Recent submissions

Comment · 1 year ago
Yeah, this has some general high level good advice, but is so old it doesn't include the new idiomatic ways of using errors.Is and error wrapping for error checking...
Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 2 years ago
"Proof of stake is not really any different to the fiat system it's trying to replace." Please elaborate.

"If a money isn't proof-of-work then it implies that some people can create it without doing work" Have you seen how much work goes into being a validator? There is definitely work being done - just much more sophisticated that guessing a random value...

Agreed on crypto not having the physical limitations and on the trend of fiat to inflate. I just can't agree on the other points.

Comment · 2 years ago
Proof of work was the first of the consensus algorithms to be used with blockchains because Satoshi (imo, probably Hal Finney) likely didn't know about Proof of Stake at the time. By the time it was being discussed, Satoshi was already becoming less active in the community.

The claim PoS is not the best store of value is asinine. PoW in BTC has consolidated around a cabal of a handful of miners and the power usage is of course a well-known sounding bell for PoW apologists everywhere.

The truth is PoW was the best they had at the dawn of blockchain, then technology improved. It's really this simple and I'm baffled when people get religious about consensus algorithms. It's as if people would say we need to keep using bubblesort instead of quicksort because bubblesort was discovered first.

Comment · 2 years ago
Crypto currencies are an experiment in the "denationalization of money" which was a book written by Hayek - of course he wrote this before cyrpto currencies were even a thing.

I would avoid just picking out BTC (which being stable in supply is prone to hoarding as digital gold and not really used as a means of commerce) and look at what other crypto has to offer as well, such as Ethereum which has a dynamic supply limit that is tied to its usage - in times of high usage such as today, it actually becomes deflationary. As usage slows, it becomes inflationary again which in theory should promote network usage.

We are essentially in an ongoing experiment of the denationalization of money and I personally think it will be fascinating how it will play out in the next couple decades.

Comment · 2 years ago
I wonder how fast F.A. Hayek is spinning in his grave.
Comment · 2 years ago
Exactly this. At the end of the day it seems like it's more about control than actually helping society...
Comment · 3 years ago
So excited for go 1.22 to fix "Iteration Variables and Closures in "for" Statements"
Comment · 3 years ago
You've never had to "verify the integrity of game cache" either? Wow, you must be lucky - 3-4 of the friends I play with have to do that quite often.

Funny enough, as we speak, I am downloading an update for a game. It failed for some unknown reason the first time and tried redownloading now. Time will tell if it will finally "just work" or if I'll have to redownload the entire game. Before you ask, yes I am on an SSD with plenty of space and I have a pretty decent fiber internet connection.

Comment · 3 years ago
While it's amazing they've got as big as they have, I have to say I'm utterly disappointed with the quality of the steam interface.

Trying to watch friend's streams breaks half the time, files often get corrupted for downloads, and feels like every other week they change the UI layout.

Comment · 3 years ago
This aligns with what I've read in Robert K Massie's "Dreadnought". It feels odd to title the book "Bismarck's War" and then come to that lesson. It should really have been titled "Wilhelm's Lunacy".

Wilhelm's obsession with a massive fleet to compete with England lost any hopes of forming an alliance with them and resulted in Germany being seen as a threat. Having a large fleet puts you at odds against England no matter what - that is their last line of defense. It's interesting to think what might have happened had Germany abandoned any aims on a massive navy and focused all those resources on it's army instead. My hunch is no mis-alignement with England and a very different looking world today if that happened.

Comment · 3 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
Nowhere in the article does it mention NFTs being at the heart of the layoffs. The article later says, "The Ottawa-based company will cut jobs in all its divisions, though most of the layoffs will occur in recruiting, support and sales units, said Mr. Lütke".

No mention of NFTs, though wouldn't be surprised if they scale back on that. I _would_ be surprised if they drop support and development for them completely.

Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
There's a site made to track the details of what needs to happen before the merge. https://wenmerge.com/ it still lacks specific date commitments. The focus is on "when it's ready" given that ~0.5 trillion dollars are in the system.

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton