Artifex
Joined 16 years ago
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156
Submissions
47
Member since
Feb 10
Recent submissions
Comment · 9 years ago
Comment · 13 years ago
| A whole generation of kids is going to grow up soon routinely using small Bitcoin escrows to hedge everyday scenarios.
Could you explain this in more detail? Or perhaps provide a specific example? I've heard people talk about DACs and such (which I also don't really understand very well). At the risk of sounding stupid, I honestly don't understand what kind of scenario this would prove useful (or at least simple enough to warrant its use over traditional methods).
Comment · 13 years ago
This doesn't make much sense. Year over year, transaction volume is increasing.
Moreover, price is a function of demand. While there may be fewer transactions over the short term, those transactions may be larger in and of themselves. For instance, in April, there may have been more people purchasing single coins, but in November, there may be fewer people purchasing hundreds of coins.
Two charts do not tell the complete story.
Comment · 16 years ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost sounds like a rudimentary AES-type encryption when they describe how he broke it into a grid and then jumbled the lines. I'm no cryptographer, but the description of this compared to AES encryption seemed remarkably close.
That said, using digraph probability to solve it was inspired.
Comment · 16 years ago
Yes, but there also used to be competing post offices that were so profitable and efficient that they were able to offer three-cent stamps.
Read about it here: http://www.lysanderspooner.org/STAMP3.htm
Spooner's post office was so good that no one was really using the USPS any more. He was literally running them out of business.
That is, until Congress came in and said that what he was doing was illegal. Since then, there have been no alternative post offices.
Businesses like UPS and FedEx survive because of a loophole in the law that basically allows for parcel, but not post, shipping: http://mises.org/daily/3646
That said, they recently had a big regulatory battle between UPS and FedEx. I forget the specifics, but one business was being classified differently, and thus incurring higher operating costs than the other, simply because it was classified differently... In other words - punitive tax legislation. I forget exactly what happened there, and can't find a link at the moment buuuut:
The point is this: Your example of the post office is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't take into account that the post office is protected from market forces by legislation and thus, force.
Comment · 16 years ago
Found this today, actually: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-safety-security/113801...
Comment · 16 years ago
I do want to buy a good, adjustable standing desk. Any recommendations?
Comment · 16 years ago
I keep wondering why there isn't a Ycombinator-funded paypal killer.
I'm not a developer/coder/anything close to one, or I would do this myself.
Come on, guys! Get on this!
Comment · 16 years ago
I posted this particularly because of point 17:
"Innovation" stays safely corralled in the realm of toys, gadgets and social media. Real innovations in education, governance, the legal system, etc. that threaten the status quo fiefdoms and Power Elites are smothered at birth.
What are your thoughts on this? I know that I've had this vague sense of disappointment that the biggest, most recognizable 'innovation' we've seen this year is the Ipad - which, let's face it, the hardware has been around for years; it's just the slick iOS that brings it all together effectively... And I'm not ready to view programming as innovation, necessarily.
So what are your thoughts on this? What can be done to foster some real innovation?
Comment · 16 years ago
Right in time for election season.
Comment · 16 years ago
Tonido Plug + Drobo methinks.
Comment · 16 years ago
Video of the speech (starts at 5:45 roughly): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmavNoChZc
Comment · 16 years ago
Doesn't seem to be. They're not censoring anything, as the redirect is still available. This more playing semantics with Chinese Gov't Policy while still making uncensored info available to those savvy enough to know to click a link (which should be pretty much everyone).
EDIT: Ahahahahah! The landing page: http://www.google.cn/landing/cnexp/indexd.html is really just an image that looks like a censored search. Every user would click it, and it then redirects. Amazingly cheeky! Hopefully the technologically illiterate bureaucrats there will see that it doesn't automatically redirect, and be satisfied without digging deeper. Hahahahaha.
Comment · 16 years ago
This is a run-of-the-mill gadget blog by bad writers. Unless I was super enthralled by the product, say, a new iphone (shudder) or something, all I want is the statistics. I skim for those. I don't read each sentence with exacting precision. A disproportionately sized link hidden in what looks like an unrelated section (in terms of design) make this a hard-to-follow, hard-to-be-informed-by read.
Aspiring bloggers take note, this is not good blogging.
The people demand answers!