221–230 of 303 posts
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They blocked very little and can only do very little. He seems to know enough that I don’t believe he’s scared of them finding his identity His own explanation is the one I find the most truth in. https://sites.google.com/view/hackersconfession/home/hacker-...
I would have loved it if he sent every coin he stole to the burn address as a big fuck you.
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You claim to know what you meant, but that isn't clearly the case. GP's post was short and to the point. Your posts are long and confusing. We do have private prisons. As you note, they started under Reagan, in response to Reagan's "anti-crime" policies. Reagan is notorious for claiming to support small government and balanced budgets while actually spending us deep into deficit in order to purchase boondoggles. How…
> Your posts are long and confusing What’s the average length of a post on HN and where does that post stand? > How are your preferences different than Reagan's? You just stated that he acted contrary to his claims, if your position is that I say I’m for small government but wish to spend, spend, spend, then I can see why you’re confused. Try dropping the assumption I’m lying, the principle of charity is a wonderful…
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I love how the crypto community encourages circumventing laws, UNTIL someone steals from them using their own “smart” contract then calls on authorities for help.
Can someone explain to me why HN is so anti-crypto?
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> Maybe we should understand the existing system before advocating complete disruption. This is a great point. One name for it is 'Chesterton's Fence' [0] [0] https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/
In 2011 a new Bitcoin exchange called Bitcoinica launched. I deposited 100 BTC to test it out. First thing I did was to try to withdraw negative 100 BTC. It sent me 100 BTC, but instead of a zero balance in the exchange, it said I now had 200 BTC. So then I withdrew a negative 200 BTC, and it sent me 200 BTC and increased my exchange balance to 400 BTC. I contacted the owner and returned the funds and he sent me a 10…
Someone recently pointed out that we have a "free market" in cryptocurrency, and are now spending years discovering why we have regulations, laws, contracts, courts etc. I love the idea of a digital native currency. But I also love financial protections that have grown up over thousands of years. The mints of each country could solve that tomorrow (is there a FOSS blockchain already that does a "we know there are 1 t…
> I love the idea of a digital native currency. But I also love financial protections that have grown up over thousands of years. Yeah, this is a contrast/friction that exists in the ecosystem. Some people just want something that is like a "digital native currency" that works kind of like banks today (with the same protections at least) but works across banks/applications and somehow also is at a fixed value. Others…
Why not drop both protection and regulations for that protection from the second group and not bothering anyone?
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> Maybe we should understand the existing system before advocating complete disruption. This is a great point. One name for it is 'Chesterton's Fence' [0] [0] https://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/
In 2011 a new Bitcoin exchange called Bitcoinica launched. I deposited 100 BTC to test it out. First thing I did was to try to withdraw negative 100 BTC. It sent me 100 BTC, but instead of a zero balance in the exchange, it said I now had 200 BTC. So then I withdrew a negative 200 BTC, and it sent me 200 BTC and increased my exchange balance to 400 BTC. I contacted the owner and returned the funds and he sent me a 10…
Many hacking laws were drafted in the 80s and are exceptionally broad. What you did was almost certainly illegal hacking, as the laws define it.
Of course, whether the victims would care to complain; and whether they could get the police to take them seriously; and whether they can find you; and whether you and they are in the same jurisdiction; are other matters. I certainly wouldn't recommend you rely on the CFAA to protect you from ransomware gangs.
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Looking back, updating Netscape may have been the correct choice.
This is an impossible counterfactual to figure out. Microsoft crushed Netscape, and it's far from clear that continuing Netscape as it had been going would have had anywhere near the success that Mozilla ultimately had.
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Counterexample: SpaceX. Sometimes, starting from scratch can be very helpful.
SpaceX didn’t start from scratch. The goal for Falcon 1 was to be as conventional a design as possible and save money via vertical integration. By comparison many other companies tried to reinvent things by launching from aircraft etc.
This is still starting from scratch. The design may be conventional, but you're benefiting from a modern approach to processes and design from the beginning.
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It used to be very strange to me, but honestly think the answer is that a large number of HN community members are - somewhat ironically - very closed minded. Once you start to think in that framework you see it everywhere, and it goes all the way back to the original DropBox thread where some guy said "this is stupid you could just combine FTP with SVN". Of course that doesn't apply to everyone, and perhaps not even…
> a large number of HN community members are - somewhat ironically - very closed minded The other side of that coin – excessive open-mindedness – however, leads to being susceptible to cults, snake oil salesmen, and hyped up technologies. Crypto currencies, in particular, frequently tick all three boxes. Skepticism is generally a good thing, and so far crypto currency proponents have failed to refute the arguments of…
Cryptocurrency offers new primitives that are unavailable in any other system known to man. It takes time to build up a backbone of technology that can take these new primitives and get them to the point where they can compete with established trillion dollar industries, but it is happening, and it's starting to happen very rapidly.
It's certainly true that crypto is full of snake oil salesmen, overhyped technologies, and culty communities. But the presence of those things doesn't change the fact that the technology is real, and that it can do things at a fundamental level that no other technology can do.
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1) FCC regulates mostly broadcast technologies, not the stock market (SEC?). 2) The amount of morale hazard we have allowed to build up since the great financial crisis is astronomical. No one has been held to account for that mess and the Too Big To Fail mindset has become deeply entrenched. The fact that no one backstops crypto is one of it's biggest features, we cannot continue to play the world's biggest janitor…
> No one has been held to account for that mess and the Too Big To Fail mindset has become deeply entrenched People don’t actually want this. The problem in 2008 wasn’t bankers or any other boogieman. The problem is that people want housing to be affordable/accessible, but they also want it to be an investment/retirement plan. If you subsidise housing to make it affordable (a market distortion in itself), and you enc…
This didn't happen. What happened was an extreme lowering of the barriers to entering into a mortgage contract, such as minuscule down payments (which are back), NINJAs, and floating the extremely high-interest rates on those mortgages to volatile and completely gamed numbers like LIBOR. After collecting these mortgages into a bundle, they paid someone to declare them as safe as US treasuries, and immediately sold them on/started borrowing against them.
You can absolutely do this with crypto, except it would be even easier.