Has anybody successfully explained bitcoin to a layman? I have a feeling this video would completely lose my mother.
This reminds me of an old reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMining/comments/i1xvv/how_doe...
An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin
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Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin
#32Has anybody successfully explained bitcoin to a layman? I have a feeling this video would completely lose my mother.
I did. I skipped all the math and just said that is a game where people guess secret numbers that fit a pattern, and when they find one that fits, they get points. Everyone uses computers to help guess, and some people agree to sell real stuff for points. She didn't care enough to challenge my explanation. The hard part of intuitively grasping bitcoin is explaining why money works at all, not why mining works.
Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin
#33Gotta 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 you don't need a classroom for that. Forums, sibreddits, etc, can host a class.
Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin
#34As 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!!!!!!
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!!!!!! Because it's not very useful until nearly everyone supports it. If a non-trivial amount of people don't implement it (which is highly likely when it's first released), then you have to accept non-proof-of-work-emails, or you'll miss the emails. That is the hole in the system that spam w…
I disagree. Anything that improves the 'this is not spam' rating is helpful even incrementally. Then once all the email clients support it it's a huge win. Combine that with proper digital envelops (i.e. encrypt all email), and we might finally have a proper email system.
Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin
#35As 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.
That would assume that all spammers use botnets or can easily obtain specialized hardware (which are mutually exclusive).
It's still a deterrent and makes it non trivial to be a spammer. Also even on botnets each node is large numbers of emails, so it increases the odds that the owner of the infected computer would notice all the work being done.
Makers of specialized 'spam' hardware could potentially be targeted by law enforcement easier then dispirit spammers (especially if the hashing algorithm could be designed to be specific to email systems).
I can see some arguments as to why it's not 100% effective, but I don't think it needs to be 100% effective to add additional value. That's why I'm amazed it's still not being done. Just like I'm amazed that we still don't have easy to use email encryption, yet demand it for the web (email traffic is far easier to eavesdrop on, and often far more sensitive).
Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that in the long term the cost of mining bitcoin is in the ballpark of the electricity cost of the proof-of-work (in that being cheaper encourages more people to mine and more expensive means mining would run a loss). You could effectively outsource the cost of the proof of work by having bitcoin validated email. Send a fraction of a bitcoin with an email to let it past. If email clients maintained the wallets…
> A cost of $0.001 per message would have very little impact on regular users. I wonder about mailing lists - a couple of thousand members isn't too big a list, but $1 a message adds up. Who pays it? What keeps someone from adding fake accounts to run up the costs of lists they dislike?
Payment isn't compulsory. You could have a number of mechanisms to clear mailing lists, white-lists would be easiest. Since joining a mailing list should be by user decision, provided the user interface is simple and painless you should be able to include adding to the whitelist as part of that process.
Re: An Introduction to the Mechanics of Bitcoin
#37As 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!!!!!!
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!!!!!! Because it's not very useful until nearly everyone supports it. If a non-trivial amount of people don't implement it (which is highly likely when it's first released), then you have to accept non-proof-of-work-emails, or you'll miss the emails. That is the hole in the system that spam w…
First of all, adding support for it isn't upto you unless you write an email client. If you are merely a user, you use it if it is implemented.
Secondly it is not that spam is a binary thing. You can use proof of work as another feature in your baysian system.