True. Recently one of the sales directors at my company threatens the CEO to make him a "co-founder" (which basically means granting him a lot of option), or he will quit. He is responsible for half of our revenue, and he has been empire-building in his org for a while, so that his team answers to him, not the company. If we cut him off, very likely he (and a few key leaders) would deflect to our main competitor with our sales pipeline, and do some real damage. Very brutal situation for the CEO. I can not imagine learning how to handle this in any water-downed advice.
I exercise a lot. But I do it mostly for the intrinsic fun part.
I doubt it has a big impact on our health and longevity. Once a research says regular medium intensity exercise could potentially prolong our lives by 3 to 5 years. But that is it. If you exercise for 50 years, 3 times a week, and 1 hour per session plus 30 minutes preparation, that is actually 12150 hours in total and translates into about 2 years of productive life.
So its ROI from a longevity perspective is really not as high as some of us think.
Rather than thinking purely about lifespan it would be better to think about healthspan. What if exercise means the years you are living are much more enjoyable and pain free.
The ROI argument is one reason why I commute by bike. 7 days a week no problem, no real preparation time. Takes up time I would otherwise be wasting sitting in a car or public transit.
Last week according to my log I rode for 213 minutes. That's a bit more than 30 minutes per day.
The main issue is that I used to spend the commute reading books. So I have basically exchanged "mental" excericse with physical excercise. I feel that listening to an audiobook while cycling is a bit too dangerous for an urban commute like mine.
I really sympathise with this. I changed job about two yeas ago and switched from an hour long train ride to a 30 minute cycyle. The shorter commute is great, and the in built exercise is great, but man I really miss that chance to read, or just relax.
I've been looking for information on risk, overall, by passenger miles travelled, by trips, and by time-in-mode (which adjusts for typical trip length).
Only partially successful, though I find:
30,690 overall auto fatalities.
- 6,067 cycling & edestrial fatalities, combined.
- "More than 90% of pedestrian fatalities occurred when the victims were hit by automobiles and light trucks."
- "A related study on risk factors for on-road cycling commuters indicated that prior to car-bicycle accidents, 89% of cyclists were traveled in a safe and legal manner. In addition, vehicle drivers were at fault in 87% of the events."
The parent didn't mean to say whether cyclists or drivers were more or less at fault, but for every minute/mile spent on a cycle instead of a car, the likelihood of injury is probably higher.
The risk of cycling depends on many different factors and is not simply described as "way more risky than using a car".
Per distance, the average cyclist has more risk than the average driver. However, that's just the base rate, and is not destiny. Combine that with the fact that cyclists tend to travel much shorter distances than drivers. So much shorter that based on distance alone I've seen some cyclists argue, with statistics for average cyclists no less, that they actually face less risk on the road than many drivers. You don't see drivers with long commutes getting warned about the danger, but if people treated driving the same as cycling you would.
There are many things cyclists can do to reduce their risk per mile. As I recall, the majority of cyclist deaths involve riding after midnight or riding when drunk. If you don't do either then your risk is a lot lower. I've been riding for over a decade now and recognize the importance of where you live, infrastructure, defensive cycling, visibility gear (lights, vest, reflectors, etc.), and even a simple air horn.
Also recognize that cycling gets safer every year on average, even in the US. At some point I looked at the data and recognized that the cyclist mortality rate in the US is decreasing roughly linearly. If the linear trend continues then there will be roughly zero cyclist fatalities in 2050. Of course, it's more likely to taper off. But I never see the fact that cycling is becoming safer every year mentioned by its detractors.
With all of this being said, yes, I do believe that cycling is more risky than I'd like. The reason why appears to be that the majority of road users (mostly drivers) do not take safety seriously. In my experience the road users who take safety the most seriously tend to be either cyclists or motorcyclists. No surprise why.
> I doubt it has a big impact on our health and longevity
It definitely has an impact on your quality of life and helps you attain your genetic potential. If you're body is prone to cancer or alzheimer you will still get them, but until then you'll be in top physical condition.
