elevensies

Joined 11 years ago

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715

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238

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Mar 11

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Comment · 9 years ago

Given that tax was invented to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich, I don't think it is surprising that taxation is ineffective at transferring wealth from the rich to the poor.

Comment · 9 years ago

Interesting!

I think this is the contract: https://etherchain.org/account/0x470fb19D08c3d2eB8923A31d140...

If you look at a transaction hash that transferred nozero ETH to the account, you can see the ASCII encoded post.

Comment · 9 years ago

Ok, so I think I can understand Tether. A token represents a share of a bank account balance. So the organization that controls Tether buys and sells the coins to keep the balances balanced. So the value of the token is predicated on the existence and continued support of the company. The on-blockchain nature is valued for transaction processing, and allowing it to be wired into other contracts (I presume), not for decentralization, because you have to trust the Tether organization, N=1. Otherwise Tether would just be a database and a website, backed up by some bank accounts, i.e. a bank.

Are you aware of any tokens that don't rely on some kind of managing external organization's voluntary continued support? Or at least anything run like an ETF, where someone can deliver a basket of assets and get them tokenized? Or the inverse?

Comment · 9 years ago

I just realized, I'm severely confused about what Filecoin is, and possibly ICOs in general. I assumed "ICO" was analogous to IPO. If a token is essentially a bearer share that is coupled to the payment system. No reason you couldn't create the coin, run it privately until you get some revenue, and then offer it, as IPOs are usually done.

But when I search Filecoin's website for "revenue" and "profit", I only see references to the participants in the system, and not the token holders.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Afilecoin.io+revenue

https://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Afilecoin.io+profit

I did a quick search of the top 5 tokens on https://coinmarketcap.com/tokens/ and I'm not immediately finding any clear statements on how profit is made and distributed.

A question for people who are better informed, is there any kind of list or tracking on tokens payouts? Something like this (https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03779# ), but for non-ponzis?

Comment · 9 years ago

It depends what your goal is. If you're trying to get a specific person to say a certain thing, then it works well. If I wanted you to confess to a conspiracy with my political enemies so I could execute them, the fingernail removal strategy works fine.

If you're trying to figure out the truth in a fluid and confusing environment, then it doesn't work well because it motivates the victim to do whatever they can do to end the conversation as quickly as possible.

Comment · 9 years ago

Yeah, AWS has five regions that are classified as carbon neutral, listed near the bottom of this page: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/

Comment · 9 years ago

The atmosphere ignition thing was mentioned by Hamming via this anecdote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming#Manhattan_Proj...

Shortly before the first field test (you realize that no small scale experiment can be done—either you have a critical mass or you do not), a man asked me to check some arithmetic he had done, and I agreed, thinking to fob it off on some subordinate. When I asked what it was, he said, "It is the probability that the test bomb will ignite the whole atmosphere." I decided I would check it myself! The next day when he came for the answers I remarked to him, "The arithmetic was apparently correct but I do not know about the formulas for the capture cross sections for oxygen and nitrogen—after all, there could be no experiments at the needed energy levels." He replied, like a physicist talking to a mathematician, that he wanted me to check the arithmetic not the physics, and left. I said to myself, "What have you done, Hamming, you are involved in risking all of life that is known in the Universe, and you do not know much of an essential part?" I was pacing up and down the corridor when a friend asked me what was bothering me. I told him. His reply was, "Never mind, Hamming, no one will ever blame you.

Comment · 9 years ago

Watching Heartbleed and Cloudbleed happen really drove it home for me. Given that routine programming errors can cause private data to be transmitted unintentionally, I have to question the sanity of writing networking software handling private data in C.

Comment · 9 years ago

I'm aware of one and only one shipping container residence that makes sense: the container can still be shipped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPgjndFqqwY

Comment · 9 years ago

It may lower everyone's risk of re-offending by making them older when they get out: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article/14309... (via https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2016001/article/14309... )

Although I guess it would make more sense to be looking at a chart of 2nd offences.

Comment · 9 years ago

Exactly what I wanted to know, thanks.

Comment · 9 years ago

Thanks. Here is a mirror of the article: http://archive.is/xsniG

Comment · 9 years ago

Question for anyone who is knowledgeable about California elections: If Mark wanted to run for governor 2018, when would he have to take an observable action? (i.e. register as a candidate or similar.) At what point would we know for sure? And would winning Governor block a presidential run in 2020? And would losing it would indicate a candidate too weak to win POTUS 2020?

I think a key factor has to be whether Trump will survive through 2020. If Trump is weak in 2020 that is the best time to run, because if a Democrat beats Trump is 2020 and it isn't Mark, he'd have to wait until 2028, and he'd be running for re-election after 8 years of a Dem executive. It will partly depend on the who is the challenger in 2020 was well. I wonder if there is a chance Hillary takes another shot?

Comment · 9 years ago

Hysterical notifications are why I deleted the app from my phone. I was getting notified about stuff that I didn't care about, that no sane person would ever care about, and I lost patience with their whack-a-mole settings system.

Comment · 9 years ago

They say they are putting them on the roads of CA in a matter of weeks. I believe miles driven and disengagements must be reported around the end of 2017. So it should be easy enough to determine is four months or so if they're doing significant autonomous miles.

( here is the 2016 report: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/deade5b7-5b10-4b25... , found here: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen... )