Hacker News: jgeerts

New comment by jgeerts in "Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence"

jgeerts — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 22:21:17 +0000

It's hard to listen to recently, he's suggesting working out and eating vitamins instead of a vaccine. He still has an influence on people and he's spreading misinformation.

Rogan is against wearing masks but demands all of his guests to be tested for COVID-19 before going on his show which is kind of contradictory.

New comment by jgeerts in "Bitcoin as a Battery"

jgeerts — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 05:59:08 +0000

That’s not the point, I didn’t say that it would be a good idea. The point is that it would work with just 100 or a 1000 miners if no one has 51% of computing power, hence the computing power is a consequence of Bitcoin’s success.

New comment by jgeerts in "Bitcoin as a Battery"

jgeerts — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 13:50:33 +0000

> This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin.

It's not "required", it's only that high because it has so much success. Bitcoin would be working with only one miner running, the first blocks were minted on a private computer.

Should We Fear Deflation? [pdf]

jgeerts — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 16:37:24 +0000

Article URL: https://upcommons.upc.edu/bitstream/handle/2117/119235/03%20(Franch%20Parella,%20Jordi).pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26344564

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by jgeerts in "Bitcoin is now worth $50k – and it's ruining the planet faster than ever"

jgeerts — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 15:32:22 +0000

That's a straw man argument, you can't change the discussion of YouTube vs Bitcoin to rice fields vs private jets. If you have the freedom to view Bitcoin as an unnecessary luxury I can view YouTube in the same way. Why is no one talking about banning YouTube to save the environment? The price of Bitcoin is suggesting that people see merit in it's use and the hashing power is being used to keep the network safe. It can only be viewed as waste if the argument stands that Bitcoin is unnecessary and I would argue that it's very necessary and more efficient than the current financial system.

New comment by jgeerts in "Bitcoin is now worth $50k – and it's ruining the planet faster than ever"

jgeerts — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 10:21:46 +0000

To put this in perspective, YouTube (243.6 tw/h) uses about double of Bitcoin's (124 tw/h) energy consumption, but there is no outrage about that. People care about the environment if it doesn't take away their comfort, airconditioning use is about 2000 tw/h globally, expected to triple in the next 30 years, some of the outrage on Bitcoin is being written in airconditioned rooms by people that drive combustion engine cars.

If you compare Bitcoin's environmental footprint to the whole financial system with air cooled offices around the world, with equipment, server rooms it doesn't come close.

A positive side of Bitcoin mining is that it's geographically independent and it can move to where they have too much energy which cannot be stored. In some cases the abundance of energy would be wasted through gas flaring which puts more CO2 into the atmosphere. Now they can get rid of their excessive energy and store it in the form of Bitcoin.

* https://thefactsource.com/how-much-electricity-does-youtube-... * https://research.arcane.no/news/equinor-partners-with-bitcoi...

New comment by jgeerts in "I Really Blew It (2020)"

jgeerts — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 09:29:31 +0000

That was hard to read, it doesn't feel like someone who is mentally stable, clinging on to an idea he once had. Sometimes you have to listen to the world, adjust your ideas and move on, maybe he should have listened more to the world instead of expecting the world to listen to him.

New comment by jgeerts in "The Day AppGet Died"

jgeerts — Thu, 28 May 2020 15:22:32 +0000

Went to the github Microsoft package and came across this issue, posted by one of you.

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353

New comment by jgeerts in "Setting up Git identities"

jgeerts — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 12:45:46 +0000

What I use to switch git identities is direnv (https://direnv.net/) which automatically loads specific config based on the dir that you are in. You can use it to switch AWS profiles, proxy settings, npm settings, maven settings, git configuration and so on.

New comment by jgeerts in "Containment gets harder every day we delay"

jgeerts — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 23:27:37 +0000

To be honest, at the start of this epidemic it wasn't that clear how dangerous the virus was or how easily it would spread. First it happened to Wuhan and we all thought that it wouldn't happen to us, then it happened in Italy and we still thought that we would be fine.