When you're 40 and start packing up weight, can't run nor climb 3 flights of stairs without panting, can't lift your kids, can't help your friends move to a new flat, &c. fast forward 20 years and you can't get out of bed without pain, walking is a chore, stairs are your nemesis, your back pain is a constant reminder of your unwillingness to exercise.
> translates into about 2 years of productive life.
I don't think making a distinction between "productivity time" and "staying in shape time" is a good thing to do. You better shave off time by working part time than shave off time by skipping physical exercise. Life doesn't have to be all about productivity.
I exercise every day for at least an hour. Screw longevity, I do it to help me think. It’s a great way to step away from work and life for a while, focus on something fun, and the ability run a marathon will come handy in the next zombie apocalypse.
Or during any sort of emergency really. Being fit has many practical uses.
I decided to run every day at the beginning of the year. Previously I would go for a lackluster jog every couple of weeks. That was not enough exercise and I went cold-turkey, no excuses. I mostly succeeded aside from a few days where it was not possible due to circumstances. I do not feel that it improved me mentally but physically it's a whole different story. Endurance improved dramatically, I do no longer feel exhausted after physical activity.
At first it was a struggle but now I look forward to the daily run. I do not want the effects to wane and that alone motivates me.
I'm aware that running is hard on the joints. Not sure about my long term plans but I will dedicate at least this year to it.
I guess my point is: no matter if it's running, walking or another activity: just continue doing it and eventually you'll enjoy it.
The reality is that mainlanders want prosperity and stability over democracy. Unless protesters could prove there is a better way to bring prosperity, the propaganda efforts would be futile. It is not 1980s any more.
VPN would not help. I learnt about what happened to Tiananmen Square, but I also learnt there is CIA agents behind a lot of these incidences. Real world is complicated. Politics is pragmatic.
I do hope different countries could put their trifles aside and focus on the big picture as a specie. But it will be a long way. Too much pride, too much at stake. Power struggle is too deep in our genes.
Would millions of minority citizens interned in "re-education" camps count as "trifles" in your estimation? Because a lot of people internationally are not fans of that, and it's hardly a matter of pride or power struggle. It's an authoritarian government mistreating its citizens without due cause. That's exactly what HK people are trying to prevent happening to them...
The old guard, many immigrated from the mainland, strive to one day democratize China. Hong Kong's youngsters say "screw that, let them keep their dictatorship, we just want to be left alone with the freedoms we've got"
I fully understand your hatred towards the Chinese government.
I want to point out what I believe is the root cause. It has nothing to do with communism. Chinese has a deep rooted culture of long range thinking (think "Sun Tzu"). It has always been willing to sacrifice piece for the whole, sacrifice short term for the long term. We read those historical stories as we grow up. It is very scary at times, especially when you end up at the wrong side of the table and you are being sacrificed. This moral code probably is very different from yours. From your perspective, what happens in Xinjiang is severe violation of human rights; from those top guys' perspective, this is sacrificing the freedom of a minority for the stability and prosperity of a whole people. I am not saying I approve this policy as I certainly do not want to be those interned. And you might argue that this "long range thinking" is really servicing communism party's self interest. But your response demonstrates that the chasm is deep. And the chasm is on a cultural level and wont bridge easily.
What this trade war scares me the most is also related with this chasm - it is just so hard to transcend cultures and reach slightest bit of mutual understanding. For a while west thinks China could turn, but now it is really starting to realize there is fundamental difference. It is very scary to me. Like most people on this forum, I do not want to see any escalation in any form of conflict. I just want a peaceful globe and we could continue do our thing that occasionally crosses border.
And speaking of this Hong Kong protest, many Hong Kong friends disapprove it. I read WSj every day and there is no mentioning of what a normal Hong Kong resident think of it. In the end, what do you expect a 18 year old high school protester to understand in regards to what "democracy" mean? At that age, we easily aggrandize our self-righteousness and self-importance and are easily influenced. It is a matter of age. I think fundamentally what is driving such grievance is that Hong Kong is no longer as important as before. And younger generation see no hope. But this is simply inevitable capitalistic evolution. Smart young Hong Kong natives are now looking for opportunities in Beijing. This is the future and we have to embrace it.
