grandalf

7 ms·

1.
by grandalf 9y ago
I made essentially this argument in the thread for the google announcement about beating stockfish and was down voted mercilessly. I think neural nets and deep learning systems are misunderstood so profoundly because humans are bad at many
2.
by grandalf 9y ago
Those are all valid points. I don't disagree at all. My comment was meant to present the hypothetical case where Bitcoin's governance model turns out to have better longevity than the USD governance model.
3.
by grandalf 9y ago
> Of course, you can make a case for gold or similar because it could make easy run away to another place, but that it's not the argument they are pushing normally. I think this is the aspect of it that applies to Bitcoin. All of th
4.
by grandalf 9y ago
I have no idea whether that will happen, just trying to express what I think the rational case is for investing in Bitcoin today. Goldbugs / conspiracy theorists have a line of argument where they describe all the fiat currencies that
5.
by grandalf 9y ago
True, but those arbitrage opportunities will stabilize the price and make other similar opportunities less profitable. I suspect that the real reason these haven't all been ironed out (exploited already) is because Bitcoin exchanges
6.
by grandalf 9y ago
These are all good points except for the idea that it won't be used like normal money. The speculative environment and price volatility resulting from that, is all by design. The mining incentive creates a "boom" environmen
7.
by grandalf 9y ago
Short term betting (for or against) Bitcoin is unlikely to result in much profit.
8.
by grandalf 9y ago
Any price is just the amount someone is willing to pay. This is why prices change even for things that do have intrinsic value like food commodities, oil, etc. More specifically, price is a function of supply and demand. Bitcoin was cre
9.
by grandalf 9y ago
Mine too. I am not attempting to let regulators off easy in this comment, merely pointing out that regardless of their specific motivations or their specific level of human integrity, systems that rely upon the good judgment of a small num
10.
by grandalf 9y ago
As others have pointed out, the actions taken by the financial firms' employees were not illegal. In hindsight some were harmful and perhaps should have been, but the question should be why weren't they illegal in the first place
11.
by grandalf 9y ago
It's great to see Sam calling attention to this problem. I'd argue that it's not really about ideas as much as it is about the public being much more accepting of authoritarianism. The broader values of free speech and free e
12.
by grandalf 9y ago
Apparently this story is one such thing, as it has been flagged.
13.
by grandalf 9y ago
I was going to make this point in a post, but saw that you had already done so. Using the pan repeatedly as a griddle will result in a superbly seasoned pan that does not need much attention or cleaning. Once in a while if the pan is used f
14.
by grandalf 9y ago
I wish more science were taught using this kind of thing as a starting demo to provoke a lot of wonderment.
15.
by grandalf 9y ago
Maybe we learned that coinbase can't scale its website, but that has nothing to do with the ability of BTC to scale.
16.
by grandalf 9y ago
Wouldn’t the companies offering flight searches have a strong incentive to include this information? I’ve been burned a few times after booking a flight that did not disclose the hefty additional fees.
17.
by grandalf 9y ago
I've noticed that the automated buys I have set up typically fail when the price is low and succeed when the price is high... according to Coinbase this is due to my bank. But now when the price is high Coinbase can't manage to sc
18.
by grandalf 9y ago
It's interesting to consider what it means when the AI can succeed without using brute force. Suppose at every turn there are n possible future states of the game based on the rules. To avoid "brute force" the AI must be abl
19.
by grandalf 9y ago
More evidence that Google is hurting financially. Thus far, Google's major platforms have had roughly the same longevity as a typical series C startup. I will keep this in mind the next time Google announces a promising platform techn
20.
by grandalf 9y ago
Ironically, both of these firms are strong advocates for "net neutrality" while they practice such childish behavior. My personal view as a user of both companies' hardware and software is that Amazon is taking the lead. I bo
21.
by grandalf 9y ago
This story is meant to make the American public more willing to support an attack on NK. Americans are generally happy to support strikes that we view as high tech and not targeting/harming civilians directly. But in reality any strik
22.
by grandalf 9y ago
There are two relevant things to realize about this: 1) Student debt is much different than normal consumer debt in that it is not dischargeable if the holder declares bankruptcy. 2) For years, many politicians have been calling for the m
23.
by grandalf 9y ago
Dai seems like a clever idea, but I'm not convinced it will ultimately be necessary. For one thing, the idea that dollars are stable is illusory. And the volatility we see in BTC these days is largely due to the ratio of speculation t
24.
by grandalf 9y ago
China has been bravely dealing with a rampant "fake news" problem for decades, and should serve as a model for US regulators and social media companies.
25.
by grandalf 9y ago
I think you could equivalently argue that the long-term effect is that the toddler learns to tune out all the noise and focus on one thing.
26.
by grandalf 9y ago
Uh, it says intentionally concealing , not owning. Income from investments is supposed to be reported to the IRS. It’s silly that anyone would expect crypto currencies to be an exception. This would be one of the few cases when the title s
27.
by grandalf 9y ago
> The moment you take incentive (bitcoin) out of the equation, whole blockchain will lose its strength. This assumes that the compute power of the miners who are left after the incentive is gone will not be sufficient to prevent attacks.
28.
by grandalf 9y ago
The problem is that wealth redistribution policies have irresistible appeal, and no regulatory system that is freedom-oriented adequately addresses the aspect of luck that impacts one's lot in life. For instance, if the initial populat
29.
by grandalf 9y ago
The strategic decline of the US relative to China and Russia over the past few decades has been due mainly to the massive cost of the American bureaucratic state. Both nations spend pennies on the dollar and cause our hawks to bluster embar
30.
by grandalf 9y ago
Not isolationism, simply democratic approval for the scope, budget, and success criteria of military action, and an honest discussion of national interest that doesn't involve fear mongering or appeals to xenophobia or racism. And whil

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