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The End of My Childhood

vitalik.eth.limo

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Re: The End of My Childhood

#51

Post by number6 »

roenxi wrote: post #22
IntelMiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the CEO's "history" [1] I'd heavily recommend against installing Brave [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

His history of designing JavaScript, co-founding and CTO-ing the Mozilla project and being a general expert in coding and the web? Yeah screw this guy. No way he'll ever be able to develop a successful browser. If you make your technical decisions based on, as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, 1 minor political disagreement with the project lead then you'll be as limited as Stallman when it comes to using a computer.…

Interestingly, the Stallmann position still leaves you with a fully functional computer. Chapeau!

Re: The End of My Childhood

#52

Post by number6 »

throwawaycities wrote: post #21
IntelMiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the CEO's "history" [1] I'd heavily recommend against installing Brave [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich

You boycott Brave browser because the CEO? The CEO invented JavaScript, do you boycott JavaScript and all websites that use JavaScript?

For other reasons ;)

Re: The End of My Childhood

#53

Post by secondary_op »

> When I met Vladimir Putin in 2017, I did not try to arrange the meeting; rather, someone else suggested it, and I pretty much said "ok sure".

> Now, five years later, I finally realized that (i) I had been complicit in legitimizing a genocidal dictator, and (ii) within the crypto space too, I no longer had the luxury of sitting back and letting mystical "other people" run the show.

Congrats on congratulating yourself on being the Benevolent dictator (in contrast with presumably genocidal dictator) and inventor of your own decentralised financial institution that enabled everything imaginable around money schemes, not matter how average and worst it is compared to regulated traditional banking. How much is you worth by the way ?

Re: The End of My Childhood

#54

Post by mkatx »

spankalee wrote: post #48
mkatx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But seriously, there are 1000's of cryptocurencies, you can't logic the possibility that even one was built with 'non-scammy' intentions? Cause 1 is all it takes to refute that 'ceyotocurrencies are inherently a scam'. I'm sure your being vacecious, but there are those that would comment that seriously.

Yes, I think digital scarcity is a scam. But that's not really the point. You seem to think that I can't really exist and any "person" with such an "opinion" is a part of a propaganda operation or trying somehow to artificially lower the price (with a post!) to buy in. Can you accept that real people think crypto is a scam?

Happily, I really appreciate your opinion, your part of the conversation.

I said "There are so many 'people' online", implying that there is a lot of propaganda being passed off as opinion. How much? How real? Well, I was giving my opinion on that.

I'm not saying that YOU are this propaganda, but challenging you to defend your point helps to fight, and weed out, the propaganda I'm talking about. Sounds like you might have read it?

Re: The End of My Childhood

#55

Post by koonsolo »

therobots927 wrote: post #47
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the comparison to gold is a bit of a reach. Gold is valuable because: 1. People see it as a store of value 2. It has some useful physical properties 3. People use it as a decoration Possibly there are other reasons as well, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind. As far as I can tell, Bitcoin only shares attribute #1. It doesn’t have intrinsic properties that make it useful into larger systems (t…

It's much easier to transfer bitcoin than it is to transfer gold, so not only does it share #1, it has additional attributes than what you listed. It already is a useful way to exchange value, people do it all the time.

You can literally store it in your mind. A lot of people buy gold for when "Shit hits the fan". But in the end, it's better to flee a horrible place (think Russia or Hong Kong) with a bottle of water and $1M worth of bitcoin stored in your head.

Re: The End of My Childhood

#56

Post by nicbou »

roenxi wrote: post #14
smackeyacky wrote: post #3

The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences: > I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world. No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.

Bitcoin has been around for 15 years at this point and there is absolutely no confusion about the technical underpinnings. It has handily survived attempts at government shutdowns in China and serious interest rate hikes. Numerous scams have come, gone and had no impact on hodlers. At this point it is no longer reasonable to just claim it is a greater fools game without an argument for why. The evidence right now see…

But as a currency it’s still mostly useless.

Re: The End of My Childhood

#57

Post by badpun »

Retric wrote: post #24
latchkey wrote: post #17

> Your personality can completely change in 10 years. This was kind of a revelation to me a long time ago. When you're 20, you're a totally different person than when you're 10. When you're 30, different than 20. Just like the linked article suggests, you really tend to underestimate how much you're going to change in the future. At 10, you can't really consider how you're going to be when you're 20.

The reverse is also true, people have a lot in common with who they were 10 years ago. It’s common for people to like many of the same songs at 60 that they did at 16. I may be more skilled, better informed, and care a great deal about people who didn’t exist back then, but I think my basic personality is shockingly close to 10 year old me.

Basic personality traits (like Big 4) stay roughly the same. What (hopefully)happens is personality development and maturation.

Re: The End of My Childhood

#58

Post by badpun »

roenxi wrote: post #14
smackeyacky wrote: post #3

The author sums up everything that is wrong with crypto in two sentences: > I was getting excited about every new cryptography protocol, and economics too seemed to me to be part of that broader worldview: it's the mathematical tool for understanding and figuring out how to improve the social world. No, it isn't. This kind of hubris is what hides what Crypto is, which is a game of greater fools and nothing more.

Bitcoin has been around for 15 years at this point and there is absolutely no confusion about the technical underpinnings. It has handily survived attempts at government shutdowns in China and serious interest rate hikes. Numerous scams have come, gone and had no impact on hodlers. At this point it is no longer reasonable to just claim it is a greater fools game without an argument for why. The evidence right now see…

This just means it's technically sound gizmo. It's central purpose is still speculation though, which is rooted in the greater fool theory.

Re: The End of My Childhood

#59

Post by jncfhnb »

MrVandemar wrote: post #50
tomrod wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Economics is the study of manipulating that power. Hello! Your friendly neighborhood economist here. Economics is the study of resource allocation under scarcity. In your comment, I think you actually mean Game Theory and Mechanism Design, which are about assessing strategic behavior (Game Theory) and about creating mechanisms that align with strategic behavior to result in preferred outcomes (Mechanism Design, sor…

> Hello! Your friendly neighborhood economist here. Economics is the study of resource allocation under scarcity. As an economist, would you be able to explain (because I truely do not understand) why "the study of resource allocation under scarcity" is more important than (and/or prevents) meaningful action on climate change?

Because meaningful action on climate change requires the allocation of scarce resources?

Re: The End of My Childhood

#60

Post by wslh »

throwawaycities wrote: post #39
wslh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not talking about Vitalik but about IPFS and about ENS: - For IPFS see the other current thread on HN [1] - For ENS I can say that it was and it is ridiculous. My company was relatively well known in the decentralized space when the ENS launched and obviously someone registered our name before us. This is not a support of the current DNS system but the "decentralized" nature didn't add any decentralized feature (e.g.…

Regarding the other post I am lucky to know neiman personally. Neiman is a PhD in mathematics and idealist. The solution he wants goes beyond just hosting a decentralized blog. As far as ENS, I’m a fan. Though it’s too bad someone registered your well known business name you can always import your DNS into the ENS protocol (ENS is not the .eth extension, rather .eth is the native ENS blockchain extension but is rever…

Beyond your ad-hominem criticism on Neiman. I have used IPFS professionally and it is very slow. This issue is well known and gives an objective metric for the tool beyond idealisms. Extremely easy to check: [1] [2].

BTW, I come out with the paper "Is IPFS Ready for Decentralized Video Streaming?" [3] that could be an interesting read.

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ipfs+performance&hl=en&...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=ipfs+performance+site%3Aredd...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39214634

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