Your dismissal of the protesters is so arrogant I'm struggling to think of a cogent response.
I've seen the argument by mainlanders often that these protests "don't represent the opinion of the people". You know what would reveal the opinion of the people? Universal suffrage and free choice of legco candidates, or Legco elections where the people could vote in a true majority (i.e. abolishing functional constituencies). Until then the only way people can make their voices heard is protest. And with two million on the street a few weeks ago, an unprecedented turnout as a share of population for any kind of protest anywhere in the world the opinion of "normal Hong Kong residents" is clear. But again, want to find out for real? Democratize HK and find out. But we all know what the result would be, including Beijing.
While a majority don't actively support storming LegCo or clashing with police, the majority definitely are against the extradition bill and further mainland encroachment, and they empathize with the protesters' intentions. That is abundantly clear.
Hong Kong is separated from China by a long period with a different value system. While mainlanders might be happy to sacrifice the minority (the "others") for stability—a preference well explained by turbulent Chinese history—the people of Hong Kong most firmly don't. And never will.
I don't hate the Chinese government, although I despise many of those in power there. Overall it's done well in modernizing the country and bringing people out of poverty. And they have done so in part by restricting civil liberties, some might say it's worth it. But interning millions of people or denying due process to dissidents is a red line for me. I cannot accept any justification for that.
The CIA definitely was not behind Tiananmen square and there is no way it could be behind a two million person strong protest...
Conspiracy theory is one of the strongest forms of propaganda. Alex Jones is dumb but effective. It’s a slippery slope before you start blaming the Jews for everything.
You can also eschew all electronic communication and do things purely in person—that works too. The valuable question to answer here is how well do these processes work compared to each other.
China is definitely quite a competitive economy in the technology space. I wouldnt say its the next SV. Rather would group it as its own class. Most of the businesses grew out of protectionism offered by thr Chinese govt but noe they seem to have made it.
The protectionism was/is there in the US too. I unfortunately can't remember the details but there is a video in the Computer History Museum that tells a story about how computers from Germany were blocked in the US and the impact it had on both countries.
Of course, as the US now has a extraordinarily strong advantage in the sector it doesn't have to flex that muscle as often. But it does flex it when needed.
I’m not sure why we need to be sarcastic about a future in which “we upgrade ourselves into transhuman”. There is nothing special about “humanity”. Emotions are likely result of chemicals. We will transform ourselves and what those beings feel most likely will not resemble what we feel today. They will have their culture and art and they will not care about ours at all. It is inevitable if there is no disastrous event happening. We just need to accept that. We are one tiny step in evolution like dinosaur.
I too find that after a 10-hour day, I can not do anything productive. My best time is morning till early afternoon. I think ego depletion definitely has some anecdotal evidence. Most of us can only do quality focused work when our mind is clear after sleep.
If you look at the data gwern provided, some of the supposedly owls actually sleep till noon, and do work immediately after waking up. That is not an "owl" in my opinion ... I too can do work at night if I spend the day wandering around. An owl is someone who could pump good work after a taxing day.
On a fundamental level, there's no way to draw a line demarcating owls, and otherwise non-owls. It's a false dichotomy, founded on behavior alone, which is subject to peer influence, and other sources of behavior modification. All people lead lives distorted by circumstance, particularly when it comes to circadian rhythm. The behavioral effects of daylight savings time prove this. Casual caffeine consumption is another fact to poison the well.
Anyway, I'm routinely up until three or four in the morning. I despise getting up for a nine to five work day, but I do it. Every chance I get, to sleep in, I take it.
Many times, what's really going on, I've discovered, during periods of extended vacation or unemployment, is that I wind up in rotations that push my bed time forward by a couple of hours every day, and then I sleep for any number of hours, until my body need me to get up, and begin my routine. This pushes me all the way from a midnight bed time, around the entire clock, realigning with a midnight bed time in less than two weeks.
