sangfroid

Hi. I'm the author of the article. Thanks for your interest. I'm glad the piece is sparking a deeper discussion of the technical trade offs of the technology.

I just want to clarify that this article is one of many included in a full Spectrum issue dedicated to blockchain technology, which I had a hand in organizing. From the outset I was adamant that we acknowledge the costs and limitations of blockchains. Part of that treatment can be found in the last half of the overview.

But we also try to hit those notes in a separate piece, which you can find here.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/do-you-need-a-b...

Hi. I'm the author. Thanks for pointing this out. You were not the only one. We've reworked the attributions paragraph to include all of the institutions that had a hand in this particular work. And we also tried to make it clear that the snarks they worked on were specific to the zcash project.

If you have not been charged with a crime, can you just refuse to hand over your cards?

I just got a copy of the paper from the researcher. They used 16 study participants. Still not a huge sample size, but big enough for consideration.

I went to the website for the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation and nowhere can I find the document that is circulating in all these news posts.

This link, which you maybe shouldn't click, because who knows what's going on here, [http://www.genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-86432/] indicates that it should be in the news section. But when I go there directly, I can't find it.

Has anyone been able to even verify the authenticity of the original announcement, let alone interpret what it means? If so, can you share where on the official website you found it?

Thanks.

Wouldn't a better way to make a point be to simply stop buying Apple products?

You have to keep in mind that during the course of those six months, Silk Road was taken offline. SR was assumed to be driving most of the non-exchange transaction volume. The fact that its dissolution had no impact on this metric is quite surprising and I'd argue it's an indication that "legitimate" trade activity has actually increased over the last few months.

Normally I would agree with both of these because they seem to be the reasons other companies introduce currency schemes. But in this case I think it's telling that Amazon first made the announcement on a blog for app developers. My guess is they are trying to attract developers by guaranteeing them a market.

If you're interested, I wrote about it in IEEE Spectrum when they first announced Amazon Coins in February.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/amazon-c...

I've corrected it. Thanks.

This guy came up with a similar idea 2 years ago.

http://txchnologist.com/post/33432483866/txchnical-improveme...

It's actually not an uncommon behavior for a sick bee to leave the hive. They do this so that they will die outside and protect the rest of the colony.

http://peacebeefarm.blogspot.com/2011/01/protection-by-behav...

In fact, the researchers never even use the term "dream."

It's a very clever advertising ploy, but that's all. Results from this will be next to worthless.

1. Patrons of 7-eleven represent a rather specific demographic, which means this "poll" will have a heavy selection bias.

2. In a well-designed poll, each subject only votes once. Here, every time you buy a coffee, you submit a new vote. That doesn't work if one side drinks more coffee than the other side...

Yeah...the problem with this is that Defcon is not a dating event and women should not have to navigate it as though it were. Eye contact and not having a boyfriend perched on my arm more likely indicate that I'm there because I'm interested in the subject matter of the conference, not that I'm waiting for someone to put the moves on me. Seriously. Grow up.

I'm one of the women who don't share her feelings. Maybe it's the word sexism that I have a problem with.

I'm not a programmer and I don't know the specific environment that she described, but I'm a female motorcyclist and I've worked in lots of kitchens and a couple in molecular biology labs. I know the behavior and I've dealt with it. Men behave in curious ways when there's a low female/male ratio, but in my experience, half of it comes out of awkwardness or plain old stupidity on the other side. Some of the more honest comments on this thread testify to that.

The other half is intended to belittle. But seriously, this isn't just at work. This is walking down the street in the city. This is buying something in the store. This is sitting on the bus. And as much as it sucks, getting offended doesn't help.

If this sounds like a long winded "lighten up," please think of it more as a friendly "toughen up." It's the only way to signal the change that you want.

I haven't read all of the comments here, but I come from a pretty good neuroscience background and have some thoughts on why this looks like baloney. It's about the way the brain works. The brain itself is not a sensory organ. It processes signals from sensory organs. Information reaches the eye or the skin or the tongue as mechanical, chemical, and optical data but then get transduced into an electrical impulse. Even if there were light receptors in the brain, it's highly unlikely that they would be so specific that activating them would cause positive feelings. That's how information gets processed at the level of our senses, but not in our brains. Individual neurons do not hold individual memories. Nor do they seem to control specific emotions.

If shining light on the brain actually changed the levels of activity, it would have an impact on entire neural circuits, not just on this one process. At least, that's how I see it.

It's nice to see that a journalism degree is universally applicable.

What you describe is basically an inverse pyramid news article.

Hook Lead Background News

Putting it into 5 sentences is where the art comes in...