hoggle

The one thing I like so much about Brennan's writing is the focus on win-win and quality, professional attributes I was very fond of already but "Double Your Freelancing Rate" helped me tremendously to actually implement the measures needed and to internalize what it means to become the consulter I wanted to become - so I guess I second those recommendations :)

Next goal, recurring revenue!

Yes, Redcar is pretty cool! This is an inspiring talk on how to hack on it - even though I'm still mostly using vim/sublime it was pretty eye opening to me, rubies all the way down:

Crafting iOS Dev Tools in Redcar - Delisa Mason (#inspect 2013)

https://vimeo.com/69745309

I'm a loyal unix guy but as a millenial without much actual hands-on experience with VMS I always love to hear anecdotes like that :) The first time I read about it was in Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg where it seemed as if there was constant competition between UNIX/VMS folks over which was the more sophisticated/elegant operating system - mostly good hearted competition of a more civilized age of course ;) I vividly remember the one encounter I had with it's weird shell where I had to re-configure an application running on an Alpha machine which had a consecutive uptime of something like 12 years...

One of humanity's biggest enemies to progress are "Not invented here" and the cult of youth. It's often better to start with a blank slate ("being ignorant") because amongst other things like simply having a different perspective (worth 100 IQ points ~Alan Key) it helps with actually starting to build something. Eventually though we should still be aware of what we as a collective have learned already.

To be fair I think Github folks should know their history so this project might be one of the exceptions - looking forward to it! <3

Wow, this really made my evening :)

I just donated two hours worth of my consulting time for two fellow human beings in need somewhere else in the world and it will have serious impact. I'm in total bliss <3 nothing feels like helping others - you should try donating!

The only thing I would like to see watsi doing is to offer donations with bitcoin! Integration with bitpay is really easy too. If watsi is rails based (seems so) they would have support for bitpay out of the box with active merchant!

Go spread some love folks, it feels great!

http://watsi.org

Edit:

https://bitpay.com (they offer immediate conversion to local currencies too!)

https://github.com/Shopify/active_merchant/tree/13e0ab52727b...

Listening to Andreas, it sounds more like a feature than a bug and that's also why it hasn't been "fixed" since 2011 - organizations introducing blockchain technology into their stacks should know about that and develop work-arounds:

https://soundcloud.com/mindtomatter/e85-mtgox-and-malleabili...

Unfortunately things usually don't change on their own, it's actually good that this happened. The client-side key-management solutions that Andreas mentioned in the last paragraph of his statement are a testament to that.

Evolution in nature is brutal, I can understand that you don't want to be part of that process.

Would be especially cool if it supported input type=file as well :)

I wonder if they could offer a less accurate version of this test over the internet (touch displays, graphic tablets).

Did they just break the internet?

Cool, I didn't know about that documentary! Perfect Saturday evening cinema, thanks!

The pre 90s exuberance for computing in general keeps me going to this day.

I tremendously enjoyed Ian McNaught-Davis appearances on "The Computer Programme" - the "Computer Chronicles" are also very much worth watching by the way:

https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles

https://archive.org/details/computer-programme

Douglas Crockford often says that most of us don't have a sense of history really, that's a shame if you ask me.

https://archive.org/donate/index.php (they take bitcoin as well)

Video of the presentation at the Quantified Self Show & Tell NY:

Getting Outdoors, Taking Photos, and Collecting Data Along the Way https://vimeo.com/85797403

Austr.* markov chain? Kangaroo ebücher? ;)

Raunzt scho wie a echter Wiener! :)

Like many typical Austrians/Viennese I've got a love/hate relationship with Austria/Vienna.

On the one hand it's very gemütlich (cosy/comfy -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemütlichkeit) to live here but on the other hand it can be quite boring as even very young people often act like they are already retired. I believe there aren't many places in the world where you enjoy as much actual freedom as you do in Austria but people mostly don't make much use of it, good luck with getting people engaged in anything interesting (maybe life here is already too comfortable).

Not having the cultural "baggage" of having gotten pampered your whole life, Vienna could very well be the ideal place to be as you might be able to actually enjoy its benefits.

You should definitely come and visit, there is tons of stuff to see - it's somewhat of a cultural Disney Land with an amazing history. While doing so you could dip your toes into what it would mean to live here, there are quite some Americans around who really like it and have been living here for many years.

