This author based its entire argument around the idea that crypto is a scam, but then says I’m not going to explain why crypto is a scam. Whether you think it’s a scam or not, it’s just not good writing.
Really weird article.
260 karma · joined February 3, 2020
Really weird article.
The difference is accessibility and optionality in the digital world.
I could absolutely see people spend more on digital goods than physical goods.
A QR Code in a commercial is not novel, making the entire commercial a QR code is. Sounds like Martin Agency presented a commercial with QR codes, not a QR code commercial. Unless Martin Agency shares the slide, It’s impossible to claim it was MA’s idea.
It sounds like her reply is the result of the Coinbase CMO cutting ties with her company.
The fundamental security limits of bridges are actually a key reason why while I am optimistic about a multi-chain blockchain ecosystem (there really are a few separate communities with different values and it's better for them to live separately than all fight over influence on the same thing), I am pessimistic about cross-chain applications.
To understand why bridges have these limitations, we need to look at how various combinations of blockchains and bridging survive 51% attacks. Many people have the mentality that "if a blockchain gets 51% attacked, everything breaks, and so we need to put all our force on preventing a 51% attack from ever happening even once". I really disagree with this style of thinking; in fact, blockchains maintain many of their guarantees even after a 51% attack, and it's really important to preserve these guarantees.
For example, suppose that you have 100 ETH on Ethereum, and Ethereum gets 51% attacked, so some transactions get censored and/or reverted. No matter what happens, you still have your 100 ETH. Even a 51% attacker cannot propose a block that takes away your ETH, because such a block would violate the protocol rules and so it would get rejected by the network. Even if 99% of the hashpower or stake wants to take away your ETH, everyone running a node would just follow the chain with the remaining 1%, because only its blocks follow the protocol rules. More generally, if you have an application on Ethereum, then a 51% attack could censor or revert it for some time, but what comes out at the end is a consistent state. If you had 100 ETH, but sold it for 320000 DAI on Uniswap, even if the blockchain gets attacked in some arbitrary crazy way, at the end of the day you still have a sensible outcome - either you keep your 100 ETH or you get your 320000 DAI. The outcome where you get neither (or, for that matter, both) violates protocol rules and so would not get accepted.
Now, imaging what happens if you move 100 ETH onto a bridge on Solana to get 100 Solana-WETH, and then Ethereum gets 51% attacked. The attacker deposited a bunch of their own ETH into Solana-WETH and then reverted that transaction on the Ethereum side as soon as the Solana side confirmed it. The Solana-WETH contract is now no longer fully backed, and perhaps your 100 Solana-WETH is now only worth 60 ETH. Even if there's a perfect ZK-SNARK-based bridge that fully validates consensus, it's still vulnerable to theft through 51% attacks like this.
For this reason, it's always safer to hold Ethereum-native assets on Ethereum or Solana-native assets on Solana than it is to hold Ethereum-native assets on Solana or Solana-native assets on Ethereum. And in this context, "Ethereum" refers not just to the base chain, but also any proper L2 that is built on it. If Ethereum gets 51% attacked and reverts, Arbitrum and Optimism revert too, and so "cross-rollup" applications that hold state on Arbitrum and Optimism are guaranteed to remain consistent even if Ethereum gets 51% attacked. And if Ethereum does not get 51% attacked, there's no way to 51% attack Arbitrum and Optimism separately. Hence, holding assets issued on Optimism wrapped on Arbitrum is still perfectly safe.
The problem gets worse when you go beyond two chains. If there are 100 chains, then there will end up being dapps with many interdependencies between those chains, and 51% attacking even one chain would create a systemic contagion that threatens the economy on that entire ecosystem. This is why I think zones of interdependency are likely to align closely to zones of sovereignty (so, lots of Ethereum-universe applications interfacing closely with each other, lots of Avax-universe applications interfacing with each other, etc etc, but NOT Ethereum-universe and Avax-universe applications interfacing closely with each other)
This incidentally is also why a rollup can't just "go use another data layer". If a rollup stores its data on Celestia or BCH or whatever else but deals with assets on Ethereum, if that layer gets 51% attacked you're screwed. The DAS on Celestia providing 51% attack resistance doesn't actually help you because the Ethereum network isn't reading that DAS; it would be reading a bridge, which would be vulnerable to 51% attacks. To be a rollup that provides security to applications using Ethereum-native assets, you have to use the Ethereum data layer (and likewise for any other ecosystem).
I don't expect these problems to show up immediately. 51% attacking even one chain is difficult and expensive. However, the more usage of cross-chain bridges and apps there is, the worse the problem becomes. No one will 51% attack Ethereum just to steal 100 Solana-WETH (or, for that matter, 51% attack Solana just to steal 100 Ethereum-WSOL). But if there's 10 million ETH or SOL in the bridge, then the motivation to make an attack becomes much higher, and large pools may well coordinate to make the attack happen. So cross-chain activity has an anti-network-effect: while there's not much of it going on, it's pretty safe, but the more of it is happening, the more the risks go up.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/rwojtk/ama_we_are...
I was a heavy Spotify member for many many years.
I can’t deal with Spotify inserting podcasts into the music listening experience. Music and podcasts are two different use cases for me. I love both, but don’t love both in the same UI.
So far I love YouTube music and very happy with the switch. I love that I can listen to live sets that people post on YouTube. Great recommendation system too.
After going through his beginners series, I went through his Django series.
Learning to work with Django was very helpful to get a high level understanding of tech architecture and how the system works. I’d recommend this, so I think your plan makes sense.
Here’s his YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-osiE80TeTt2d9bfVyTiXJA-...
Obviously, I read and used other sources here and there, but he is the best.
