Hacker News: Valakas

New comment by Valakas in "Tesla has suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin"

Valakas — Thu, 13 May 2021 20:03:09 +0000

How is it that PoW is better though? No single individual can mine profitably anyway. You also need to be part of a pool to get some share of the profits.

New comment by Valakas in "Internal Combustion Engine"

Valakas — Sat, 01 May 2021 07:56:41 +0000

It's easy to dismiss the difficulty of something when all you see is a webpage explaining things very well and simply with some cool graphics. That webpage looks really cool, but this is just a front page of the result. The backend of all the math, equations and thoughts involved wouldn't be so visually appealing. This is just the pretty part result. If you would delve into the actual math and physics that was required for this I'm pretty sure you'd reconsider that statement. Just the study of vibrations alone is probably as difficulty as whatever you're talking about. And that's just one of several areas of study that needs to be considered when making a machine like this. Then you need static mechanics, dynamic mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, knowledge of manufacturing processes, materials, among others. And each of these topics is HUGE in itself. You probably have no idea because you're a software engineer? It's easy to defend our own realm and dismiss others, when we know little about others' or all we know is based on some cool animations we saw on the web once.

New comment by Valakas in "The more complex crypto seems, the higher the pyramid schemes can go"

Valakas — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 13:21:08 +0000

What happened to the freedom to have your money without it losing value without having to resort to risky alternatives to prevent it from happening?

New comment by Valakas in "Nassim Taleb: Bitcoin failed as a currency and became a speculative ponzi scheme"

Valakas — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 12:21:42 +0000

Gold is a metal made in the burning core of dying stars. It doesn't really care about buyers and economy. We use gold for many purposes other than as a store of value, and that is exactly why it became a store of value. It is useful BESIDES being a store of value. Heck if you don't like gold, buy platinum or some other exotic material. Stores value just as well. Bitcoin is useless besides being a store of value. That makes it a bad store of value.

New comment by Valakas in "Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count"

Valakas — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 09:26:31 +0000

"Hey we're not removing your ability to speak, just your tongue!"

New comment by Valakas in "Testing a few new designs that don't show the public dislike count"

Valakas — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 09:22:43 +0000

Totally agree with you on this. We're reaching a point where the services some private companies provide are becoming too important to remain private, or at least, being served in a monopolistic fashion where the user has basically no power.

New comment by Valakas in "AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology"

Valakas — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 13:20:54 +0000

'Never' is a long timespan :) It will be solved, sooner or later. The universe will be fully understood and manipulated. By us, a modified version of us, or some other entity, perhaps even one we created. 300 years ago 'electricity' wasn't even a word. We can imagine what 500 years into the future will be, with an exponentially more advanced tech, worse than a caveman could imagine the concept of 'machine learning'.

New comment by Valakas in "Sleep duration is associated with brain structure and cognitive performance"

Valakas — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 12:28:53 +0000

I have the opposite experience. I had fears of having heart problems, or in my head, and at some point in my life I went to doctors and they all sent me away, they couldn't find anything wrong. The more incompetent ones might have more suspicious, because they were playing it safe. Better to order more tests and not find anything, than be confident and make a fatal mistake.

One of them even went as far as telling me "Man, there's so many people sick ou there and you're here wasting your time and money while you're damn healthy. Go enjoy life :)"

Maybe doctors think differently in the US or you were just unlucky?

New comment by Valakas in "Anki as Learning Superpower: Computer Science Edition"

Valakas — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 23:53:58 +0000

I've used Anki for language learning but didn't find it that useful. A problem I encountered was that while I could remember words and expressions in the Anki environment, I couldn't do it outside of it. Or I could memorize an expression exactly as it was written down, but if I saw a little variation then it was useless.

For language learning I found it works way better to use another technique: ridiculous imagery and word association. Higher initial time investment (have to spend some time for each new word in the first time I see) but after that I don't EVER need to recall it again. It just sticks. I also used that to memorize different alphabets and it's WAY easier and does feel like a superpower as opposed to just brute force memorize something by repetition and recall with no other brain connections between what we're memorizing and what we already know.

New comment by Valakas in "He Married a Sociopath: Me"

Valakas — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 15:33:23 +0000

Harm maybe not, but used definitely. If you're not useful to a sociopath you will not be in their life. And if something goes wrong, you definitely incur the risk of getting harmed, either physically or mentally.

New comment by Valakas in "Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study"

Valakas — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 12:22:58 +0000

I attest to this. This book should be required reading in school. There's so much suffering in the world being done to children in the privacy of homes. That suffering goes without punishment and the victims grow up to be perpetrators or victims again (in abusive relationships). And most don't even know how that happened.

New comment by Valakas in "One-Percenters Close to Surpassing Wealth of U.S. Middle Class"

Valakas — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 08:05:43 +0000

But are the billionaires the ones actually responsible for creating all that value? Is Bezos actually responsible for 10 000x the value of what Amazon produces than a worker? If Bezos didn't exist, there would be another "Bezos". He just happened to be there at the right time and do the right things. We discount all the effects that luck and society play in making a "Bezos". The company is what is providing that huge amount of value, not the person.

New comment by Valakas in "The Psychological Trap of Freelancing"

Valakas — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:56:27 +0000

Indeed. I use something instead called "savings rate". How much per hour of the money I make is not spent in basic stuff? I also go one step further. In calculating this savings rate, i add to the 40 work hours, much more that are spent for work and/or are not actually free time: commuting, dressing for work, shopping basics, washing dishes/clothes, ... etc. From there you get the real non-free-time-cost of anything non-basic you buy. Turns out things are much more expensive than they actually seem like.