leppr (u/leppr) - Readit News

leppr commented on Learn Physics with Functional Programming nostarch.com/learn-physic... · Posted by u/privong

tobinfricke · 2 years ago

> Scheme lacks the type system, syntax and syntactical "convenience" of curried functions.

The argument is that all of that syntax is a distraction.

leppr · 2 years ago

Yes, and that's like arguing that spaces between words is syntactic distraction. It's clearly not, more syntax rules can make a language simpler to understand (for both humans and computers).

leppr commented on Ubuntu Desktop: charting a course for the future ubuntu.com/blog/ubuntu-de... · Posted by u/jandeboevrie

marcodiego · 2 years ago

Not related to the post, but related to the feeling:

I miss the dreams of two decades ago. It was like a cause to fight for, a bunch of hackers against a billion dollar industry. Actually, we already had support from part of that "billion dollar industry" but there was still a fight against antagonists. Every contribution was a small step, every new version, new improvements, a new program covering a feature we missed from some evil proprietary software... The points where we were ahead like security, stability and performance made every enthusiast user feel like part of great opus, a soldier in a somewhat silent war.

Fast forward 20 years, linux is now "the kernel that powers billions of end-users devices". We're still way behind on the desktop, but the "war for the end-user" has a clear leader. Many other markets were also taken entirely or partially: HPC, embedded, auto, entertainment, routers, servers, cloud... The thing matured. If you want to get a contribution in the kernel, you'll have to convince the "billion dollar industry" we seemed to be fighting against in another era. You could say they are on our side now, but I really don't know what difference it makes. Those teens of two decades ago should be proud of what was achieved and, I'm sure, many are.

The situation is good, stable, mature. Always a bit better. But the feeling, the enthusiasm, the hope... all that seems gone, and I sorely miss that. I'd love to have that feeling again. The feeling that heavy investments will be made, the feeling that the desktop is a good cause to fight for, that a small circle of hackers are willing to make something BIG.

Yes, I miss that.

leppr · 2 years ago

It's fine, you can still get the same feeling and experience working on mobile computing.

User-respecting mobile OSes and hardware are still as unusable as the desktop Linux of 20 years ago, the incumbents are not helping at all, and the stakes are even higher (users get their freedom violated 24/7 instead of only when they sit down to their desktop).

leppr commented on Tilia – regulation-compliant (but US-only) money transmitter for gaming tilia.io/about... · Posted by u/carabiner

qup · 3 years ago

> Paypal only

They can't transmit money to a bank account?

Oh

leppr · 3 years ago

As if relying on Paypal by itself wasn't enough of a nightmare, imagine relying on Paypal directly linked to crypto stuff. Or is the value proposition here that Tilia somehow have a deal with Paypal to keep their users accounts open?

leppr commented on Linux is not “ready to run” on Apple Silicon, but give it time arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

onepointsixC · 3 years ago

That implies that using linux doesn't have you still beholden to a black box which is controlled by 2 US companies, when most likely you're still using an X86 Intel or AMD processor. But let's say you're using some ARM chip instead. Now your black box was built by TSMC or Samsung instead. It's black boxes all the way down.

leppr · 3 years ago

Valid point which I expected to come up, but the difference is that AFAIK exfiltrating precise data with such a setup would be challenging, while the software stack is so messy that it's orders of magnitude easier to stealthily compromise.

leppr commented on Linux is not “ready to run” on Apple Silicon, but give it time arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

leppr · 3 years ago

Sometimes I briefly get out of my bubble and realize that the vast majority of the world population - even the first, highly educated world - still trusts their entire digital lives to a black box controlled by either 1 of 2 US companies.

I mean, the fact that we have a widely available alternative makes the picture slightly less bleak, but still. How many politically-inclined persons rave endlessly about freedom and sovereignty while making no effort on such an important front? The Linux usage numbers are so far from where they should be.

leppr commented on Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore gamedeveloper.com/culture... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

kkielhofner · 3 years ago

Thank you for succinctly saying what takes me multiple paragraphs.

One nitpick - it’s easily $10s of billions of in investment, more than likely approaching or surpassing $100s of billions.

A16Z alone has raised roughly $10b. Throw in other big VCs, a bunch of coin/crypto specific funds, likely thousands or tens of thousands of angel/seed rounds we’ve never heard of capitalizing on the hype (or just outright frauds), initial coin allocations (the Ethereum foundation alone had over $1b last I looked), etc, etc. Then there’s trying to figure how to “value” “investment” in things like ICOs and ICO 2.0 stuff like NFTs, etc.

Not to mention the tendency for crypto projects to be outright frauds from the start. OneCoin alone brought in $4b in what could be characterized as “investment” from the perspective of the victims. One incomplete analysis[0] shows this specific category of frauds (of which there are many in crypto) to be at least $26b in total.

It’s been 14 years, hundreds of billions in investment and roughly speaking zero non-criminal usage and no real-world killer use cases. That’s just fact. Time to move on.

