A from-scratch tour of Bitcoin in Python

Post by spinny » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:52 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #20

ubi3921 wrote: post #2

> We don’t just get to share code, we get to share a running computer, and anyone anywhere can use it in an open and permissionless manner Can someone explain what this means? Its not explained anywhere in the post.

You can think of the Bitcoin block chain as the state of a globally-accessible machine. The state is updated through the publication of valid blocks, each of which builds on a previous block. A block is composed of transactions, each of which incrementally advances the machine's state. Each transaction contains a small program "script" that defines the conditions for the state transition it causes. There's this persi…

Post by GeorgeTirebiter » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

malux85 wrote: post #18

yumraj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he is losing faith in self driving cars and is looking for an alternate field.

Diversification of interests accelerates creativity due to axiomatic discovery and reinforcement, idea plasticity and abstraction practice. Other interests are not just important, they are necessary.

Post by karpathy » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #53

malux85 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversification of interests accelerates creativity due to axiomatic discovery and reinforcement, idea plasticity and abstraction practice. Other interests are not just important, they are necessary.

Right. All really smart people 'play'. Famously, Feynman was spinning plates in the Caltech cafeteria on his fingertip, which gave him the ideas that ended up winning him a Nobel prize. Play is important for children of all ages.

Post by msgilligan » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 6:02 PM UTC

Post by only_as_i_fall » Tue, Jun 22, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

eigenvalue wrote: post #44

chadhutchins10 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this were talked about more. Quantum computing is the biggest long-term threat to crypto imo. What's the plan once elliptic curve cryptography can be broken? There will be a point in time where there are just a few quantum computers that can break everything before the general public has access to quantum computing. Can crypto work in that scenario? Normal computers wouldn't be able to work with the beastly al…

The first entities that are likely to achieve practical quantum computers will either be governments or big tech companies like Google. And it will be a big deal, so there would likely be several years of warning before it could be at the point where it would make sense to use it to steal someone's bitcoins (I guess the original Satoshi coin address would be the biggest bounty). And in the time period between when th…