Hacker News: touchofevil

New comment by touchofevil in "New study quantifies Bitcoin’s ludicrous energy consumption"

touchofevil — Thu, 17 May 2018 23:58:41 +0000

This site claims that a single Nano transaction taking 0.112 Wh vs a Bitcoin transaction taking 950kWh. (note Wh vs kWh) https://isnanogreenyet.com/

Check Nano's FAQ regarding "Is Nano vulnerable to attacks?" here https://nano.org/en/faq

New comment by touchofevil in "New study quantifies Bitcoin’s ludicrous energy consumption"

touchofevil — Thu, 17 May 2018 15:04:04 +0000

This is one reason why I think Nano (Nano.org) will eclipse Bitcoin for pure transfer of value transactions. Nano uses a block lattice that doesn't require mining. The transactions are instant and feeless b/c of this. There is a tiny bit of PoW on the sender's device to prevent spam transactions.

Can Nano Kill Spam?

touchofevil — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:38:29 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@MichaelMcNeff/can-nano-kill-spam-71a2a190dfa9

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16529451

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by touchofevil in "Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?"

touchofevil — Mon, 19 Feb 2018 13:44:18 +0000

You sound a lot like me. I have had tons of trouble making myself work, even on my passion projects that I have invested significant amounts of my own money in. I would recommend that you read Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. He was a chronic procrastinator who turned things around. I would combine this with renting a desk at a coworking space and keeping regular work hours, though they might only be four or six hours per day (8 is too much if you are actually working).

New comment by touchofevil in "RaiBlocks: A Feeless Distributed Cryptocurrency Network [pdf]"

touchofevil — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:55:49 +0000

RaiBlocks was distributed using a captcha faucet. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1381323.msg14252334#...

New comment by touchofevil in "AI-assisted fake porn are being used by people on Reddit for self-completion"

touchofevil — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 18:46:46 +0000

I've worked in the visual effects industry for many years and this is incredibly interesting. In vfx to create a face replacement, we would have to create a 3D model of a head and then texture it with photos/scans of a the desired face. Then we would 3D track this cgi head onto an actor in the shot and then animate the face either by hand or using motion capture data from the stand-in actor's face. Then you'd light and render the cgi head and composite it into the shot.

This video shows the process: https://youtu.be/rsPq2qp_Z-E

And here's an article about it: https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/di4d-in-la/

It's pretty incredible that there's a completely different way to do a head swap. Of course, the vfx method gives the artist complete control over what the face/head does.

New comment by touchofevil in "Bitcoin Cash deals frozen as insider trading is probed"

touchofevil — Wed, 20 Dec 2017 19:53:57 +0000

It seems like one of the disadvantages of Satoshi being anonymous is that Bitcoin wasn't trademarked, which allows for forks like Bitcoin Cash to use the name Bitcoin. I think this is kind of an interesting case of why trademarks are important as having both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash must be very confusing to new users on Coinbase.

New comment by touchofevil in "A Cryptocurrency Without a Blockchain Has Been Built to Outperform Bitcoin"

touchofevil — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 02:47:07 +0000

If you're interested in cryptocurrencies that use DAG like Iota, also check out Raiblocks. Raiblocks.net

Full Disclosure: I own some Raiblocks.

New comment by touchofevil in "Coinbase: The Heart of the Bitcoin Frenzy"

touchofevil — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 02:24:04 +0000

It may be that your bank is charging you an international transaction fee and that is the second charge you are seeing. This happened to me the other day with Coinbase. If you buy from Coinbase with a credit card the transaction actually gets processed in London. Some American banks will charge you a 3% fee for this international transaction. So it will look like Coinbase has charged you twice, but actually the second charge is from your bank.

New comment by touchofevil in "Where People Spend the Most and Least on Rent in America"

touchofevil — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 21:29:42 +0000

I can attest to the fact that LA rents have gone insane in the last maybe 5 years. A run-down 1 bedroom apartment in a working-class neighborhood of LA (Palms) without central air and no dishwasher will rent for $1700/month at the minimum. I'm currently apartment hunting in LA and it's brutal.

