cujic9

I've been pleasantly surprised by the face- and object-recognition AI in the Synology Moments app: https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/moments

Synology is a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) appliance.

I don't think it uploads my data anywhere. If it does, it certainly doesn't upload everything, because I would have noticed the bandwidth usage, but I haven't verified that it doesn't upload some low resolution version of photos.

Except for when you're on the same project. Then it's like canoeing with mediocre people. When the alligator comes, instead of paddling for one, you are paddling for two.

I'd be interested to hear responses from among the 1.X billion unbanked people in developing countries.

I think the goal of Libra is to turn this population into sticky Facebook users. Facebook has saturated the developed world. Meanwhile, developing countries are too busy surviving to mess around on social media.

Libra gives them a way to transact in a stable currency, and Facebook starts to discover the currently grassroots social graph of small time farmers and craftsmen selling goods to their neighbors in villages with slow internet access.

Ohio Becomes First US State to Allow Taxes to Be Paid in Bitcoin

https://www.coindesk.com/ohio-becomes-first-us-state-to-allo...

On a side note, I did some more digging, and:

The Agnelli family is the largest shareholder in the Economist. The Rothschilds are second largest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group#Ownership

Also, as of 2015:

Pearson’s move to sell most of its stake to Exor, the investment company run by the Agnellis, upholds a tradition of dynastic ownership of media assets. Rupert Murdoch owns News UK, which publishes the Sun and the Times, the Barclay brothers own the Telegraph, and the Rothermere family controls the Daily Mail titles. Overseas, the Sulzberger family owns the New York Times, the Springers control huge chunks of German media and the Bonnier family owns a large publishing portfolio in Sweden. Newspapers have long been the playthings of wealthy media barons who are seduced by the access and influence they bring.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/15/economist-beco...

Just because press is foreign doesn't mean it's objective or independent of politics. News is a business, and just like any business, the owners make decisions based on their beliefs.

However, I do not live in that context, I live in a society and inside my own head, and this is what generates an idea of contribution and happiness.

Right. This just happens to coincide with a shift in my life, where all the old contexts from my youth are meaningless, and I need to find new contexts.

So if there is no such thing as contributing, then the contributing you used to do only mattered because of a context you (or I) constructed to find important.

I don't think the right answer is to say, "Nothing is important." I think the right answer is to relentlessly seek for a new context to find important, to give meaning to our own life.

Yes. I view posting on HN and seeing the response as one way to help uncover the truth for myself.

We're on a rock flying through space. In that context, what does contributing even mean?

I'm not that clever.

I've noticed a recent uptick in news promoting the cruelty of China toward its citizens.

I struggle to figure out how much is true, and how much is an alternate reality created by my government. (I'm in the USA, and anger towards China definitely benefits the Republican Party / Trump administration.)

In my opinion, inflation is poorly defined.

The metrics we use to measure inflation (e.g. CPI) have grown slowly, but that doesn't mean that inflation is low.

You're right. His real voice is slightly more robotic.

The discussion here is somewhat relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20026297

I typically say:

1. Anything is better than nothing.

2. 1Password is pretty good.

3. Keepass is the best if you are ultra paranoid.

Meteor was the Shiny New Thing in web development that made me stop chasing Shiny New Things.

Yes, if you simply want to run a VM, Docker may not make sense.

The real point of Docker is containerized apps.

Isn't this the ADA working as designed?

My understanding is that the ADA is enforced specifically by citizens filing complaints which turn into lawsuits.

It's great that these lawsuits actually carry enough weight to make the universities take action.

In other cases, companies repeatedly get fined for some violation (pollution comes to mind) and simply see it as a cost of doing business.

Also, simplicity is a feature when it comes to storing things of value. Ethereum has too many features.

I recently paid for washingtonpost.com in an experiment to support the publishers.

Even after paying, there were still a hugely distracting number of ads embedded every few paragraphs.

In addition, I got bombarded with emails from multiple mailing lists.

So, this just downloads a web server written in Go and runs it? Why isn't this more explicit?

Yes, I get that. You're limited by the collateral you can put against the loan.

But they won't accept a pinky swear that you own the collateral. They want proof.

I'm confused why somebody would claim to possess an immense fortune (Satoshi's blocks are currently worth ~$10B) without being able to verify and/or access that fortune.

Congrats. Now you have a huge target on your back. Watch your step and sleep with one eye open for the rest of your life.

But go try to borrow money, and the bank will ask, "Why don't you just... use some of your fortune."

Typically people are unbanked not because they are completely broke but because of one or more of the following:

1) They do not live near a bank 2) They don't meet some minimum threshold of money 3) Discrimination - The are part of some social or ethnic group that the banks won't touch

Agreed. Though it seems like the consensus protocol does protect against malicious or compromised gatekeepers.

It seems that by dialing up the trust in their validator nodes (to something significantly greater than the trust you might have in a bitcoin node, but also significantly less than 100% trust), they are able to decrease the work involved in the consensus protocol, reducing energy usage.

I think that's just called "investing."

To me, the biggest roadblock to success is the number of corporate stakeholders.

For this to succeed, the advantages of having that many stakeholders (big budget, large audience) must outweigh the disadvantages (two-dozen different and often conflicting opinions).

I've never seen a large number of corporations collaborate successfully. A strategic partnership between two companies is hard enough. Two dozen? Good luck.

Especially when some of the partners have a vested interest in this failing. (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Stripe.)

My bet is on existing crypto-currencies solving this problem becuse they can focus on a solution without being constrained by corporate interests.

If Libra launches, I predict the following:

1. It will be very, very delayed. 2. Facebook will take sole ownership and shed all the corporate partners. 3. At that point, they will give up on crypto and just build (or buy) a plain old peer-to-peer payment system.

Alternative 3: They will piggy back on an existing crypto currency.

Yes, Bitcoin is a poor fit for face-to-face transactions, but that doesn't mean it failed.

They require very little capital and skill to launch and they lose money slowly. The only get hard when you try to scale.

+1, especially since all notes are public.

That's a strange claim.

First, how do you know what all institutional investors are thinking?

Second, Sales and FCF straddle Earnings on the income statement. A focus on EV/Sales suggests that investors are optimistic about growth and ignoring the spending required to get there. A focus on EV/FCF suggests that investors are optimistic about increased efficiency and cutting costs.

Yes, the title of the post was changed after my comment.