destructaball's comments

destructaball | 8 years ago | on: European Copyright Law Could Soon Get Worse

On something of a tangent I suspect that large parts of the GDPR will be comparably moot.

Many companies including Twillo and Delta have rolled out their tracking controls behind feature flags. If you decide that you'd rather not be tracked they make you stare at a spinner for ~100 seconds while your privacy settings are "being applied".

Keeping privacy as inconvenient as possible is big business.

destructaball | 8 years ago | on: CBOE Will Start Bitcoin Futures Trading on December 10

30% is far too small of an initial margin for such a volatile commodity.

The initial margin is expected to cover a the movement of an observable through making the margin call, the period of time the margin call could be filled, declaring the counter-party in default and closing out the position. This normally adds up to a minimum of 2 working days.

Saying that it's beyond the realms of possibility for bitcoin to jump or fall 30% in 2 days seems ridiculous.

destructaball | 11 years ago | on: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

I don't think that's true. I think in most western countries the kind of people who end up taking meth are already people who have a drug problem, making the makeup of meth users be generally people with serious issues.

New Zealand has been particularly good at prohibiting the import of drugs like MDMA and Cocaine, which has made them prohibitively expensive. As a result, if you're a drug user you either smoke cannabis, take pills which are generally a mix of mephedrone and meth or just straight up take meth. There's no middle ground.

As a result the kinds of people who would normally take MDMA on a night out in London would take Meth on a night out in Auckland. I know a good number of young professionals who take it from time to time without it being a big part of their lives. Strangely the meth snorters stigmatise meth smokers in the same way a normal person would stigmatise a meth user.

destructaball | 11 years ago | on: Inside a Chinese Bitcoin Mine That's Grossing $1.5M a Month

I used to know a fairly small miner, ~$2,000 a month turnover, who managed to rig his ASIC up to his heat pump in such a way that is heated his house and cooled the card. He lived in a fairly big house and it was always toasty even in the middle of winter.

It might still make sense for some people even when the margins are small

destructaball | 11 years ago | on: Secure Secure Shell

Every now and again I step back and think of the absurdity of us having to take all of these precautions to stay safe from the people employed to represent our interests

destructaball | 11 years ago | on: Clojure 2014 Year in Review

Anecdotally, I've been applying for jobs using Scala and Clojure in Australasia and Europe and the Scala jobs seem more numerous and far better paid

destructaball | 11 years ago | on: Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. The DEA Put Him in Prison (2013)

I have on a few occasions refused to sell Bitcoins to people. One time a man brought $5,000 of crumpled bills in a carrier bag and I told him to take a hike and never try to buy from me again. I refuse to sell to anyone who tells me they're going to use the Bitcoins to buy drugs and I try to buy directly from miners.

I'm doing everything I can reasonably do because I really don't want to get involved with criminals, but all of these safeguards are trivial to sidestep

destructaball | 11 years ago | on: Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. The DEA Put Him in Prison (2013)

I run a reasonably successful service buying and selling Bitcoins for cash, an act which is completely legal where I live. I have absolutely no idea where my clients get their Bitcoins or what they use them for and there no way I could find out. It isn't inconceivable that some of these people are using the coins I sell to commit crimes or that the ones I buy are the proceeds of crime. I always fear I could be a victim of this kind of overzealous prosecution for running a legitimate business and it causes a chilling effect in my industry

destructaball | 12 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?

Location: Currently Auckland/London but I'd love to relocate

Stack: Scala, Play!, Akka, JS/JQuery, Angular.js, MySQL, Git, Android

Resume: http://goo.gl/8UzKrM

Contact: david at 4ta dot co dot uk

I'm graduating this year (BSci Computer Science, University of Auckland) and I'd love to get involved in an environment where I can tackle interesting problems and make a difference to the trajectory of a small company. I'm young so, if the jobs interesting, I don't care where it is or how long it's for. I've reliably come top 5 nationally in programming competitions and I'm always dabbling in new technologies.

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