[0] - https://www.comparitech.com/crypto/cryptocurrency-scams/

leppr · 3 years ago

You are both going around my very simple argument that these mind-blowingly huge piles of money poured into crypto scams, don't undermine the undeniable reality of crypto that is not a scam.

Yes, people pouring their savings in tulips, fake railroad companies, and beanie babies is absurd. Does it follow that tulips, railroad companies, and baby plushies are scams and criminal in nature? The grifters and their victims moved on, and the underlying objects of speculation seem to exist and do their respective jobs just fine now.

Crypto is doing its job just fine of being a trustless and permissionless way of transferring value. It doesn't care if grifters hype, pump, and dump its tokens. The few actual decentralized networks in existence just keep running and securing their immutable ledgers. The few actual peer-to-peer researchers and developers keep improving them.

leppr commented on Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore gamedeveloper.com/culture... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

quickthrowman · 3 years ago

> Here are some stats for any passerby who might be convinced to think crypto really has ~zero non-criminal usage [1]. Surely calling 5-25% of many countries' populations criminals (including the US), should be relegated to a fringe extremist view.

Simply owning digital tokens is not a real world usage of those tokens, full stop.

That being said, I can fully accept that 5-25% of a countries population is gullible enough to buy cryptocurrency.

leppr · 3 years ago

> Simply owning digital tokens is not a real world usage of those tokens, full stop.

It's as much real world usage, as people owning stocks and precious metals is.

> I can fully accept that 5-25% of a countries population is gullible enough to buy cryptocurrency.

In many countries, it's the 75% of the population saving in their local fiat currency that are the gullible ones. I know we all love United States Dollars, but in many local economies, there aren't enough of them to go around. Acquiring, storing and transacting with cryptocurrencies can be easier, and more secure and discrete than going to your local black market USD dealer and stashing stacks of bills under your mattress.

leppr commented on Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore gamedeveloper.com/culture... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

arcticbull · 3 years ago

It's been 14 years, billions in investment and roughly speaking zero non-criminal usage and no real-world killer use cases. That's just fact. Time to move on.

leppr · 3 years ago

If anything, crypto at least seems to indirectly put food on your table, articbull. I would find it hard to believe you don't get any compensation from religiously covering every HN comment sections about crypto with misinformation. Surely your motives can't simply be the fear of being out of a job if bigtech fades into irrelevance. AI would logically be a way bigger threat to your occupation.

Here are some stats for any passerby who might be convinced to think crypto really has ~zero non-criminal usage [1]. Surely calling 5-25% of many countries' populations criminals (including the US), should be relegated to a fringe extremist view.

[1] https://triple-a.io/crypto-ownership-data/

leppr commented on Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore gamedeveloper.com/culture... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

soiler · 3 years ago

This isn't about cryptocurrency at all. It's about the obviously bad idea of transferable digital in-game goods [sold for cryptocurrency]. You don't need the crypto part to see why it's not a good idea, although the model described here (selling loot to other players?) is not the extremely silly one I've heard more often (buy a CSGO skin and wear it in other games!).

leppr · 3 years ago

You are right. From reading the article, Neal Stephenson doesn't criticize cryptocurrency in itself. His whole criticism is about integrating it inside the universe of games.

I don't agree with your opinion that item transferability is necessarily silly, though. I was happy to be able to sell the rare Dota 2 items I accumulated after playing it for a couple years. It was never a central motivation for playing, but the transferability didn't detract from the experience in any way. It just made for some nice pocket change when all was said and done.

___

Meta remark: It's pretty sad that one of the only HN comments correctly pointing out the disconnect between the article title, the HN knee-jerk reactions, and the actual content of the article, seems about to be downvoted to oblivion. The article is barely 3 paragraphs. Is it too much to ask to read it, before jumping in with the same tired crypto takes as every link to crypto-related resources on HN gets?

leppr commented on Neal Stephenson doesn't seem keen on crypto anymore gamedeveloper.com/culture... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

legrande · 3 years ago

We all started off enthused about cryptocurrency and then the Wolf of Wall Street types co-opted it and ruined it for everyone pulling off the most sophisticated Ponzi schemes in history.

The only use-case for it now is for the criminal underworld (who have to somehow convert to fiat privately using novel techniques, and that gets harder with regulation and sanctions and outright banning of tumbler systems).

leppr · 3 years ago

The "Wolf of Wall Street" types and various "crypto-bros" didn't "ruin it for everyone". They tarnished the connotation of the word "cryptocurrency", and wasted a lot of people of a lot of money. But their work has been mostly orthogonal to the real work on decentralized networks being done.

> The only use-case for it now is for the criminal underworld

This conclusion doesn't follow, neither logically nor empirically. [1] The exact opposite actually happened: we went from the vast majority of the volume being a darknet market, to most volume being saving/speculation and non-criminal e-commerce settlements.

[1]: https://twitter.com/malekanoms/status/1626583628099784705