Thinking that it won't happen to you won't make it go away unfortunately, your country isn't special, if no drastic measures are being taken like full quarantine this will happen to you too.

My country is in full lockdown and still a lot of people don't see the gravity of the situation. People dismissing it as less dangerous than influenza are misinformed.

New comment by jgeerts in "How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?"

jgeerts — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 02:32:47 +0000

They didn't include more information because they implemented the OpenID Connect specification which is awesome. That means that you can use any OIDC library and it will work for Apple, even verifying the keys. If you want to know more you should read up on OAuth2/OIDC/JWKS.

Apple's public key can be found here.

https://appleid.apple.com/auth/keys

New comment by jgeerts in "Does the Amazon provide 20% of our oxygen?"

jgeerts — Sun, 25 Aug 2019 07:48:52 +0000

In present days it's really hard to get factual, correct, unbiased news.

New comment by jgeerts in "First Lightning mainnet release"

jgeerts — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 17:51:03 +0000

If we ever want Bitcoin to evolve from a store of value to an actual payment method we have to come up with something that does at least better than VISA's 8000tx/s and that's just not solved with going from 7tx/s to Bitcoin Cash's ~62tx/s. We have to be able to compete with every payment method out there and we should be able to handle peak throughput during sales period.

Another important factor is the 10 minutes confirmation time, nobody wants to wait for 10 minutes at the counter before they trust you walking out. We need something with instant verification and low fees and increasing the blocksize will never do that.

New comment by jgeerts in "F.C.C. Repeals Net Neutrality Rules"

jgeerts — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 06:51:41 +0000

Democracy is fundamentally broken, the examples go far and wide accross the globe.

Lobbies are winning from the population and governments don't give a damn about the people who put them in office.

How can we fix it?

New comment by jgeerts in "Bitcoin has died 166 times, so far"

jgeerts — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 11:20:33 +0000

You can't predict the future, when ARPANET was developed they didn't have the internet in mind as it is today, but it was a new technology which evolved and will keep to evolve.

I think it will be the same with Bitcoin, it might be dead if it will stay in the form that it is today but my guess is that it won't be the case.

New comment by jgeerts in "iPhone X"

jgeerts — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 22:48:12 +0000

Take a backup or charge it for example.

New comment by jgeerts in "Return of the Mac (2005)"

jgeerts — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 22:28:33 +0000

I'm growing tired of people saying that they want a full touch screen. Good luck holding your arms up 8 hours a day while sitting.

Every new thing that Apple does gets a lot of negative attention, remember the launch of the iPad? It was being mocked and laughed at but now everyone seems to have a tablet. Remember this?

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*9tNGJOMAcFprbQrUFp...

Another argument I saw is "they force users to look down at their keyboard". I still have to meet the first user who uses the function rows blindly, besides the esc key it wasn't that useful and everyone was looking down at the keyboard to find the right keys already.

It intrigues me and I would like to try it out.

New comment by jgeerts in "Why Americans don't take sick days"

jgeerts — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 22:07:24 +0000

> I sit at my desk and that's apparently what's important.

After everything it indeed sometimes feels like it comes down to this. They want to see you physically sitting at your desk for at least 8 full hours, that's the only 'measurement' in productivity that most companies seem to care about.

New comment by jgeerts in "Turkish government revokes ham radio licenses"

jgeerts — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 22:57:09 +0000

I just can't wrap my head around the fact that it can happen like this, wide in the open with everyone watching. Before the coup I was already amazed that I heard news about he taking over a critic newspaper and the next day publishing pro Erdogan propaganda, it's just beyond belief what is happening.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/turkish-g...

New comment by jgeerts in "What are your rabbit holes on the internet? (For instance, HN one we all share)"

jgeerts — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:53:00 +0000

http://waitbutwhy.com/

Gives great insights in various matters for simpletons like myself.