When I get locked into as static 9 AM, alarm induced wake pattern, this frequently expresses itself as pulling an all-nighter, just to realign with the totalitarian nature of the work week, such that I might arrive to work on time, for some bullshit, daily 10 AM scrum stand-up, or whatever. It also leaves me really fucking moody, including symptoms of seasonal affective disorder.
But you know what? I'm not crazy. I'm not sick. I'm just forced to live my life on other people's terms for economic reasons, because I wasn't born into a trust fund, and I'm not otherwise independently wealthy. So, by corollary, I cannot tolerate the idea of being taxed financially, to treat something medically, when it should not actually require medication.
Anyway, you have to account for the proper modular math, when declaring that night owls "simply do not sleep in" nor can you claim that your supposed version of a night owl never experienced fatigue, after 10 hours of undescribed daily activity, due to the psychological cost of an ego facade, or whatever.
Great pos! The more I learn about bitcoin, the more I feel like it still has a long way to go. There are a few hurdles that can not be easily solved now: 10min transaction time; deflationary (this pretty much means it would have a hard time to act a real "currency" based on nowadays economic thinking); the resources wasted in mining and the potential consolidation of mining; the programmable aspect is very limited today. What is your take of it?
> For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often.
Not exactly. If you have all your coins in a single transaction, you will get change - which can take 10 minutes to confirm before you can spend it again.
Yes, you can solve this by splitting up your money, but it's not something people expect.
> It's not wasted if it's being used to process bitcoin transactions.
Yes it is being wasted. Waste doesn't mean "unused", waste means "using more than necessary". Due to the hashrate arms race, tremendous amounts of power are being wasted doing nothing useful.
Bitcoin is powered by electricity, a better currency would spend something else instead.
> Due to the hashrate arms race, tremendous amounts of power are being wasted doing nothing useful.
But they are doing something useful. They're preventing someone from turning up and performing a 51% attack, thus ensuring the security of the network. You could suggest that there's better ways of doing that, but our ideas so far haven't panned out.
Interestingly, how it works at the moment is that essentially, through the mining of bitcoins, every bitcoin holder's bitcoins are devalued to pay for the security of the network. Therefore, if a significant amount of bitcoin holders decided that they could deal with less network security, they would use a coin which provided less network security (by paying miners less).
As it is, at the moment, we're not sure exactly how much security we need. Therefore, we're willing to pay for as much security as possible; nobody wants their bitcoins to be worthless tomorrow because they didn't pay enough to protect the network.
The thing I don't like about the way bitcoin mining works is that it's an arms race that leaves attacker and defender on equal footing - quite unlike a lot of crypto, where adding a bit increases the defender's work linearly but the attacker's exponentially. By its nature, then, we have to keep burning off more in value than someone could make with a 51% attack, regardless of improvements in tech efficiency.
Of course, lacking a better proposal, it could be that this is the best we can do. I don't have to like everything about every piece of technology in the world...
> You could suggest that there's better ways of doing that, but our ideas so far haven't panned out.
Can I ask, have you heard about Peercoin, which uses a combination of a proof of work and a proof of stake system rather than just a proof of work system? Do you have an opinion as to why such as system wouldn't be at least as secure as bitcoin?
My understanding is that it's currently unproven, and certain ideas we used to have about it have already been disproven. I'd love to see an actual academic paper on what it would take to break the network.
There's also the fact that wealth inequality - specific groups of people owning significant amounts of money - will break the network's assumptions. This could be a good or bad thing, depending on your point of view.
Additionally, minting a proof-of-stake block locks your stake for 520 blocks. Most reasonable people would be angry that they can't access their money for that long. There's a workaround of reserving a certain amount of coins so that it can't be used for proof-of-stake, but that doesn't actually solve the problem, and generally means that the poor will reserve all their money and never generate a proof-of-stake block.
And that leads on to another issue with proof-of-stake; the rich get richer, as a rule that's explicitly built into the system. Probably not much richer, but it's against common ideology.
