Whoops I think I may have inadvertently stepped into the wrong echo chamber.
Before I leave, let me say that California has its problems like everywhere, but it's the most populous state and gaining net population for a reason. It's simple logic that it can't be bad if so many people are so intent on living there.
I can tell that logic won't really fly there though so I am outta here...
Bitcoin is intrinsincally unfit for its intended purpose. The cost of validating transactions within the network, while based on really cool ideas, just doesn't scale. It is fundamentally limited to a handful of transactions per second, which is absolutely insufficient for the global monetary system it purports to be.
I thought bitcoin was super cool when I read the whitepaper in 2012, aside from a few fatal flaws, it is a thing of beauty. But I recognized its inherent flaws and so I could not get excited by it.
The lightning network is a similar joke. It requires that anyone who wants to participate pair up with the person they want to transact with and sequester bitcoin for the duration of the "lightning" transactions. Thus you have to pay a bitcoin transaction fee (not sure how much that is at the moment, but it has gotten into the tens of dollars per transaction in the past) for every partner that you want to participate with, and you have to limit the number of people you can partner with to the amount of bitcoin you have to sequester for this purpose. And you have to watch the bitcoin network *constantly* because you have no idea if and when the other party may terminate the relationship via another bitcoin transaction.
Supposedly with lightning you can chain in other parties but that also increases the number of transactions you have to be watching for on the bitcoin network. Essentially you become even more tightly bound to the data stream of the bitcoin network than you are when you just trade bitcoin.
Whereas bitcoin is fundamentally unsuited for its purpose because of its inherent low transaction rate, lightning is fundamentally unsuited for its purpose because its network requirements grow exponentially (for participating parties who have to be constantly vigilant to watch for on-blockchain transactions that could affect their lightning balances).
Also the lightning whitepaper has big handwavy "we haven't figured this part out yet" gaps (at least it did when I read it like 8 months ago). It is also so complex that it's hard to find confidence that there aren't loopholes, either in its design or in any software that would be written to implement it (unlike bitcoin which was at least itself simple enough that just about anyone familiar with programming and cryptography could easily validate its design and implementation).
The only thing giving bitcoin significant perceived 'value' is the greedy impulse of buyers looking to get rich quick. Lots of people definitely can conspire, either intentionally (bitcoin price manipulation, definitely a thing), or unintentionally (whims of the market) to place 'value' on something like bitcoin, but it's not something I personally want to be involved with. The early bitcoin forums were filled with the most disgusting collection of get-rich-quick schemers and I have no doubt that it isn't 1,000 times worse now that there is actual real money in it. Not to mention the unsavory underworld criminals you will be in bed with (remember those price manipulators) when you trade in bitcoin.
The problem I have seen with ad blockers (and admittedly, I have only tried a few, and haven't put a lot of effort into trying to find the best or most useful one) is that they work by preventing the loading of certain parts of web sites. Like, they refuse to load images from a certain domain, or refuse to load and run javascript from a certain domain, or whatever. The important point is that I believe they work by not loading content that they want to block.
It is my experience that sites can detect this behavior - they can tell when you have loaded all of a page but not the ads, because they can see that your browser only fetched part of the page. They probably also embed javascript in ways that require that it be run and show an ad or else some other javascript notices that this did not happen, and then knows that you did not load the ad. And then they run other javascript that blocks out the content of the site itself because they have detected that you are running an ad blocker.
I don't know why ad blockers don't then just implement the obvious:
Load the ad. Load the javascript. Just turn all the pixels that you display for those ads to white, and all the sound to zero volume. The javascript won't know that behind the scenes the APIs that would display images have instead decided to show white pixels. The remote server will still see you fetching all the content and "presenting" it to the user.
I'm talking about switching ad blocking from a detectable and defeatable "don't show ads" to an undetectable (by the ad displayer) "do everything you would have done up to the last possible moment which is the presentation of the ad image/sound, instead showing nothing".
