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I read a great comment once in response to a post about parental advice - roughly:

"When I was young, my father said to me, 'Son, don't be an asshole.' Since then, before doing anything, I ask myself, 'Would an asshole do this?' And if they would, I don't do it."

> You're also talking about systems 20,000x larger than what The DAO contract was [1].

It sounds like the contract was underspecified.

In my experience, the basic core logic of a system's usually a pretty small part of the overall codebase - the edge cases and error handling tend to be the bulk of the code.

This tends to be the case in legal contracts, too - 100 pages of boilerplate to make sure the two pages of contract are air-tight.

From the look of things around here, your average tech company ain't much better.

> If you work in tech you know more than the average wall street trader about tech companies especially the one you work at.

I have never met a group of people less able to correctly assess a firm's proper value or more capable of self-delusion than the engineers working for that firm.

> Those free units would translate into a sizeable discount for their paying retail customers

I doubt it. Initial runs are always more expensive because you're paying for the initial tooling and investment, not necessarily because of the actual raw price of the unit. Depending on minimum size commitments and the like with the manufacturers, the 7k "free" units may even be netting a discount on the remaining unit costs.

Great, thanks for the info - I'll check into those.

Thought ethereum was basically the BTC protocol under the hood?

Can you point me to some of the consensus protocol work? That's always seemed to be the more interesting aspect of BTC to me, but the other requirements of the currency have made that harder than just the smart contracts alone.

Autoimmune disorders are a large category - there's also some evidence that autism-spectrum disorders are caused by autoimmune responses in the mother.

They're cheap enough that my first thought was to pick up a couple and figure out what I'd do with them later, but the disadvantage here is that they're older boxes, which means they're going to be energy hogs (for the performance point, at least).

That's what makes the eco pitch interesting - they're reducing e-waste, which is good, but energy efficiency on newer boxes (especially if you just need minimal performance) is worlds better than what these are offering. On the one hand, the recycling is great, but on the other hand, it's like putting a 1953 Chevy back on the road - sure, we didn't have to manufacture another one, but it still might not be the best thing for the environment.

People getting robbed tend to prefer losing their wallet to getting shot. Doesn't mean those are the options they'd prefer to choose between.

We're a bit cynical here because we tend to make frivolous stuff and market it as life-changing, but conveniences can actually add up for people in need. The problem with poverty, as the article notes, is that it's only partially about money - along with a scarcity of money comes a scarcity of time, a scarcity of information, and a scarcity of opportunity. If you can give someone below the poverty line more time or information, it may not change their life, but it can allow space for things that do.