skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Let's assume rich countries of the world (e.g. G7) set up a climate change fund in a smart contract. They could just lockup some funds there to be claimable after x months/years for any country (except the G7) proportionally to how far they managed to reduce their CO2 emissions. This assumes that we can trustlessly get the CO2 emissions for all countries (Let's just assume satellites can provide that data in a trustless way to the blockchain via some clever oracle mechanism).

Instead of having a handwritten weak contract like the Paris climate act, you'd have actual enforceable code that can not be gamed. I'm obviously oversimplifying things here but this is just to give an idea how blockchain tech can improve coordination games in the future.
I dunno, the good thing about single entities is that it’s fairly easy to determine if you should trust them.

A web of entities of varying integrity, not so much.
If you read the article they're asking for more than explaining algorithms. Overall they want the the tech providers to be responsible.

Explaining algorithms could, in theory, give away a competitive advantage. However fairness to users seems to be a priority in this decision.
Yep, I had struggled down these lines too but the always lucid John McWhorter cleared things up for me, and as a linguist it's right up his alley.

"On metaphor, master is a useful example. The basic concept of the master as a leader or person of authority has extended into a great many metaphorical usages. One of them was its use as a title on plantations worked by slaves...That makes sensible the elimination of certain other uses of the word, which parallel and summon the slavery one...in the 1970s, such schools had just begun a call to stop having male teachers called "master" and female teachers called "teacher," in favor of having all instructors called simply "teacher"...This meant that young subordinates had been calling white men in positions of authority "master," after all—including, by the 1970s, more than a few black students. And today's call to stop referring to technology parts as "master" versus "slave" attachments follows in the same vein, as it directly channels what was so offensive about the slavery usage...However, other extensions of the word master do not meaningfully resemble the plantation one, and only a kind of obsession could explain spraying for them now. Are we to consider it racist to refer simply to mastering a skill? To master tape as opposed to dupes...The plantation meaning of master was one tributary of a delta of extensions of the word; it should go, but we need not fill in the entire delta."

And for emphasis I'm pulling this one out of the main block:

**
"To be human is to make distinctions."
**

https://reason.com/2020/08/12/is-your-master-bedroom-racist/
Yeah, I agree that you'd never get anywhere with a "this is the best way to do it because X" approach; it's just too divisive and often there's no single "best" answer that can be equally applied to every project.

I feel like a comprehensive article would need to be more of a catalog of "here are the basics of the various major approaches and how they differ and why you might choose one over another", rather than (for example) advocating specifically for forward shading vs. deferred vs. forward+ vs. clustered as being the universally "best" option. (especially when that whole discussion has become kind of moot for the majority of modern games developers, who mostly just take their engine's default rendering pipeline and just use it)
Preventing double spending is possible even without trust. A centralised authority could publish the transactions in a signed append only log. Independent verifiers could pull the log with some frequency and verify that no one spent twice.
Maybe in terms of concept, but in terms of real life cases and adaptability Bitorrent was arguably and still is a very successful technology that many people have engaged with.
I'm surprised: in Rust they allow variable shadowing because otherwise with the 'immutable by default' design they thought that you'd have to create too many names.

Isn't it an issue for Vale?
Interest rate increases, selling reserves, RUB sales bans, demanding customers pay for energy in RUB, demanding local businesses sell non-RUB reserves, banning foreign sales of Russian assets

The rate may look similar, but it is against a backdrop of a significantly different and far worse economic environment, not least the use of reserves to prop the currency will have depleted their reserves.
I'm not sure why I would go with something that isn't guaranteed to work when I can just go on a medicine that has a someone known outcome, which I have done. I pretty well just went on the medicine the doctor recommends, which is one of the drugs the overall medical guidelines here recommend. I have regular MRIs that monitor disease activity, and so far I've had no activity in the years since I started it.

The risk of doing something that won't work is too great, honestly. I don't have many day to day symptoms and pretty well do as I please. Disease activity means that I could have a much, much worse daily life. I'd like to keep walking and using my limbs and keep control of my bladder, thank you very much.

If the doctor recommends it as part of treatment, I'll do whatever they say. I'm not going to personally worry about it, though. I'd much rather just take a daily pill and go on with life, thank you.
They want to know how the algorithms work, not the data itself.
Pushups only is bad, but pushups with pull-ups in particular are a great pair. I learned this in my youth when I found the Armstrong program to be particularly useful. [1] I would also take a moment to emphasize the importance of stretching in muscle formation and recovery as well as injury prevention. I'm serious about the stretching, at 5 minutes per muscle about 1hr per day is a decent start.

