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Comment College, 1987 and once in career (Score 1) 113

Our college Data Structures and Algorithms lab was in Turbo Pascal on PC. We wrote stacks, queues, linked-lists etc - much fun. It was an enormous improvement over our previous FORTRAN labs on terminals talking to a Honeywell CP6 mainframe.

Later I worked on a project in the early 2000's and the chief technical person from our US partner was huge on Delphi and OOP. That was a Delphi-CORBA-Java system.

Comment Privacy too (Score 1) 207

From the PC Mag article at https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmag.com%2Fnews%2F10-... entitled "10 Big Reasons Not to Upgrade to Windows 11"

"6. Windows 11 Requires Signing In to a Microsoft Account"

"You won’t find any Mac users who don’t sign in to an Apple account, not to mention any Chromebook or Android users who don’t sign in to a Google account. But some Windows users are vehement about not wanting to sign into an account on their PC."

Comment Interesting part is the control (Score 1) 168

JFK issued "Executive Order 11110" on June 4 1963 to strip the Federal Reserve of the authority to charge interest on money loaned to the US government. One theory is they killed him for that reason, because money-printing is slavery and nobody likes to lose their slaves.

It wasn't a new idea. Abraham Lincoln said:

"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity."

Technically, a Treasury currency, digital or otherwise enables the Treasury to go around the Fed and issue currency directly, without having to go through the banking system and thereby removing the Cantillon Effect.

Comment Right you are Bill, as usual. (Score 0) 328

Sure. Many (but not all) cryptocurrencies and NFTs are scams. DYOR.

But before listening to Bill Gates about anything tech, here are some of my foggy remembrances of him and M$:

- didn't invent DOS - he and Paul Allen bought it, rebranded and licensed it out to IBM
- thought 640k should be enough for anyone, impeded higher memory models for years
- built a single-user, single-task operating system, and shoe-horned in the multiuser and multitasking much later
- wanted Novell Netware, then added the TCP/IP internet stack as an afterthought. Trumpet, anyone?
- took the whole idea of a desktop, mouse and keyboard setup from Xerox (as did Apple), then never improved on it
- built an O/S that wasn't reliable until 2003/XP'ish
- failed to tackle the rampant viruses, worms, spyware and bloatware made possible by a weak security model
- provided the high-performance APIs only to business collaborators
- bought Visio then wrecked it
- implemented Java, tried to own it, changed naming conventions and rebranded the result C#
- sponsored Darl McBride's attacks on SCO Linux
- broke backwards-compatibility for VB with VB.NET and screwed many customers
- used Internet Exploder to add proprietary, licensed extensions to HTML to break competing browsers and webservers, to own the web
- employed monopolistic business practices and was called to senate hearings. "Depends on what your definition of 'is' is ..."
- tried the mobile computing thing too late
- never figured out tablet computing (iPad sucks now too though)
- bought the dump of private message data from Facebook (as did Netflix)
- collaborated with China to implement a government-censorable blockchain with a high fee-to-play model (NEO)

So now Bill Gates has comments about blockchain and NFTs. Okay then...

- Bill Gates still hasn't figured out blockchain's true use cases.
- Bill Gates isn't a savvy investor nor expert in monetary theory - he's just a monopolist who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
- Bill Gates doesn't understand crypto's case for individual financial freedom - his world only respects freedom for the wealthy.
- Bill Gates doesn't understand crypto's potential to deter war and slavery in the world, as he benefits from both.
- Bill Gates can't see beyond the stupid ape-pictures - he hasn't yet realized that NFTs are society's first encounter with the idea of tokenizing assets.
- Bill Gates will just watch as society figures out how to use NFTs and cryptos, then try to own all that too.

So Bill Gates can't say much about blockchain tech that would be of any real interest to me.

Comment "Renewlogy" - right (Score 2) 242

C'mon Dow - pyrolysis has been around a long time and is used many places in the world already. The challenges are known.

The trouble with plastic bags (plastic films) is they snarl the presorting equipment and prevent it from removing trapped air, thus making the chamber less economically efficient.

The trouble with mixing plastic types resulting in mixed output is well known too. I don't undertand what the big problem with mixed heavy oil is - it has to be further refined to be useful as diesel anyway. Mixed or not, all that hhe heavy oil can be burnt in a heavy-oil generator to generate electricity - such generators already exist. The heavy oil can be further refined to diesel, and it may be used directly for chemical/industrial purposes.

