ahnick

There's a lot of people making claims based on paid research with agendas to sell fear. If you think you have some real empirical evidence that will standup to scrutiny, by all means share.

Exactly. All of this screen time is bad for kids and the phone is the devil reincarnate is ludicrous. The type of content they are consuming is what parents should monitor. Allow kids to use the device appropriately. If they do something with the device that you deem as inappropriate, then talk to them and correct the behavior. It is through mistakes that kids (and adults) really learn. Sheltering and avoidance will do nothing to prepare them for the real world once they reach early adulthood.

Please provide links to the "plenty of evidence that smartphones are hurting kids".

It seems like it would be less polarizing if it was the default state for news and information outlets to not endorse any candidate ever and just remain as neutral as possible.

It's pretty obvious isn't it? They don't want anyone to understand how the system really works. They should not be allowed to put the words "Unlimited" anywhere in their advertisement. period. It's all deceptive advertising and they should be raked over the coals for it.

If it's shared then say "Shared gigabit internet for only X dollars!" I guess the reason they don't do that is because a lot of people would choose competitor services if they were honest. Cable companies are soul sucking monopolies/duopolies and deserve no quarter.

Great info. What's the source for this data?

Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh, your opinion, man.

but you did bother to comment on it. :)

Here are the key points outlining why thewanderer1983's response misinterprets noch's comment and contains inaccuracies:

    Misinterpretation of the Original Point:
        Intelligence vs. Moral Superiority: Noch discusses the intelligence level of a mediocre graduate science student compared to the general population. Thewanderer1983 misreads this as a claim of moral or inherent superiority over "the rest of humanity," which was not implied.

    Conflation of Educational Levels:
        University Graduates vs. Graduate Students: The response conflates undergraduate university graduates with graduate science students. Noch specifically refers to graduate students who have pursued advanced degrees, which typically require higher levels of specialization and intellectual rigor.

    Incorrect Assessment of Intelligence Measures:
        Graduate Studies as a Measure of Intelligence: Successfully completing graduate studies, especially in science, often requires significant intellectual capability. Dismissing this as "not a good measure of intelligence" overlooks the challenges inherent in advanced academic work.

    Irrelevant Focus on Credentials and Industry Practices:
        Credentials vs. Intelligence Discussion: Noch's comment centers on intelligence levels, not merely on holding credentials. Bringing up how industry values experience over degrees shifts the focus away from the original discussion about intelligence.

    Unfounded Assumptions About Noch's Background:
        Ad Hominem Attack: Suggesting that Noch hasn't been to university is an unfounded personal assumption that does not contribute to the argument and detracts from a respectful discourse.

    Introduction of the 'Elite Class' Notion:
        Straw Man Argument: Thewanderer1983 introduces the concept of an "elite class," which Noch did not mention. This misrepresents the original comment and argues against a point that wasn't made.

    Overgeneralizations About Academia and Industry:
        Academia's Recognition of Intelligence: Claiming that academics don't consider intelligence until one has a Ph.D. and years of work is an overgeneralization. Intelligence is recognized and valued at various academic levels.
        Industry's View on Graduates: Stating that industry only uses graduates as an entry requirement ignores the significant roles that advanced degree holders often play in innovation and leadership within industries.

    Ignoring the Core Benefit Highlighted:
        AI as a Life Upgrade: Noch emphasizes how access to AI with the intelligence level of a graduate student is a substantial benefit for most people. Thewanderer1983 fails to address this key point, instead focusing on unrelated issues.

    Misunderstanding of the Value of Graduate Education:
        Work Ethic vs. Intellectual Achievement: While a good work ethic is important, graduate education in science also demands high intellectual capability, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

    Logical Fallacies:
        Red Herring: The discussion about industry preferences and academic credentials diverts from the main argument about the intelligence level of graduate students.
        Ad Hominem: Attacking Noch's presumed lack of university experience instead of addressing the argument presented.

