skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Fiat currency is backed by courts and regulation, which is backed by a literal army, and the threats of violence that army brings. If someone steals your fiat USD, there will eventually be someone with guns removing you from society if you don't return them.

Cryptocurrency has no such backing.
yeah and then there was this other study where people had to count how often people would pass the ball in a video and no one noticed that there was a guy in a gorilla custom going around, because no one cared about that (they were distracted by counting). I think this is similar to how we usually try to avoid looking at ads in the internet: it's not what we are interested in at that moment! https://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-show...
Some of these athletes are very young. Training is one thing, but doing it IRL is another, especially after a hard loss when you are physically drained.
We're working on 1.0. The language is basically stable but needs a little polish. As usual everything depends on what time people have to put in. Always looking for more help!
Sure for Player 1, but if Player 2 reduces their cash by buying properties that still results in a loss. The premise is creating so much rent on Boardwalk that player 2 can’t afford it.
If I'm not wrong, the average yearly ROI of something like S&P 500 has been around 7-8% over the last 70 years.

Since you're French as well, I can tell you that here it gives about 4-5% in yearly returns.

So it's not unheard of returns with traditional asset classes. As far as I'm aware, the money in that specific case comes from interests paid by those taking loans (from the funds that's you're putting out) or from staking rewards (in the case of staking cryptocurrencies using proof of stake).
A lot of people underestimate the value provided by a payment system that makes chargebacks impossible. Yes, it's a double-edged sword that needs to be used carefully. But it makes perfect sense for markets where one side has an established reputation, while the other doesn't.
Family house and shop for sale in Rylands
> alternately, I just don't care what symbol is used since it's not connected to any actual function.

Put it like this: it is connected to an actual function, it's just that that function is in people's minds.

As for people getting offended, I think you might be projecting. Let's look at how part of this conversation might have played out in an alternate universe:

> I think it's actually a carry over from reddit, where it activates the quote, while here on hacker news it does nothing. It's just a symbol.

> > It’s a carryover from long established internet (plaintext email, Usenet, etc.) convention, which is where reddit (and lots of other forums) got it, too.

> > > Oh wow, I didn't know that! It's always cool to learn about the history of where things we take for granted come from.

The point is, there's no need to take offense at a minor educational correction.
Ah, then no hard feelings I hope; you just picked it up from so many others getting it wrong! It is a common error for sure, just a pet peeve of mine for some reason, so I call it out occasionally.
> The who therefore played down the risks of aerosols, issuing guidance via its Twitter and Facebook pages at the end of March 2020 that the general public need not worry. “FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne,” it said, adding that any claims to the contrary were “misinformation”.

Not quite the money quote, but on reading this I wanted to point out one little thing.

This is also a form of authoritarianism, not the splashy kind that has you making land wars in Asia or creating command economies and seizing private property; but the bureaucratic "we know better than you because we said so" kind. When authority is invested in you, as it has been invested in the WHO, and you abuse that authority to tell independent investigators not on your payroll that they are just flat out wrong and the lines of inquiry they are investigating are dead ends and they should just shut up already, well, maybe you shouldn't have the authority you were vested with.

Fortunately, we also live in a world where the UN and its agencies do not have a monopoly on good information.
I wonder if it is just filling when the number of matching search results are low. I don't recall having memorable problems like that.
You won't get a month on a single charge with an RPi, if I'm not mistaken.
I guess what really baffles me here is that a CC issuer is allowed to sell that data at all.
Just. Wow.

I’m not trying to show off my European high horse, it’s not like we don’t have our own problems.
In the same 7-day span a couple of weeks ago, I saw headlines about crypto's legitimization in the market, and a $1 BILLION crypto donation to COVID efforts in India. I can't believe both simultaneously.
It's become gold. Preferred by criminals, untraceable (gold is a single stable isotope, basically untraceable). A store of wealth. And you can't buy a pizza with gold, either, and there are tons of scammers who love gold (I remember, about Thailand, the scammers would conspire to get people's gold, a few would talk loudly about how jewels were going up, then someone else in your trip would just happen to mention, despite not wanting to mention it, that there was a great new jewelry offering discounted jewels, whatever, the point was they wanted the tourist to go to buy gold, then trade that gold for fake jewels, because then he couldn't get a refund).
> it takes thousands of hours to grasp.

It really doesn't. But that is a convenient way to dismiss criticism from everyone who isn't a crypto insider (which is a self-fulfilling prophecy -- the people who spend that much time on it will necessarily be bought into it, the people who are critical will have given up caring about it at some point so will never have the necessary "credentials" to talk about it).
> With cryptocurrency there’s nothing to do

Then you haven't looked deep enough or maybe the subject matter doesn't interest you. Don't extrapolate your experience to everyone else. I find the DeFi space and the scaling issues and layer 2 projects being built pretty interesting. Web3 and the protocols being built around that are also worth a look. Sure, there are a lot of scams and vaporware, but that's also true of the early and today's internet.
If you think these defi projects are hurting the environment then you have not been paying attention to the industry. Proof of Stake, what most smart contract tokens are moving to, is very energy efficient.
Fair point re: considering Marx's time of writing.