1. https://savannahstate.edu/cost/nrotc/documents/Inform2010-th...
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!
Temporary changes to sunflower oil labelling
Have you seen Netflix's stock this week? It's also just a really poor time to start up a streaming service.
Google doesn't know what the algorithm is anymore. The whole site is a black box.
Reminds us all that instead of fixing real social issues we can all go into denial by changing the words that denote them
The more interesting question is why Hryvnya is so stable despite the prices is rocketing up (except of some goods which has layed too long on warehouses) and you even can buy dollars on 34 UAH per USD (on today's black market).
as far as i understand it they just keep buying stocks and keep buying Ruble

obviously this can’t go in forever and this is just a crutch
Yet if they are true often enough, then the use case makes sense.

Also don't forget insider problems. Every major financial institution has massive insider threat problemss.
While I understand the emotion but anyone who believes that 200 million Muslims in a country are a target for genocide, is being unfair. Situation isn’t as straightforward.
The new regulation requires a hand-wavey style explanation i.e build a retrieval / ranking / matching algorithm that learns from customer clicks and considers blah blah.

There will be no explanation of the actual algorithm.
A lot of it is grown locally (other US states also import food from California, but it’s not local).

Also in SF these days food prices are high for the US. Head east 100 miles and the food is the same as everywhere else: factory output even though that’s where a lot of food is grown!

In California, most of the state (by land) is red state poor and votes accordingly. However 60+% of the population lives in a couple of blue state rich pockets, hence the politics. This is why, for example, at the national level the leader of the House of Representatives and the leader of its opposition are both from California.
Not sure what you mean. Copy-on-write means that no actual copy is made initially. Branching is therefore almost instant in SVN and only requires minimal storage space. Only when you modify a file within the branch (or the original) does that specific file get copied (or rather, the diff of the modification gets stored).

What is slow in SVN is switching to the branch client-side, because branches are always created server-side and you still need to synch the whole contents of the branch from server to client when switching (which works similar to a regular `svn update`).
So, how much do you trust your own intelligence? When has it failed you?

I think you have too much hubris. What do these people know that you do not? What non technical things do they know that you do not, that totally change the context and the reasoning behind these solutions?
The big problem being that they can’t actually access most of those foreign assets now.
How so?

With git, you have to manually resolve merge conflicts.

With blockchain, the general point is to use PoW (or something equivalent) to automatically do a vote on which is the correct version. Isn't that also the case in a private blockchain?
resembles stormfront actaully in many ways.
Agile Is Getting Us Nowhere Fast
Expecting the nation state to just sit there and watch seems naive. When it becomes a big enough threat to make them notice, the nation state will regulate it stone dead.
do you want your laptop bulletproof from hacking by members of this forum?

what about your bank account?
"Blockchains are excellent for logging with peer participation, distributed append, and tamper resistance. For example, each peer can add their own chain links, and also see all the chain links added by other peers, and also be sure that the log hasn't been corrupted by any of the peers."

This sounds very close to a git repository, which Linus wrote using only SHA libraries.
>The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party

That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read.

Unfortunately, the mechanism for that (Proof-of-work) is slow, expensive and planet destroying at scale. And while we may remove a trust provider third party, we aren't getting rid of centralization with blockchain anyway.
The power is used to secure the system, not to perform transactions. The transaction rate has always been the same, the power use has gone up with the value of the contents (to resist a 51% attack)

Some people feel strongly this security is worth it. Some feel strongly that it isn’t (but one suspects their objection is really to the lack of central control)
>> I am talking committees formed in parliaments and central banks around the world to discuss its benefits, serious universities dedicating whole programs on the subject, elite investors pouring money into its potential, and the list goes on.

Most of this is indeed nonsensical. However, I think you may be letting the hype train move the goalposts in your mind.

The vast majority of "blockchain tech" out there is indeed a scam, useless, and of no value. The same was true about what people promised about the Internet. Pets.com and all that. This is nothing new.

I've owned a small amount of cryptocurrency for a long time, because to own $0 in a modern portfolio is probably not too smart if you're an index-type investor, given the market cap of BTC + ETH. However, I am no zealot of the tech and was very skeptical for a long time. I still am skeptical, but the thing that convinced me to give cryptocurrency a bit more run was the concept of decentralized financial instruments. I know the HN poster reading this can't wait to reply with any number of links of scams and rugpulls after I mention this, and it's true, scams abound. This happened on the Internet big time when people would "never put their credit card online," for example.