The other thing that most cryptocurrency enthusiasts won't like about Peercoin is that it's eternally mildly inflationary. While some will understand that this is essentially payment for security, others will argue that those who use the network more should pay more (via transaction fees), rather than a "tax".
I suspect that it will see a mild increase in use when they prove that they can get rid of centralised checkpointing, but I think there's a very significant core group that will not be able to get past the ideological issues and lack of academic research.
> Yes it is being wasted. Waste doesn't mean "unused", waste means "using more than necessary". Due to the hashrate arms race, tremendous amounts of power are being wasted doing nothing useful.
Due to the arms race, it's only getting more and more efficient.
> nothing useful
Again with that? You are starting to sound like a troll.
> Bitcoin is powered by electricity, a better currency would spend something else instead.
Can't you say the same about everything? Why does Bitcoin's energy consumption bother you so much, while you have cars, factories, and everything else still using fossil fuels, coal, etc.? Is your computer running on dark matter energy or what?
Imagine a computation-intensive crypto-coin-mining activity somehow linked to a real-world, practical use, say, curing cancer (say, by digging through vast amounts of genetic data). Instead of paying for the computation time directly, people could work on chuncks of the problem as they wish and be rewarded with CCCs (Cancer Cure Coins) for defined partial results.
Then we could say the computing ressources are not wasted.
This is a frequent point that comes up from people who haven't really thought through all the details of how PoW based cryptocurrencies work.
A good proof of work function needs two things (among other desirable properties I will elide):
1) For some difficulty factor D, you should be able to generate an instance of the problem that takes time proportional to D to solve
2) The solution should be verifiable in time much less than D (preferably constant time)
So until you can show me a foolproof way to generate protein folding problems, genetics problems, or SETI problems, etc. that have these properties (I haven't found one myself), it seems quite difficult to make a "useful" PoW.
Now, theoretically, if you found a "useful" problem that had property 1, but not property 2, you could convert it into a viable PoW using efficient zero knowledge proof techniques [0], but at the moment that isn't really viable.
It was just an example to clarify the criticism of "cryptocurrencies waste energy". It would be up to the cryptocurrency advocates to show such a function.
On the plus side, the problem does not necessarily be "proportional to D", in fact, finding a better function would be incentivized. Since the computer cycles would produce a "real" value (curing cancer), the upper limit for these coins would be the amount of money society would spend on a cancer treatment.
> For almost all practical applications for which bitcoin is being used, this doesn't actually come in to play very often.
But could this be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps this property of Bitcoin is hurting its adoption, by relegating it only to uses where this is not a hurdle.
In the short term, I think it will have a hard time gaining use as a currency. A few currency scenarios might pop up, for example countries with unstable government or corrupt governments could see people store $ in BTC instead. However, I do think it could be very valuable as an application. Like if you layered it on top of the existing payment system to provide better security/anti-fraud.
If you look to the top of the page, next to your username, there's a number in brackets. Wouldn't it be nice to take that number and buy something real with it? You could, if it was a fun cryptocurrency that had at least a little traction.
I'd imagine certain people could use their Stackoverflow Coins to buy a house!
So what property does Dogecoin have that Bitcoin doesn't, that enables us to do this? The answer is nothing, and Dogecoin is redundant. Might as well use Infinitecoin or any other copycoin before Dogecoin, they are all the same copy/pasted code, with no technical added value and the only effort they put goes to marketing.
> deflationary (this pretty much means it would have a hard time to act a real "currency" based on nowadays economic thinking)
This argument makes no sense to me. If Bitcoin's deflationary nature prevented it from acting as a currency, it would also prevent USD/CAD/dogecoin/etc. from acting as currencies because people would chose to buy Bitcoin instead of spending their inflationary currency on anything else.
Every time you spend USD on something, you can instead buy an equivalent amount in Bitcoin. Not buying bitcoins can effectively be thought of as buying them and spending them.
In fact, the truth is that no one knows if Bitcoin will be inflationary or deflationary within the next year due to its current small market cap and risky nature. But in an hypothetical world where Bitcoin does become a stable and deflationary currency, why would any selfish actor chose to hold an inflationary currency?