>The distinctive, defining element of the bourgeois property system is marketable property in means of production to which rented wage labor is applied, and it is principally that particular feature that Marx targets for elimination and replacement with control of the means of production by labor when he talks about elimination of bourgeois property.

This at least points me in a direction of interest (Marx doesn't mention feudal property much in the Manifesto, but briefly reading about the historical relationship to property has piqued an interest. Surely other writings of his explore the concept more, and maybe even Hegel writes about it).

Marx in the manifesto:

>Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

This also clears the focus a bit for me, even if I still don't have a solid position yet. I'm glad I poked the bear a little.
I shed a tear of pride... haha
If you drop some presumptions about the players you can go even faster--

Player 1: Roll a 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 or 12. Don't purchase, so it goes to auction. In auction player 2 buys for 100% of their cash.

Player 2: Rolls a 4, lands on income tax. Game over.
Surely you recognize that this is a bad faith argument? The average transaction fee today is around $8 USD. That's a small price to pay for knowing that a transaction is set in stone.
A friend of mine is a chief pilot for an (astonishingly) wealthy family. One day he toured me through their 2-year-old Bombardier Global Express jet. I asked how much one of the somewhat flimsy-looking passenger-cabin seats cost and he said, "About $40,000."

He pointed out that virtually every single element in the $60+ million aircraft is engineered for flight and occupant safety, and to be as light as possible.
The big corporations have binders full of techniques to take control of content from the little creators and claim it for themselves. A popular one right now goes: A one-person operation making and selling designs could find their online work subject to pointless DMCA complaints or even threats. They'd crumble at even the threat of a big corporation actually suing for infringement. Now the big company copies the individual's designs, and collects rent on something it didn't create.
Hi HN,

I help maintain Terra, and also use it to build Regent, my distributed programming language[1].

A bit busy at the moment, but if you leave questions here I'll try to answer them (possibly in some hours).

[1]: regent-lang.org
It's the transaction fees that get distributed to all the other coin holders that makes it a pyramid or MLM scheme.

In the case of Bitcoin, originally, every Bitcoin holder would also be able to mine with their own computer and receive transaction fees. This has since changed, so now it's only the miners with specific equipment that benefit from the transaction fees.
I get the feeling that the underpinnings of your argument points are based on not being very familiar or well read with the technology around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, especially Ethereum. Your coming at it from an end user or armchair quarterback point of view, not someone who actually does development in that space; if you did, you'd know that one of the reasons Ethereum was created was to provide a digital escrow mechanism, and has been around for over 5 years. So no, your example isn't based on reality.
And don’t forget that Player 2 most also pick an “advance to Boardwalk” card out of a shuffled deck.
My sister often buys nothing. She has this weird idea that certain colors and utilities aren't worth buying. I beat her every time with my "buy literally everything" strategy.
Twitter crypto-haters essentially act as the "anti" to the crypto-bro "pro".

Both repeat the same memes to each other in a self-reenforcing echo chamber. The underlying link is to political consensus. Leftist-socialist Twitter is eager to say that socialism is good because Bitcoin is bad. Trumpist-conservativist Twitter loves to say that Bitcoin is good because Joe Biden is bad. Nihilistic crypto permabulls are so hyped up that they jump into every thread to defend their favorites and their negativity is usually limited to the dismissive "sorry you want to be poor".

It never really goes anywhere. Someone comes up with a new crypto narrative - adoption, value, environmental impacts, human interest - and it's all you hear about for the next month. If you try to find good information you are presented with an opaque wall of obvious scams, not as obvious scams, and people who believe or do not believe in them.

There is interesting stuff going on, but the people studying it carefully are so hard to find through all the noise now.

It's easier when there's a bear market.
> Nothing about blockchains, DLTs, crypto, at its core is a scam to me.

I think everyone is talking past each other, because no one's exactly defining what the "scam" is, so you're talking about different things.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that, say, deep in the BitCoin code there is some algorithm giving Satoshi Nakamoto a dollar for evert transaction.

On the other hand, I believe that the vast majority of buyers are buying simply because they hope that someone else will buy at a higher price tomorrow, or next year.

This causes everyone to cheer-lead about how everyone else needs to buy or HODL, because they simply want to drive the price up.

For me, personally, I'd say this is what I'd call a "scam," in the sense that a MLM company is a "scam": that the motivation of the majority of people extolling the virtues of buying crypto tends to be simply personal enrichment.
How does someone who is poor convert their local - non dollar denominated - currency to bitcoins?

