ryanobjc

Solutions exist to this that can respect the distributed nature and not rely upon a single authority. Multisig wallets that require N of M where the participants are chosen from a broad swath of the relevant community is popular. That way you can go in and change transactions after the fact, all without requiring the blockchain to (a) know about it and (b) everyone gets to choose their own relevant security model.

It even exists now, if you mis-send USDC/USDT you can petition Circle or Tether to reverse or change a balance. Commonly required when sending USD* to an address that can't move it out or handle it.

But ALSO a lot of payment systems that people like are in fact not reversible, even by courts. And people like them that way - it prevents fraud. Fedwires, Swift wires. Consider selling a high value item: there are few ways of electronically transferring amounts that can't be frauded out later. This is why many used car sales are done via cash - can't undo cash!

A centralized database of fungible and useful assets is going to eventually be hacked. Just ask OKTA about that.

Whereas there is no central point of hack for a well designed and tested blockchain. Distributed custody in an adversarial environment with mutual trust and dis-trust.

Yes it's not everything, but tradfi solutions are not 150% bulletproof either - they may only seem that way to the outside, but there are massive hazards lying just under the surface waiting to blow up. See: GME settlement risk end of Jan 2020.

EDIT: I used to be a huge skeptic of Eth and smart contracts. But I knew basically nothing about how they actually worked in practice. I learned a lot more and now I am a big believer.

The reality is you just likely do not know enough. Your skepticism of the space prevents you from learning and seeing the value that's sitting right in front of your eyes. You also have baked in presumptions that existing systems are somehow... workable or great, when they are not.

His paper was definitively broadly inaccurate. A number of dissections online have illustrated at how he grasps at evidence that doesn’t say what he claims it to say. He over emphasizes the nature of statistical evidence, and ignores the minimal strength of effect as well.

Besides which this wasn’t a “all of a sudden I wrote a paper and then I got fired” - he had been posting similar ideas into internal forums and was getting push back and disagreements. He got his editorial feedback already and he ignored it.

I’ve looked at some of these academic circumstances and the ones I looked at were very misleading. Often times the only account we have is from the fired person, who is obviously going to push the most favorable narrative. When you dig in, there is something else amiss.

But this focus - deliberately engineered btw - on right wing firing is misleading. There is an order of magnitude more firing and suppression of left wing voices at college. It’s just there is no Fox News of the left to focus culture war agitprop on those cases.

The poster perhaps should have noted how they intended on treating their coworkers. Instead we are left to infer that their intent was to lean into their ideology against basic decency.

And in the end this is what the “culture wars” are about: the right to not be decent to certain people.

So, your new colleague says their name is Richard. You decide it’s hilarious to call him “dick” and refuse to stop even after he’s asked you multiple times.

Pronouns aren’t any different - if you had a masculine looking female coworker at work - say she was into bodybuilding - and you keeping calling her “he” as a “joke”… persisting when you were asked not to, by your boss, by hr perhaps even. What kind of person are you being here?

You can not believe in gender identity, I don’t care. But be respectful to your colleagues at work. Is that so much to ask for? To literally not be as asshole? Is that what you’re defending - your right to be a flaming asshole to your coworkers without any consequence??

I think your 'commoners' framing... is not helpful here.

You raise a few objectionable assertions that I think is good to contemplate: - GoF was never banned - The ban was NIH funding GoF - The ban was lifted in 2017 anyways - Is this risky? The ban on funding it doesn't mean it's risky, as per se. - The potential pie in the eye risk are infinite, but what are the realistic risks? That really depends on the technical details of how the research is done, and where it's done. - Compare and contrast to activities that are very dangerous and have nearly infinite catastrophic risks but we do every day: driving, flying, operating nuclear power plants, refining oil, and much much more.

All of this research came out of the desire not to be caught flat footed by the next version of SARS or MERS. Overall global research did in fact prep us for SARS-CoV-2. Vaccines "made in months" that have stood the test of efficacy and safety? Months if you ignore the years of research behind it.

