An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#11

Post by cantrevealname » Fri, May 03, 2013, 3:50 AM UTC

sunnybythesea wrote: post #2

Gotta love online learning...no more waiting for information to be available in a text book and to enroll in classes to get educated.

Let's not discount the fact that most people need the social pressure that a live classroom brings to bear.

Most people--even us self-motivated HN people--are far more likely to do hundreds of hours of coursework if there's a real class, human teachers, and other students than if it's online to pursue at your leisure, or in a book sitting on your shelf for that matter.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#12

Post by spicyj » Fri, May 03, 2013, 4:33 AM UTC

ZeroCoin wrote: post #10

Siecje wrote: post #6

Where is Sal?

He doesn't do a lot of the new videos. It's lovely to hear his voice when he does, though. Makes you feel just a bit more special. Perhaps Sal doesn't have a great understanding of cryptography? He doesn't do a single cryptography video on khanacademy as far as I know.

Sal still makes lots of videos! Lately he's been making a World War I series:

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/history/euro-hist

We just like to put up good content from other authors too when we find it. :)

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#13

Post by PakG1 » Fri, May 03, 2013, 4:36 AM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #4

obviouslygreen wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is a point worth making, another is that there's also little to no vetting or editing required to publish "information" on the web compared to getting it into a book and into distribution. Of course the latter isn't perfect and comes with its own evil hegemony and other assorted issues, but the point is that there is so little barrier to entry to posting on the web that praising speed in and of itself igno…

Fair point, but I would argue that "known" and trusted organizations, such as Khan Academy or Coursera, backing a given instructor or set of materials constitutes a form of vetting. It's not like they pick their material out of a hat, and they're all fully aware of the potential repercussions of publishing quackery.

Don't forget MIT OpenCourseWare. They were first to the party. :) http://ocw.mit.edu

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#14

Post by hkmurakami » Fri, May 03, 2013, 5:39 AM UTC

PakG1 wrote: post #13

doktrin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, but I would argue that "known" and trusted organizations, such as Khan Academy or Coursera, backing a given instructor or set of materials constitutes a form of vetting. It's not like they pick their material out of a hat, and they're all fully aware of the potential repercussions of publishing quackery.

Don't forget MIT OpenCourseWare. They were first to the party. :) http://ocw.mit.edu

They were here for such a long time, way before anyone else and yet they are practically forgotten now. I wish it had been given the attention it deserved by the good folks at MIT.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#15

Post by SilasX » Fri, May 03, 2013, 6:53 AM UTC

cantrevealname wrote: post #11

sunnybythesea wrote: post #2

Gotta love online learning...no more waiting for information to be available in a text book and to enroll in classes to get educated.

Let's not discount the fact that most people need the social pressure that a live classroom brings to bear. Most people--even us self-motivated HN people--are far more likely to do hundreds of hours of coursework if there's a real class, human teachers, and other students than if it's online to pursue at your leisure, or in a book sitting on your shelf for that matter.

Sure, but that very same social environment can be an impediment at least as well as it can be a motivator.

The overwhelming majority of my formal education (through high school and most of college) consisted of classes where most of the students either didn't want to be there, or weren't interested in the course beyond its impact on their grade and future transcript, and so were disruptive to the learning process.

And I doubt I'm alone in saying that.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#16

Post by joshuak » Fri, May 03, 2013, 7:59 AM UTC

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video.

However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#17

Post by defect » Fri, May 03, 2013, 8:24 AM UTC

joshuak wrote: post #16

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video. However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

There's Hashcash: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#18

Post by new299 » Fri, May 03, 2013, 8:26 AM UTC

joshuak wrote: post #16

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video. However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

yep, as you probably know the proof of work idea came from Hashcash which was designed as a spam filtering system. I guess we've all just got locked in to email as it is. Looks like Spam assassin supports it, I wonder if mutt can be configured to support it.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#19

Post by SagelyGuru » Fri, May 03, 2013, 9:24 AM UTC

sunnybythesea wrote: post #2

Gotta love online learning...no more waiting for information to be available in a text book and to enroll in classes to get educated.

Online learning, yes. However, what is wrong with writing? Why this youtube mania for making videos of everything? Not everyone wants to listen to hours of videos of some guy droning on about something that they could have read in a few minutes, with random access ability to concentrate on the few bits that they don't know.

I am not saying that this guy does a bad job but, in general, I avoid videos like plague after many bad experiences with them. Especially those where there is just scrolling text and some god awful soundtrack with it.

Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin

#20

Post by makomk » Fri, May 03, 2013, 10:08 AM UTC

joshuak wrote: post #16

As a cypherpunk, when I first heard of bitcoin I was incredulous. But after many months of research and experimentation I became satisfied that the bitcoin protocols don't have any obvious flaws. God how I wish I could have saved some of that time with a nice summery video. However, far more importantly then bitcoin I want to know why the hell we don't have proof of work as an email spam filter yet!!!!!!

Proof of work as an e-mail spam filter isn't effective protection for two reasons: botnets, and specialized hardware that can compute proofs of work faster than general-purpose PCs.