Questions I have in these types of situations:

* Does replacing the CISO actually make the system more secure? Presumably he had a lot of tribal knowledge built-up and who is going to know the system better than him?

* As systems get more and more complex, it's likely impossible for a single individual to truly understand and prevent these types of situations 100% of the time. It seems that any application that needs to be 100% secure (if that is even possible) has to be provably secure in a strict mathematical sense, which goes beyond individual culpability.

* Does shooting the person accountable actually encourage responsible disclosure or discourage it?

Exactly!

What are you even talking about? Being able to run 10 year old software (on any OS) is orthogonal to being able to build a piece software whose dependencies are completely missing. Don't pretend like this doesn't happen on Windows.

Anyone made the jump from Linux to OpenBSD on a laptop as their daily driver? If so, any tips or suggestions for making such a change? What did you find the biggest benefit to be?

Tim writes a post about a "Money Bubble". There is now an alternative form of money that anyone can buy through their 401k if you believe there is a money bubble. He dismisses?(or doesn't even consider it?) since it uses a blockchain, because that's a dirty word in the cloud/SaaS tech circles. sigh

The real answer is that the ongoing 50 year old, fiat money system experiment is a bad idea.

That must be why that Bitcoin thing didn't pan out.

You have data to back that up? How do you know that the death rate from heat won't eventually eclipse the cold weather death rate?

Who do you trust currently?

> You’re saying this as if it’s a “when”, not an “if”.

Yes, the fact that Blackrock has now applied for a spot Bitcoin ETF makes it much more "when" than "if".

> Chargebacks aren’t something to worry about for customers – they are the reason they feel comfortable giving new merchants a try!

Correct, but merchants care a lot about how much they fork over to Visa/Mastercard for every purchase. Most people won't care about not paying through a credit card for small retail purchases. (e.g. People know if Starbucks got their order right and can have it fixed right there on the spot)

People dealt in cash long before credit cards ever existed. The scenarios where you really care about the chargeback protection do not make up a majority of purchases and can be addressed through other mechanisms. IMHO, credit cards will still exist in the future, just in a greatly reduced capacity.

Right, Flexa is already integrated in a number of PoS (Point-of-Sale) devices and providers (e.g. NCR), which makes its merchant acceptance fairly broad already. Once stablecoin legislation occurs, then being able to accept something like USDC will be more valuable for merchants and since there are no chargebacks to worry about then the merchant fees will be substantially reduced. Something like 1% vs 4-5%.

Buying an operation like Discover doesn't seem radical enough. IMHO they need to do something like buy Flexa (https://flexa.network/) and do a complete end run around the entire TradFi payment space. If they do that, then the margins will be much better and they will be well positioned for the future. Although Apple has so much money, they could take both approaches at the same time.

It seems like you could build a separate salt water basin that would hold the pumped sea water, so as to avoid having to pump it into Gatun lake. Then the salt water could be pumped into the locks to supplement the fresh water, when fresh water levels are running low. The pumps could be powered through solar or hydropower.

This strikes me as being very similar to Jargon (https://github.com/jbrukh/gpt-jargon), but maybe more formal in its specification?

Yeah, I didn't think so. :) I know of no single incident of SHA-256 or SHA-3 having collisions successfully generated.

Cracking SHA-256 with rainbow tables is a fundamentally different exercise as you are relying on someone having selected a weak password that you can then generate a hash for. The weakness is not in SHA-256, but in the weak user selected password.

> So what you want is faster access to HELOCs, and why does an NFT allow that?

It helps facilitate more automated approval b/c if you were to complete an application with your wallet then the system could check for the presence of the NFT to indicate ownership.

> How does cryptography proof that you own it?

The presence of the NFT in your wallet.

> Because you know a private key attached to a wallet address with the NFT in it?

Yes

> Okay, and how does that NFT relate to actually owning something?

