seleniumBubbles's comments

Public perception about the average intelligence of any type of criminal is likely influenced by survivorship bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

This whole case just makes me incredibly sad.

Two federal agents tampered with important evidence, likely fabricated the entire “murder for hire” fiction, abused their law enforcement positions to steal millions of dollars worth of bitcoins, and carefully framed other people.

The literally corrupt federal agents got a slap on the wrist. They’ll both be out of prison soon.

But the young man who built a website for weed is to remain in prison for life.

What a sad, miscarriage of justice.

One of the best papers I've seen is Crime Markets: Non-Usefulness of Prediction Markets for Assassination and Crime: http://bitcoinhivemind.com/papers/6_Crime_Markets.pdf Summary:

> Some worry that censorship-resistant prediction markets will be used to encourage assassinations (and other crimes); this concern does not hold up to a sober examination. “Assassination markets” (AMs), as originally proposed by Jim Bell, are irreconcilably different from Prediction Markets (PMs). My experimental method for funding public goods with PMs has features which render it incompatible with crime. Furthermore, markets would generally present an excessively-complex, risky, and convoluted form of criminal financing. Truthcoin presents a (peaceful) alternative for accomplishing ideological goals, which features greater persuasiveness as well as lower cost. I conclude with a short discussion covering [1] recourse for those affected by AMs (of any kind), [2] features of Truthcoin designed to amplify the inherent impracticalities of AMs, and [3] the (necessarily relevant) total net effect of Truthcoin on political assassinations, general crime and general human welfare.

The linked paper does a thorough job of explaining this scenario, but to summarize: yes, in the absence of other market participants you might try to bet on low-probability events and make them happen. But because it's a public market, anyone can see the anomalous "predictions" you have made, and "free ride" on or even "front run" your position, including your accomplices (who can also sabotage you). On net, your position will be mostly consumed by arbitrage, your payout will be inconsequential compared to the capital required, and the probability "returned" by the market will remain accurate.

Having reliable, auditable, public protocols which can operate without the blessing of the world’s existing governments is precisely the point.

Killer examples include any products or services which would provide a net positive value to society but are currently outlawed within various geographic territories for superstitious reasons and/or to protect existing industries from competition.

Prediction markets are an excellent example here: a substantial body of research now indicates that 1) prediction markets are superior to all other strategies in predicting any quantifiable event (because they are “meta tools” which inherently incorporate the best information from all strategies) and 2) non-private markets can’t be used for manipulating elections, sponsoring assassinations, or incentivizing real-world action of any sort. (In any prediction market with a public order book, any attempted “action-incentivizing position” can be consumed by arbitrage until all that remains is a measure of the event’s real probability). For several decades, researchers from dozens of universities have lobbied for relaxing the ban on prediction markets in USA, with little progress to show. Until that ban is lifted (which could take decades longer), blockchain-based prediction markets will have no domestic competition.

Also worth noting: even in the presence of legal, centralized prediction markets, decentralized prediction market protocols may still be competitive because they require far less counterparty-risk, allowing them to safely support higher volumes and larger positions.

What is the ongoing performance cost of using the official TypeScript compiler for long-running applications? Or is this primarily a concern of startup time for scripts and short-lived programs like CLIs?

Congratulations on the 1.0 release! I've been using Deno as my primary "hacking" runtime for several months now, I appreciate how quickly I can throw together a simple script and get something working. (It's even easier than ts-node, which I primarily used previously.)

I would love to see more focus in the future on the REPL in Deno. I still find myself trying things in the Node.js REPL for the autocomplete support. I'm excited to see how Deno can take advantage of native TypeScript support to make a REPL more productive: subtle type hinting, integrated tsdocs, and type-aware autocomplete (especially for a future pipeline operator).

The “inflation protection” provided by TIPS relies on the good-faith reporting of the same government which creates and benefits from the inflation.