Is this particular thing excessively dangerous or not? I'm not 100% sure. Most of the "this is unacceptable" seems to be coming from people who seem to have a visceral hatred of Dr Fauci and who as head of the NIH was indirectly responsible for this funding. But I don't find that a reasonable line of reasoning. One thing I know, is every scientist I know is not paid a boat load, and care deeply about what they are doing and why.

Perhaps GoF is too 'dangerous', but maybe we should also hear about how it can be made safe, how does it compare in hazardousness to other common things that are deemed 'safe' and what the benefits are.

When you buy semiconductors on digikey or whatever, there are several different 'classes' of performance. Everyone imagines milspec being the top one, and it's true, but for most people the ideal class is 'automotive'... Because precisely of what the parent said: tolerances of temperatures to 140F or more. Think of a car sitting in a baking parking lot in Phoenix, no shade.

You don't build semiconductors for that purpose by using 10nm process then adding a lot more redundancies when all you need is a simple opamp. You instead build the thing beefy and resistant to the environment.

And all the excitement over new chip plants by TSMC etc, won't do a thing for these automotive applications.

For a site filled with developers y’all really misunderstand the whole 30% cut thing.

It’s an alternate way to pay for API, sdk, and platform access.

Before the era of phones, if you wanted to develop for some kind of gated platform, for example video game consoles, one would have to pay very high SDK fees. Fees that would scale based on licensed seat, enterprise size, and more. Then when you ship, you’d pay royalties on a per item basis. You sold a game cartridge or cd? Great, a portion of your sale prices goes back to Sony/Nintendo/whatever.

If Apple and google were to provide un-marked up card services, they’d probably charge 3-5% like stripe: there’s a certain amount of fraud that would be priced in.

Then they would charge for dev tools. A lot. They’d probably charge for API or SDK usage, perhaps tied to the sales volume and enterprise size.

But instead they give the tools away for free, and charge at point of delivery.

I think the current situation is actually a great deal for developers: you get access to an always improving platform, it’s free for personal/hobby use, and if you make sales, you get paid. And the first $X is fee reduced/free. And it’s a highly available distribution platform that scales world wide. Good luck getting your Indy game into every brick and mortar store.

The world is really different, and way way better, for developers. This Spotify announcement is great for users, it’s handy to have all your subscriptions in one platform. And not having to sign up on a desktop or outside the app flow.

Erigon nodes are full archival by default, and dont use much space, about 1.7TB, which is quite thrifty consider geth uses like 10TB.

So, many people run full archive nodes now. Thanks erigon team!

You’re wrong about San Francisco having a $1.1B budget for homelessness.

In fy2021-2022 the amount is $670M … over two years.

SF spends 1/4 of the amount you accuse it of.

Furthermore, it’s well known that other counties near and far send their homeless people here. So as a SF tax payer… I think you owe me many thanks for taking care of your homeless people.

The flu has been feared throughout history, as it is... frankly quite deadly at times. Now a days we have excellent flu monitoring, and flu shots, and have been able to manage it, also at great cost. But to dismiss the flu, and covid-19 as "nbd" is... not the kind of analytical strength I am expecting on HN. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

At the time of the breakout of Covid-19 in Jan/Feb 2020, the reports on the ground in Wuhan and Italy were pointing to a catastrophic failure of healthcare systems leading to significantly enhanced death rates, CFR of 10% or so was being observed in Wuhan. Yes, everyone knew that not everyone was being tested, but having 10% of everyone you tested died... well that ain't good. And China has a powerful government and can mobilize resources when they feel like it. Witness the building of hospitals in Wuhan in 10 days. Turns out they were probably more like convalescent centers, but they were fighting the multi-generational housing problem where younger sick people would get their parents/grandparents sick (who lived with them, and weren't able to isolate in their apartment/houses).

