rojeee

Common units _do_ have a claim on the bank balance of a company in the case it winds up. It’s just that employees, bond holders and preference share holders get paid first.

Not a crazy idea! I think this is the only decentralised system that can work long term. I’ve spent a long time thinking about it. Figuring out how to manage reputation is key, which you allude to with your comment about needing a page rank type algorithm.

I’m not vaccinated. 37 years old.

I had COVID a couple of weeks ago. I’m in London. Was like a mild cold for me. I track my resting HR, HRV, body temp and whatnot via Oura ring and the ring didn’t even register any meaningful increase in resting HR or decrease in HRV. I like to think I’m pretty fit (run 40km per week) and healthy (no mineral or vitamin deficiencies). One strange symptom still remains where I feel slightly hungover when I wake up (I never drink enough to get hungover these days) but it clears soon after waking. Could be unrelated.

I worked for a blockchain company for 5 years and recently quit because I finally realised blockchain has no feasible real world uses.

What typically happens is that a company suggests they want blockchain to solve some problem, like trade reconciliations for example and gets together a groups of likeminded partners. After lots of deliberation they then build some blockchain thing. However it turns out that the blockchain solution is more expensive (hardware and devs), more difficult to understand (see upgrades comment below) and generally worse in most regards compared to a centralised solution.

Furthermore, there are difficult technical problems to overcome like versioning (eg flag days vs rolling upgrades, backward compatibility of protocol upgrades) which there are no good compromises to. Eg company A wants to upgrade but B doesn’t, so no one can upgrade. Because of this you can’t really use a single network so you need a federation of networks and this gets really complicated.

The other issue is around systems of record. Companies - of sufficient size - by law need to maintain financial and operation records and of course they manage the golden source for these records. Conventional wisdom is that blockchain can be the new golden source but it doesn’t work like that because what’s ends up needing to happen is that all the participants end up reconciling what’s in the blockchain to their own systems! The blockchain becomes another system! They need to do this because the blockchain can’t contain any private/enriched data for a particular company (eg company A reports using UK GAAP and company B reports using IFRS).

Some companies struggle on with the blockchain because there is a true believer sponsoring the project. They waste a lot of effort. I’ve seen companies Chuck away tens of millions and have nothing to show for it. Most companies end up ditching the blockchain and build a centralised solution using something like a clearing house model where all participants are owners and get a proportionate say on governance for the centralised entity.

Don’t get me wrong… There are uses for blockchain but they are typically infeasible to implement because the costs outweigh the benefits.

I was doing blockchain for 10 years before I gave up. I was really enthusiastic about it before but now I know that the enterprise space won’t go anywhere and the permissionless/web3 space will likely get regulated out of existence in due course.

I have a 5 week old son. I'm lucky enough to be able to quit my job to help mum look after him because we don't have any family nearby to help. It's still a struggle with both of us doing it full-time! I have no idea how single mothers cope. I've no idea how people can work in the early months of parenting a child. I'm in the UK and had 2 weeks parternity leave - it's really not enough!

Certainly happy to have a conversation about it. I'll dig up my notes and I have a whole bunch of research papers you might find interesting. Feel free to drop me an email: rojw at pm dot me.

I've found that talking about "credit money" explicity is problematic because most people - especially in the crypto world - don't understand what money really is. They believe it is, or should be, some kind of token with "intrinsic" value. But history suggests otherwise becuase the vast majority of monies were credit instruments and the system we have today is a credit based system, it's just heavily centralised around central banks. I believe that one could make a better system by liberalising who can create credit. The problem ultimately boils down to reputation scoring and tracking.

I'm not saying that "intrinsic value" coins such as gold coins were not used. Of course, they were! Particularly in situations where relationships were ephemeral or not long lasting so maintianing a credit ledger wasn't possible. However, now we have the technology to maintain a credit ledger for the whole World so instinsic value tokens/coins are not necessary anymore. In that light, I believe the current iteration of crypto really isn't very useful for anything other than facilitating a big casino.

In the meantime, have a read of this great paper [1] by a British Diplomant called Alfred Mitchell-Innes. He wrote two papers and this is the first one and I think it's the best paper on "what is money". Enjoy!