The reality is that it's just another means for the wealthy (and criminals) to evade currency controls.
"People had to invent entirely new ways to explain it because our existing models didn't work" isn't a very good argument for it being real.
This article strongly suggests that Dadd’s psychosis was precipitated by consumption of hashish based on seemingly no evidence at all? Just that its use was widespread in Egypt where he traveled and that it can cause paranoia. This seems like quite a leap.
I have looked into proof-of-work in meticulous detail, I have not looked into proof-of-stake. If proof-of-stake exists and eschews the problems I have stated, then what I said here about the problems it creates does not apply anymore.

I have many other doubts against the usefulness and sensibility of blockchains in general, e.g. I have doubts how smart contracts actually succeed to reach their goals in a reality where humans make mistakes and courts are used to settle disputes and ambiguities. But these concerns then only affect the viability of technologies that I and others are not forced to participate in.

Proof-of-work on the other hand, as long as it continues to exist, affects everyone in that in incentivizes burning resources directly for money without regulation, no matter how dirty or wasteful.
My favorite monopoly games are those where the players have played together before, and agree on a set of custom rules to the game in advance, and are fast-paced. I remember having rules added like loans and interest, and effectively unlimited freedom to make deals with players. Deals logged on paper, loan interest measured in turns and percentages, so much...fun. Actual fun though.

A game like this can even go fast paced where the next player is making their turn while you're still interacting with the bank from your turn, while someone else is calculating interest.

Doesn't sound fun typing it out but it was a blast.
For a while... until it isn't. I've been very poor, and I've experienced very similar things. Traveling everywhere by bike in the freezing cold.

I think there is a romaniticization of suffering. I also wanted to show my merit, my worth in some way. I had grown up in a very cushy environment, and I was trying to prove something.

Going back in time I would advise anyone against your belief. Anyone who reads this, please don't make the mistake of living a rough life for whatever inane purpose you can think of. It will not make you a better person. It is as stupid as it sounds.
You just described Fair-trade laws[0] enacted during Great Depression and repealed around ~1971. Matt Stoller also described these laws in his book.

[0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/fair-trade-law
This is the most reasonable comment in this whole thread. It’s good to acknowledge the current mania and the type of unethical behavior it attracts, but it would be intellectually lazy to dismiss the whole field.
I worked on a short-lived idea for taxi hailing apps before the iPhone even existed. The target then was Palm Pilots and feature phones. Alas, before its time.
You were already told that that is literally not true and exactly what the lawsuit is about.
The twitter thread mostly uses the full term "cryptocurrency", which is not ambigous. Using the term "crypto" to refer to cryptocurrency is amigous and misleading.
The Augmentation Research Center (aka Augment) was Englebart's lab at SRI.

This was a project that wanted to change computers from being number crunching machines to "augmenting human intellect". Things like the mouse, windowing systems, video conferencing, and hypertext came out of that lab and spilled into Xerox PARC, etc. It was also the SRI end of the original Arpanet connection with Berkeley.

Other ideas, like a keyboard that worked via "chords" didn't pan out. It made it so one hand could use the mouse and the other could use the keyboard without switching back and forth. I'm sure many folks with RSI wish for that.

I would check out the "Mother of all Demos". It's out on YouTube: https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY

And of course you can look up Englebart on Wikipedia or whatever.

And if you are interested in the topic more I recommend "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" by John Markoff. It plays this history out more before and after.
I believe bullies choose weaker victims, and fear almost-equal rivals. Other explanations are possible for your anecdatum.
But you forgot, the emperor has no clothes!!!
A lot fewer people use crypto for ill motives than you think.

Paper USD is a lot easier to hide than a Bitcoin transaction on a public ledger
You’d be surprised how few people know about the rule for auctioning property that is not purchased. I’m guessing most people learned to play without reading the actual rules. It’s just passed down by copying the actions of your older siblings.
I’ve bought the Coway AP-1512AH which filters air, and is extremely silent, and I have a separate CO2-PM10-PM2.5 measurer. It does wonders against asthma. PMs go from 25microgram/m3 to 1 in half an hour, which I trust because the measurement tool is separate. I never succeeded to have less than 10 before the Coway.

Before that, I would sneeze first thing in the morning, then sneeze by rows of 10 times in Spring, 30 times a day, nose bleeding from too much sneezing. I would also have an irritated bronchitis which gave me slight asthma (but enough to make me abandon intensive sports). Now I still have risk of asthma, but at least when I want relief, I close the windows, switch on the Coway, and breathe fresh air. I live in a city center of average density.

