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I remember being a kid (8 or 9) and sitting down with my friend at his house with his parents and going through all our candy together to check for danger signs. Sure enough, there was a single-wrapped Reese's peanut-butter cup with a hole in the wrapper, and we opened it up and found a sewing needle stuck inside the peanut-butter cup. (I don't think I'm making this up, but memories being what they are, this might have been a story that was told to me. I do remember vividly the breaking of the peanut-butter cup into two pieces and the needle falling on the table, though, so I'm inclined to believe the memory.)

This would have been in the late 1980s. So, in my case, the fear did not come from the media, but from a personal experience.

So rather than saying, "this never happens, it's just a myth", we should be saying, "this can happen, and let's take steps to protect ourselves".

Anyone remember the Tylenol Poisonings[0]? That was real, inspired copycats, and led to tamper-resistant and tamper-evident packaging. Tragic, but at least we learned from the tragedy.

While it's true that not everyone is out to get you, at the same time it's foolish to think that no-one is out to get you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders

Room 237 has some compelling evidence pointing to what might have become of Stanley. Anyway, connecting with great souls through their works is one treasure this baleful world of ours can still offer. Thanks for posting this.

I didn't downvote you, but my best guess to why you're being downvoted is that HN skews capitalist, and confusing the market with politics is, in the capitalist p.o.v., how the game is in fact played.

Myself, I don't think that you can untangle (even in your mind) the mess that is the market (financial system, really) from the mess that is the government. They're called "voting dollars" for a reason.

I prefer to just refer to the whole big mess as "The System".

As for downvotes, I don't think they add any value to the site except to encourage groupthink, and you're better off ignoring them. Or take them as a hint that you might be on to something! :)

> There is an unfortunate viewpoint that decentralisation is just always a "good thing".

Well, to put cryptocurrency in its historical context, the design-decision to make the architecture of the internet(/darpanet) decentralized was because of the very real and persistent possibility of global thermonuclear war. If you want your computer networks to stay up after NY, DC and SF have all been wiped off the map, decentralization is fairly key.

So I would say yeah, the world has changed, and decentralization is now always a good thing. It's not just "crypto people", it's "people"[0] carrying on in "software"[1] what is already a decades-old trend in computer networking.

[0,1] scare quotes because people and software are both scary

But you can't actually take someone's humanity with a word. That's hyperbole. Knife-point robbery is not.

"You cannot, sir, take from me anything that will not more willingly part withal – except my life, except my life, except my life." -- William Shakespeare

Yes! sign me up. :)

It is a neat trick! Somehow those pieces of metal are storing a magnetic field like a permanent magnet, but release their "charge" when the field is broken.

There's another interesting effect where an electric charge can be pulled from that set-up. Lasersaber demonstrates that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ssUTRbRRs

I certainly can't explain it, and I don't think we have an adequate theory that does explain it (yet).

>> because our current theories already account for ALL of the phenomena that are easily accessible here on earth.

I'm not so sure of this. Have you heard of Edward Leedskalnin, or his "Perpetual Motion Holder"? The textbooks that I have discussing magnetism do not explain this effect, which you can see an example of here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWSAcMoxITw

If you can explain this effect with our "current theories", I would love to hear it!

ha ha. you said "customers".

Food for thought: it could be that the already-picked "low-lying fruit" is responsible for new discoveries being harder to make. Once you get into a certain mode of thinking, or come to view the world a certain way, it becomes harder to see the world as operating any differently.

So, maybe it's not so much that we have stuff "figured out", as it is that we have mental models that, while they work well enough to make certain predictions, also constrain our thinking in terms of what phenomena are possible. The "EM drive" controversy is one example of this tension.

These examples you have are insightful, and they remind me of the saying, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Zealots want the "perfect", and Moderates want the "good."

It does seem to me that you are working with a strong bias against environmentalists, though, and maybe it's because you don't consider yourself one?

I've been thinking a lot about identity, and how a lot of our interpersonal issues comes down to whether or not we see our fellow humans as "same" or "different". ... and I'm starting to understand that the important thing is to evaluate ideas on their own merits, and pay less and less attention to the individual putting forth the idea.

We're already working with a lot of crummy ideas that are in full effect (long dead the individuals having put forth those ideas), and now we have adherents of those ideas roaming about the world quite zealously.

