If quantum computers worked as D-Wave advertised, they would be great, but so would perpetual motion machines and snake oil.
FTFY
Quantum computing is in its infancy. Everyone (except Geordie Rose, presumably) knows that all we have right are proof-of-concept toys which don't solve any problem any better than well-tuned classical solvers, and also that we probably won't any time soon.
Nonetheless, it's in the nature of the tech industry to overestimate the short-term impact of a new technology and underestimate its long-term impact. Snake oil was a patent medicine, but so were aspirin, Vicks Vapo Rub, and tonic water.
That's the thing for me too. I will consider buying a smart watch when they are cheap enough that I will not regret the purchase if it turns out it's useless. Maybe I should get a refurbished Pebble.
For example, land records are something that gets brought up a lot. But if you want to guarantee there's no (retroactive) hanky panky with records, you just sign them and publish them.
Yeah, that's a "trusted third party" model. We've been doing that for millennia; having the seal of Croesus on your coin makes it definitely worth something.
That's a really specific scenario, and aside from currency, where it seems to work quite poorly, I haven't heard even a single realistic example.
Cryptocurrency gives people an economic incentive (i.e. money) to donate CPU, and that's probably the only public blockchain that might work (for some vague definition of "work"). Every other proposal that needs a public blockchain that I've seen piggybacks on top of a cryptocurrency blockchain.
Private blockchains are a bit different. One example that came up recently is if all the banks of the world ran a blockchain between them to handle... I don't know, whatever they need to handle. In this case, the incentive for donating CPU isn't money, it's the fact that they need to trust the system to run their business. Only the people who need to invest in the trust need invest in the trust. I can see how that might work; it doesn't seem like an improvement on than the current world banking infrastructure, but it's no more ridiculous than what currently exists.
So those are the only two vaguely realistic classes of blockchain proposals I've seen: 1) piggyback on a public cryptocurrency blockchain (i.e. basically pay others to maintain the blockchain for you), and 2) private blockchains which only exist between the parties who need to trust each other. I haven't seen any other examples which make any sense.
Outside of transactions you want to be resistant to government interference, is there anything that's not better solved without blockchain?
Kind of. More broadly, the point of blockchain is to establish mutual trust in a scenario where it's otherwise hard to achieve that. If you have a lot to lose should trust be broken, you put in CPU resources.
There is certainly a trust issue in homelessness, but even assuming that this is the kind of trust issue that blockchain could help address (which it isn't), I'm lost on where homeless people are going to get their CPU resources from.
Was he a dick to competent people who screwed up and fixed their error?
Yes. But more to the point, he was a dick around competent people who decided to go contribute to some other project instead. And he encouraged others to be more dickish even when it ran contrary to their personality.
Admittedly that isn't a loss for the world, but it is a loss for the kernel.
As with my Slashdot, my email address is some variant on a word for a false name. So a lot of people use it to sign up for services which don't check that email addresses are valid.
I may or may not have reset a few passwords in retaliation.
That... and advocating a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country whether legal or not. And apparently not bluster since he actually tried to implement something very close to it until it was shut down by the courts.
Slashdot Mirror
My penis looks like Master Onion. How the hell did you know?
If quantum computers worked as D-Wave advertised, they would be great, but so would perpetual motion machines and snake oil.
FTFY
Quantum computing is in its infancy. Everyone (except Geordie Rose, presumably) knows that all we have right are proof-of-concept toys which don't solve any problem any better than well-tuned classical solvers, and also that we probably won't any time soon.
Nonetheless, it's in the nature of the tech industry to overestimate the short-term impact of a new technology and underestimate its long-term impact. Snake oil was a patent medicine, but so were aspirin, Vicks Vapo Rub, and tonic water.
CloudFront, which is 30% different from Cloudflare judging by the letters in its name.
You may like to check out The Witness if you haven't already.
Gyruss had such a good soundtrack. An 8 bit cover of the Sky cover of the Bach Toccata in D.
I bet they don't have Polybius.
If he had simply been living up north by one state, he might not be in such hot water.
Uh... in what US state is paying for sex with a 16 year old legal?
