamental level.

Yes, but as long as nothing is stopping them from simply minting out of thin air, I wouldn't bet against their ability to keep pushing the prices up.

Daily volumes of tether trades are consistently a high multiple of the total supply. (Today it's 130bln vs 30bln.) So I don't know if it's safe to even trust that number.

As per Steins law, anything that cannot go on forever must eventually stop. Question is how long?

Any real value analysis of Bitcoin that doesn't take Tether into account isn't worth much. As long as the whole crypto market is built around a currency issued by an unregulated and unaudited company with a mile-long list of past controversies, any unbiased take on the future of Bitcoin has to allow for a significant downside risk.

> Setting IT maintenance as a core strategy, rather than something that serves a strategy, is complete death. Employees better hope they like the dead end career they have at such a company, because it’s going to cut them off from any lifeline to relevancy.

I think you have it completely backwards. As an example, having competency maintaining core banking systems is a far safer career long-term than working at some fancy crypto fintech. Work on stuff that's actually important, don't waste your best years on the hype-train of the season headed nowhere.

Denmark has been doing this for years. It's not a perfect solution but it hasn't been a complete disaster either.

I agree. Vegans are usually 'all or nothing' when it comes to animal welfare. However, if you could increase the quality of life of farm animals from miserable to decent for the majority of their lifespans, that would surely eliminate the majority of animal suffering overall. I don't get why someone who claims to be concerned about animal welfare wouldn't promote such efforts.

You can also search for the serial number on eBay and typically find a compatible part.

> already priced in

Nothing can be effectively priced in as long as you have an artificial and illegitimate source of liquidity pushing the price up. Such a market doesn't allow for rational pricing mechanisms to manifest.

Speculation? You can look at the raw market data right here and see several things that should make any critically minded person go 'hmmm': https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/

How can Tether have a daily trading volume of almost 100 bln on a supply of 'just' 24 bln? Seems rather obvious that the vast majority of crypto trades are done by HFT algos and not people (or worse, that the actual supply of Tether is much higher than the reported supply).

You can't deny that Tether is a very essential component in the crypto markets. It is also an unregulated, unaudited private entity operating outside western jurisdictions, with a long history of controversies: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex/

Hardly the group you'd want managing a global currency system.

Remove the unconstrained supply of Mickey Mouse money (Tether) and eliminate wash trading, and you will watch Bitcoin descend into the abyss rather quickly.

Human drivers fail reliably, in ways that are understandable. Non-AGI artificial intelligence based on a mix of heuristics and dumb statistics (aka 'deep learning') will fail in highly unpredictable and to a human eye completely foolish ways. The day these cars are let on the road in my area is the day I start taking the train.

HN has a giant global user base. Wouldn't be surprised to find more than a few west Africans here. As for myself, here in northern Europe I'm a lead developer in finance/banking, but for a few weeks a year I'm a farmer in Nigeria. Just because someone is a geek for technical stuff, doesn't mean they have to have such a limited perspective on the rest of the world.

Completely disagree with this sentiment. I personally built a small program that scans our production environment for logs with errors and sends the team an email if something's up. Spent two days writing the initial version, have only made a handful of small extensions since then. Been using it for years now, with no complaints from anyone. But countless problematic situations that were resolved before they could cause major havoc.

Would have probably spent a lot more time wrestling with a more general solution to make it fit our particular environment.

Might have something to do with this:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-hunter-biden-...

Forget mocking, the major benefit of DI for me has always been proxies.

For our multi-tiered system, this means managing caching and logging of certain calls and events at the level of data access. And at the service level, it means dealing with things like authorisation.

Smart use of DI sets the system up in a way were it's easy to handle these types of cross-cutting concerns where appropriate, and with minimal boilerplate. It also simplifies refactoring.

Cool. Now can we please get this thing with Norwegian key layout ASAP?

Based on advice from certain experts like Rhonda Patrick and various anecdotes from others I think the combination of sugar and fat in particular exacerbates the damaging effects of both.

This study seems to focus on one variable, but there may be all sorts of bias in that those who consume a lot of saturated fat also have poor nutrition otherwise and lead unhealthier lives overall.

> We say African Americans have higher rates of Vitamin D deficiency, but this is based on the assumption that their average levels of Vitamin D should equal those of European whites, not on an assessment of when they experience problems.

Couldn't you just survey average vitamin D levels in native West African populations, and compare it with African Americans?

Even if there was a difference in the requirements between native Africans and native Europeans, many African Americans also have varying levels of European heritage that would complicate the picture.

Perhaps there has been an improvement in other parts of the supply chain, but the situation in DR Congo (where e.g. coltan used for capacitors is mined) seems to only be getting worse.

I've read both. The first was the most impactful to me personally. The way he uses Gödels theorems to argue against the computability of consciousness is actually quite ingenious and it's presented in such a straightforward way that I could easily grasp it from first principles. I also find the criticisms I've seen against it to be knee-jerkish and flimsy.

Orch OR seems like a shot in the dark, and while certainly an interesting thought experiment I'd like to see more evidence before I buy in to it.

Such a joy to see Sir Roger Penrose awarded with this honor. One of my favorite contemporary intellectuals.

If anyone hasn't seen it, I recommend his recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orMtwOz6Db0

True, but I'd still go as far as to say the majority of illnesses western people in their 40's are suffering from could have been avoided with different lifestyle choices.

If I hadn't kept fitness and eating healthy as a priority for the last 15 years, my health would've been in complete shambles by now. I was pretty lazy and self-destructive through my early adolescence, and in my early twenties I was in terrible shape physically and had a lot of severe mental problems that I no longer struggle with. I'm extremely grateful to my 22-year old self that decided to try and turn things around, it didn't happen overnight.

Exactly. As a counterexample, I'm approaching 40 in the best physical and mental shape of my life. You simply have to take responsibility for your own health, especially if your job involves sitting on your ass for extended hours every day.