New comment by touchofevil in "Tezos founders push for legal bailout from Swiss foundation"

touchofevil — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:49:25 +0000

I don't think that letting people who are interested in Tezos know about a coin with very similar features is "pumping" the currency. Tezos has some really interesting features, but they have stumbled with the ICO and delayed their release. As someone who was waiting for Tezos to launch I was excited to hear about Cardano and I'm sure there are other Tezos enthusiasts here who are happy to learn about the existence of similar coin. To say that I'm "pumping" the coin implies that I will dump the coin, when I'm really just interested in the Tezos technology, which is also present in Cardano.

New comment by touchofevil in "Tezos founders push for legal bailout from Swiss foundation"

touchofevil — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 18:25:12 +0000

If you like the idea of Tezos, have a look at Cardano. It has on-chain governance voting, formal verification, and the ability to upgrade the protocol without the need for hard forks. Basically, all the stuff that got me interested in the Tezos project.

https://www.cardanohub.org/en/what-is-cardano/

In the interest of full disclosure, I do own some Cardano.

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:18:51 +0000

I'm proposing that the concept of states is obsolete now and we need to move to what I'd call a "unified America" policy, where we get as close as possible to a majority rule system of democracy. The best way I can think of to achieve that is to abolish the Senate and the electoral college.

If you think our current system of governance is working well, then please say so. If you think our system isn't working well, then please let me know how you propose to fix it.

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:04:27 +0000

This whole idea of "coastal elites" and "flyover states" is just a tool that those with real power (corporations and special interests) are using to divide Americans so that they are easier to control. If you were the NRA looking to make sure that "bump stocks" don't get banned after a gunman shoots hundreds of people in Vegas using them, where would you focus your resources? On the Senate, of course! Because the House can't do anything without the Senate's approval and influencing 41 Senators is a lot easier than trying to influence hundreds of members of the House.

It's the same with the presidential election. If you're the NRA, what's easier for you to influence? A popular vote or our current electoral college system where only a few swing states matter?

If you're saying that the electoral college and the Senate are a means of protecting those in the "flyover states", then I would just you how that's working out? Do you think "Wyomingers" are the ones who are going to benefit from repealing the estate tax? The House, Senate, and Executive branch are all controlled by Republicans who should, in theory, be advocating for "Wyomingers" and yet they seem to only be working on behalf of the interests of the wealthy, special interests, and corporations.

Just abolish the states all together as far as I'm concerned and let's have one unified America, which would be much harder for special interests and corporations to influence.

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:49:49 +0000

Here's my proposal for tweaking the USA's current government so that it better represents the will of a majority of Americans: 1) abolish the Senate 2) end the electoral college 3) end gerrymandering 4) reform campaign financing.

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 20:55:24 +0000

Because it's harder to corrupt a "pure" democracy. If you have a policy that is bad for the population at large, but good for your own interests, in a "pure" democracy then you will have to convince a majority of the voters to vote against their own interests.

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 20:49:29 +0000

Yes, and this would be fine if the senate did not exist. But the senate can kill anything that the house proposes. So Wyoming has undue influence over what the (correctly balanced) house tries to make law.

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 20:45:16 +0000

Well, the real question to me is do we think of people who live in Wyoming as "Wyomingers" and those in CA as Californians? I don't think so. We just think of everyone in the USA as Americans. So why should it be that some Americans (those who live in Wyoming) having outsized voting power over national laws? A minority of Americans is controlling the country via the methods I mentioned. It doesn't seem to be working out very well. We need to make sure that the majority of Americans have veto power over things like electing Donald Trump, the current tax bill, the attempts to end Obamacare.

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 19:30:29 +0000

The Senate doesn't reflect majority rule based on population. California has 38.3 million residents, Wyoming has 600K residents [1] but both states have 2 senate votes. Due to this, Wyoming residents have much greater voting power in the Senate than residents of CA.

Edit: And since bills must be passed by both the House and the Senate, Wyoming residents have much more power over what becomes law than CA residents do. [1] http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/population.shtml

New comment by touchofevil in "American Equity"

touchofevil — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 19:10:50 +0000

I completely support this idea. Additionally, I think the USA needs to move away from anything that doesn't reflect majority rule. For example, abolish the Senate, end the electoral college, end gerrymandering, and reform campaign financing.

The USA could be a lot more democratic than it is at present and until that is fixed, you will keep seeing a minority of the population control policies that affect the whole nation.