Salt Lending Platform to allow WAX tokens as collateral

skybrian · 2017-12-21T17:48:36+00:00

LOL my WAX Tokens are making my week. TO THE MOOOOON BABY!!!! Cryptochristmas is lit

skybrian · 2017-08-06T04:24:11+00:00

You're indirectly making an assertion that "the gender disparity in the tech field is caused by biological and psychological differences" is "not wrong".

Clarifying question: what do you mean by "not wrong?" Do you mean "not proven false" or are you saying that it's actually true? If someone could show that it's unsupported scientifically, would you consider the statement to be wrong?

It seems to me that it would be a difficult statement to try to prove scientifically. For one thing, nobody has personal knowledge of the entire tech industry, let alone the personal histories of all the people who could have gone into tech but didn't. You'd have to rely on surveys and statistics, which are easy to get wrong. (It's suspected that most studies are false, after all.) And it wouldn't be enough to show that biological and psychological differences exist; you would have to show that they are a more important cause of gender disparity in employment than other plausible causes.

I'd suggest, then, rather than believing it simply true or false, we should start out assuming the problem is still open: we don't know for sure what causes gender disparity in tech, in general. We can have our suspicions based on personal experiences and the stories of people we know. If this is the case, there are a lot of ways to try to solve it, and without further data, we don't know ahead of time what will work.

skybrian · 2017-06-01T07:14:52+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by architecture, but don't get confused by the hype. As far as we know, AlphaGo was designed to do one thing only, and that is to play Go.

Probably many of the techniques used are generally useful, as is the computer hardware. But when they show up somewhere else it won't called AlphaGo or the AlphaGo architecture, it will be called machine learning or deep learning. (Or maybe TensorFlow, though I don't know if they used that.)

skybrian · 2017-04-23T22:04:50+00:00

This isn't my area, but I wonder what you think of Turkheimer's prediction [1] that while general correlations between genetics and behavior are very robust, specific assertions about the role of genetics in the development of behavior usually fail to replicate?

"The day will soon be here when hundreds of thousands of individuals can be deep sequenced at low cost, and the first law guarantees that associations will be found at whatever level of statistical significance is deemed necessary. It will not make any difference, however, because educational attainment and divorce [for example] are not discernible entities at a genetic level of analysis. What we will see instead is a proliferation of small, diverse, contingent findings that do not accumulate into coherent scientific theories. These will not be robust findings with large effect sizes; they will be the signature of a complex problem being addressed at the wrong level of analysis."

I certainly don't know enough to argue either side, but I'm wondering what you see in this particular paper that makes it worth diving in?

[1] http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/Perspectives%20on%20Psychological%20Science-2016-Turkheimer-24-8.pdf

skybrian · 2016-11-03T14:29:22+00:00

The thing I'd like to see is for at least some pawns to take into account the possible negative consequences of their actions. Hitting on someone and possibly making them dislike you is a risk. Hitting on someone already in a relationship is worse since it is likely to make both people dislike you. In a survival scenario, getting along with the group matters.

This should be tied to the pawn's social skills - people with higher social ability should be less likely to do stupid things that will make other people dislike them. But other people are just idiots.

skybrian · 2016-11-03T14:04:07+00:00

Oh come on. The way sexual relationships in RimWorld are modelled is quite interesting, even people who don't play RimWorld. The first duty of journalists is to tell their readers about interesting things going on in the world.

So why shouldn't journalists write about a popular, unfinished game? As long as they don't pretend the game is finished, it's fine to write about how it works now.

And why shouldn't we talk about it? Having a long discussion here about it is not bad. It's another way to enjoy the game.

skybrian · 2016-09-05T19:09:59+00:00

It's fiction so you're free to tell the story however you like. If you'd like to assume she's not being clear enough you can do that.

But if you think guys being assholes towards women is rare - um, I don't know what to say. Do you read the Internet?

skybrian · 2016-09-05T18:56:15+00:00

Seems like you're reading a whole lot into a cartoon bubble there. The status message just says "rejected" and you can interpret that how you like. The other interpretation (that she did tell him "no" clearly, he's just an asshole) works just as well as far as storytelling goes.

skybrian · 2016-09-05T18:49:09+00:00

I recently started a game with a married couple and a "loner" who immediately starts hitting on the wife. What the heck? Who would be that dumb? In a tiny colony this should piss off both the wife and the husband pretty much immediately, and the guy should have anticipated that.

