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Perhaps it's not the right thread to ask this, but:

What stops e.g. Pixar from opening up Pixarcoin where they let the community render their next movie? Am I missing something here?


Rendering a movie is not suitable as a proof of work function. It's probably very difficult to design a mathematical framework to verify that you really rendered the movie and not just send garbage back in exchange for coins.

At the moment most Coins use either one or multiple hashing functions¹ or prime chains² as proof of work system³.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin#Proof-of-work_system

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system


An additional problem is that the rendered images will leak.


Thank you! Exactly the answer I was afraid of.


I think one of the harder problems would be verifying that the render results from a distributed system are correct, and then Pixar would be a centralized entity doling out coin for correct output. Unless there's some decentralized way I'm blissfully missing.


How about protein folding? That actually has a way to check that it was done correctly (NP hard). Sounds really awesome.


What if people started a Pixar road, where drugs and guns would be sold for Pixar coins? Pixar would have no control over that what so ever. I don't know about the technical part however, it could probably be possible.


Nothing at all. What do think you're missing?


Thank you for the enclosure idea! Will implement your idea again if I happen to have a ridiculously huge and cold room like I did last year again.


The Northern Hemisphere has roughly 90% of the population[1]. That is far from 50% what we should be looking for.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Hemisphere


Are you born above or below the tropic of cancer then: replace with whatever latitude separates humans into equal groups.


This make other questions based on geography useless (as in the second question). Thats not to say the already given second question is better than your one


Is it really all about the speed race? Why don't I ever hear about quality of service, smaller latencies, etc? Is it because it is less marketable? I am sure ISPs can ultimately do something about it.

If I am naïve, then please guide me.


Will it be suitable to use SteamOS not only as a gaming platform, but also as a general-purpose operating system - i.e. the new Windows for gamers? There might have been a hint in the article, but I didn't quite catch it.


they will have a "desktop-mode", and seeing it will probably be based on Ubuntu, it should be usable for at least basic tasks.


I am currently residing in Singapore and in my opinion - there is not really much to see here and in the surrounding areas, if you are here for more than a month.

I encourage you, before nosediving here for a longer period (like I do for 9 months), visit the place and make sure you really like it here. I do not, as my view of Singapore highly correlates with the article.


I think the main problem for the author is that singapore is to clean and to un-exciting for him, because everyone just works and is in line. But my point is to have a good working environment (evidently one can work quite well in SG) but look around for the non-working time.


It's also an appearence issue. Most women I know tend to choose their phone by its looks. Phonebloks would not appeal to most of them ("I see the screws!") and thus it is not a very marketable phone.


Yeah, sure, it's only women who choose a phone on looks.


Heh.

My girlfriend's complaint about her android is that it's all software buttons on the screen. She wants physical buttons ala blackberry (but absolutely NO blackberry!)

And a bigger battery would be helpful.... As would a better antenna! She remembers the old 5W bag phones that could get signal from hell and back.


Never said it's only women. Just that in my experience they're the ones who care and show it most in their purchases. It's of course also myself, although I personally like the design. I hope I didn't confuse anyone.


Could you please refer to any good sources or books that you've worked through for people skills? Thanks!


How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie. I found this book quite brilliant.


Artificial intelligence wont take my programming job during my lifetime. Should it happen in the future, though, our descendants will have a completely different mindset from ours, being able to solve the problems at that time.

Nothing to worry about.


I wonder if I could be another MMM, but with buying stuff that are of extremely high quality and improve my life?

A simple example would be a fairly high priced mechanical keyboard... I would be using it every day.


It depends what you mean. There's certainly something to be said for buying stuff that's decent quality if you're going to be using it for a while, but just buying things that are high quality isn't going to free you from a job if you still have bad spending habits.



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