This seems so much more foolproof to me. It doesn't have the nice property of reducing your bandwidth usage by not even loading ads but... I personally don't care much about that. I just don't want to see the ads.
The only recourse of the advertisers at that point would be to make the content of the ads intrinsic to the content of the site; like the site text renders in javascript that also renders ads, or something. At that point, I don't know what we do to stop ads... maybe stop allowing javascript?
In terms of how to detect what is an ad, just let users clock on anything that shows up as an ad image, choose a pop-up "this is an ad", when they select that, white out the image, and add the URL of the ad image to a voting database. Then when fetching images, if enough votes have been cast saying that it's an ad... treat it as such.
What are the obvious flaws to this design that I am missing?
Ah well. I've lived in silicon valley most of my adult life and I'm really hoping to move up to Oregon or Washington someday. Sorry to cramp your style.
I remember back in 1994 at my first job an older woman lamenting the prices and traffic in the bay area and actually quitting and moving to Oregon with her husband. At the time I just didn't understand. But wow, 25 years later, a) it seems quaint to think that conditions in the bay area in 1994 were something even remotely worth getting away from given how much worse they have gotten since then, and b) I envy her for having the prescience to do it so long ago when it was probably a much better deal.
" Also, why would you want capital gains tax on stocks? You want your 401K to be taxed for gains, or your pension?"
Just to answer this nugget: anyone who proposes fairer or better tax structures is implicitly agreeing that taxing everyone (including themselves) for the common good (including themselves) is the right call.
So yes, if it's fair and beneficial to the state as a whole, I would support a tax on my 401k and/or pension.
I'm not saying one way or another whether these particular taxes are justified; I am speaking more to the sentiment you seem to be raising where it doesn't make sense for anyone to decide that taxes which would affect their own assets are a good idea.
It is the inability of lots of people to understand and accept a common sacrifice that is the heart of alot of social problems we have.
Of course, it's also the spend-whatever-you-can-and-then-ask-for-more attitude of most government that is at the heart of alot of other social problems we have.
A sensibly run government intelligently taxing the right amount to get the best bang-for-buck and do the most with the least possible? A pipe dream for sure... but what a dream...
This is one of the lamest Slashdot articles I have ever seen. In what way is this at all news for nerds? And in what way is this any more news worthy than 10,000 other random news items of day? What about if Walmart has a one-day sale on Nintendo games. Should we get a Slashdot headline article for that?
msmash is not a competent Slashdot editor. I'm going to give Slashdot some feedback here.
... in a hamfisted manner has little to no chance of sticking. The man is dumb as a box of rocks, unfortunately. Despite all of his bluster he is apparently unable to operate with the required tact and subtlety necessary to effect changes he desires. There is the possiblity that everything he is doing publicly is a ruse to distract everyone and he is going to surprise us with the masterful maneuvers he's been making behind the scenes but... given how dumb he has appeared to be at just about every opportunity, I doubt it.
When he won I was at first disgusted, then somewhat hopeful as I thought, maybe the guy, despite being scum, can actually effect some interesting and valuable changes to the status quo of politics, maybe he can make some meaningful things happen that others couldn't because of their political ties.
But seeing how hamfisted he's been in everything he's tried, and failed thus far, to do... I am holding out little hope at this point.
Also may I point out that the word "eliminate" was just the wrong term to use full-stop because of the ambiguity that it introduces. No need for that ambiguity, but clearly the author was going more for "impact" than for clarity. Something like:
"How UPS Trucks Saved Millions of Dollars By Preferring Right Hand Turns"
would have been clearer and then we wouldn't even be having this pointless discussion.
Yeah, this is why in English we use disambiguating terms like "some" and "all". No soldier speaking english would ever say "I've eliminated enemy combatants", they'd say, "I've eliminated SOME enemy combatants". And I agree with your assertion that the "the" in my example was disambiguating.
However, we all know that article titles generally do not use articles in the same way, for brevity's sake, which is why choosing an ambiguous wording as the article did, is a bad idea, and why it leads to confusion where some people interpret it one way and some the other way.