If the government decides to use a blockchain as its system of record for property deeds, then the NFTs on that blockchain would be just as legitimate as paper property deeds. The NFTs hold the hash of any off-chain data whose validity could be verified.

> What if you get hacked, does the hacker now own it?

Perhaps in a poor implementation. I would expect clawbacks to be implemented for property deed NFTs.

> And if the hacker takes out the line of credit, fail to pay, does the defi protocol they borrowed from now own your house?

Hopefully that user is using a hardware wallet and again clawbacks are implemented, so that doesn't happen. If it did, then you'd probably seek resolution through the courts as needed.

> Why would you want to make house deeds easy to hack?

It's very hard to steal NFTs from a hardware wallet with clawback support. Good luck!

> Okay, why bother with that particular blockchain standard then, and not the hypothetical FOSS software for hosting a property deed database? Because then you have the same benefits, but also don't need the blockchain?

Because a FOSS property deed database could be censored and cannot be independently verified outside of the governing body easily. I would expect the uptime to be slower. It would also become a central point of failure for all property deeds and would need to protect against DDoS attacks.

> Absolutely. And this is one of the methods that is used to do just that. I'm not talking about a theoretical security issue here, this is a weakness that has been leveraged in the real world for a long time.

Oh really? Care to share some examples of SHA-256 and SHA-3 collisions?

The purpose of having property deeds represented as NFTs on a blockchain is not to eliminate the need for a governing body, but to make the ownership transparent, trivially verifiable, and easy to transfer. I've outlined this many times in this thread at this point. In the event, that a valid copy of off-chain data could not be recovered, then the governing body could use a longer and more manual process to identify the rightful owner and mint a new NFT.

It is extremely hard to break cryptographic hash functions to the point it is considered impossible. If you could do that, then you could be breaking into all sorts of systems. Cryptographic one-way hash functions are actually the preferred way to secure passwords.

> You claimed it as a benefit! There's no reason that NFTs for property deeds would: Be standardised, or be on the same chain. That's more an application level concern, so please take that point back.

There's different standard levels right? I'm talking about when you build a property deed NFT you'd have to adhere to the on-chain standard for how NFTs are created on that particular blockchain. Then once those NFTs existed other people could integrate them. If you want the property deeds to have a set of standard specifications of how they deal with particular situations that might arise through inheritance, multiple parties, lost keys, etc. then that would be an application level specification.

> Also, still no one is asking for cryptographic proof of property ownership, even if you make it a single button push. No one needs it now, what does it add? Why is what we have now in need of cryptographic verification? Crypto boosters want it because they're selling it, directly or indirectly. You have not answered this question.

I'm asking for it and I'm sure others would like to have it to. :) Having cryptographic verification provides an ability to quickly prove ownership from an application and then that verification could unlock certain home owner benefits (e.g. HELOCs)

> That's just centralized in a different form. Or more precisely - not decentralized.

How many copies of the data in different locations do you need to be considered decentralized? In fact, I'd argue you just care about having enough copies of the off-chain data that you feel well insulated from data loss, so I'm not sure that the off-chain data needs to actually be decentralized. The goal is to have the ownership proof (on-chain NFT) be as decentralized and easily auditable as possible.

> Sure, some app can interact with centralised DB holding all actual information like deeds or music or whatever. Why do you need NFTs for that? Centralised BD must me utilised to track ownership of actual data or items by real people and it won't work any other way due to the IP rights and complex ownership agreements. NFTs are useless and impotent for this task.

I feel like many of these conversations in this thread are focused on the current state of blockchain adoption today. I don't know of any government today that has adopted a blockchain to track property records at scale, but I do think that will probably come eventually. As soon as that happens, then you can have rules and regulations drafted around all these tertiary concerns including IP rights and complex ownership rights, potentially some of those codified in on-chain contracts, but some would remain as processes for the government or the courts. Putting property deeds in an NFT on a blockchain does not solve all problems that arise with property ownership, but it could improve the record keeping process in some areas.