As a quacking/ducking web developer, results often are more relevant than with google these days. If I'm not happy with what I find through duckduckgo I just add a quick !g and skim the google results - best of both worlds.

Cash is also great for when you want to lose that debt addiction. A good practice is to approximate your cash needs for a week and withdraw the according amount. If you really spend everything before the week is over, you will feel it. I did this 5 years ago and I've never been in debt since.

Cash == Freedom

I often really like long sentences, also when reading. This constant trend towards conformance is one of the more annoying trends of our times.

Isn't it the case with Bitcoin that the official implementation amounts to its specification? Maybe implementing the protocol themselves was a good idea from a theoretical standpoint but in reality amounts to over-engineering? I certainly don't know enough about this stuff so I could be naive of course.

Bitcoin isn't only about transferring money though. It's also a decentralized system for minting money, potentially rendering obsolete central banking.

Out of Satoshi Nakamoto's paper:

By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them.

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Democrati[z|s]ation to democrati[z|s]e:

• make (something) accessible to everyone: mass production has not democratized fashion.

Finance:

the management of large amounts of money, especially by governments or large companies: [ as modifier ] : the firm's finance department.

• monetary support for an enterprise: the clearing banks are important sources of finance.

• (finances) the monetary resources and affairs of a state, organization, or person: the club's finances are stretched to the limit.

Defintions, Oxford Dictionary.

I don't see how those two terms in connection with a decentralized system for issuing and controlling money are in any way at odds with comparing them to a decentralized system for communication. You need to elaborate more on what you want to say here.

The problem with "documentaries" is that they tend to be really simplistic these days with a lot of bad music (emotions!) and manipulative editing. As you stated yourself things often go so wrong that it's probably not worth the hassle of auditing.

I would very much prefer to see Notch have all his time & energy invested in himself because with that we might see 0x10c one day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0x10c

Edit: This article puts things into perspective, we should probably all be less opinionated. How many of us know about the creative struggle after success?

http://mikebithell.tumblr.com/post/76030689478/on-success

I'm also thankful for non existing information on non existing technologies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin#Uses

https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Open-Transactions-old/wiki...

True we aren't at Apple II level, open hardware would be great but as I said the whole culture surrounding it as well as the documentation which exists is really good. It's still a very cool project which succeed to get this ball rolling, obviously there is room for improvement.

Could it be that you were exited about fiddling with rpi yourself? I don't have children but I guess it's difficult to deliberately not help them (too much) solving problems which are inherently interesting to you (grumpy neckbeardism can't hide that fact, you obviously still care about this).

I think rpi (culture/ecosystem) is still absolutely the best thing, it's literally the perfect AppleII/C64 for today. Today is also more complex and more stuff is possible but there is also Unix which at least tries to be simple.

I've given one of my rpis to my 13 year old neighbour and he is regularly meddling with it. It's likely that he is also constantly failing but that's what is needed in order to learn, it certainly was the case for me when I started (I'm still failing after many years, that's a reality).

Where you could make a difference is just by saying you'll be there to answer some questions ... now and then. Encouragement and enthusiasm!

There seems to be an unfounded fear of gastroscopy here in Austria so people often choose to get fluoroscopy during barium swallows (euphemistically called "stomach x-ray") for check-up on common issues like gastritis, ulcers, etc.

It always boggles the mind how doctors will habitually do fluoroscopy first (approx. 6mSv per session) when gastroscopy as a diagnostic tool is often 100% as effective while being mostly harmless and offering the option for a small biopsy for further diagnosis.

I've had gastroscopy multiple times myself, it's really no big deal and doesn't warrant getting a (general) anesthesia in my opinion but YMMV.

Fred Wilson is right: "Regulate at the edges, but don't regulate the system itself"

To be fair, Youtube could have been so much more. For example they recently removed the video response feature while claiming the click-through rate was abysmal - it probably was because the focus of Youtube is more like "Newtube". TV now means on demand and broadcast via internet/web, simple and boring as that.

The price seems quite low, goes to show how bad most technologists are at bargaining.

Oh my I love this, open source hardware is the future.

Come to think of how Red Hat is doing great even though they are an open source company. Why can't this work for hardware as well?