My main beef was with you calling people 'idiot' because they were misled by an ambiguous title and then pointed out what was ambiguous about it, as if your personal interpretation of ambiguity was somehow the "correct" interpretation and anyone who reads it a different way is an "idiot".
Really alot of it comes down to hating to read people immediately start out with name-calling, and it seemed ironic since the person you are responding to had a valid point, which I have just elucidated.
You completely misunderstood everything apparently, brainiac.
But I see you did not miss an opportunity to show your envy of those with Slashdot ids lower than yours, by jumping into an argument that you don't even understand just to insult me.
Hilarious that you are calling ME pedantic when you're the one who initiated this nonsense by berating someone else in a pedantic manner!
I think I'm going to start using your logic at work though. Should be fun.
Me: "Hey boss, I eliminated the bugs that were preventing our product from shipping!"
Boss: "Awesome! Finally we can ship because there are no bugs! I just uploaded the new build to the server and users are downloading it as we speak!"
Me: "What?!? But the bug that wipes users' hard drives is still in the product! We're ruined!"
Boss: "But you said you eliminated all of the bugs..."
Me: "No, I said I eliminated the bugs. But clearly that only means some of them! In fact, I only fixed one bug, but... since 'eliminate the bugs' really means 'eliminate some of the bugs', and 'some' in this context really meant 'one'... I was just being accurate! Ask fisted, he knows."
But correspondingly, if someone says "your chicken tastes worse than other people's chicken", you don't then compare your chicken against someone else's steak to see if they're right.
Well to be honest this story is kind of a snoozer for me. Like, it's already known for this sort of thing to be possible. The fact that it was actually observed hardly seems that interesting to me personally. But for those of you for whom this sort of thing is exciting, please do post, maybe your posts will be interesting to read.
Bullshit. I don't believe it. I just simply cannot believe that another person can TALK to you in a certain way and completely change your state of consciousness. I refuse, absolutely refuse, to believe that it's any more than quackery that people will believe because they really, really want to believe it.
Close minded I may be, but I'm not easily fooled either.
I would imagine that with enough data you could calculate how long to wait before actually looking at your real cards to decide what to do next. At that point you could probably calculate your odds of winning if you keep playing your "fake hand" versus the odds of winning if you play your "actual hand" and then choose the best option.
What if you could somehow invert the problem of poker, and have, through enough mined data, a table of, given the current game situation, i.e. the best of prior players, etc, what hands you *could* have and what hands they *could* have, and then you could just choose the hand that you want to be playing as if you have at any moment.
Like, if, given the current game state, it's equally likely that you have hand A, B, or C, and if having A is most likely to win you the most money, then play like you have A, until that option is either not possible anymore, or is worse than having B or C (assuming they're still possible). Then switch to B or C when it's the best strategy.
I can't be the first person to have thought of this. Is there software out there that will do this for you?
Further to this, I've never played online poker but I've often wondered what it would be like to join up, and then play games pretending like I have completely different hands than I do have. Like what if I could actually hide the cards I actually have on the screen and just choose what cards I want to pretend actually appeared. Then I could play from my pretend hand without any uncertainty due to knowing what I actually have.
There's the problem that I haven't played enough poker to actually make smart bets and plays based on even made-up cards... but if you are an online poker expert, would it help you in any way to have a system like I describe, where you don't even see your actual cards, but only see the cards of the hand that you want to "pretend" to have?
Slashdot Mirror
Given that you said "jobs prospects" instead of "job prospects", I'm guessing you're in the U.K. My advice -- come to California.
"Amazingly good cache" is called "registers".
Whoops I think I may have inadvertently stepped into the wrong echo chamber.
Before I leave, let me say that California has its problems like everywhere, but it's the most populous state and gaining net population for a reason. It's simple logic that it can't be bad if so many people are so intent on living there.
I can tell that logic won't really fly there though so I am outta here ...