I have a (not a knock off) 1930s-style Mickey Mouse watch that I haven't worn since the CTEA passed.
That's the thing for me too. I will consider buying a smart watch when they are cheap enough that I will not regret the purchase if it turns out it's useless. Maybe I should get a refurbished Pebble.
Special Relativity is about the speed of light being a constant in all reference frames and the implications of that.
If you actually read Einstein's original paper on special relativity, you'll find that it's about electrodynamics.
I see where you're going with this, but as a society (and it's true in mine just as much as yours) we generally prefer checks and balances.
People screw up too, and we don't blame the person who hired them most of the time.
For example, land records are something that gets brought up a lot. But if you want to guarantee there's no (retroactive) hanky panky with records, you just sign them and publish them.
Yeah, that's a "trusted third party" model. We've been doing that for millennia; having the seal of Croesus on your coin makes it definitely worth something.
That's a really specific scenario, and aside from currency, where it seems to work quite poorly, I haven't heard even a single realistic example.
Cryptocurrency gives people an economic incentive (i.e. money) to donate CPU, and that's probably the only public blockchain that might work (for some vague definition of "work"). Every other proposal that needs a public blockchain that I've seen piggybacks on top of a cryptocurrency blockchain.
Private blockchains are a bit different. One example that came up recently is if all the banks of the world ran a blockchain between them to handle... I don't know, whatever they need to handle. In this case, the incentive for donating CPU isn't money, it's the fact that they need to trust the system to run their business. Only the people who need to invest in the trust need invest in the trust. I can see how that might work; it doesn't seem like an improvement on than the current world banking infrastructure, but it's no more ridiculous than what currently exists.
So those are the only two vaguely realistic classes of blockchain proposals I've seen: 1) piggyback on a public cryptocurrency blockchain (i.e. basically pay others to maintain the blockchain for you), and 2) private blockchains which only exist between the parties who need to trust each other. I haven't seen any other examples which make any sense.
Outside of transactions you want to be resistant to government interference, is there anything that's not better solved without blockchain?
Kind of. More broadly, the point of blockchain is to establish mutual trust in a scenario where it's otherwise hard to achieve that. If you have a lot to lose should trust be broken, you put in CPU resources.
There is certainly a trust issue in homelessness, but even assuming that this is the kind of trust issue that blockchain could help address (which it isn't), I'm lost on where homeless people are going to get their CPU resources from.
That said, a blockchain is a type of data store.
And an expensive-to-maintain type of data store at that.
That's some expert-level virtue signalling, sir. Well done.
That's not what I meant. I was referring to people who never became Linux kernel devs in the first place because LKML turned them off.
Everyone I can name who was already a developer and left moved into trying to make tech a less asshole place. Sarah Sharp is the most famous.
Because that's what diff measures.
Was he a dick to competent people who screwed up and fixed their error?
Yes. But more to the point, he was a dick around competent people who decided to go contribute to some other project instead. And he encouraged others to be more dickish even when it ran contrary to their personality.
Admittedly that isn't a loss for the world, but it is a loss for the kernel.
That could be my problem. I have a peculiar set of skills which aren't amenable to keyword matching.
(Only a few employers understand how to use someone who can speak over 70 programming languages and has an Erdos number of 3.)
I don't know why millions of users use it. I believe I already made that clear.
Start by not accepting EVERY FUCKING INVITATION you receive.
I have 82 connections. I only accept people that I know and who know me, and I only endorse people that I've worked with.
Next piece of advice?
So how do you use LinkedIn correctly? Because nobody has explained it to me, either.
In my experience, if you need it explained to you why you need something after you already have it, then you probably didn't need it.
As with my Slashdot, my email address is some variant on a word for a false name. So a lot of people use it to sign up for services which don't check that email addresses are valid.
I may or may not have reset a few passwords in retaliation.
He ran on an anti ILLEGAL immigrant platform.
That... and advocating a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country whether legal or not. And apparently not bluster since he actually tried to implement something very close to it until it was shut down by the courts.
The current era, sadly, cannot be parodied.