Starting, eh?
The author basically says the bitcoin handler at the coffee shop will know how much you have unless you go through a massive scheme (which is probably borderline illegal for decent reasons) to gain back any sense of normalcy.
This is what happens when people take their own ball to go play in their own yard.
If it's going to take the amount of time, energy, and expertise to barely make bitcoin usable, how does the cognitive dissonance not overwhelm the coinbugs?
Bitcoin is not so bad at privacy as you say. But it's certainly can be made better with fully automated solution deployed on massive scale individually, without major agreement or protocol changes. It's just an evolution of the technology. Ajax apps also did not appear overnight on the web.
That's generally not the case. You might be able to see some of my funds, but certainly not the entire contents of my wallet unless you're using very broken ones. I've hundreds of different inputs in my wallet, and you'd only be seeing one of them.
I think the danger of the public nature of the blockchain is way overstated. It's fairly trivial to introduce reasonable doubt into your transaction history, blockchain analysis is nowhere near as useful to law enforcement as some people think.
The situation I worry about more is when someone is operating outside of the law, for example if you legitimately but unknowingly end up with some coins that were previously stolen, and then some guys with baseball bats turn up at your house.
That's why you split the coins repeatedly as you mix them. You don't want more than 0.1% of someone's "dirty" history. Client-side statistical analysis allows each node to decide which coins are good for them personally. (So that all coins are "far" away from each other.)
Give poor people money to buy food, they will likely optimize in fat+ ways. Pay people to be healthy. The needy can be healthy. Put a floor under everyone and then progressively incentivize health.
Health is its own reward; paying people for healthy _outcomes_ == worse poverty for the chronically unhealthy, partially disabled, and (in the US) victims of the non-healthcare system.
People need to eat every day. Give people cash, it goes for random things. Give people food stamp - at a minimum they have food. I'm guess you've never been hungry. The folks who invented food stamps were trying to reduce a real problem.
Not amazing. Those subsidies have quite a logical nexus actually.
Most fruits and vegetables can't be stored or transported like grains - unless they are picked before being ripe & at peak nutrition.
Playing games on the supply side is a fool's errand. Incentives become unpredictable, if not counter-productive. Boost demand and incentives will work themselves out. Pay people to live healthy lives and they will drive the farmers to produce healthy foods. Put money on the behaviors you want to see more of - and you will see it. Pay to encourage price stability (farm subsidies) and you'll see price fixing. Pay people who get and stay fit and they will drive the markets to healthier plateaus.
Year-round fresh fruits & vegetables for 300M people can not be grown in the US. You can't subsidize farmers enough for them to make the sun shine longer and breed apples with a 6 month shelf life. You also ought to consider the global effects of shipping fresh food a few thousand miles or more, not to mention the human costs of raising and harvesting all those tasty luxuries.
Grains (and other starches) are stable, travel well (though they can grow closer to everywhere), and can provide an adequate base of energy and fiber within a diet tailored to a healthy individual.
If you want economic incentives done better, tax the fat and transfer it to the fit.
What are you working on? / The shit.
How much longer? / Not much. Almost done.
Is it hot? / It IS shit.
Is it tight? / It's DONE.
Awesome. Can I blog about it? / Yeah... you're the CEO.
Later...
Hey - this is a pile of shit! / It IS done.
You're a cog in someone else's machine. You are a means to an end - which is some form of naive auto-fellating bullshit. Shut up and get the shit done. Someone wants to disrupt the treehouse club!
Treat me mean. I need the money.
Maybe they should A/B the color of their log in finding the A players.
There's been a fair number of fluff PR and guerilla marketing - even directly at HN readers - around vaping. It's likely organized and funded, etc. blah blah. How far did you have to read through this article to get any voice of someone NOT paid by the company or by the company of the author?
The whole e-cig thing is trying to re-build the signalling that real cigarettes have had instead of the self-medicating, addicted idea people have at this point. Rebellion, authenticity, ritual, nostalgia, freedom etc. vs.
Addict
It must be turned into something you do in front of people to be safely contrarian. Why not just have little capsules that you can get a high dose rush from that essentially is minimally enveloped nicotine? Just enough toying to get it straight to the blood stream?
> Why not just have little capsules that you can get a high dose rush from that essentially is minimally enveloped nicotine?
They have these too. Look for the '4mg nicotine mini lozenge' made by Nicorette and generic by many companies. Unfortunately they're expensive and you need to use 2 or 3 (8-12mg) to really get effect from it. Also, they are slightly irritating to the mouth at times (but much less so than nicotine gum or any tobacco).
> The whole e-cig thing is trying to re-build the signalling [...]
That's an interesting point. I think you're right on that for the companies like Njoy and Blu, which are imitating the feel of real cigarettes. They're tapping into the smokers' rebellious psyche but interestingly, it's because those smokers are generally too self-conscious to use an e-cig with a giant battery and refillable tank that looks odd. Essentially, smokers feel (perhaps rightly) that smoking is accepted on some level, but people definitely do find it strange seeing someone inhale from a giant piece of metal that many might assume is some kind of hard drug.
However, as a result of their design concerns (to look like a real cigarette... or 'analog cig' as many say) they've sacrificed on tech specs and also on price. It's much more cost effective and also an overall better experience to buy an e-cig with a large battery and refillable tanks to hold the liquid. But Blu and others do not offer this. Compare their $7.99 e-cig that is equivalent to 20 cigarettes to the $7.99 10ml bottle of e-liquid for refillable e-cigs which will last at least a week (probably equivalent to 200 cigarettes), and batteries that last upwards of 1-2 days between charges. Some Blue e-cigs aren't re-chargeable and the ones that are run of out charge after a few hours of use. Also, Blu does not deliver the amount of nicotine to the user that a refillable tank + large battery can (which is bad b/c then smokers don't feel satisfied).
So, if smokers can find the self-confidence to vape on the most effective device (regardless of its appearance) then they'll save lots of money, get a better nicotine experience, and thus be much less likely to return to smoking.
This is what happens when people take their own ball to go play in their own yard.
If it's going to take the amount of time, energy, and expertise to barely make bitcoin usable, how does the cognitive dissonance not overwhelm the coinbugs?