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User: JeffreyBPetersen

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  1. Simple formula to start with on Ask Slashdot: What Are Good Books On Inventing, Innovating and Doing R&D? · · Score: 2

    Put interesting people in close quarters with minimal oversight and throw money at them. I can't say it works every time, but I'd like to see anyone come up with any example of consistently highly performing R&D that followed another model. If you have a particular problem you want solved, do the above, then figure out how to make the given problem as interesting as possible.

  2. MPH, really? on Supermassive Black Hole Rocketing Out of Distant Galaxy At 5 Million MPH (blastr.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Approximately 0.01c.

  3. Someone in the army's been playing too much SC2: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wik...

  4. Missed naming opportunity. on Windows 10 Build 15048 Has a Windows Mixed Reality Demo You Can Try (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    I can't believe they didn't call it Windows Windows...

  5. So that's where the iCars are headed... on Apple Invests $1 Billion In Uber's Chinese Rival Didi (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    Now to see whether this is the beginning of tossing around a lot more cash as a means of getting cozier with China again.

  6. Improvement to topic labeling? on NY Approves New Digital Currency For Winklevoss Bitcoin Exchange (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    It'd be nice to see stuff like this listed under "Blockchain" instead of "Bitcoin".

  7. Proof-of-stake and light clients render those concerns moot, you're behind the times

  8. I can haz statistics? on Jihadis Twice As Likely To Be Students of Science Than Of Sharia (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 2

    The message of the article could easily be turned 180 by pointing out the ratio of % of Jihadis who studied Islamic subjects to the % of non-Jihadis who did. Unfortunately I couldn't easily find the total % of those who study engineering disciplines to do a comparison on that point. Please do your part to prevent clickbait like this in the future.

  9. Why is this {expletive noun} on the front page? on Scientists To Open Mass-Cloning Factory in China This Year To Clone Cows, Pets, Humans (express.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Title is nothing if not a complete lie for the sake of being clickbait. The "article" itself about matches it for quality.

  10. Coins tho on Why We Should Fear A Cashless World (theguardian.com) · · Score: 2

    Quick, somebody teach all the hole in the wall cash only restaurants we know and love to use ring signature based alternative cryptocurrencies. /s

  11. Re:Cashless society push being driven by NIRP on Why We Should Fear A Cashless World (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Deposit fees effectively lower the value of physical cash so long as it has to make its way back into a bank eventually; most likely a means of killing any attempts to continue holding cash.

  12. name collision on AI Bookworms Seek To Predict Human Behavior (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately there's also a prediction market in the works by the same name: http://www.augur.net/

  13. Ethereum for general purposes, more details within on Ask Slashdot: Time To Get Into Crypto-currency? If So, Which? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Bitcoin is all the hype, but the blockchain has flaws, in that it isn't as anonymous as one would hope for — you can track past transactions. Is Bitcoin the way to go, or will it falter under wide use / become easily trackable once NSA and the likes adapt their systems to doing exactly that? Are there feasible cryptocurrencies that have the upsides of Bitcoin (such as a mathematical limit to their amount) but are fully anonymous in transactions?

    There are a number of properly anonymous cryptocurrencies now. Dash (formerly Darkcoin) and Monero are current market leaders. Zerocoin is a notable new contender as it uses zero-knowledge proofs which are as good as you can get on anonymity. Bitcoin on the other hand would require dramatic changes which are very unlikely to receive support from the institutions involved with it.

    So I have some questions: Is getting into dealing with crypto currency worthwhile already?

    Only if you're a fan of economics and programming. It's still very much in the experimental phase of technological maturity.

    Rumors of Bitcoin showing cracks are popping up and also there are quite a few alternatives out there. And does Bitcoin own the market or is it still flexible enough for an technology upgrade?

    There's currently a holy war going on between different groups of Bitcoin developers on how to upgrade network protocol, which is sorely needed given Bitcoin's dinosaur status in the field. Looking at that there's definitely not much flexibility. There's also not much of a market to own yet, so despite its network effects, Bitcoin could easily be dethroned by a cryptocurrency with actual momentum in becoming useful beyond largely experimental purposes.

    What digital currency has the technical and mind-share potential to supersede bitcoin? What do the economists and digi-currency nerds here have to contribute on that?

    Ethereum has by far the strongest development community at the moment. It's also designed to maximize flexibility in what it can be used for, giving it abilities to adopt new features as needed without requiring agreement among those using it (pick and choose which features you want to use for all but the most fundamental).

    What are your experiences with handling and holding cryptocurrency?

    Dodged a couple exchange collapses, scary stuff. Keeping wallets local, encrypted, and with multiple backups is a considerably safer experience and doesn't require too much involvement. Getting holdings in the first place is also a hassle.

  14. Arms Race on The Pirate Bay Now Let You Stream Movies and TV, Not Just Download · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's only a matter of time until someone builds an anonymization layer for this that sees mass adoption.

  15. Re:I stole this comment on The Pirate Bay Now Let You Stream Movies and TV, Not Just Download · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thank you for sharing.

  16. Re:It's Ethereum, not Bitcoin. on Bank Consortium Successfully Tests Bitcoin Tech (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    It's a shame it wasn't mentioned in the abstract.

  17. Re:It's Ethereum, not Bitcoin. on Bank Consortium Successfully Tests Bitcoin Tech (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    They've got a consensus algorithm (Casper) in the works which is a vast improvement over how Bitcoin handles blockchains, and has the nice added benefit of requiring that you only keep recent parts of the blockchain handy. To summarize how trust is accomplished: Anyone validating blocks (note that it's not traditional PoW mining in this case) has to post a bond which is forfeited in the event of any attempt at a double spend given there's cryptographic proof of malicious behavior. Thus you need only have the current set of bonded validators handy.

  18. Inhuman Languages? on Interviews: Ask David Peterson About Inventing Languages · · Score: 1

    Ever played around with languages that aren't intended for interaction between humans or human-like entities? Programming/deterministic languages being an obvious example, but some other possibilities being human to machine, machine to human, bidirectional human/machine, machine to machine, and vastly more alien actors as well (complex chemical signaling between plants for example)?

  19. Miners have reached majority consensus on 2MB on Big Trouble for Bitcoin (medium.com) · · Score: 1

    The drama is about to die down since a majority of the mining power has now agreed on a fork to 2MB blocks. Specifically see https://bitcoinclassic.com/ for details and maybe hop on the Slack if you want way too much detail.

  20. Discovery problem? on Explaining the Lack of Quality Journalism In the Internet Age (gawker.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm gonna bet the vast unseen wastes of the internet are harboring some passionate citizen journalists who are producing quality content without being paid a dime for it.

  21. Re:What we really need on Entering the Age of Body-Worn Police Cameras (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    It's only a matter of time until somebody does exactly that as a campaign stunt.

  22. Autonomous Organizations will Panic the Public on Ask Slashdot: Predictions For 2016? (slashdot.org) · · Score: 1

    Someone will create a blatantly illegal decentralized autonomous corporation running on Ethereum, it will get media coverage, and there will be full blown moral panic. This will be used to further interests in expanding mass surveillance and the use of cryptography will become even more politicized. Meanwhile said corporation will experience record profits which are only improved by the notoriety.

  23. What about AO? on Interviews: Ask Ray Kurzweil a question · · Score: 2

    Any thoughts on whether (Decentralized) Autonomous Organizations could potentially beat AI to the superintelligence punch?