whiskers08xmt

Joined 10 years ago

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203
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86
Member since
Apr 19
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Comment · 7 years ago
Comment · 7 years ago
Important note here is that it's primarily red and processed meat. I think fish and poultry are still considered healthy in moderate amounts.
Comment · 7 years ago
It can still be competitive with things like tar-sand extraction, which takes more energy than you get out of the oil. It's only economically viable because energy in gasoline/oil form is more valuable than the energy content itself, due to it's ease of transfer. Air sequestration might be a viable fuel source in regions where import costs of fuel are high, but energy is cheap.
Comment · 7 years ago
This echoes the sentiment of Deep Work, which helped me a lot with my own productivity.

If you can do 4 hours of productive work, truly, no distraction, deep productive work, then you're likely way ahead of your peers.

Leave the rest of your time for shallower work, which doesn't require intensity of focus, and make sure to spend some time re-charging, where you focus on not doing work or being connected at all.

Comment · 7 years ago
No doubt. It'd be incredibly expensive and risky, but with a huge potential pay-off.
Comment · 7 years ago
A lot of heavy rare earth metals can only be found in very limited concentrations in the earth's crust, with the largest concentrations all being from asteroid impacts. As a consequence, these metals are incredibly valuable. A single high-concentration asteroid, could provide more of these metals than has been mined in the history of the earth, in high concentrations, and may be able to make a host of applications economically viable, which previously weren't.
Comment · 7 years ago
The amount of transactions is much higher, but the amount of money being moved is much lower. The highest number I could find for yearly transaction amount in mPesa was 3.7 Trillion Kenyan shilling, which is about 36 billion$. Compared to that, bitcoin moved value for over 400 billion$ in 2018.

I agree with you that the mPesa transactions are much more likely to be transactions for goods and services, but I don't think Bitcoin can be counted as an abject failure just yet.

Comment · 7 years ago
A digital, decentralized currency. If you want to solve the double-spend problem, you need some kind of economically incentivized block inclusion lottery.
Comment · 8 years ago
Coded communication is nothing new between criminals, and weakening the security/privacy of Australian software is not going to solve this problem. Weakening encryption of Australian software is not going to work against organized crime; These organizations are quick to adapt to changing law enforcement techniques. It is, however, going to make it much easier to surveil the general populace.
Comment · 8 years ago
Of course having access to the private key, need to be the most basic way to access funds. It's the only thing that's guaranteed to be uncensorable, while minimizing the requirement of trust. It is a big responsibility though, and should not be taken lightly. The crypto-currency community is partly at fault here, for blaring memes like "If you don't control your private keys, it's not your Bitcoin", without any regard for whether or not people are ready for that responsibility.

That being said, there are number of ways you can store your crypto-currency, with varying degrees of trust-minimization:

- Use a multi-signature smart contract wallet, where a master key has power to move the money. If the master key is lost, the money can be moved by X out of Y keys signing off on the transaction. You can then distribute the Y keys to your trusted associates, preferably without telling them who the other key-holders are.

- Use a dead-hand smart contract wallet, where the money can be retrieved by a trusted associate, if the dead-hand switch hasn't been activated within Z amount of time. Can be combined with the above, in case further trust minimization is needed.

- Store your crypto-currency at a FDIC exchange. Pretty much the same model as the banking world. This really should be the go to way for the average Joe, as it mirrors what you currently can expect from online-banking.

Comment · 8 years ago
Most of the world's population lives in third and second world countries. You're absolutely right that the centralized fiat gateways are the obvious, censurable bottlenecks of crypto-currency, and there's no good way around that, but crypto-currency itself is still an attractive way for many people, to move their money out of very restrictive regimes. The centralized exchange problem is mainly a problem of creating a black/grey market economy, with crypto-currency as it's main unit of value transfer, which of course is a whole other can of worms.
Comment · 8 years ago
Danish university student here. In the course I'm currently taking, they've made a point of stressing the importance of not rolling your own crypto, along with using salts, and have had assignments where the point was to crack weak encryption like MD5, and do dictionary attacks on stronger crypto. Timing attacks were covered as well.
Comment · 8 years ago
Realities get murky when you talk geo-politics. Some times it's in the interest of the US, to protect the self-determination of a nation, especially when it goes against the interests of a geo-political adversary. We see this with your country, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, etc.

At other times, it means selling F-16s, Apaches and munitions to Saudi Arabia, so they can carry out a brutal bombing campaign in Yemen. There are no good or evil regional powers, only national interests and the smaller nations which either get in the way of those, or help you achieve them.

Comment · 8 years ago
IANAL, but you should own the copyright on all the software you wrote unpaid, as well as the derivative copyright of everything that is based off of your initial software, which sounds like is pretty much the whole stack.

Let's try to list the options and see what optimizes for least bitterness/spite.

1. Leave the company to pave your own way.

  1.1 You're more successful than your father, but his company does well.

  - He's proud of your success

  - He's envious of your success


  1.2 You're more successful than your father, as the company flounders without you.

  - He's resentful of you betraying the company.

  - He's remorseful for not appreciating how valuable you were.

  1.3 You're less successful than your father.

  - You're resentful about your lack of stake in this success.

  - You're at peace, knowing your contribution wasn't necessary to the success of the company.

2. Lawyer up and fight for your right to the company/companies code base.

  2.1 Litigation is successful, and you're awarded meaningful compensation.

  - I only really see this souring relationships, but it might be mendable in the future, if you continue to grow the company.

  2.2 Litigation is unsuccessful.

  - Relationships are still soured, but nothing to show for it.
3. Continue status quo.

  - Your dad comes to value your inputs, and eventually rewards your diligence. I think this is unlikely, unless something indispose him from working.

  - Your difference in vision becomes more frequent, until you can't work with him anymore.

  - You continue with ownership limbo, as your bitterness about the situation grows.
There are probably situations I haven't accounted for, and the probabilities of these outcomes are largely dependent on you, and your dads personalities. My own bias is probably showing, but I think your best option is to leave the company, and forge your path.

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