> If Bitcoin's deflationary nature prevented it from acting as a currency, it would also prevent USD/CAD/dogecoin/etc. from acting as currencies because people would chose to buy Bitcoin instead of spending their inflationary currency on anything else.
This is exactly what happens. No one holds currency.
People don't generally have their assets as cash, just what they need to be liquid. They hold their assets as a mix of stock (incl. funds, bonds, options), real estate, etc.
In fact, the majority of people have practically no cash at all because they lend it to a bank (i.e. putting it in a checking or savings account) who invests it or lends it for a return! The bank only holds a small portion of what they say is in the account.
Not sure if you are disagreeing with me but in case you are: suppose those assets (stocks, bonds, real estate) could be transferred as easily as a currency (instant transfer/fungible/divisible/liquid/etc.), would people use cash at all? What would be the use case for cash? My point was that Bitcoin would be such an asset.
Perhaps a deflationary currency would have a negative overall impact on the economy, but that's not what I'm arguing about.
I was disagreeing, but I don't think you are wrong: just misinterpreting.
I think that a good currency really has couple properties: fungible, no inherent value (i.e. not a good value store).
(This could be viewed as a weakness but I think is actually a strength in this circumstance).
If the currency is a value store, it changes the dynamics of spending it. I feel this is the reason that salt (going back in time) is not a particularly good currency either. Imagine it this way -- if all of a sudden salt was more useful (perhaps it's a hot summer, and meat is spoiling), then all of a sudden there's an extra inertia on all transactions, i.e. the cost of all goods changes.
The point of a currency is to facilitate transactions. If there's any sort of speculation around the inherit value of the currency (as per bitcoin -- the knowledge that demand will increase and supply will be lost) then it increases friction in spending.
I would certainly have to think a lot harder all the time if I were spending stocks or tiny pieces of land.
> I would certainly have to think a lot harder all the time if I were spending stocks or tiny pieces of land.
You said it yourself: people don't hold cash. They sell their assets before buying something with cash. And it doesn't seem to prevent them from spending. With Bitcoin, it would be the same thing except the whole "sell your assets before you buy" process could be skipped.
Of course I oversimplified a lot here. People don't literally sell their stocks/real estate before they buy something. But I'm sure they would if those assets allowed them to.
> 10min transaction time, resources wasted in mining, programmable aspect is very limited, deflationary, nowadays economic thinking
Getting really tired of these arguments. Transactions take 0-2 seconds. The resources are not wasted, they are used to secure the network and are way lower than what VISA or any other big company use. And It's deflationary because people like me are suffering from this form of theft called inflation, and we desperately needed something like Bitcoin. Besides, without an economic incentive why would people risk money? Nowadays economic thinking is pretty much a pseudoscience, just like Psychology.
A crypto currency network that requires constant hash thrashing is not one I'd call well designed. It appears to be a trade-off for the decentralisation of initial currency issuing, not something everyone considers important.
"It appears to be a trade-off for the decentralisation of initial currency issuing, not something everyone considers important."
Mining isn't (primarily) for currency issuance - it's decentralization of secure transaction processing. Which still isn't something everyone considers important, of course.
Well sure, it does both. There are (theoretical) systems that allow cryptographically secure transactions to take place without so much thrashing though. Even verifiable offline transactions.
Of course bitcoin's major advantage is that it's already here and working.
Certainly. Using it to distribute the currency, before there's the critical mass of people wanting to make transactions enough to pay your miners seems a perfectly good fit once you're already needing to mine, though.
"There are (theoretical) systems that allow cryptographically secure transactions to take place without so much thrashing though. Even verifiable offline transactions."
Verifiable offline transactions with no centralization? Can you link to some?
And no, not everyone values decentralisation, sorry. I ddon't consider it an important aspect of a currency or payment scheme. Good for you if you do. Personally I value consumer protections and ease of use way more.
Agreed. The risk for innovating is too high. When there are ideas up for grabs in the US, why not just take it and localize it. This is simply a rational decision.
