politics
Many have asked why there has been so much more attention to the Charlie Hebdo attacks compared to Nigeria's Baga Massacre. Here are my thoughts: I've been to Paris multiple times. I've studied French. I've read French cartoons. I've read
bitcoin
Update: Bitstamp CEO Nejc Kodrič issued a comment via Twitter an hour or so after this post went live Bitcoin had a rough year in 2014, losing much of its value. The first few days of 2015 aren't looking much better. Since January 3rd, we've watched
blog
Richard Stallman's views are always "interesting"...his latest on Uber are no different ranging from well-reasoned to the absolutely insane * It requires passengers to run a nonfree program (an app). As always, a nonfree program tramples its users' freedom. Free software has never figured
technology
Paul Graham in his latest treatise argues that the USA should allow more foreign tech workers into the country. American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier because they say they can't find enough programmers in the US. Anti-immigration people say that instead of letting
technology
Great conversation with NYU artificial intelligence expert Gary Marcus by Russ Robert on EconTalk puts our progress on AI in perspective. TL;DR: Progress on artificial intelligence as we know it today is almost all the result of brute force and not actual intelligence. people have always been saying it&
infosec
Great security analysis of promises-to-make-bittorrent-anonymous app Tribler TLDR: Do not use this if your threat model includes active attackers, adversaries versed in cryptography, those with lots of money, or if you wish to be anonymous. Many problems come from using sources of "random" numbers
bitcoin
Apple Pay launched in the US on October 20, 2014, and has been doing very well. 1 million cards added in the first 3 days. In the first 3 weeks, just one merchant, Whole Foods, saw 150,000 Apple Pay transactions. Few Bitcoin accepting merchants are seeing anything close to
politics
Asks a friend of a friend on Facebook: Not absolute sure if legal legitimacy is close to moral legitimacy... Can contravention of the law be justified on moral grounds? Legality and morality are not the same. From [Bastiat's The Law] : "The law perverted! And the police powers
apple
Apple has done it again. It’s taken a product category filled for decades with failed products that saw little success even among dedicated nerds and re-invented it to make it both useful and cool. The most often heard complaint, even among fanbois is “But I wish it didn’
hong kong
A reader brought up treatment of foreign domestic helpers are a great example of racism in Hong Kong. However, it's important not to confuse perceived low pay and racism. They're separate issues. Let’s look at helper pay. The "cheapness" of maids is because
hong kong
You don’t move to a foreign country where most people look different than you and stay for very long if you can’t put up with mild racism. I always expected there to be racism in China, but assumed that Hong Kong would suffer less from this being an
blog
I had the good fortune to (literally) travel around the world last month with multiple stops in the USA, Europe and Asia talking with customers and friends about crowdsourced software testing and Bitcoin. While I’m happy to talk about software testing, most people were more interested in Bitcoin. Everywhere
