Ok, thanks for the clarification
2,253 karma · joined February 5, 2012
Email: avp-13@yandex.ru
The "How to Apply to Y Combinator" essay hasn't been updated to reflect this change.
His advice was "have a few goals". You can quit your job and have a few fun months, but after that you'll have to return back to your previous life and problems that you had will be likely unresolved.
I am curious: what kind of change happened to your friends' lives? I'd like to take a few months off work, but I am considering a more directed approach than funemployment. Funemployment is certainly great for some people, but probably not for me.
Then game theory is pretty useful model. Players are rational, after all. Thats what's game theory is about.
> Governments may not want currencies they can't control.
Makes perfect sense. But we're discussing 51% attack. Would a miner with 51% of hashrate willingly help a government(and why would he)?
Or, would a government simply try to legislate bitcoin out of existence? I would say that the latter is more likely than the former.
> And now that there's a single pool with >51% of the CPU power, the difficulty of a hostile takeover just went way, way down.
Remember, it is not a single entity. It is a pool. And, in fact, ghash.io share is down to 39%.
> all the CIA has to do is threaten a few people and say
I do agree with this point. One of the strongest points of bitcoin is decentralization. We should keep bitcoin as decentralized as possible. But I would say ghash.io having 51% is a minor obstacle.
All models are wrong, but some are useful. What is the chance that there is an irrational player that spends a lot of money only to destroy bitcoin? This kind of player has to be politically motivated, not just simply irrational.
> Besides, there are plenty of profitable avenues if you control 51%
Like what? Basically you can do a few things:
1) Mine all the current coins
2) Double-spend
3) Not confirm any transactions
All of them are harmful to the network. However, given that it is not an actual single entity that controls 51%, I wouldn't be worried much about anything except 1)
BTW, there is another book by the same author(David Burns) -- "When Panic Attacks" [1]. It is focused on anxiety, not depression, but these two conditions often go hand in hand.
Let me explain why I am asking. It seems to me that we already hit some sort of physical limit for the clock rates. We can't (easily) double clock rate of a CPU, so we add more CPUs. But programming multithreaded applications is more difficult, so it is more difficult to utilize this power.
Can't we hit similar limit for humans? Is there a limit on what humans can comprehend and build? Let's say one programmer can code 1 abstract feature-unit per day. There are limits. What makes everyone think that replacing humans with robots will require not 10^100 abstract units of features? Why no one considers that this problem may be just _too difficult_.
Also, "The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development" is a great book for people starting a career in software development
If you know some C++ and want to learn(by doing) how search engines work -- email me!
Ideally, a potential mentee: -- Wants to code her or his own small search engine. Obviously, it is difficult to recreate Yandex or Google, but it is relatively easy to make something on a smaller scale. -- Knows some C++, but wants to expand her or his knowledge -- Is in the beginning of the software development career
This is just a description of someone who I can help the most. If you don't quite match this description, send me an email anyway -- I can still help you with your own project in C++ or help you code a search engine in a some other language than C++. Or maybe I can just help pairing you with someone more relevant. :)
Email: in profile.
Ideally, a potential mentee: -- Wants to code her or his own small search engine. Obviously, it is difficult to recreate Yandex or Google, but it is relatively easy to make something on a smaller scale. -- Knows some C++, but wants to expand her or his knowledge -- Is in the beginning of the software development career
This is just a description of someone who I can help the most. If you don't quite match this description, send me an email my anyway. I can still help you with your own project in C++ or help you code a search engine in a some other language than C++. And even if I can't help, maybe I can match you with someone relevant.
Email: in the profile.
Probably not as much as simply reading books.
My currrent understanding that they were cost effective at some point of history, when students didn't have books, but lecturers did:
> Not only are they still lecturing, a relic of the Middle Ages when students didn’t have books and monks read them to them
http://educationoutrage.blogspot.de/2013/01/princeton-profes...
This is incorrect. I sell a burger because I value it less than your dollar, and you buy a burger because you value it more than one dollar. Win-win. It is a positive sum game, not a zero sum one.
It is probably that not only cypherpunks thought that bitcoin is nice but weird idea, but also Satoshi Nakamoto himself. True, if it takes off, Satoshi will change the world and make some money, but what if it doesn't? Then bitcoin is like bit gold or b-money -- cool theoretical concept, and Satoshi want some recognition for his work(just like Nick Szabo or Wei Dai who used their real names).
Of course there is some chance that bitcoin will succeed, so Satoshi wants to protect himself from government hostility. He knows about Liberty Dollar(don't confuse with Liberty Reserve), he knows about e-gold, and he knows about Phil Zimmermann(criminal investigation related to PGP).
