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dwgebleron Show HN: Break 5, the addictive, free 5 minute, daily word game

Thanks, I've seen you on the leaderboard almost daily, I'm glad you're enjoying it. I keep making improvements to the site and public user profiles with stats and rankings is something I'm considering, but I've gone for a more privacy focused approach for now because I think people are tired of their data being shared by default. Message boards I think are out of the question because I'm based in the UK and anything like that would instantly bring me in scope of the Online Safety Act.

dwgebleron Show HN: Break 5, the addictive, free 5 minute, daily word game

Try now. If it isn't working, please let me know if there's any specific error you're seeing

dwgebleron Multiple assertions are fine in a unit test

It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with multiple assertions in a unit test, it's that it's often a smell you're testing multiple behaviours in a single test - which is the thing you should avoid.

dwgebleron RejoinEU – About UK to rejoin EU possibility (aka Reverse Brexit)

It's not going to happen. I'd love the UK to rejoin the EU but there isn't the political will to do, either here or in the EU27. Remember too it only takes any one of the remaining constituent nations to veto any membership consideration - and that's only after a process of political wrangling which can take a decade or more. If international treaties are famous for anything, it's that they are formed at glacial pace.

I'm also doubtful the public will is there in the UK, either. I wish I could say with confidence that if we had another referendum tomorrow on whether to rejoin or stay out, rejoin would comfortably win but I can't. It's one of those things which seems so obvious if you support one side, you just can't see how the other can possibly take the position they do.

In respect of the site, it's not going to persuade anyone who was either in favour of Brexit or on the fence, is it? It's clearly designed to preach to the choir. But partisanship and ideological bubbles is how we ended up in such a mess in the first place. If any campaign is serious about rejoining, they need to accept two things, IMO - first, that it's a generational cause, not something which will be achieved within a few years, and second, that any campaign will only succeed by making concessions with the EU and the pro-Brexit faction among the public, by understanding them and by forming a new relationship. To call this task gargantuan is an understatement.

dwgebleron GitHub Copilot investigation

Okay, so just take "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software" out of MIT and call it the Do Whatever You Want Licence. You're not obliged as an author / copyright holder to impose restrictions on people using your work if you don't want to.

Whether Copilot is breaching MIT depends on what constitutes a substantial portion, which I am not qualified to rule on.

dwgebleron GitHub Copilot investigation

For me, as a (granted very minor) contributor to some open source, I couldn't care less about attribution. The ethos of open source is specifically about sharing stuff (probably for free) for the benefit of everyone, take a penny, leave a penny. It's more of an interesting question if Copilot is suggesting code verbatim from source-available rather than open source repos though.

dwgebleron GitHub Copilot investigation

You don't need to license it, you can just publish it with a declaration that as the author, you are releasing your work in to the public domain. However, in terms of licensing I believe MIT is the most permissive.

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

> Maybe most people were voting on this because they think it's right or wrong, not because it says anything new or interesting (I don't see that it does).

There's probably some truth in this, in respect of the voting. I certainly never expected it to have a brief stint top of the front page when I submitted it.

As the author I'd like to hope it was an interesting read, but I'll absolutely agree if you're much familiar with the crypto space, it's not new information or a new set of arguments. That doesn't matter to me because for me, for the position I take on this industry, I think what's important is for more people to speak out against crypto, to challenge the hype around blockchain and not be afraid to say it's simply not delivering.

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

> Nobody in Web3 is suggesting you hold all of your assets in a single private key that you physically carry to a restaurant

I'm not suggesting that, either. It's a metaphor. In the metaphor, we're not talking about crypto wallet keys, we're talking about actual, physical keys which open doors. But many people do of course keep all their crypto keys in a single, vulnerable location, or hand the contents of their wallets over to another wallet for some other purpose such as lending - typically this is on centralized exchanges or defi markets and platforms, for example Celsius - which I haven't checked in a while but can only assume is still in business, doing well and allowing customers to access their funds.

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

Hi, author here. So the first thing is as something meant to be an engaging (though casual) read and one which is targeted at an audience who might not all be tech buffs, of course there's some simplification, glossing over some things and yes, a bit of hyperbole here and there for dramatic effect. The opening paragraph, for example, obviously lays out a strong and provocative position to immediately engage the reader and establish the post's theme as a critical piece.

The other part is the article already comes in at something like 3800 words. I could write five, ten times that on the subject and still not be done. I have to pick and choose what I cover and in what detail.

The primary use case of cryptocurrencies (and in particular Bitcoin) today, when used directly as currency, as a means of purchase, is criminal activity. The article glossed over that there are other niche use cases where coins are used as currencies but they are very much a niche, particularly when weighed against the biggest use of crypto today which is simply as a form of something analogous to stock trading only without the regulation.

But this is almost a secondary point; the article is about "Web 3" hype, these points are relevant insofar as the thing which is really being challenged is this idea that crypto and blockchain will be the foundation of a major new era in the web.

I'll certainly take it as constructive feedback on my writing if that isn't clear enough. Thanks.

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

You raise a good point. As a sceptic of this space, I would counter the UX issue you mention - which is a huge hurdle for any larger scale adoption of blockchain - will realistically only be solved by billion-dollar enterprise involvement, which will inevitably mean centralization, which in turn means we might as well drop the blockchain part.

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

Should I just put a Paypal pay button?

Probably, yes. A lot of businesses big and small do this, and they're not in violation of any tax or other laws. Plus you get paid in actual money.

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

I am saying there's nothing (or very little) interesting or novel in blockchain, yes. I mean that's literally in the article.

a huge ecosystem built on what is in reality a simple data structure which is neither particularly novel nor interesting

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

Tbh I'm kind of happy for my VPS it's off the front page now.

dwgebleron Web 3.0 – The Great Con

I wrote it, it's just an opinion piece on my personal blog. No grift; what do you think I'm doing, selling the post as an NFT?