All I can say is that the applications of decentralizing financial instruments and methods appeals to me in a way no other derived technology from cryptocurrency/blockchain has. Maybe it won't ring true for you, but I can see some novel services and products coming out of this area of blockchain technologies that will be a benefit for global payments and humans in general.

Plenty will disagree, and that's fine. I'm not saying I am definitively correct. Just saying I was in a similar spot to you, and with an open mind, eventually found something.
Ask HN: What is the best streaming device for a Lineage OS user?
I run Lineage OS 18 on my Poco X3 Pro. Have just purchased a cheap, non-smart TV and would like to broadcast stuff from my phone using a streaming device. Which device is most compatible with Lineage OS: chromecast, fire stick, roku etc? What would you recommend (ideally something without ads). Thank you.
The Economist (I’m a subscriber) did a podcast on this recently. Lots of measures, but bottom line it is not a convertible currency. The published rate is a bit of a fiction.
> In fact it is not clear who benefits if it gets "adapted", whatever that means.

People who hold cryptocurrency benefit from increased demand and hype around it. It drives up the value of their assets even if indirectly.

Not everyone may even be aware that they have this conflict of interest. They may genuinely buy into the hype, which is why they hold cryptocurrency in the first place. However as always we should be skeptical of technology advice from people who stand to make money from you choosing one technology over the other.
Some discussions over the last several months, including just yesterday:

* The Birth of Tcl: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31111220

* TclTutor 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30327945

* Tcl/Tk Spline Editor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772621

* Tcl library for CSP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29421786

* Why Tcl syntax is so weird: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29143346

* Tcl: Lisp for the masses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28957701
As long as you have the wherewithal to tolerate all the nasty users IRC can be really good. Comp.lang.python is gold too.
Just add the DayZ mod and you'll not only be able to enjoy thrilling Zombie survival bugs, but also dreadful 20 FPS :)
They have a lot of commodities to back the ruble.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-03-25/russia-just-told-u...
We moved to the US from Canada 20 years ago. Fortunately we found a bank that would look at our Canadian credit history and were able to buy a house. Not all credit checks were as flexible. We couldn’t get a cell phone plan for several years.
Prior to self-infection and treatment, he was ridiculed for even suggesting the theory.

Think "wow, your idea is so stupid I can't believe you call yourself a doctor" type criticism.

My suggestion is not "can we ban anti-vaxxers" but rather "if someone posts anti-vax comments just address them with counter arguments"
I don't think I have to trust anyone when I run my own Bitcoin node and sign transactions. What entities do you mean?
Please send another letter to unsubscribe.
I doubt it, they should know what the various algorithms are, especially the most important ones that drive most of the ranking. But their competitive advantage would be on the line.
Things like "fairness" aren't defined in the legislation and will be determined in smoke filled rooms by shadowy moneyed interests.

Ordinary users will get censored. By the courts, by unelected regulators, and by Big Tech AI zealously nuking content to avoid arbitrary fines. It's content ID on steroids.
There is for sure some value in blockchain technology, but you’re not insane for being baffled by the attention being paid to it. The whole space is riddled with nonsense, with very few concrete and practical use-cases being put forward. Cryptocurrencies in particular are awash with outright scams that just drown out the interesting and useful stuff.

I like this well-know NIST flowchart as a starting point: https://images.app.goo.gl/wsK2e2zPUnQW5agRA

It’s a bit pessimistic perhaps, but it kind of gets to the point: a blockchain is an interesting technology for solving problems where you need to achieve some sort of shared, trustless ledger. That’s useful in some cases, including the implementation of digital currencies.
> This assumes that we can trustlessly get the CO2 emissions for all countries

Classic blockchain advocacy: it works great provided we solve this unsolved problem of communicating "trustlessly" with the real world!

> you'd have actual enforceable code that can not be gamed

People keep "gaming" smart contracts all the time. Just recently there was a defi attack where someone simply flash-borrowed all the tokens, voted themselves a reward, and returned the tokens.
you mean, fully embrace it to front-run the laggards, like El Salvador did?
You say you've done research, i'm curious how you did the research? The standard go to reference from people who don't like crypto is now is a 2 hour video that makes zero effort to look for any good. It's not alone, there are hundreds of videos that make bad faith effort to "investigate" crypto. On the progressive left, for some reason it is becoming part of their culture to hate crypto (which is ironic considering a huge amount of their goals could be achieved easier using it)

I will say though, the more I dug into crypto the more I see a lot of actually amazing things. I moved into the Avalanche chain, and it's a radically differenent experience from Bitcoin and ETH frankly. I don't think ETH or Bitcoin got close to accomplishing their vision, but AVAX is different. I'm making transactions all the time (I made almost 700 transactions last year... the taxes part absolutely sucks). I'm not going to try enumerate the ways I think crypto is useful but i'd question the sources you're using.

