resf · HackerTrans

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Wow, do nutrition labels in USA generally not show figures per 100g?

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Literally the first sentence:

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Consider Dubai. Built by immigrants, used by natives.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Your argument is that it's OK to hurt someone if there's a chance that they might be hurt regardless.

If I were Chinese I'd be feeling pretty damn patronized if someone told me they were taking my iPhone away and I should be happy about it.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

This would harm Chinese people. If you lived in China, would you consider an iPhone or a Chinese phone to be more secure against intrusion?

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Stupid question: can the glue code not be licensed under both GPL and CCDL?

Clearly ZFS is not a derivative work of Linux and Linux is not a derivative work of ZFS. Only the glue code is in violation (because it derives from both).

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

That some people are too vain to adopt is not a good enough justification. It is a foundational point of ethics that medical experimentation must be voluntary.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Tell that to WeChat, Alipay et al.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

If I buy a grain of sand from you for $10, have I just massively expanded the number of dollars in existence?

Market capitalisations != money.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

> As I understand it, bitcoin doesn't track coins so much as it tracks the funds associated with account numbers.

It's actually the opposite. The blockchain does track coins, but not accounts or account numbers. Rather, each transaction involves "scripts" which specify some conditions with which coins can be used as inputs to another transaction.

In a normal transaction, one key can spend the coins, but e.g. it is possible to send coins to a script that is impossible to satisfy, therefore the coins are unspendable, yet don't exist in an 'account' at all.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Decaying in more than one way. The JS files on milliondollarhomepage.com start with:

    /*
         FILE ARCHIVED ON 5:47:20 Aug 6, 2015 AND RETRIEVED FROM THE
         INTERNET ARCHIVE ON 20:45:17 Aug 24, 2015.
         JAVASCRIPT APPENDED BY WAYBACK MACHINE, COPYRIGHT INTERNET ARCHIVE.
    
         ALL OTHER CONTENT MAY ALSO BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT (17 U.S.C.
         SECTION 108(a)(3)).
    */

I guess someone didn't keep backups?

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

> Is it possible that we're fat only because we're eating the wrong kind of sugars?

Nope, we are fat because there are many cheap sources of calories, particularly deep fried foods.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

I think by "better" you mean "more properly" ;)

I'm sure IELTS doesn't cover important life skills such as "use of the word innit".

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Imagine you go to Ancient Greece and tell them: "in the future there will be a library of over 1 million books and papers containing the knowledge of the world, that any person rich or poor can access from almost anywhere in the world"

Do you think their reaction will be: A) wonder that such a library can exist, or B) to tell you that it is not a library because of the flagrant copyright violations.

Libgen and scihub are among the most amazing products of humanity, that will receive a prominent place in human history. That they are illegal is an almost boring item of trivia.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Although descriptive of the legal situation, I object to the term "pirate library". There is no practical difference between a pirate library and a brick and mortar library, except the larger stock of books online. My local library even has a photocopier.

A library is a place where you can choose a book, and read it for free. That's how it's been for thousands of years. Copyright is a modern intruder and has no right to brand bone fide libraries as "pirate".

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

It seems to me that large blockchains^ are some of the most stable social structures in existence. The rules of Bitcoin have been in place for 8 years with only minor modifications, despite huge sums of money passing through the system.

This compares very favourably with other social structures, such as nation states, especially 8 year old nation states.

^ Large as in Bitcoin and Ethereum, smaller networks are much easier to manipulate.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

In a blockchain, the participants in the network have unlimited authority to modify the "law" of the blockchain, even retroactively.

If there is sufficient consensus among Ethereum users for a hard fork, then it can happen.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

Hydroelectric power, like geothermal, is only applicable if the geography permits it. It is also a potential WMD, so you'd better hope the area where you are building your dam is either not near a population center or is (geo)politically stable.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

ITER is an almost pointless project, because its design is already outdated even before it has completed. DEMO, if it ever exists, will almost certainly have more in common with ARC than with ITER.

resf

hace 9 añosdiscuss

At least in the UK, merchants pay very low fees to process debit card payments, to the extent that some merchants (e.g. budget airlines) do not accept or charge a penalty for using credit cards.

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