Thank you for speaking up!
You're exactly the sort of thinking parent I'm looking for!
I'd love the chance to have a conversation with you - please contact me at petroff.ryan at gmail - thank you again!
Of course I taught my child to read and write. Beyond that, I am not forcing them to get up at 7am and memorize what other adults want them to all day every day. My child can learn about whatever interests him. I pay attention to what he is doing and provide advice, guidance, resources.
For example, if tomorrow I learn that my son has taken an interest in playing guitar, I will encourage him to take lessons, and provide what he needs to do that. I may expose him to music theory or other things I think align with his interests.
I will try and encourage him to cultivate skills and interests, but it is up to him what he wants to do.
Ships, planets, space, etc. are scarce and owned by various actors. The Federation is an interplanetary government made of sovereign member states, many of which do trade and use money. Even without the use of trade, there must be systems for determining who controls what.
The incessant snide comments expressing nothing but dislike for Bitcoin really don’t belong on HN. Not liking Bitcoin is fine, but if you don’t have anything to add just don’t comment. Every thread about Bitcoin on HN does not a dozen comments that it’s a waste of time and energy.
It's really pretty ridiculous and frustrating. I come here for intelligent discussion, and I agree it's okay if people don't like Bitcoin, but at least take some time to learn about it if you're going to argue. It's straight up denial at this point, because Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DeFi are securing and transacting billions of dollars every single day. It's not a question of if it works at this point, it does work! An decentralized overlay financial system has successfully been bootstrapped on top of legacy infrastructure. If you don't understand how big of a moment this is for humanity you must have your head in the sand.
I'd like to also bring up the Helium Network which is an entirely novel use of blockchain technology where Proof-of-work is done by being a LongFi transmitter and having other transmitters check each other's signals as a way to verify that it's actually up and working. Miners literally make money by running LongFi cell towers from their house. It's currently bootstrapping a LongFi cell network world wide and is already prolific in every major american city. If this technology could be applied to power generation or even cell service we could have a real decentralized network with no companies in charge.
“How corrupt and two-faced is one who claims, 'I intend to be fair and honest in my dealings with you.' What are you up to, my friend? There is really no need for this preamble. The matter will soon become plain. It should be written on your face, it should ring out immediately in your voice, and shine out at once in your eyes, as the loved one at once knows everything about his lovers from the manner of their glance. In short, a good and honest person should resemble one who smells like a goat in this respect, that anyone who comes near him is immediately aware of it whether he wishes it or not. But the mere pretence of simplicity is like an open blade. There is nothing more odious than the friendship of the wolf for the lamb; avoid this above all. A good, straightforward, and kindly person reveals these qualities in his eyes, and they will not escape you.” —Marcus Aurelius
>snide comments expressing nothing but dislike
That's because people who know a thing or two about economics ánd computer science know that all you're doing is pumping your bags. The only thing bitcon incentivizes is greed, making the rich even richer. Crypto“currencies” are pyramid slash Ponzi schemes hiding behind a veneer of sophistication. https://cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html.
Thank you! I come to HN to have intelligent discussion as well, and I totally agree. If I go to Reddit it's mostly just a bunch of garbage, even with crypto fans. I do think HN is warming up to crypto, a little bit, at least, or maybe it's just that more crypto fans are speaking up here.
Anyway, like you said, crypto is already working. The network effects are real.
Also, PoW does require a lot of energy, which is a common argument, but this is energy that includes audits, transport and security of the system. For Bitcoin, that's currently over $1 trillion, which to me seems like it is worth securing.
There also do seem to be ways to use excess energy for PoW and make it more green, which seems promising. The energy can be captured anywhere on the planet and used to support the global Bitcoin network from wherever the energy is. There is so much potential in this network.
“When the Church of Scientology announces that they’ve been thinking about solar panels, why does everyone have to rush to mention that it’s a cult? Can’t we just give them credit for these good intentions and forget everything they’ve actually done?”
(Celebrity endorsements, non-functional technology, libertarian fantasies of escaping the tax man — L. Ron Hubbard would have loved Bitcoin.)
Ethereum doesn’t know what it is. The rules are always changing, running a full node is practically impossible, and issuance is always changing. It’s not even clear that the features claimed in this paper will be true one year from now.
Multiple consensus failures (most recently this last month) and constant design changes do not provide a secure foundation for sound money.
I found it super easy to setup a full (non-mining) ETH1 node on an Intel NUC running Ubuntu. And on the same NUC I’m running two validator nodes on the ETH2 mainnet, which together have earned about 3 ETH in rewards so far. The NUC is hooked to a cable Internet connection at home, nothing fancy.
The above comment is based on a disproven conspiracy theory that claims no one knows the true number of ETH in existence, and misinformation that a single client (of many) failing to sync for ~6 hours after an upgrade was a problem with Ethereum.
If I’m going to stick my savings in a cryptocurrency, I want the network to be stable for the foreseeable future (and be private, but that’s another story).
My guess is it’s because Unix timestamps aren’t calendar date and times. The same number could mean a different date and time depending on which timezone is used.
Given a Unix timestamp, there’s no way to know which date/time the author intended. The browser can only map a Unix timestamp into the user’s timezone, but it wouldn’t know which timezone the document/page refers to.
I don't think this is true, because epoch time does not have a timezone, because 0 already corresponds to a certain timezone. Although epoch time isn't exactly "just UTC", as explained in the very interesting StackOverflow question below, it is close enough, and it does not change with the timezone.
A timezone can’t be encoded with a Unix time stamp, or a date without a time, or just a time. Unix timestamps ignore leap seconds and treat days as 86400 seconds, so it doesn’t correspond directly to UTC. And they aren’t readable by humans. There are many reasons Unix timestamps aren’t appropriate for encoding a date and time.
Thanks. Yeah that's also a very inspiring micro framework to me. A bunch of people seemed to create new frameworks around the same time, me included, i think in part as a reaction to the main ones.
2009: "Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852>
2010: "if this is a serious virtual currency implementation by people who understand the security implications of such, I'm unable to find strong evidence of that fact. And, so, I worry about dealing with it." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998144>
2010: "at the current exchange rate they'll be worth about $12.50 USD. That's very little value for a year's worth of computation, and they're still quite rare. As more are created the exchange rate is going to drop unless they become very widely accepted, but there probably won't be enough of them to support a large economy." <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998144>