But I don't blame the environmentalist for being an extremist. I think they rightly perceive the situation they find themselves in to be an extreme one. I'm glad they get to tell us about it, and happy when they are able to limit humanity's encroachment on a diminishing wilderness.

Apologies for the glibness, but it sounds like you're a zealot for moderation?

I really appreciate this screed. You're opinions here are obviously warranted. I'm wondering, though, do you have any examples of folks who do have "actually workable plans"? It seems to me that you've set a pretty high bar for what those types of plans are, and so I would very much like to know if you can reference any person or group who has met that bar. Thanks.

(should be) Required reading for anyone working on MUDs, or their MMORPG descendants, or any kind of online community, really. Part of me wants to relate it to the Therac-25 incident... only this episode took place in the mental realm instead of the physical realm.

Well, it's misleading now. It wasn't misleading when it was published.

It sounds like you do agree that life is unfair, though. At least, you call it a "fact". I think it is a fact, as well, because "fairness" is an ideal that we strive towards, and ideals never exist in reality. I don't disagree with you that we should strive for better conditions.

In the case of chuckdries being financially punished by a swath of users choosing to install AdNauseam or similar plugins, I think we might agree that it isn't fair for his particular case, but it is fair in the aggregate, or more general case, due to the reprehensible behavior of "big ad networks", which created the impetus for the development of these types of plugins in the first place.

I'll admit to being in a negative mood, which is why my mind went immediately to gym class. :( I just don't see a sensible way out of this situation that will both castigate the bad actors in the advertising space, while simultaneously allowing for these small "home-grown" ad networks to escape the castigation.

We've got to find a better way of supporting websites than selling out our visitors, though. Some revenue models that worked for traditional print simply won't work for the web. I think the sooner we find that out and adapt our models, the better off we'll all be.

When I was in a high school physical education class, if one member of our class wasn't ready (changed into p.e. clothes and standing in a line) 5 minutes after the bell rang, then the whole class had to do ten push-ups. I remember thinking how unfair it was for the whole class to be punished for the actions of one individual. But I'm sure the P.E. teacher's response to any mention of unfairness would have been something like, "Tough. Life is unfair." And I completely agree with that.

You forgot basic humanity.

Well, I guess it depends on your definition of "open". There is such a thing as an "open secret". And I think we all know which side of the fence Trump is on.

You're getting warmer.

Apparently you haven't seen Trump.

I find your comment extremely insightful, especially the second paragraph. So thanks for that.

It makes me wonder if we could bring back more "trust in the system" by putting a cap on the price of litigation, or using "public prosecutors" the same way we use "public defenders".

My understanding of the system is that poor folks only get "public defenders" when they are arrested and can't afford a lawyer, but apart from the government bringing cases against private individuals (eg, "the people vs larry flint"), we don't see poor private individuals bringing cases against the government using "public prosecutors" when they can't afford an attorney. Instead, we see things like the EFF, the NAACP, and the ACLU, who all have to raise large sums of money to pay for private (as far as I'm aware) attorneys to bring cases to court.

It seems that the bias in the system is like a grain of wood that runs from rich to poor, where poor is against the grain.

So yeah, I do assume that the system is a corrupt duck, because it looks, walks and talks like a corrupt duck.

And yet Satoshi Nakamoto still has not been doxxed.

>>The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies.

uh... citation needed?

You need to think it through. Imagine the worst case scenario, that you do all the hard work, and then someone really does come along and gain all the benefits. Then what happens? You will still get the experience from doing the hard work, if not the money or recognition. The only thing that matters when it comes to getting things done is experience. Fame and fortune come later, if at all. Eventually, with enough experience, you will be so good that it will be impossible for anyone else to take credit for your work, even if that isn't true now. Have faith in yourself and your future.

It's a colloquialism at this point. Nature also abhors a vacuum, goes toe to toe with Nurture, and is a mother herself.

You might have misread or misinterpreted the opening paragraph. I don't see where the author classifies the trace of a matrix as trivia, though she does refer to some linear algebra concepts as "basic".

seriously

I think we're finding out that the coins that Coinbase's customers believe they hold don't actually belong to those customers. It looks like they belong to Coinbase, who is deciding what to do with them. You gotta read the fine print.

We've known this for quite some time:

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." --- George Orwell, 1984