However, CO2 fills up quickly. I wish I could find some portable air exchanger: Taking air from outside, exchanging temperature, and filtering. I’ve lodged a bit for a house which has that, I’m hoping I’m selected.
Do you happen to have a source on the ML claim?
I`d be interested in reading more about that issue.
Android gives me 2.2
I agree that proof of work seems to have outlived it’s usefulness as a mean to prevent spam on the ledger.

That being said, I still see proof of stake and proof of coverage as interesting way to maintain said ledger integrity in the like… 3 actually existing use case where a blockchain is superior to a SQLite instance with good security.
I still find the moralising about cryptocurrency curious and difficult to understand. It always takes the tone of 'We the nerds should...'. Never seen it applied to any other (dramatically more important) issues.
Techniques aren't culty, people are. I've been practising TDD for years, but I've only ever heard of this cult in web forums.
Do you have a good recommendation for learning about what use cases DynamoDB makes sense for? I've used MongoDB and various SQL databases extensively, and when I tried DynamoDB it felt like a solution in search of a problem compared to my usual DBs of choice.
Thanks! Hopefully it saves someone else from being confused and gets you more sales.
You do realize Maciej comes from a reasonably unprivileged time and place, right?
Is art important because someone tells us it's important, did something different, or is it up to the beholder?

I'd wager the average american if asked throughout there life would reconcile the fact that EAP was not worth learning about.
Maker to Manager – How We Support New Leaders
There's real technology and products and economics behind MLMs like Herbalife and Young Living too. Doesn't make them any less of a scam.
The problem I see is that everyone in tech seems to think they're an expert on cryptocurrencies while simultaneously being at the ignorant end of the Dunning–Kruger effect (and failing basic statistics.)

Cryptocurrency makes it easy to enhance ones own confirmation bias because the industry has had such a bumpy ride towards progress. If you want to take an overly harsh perspective about the technology then by all means just Google 'a list of hacks and scams.' You'll be entertained for days with what you find, and at the end of your research you will have more than enough material to make yourself look smart on twitter.

That's also another point. If you can talk about basic flaws in a technology by playing 'Dr Doom' then you can score free points from the audience without having to know much about the subject. It's an easy way to look credible because most people are followers on social media and won't have the time or interest to look more deeply.

So lets look at the claim that cryptocurrency 'has no use and only causes problems.' To disprove this we only need to find a few examples of use-cases that are very hard if not impossible to do under traditional finance.

1. Trusts -- escrow -- jointly controlled accounts with arbitrary leverage over assets. You can't do this under the traditional financial system because the legal system can be used to dispute ownership which commonly happens when a will is attested.

2. Confidential transactions. Anonymous money and accounts. Traditional finance views this as a disadvantage, whereas FinTech views privacy as a right.

3. Flash loans. Flash loans are a way to finance a smart contract that borrows money and repays it atomically in a single transaction. Flash loans have radically changed capital markets but their power is still being understood. Potentially this is a new form of funding for automated companies.

4. Price stability. It's possible to design cryptocurrencies in such a way that their price trends towards some function. This property is highly desirable when people are going to be storing their wealth long-term. If we can build more stable currencies we can protect against flash crashes and even economic depression.

5. Smart contracts. Programmable agreements for wealth exchange make it possible to provide unique financial instruments that are engineered to be less risky than anything traditional markets can accomplish. This is due to increased transparency, collateral requirements, and protocols that help enforce fairness.

There are too many examples to list in how cryptocurrencies are shaking up not just finance but many other industries. To claim that it all amounts to fraud, gambling, and ponzi schemes just tells me the author has no understanding of the transformations taking place right in front of them. They'll probably be left crying 'its a scam' long after society has silently replaced most aging FinTech with platforms that provide enforceable safe-guards... because in the end it is more transparent, flexible, and when done right -- safer than alternatives.
I have a question: are there any "crypto-like" currencies?

I do see value in being able to instantly exchange tokens which are generally liquid and convertible to local currency, with low fees, internationally, and in denominations that make sense to, e.g., tip a blogger for a post you like. The US could regulate the heck out of it, and the Venezuelan or Tanzanian farmer could use it more laissez faire.

But none of that comes from the crypto aspect and PoW and untrusted decentralization. It could just be a non-profit with a DB and a public API.

Are there any coins out there trying this?
> I mostly agree, but Kennedy and Khrushchev families probably had bunkers to survive.

What sort of "survival" would even be possible in a post-apocalyptic world?
Wait, what? Char siu is 叉燒 and chop suey is 杂碎, they are two totally different dishes.
Be the banker, embezzle the hell out of the bank, never worry about making rent. Eventually you’ll be discovered: “Hey! You’re cheating!”

“Huh? I thought that’s what this game was about. Y’all started it with that Free Parking nonsense.”
Most comments here are related to availability in certain regions. It blows my mind that is so difficult to access content depending on where you are.

I absolutely hate geoblocking. There is no single reason I can come up with why it could be a good idea.