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teod

29 karma · joined January 27, 2013

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teod··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2021)
Heads for anyone thinking of applying: I took the half hour or so to fill out their application and was instantly denied. I suspect it was because I don't have a proper CompSci degree (I have a degree in Chemical Biology and have been working as a Software Developer for six or so years).
teod··on Tabletop Simulator
I took at little stab at it earlier this year and made a very basic POC using PhaserJS [https://github.com/te0d/web-tabletop]. You can see what the code does at [https://bored.blue/].

It has a hardcoded background and limited token options, but you can see it live update token positions between the users connected. I actually decided to take another look at it yesterday and I'd like to add some preset game options. And very importantly, add persistence (right now the websocket server keeps each table's state only in memory).

teod··on Learn Ethereum smart contract programming
Edit: Filecoin does mention smart contracts in its white paper.
teod··on Learn Ethereum smart contract programming
Filecoin doesn't have any smart contracts as far as I'm aware, so it's limited to use as a decentralized storage network. I believe it would be possible to build something very similar to Filecoin on the Ethereum platform. Storj (https://storj.io/) may be trying to do that.
teod··on Learn Ethereum smart contract programming
I believe there are times when it is favorable to "burn" ether or another cryptocurrency, i.e. lock up the money in an unowned account. For example, the decentralized market place OpenBazaar discusses proof-of-burn to establish a user's reputation (https://blog.openbazaar.org/proof-of-burn-and-reputation-ple...). Burning coins allows a user to show they are invested in their reputation on the platform, without being forced to pay money to a central party.
teod··on In praise of cash
Ah ok, I think that a 51% attack is what I was describing. I would update my comment, but it appears that I can no longer edit it.
teod··on In praise of cash
For those out of the loop, miners work together in pools to combine their mining power. With more mining power, the more likely it is for them to mine a block (of the blockchain) and divide its payout among members of the pool. Pools cause centralization of mining power. You can see a list of pools and the percentage of their mining power at [https://blockchain.info/pools].

Looking at the chart, you can see that the top 5 mining pools can collude in being a single entity to "control" the blockchain (I believe this is called a Sybil attack [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack]). Now keeping incentives in mind, the idea is that people using bitcoin have faith in the system. That gives bitcoins value. Miners get paid in bitcoin. If they were to manipulate the blockchain, that would most likely cause bitcoin's userbase to lose faith in the system and thus what the miners would be stealing would suddenly have little to no value.

I'm not positive, but I recall hearing that pools have been intentionally been made smaller to keep users' faith in the system. Perhaps the goal of these majority mining power is not to steal bitcoin but censor certain users? That may be a bit more complicated depending on the users' opinions on a case-by-case basis. Fun stuff :)

teod··on What’s Lurking in Your Showerhead
Gross stuff which is actually a collection of microorganisms. And reading further, there's the idea that our exposure to this gross stuff may be beneficial and one of the few ways we're still exposed to it. Or harmful.

Very interesting stuff in my opinion. Have studies like this been made more accessible due to cheaper sequencing?

teod··on The cypherpunk revolution
Steven Levy's "Crypto" [http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto] is a good read on this topic if you're looking for something more in-depth.
teod··on Bitcoin Sinks After Hackers Steal $65M from Exchange
Is it possible to verify that these coins are among the ones stolen?
teod··on Bitcoin Sinks After Hackers Steal $65M from Exchange
Couldn't find too much information on this, but I see that [https://support.gdax.com/customer/portal/articles/2436336] under "Is GDAX's ether hot wallet insured?" states "The majority of ether and bitcoin deposited to GDAX is held in highly secure cold storage." (GDAX is Coinbase's exchange platform) See also [https://www.coinbase.com/security].
teod··on Bitcoin Sinks After Hackers Steal $65M from Exchange
I suppose he could pose as the "winner" and claim ignorance, although I'm sure there's much better ways of laundering via a Mixing service [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mixing_service] or something similar.
teod··on What Makes Work Meaningful or Meaningless
Also, you can click on the little green arrow next to links on Google and click Cache to view the cached version. This "cache:" operator is pretty nifty though.
teod··on How to build server-less applications for Mist
As mentioned in the article, would that P2P solution be Swarm (http://swarm-gateways.net/bzz:/a600d48f01d5e6d07907d9d14db0f...)?
teod··on How to build server-less applications for Mist
I haven't played with this too much, but does Mist need a local copy of the entire blockchain? If so, I'm not sure these decentralized applications will be accessible to the average user. On the other hand, the application in the tutorial directly deals with Ether so the user may already have a fully validating node. Are decentralized apps created on Ethereum intended to always involve Ether? I suppose Ether is used to reward the miners for hosting the application?
teod··on Spiegelman's Monster
For those in NYC:

