Anki IS amazing and DOES suck at the same time. I am very glad it exists and this is not meant as a dig at the maintainer for whom I am very grateful.
In particular, the UX is a mess. It is very hard for a beginner and frankly it feels like you are in an escape room whenever you want to do something new in terms of difficulty.
Once you are over that hump and just internalize its warts, it is AMAZING, but it IS a huge hurdle for a lot of people.
The default on iOS is pretty bad for example. Hidden hitpoints all over the card is obviously bad. And like the article states: no way to just go through all cards regardless of deck is kinda silly and annoying for no reason.
I've never understood crypto, however I'm long term Bitcoin fan and user, and don't consider it "crypto". I think Bitcoin is pretty much opposite what the typical crypto project is.
Monero is used for criminal activities, not Bitcoin. How do I know? I monitor crime, mostly but not exclusively drug crime, on Tor's hidden services: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ Monero is the cryptocurrency of choice.
The majority of the criminal activity on the Tor darknet is mediated by hidden services listed by that scanner. You can visit those services (using the .onion URLs) and see that Monero (XMR) is the preferred cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is sometimes used for hosting, etc., but Monero exists to avoid Bitcoin's security weaknesses and the criminals are well aware of this advantage.
This is the same, nonsensical argument against monero that is used against end-to-end encrypted messaging. "app of choice for criminals" "makes enforcement harder" etc.
It completely ignores the benefits of Monero. Crime exists. Its not going anywhere. It is not societies job to make the crime fighter's job a walk in the park. Crimninals use cars to commit crimes, we don't outlaw cars. They use masks, the store sells masks.
The benefits of a global, decentralized and truly private and free medium of value exchange would be massive to the average person, but deterimental to those in power so they must use FUD to squash it.
It's a store of value in the sense that it has a non-zero price at any given moment, but when people say that one of the functions of money is to be a store of value, they mean that its value must be reasonably stable so that its future usefulness is predictable.
> A store of value is an asset with as close to 0% volatility in price as possible.
You just proved his point. In this example, bitcoin's volatility is closer to zero than gold's. Thus, by the quoted definition of "store of value", then in this particular time frame (it would be very different going back 5, 10, 15 years), bitcoin is the better store of value.
And when it goes down the answer is to buy the dip. If you have funds needed for other things, they should be in lower-risk investments. As people get older, they should be moving large amounts of equities into bonds to lock in their gains.
There is a reason people still have things like checking and savings accounts and CDs.
I worked in crypto for five years, and this resonates. Sure, you can make money hustling some hype coin, but chances are you are more likely to lose money/time in the process. Outside of very specific supply chain blockchains, 99% of the actual value I see in order of value: 1) Stablecoins [faster than ACH!], 2) Bitcoin, and in certain places, 3) Ethereum has its uses.
Even Bitcoin though is not a panacea though, as without REAL transactional use-cases, it is also prone to sudden major drops. Until people in your home state can buy a car, house, and groceries using bitcoin directly (WITHOUT a Visa bridge), the real value will be highly subjective to the whims of the market.
How is it opposite. In my mind they all fall under the same libertarian fantasy umbrella.
The post mentioned the idea of casually sending a billion dollars. Was that ever possible with Bitcoin? AFAIK it's less ergonomic to send money using Bitcoin than it is using traditional banking.
Tell me a single useful real world use case that Ethereum is being used in today, a decade after its creation
If I can solve that problem with another simpler, older technology it doesn’t count as useful. I don’t care if you can pay for things using ethereum when I can just use my credit card instead.
> The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database.
Care to elaborate? I have been using Bitcoin now 10+ to store my wealth and make payments, and it has been very convenient - not much time needed to use it, and I think I've gotten plenty of value for my time-investment.
What kind of database would you recommend to make it more convenient? Maybe you can write a guide how to implement decentralized value transfer and storage system on top of PostgreSQL, so that the amount of tokens is limited to 21 Million, with similar security guarantees?
Governments do care, they have developed heavy regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies, such as MiCa in EU. I think central banks have been giving (negative) comments about Bitcoin since 2011 or so when it first gained modest publicity.
Governments are huge and consists of many different institutions. I guess many would like to see Bitcoin stopped, but how to do that without fondling with the basic human rights, such as the right to free communication? So far the governments have been regulating it, trying to reduce the illicit use, which doesn't really stop it but actually makes it more legitimate.
Also it is very likely that the advent of Quantum computing would be gradual. There exists bounty addresses, with ascending difficulty to crack. We would see the progress in steps, not suddenly. These quantum tinfoil scenarios just don't make sense.
It takes no imagination or insight to see reasons why something wouldn’t work. It’s the default mental pathway for every risk-averse beast. Skepticism is not born out of contentment and abundance but out of self-preservation. It’s not correlated with feeling enough, but with feeling bitterness and envy of those who took risks and gained an advantage instead of suffering consequences.
People who are content feel less need to take risks by accepting dubious statements without proof. They have what they need so why risk it for more?
Sceptical people will be grounded by what we know to be true. They will explore new ideas but will not be swept up by them. We need people like that or we'll waste our time on flights of fancy. But we need the irrational optimists to explore new ideas too. It's a classic exploration vs exploitation trade-off.
Many people who have risked their money by placing it on Bitcoin likely had enough, and they risked the extra money that they had lying around. Why not place bets on something you think might be probable? Is there something morally wrong in making some extra buck? Is it morally superior just to keep your money lying on bank account or what?
I'm pretty sure these peeps who hang out at /r/buttcoin are going to work like regular people to get some fiat currency to their beloved government blessed bank accounts. So I guess they don't feel like they have enough.
To be honest I don't think the skeptical people thought bitcoin's success was probable and that's why they didn't bet on it. It's not really anything to do with them being content with what they have.
But it could be this too in some cases.
Some people do things unless they find a reason not to but so a skeptical person will only do things if they find a reason.
People who really feel they have enough might not see any reason to spend their time or effort placing bets, even on things they think are probable. But I don't think many people think that way.
I don't think the first group is smart as all. Understanding human behaviour is pretty basic skill. Missing a basic understanding on how humans work is just stupidity. Being able to build great lego sets, but not being able to have a basic conversation with other human beings, is not smart, but autistic.
But then if you travel along the autism line until you reach turbo autism, doesn't it just loop back around to being smart again? Like Kim Peek or Scott Flansburg?
Interesting cases, thanks for sharing. I didn't know what real-life inspiration the movie "Rain Man" came from. However, the two people seem to be worlds apart socially. While Peek seems to be extremely "stunted" in his social development, Flansburg appears to be coping well with his position as a speaker, which I always thought to be rather unusual for people with autism spectrum disorder.
I was thinking the same thing, but I was watching his human calculator video [0] and there are moments where his mouth moves quicker than his brain and he has to catch himself a few times. My guess is he's given this talk and rehearsed the mannerisms so many times that he's on auto-pilot.
I don't think these people would be superrich if they wouldn't be optimizing their taxes, at least at some level. I would guess taxes are the typically the biggest single expense the really rich people pay.
I would think so, but perhaps for the people who are self-defined by the magnitude of their wealth they become more and more obsessed by it as their expenditures on "real" things dwindles in comparison.