One big thing i'd point out, the vision of crypto is still pretty far out. There are many infrastructure pieces missing. DAPP's Development seems WAY slower than centralized services. A smart contract is like hardware development. You basically want to get it perfect before you release it. Move fast and break things could mean a 50 million dollar hack in crypto. That doesn't make crypto useless or bad. Just a thing you need to think about.

EDIT: I went back about 3 seconds after positing this to fix a spelling mistake, and I was downvoted. It would be nice to get a comment with each of your downvotes. In the past upvotes and downvotes were signal of quality (not agreement)
To counter that, imagine police bodycams with embedded AI touching up live-recording so that the police was always right, suspect always did something wrong. If you build the source device with this touch-up capability, if you are the certificate authority about these, if you are also defining how these recordings would be used in court, then a perfect fake is useful. (None of us see the actual sensor output from our mobile phones)

TL;DR In order for a fake to be useful, you have to fake AND be the only reputable source. If other recorders cannot get close enough, then your touched-up "real" video is the only material available.
I have a couple of machines lurking in my collection which worked fine the last time I turned them on, but that was 15 years ago now... I really should do the research on how to make sure I don't accidentally damage them by powering them on if there's a dried up capacitor lurking in the power supply or something. (One of them is acutually genuinely semi-rare: the ICL 3300 was produced as a prototype but was cancelled before it went into production. The PERQ 1 is older and arguably cooler, but more common.)
What people have to understand is blockchain is more than just about coins. Blockchain is a way for everyone to have a global, universal database that anyone can read and write data to. That has value.
Drug trade, tax avoidance, banking for the unbanked and sanctioned. I'm currently living from airbnb to airbnb, with all my Russian banks banned from SWIFT, and crypto is the only way I'm abe to access my money.
even simpler than database technology. A git repository is tamper resistant.
It is one thing if you need to lose weight and we aren't exactly making lifestyle changes easy especially if you are poor in somewhere like the US.

That isn't the case for MS. So far, a diet does nothing to decrease disease activity. The risk for doing something not proven (at this point) is increased disability.

And honestly, there is really no reason that state-run medicine programs (like in Norway, where I currently live) would pay for expensive medication when they could simply provide food for folks. The area I live in has a central kitchen that cooks and provides foods for the area nursing homes and other similar places: Providing a special diet wouldn't exactly be a huge cost and definitely cheaper than the medication. Heck, I could feed and cook myself for the price of medication.

Similarly, there is really no real reason insurances in the US would pay the monthly cost for the medicines if they could control it with a diet plan.

I'm not saying that diet and exercise does nothing: It is easier to overcome things if you have the ability to stay generally healthy and I do what I can. That said, I'm not willing to risk independence for an unproven diet. Especially if the person selling it claims miracles.
I agree that databases on their own are never tamper resistant. But you can certainly set up a process around the database that guarantees tamper resistance. You'll still have to trust said process, and with blockchain you still have to trust the code. You'll never get away from having to trust _something_, but at least it is in theory feasible to have tamper resistance both with a centralised database and with a blockchain.
I recently watched this video (Line Goes Up) and it covers a lot of ground, from crypto to NFTs to DAOs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
You're missing the fact that it enabled purely online/digital money people will actually use.

You could build an online currency with a database much more easily than blockchain but people won't use it because it relies on a central authority to maintain the database and not enough people will trust that central authority not to misuse their power. It was tried a bunch of times in the past and never worked.

Fundamentally though it isn't about the technology it's about the transition. It's about money transitioning to a purely digital form which people will use.

In the past entire industries have been revolutionised multiple times by such transitions. Music moved to digital via mp3. TV, Movies via efficient video codecs and streaming. In both cases those shifts caused massive and unpredictable changes to how we consume and buy music/tv.

Now that money is making the same transition, people are jumping on it hoping to profit from it and money is much much more important a technology than music or tv/movies, it's the fundamental technology of society.
> A private, trusted, permissioned blockchain is pointless

Not at all - it's a verifiable audit log. Git is an example of exactly this.
No it's not. You can rewrite history.
> collapse of governments

If this were true, it would be a reason to sanction bitcoin. As it is, we've yet to see how it pans out as a means of Russia evading the sanctions.