http://genspace.org/

teod··on Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use
Sorry, I think I may have misunderstood your original question. When you mentioned shared cars, I was imagining a fleet of autonomous, on-demand cars but not one that would pick up other people during your transit. Essentially I'm imagining Uber without the driver. Depending on how it's implemented, self-driving cars won't need sleep and they won't care where they go.

Maybe you're right and currently self-driving cars doesn't offer much more than the current human-driven cars; however, I don't think sociological barriers come into play as much in this scenario (beside the general concept of a self-driving car).

teod··on Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use
To me, it seems like the incentives to own a car may not be so great once self-driving taxis are available, especially in the city. No need to worry about parking, insurance, maintainence, or gas.
teod··on There's a Lot We Don't Know About Ebola
That's sort of not too far off from how the human immune system works. The internal database would be your collection of antibodies[1] which match epitopes[2] presented by MHCs[3] on cell surfaces. The presence of Pathogen Associated Molecular-Pattern[4] should trigger a response. In terms of adding to the database, I think monoclonal antibodies[5] have been used to that end. I'm not entirely up-to-date and this is very simplified, so take with a grain of salt.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitope

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_histocompatibility_compl...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathogen-associated_molecular_...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody#Therapeuti...

teod··on Mozilla Research Projects
I'm not sure if it still has relationships with Google, but it did form a partnership with Yahoo recently [https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/11/yahoo-and-mozilla-for...].
teod··on Mozilla accepting Bitcoin donations
I don't think that's how it works. From my understanding, a new address is typically used for every new transaction. What you are interested in is their wallet which would be the sum of their addresses.

On the other hand, it appears that they are using Coinbase. In that case I'm not sure Mozilla would have direct access to a wallet. Instead I imagine that Coinbase keeps track of their balance which is divided among Coinbase's wallets (sort of like a bank). I'm not too well versed however, so maybe someone else can clear this up.

teod··on Namecoin, A Replacement For SSL
I have thought about a similar service but was dissuaded by various sources warning against the idea of using javascript with cryptography, e.g. http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/. That's not to say a reasonable solution cannot be found, but there are a good number of issues that need to be addressed. The one that seems crippling to me is that the strength of javascript crypto libraries is questionable at best - nevermind the various other javscript attack vectors. A browser plugin could address some issues, but then that limits users to browsers with the plugin installed. Might as well have a native application where the quality of the cryptographic algorithms are more thoroughly tested at that point. Still, I like the idea and wish you the best of luck.
teod··on The Story of Marion Stokes, Who Single-Handedly Taped 35 Years Of TV News
There is a little more about her in her obituary. http://articles.philly.com/2012-12-21/news/35955478_1_televi...
teod··on How Your Brain Becomes Addicted to Caffeine
The medium size (grande) Starbucks coffee contains nearly that much caffeine. I'm not saying that 360mg isn't a lot, but it is not uncommon for people to drink that amount in a single drink. You can see this amount in Starbuck's nutrition facts (http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/brewed-coffee/bold-pick...).
teod··on _why's site is updated
I remember reading [Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby](http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/) back when I first started out learning ruby. I'm not familiar with his other projects, but I think they mainly dealt with ruby. A few years ago he randomly deleted his entire web presence and essentially disappeared.
teod··on Two Months of Soylent
The Wikipedia article on Intermittent Fasting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting) says that there is evidence which suggests it may increase longevity.
teod··on JS roguelike game: The Royal Wedding
The dynamic legend I have not seen before, but this game must be based loosely off of nethack (which includes a narrative).
teod··on Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?
If not, it can be done using Linux's tc command.
teod··on Google Publishes Detailed Map of North Korea
In maps view they are easy to find since they are surrounded by a grey area. Is that the entire area dedicated to the gulags?