[1] https://www.community-exchange.org/docs/what%20is%20money.ht...

You should read about the "new monetary economics" and the "BFH payment system" when BFH stands for (Fischer) Black, (Robert) Hall, (Eugene) Fama - the economists who conceived the original idea. This paper is a decent review: https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/cato/v32i3/f_00261...

I too would like to see a peer to peer IOU based system where anyone can issue credits. It doesn't necessarily have to be built "on top of bitcoin" though. Indeed, you can have credit money systems that don't require an explicit settlement currency. I did a tonne of research into this and wrote a bit of code but sadly not many people seem to be interested in credit money systems, instead favouring what crypto is currently. I guess the reason why is that credit based systems don't have the feature whereby issued credits can increase in value far excess of their nominal value. Sad because I think a P2P credit money system would add real value to the World.

That's good you've observed the same effects and definitely agree that anaerobic training improves fitness and teh associated markers over time. When in my teens I did a lot of running but back then I didn't have a HR monitor and probably most of my training was anaerobic and still managed to improve well over the years. I suspect I was taking on high levels of stress which ultimately led me to quit running when I started university.

Interesting that you mention sleep HRV. I use the Oura ring and have observed that my sleep HRV is super super low at the moment, like 15/20ms but when I check it in the morning with my polar H10 strap then it will usually come out between 60-80ms. Tried to figure out what causes it but not had any luck so far. I don't think I'm over-training or have any other issues.

I follow Phil Maffetone's training methodology [1], which has worked quite well for me. So currently, 80% of my training by distance/time is between 135bpm and 145bpm. The training is mostly steady runs between 7km to 25km. The remaining 20% is a mixture of progression runs, speed training, and intervals.

Initially, for the first 6 months of training, all my training was below 145 bpm and was quite slow at 6min/km but now I can do 4.30min/km at 140bpm and I'm still getting faster!

Cheers

[1] https://philmaffetone.com/method/

The value is not embedded in the ledger. Miners need to keep mining for all of eternity to maintain the security of the ledger. The featured article explains this point quite well. Ask yourself what would happen if miners stop mining?

Thank-you for this.

Thanks, very interestering to hear about your experience.

It's a good question that I don't really know the answer to but I can offer some experience. I do a lot of running and 80% of my training is below the aerobic threshold, with 20% above (so anaerobic). After aerobic sessions you recover quickly and can do them day in day out for prolonged periods of time with no increase in chronic stress. E.g. running 100km/week. Effects are higher HRV, lower cortisol and lower resting heart rate. Anerobic workouts, on the otherhand (including any weights sessions I do), need to be done sparingly. The day after a hard workout your HRV will be lower, resting heart rate will be higher, cortisol will be higher. Too many anerobic sessions in a row and you'll start getting into over-training syndrome territory, so you really need to be careful! So I guess the TL;DR is the only way anerobic exercise decreases stress/cortisol is by not doing it or doing it sparingly. E.g. It is my opinion that people who only lift weights are probably unhealthy because they have consistently high levels of chronic stress.

That's interesting. Is there a paper I can read? Quite interested in this stuff. Cheers

More aerobic exercise, less anerobic exercise, more meditation, etc.

That's a good point. There's also a bunch of other confounding factors which affect sleep. E.g. circadian rhythm, variance of sleep/wake times, how physically tired you are, how much recent REM/deep and whether there is a deficit, how stressed you are, screen usage before bed, eating close to bed time, exercise close to bedtime, etc... Maybe the Vitamin D3 taken close to bedtime is enough to tip some people over the edge to some kind of insomnia, given the presence of other melatonin inhibitors.

Apparently D3 inhibits production of melatonin. Can't remember where I read this so not a hugely useful comment but I promise I didn't just make it up! Anecodtally, I've also experienced similar issues taking 1000 IU D3 before bed and having trouble sleeping. I moved the dose to the morning and Boom!, good sleep.