Comment Algorithmic stablecoins experiment (Score 2) 75

> Unlike other stablecoins that are backed by cash or other assets, the Terra coin primarily relied on algorithms. The experiment failed ...

Other stablecoins backed by proof-of-reserves are fine. So LUNA was something new, an "experiment" as the article says. People piled in without knowing what an algorithmic stablecoin is or how it worked or how it could be attacked, and vefore it was tested in the wild for some length of time.

If it was /possible/ that a coordinated effort by some tradfi whales /could/ bring LUNA down, then it is excellent that they /did/ bring it down and so early in its life. Fail-fast is better than having it go for years and get much bigger before failing.

Comment Some valid points, but ... (Score 1) 94

Sorry but have to disagree.

Yes there are scammers in everything, and crypto makes it easier. Yet people get burned by credit card scams, rug pulls and phishing attacks in the dollar world. Everyone has to learn how to avoid and spot the scams, whether by crypto or fiat.

Energy use by Bitcoin is less than friggin TikTok. Yes, proof of work takes energy and it is energy well spent, securing the first honest system of money ever invented.

Yes there are hawaiian shirt-wearing crypto bros trying to get rich from the mania. Rather than pooh pooh it, why not take a slice of that and use it for WikiMedia? Why ignore?

Yes the use of crypto is tiny, so far, but it potentially opens WikiMedia up to a world of donors. If WikiMedia believes in itself, it should be doing everything it can to promote financial freedom in the matrix.

Comment Re:"DeFi" = "Deregulated Finance" (Score 0) 56

> The crypto bros all want to wrestle control away from governments, and do it without any oversight, and hence no accountability.

The blockchain provides PERFECT accountability with no central point of trust - it does its own full forensic audit about every 10 minutes.

When I saw the words "legitimate currencies" together I nearly spit my milk. That's an oxymoron at this point, thanks to governments.

Comment Be sober, be vigilant (Score 2) 371

1 Peter 5:8 "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." King James Version

Where there is motive and opportunity, there will be trouble.

Various people from various organizations have a strong motive to rewrite recent history. They have an opportunity due to the positive-feedback loop of fear and control going on between leadership and mass-media.

Science never stops. The origin will be questioned. The research methods, data and papers will be questioned. The formula provided to the world for making the vaccines will be questioned. The companies and products their products will be questioned.

Science will take years. Meanwhile the world is on fire while we kick one another in the guts over public control measures that don't seem to help, in fact are tearing society apart.

Comment Not if physics has anything to say about it (Score 1) 191

Gravity really does suck. The amount of energy required to lift any appreciable amount of mass off this planet is crazy. Every space launch is an environmental disaster in its own right, generating gigatons of carbon and nasty stuff.

Getting Jeff and his billionaire buddies to space to make a temporary colony on Moon or Mars will leave Earth looking like Venus looks today.

People with too much wealth and highly-specialized brains shouldn't be running things for everyone. Stick to websites Jeff.

Comment MF is myopic: Its about power (Score 1, Insightful) 55

The Motley Fool thinks only of price/investing and does not realize the bigger picture.

1. The Salvadorans who try to use it will very quickly see that Bitcoin is too expensive to be used casually, but the law is such that they can't abandon it. They may discover decentralized exchanges and shapeshifters that can switch back and forth with other cryptos that are better suited to everyday commerce. This could be great for the crypto industry in general. Bullish.

2. El Salvador can now turn (relatively) free and clean volcanic energy directly into Bitcoin which is economically hella-efficient and profitable for them. They don't have to manufacture and sell anything, nor do they have to destroy natural resources for profit.

3. If other Central American nations do similarly, then they can collectively break out of the USD empire, keep more money at home and perhaps be effective at building and rebuilding their nations.

It is a revolutionary step for El Salvador and a poli-economic experiment with some risk for sure. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Comment Fascism (Score 1) 190

I like Prof. Wolff's definition of fascism as the cooperation of government and business to help business achieve more by forcing citizens to behave in certain ways. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FHpqwDo_2xck

The idea that private citizens can be forced to reveal such personal information to government and business is fascist. We accepted a little of this in order to have a tax system that was supposed to fund a decent society, but now we have no argument as power seeks to increase and extend existing rules beyond what we considered reasonable.

Comment It already exists (Score 1) 48

It's called Bisq. See https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbisq.network%2F

But Square already knows this, because Bisq used to be called "Bitsquare" but had to change their name. I wonder why ... It might be cool if Square threw some real support behind Bisq instead of creating yet-another competitor.

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