So why does Satoshi need anonymity? Well, he doesn't. All he needs is _plausible deniability_, and he maintains it pretty well.
When you have 51% of mining power, you can do a lot of nasty things(like stopping confirming transaction at all), but not spend someone else's bitcoins.
What they _might_ do at some point is in fact allow trading bitcoin itself just like China. They declare that they are concerned "protecting interests of users of cryptocurrencies", so there is hope.
Why do we need to do simple arithmetic efficiently in our minds? We already have readily accessible computers for this, let's focus on something computers can't do for us yet.
> but a competent soldier needs to exercise that capability until it's second nature
I'd prefer a robot to fight in a war(instead of me).
I never understood this argument. If I don't like every company, I can start my own company and disrupt the market. But if I don't like every state in existence, I cannot start my own country and migrate to it.
It is more like slavery: you can choose your master, but you can never become fully free. Just like russian Yuriy's day( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Day ): once a year russian peasants were granted the right to move to another master. "If you don't like your master, why don't you go to another?".
> if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.
This is the exact problem with governments/states: people are not allowed to live however they like. It is not like anarchy is crazy social order that even anarchists are scared to try. Anarchists are simply not allowed to start their own country/city and live there.
> BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties
BTW, google is not a monopoly in many countries(including USA). It doesn't even have a majority market share in every country(e.g. Russia, China)
Now, what incentive do you have to blindly protect every robber who payed you? If you try to prevent punishment of a robber, your current(as well as potential) customers won't view your services as desirable, and simply won't pay you. Then you go out of business.
I think Murray Rothbard makes a better argument(while dissecting many common objections similar to yours). I recommend the chapter "Police, Law, and the Courts" from his book "For a new liberty: the libertarian manifesto" : http://mises.org/document/1010/For-a-New-Liberty-The-Liberta...
> But fiat currencies are simply currencies that aren't backed by collateral
I've checked wikipedia, and one of the definitions for the term "fiat money" is "state-issued money which is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard.". Bitcoin clearly doesn't fall under this definition. So your statement is not quite true.
Correct.
> Currently it's the exchanges and merchants directly, because they rely on the exchanges.
Incorrect. There is the solution: https://bitpay.com/ , which automatically does conversion for a small fee. Buyers pay in bitcoin, but sellers receives fiat money(e.g. USD). The risk is taken by bitpay, sellers always receive fixed amount in fiat money, and buyers have the window of 15 minutes to make BTC payment.
My point is that if you believe in equal abilities regardless of race/gender then you probably want to completely get rid of race and gender fields in your application form. And if you actually support discriminating against these fields, then you have to explain your decision rather than simply hit downvote button.
I can see how BlackGirlsCode may help people, but I also can see how it may harm. My guess: it probably helps(although I'm not an american). Downvote irrelevant comments not comments you disagree with.
The comment isn't stupid: such gender/race discrimination _may_ backfire(for example, if your message is read not as "black girls have the same abilities but may need extra help" but as "black girls need extra help because they are black & girls -- inherently less smart and talented". Now, I'm not saying that it _will_ backfire(I guess it probably won't) but it _may_.
Also, the author makes a really good point that you probably want to help all disadvantaged(unless you're racist/sexist for some reason): why exclude asian girls if they get less help?
I get that, in fact, race/gender discrimination may be the best way to fight race/gender discrimination of the past, but this point of view requires much more explanation than simply hitting downvote button.
You simply don't understand bitcoin. It is not like Satoshi couldn't come up with "useful" computations with "intrinsic value". He deliberately chose "useless" computations. Why? Because these computations serve very important role in the network: they make fraud(like double-spending) very costly(you have to control 20-30% of network computing power to have even smallest change to execute your attack, and 50%+ to have 100% chance of doing it). Computations having "intrinsic value" == extra incentive to attack.
Also, you miss all the work done by armed guards to protect large piles of cash( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash-in-transit ). Do you think they do their work for free? And this is only obvious work. How much does current banking costs to us in total?
> Gold has industrial uses due to its physical and chemical properties, and it is desired in the consumer space as a material to make jewelry out of.
Gold was used for thousands of years long before it had some uses in the industry. It has no really special chemical properties: it doesn't react much with other chemical elements (which is actually awesome for a currency: it means it can preserve its value for many many years). Jewelry - maybe, but isn't it so desired for jewelry because it is scarce? You could make jewelry out of less noble metals.
BTW, there are recent news about FBI secretly activating webcams: https://twitter.com/tinyrevolution/status/409311691088723968...