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#off-topic
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2018-02-05
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gganley04:02:51

Thinking on it I listen to Accidental Tech Podcast and one of the fellows, Marco Arment, swears by the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard

gganley04:02:11

And mech swiches matter less and less to me since I do a lot more work on my ipad

fellshard04:02:00

I could not imagine trying to do the majority of formal work on a touch keyboard.

gganley17:02:58

I would never do programming on my iPad, it’s more a admin and creative writing platform. I take a lot form the Cortex podcast http://relay.fm/cortex

fellshard18:02:56

Even for regular writing, it seems like it's far more painful to write things; higher error rate, and much higher cost to correct errors accurately.

fellshard05:02:33

And this is why I have zero trust in 'smart contracts'. It's so hilariously naive.

fellshard05:02:06

Also, despite the vulgarity, that seems perfect name for this type of thing.

fellshard05:02:46

I think what people will find is that there's an enormous amount of context awareness people have when interpreting real legal contracts that helps keep their interpretations bounded, context computers simply don't have.

fellshard05:02:24

Basically reducible back to an NLP type of problem.

qqq05:02:27

To make things even more insane; I've been programming for 15+ years, in qbasic, c, c++, scheme, clojure, elisp, haskell, ... even took a class on writing shellcode on x86 binaries -- and I completely missed the underflow attack until I read the article.

qqq05:02:52

I don't see how non-programmer investors can safely invest in these coins.

seancorfield05:02:46

And I would have expected programmers to be smart enough to not invest in these coins -- but clearly there are a lot of programmers who think that there's still some magic, get-rich-quick scheme... 👀

qqq05:02:52

I wish I had invested, when bitcoin was $1 or when eth was $0.08

qqq05:02:32

The really crazy thing was: after the ETH/DAO hack, I thought: "either this is going to 0, or it's going to blowup" -- and for some dumbass reason, I didn't invest.

seancorfield05:02:17

And with that, I'm off to bed! 🙂

borkdude12:02:37

> And I would have expected programmers to be smart enough to not … One look at hackernews should tell you that a lot of programmers are not all that smart about things other than programming 😄

schmee12:02:28

@borkdude One look at hackernews should tell you that a lot of programmers are not all that smart about things other than programming

qqq14:02:35

As someone who holds no tether: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16308568 is insane

tbaldridge15:02:29

Ah, crypto currency, the gift that keeps on giving.

tbaldridge15:02:23

I'll borrow the words of Tim Ewald from a Clojure talk he gave (talking about something different): "It's like a crash of one of those massive coal trains, and down at the other end of there's a factory still producing cars."

sveri17:02:04

@gganley In case you dont know exactly I would like to add, what my guitar teacher once told me. Whenever you start to have wrist pain, take a break, instantly and dont stress it more. I dont know about todays methods, but back then, once your wrist was messed up, it was messed up for the rest of your life. I have seen that happening to my mother. She was using a steam cleaner for like 8h when it was new, ignoring the pain. Still 20 years and one operation later she has nights where she cannot sleep because of the pain. If you feel pain, stop. Take a break, if the pain is still there when you start again, stop again, repeat. No deadline is worth a messed up wrist.

qqq17:02:39

since btc neither produces a product nor pays divident, it has to be a zero sum game right ?

qqq17:02:58

i.e. ttl money people get from selling btc < ttl money people put in from buying bitcoin

jgh18:02:24

there’s still some level of inflation because new coins are still being minted

jgh18:02:33

at some point that will end though

jgh18:02:31

i think it halves every 4 years…right now it’s 12.5 btc/block

jgh18:02:01

so every 10 minutes until the next halving 12.5 btc are minted

qqq18:02:58

Producing new coin increases the market cap, but doesn't change the fact it's .a zero sum game.

qqq18:02:11

For someone to sell that new coin, someone else has to buy.

tbaldridge18:02:58

kindof that way with anything tbh

tbaldridge18:02:26

gold isn't worth anything, it only has worth because someone wants it and is willing to pay

fellshard18:02:09

Currency is a really weird historical hole to dive down. Fun, but mind-bendy at times.

jgh18:02:26

@qqq what’s the point of regarding it as zero-sum? Wouldn’t you therefore consider USD as zero-sum? There’s no dividend and it doesn’t really produce anything either..

tbaldridge18:02:53

It's a little different, because in the case of USD there's a rather large group of people with a lot of guns that say it has worth 😛

qqq18:02:00

USD has some value, because every year, the IRS asks you for some.

tbaldridge18:02:27

Hence the argument some make that BTC isn't currency, it's a commodity. Although that seems greatly up for debate

qqq18:02:37

This was not stated in my original statement; but I was mentally comparing Bitcoin to 1. stocks that pay dividends and 2. investments in startups, where the funds are used to build something.