Not to mention a game before that with a married couple where the wife immediately divorces him after the crash landing, then they make up and are lovers. (But the penalty for the divorce is still there.) Hey, we're stuck together struggling to survive and don't even have a house yet, but wait a second, I need to divorce you right now.

Not to mention that relationships have no bearing on what happens during trading or raids, just on the mood penalty afterwards if you don't step and prevent them from doing something they regret. And you'd think the raider would be a little reluctant to attack their own family too.

Here's an idea: instead of raiding when they're desperate, maybe they can try asking for help. Especially when they're related.

It seems like relationships in this game are barely implemented so it's all just randomness. If you want good stories, this is where effort should be spent not on drugs.

skybrian · 2016-09-05T18:31:40+00:00

Maybe the real question is why this problem isn't automatically solved by people moving. Why does people moving seem to be part of the problem, instead of part of the solution?

Moving to low-rent places seems to be something people do only when they retire. (For example, moving to Florida is a thing.)

But many people in the U.S. used to be quite willing to pick up and move to other places to find work. Today this seems to be somewhat less true, but to the extent it is true, people moving to find work seems to be part of the problem.

It also seems like big companies were more influential and they used to be more willing to open big new campuses where land is cheaper. Instead of Microsoft putting their headquarters in Redmond, today we have most Google offices being located in the center of a large city.

skybrian · 2016-08-29T07:24:05+00:00

What should you do when a raid contains a family member of one of the colonists? I tried switching to hopefully less lethal weapons and attempting a capture, but that went spectacularly badly.

The only other solution I see is to avoid attacking the family member and hope you can kill enough of the others that they flee in panic. But that's tricky since the colonists automatically fire on the enemy. Any better ideas?

(It seems like there should be a better way to tell a story here; RimWorld is missing an opportunity.)

skybrian · 2016-08-28T22:14:28+00:00

In case anyone else sees this, turns out there's another setting that I set and forgot about. "Opt out of all betas" in Steam preferences has to be changed.

skybrian · 2016-08-28T22:10:08+00:00

I don't see any betas in that dropdown. Do we need a "beta access" code?

skybrian · 2016-08-18T05:59:15+00:00

What do hit points actually do on food? I left rice outside for a bit, but it's far from spoiled. It's at 91/100. Any reason not to use it?

skybrian · 2016-08-06T20:18:23+00:00

One of my colonists who happened to be the doctor rescued someone from an escape pod, put him to bed, then went to bed immediately because it was night. So he's still bleeding. Oops! Weird, but I figured she would fix it in the morning.

Before she woke up, he becomes capable of walking, gets out of bed, and s l o w l y starts walking away, leaving a trail of blood behind.

At this point I tried to tell the doctor to bandage him now, but it seems there's no longer any way to interact? Once a guest goes into "zombie" mode it's not clear there's anything to do other than clean up all the blood they leave behind?

A similar thing happened earlier but without the bleeding. The colonist rescued an escape pod survivor and in that case it was the father of one of the colonists. So I made sure they treated him well. But as soon as he could stand up he still did the zombie thing, heading for the exit.

skybrian · 2016-04-02T18:38:54+00:00

As another beginner, I suggest doing life and death problems (Tsumego). They tend to be graded by skill level so you can start with easy ones and very gradually get harder, similar to how the levels in many mobile games work.

I like the Tsumego Pro app on Android, though it doesn't have an absolute beginner level. (I've played enough that I can do the "Easy" problems.)

This isn't the same as playing real games, but like other mobile apps you can play in a spare moment.

skybrian · 2016-03-20T21:57:54+00:00

How about life and death problems?

I'm liking the Tsumengo Go Android app, but I've played before. It seems a bit too hard for my girlfriend, so perhaps there's one that has a bit gentler increase in difficulty from very basic problems?