Bitcoin is intrinsincally unfit for its intended purpose. The cost of validating transactions within the network, while based on really cool ideas, just doesn't scale. It is fundamentally limited to a handful of transactions per second, which is absolutely insufficient for the global monetary system it purports to be.
I thought bitcoin was super cool when I read the whitepaper in 2012, aside from a few fatal flaws, it is a thing of beauty. But I recognized its inherent flaws and so I could not get excited by it.
The lightning network is a similar joke. It requires that anyone who wants to participate pair up with the person they want to transact with and sequester bitcoin for the duration of the "lightning" transactions. Thus you have to pay a bitcoin transaction fee (not sure how much that is at the moment, but it has gotten into the tens of dollars per transaction in the past) for every partner that you want to participate with, and you have to limit the number of people you can partner with to the amount of bitcoin you have to sequester for this purpose. And you have to watch the bitcoin network *constantly* because you have no idea if and when the other party may terminate the relationship via another bitcoin transaction.
Supposedly with lightning you can chain in other parties but that also increases the number of transactions you have to be watching for on the bitcoin network. Essentially you become even more tightly bound to the data stream of the bitcoin network than you are when you just trade bitcoin.
Whereas bitcoin is fundamentally unsuited for its purpose because of its inherent low transaction rate, lightning is fundamentally unsuited for its purpose because its network requirements grow exponentially (for participating parties who have to be constantly vigilant to watch for on-blockchain transactions that could affect their lightning balances).
Also the lightning whitepaper has big handwavy "we haven't figured this part out yet" gaps (at least it did when I read it like 8 months ago). It is also so complex that it's hard to find confidence that there aren't loopholes, either in its design or in any software that would be written to implement it (unlike bitcoin which was at least itself simple enough that just about anyone familiar with programming and cryptography could easily validate its design and implementation).
The only thing giving bitcoin significant perceived 'value' is the greedy impulse of buyers looking to get rich quick. Lots of people definitely can conspire, either intentionally (bitcoin price manipulation, definitely a thing), or unintentionally (whims of the market) to place 'value' on something like bitcoin, but it's not something I personally want to be involved with. The early bitcoin forums were filled with the most disgusting collection of get-rich-quick schemers and I have no doubt that it isn't 1,000 times worse now that there is actual real money in it. Not to mention the unsavory underworld criminals you will be in bed with (remember those price manipulators) when you trade in bitcoin.
The problem I have seen with ad blockers (and admittedly, I have only tried a few, and haven't put a lot of effort into trying to find the best or most useful one) is that they work by preventing the loading of certain parts of web sites. Like, they refuse to load images from a certain domain, or refuse to load and run javascript from a certain domain, or whatever. The important point is that I believe they work by not loading content that they want to block.
It is my experience that sites can detect this behavior - they can tell when you have loaded all of a page but not the ads, because they can see that your browser only fetched part of the page. They probably also embed javascript in ways that require that it be run and show an ad or else some other javascript notices that this did not happen, and then knows that you did not load the ad. And then they run other javascript that blocks out the content of the site itself because they have detected that you are running an ad blocker.
I don't know why ad blockers don't then just implement the obvious:
Load the ad. Load the javascript. Just turn all the pixels that you display for those ads to white, and all the sound to zero volume. The javascript won't know that behind the scenes the APIs that would display images have instead decided to show white pixels. The remote server will still see you fetching all the content and "presenting" it to the user.
I'm talking about switching ad blocking from a detectable and defeatable "don't show ads" to an undetectable (by the ad displayer) "do everything you would have done up to the last possible moment which is the presentation of the ad image/sound, instead showing nothing".
This seems so much more foolproof to me. It doesn't have the nice property of reducing your bandwidth usage by not even loading ads but ... I personally don't care much about that. I just don't want to see the ads.
The only recourse of the advertisers at that point would be to make the content of the ads intrinsic to the content of the site; like the site text renders in javascript that also renders ads, or something. At that point, I don't know what we do to stop ads ... maybe stop allowing javascript?