qqq18:02:39

There seems to be a fundamental difference between, say, 1. giving tbaldridge 1M so he can hire osme ppl and build a great clojure startup that generates revenue and pay dividends vs 2. buying 1M in bitcoin and hoping that someone else buys it later for 2M

jgh18:02:49

arguably ICOs are used for funding startups, but I’m guessing they’re mostly used for funding unscrupulous people’s bank accounts

qqq18:02:25

ICOs are fucked up since it seems to be: 1. give company money 2. you don't even get shares

jgh18:02:31

pretty much

jgh18:02:15

i wonder why people dont do actual shares as smart contracts or something

jgh18:02:37

i guess it’s just easier to sell them tokens and they get no control 😛

qqq18:02:00

also, if you do actual shares, and the buyers are not accredited investors, I believe the SEC starts investigating

jgh18:02:13

yeah, depends on where you are

jgh18:02:20

i think in europe you dont have to be accredited

jgh18:02:36

obviously you have to limit the buyers too

qqq18:02:16

ICOs are basically a marriage between: 1. startups that can't get funding from real investors 2. 'investors' that are not full time / professional investors

fellshard18:02:00

'amateur bubble for people who don't understand money'

fellshard18:02:23

In the end, cryptocurrencies are stuck because they simply can't operate as an independent currency; they are entirely dependent on being commutable to and from existing currencies backed by existing authorities

justinlee18:02:37

yea, i’ll believe bitcoin is a currency when people start pricing in bitcoin (as opposed to pricing in dollar or euro and listing the btc conversion rate)

fellshard18:02:32

That would be a good chunk of evidence of intrinsic trust in the benefits of cryptocurrencies themselves. Right now, no such trust is formed for any lasting period, especially with wallets failing left and right.

jgh18:02:45

i dont think bitcoin can ever be used as a currency for a lot of reasons, but that doesn’t mean that some future invention inspired by bitcoin can’t be.

tbaldridge18:02:31

I just sit back at laugh when I hear people talking about bitcoin as if it's divinely inspired, and then they talk about it ways that proves they haven't a clue what they're talking about

qqq18:02:08

one area I think a crypto coin could really work for -- is a paid stack overflow; I really want a site where I can pay to get questions answered, and get paid to answer questions; and since it's for knowledge work / QA, I'm okay with the value fluctuating 50%-200% every week

jgh18:02:06

yeah i think there are a lot of legitimately good usecases for cryptocurrency that are yet to be found, but i have a feeling they’ll be a lot more mundane / a lot less world-changing than people think.

tbaldridge18:02:06

If that could even work. A lot of time the failure of SO is that hte people that could answer the question don't care/are paid more to do other things.

justinlee18:02:19

there are loads of startups and technologies that make that technically possible. the problem isn’t with the tech, the problem is that that kind of arrangement never works

jgh18:02:20

it’ll just be another progression of a digital society

justinlee18:02:35

it isn’t hard to clear a transaction efficiently

Ryan Radomski18:02:13

@tbaldridge sounds a lot like chegg, but for career instead of school. There's a BC subscription model in there

jgh18:02:11

what’s that tipping plugin for github called again? Is that widely used?

qqq18:02:21

@tbaldridge: I've alwahs thought the problem was SO was taht: 1. it's free to post questions 2. lazyass people post dumbass 5 minute rtfm / googable questions 3. helpful people burn out 4. bastard operators from hell remain 5. future questions get down voted to hell -- and most of this can be solved if there was a financial cost of: $100 to post a single question, platform tkes 20%, 40% to accepted answer, 40% to top voted answer

justinlee18:02:03

and then what happens if you don’t get an answer? what happens if you get an answer but you think it is bad?

qqq18:02:22

you still pay the 20%, the top voted community answer with > 0 votes still get 40%

justinlee18:02:31

the hard part of these transactions is never the problem “how to get paid.” the problem is always “how do you deal with an unsatisfied buyer”

Ryan Radomski18:02:34

Maybe parameterize the bounty so people can sort out the cruft $0.50 questions

qqq18:02:07

@lee.justin.m: the unsatisfied buyer ends up losing $60.00 and either (1) asks better questikns ni future or (2) never uses site again

justinlee18:02:46

well that’s interesting but I think you would never have anybody use that site. you’d just ask on SO and you’d probably get an answer

qqq18:02:52

if something like ebay can work (where ebay can't even vedrify what is shipped), a paid QA should be able to work (when company can check what the answer says)

justinlee18:02:01

and at any rate, you don’t need crypo to do that site, you just need visa

qqq18:02:45

I would actually use this site, because as a founder without engineers, it's not useful having SO people downvote and tell me "just fucking google it" "what have you tried?" I want to pay someone to answer my question.

jgh18:02:57

i signed up for this site like 6 months back out of morbid curiosity: https://earn.com … this is going to be a shocker I’m sure to you guys but i have gotten 0 paid emails.

justinlee18:02:12

my real point is that the limit of most of these ideas isn’t “how do I clear the transaction”

tbaldridge18:02:20

Sadly Ebay doesn't work (anymore)

justinlee18:02:38

and in the rare case where that is the problem, having a centralized system is usually technically better than crypto

tbaldridge18:02:46

1/2 of the items are stolen, the rest are hardly cheaper than Amazon. Scammers are everywhere.

tbaldridge18:02:14

Now I have to post this:

tbaldridge18:02:41

Do that for 1/50 shipments and you'll still have 98% good feedback 😛

andy.fingerhut19:02:07

Huh. I have ordered dozens of things from eBay over the years without problem, but the last time was about 5 years ago. It wasn't because I got scammed that I stopped -- not really sure why.

tbaldridge19:02:05

For me twas that Amazon Prime killed Ebay. I can get the same product for about 5% more on Amazon, and that comes with free 2 day shipping.

tbaldridge19:02:04

On Ebay, they may take forever to ship, the product may be used, and most of the time the sites with good products are store-fronts for products selling at almost retail price. So what's the point?

joelsanchez19:02:57

legal question: I just forked an EPL project. the project includes this line in every source file: ;;;; Copyright © 2015 Carousel Apps, Ltd. All rights reserved. EPL says I can't remove those notices. however, it is legal to add another notice right below, right? would this additional notice be legal? ;;;; Copyright © 2018 Shit Software Copyright Is Stupid Incorporated. All rights reserved.