139 karma · joined June 24, 2011
What are the chances that collapse is a sudden event vs a cascading deterioration event?
If there were a systemic collapse breaking governments, knocking off power and telecom networks etc, gold would be immediately most valuable. But more quickly than fiat, bitcoin would be useful.
Power and telecom systems are more resilient to systemic collapse (& have more bouncebackability) than a functioning government and its currency. Some semblance of critical systems would come online whether put up by government, armies, warlords, cooperatives etc (See Somalia as an example). When those systems are online, bitcoin can be sent and received.
In short: in terms of usability: Fiat > Bitcoin > Gold in terms of resilience: Gold > Bitcoin > Fiat
Am I missing anything here?
That said, it's quite possible that the article mistook 'hit rate' for 'conversion rate'. That would explain why snooping for imps "near bank branches" would make sense. Those customers may be primed for the ad/can convert sooner.
A second point. There is a design challenge here too. How much open is too open? How many cubicles is too closed?
I know little about GPU compilers though. What are the key factors to make this successful?
Details: - Using latest iOS
- All notifications are off in iPhone's settings
- Every time I switch to the app, a full page message reminds me to turn on notifications (even just swiping to Control Center reproduces the full page message. Aggressive!)
- In the Facebook messenger settings, there are only 2 options: to "Turn off until 8:00am" or "Turn off for 1h".
If this is intentional (or rather if it persists past today), Facebook just lost the last stronghold they had on me. I use them for nothing but messaging. And the one caveat I have for using them is that I only check in when the thought occurs to me not as I'm pinged.
If intentional (speculation coming), I bet they've run the engagement #s to show it makes sense. But this is a bad principle that is pretty restrictive for a company at their scale. They've pretty much increased the cost of cognitive cost of using their app.
The facebook messenger user in me is hoping this is a feature that times out after the first day of installs. Otherwise goodbye Zuck.
I rationalize the renunciation of social media by remembering that I'm looking to build something incredibly innovative. And to build something incredibly innovative, it helps to (first) step away from the crowd, (second) find a boon, and (third) bring it back.
I think you can worry about the crowd after the first 2. At least then you have direction amidst the chaos.
As humans, we plan into the future. However, our planning timeframes are limited by how far into the future we can imagine. Further, our ability to imagine the future depends on how likely we believe that future to be.
In the West where life is safe and prosperous, planning/imagining 20-30 years out is reasonable. In all likelihood, you will live that long. However, in war-torn African countries, the planning timeframe is much shorter for the people. If one faction can gain an advantage that gives them dominance over another faction for the next 2 years, they'll view that as ok. They do so because they can't actually think further than that. The past has taught them not to. This leads to awful decisions in a 10-yr frame. And so they stay trapped in a shitty situation.
I think the actionable question here is "How can an (x+n) year future be imagined?" where x is the current imagined future whether it be a day, month or year and n is any additional time.
Sadly, this question is philosophical until the basic needs of survival are met.
Its architecture applied to any data store (books, websites, articles, thoughts, poems, art, jokes), with easy storage, easy tagging and easy retrieval, makes for an excellent thinking tool.
I'm a fan.
It is just the name of the thing that has changed, not the thing itself.
One must put as little order as possible to reach their goal. Too much order and you are prematurely optimizing the solution. Too little order and you don't have enough discipline to get to the solution in the first place.
Balance the opposites of order and disorder.
For example, instead of renovating your restaurant and reopening it with your personal conviction that it is now better, why not test different redesigns before investing.
I'd call it teaching the scientific method.
The high demand for education due to complete institutional failures in the developing world and the reduced cost of learning and coordination that the Internet provides will make students there extremely receptive to new ways of learning as soon as it becomes affordable. Sufficient penetration of the mobile phone and the tablet computer in these populations will be the vehicle for this change. I wonder if this penetration could put some of these developing countries in a position to leapfrog old ways of learning and ramp up both enthusiasm around learning and skill acquisition.
The reason that point is important is because regardless of the value derived by the end user, it is the ability to extract value that counts for the producer. And when smell cannot be rationed, or music supply cannot be controlled, you change your model.
A better strategy would be to point out the progress (even if false) that someone is making in living a better life (less TV for example). If you can successfully plant that identity seed in their head, they will feel empowered to continue to cut back. The ego is a funny construct.