gersh

People seem to have some misconceptions. If we assume the cost of the mining hardware becomes negligible over time, then the cost of mining bitcoin is the cost of the energy. The amount earned by miners is: mining reward + transaction costs. The mining reward will decrease over time, so in the end it should be the transaction costs.

Now, we then get that as t --> big transaction costs = cost of energy because spending more energy than you make on Bitcoin loses money. People should be incentivized to reduce their transaction costs by going off-chain, using a POS chain, or other means.

Are they selling the reservations now? Is this about getting more cash to keep funding their operations?

You need to weight the law enforcement need for encryption against the security threat of hackers stealing your data. Hackers including foreign state-sponsored hackers appear to be a major threat. People need the tools to protect their data.

What happens when you lose your wallet, or someone steals the peace of paper with your private key? Credit cards and atms get stolen all the time.

You gotta be careful with commission-based sales people. They will promise the sun, the moon, and anything to close the sale. While this may work for some products, it can lead to pissed off customers.

Commission can encourage a short-term attitude that doesn't consider the long-term relationship with the customer.

Isn't the code open source? Can he fork and start his own company?

So, if you are hiring for diversity, does that mean you should hire whoever solves the interview problem in the most unique way?

What was the underwriting criteria? What percentage of the loan applications got accepted? It looks they were looking to back entrepreneurs of color, but the criteria beyond that look unclear. Were there specific criteria, or was it just at the whim of the loan officer?

I think Angel's list requires a range to list jobs on there.

Can a defense attorney in Georgia argue their client couldn't obey the law because they couldn't afford to know the law?

I had a terrible experience with a Lyft driver. I took a Lyft home after a long flight where I wasn't feeling well. I mentioned something about not feeling well. The driver decided I was going to die and mess up his car. Then, he tried to dump me at McDonalds. Only after arguing with him for 10 minutes in the McDonalds parking lot and refusing to get out of the car, he reluctantly sorta agreed to take me to the hospital except he took me to the children's hospital.

I'd take this as a sign the fossil fuel industry is dying. Trying to ban your competition is usually a last resort for dying industries.

Does the data include high-ranking government leaders and leading businessmen?

How could I meet these gifted, socially-isolated people? I'd be interested in Skype or Google Hangouts. Email me.

Can high-frequency traders replace active investors in an ideal world. Ideally, the price should be the best estimate of the value of the company based on all publicly available information. When new information is released, high frequency traders should rush to profit from the discrepancy. Further, they can market make based off their knowledge of the stock's true value. However, this business should face increasing competition until it becomes a low-margin business. I don't see any inherent reason, active investing should be super profitable. In the end, it is just another business like any other.

I don't think I really get how to have relationships. It seems a lot of developers fail bad at relationships.

I see beauty in math and algorithms. I'm sick of people, who just see such things only in dollar terms.

However, I think there is a greater cultural attack on technological professionals. I feel like we are devalued as some sort of machine that cranks out code. Many play into this as well. I don't think it is healthy.

I'm sick of the conformist 'hacker'-wear in the tech industry. You gotta wear designer clothes to rebel against the techy t-shirt, hoody uniform.

He is looking at obituaries of startups for advice. If you look at successful startups, did they face early technical risk?

Google won early by having the best algorithm. Facebook's early competitor Friendster died due to technical issues. It seems less clear at what stage companies like Uber and AirBNB faced substantial technical risk? I'd guess Slack and DropBOx had significant technical risk in early stages. I suppose WeWork probably had less technical risk.

I suppose the early prototype's code may not be totally indicative of whether the company can overcome the technical risk. Still, I think you need to evaluate whether the founding team can deal with the technical risk.

Technical due diligence isn't about looking for beautiful. It is about looking for an ability to manage technical risk. This includes an ability to hire and manage good engineers.

Can't you just say the decision was based on a random forest trained on the following parameters with historical data. You could get more specific on how the model was trained or even show model if you have to. I'm sure you can create a small-print tree diagram.

In terms of human review, does this require more than a spot check? I can imagine look over the p-value and possibly spot check the input data, and then approve it.

It may not be profitable to a full-time Uber driver, but I think Uber can be a good part-time job. You can driver whenever you want, so you can work when no other work is available.

Further, I've heard you can deduct car-related from your Uber earnings. If you have a car already and can do this successfully, your Uber income is effectively tax-free until the IRS cracks down.

4.45M Tesla shares trade ever day. You could liquidate $300m in Tesla stock at less than one day's average volume.

Yes, but how much of real estate is owned by REIT?

According to the author, the passive investors are buying into indexes regardless of valuation. However, we know the private unicorns have gotten higher valuations than public companies, which is the opposite of what we'd expect. Further, real estate prices have been going up, and real estate is not a passive investment.

As a former NLP engineer and former wikiHow engineer, I have some perspective on this. Google has included more and more information from Wikipedia. Furthermore, Google includes snippets of external websites in the knowledge box on more and more pages.

How long will be until can algorithmically generate its own Wikipedia articles? Wikipedia relies upon coming to its site for contributions and donations. Without search, Wikipedia risks being subsumed by Google. They have a difficult position of thinking about the future without pissing off Google.

Computers are getting more and more powerful. Wikipedia needs to do stay relevant. I think this is the right decision.

I see a lot of police near the ferry building in San Francisco with machine guns. It feels like the NFL is invading San Francisco.

San Francisco has gotten so expensive that New York is cheaper.

June 21 is the summer solstice, and pregnancy lasts for 280 days. March 27 is exactly 280 days after June 21.

I think engineering discipline is about knowing how much testing is required to ensure your code is good enough with a high probability.

If you make a change to your code, how much testing is required to know it works? If you don't write a unit test, will it lead to technical debt? Are you capable of testing your own code?

Suicidal lone-nuts need shouldn't be able to obtain guns. There are probably ways to do this without an outright ban, or excessive bureaucracy. I propose the following possible solutions:

1) Outlaw buying a gun by yourself, and require 10 co-signers, who assume personal liability for any misuse of the gun. Everyone must be free of a criminal record, and take an oath to follow the law.

2) Require liability insurance to own a gun like car insurance. The insurance company would ensure you aren't a threat, or they probably wouldn't provide you with liability insurance.

Are you willing to share what your evidence is that the big winners do the best during the interview phase? Do you rank all startups that are accepted into YCombinator?

Have later YCombinator classes had a larger percentage of homeruns? If you have more applicants and have gotten better at selecting, this should be the case.

Is it about selecting winners, or weeding out losers? Are there companies that you know will fail? Who would be least likely to succeed as an entrepreneur?