Back then, people noted "if we do this right, then we will be accused of over-reaction", and sure enough that is what we are seeing. Fun fact: by the time the first lockdowns in SF/bay area were announced, domestic flights were down... 97%. All major conferences had been cancelled. Tech companies were already allowing/requiring WFH. If that seems like an overreaction, imagine if Google Search went down in spring 2020... that isn't an impossible situation, after all if staff were spreading covid to each other readily without being aware and having a 1% death rate as a result... that is devastating. The notion that life would have been fine if we just ignored it is kinda nuts considering we had 800,000 deaths to date, and yet our mask effort resulted in the extinction of a strain of the flu, and reducing the pediatric flu deaths from 200 -> 1. Yet still 800,000 deaths.

I tried to do this for a few years. I really tried, I renewed, I did various analysis in it... But it's really hard to make it performant on data processing tasks, learning how to do things efficiently in the language.

The curated data is... honestly a little basic and overrated imo. If you are doing general work, maybe their population info is ok, but you don't really know the source of the data entirely, when it was acquired, etc. If you are doing real research, it's not gonna cut it.

I wanted to do analysis of ethereum, but their blockchain library was incredibly weak. It did not support reading data at given block ids (ie: historical analysis), and when I requested the feature the answer was basically "maybe in the next major revision."

I'm not a fan of python, but I went there. I used typed python, which ultimately I think the best solution moving forward is probably typescript, since typed python has a lot of type holes in it :-/

itunes match is what you want.

You can upload your own music to the cloud, and whatever matches existing ones just matches to the itunes store so you dont actually have to upload everything - this is the 'match' in the 'itunes match'.

And it's $25/year.

Tell us a little bit about your Indian high school experience. Who were your peers? Who were their parents, where were they from, how wealthy were they? How wealthy was you? Did the school have competitive entry? Did kids get kicked out for failing or doing poorly?

Most of the comments in here are way way off base.

First off, I believe in and trust the policy experts. If they are saying that algebra for everyone as a compulsory subject in grade 9 isn't helpful, it's quite possible they know what they are talking about.

A lot of the comments in here are varities of "if you don't try harder then you wont win" basically. The problem... is that really how teaching kids work? How do you know that is how it works? Your N=1 personal experience is not really the right evidence for running a state-wide policy. Additionally, some of you are probably 99th percentile intelligence, and really what worked for you won't work for, say, the other 99% of people.

Secondly, education is a complex issue. Schools are being expected to pick up the slack from every single societal problem, all the while Oh So Smart People endlessly shit on them. I'm not even joking about every single societal problem... here are some things schools are expected to pick up for: - Food poverty: Feeding kids at school because they didn't eat at home - Food quality: Feeding kids RIGHT with GOOD food - Parental availability: Hard to read to your kids when you are working tons of hours or extra jobs. Schools are expected to paper over this deficit. - Redlining/poverty: Schools are expected to raise kids up out of poverty, with practically no other help, and a lot of un-help (police at schools arent helping) - Gun violence: Kids are expected to do active shooter drills, nuff said. That's messed up.

One thing to remember about people who are from other places like India and such, if you are here and commenting here, perhaps your school isn't a representative sample of everyone where you were from. Here in the US, it's common for private school to kick out kids who don't academically perform, which means you have a self selection effect. So pointing out that "private schools do X why can't everyone do X" is useless, because the schools have, by definition, selected those students that can do X and everyone else was dropped on the floor.

Dude, you have no damned idea what you're talking about.

You are extrapolating from N=1 to a state of 36,000,000 people. Your experience is not the guiding star for state-wide policy.

Also consider this... the people who work on this stuff, have spend years and years on this stuff. Perhaps... they... know what they are talking about?

As someone with a kid, introducing subjects before kids are ready for it is counterproductive. It can cause confidence issues later, and doesn't help them learn earlier. By way of a small example, try to teach a 3 month old how to walk. Good luck, you aren't doing anything useful.

Now back to the immigrant thing, by now you surely must have realize you are in the upper X percentile of your peers from India. There are many many many, in fact most, Indians, who cannot do what you can do. Not even close. Basing educational policy on what you found easy with your Xth percentile intelligence is not going to be a great idea.

Ok I'll bite... that's not how this works, that's not how ANY of this works!

First off, vaccinations are done via intermuscular injections, not bloodstream injections.