In terms of how to detect what is an ad, just let users clock on anything that shows up as an ad image, choose a pop-up "this is an ad", when they select that, white out the image, and add the URL of the ad image to a voting database. Then when fetching images, if enough votes have been cast saying that it's an ad ... treat it as such.
What are the obvious flaws to this design that I am missing?
Yeah, I guess if you're going to believe in fairy tales, you really should go all the way.
Ah well. I've lived in silicon valley most of my adult life and I'm really hoping to move up to Oregon or Washington someday. Sorry to cramp your style.
I remember back in 1994 at my first job an older woman lamenting the prices and traffic in the bay area and actually quitting and moving to Oregon with her husband. At the time I just didn't understand. But wow, 25 years later, a) it seems quaint to think that conditions in the bay area in 1994 were something even remotely worth getting away from given how much worse they have gotten since then, and b) I envy her for having the prescience to do it so long ago when it was probably a much better deal.
" Also, why would you want capital gains tax on stocks? You want your 401K to be taxed for gains, or your pension?"
Just to answer this nugget: anyone who proposes fairer or better tax structures is implicitly agreeing that taxing everyone (including themselves) for the common good (including themselves) is the right call.
So yes, if it's fair and beneficial to the state as a whole, I would support a tax on my 401k and/or pension.
I'm not saying one way or another whether these particular taxes are justified; I am speaking more to the sentiment you seem to be raising where it doesn't make sense for anyone to decide that taxes which would affect their own assets are a good idea.
It is the inability of lots of people to understand and accept a common sacrifice that is the heart of alot of social problems we have.
Of course, it's also the spend-whatever-you-can-and-then-ask-for-more attitude of most government that is at the heart of alot of other social problems we have.
A sensibly run government intelligently taxing the right amount to get the best bang-for-buck and do the most with the least possible? A pipe dream for sure ... but what a dream ...
This is one of the lamest Slashdot articles I have ever seen. In what way is this at all news for nerds? And in what way is this any more news worthy than 10,000 other random news items of day? What about if Walmart has a one-day sale on Nintendo games. Should we get a Slashdot headline article for that?
msmash is not a competent Slashdot editor. I'm going to give Slashdot some feedback here.
Jesus I really wish for that kind of sanity in the USA. It will never happen though.
Whatever, coward.
... in a hamfisted manner has little to no chance of sticking. The man is dumb as a box of rocks, unfortunately. Despite all of his bluster he is apparently unable to operate with the required tact and subtlety necessary to effect changes he desires. There is the possiblity that everything he is doing publicly is a ruse to distract everyone and he is going to surprise us with the masterful maneuvers he's been making behind the scenes but ... given how dumb he has appeared to be at just about every opportunity, I doubt it.
When he won I was at first disgusted, then somewhat hopeful as I thought, maybe the guy, despite being scum, can actually effect some interesting and valuable changes to the status quo of politics, maybe he can make some meaningful things happen that others couldn't because of their political ties.
But seeing how hamfisted he's been in everything he's tried, and failed thus far, to do ... I am holding out little hope at this point.
The other person's account was more detailed, more compelling, and more convincing than your one-liner response.
Yeah, still not understanding even though you think you do. Loser.
Also may I point out that the word "eliminate" was just the wrong term to use full-stop because of the ambiguity that it introduces. No need for that ambiguity, but clearly the author was going more for "impact" than for clarity. Something like:
"How UPS Trucks Saved Millions of Dollars By Preferring Right Hand Turns"
would have been clearer and then we wouldn't even be having this pointless discussion.
Yeah, this is why in English we use disambiguating terms like "some" and "all". No soldier speaking english would ever say "I've eliminated enemy combatants", they'd say, "I've eliminated SOME enemy combatants". And I agree with your assertion that the "the" in my example was disambiguating.
However, we all know that article titles generally do not use articles in the same way, for brevity's sake, which is why choosing an ambiguous wording as the article did, is a bad idea, and why it leads to confusion where some people interpret it one way and some the other way.