If inflation as measured by the CPI picks up beyond the single-digit numbers of normal years, do you really expect TIPS to remain honestly valued? Even if that means they outperform all other assets “risk free?”

You can also use the “restart stack frame” option in Chrome DevTools to move back to the beginning of any function currently being executed. So if you skip past something on accident, you can just restart the closest stack frame to bring you back.

It's good to see EFF taking a principled stance on Assange. Too many organizations have chosen to throw WikiLeaks under the bus after their 2016 election leak harmed the "wrong" American political team.

It's a shame that the American political machine is so good at character assassination (of both Assange and WikiLeaks), despite the sorely-needed transparency they've offered to many modern democracies. The world needs more organizations like WikiLeaks, not fewer.

Nice list! One I’d add: one of my all-time favorite cryptography-related quotes is from Bruce Schneier‘s Applied Cryptography, talking about key length:

> These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.

Full context: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_...

Good to hear! Here’s also a fascinating news clipping from a 1910 issue of the New York Times. It really helps to get a feel for the rhetoric of the era, “Physician Condemns Practice for Lodges”: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/11/06/105...

Just curious, have you ever heard of lodge practice?

It was a huge source of medical care for the poor and working class well into the early 1900 (serving ~1/3 of the population), but was strangled by the AMA and the centralization of unions: http://www.freenation.org/a/f12l3.html

I think it’s particuarly interesting because it was completely absent from all my previous education about medical systems. I only recently learned it existed, and it’s changed my views significantly. (I.e. I’m no longer of the opinion that switching to full government management is a good target, but rather, the government should stop propping up and providing corporate welfare to the systems which strangled mutual aid societies.)

This seems to be the deeper reason why many wealthy people begin leaning left publicly after amassing their fortune. The very same people can often be seen years earlier making statements that could come out of an Ayn Rand book, but when they’ve beaten the game, the risk-mitigating option is to become “the people’s billionaire.” Im afraid it’s not a change of heart, it’s simply the most logical decision for someone whose wealth is locked up in institutions governed by a democracy.

It’s worth noting here that an astonishing number of prominent politicians and politically-involved elites are still avowed (and publicly acknowledged) Malthusians. So when trying to understand their actions, keep in mind, their goals may in fact be to “reduce the global population to a more sustainable level.”

That is such a fantastic article. It’s timeless: it was published in 1850, but it remains more relevant than ever.

I would love to see a comparison of the probability of contracting a foot fungus or other contagious disease in a security line vs. being a victim in a terrorist attack.

Seeing as the TSA has never caught a terrorist (and has missed several) I’d bet a statistical case could be made that their security lines are more dangerous to the public than any terrorist attacks they may have prevented.

This is great, thanks for sharing.

People in this thread might also appreciate this essay: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-in-six-hundred-words

And the more expanded version: https://maryrosecook.com/blog/post/git-from-the-inside-out

It really helped me comprehend Git enough to start understanding the more complex work flows.

I think the other response was flagged for language, but the included link was really interesting. I'd never even heard of medical "lodge practice" before seeing this video and reading through some of the references.

They're basically voluntary, mutual aid societies – many of them were basically small unions. The were strangled by the bigger, consolidated organizations:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fFoXyFmmGBQ

The video is probably good for most audiences, but if (like me) you prefer to read, it looks like this is the short essay it's based on: http://www.freenation.org/a/f12l3.html

The references at the end of the essay include some really interesting historical accounts which I've enjoyed reading over the past few hours.

Would you make the same argument in favor of the cartelization of internet service providers? If in the 90s the ISPs banded together and got a government to prohibit competition, would we be asking if it's fair to compare "internet service measured in baud" with our much faster internet service of today? Humans are very clever; technology can improve even in the most oppressive regimes.

That’s an amazing video, thanks for sharing.

And the comments are actually useful – there’s a pinned link to a New York Times article published in 1910 which explains the argument at the time for cartelizing the industry.