I’m not a developer, and have no plans to become one.
I’m a product manager, so my initial reason for starting was so I could better communicate with developers regarding effort and ideas.
But I also wanted a hobby to challenge my brain and allow me to create.
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time learning/doing. Starting with about 3 hours per night for 3 weeks to start - now it’s dependent on the projects I build.
Anyway, I don’t think we’re disagreeing on chess cheating. For me, the small chance someone is cheating doesn’t ruin the esport for me - For you it does, which is a perfectly reasonable response to it.
Secondary thought in the engine idea you had - chess fraud detection, I imagine, goes well beyond just the engine and move likeliness. It will also human-like interaction (Can’t confirm this, but the PM in me has me consumed with thinking about solutions to this problem)
When people play a chess game online, they are frequently evaluating positions. This results in cursor/mouse behavior that’s sporadic. If a user is considering moving the queen, they’ll move their cursor over to it. A user relying on an engine for every move would interact with the board in a very precise manner.
A player with a perfect engine to mimic humans will still get caught as their interaction with the board would differ greatly because only one position is considered for each move.
The original commenter say it’s easy to cheat at chess. While potentially possible, I wouldn’t consider building a ML model to mimic your own play an ‘easy’ cheat method.
I’d also say building a model to mimic your own play consistently would be incredibly difficult. But, that’s for a different conversation.
The same engines that people cheat with are the same engines used to detect cheating. If you’re using an engine to play your moves, you’ll be caught very quickly.
Id much rather watch competitors competing on 100% equal terms, without any developed advantage other than one created through the competitors skill.
Rocket league is a fantastic esport, and it’s been the same mechanics for years. There are no ‘special items’ or OP’d power ups. Both sides are 100% equal. It’s why I love it, the game is pure - Competitor vs competitor.
I think of NFTs like car titles.
Having the car title in your name is the only way to prove you own a car. Someone can burrow your car, and have it in their possession but that doesn’t make them the owner - the title does. When you buy a car, what you’re really buying is a little paper that says you’re the owner - without it, you’re just renting.
NFTs work the same but for digital items. When you buy an NFT, you’re really buying the title for that artwork. Sure, people can copy and paste a JPEG, but they can’t take the title from you - Just like possesing a car without a title doesn’t make you the owner.
The concept of an NFT isn’t absurd, it’s a digital version of a real world use case we all rely on daily to prove ownership.
He supports his family with his income, and frequently sends money from the United States to Bosnia.
Best case scenario, using Paypal (Xoom), a centralized company, this takes him two days. Two days is the best case scenario!
With Bitcoin it is almost instant.
They switched to cryptocurrency after a near disastrous situation with the length of time the transfer took.
How is Bitcoin less efficient here?
Sure, it's one use case, but just because something doesn't benefit you does not mean it's not beneficial for anyone.
Advertising is a core business expense for them needed to run the business.
I’m a massive music fan and podcast listener.
Spotify had been my go to for music, but the combination of podcast and music has absolutely killed my experience.
I love both, but when I’m listening to music, I don’t want to listen to podcasts and vice versa. They serve different purposes for me, all audio is not the same.
I’ve recently switched to YouTube Music. I will occasionally use Spotify for podcasts.
When we had no front-end devs available - we used Googles sheets API, connected our spreadsheets to our production DB, and did all the input of raw data, and ingestion of outputs automatically. User interaction happened within the spreadsheets.
When FE devs opened up, we eventually built the UI to replace the spreadsheet (Which is a very hard task, spreadsheets are good at what they do). But by this point, we knew exactly what we needed in the ux and had iterated on the ux multiple times.
BO said historically NASA gives contracts to multiple companies, and BO wanted funding too (in addition to SpaceX.
BO “argued that the agency was required to make multiple awards" because it had previously stated a preference for multiple awards”
I’m a product manager that is sick of operations & other PMs asking me to write simple SQL queries or create tableau dashboards.
I’ve seen many friends/colleagues that say they want to learn SQL, but never do.
Yet, companies are looking for talent in all departments to learn these skills for decision making.
Rather than having non-technical people try to learn SQL and tableau, I’m exploring a product that translates human text into simple sql queries to enable data analysis for everyone without needing to learn SQL.
“How many [column name] did we have on [Date]”
This isn’t easy, but if done successfully will be extremely valuable.
I’m primarily looking for a data scientist with NLP experience, ideally around semantic search. However, I’m willing to chat with everyone who wants to!
Respond to this comment and/or Email me: wigrizer[at]gmail.com
Is this because you don't have interest in it, or do you have a true justification of this?
I'm willing to take this bet. Just like art, 99% can be bought for $1 at a garage sale, but there will be the 1% that has value to someone.
You are betting against the generation who spends massive amounts on video games costumes, and puts more value into their online image (instagram) than real life image, not finding value in a form of digital scarcity & status. I find that hard to believe.
Back in the day, I wanted to support bitcoin so I paid 1 Bitcoin, equivalent of $150 at the time, on a single night at a hotel. I learned my lesson, at today’s price, that one night stay cost me $60,000.
And this is why people don’t use it as a currency.
Notice how you used the term ‘access’ instead of ‘own’ at the end of your question? Sure, anyone can access it, only you can own it. That’s why people give a shit.
Google Maps ETA’s are a simple problem compared to this because of the park and embark times & handoff variability.
- Parking is different at every restaurant, some days you may get lucky and find a spot, others you have to park far away and walk.
- A restaurant may be down staff on an given day and are late cooking the order.
- Customer may live in a high-rise or gated community that requires security identification before entering.
- Customer may not have a house number clearly visible making the house hard to find
The actual driving route/ traveling time is the easy part. It’s the other variables that make this incredibly complex.