My main beef was with you calling people 'idiot' because they were misled by an ambiguous title and then pointed out what was ambiguous about it, as if your personal interpretation of ambiguity was somehow the "correct" interpretation and anyone who reads it a different way is an "idiot".
Really alot of it comes down to hating to read people immediately start out with name-calling, and it seemed ironic since the person you are responding to had a valid point, which I have just elucidated.
But whatever, have a good day.
You completely misunderstood everything apparently, brainiac.
But I see you did not miss an opportunity to show your envy of those with Slashdot ids lower than yours, by jumping into an argument that you don't even understand just to insult me.
Hilarious that you are calling ME pedantic when you're the one who initiated this nonsense by berating someone else in a pedantic manner!
I think I'm going to start using your logic at work though. Should be fun.
Me: "Hey boss, I eliminated the bugs that were preventing our product from shipping!"
Boss: "Awesome! Finally we can ship because there are no bugs! I just uploaded the new build to the server and users are downloading it as we speak!"
Me: "What?!? But the bug that wipes users' hard drives is still in the product! We're ruined!"
Boss: "But you said you eliminated all of the bugs ..."
Me: "No, I said I eliminated the bugs. But clearly that only means some of them! In fact, I only fixed one bug, but ... since 'eliminate the bugs' really means 'eliminate some of the bugs', and 'some' in this context really meant 'one' ... I was just being accurate! Ask fisted, he knows."
But correspondingly, if someone says "your chicken tastes worse than other people's chicken", you don't then compare your chicken against someone else's steak to see if they're right.
Are you serious?
"eliminate: completely remove or get rid of (something)"
Saying 'partially eliminate' is an oxymoron although it's commonly used enough to mean "eliminating part of" that its meaning is well understood.
A sentence that is otherwise unqualified that says:
"How UPS Trucks Saved Millions of Dollars By Eliminating Left Turns"
VERY clearly means that "all left turns were eliminated".
But I think you understood all of this already and were just looking for a way to be salty. Mission accomplished!
Well to be honest this story is kind of a snoozer for me. Like, it's already known for this sort of thing to be possible. The fact that it was actually observed hardly seems that interesting to me personally. But for those of you for whom this sort of thing is exciting, please do post, maybe your posts will be interesting to read.
This is more "news for gossipers who love salacious stories that don't actually matter."
Come on Slashdot. Curating the content so that it's relevant reading for tech enthusiasts is WHAT YOU DO. So DO IT.
Bullshit. I don't believe it. I just simply cannot believe that another person can TALK to you in a certain way and completely change your state of consciousness. I refuse, absolutely refuse, to believe that it's any more than quackery that people will believe because they really, really want to believe it.
Close minded I may be, but I'm not easily fooled either.
I would imagine that with enough data you could calculate how long to wait before actually looking at your real cards to decide what to do next. At that point you could probably calculate your odds of winning if you keep playing your "fake hand" versus the odds of winning if you play your "actual hand" and then choose the best option.
What if you could somehow invert the problem of poker, and have, through enough mined data, a table of, given the current game situation, i.e. the best of prior players, etc, what hands you *could* have and what hands they *could* have, and then you could just choose the hand that you want to be playing as if you have at any moment.
Like, if, given the current game state, it's equally likely that you have hand A, B, or C, and if having A is most likely to win you the most money, then play like you have A, until that option is either not possible anymore, or is worse than having B or C (assuming they're still possible). Then switch to B or C when it's the best strategy.
I can't be the first person to have thought of this. Is there software out there that will do this for you?
Further to this, I've never played online poker but I've often wondered what it would be like to join up, and then play games pretending like I have completely different hands than I do have. Like what if I could actually hide the cards I actually have on the screen and just choose what cards I want to pretend actually appeared. Then I could play from my pretend hand without any uncertainty due to knowing what I actually have.
There's the problem that I haven't played enough poker to actually make smart bets and plays based on even made-up cards ... but if you are an online poker expert, would it help you in any way to have a system like I describe, where you don't even see your actual cards, but only see the cards of the hand that you want to "pretend" to have?