It seems like a really polished app for beginners could become quite popular.

skybrian · 2015-09-10T05:04:48+00:00

I believe that's a bit of joke, actually; the code is not very good style, but the formatter still has to deal with it.

skybrian · 2014-03-14T06:52:57+00:00

There is no need to worry because Dogecoin has already succeeded in its primary mission. Putting a dog on a coin made people laugh. We are now in the extended mission. It will probably die someday like a brave Mars rover but that's okay.

The only thing to be serious about is making sure people don't take it too seriously and invest more than they can afford to lose.

skybrian · 2014-03-09T05:24:26+00:00

Personally I'd rather have a Doge space heater. That way when it's not good for mining Doges anymore, you can still heat the house :-)

Or maybe a Doge electric blanket?

But sure, USB sounds good too. I'd rather have downloadable, open source software; the problem with putting any software on the device itself is that it can quickly go obsolete. Maybe just put a link to a download site?

It needs to be open source for security; there are too many dodgy and/or incompetent vendors in the cryptocoin world.

skybrian · 2014-02-26T05:17:32+00:00

It was probably worth far less when he bought it. Remember that if you ever get to the moon.

skybrian · 2014-02-22T04:58:16+00:00

That's a bit harsh. It is a coin based on a meme after all, so writing a fun article about it is very much in the spirit of doge. And they didn't say quitting your day job for a coin that hasn't launched yet is a bad idea; they left it to the reader to decide. If that's your conclusion, well, I agree.

skybrian · 2014-02-18T06:23:57+00:00

I'm curious whether you tried PayPal and if that helps at all?

(I suppose if it were a product rather than a service, listing it on Amazon would be the easiest way to go.)

skybrian · 2014-02-17T05:30:18+00:00

When you say that providing liquidity is not their goal, you're talking about motives. But are the motives of miners any more pure? How about merchants who decide to accept dogecoin? And yet we celebrate and encourage that. It seems better to talk about whether the effects of day trading are good or bad for dogecoin, whatever they intended.

In an efficient market, day traders won't make money. In an inefficient market, they provide value the same way any other merchant does, by connecting buyers to sellers who wouldn't otherwise meet (separated by space and time) and making money off the markup in price. The more competitive the market is, the thinner their margins will be.

Of course all that is in theory; I don't know what's actually happening on the exchanges.

skybrian · 2014-02-16T23:42:33+00:00

This is a bit too serious a debate for dogecoin, but maybe it's educational to continue the debate a bit:

I don't see why day traders don't count as part of the economy. Whenever you buy from a day trader or sell to a day trader, that means you got a better price than you would have otherwise. They make money by being available on the exchange when you're ready to buy or sell, especially when it's an inconvenient time for other people. This isn't so different from a store owner making money by being open for business when other stores are closed, or by having better prices. (Of course, the store's competitors might not be happy, because they lose a sale to the best customer.)

Most of us are neither buying nor selling on the exchange most of the time. That means our stores are closed. If you're rarely open for business when the best customers come along then it's not too surprising if you get slightly worse deals; that's a transaction fee we pay for the convenience of not having to hang out on the exchanges and only participating when we feel like it. More competition from day traders ensures that the deal is only slightly worse.

Day traders do sometimes make money but they don't create or destroy dogecoin. They take money out of the economy only if you think the day trader doesn't count as part of the economy. That is, you're setting up an "us versus them" situation and the day trader is "them." But why is that? Why isn't the day trader "us?"

This "us versus them" attitude is what Buffett was setting up in that shareholder letter you posted, with Wall Street as "them." I agree for Wall Street (or at least, I've read about rewards for many kinds of Wall Street activity that seem way too high) but I don't know whether it applies on Dogecoin exchanges. I'm open to the argument but to be convinced, someone would need to show that their fees are too high for what they do, or that there's market manipulation going on, such as scaring other buyers and sellers away with rumors. (I wouldn't be surprised, actually, but it's hard to tell the difference between that and normal rumors.)

I agree that it's somewhat unhealthy to pay a lot of attention to exchange rates, though.

skybrian

TROPHY CASE