foxhedgehog's comments

foxhedgehog | 8 years ago | on: How Poetry and Math Intersect

  KING CLAUDIUS

  Thanks, dear my lord.

  Exit POLONIUS

  O(0), my offence(0) is rank it smells to heaven;
  It hath the primal(1) eldest curse upon't,
  A brother's murder. Pray can I not(0),
  Though inclination be as sharp as will:
  My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
  And, like a man to(2) double(2) business bound,
  I stand in pause where I shall first(1) begin,
  And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
  Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
  Is there not(0) rain enough in the sweet heavens
  To(2) wash it white as snow? Whereto(2) serves mercy
  But to(2) confront the visage of offence(0)?
  And what's in prayer but this two-fold(2) force(4),
  To(2) be forestalled(4) ere we come to(2) fall,
  Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
  My fault is past. But, O(0), what form of prayer
  Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
  That cannot(0) be; since I am still possess'd
  Of those effects for which I did the murder,
  My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
  May one(1) be pardon'd and retain the offence(0)?
  In the corrupted currents of this world
  Offence's(0) gilded hand may shove by justice,
  And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
  Buys out the law: but 'tis not(0) so above;
  There is no(0) shuffling, there the action lies
  In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
  Even to(2) the teeth and forehead(4) of our faults,
  To(2) give in evidence. What then? what rests?
  Try what repentance can: what can it not(0)?
  Yet what can it when one(1) can not(0) repent?
  O(0) wretched state! O(0) bosom black as death!
  O(0) limed soul, that, struggling to(2) be free,
  Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
  Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
  Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
  All may be well.

foxhedgehog | 8 years ago | on: What Data Does Facebook Collect When I’m Not Using Facebook, and Why?

> Paying for a car and being defrauded is in no way related to being tracked by websites.

This is incorrect: they're both examples of informational asymmetry being used to disadvantage a consumer. In both cases, that consumer needs to possess technical knowledge in order to understand the ways that the counterparty entity is exploiting them. In the case of the car dealership, at least the consumer is aware of the stakes when they step onto the lot, i.e. they are planning to buy a car. The problem with Facebook is exactly that people aren't aware of how they are being monetized, and that there is an explicit financial incentive to obscure that from them. They are stepping onto a car lot, or more accurately a surveillance operation, that has been made to look like an amusement park. "Personal responsibility" is a convenient fig leaf for people who want to pretend that the amusement park wasn't the sales pitch. If you don't like the original analogy to a used car salesman, consider the need for similar regulation around financial services, clean water, pharmaceuticals, etc. etc. etc.

foxhedgehog | 8 years ago | on: Plagiarism software unveils one of Shakespeare’s sources

I also think that it's interesting that one of the main texts that this article applies to is King Lear, which also takes inspiration from the Book of Job, a contemporary Elizabethan play called Gorbuduc, prior versions of Lear ("Leir"), and the Cinderella story, among others. Generally, it's interesting to look at how Shakespeare inverts, changes, or fuses his sources: Lear is, like Job, an intensely ordered play that motions towards disorder, and like Job it contains a menagerie of animals referenced incidentally -- Shakespeare alone elevates this to a thematic discussion of "nature," which in turn also provides him a rich vein of material, since "nature" (i.e. mother nature, order, human nature, etc.) and "natural" (i.e. legitimate child, fool, unvarnished truth) had multiple meanings that provide thematic offshoots for the play. All of which is to say that the key isn't just what sources the plays but what Shakespeare does to transform his source material.

foxhedgehog | 8 years ago | on: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

I see this as the 1.0 era of blockchain. There may yet be an amazon or a google lurking amidst all of the pets.com ICOs out there. If I had to guess who would survive, I would say SAFE.

foxhedgehog | 8 years ago | on: Startup Ideas

what if there was an ML to generate startup ideas and then you securitized that on the blockchain
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