m-i-l

I wish there was a good way to try mattresses properly before buying them. Not just lie down on it for a few minutes in a shop, but sleep the whole night on it. Like a bed shop teaming up with a hotel…

A couple of similar questions on HN from a few years back: - "Ask HN: Steady 4-5% on $5 million?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1108163 - "Ask HN: Just cashed ou…

> When bitcoin appeared it's price was zero, yet people still mined it despite being a clear "worthless" activity. It was as simple as pressing a button, labelled "Generate&qu…

The source for the article's "Blockchain study finds 0.00% success rate" headline is "We documented 43 blockchain use-cases through internet searches ... we found no documentation …

Yes, and as per your example this combination also doesn't need blockchain. The only combination that actually needs blockchain is decentralised and secure.

Also note the "blockchain trilemma": at the moment you can have decentralised and secure systems that don't scale (e.g. Bitcoin), or you can have scalable and secure systems which aren&…

Not mentioned in the article, and almost certainly not known to NATO authorities at the time, but Able Archer 83 came a few weeks after the "1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident"[0]. See…

> "What about libertarianism were you guys talking about? Because the motivation around this coin is simply NOT libertarian.." According to the wikipedia article on Libertarianism[0] ther…

The analogy I sometimes use is that you don't need an architect to design a garden shed, but you do for a house which is much larger, has complex integrations with plumbing, electrics etc., plus …

I like the flight analogy too. Extending it further, we failed to build flying machines by blindly copying bird design when we had no idea how bird flight actually worked, and we successfully built he…

There's a great site with more details about many of these at https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/ .

If you liked this, you may also like "Am I autistic? An intellectual autobiography"[0] by Karl Friston. It doesn't go into his free energy idea at all, but is more about the person behi…

Don't forget: "Disaster Area was a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones and was generally regarded as not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but also as being the loudes…

The central point of this thesis is that technological progress was almost universally abhorred in the immediate aftermath of the Great War due to its perceived role in the industrialisation of death …

The Thirty Years' War[0] lead to the deaths of around one third of the populations of some of the belligerent countries. But that wasn't within living memory for anyone at the time. [0] htt…

> Donationware does not work for companies, I think - the bureaucracy required to make money move from the company to you will keep people from doing it even if they think you deserve it. This is…

On a slightly related note, I used to use a hi-fi stereo equipped VHS (used for recording NICAM digital stereo transmissions) to listen to music, e.g. transferring my vinyl albums to VHS tape. Advanta…

That's the problem - the only functioning use for public blockchains after 10 years is for crypto assets, i.e. for money making schemes, so will there be anything left at all if the people intere…

A couple of quotes I like: "I think the interesting balance you have got to get right as an entrepreneur is to have a healthy disregard for what people are saying. But the key thing also is, how …

Mostly ceramic tiles in my experience, or lino in budget e.g. student accommodation. I've rarely seen wood in the UK, presumably because it is prone to water damage. The problem with tiles though…

In the case of US, it is because the dollar is by far and away the largest international reserve currency, which gives the US what is known as the "exorbitant privilege"[0]. Putting it simpl…

Indeed. As easy as it was to grow up hating "the system", with the benefit of perspective it has to be said that a good selection of well-trained doctors, well-connected councillors etc. are…

It is easy to forget nowadays how much fear of nuclear war there used to be always lurking in the background. One anecdote to illustrate: My secondary school was built on top of the region's nucl…

It is indeed "the old lie" according to Owen. Full quote: If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of v…

According to https://dappradar.com/ , CryptoKitties has only had 351 active users over the past 24 hours, which is tiny considering it is the 8th most popular dapp globally. It used t…

To clarify - it is wealth of the council, not average wealth of individual residents. Bear in mind also that the cost of living is very high, given most products have to be imported from the mainland.…

If it is centralised, i.e. one entity controlling write operations, you don't need a blockchain. See e.g. the "when to use a blockchain" flowchart on page 41 (53 of PDF) in the "NI…