Second, as cells produce the foreign proteins, they are captured and displayed by the MHC molecules, so this notion that 'spike protein coursing through the body' is a wild fabrication.

The body is good at degrading proteins. And honestly if you are worried about the mRNA vaccines doing bad things to you... I have news for you, SARS-CoV-2 injects a lot more mRNA into your cells, and lots more of those 'spike proteins' you're worried about are created, in a self-replicating pattern, until possibly you die. So you probably want to avoid SARS-CoV-2 a lot more than the mRNA vaccines.

Since Herpes Zoster reoccurrence can be triggered by stress, or many other environmental factors, the base rate is that there would be some reoccurrence after a vaccination. In fact if this number was 0, that would be it's own paper and a PhD waiting for someone righ there.

The base-rate fallacy drives a lot of 'but the vaccine did X'. Plus it's publish or perish you know.

Check out Reddit.com/r/hermancainaward for this exactly

Exactly this. If these places are so terrible, at least according to uh, fox news, then why are they still so desirable?

One thing to remember is that sqft != quality of life. I know where to get tons of sqft, but I will be driving an hour every day to even find food. Quality of life... maybe if you never leave the house? ha!

Every kid already has a vaccine card. This is one ore row on it.

A lot of hyperbole for something that’s been here for the better part of a century.

Oh yawn it’s already required for school. So yeah “second class citizen” indeed.

I mean this article just leans into all the hunches that people have about kids.

My friend who is a school councilor (eg: therapist at school, not a 'career advisor') for elementary school, says its very obvious which kindergarden kids have preschool and which do not. And it's not all about learning about letters or whatever, it's also about emotional literacy and learning how to play with others and how to navigate a large group setting. These are all skills kids need to learn, some learn them fast, others less so.

I generally agree that we shouldn't be turning pre-school into some form of collegiate prep, but I also think that by focusing on academics as 'learning' we also forget about all the other things kids need to learn. Like how to operate their bodies (eg: running, jumping, bikes, scooters, play structures, all things they may not have a lot at home), how to handle feelings, negotiate play with peers, how to participate in large group activities (circle time), and much more. These are all foundational skills. Yes they can learn them in kindergarden as well, but frankly as a parent, I like that my kid has socialization and honestly we have a few hours without him!

I live in hippy dippy trippy California, and I think we have it right here: preschool is about teaching/practicing kids social play skills and emotional literacy.

In the 'nuclear family' age, without a ton of kids to play with, it's important for children to socialize, and learn how to negotiate play successfully, without resorting to kicking and punching and so on. Learning to identify feelings, take actions on them, etc. It's a lifelong course, so it's not being 'solved' in pre-school.

In terms of curricula, yeah there's some stuff, but sometimes that curricula is "play in the dirt" and "lets find bugs".

It's also a coop pre-school, so I attend the classroom, which is very awesome.

Ah yes the "just the facts please" argument, regardless of context.

Turns out getting a teacher cred is a little bit more than "just" getting a undergrad, and has ongoing licensing requirements.

On one hand, kudos to the OP for using median rather than average, but still a single number to represent all teach jobs in a country with 300M people seems a bit weak. There's a lot of stories out there, and it's just not being captured here.

"Data data everywhere, but not an ounce of wisdom within sight" -- old proverb

Every `ratbag kid` is someones child, someone who's brain who has been at odds with the expectations foisted upon them their entire life, and who may be tired of failing but can't figure out how not do.

It makes me sad to read comments like this.

More importantly when confronted with a serious piece of leadership challenge the guy screwed up badly. He needed to navigate that a lot better and didn’t.

That was worth his resignation.

Services for the homeless come with a lot of strings attached, a lot more than you'd think, including a bunch of strings that people who are homed would never accept in their own house.

So it's not as simple as homeless people don't want homes, it's because they want freedom.

I find the Economist has fairly shallow "analysis" if you can even call what they do analysis. So I am disappointed but not surprised that they missed on the real story.

The Economist is as useful in terms about learning about the world as reading headlines.