Edit: Here is the study. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23665342/ - only a single study but still interesting

Not that I'm an expert in sleep but I would recommend assessing your cortisol levels - you can do a blood test and I think there are also saliva tests - if you are regularly waking up early. I'd also recommend reflecting on whether there are any chronic stressors in your life - sometimes these things affect you for so long you almost become unaware of them!

I guess you alrready know this but 11000 IU is a massive dose of D3 and probably isn't healthy long term.

I lived in China for a year and vouch for this type of behaviour. It’s just considered normal in China. The really odd thing is that when you call them out on it, they are super polite. Eg they will always try to give foreigners fake money but after a while you can spot the fakes “zhe shi jia de!!”, you say (This is fake!) and they apologise and give you a real one. At the same time, you earn respect from them. It’s just all very odd but you get used to it. Whilst I enjoyed living in China, I don’t want to ever go back.

Yes, to lose weight, one must burn more than they eat. That’s not in dispute! I’m also not saying you only need to run in aerobic zone to lose weight. My point was that, people who go for a run at a 160bpm+ HR are not doing themselves a favour because:

1) it stresses the body too much which releases cortisol and other hormones which don’t play well with weight loss 2) uses only the anaerobic system, so burns sugar, not fat 3) burning of sugar makes the body crave more sugar and refined carbs making it harder to eat healthier

They would be better off running at a slower pace for weight loss and eating a diet mostly comprising fat and protein (whilst keep in calories less then out calories). If you build up the aerobic system well, you’ll be super healthy, fit and find it difficult to put on weight!!

People who say running is too hard are not doing it right. Running is easy when doing it below aerobic threshold. We are literally designed to be able to run long distances. Your body has enough fat stores to run for tens of hours (providing you don’t deplete your glycogen stores!)

It’s important to note that all running (or similar exercise) is not created equal. If you are over weight and you start running to lose weight it probably won’t work because your heart rate will likely hit the roof when you start jogging and thus you will be using the anaerobic system - burning sugar. This is the opposite of what you want to be doing. Instead, unhealthy people who need to lose weight should firstly get a HR monitor and only exercise below their aerobic threshold. This burns fat which is what they need to do! If they continue doing this, they’ll be able to move faster at the same HR and also improve their fat burning capabilities. This is how they will lose weight. It will take a lot of time and patience because initially they won’t be able to run because the HR goes too high.

Those who start running with high heart rates likely won’t see any weight loss and furthermore, the sugar burning of the anaerobic system will guide you towards eating more carbs and sugars.

I’m not an expert by any means but weight lifting is the opposite of what you need to do to lose weight as it always uses the anaerobic system.

That was my point. Physical bills are not debt - everything else is!

Update for clarification - initial response was a bit flippant and not very well considered... Technically phyisical bills ARE debt (they are a liability of the central bank, after all) but they don't _behave_ like debt because they yield 0%.

Debt is money. So, if we pay off all the debt then we won't have any money other than (probably) physical notes but even then there won't be any debt for the central bank to collateralise the physical notes - physical notes are a central bank liability and therefore must be balanced with an asset (debt, usually).

Debt isn't inherently bad. However, if mis-managed or abused then both creditors and debtors get into trouble.

I would imagine your HR would be higher running at the same speed if you are hanging. I'll do 4:40min/km at 145 bpm on a normal day but if I'm hungover I'll do the same speed 10bpm higher so just tipping into tempo HR zone.

I installed this on a bunch of school computers when I was 15 only to open and close the CD-ROM bays to freak out the teachers. This was the golden days of computing!

I think this is a bit unfair. I actually enjoy watching GB news. They touch subjects mainstream channels won’t and the debates are usually quite balanced. Furthermore, all of the presenters are transparent about which way they lean politically.

Great project! For anyone interested in the UK, there is a similar-ish (government funded) scheme called the "knowledge transfer partnership" [1], which connects academics and their research to businesses where it can be usefully applied.

[1] https://www.ktp-uk.org

All banks in the EU must offer a data and payments API. The APIs are standardised and must allow third party service providers - which themselves must be regulated - to be able to build services using these APIs. With a user's authorisation, said service provider can view transaction data or initiate a payment, for example. The specific regulation is called "payment services directive 2".