That's not unique to cryptocurrencies with blockchains. Any private digital currency (including and especially those used in MMORPGs) has to deal with the same problem, of making sure that transactions are ordered correctly, that money is still available in an account, etc. In that sense, they all have the problem of the network having to know about both transactions.

It even affects the real-world clearing of bank transactions, which is why people always complain about the lag between when they get their money and when they can spend it, which exists (in part) because of the interdependence of all the accounts.

One solution, of course, is to perform the accounting via bearer notes, aka physical paper/coin money. The holding of the note validates the availability that unit of money, and that there is no "lock" on it.

But even then, you have to worry about someone spending money while they still have a lien from a third party.

Fine, as long as we don't make it a *general* policy to adopt Steve Ballmer's jargon.

Oy gevalt! This again? When minimizing risk, you have to invest where you get the best returns in lives saved. Obviously, in retrospect, after an accident, you'll wish you had spent infinity on having more safety, but that's the wrong way to think about it.

You should instead:

1) figure out how much you're willing to spend per statistical life saved

2) deploy safety measures up to that point

It's not always going to make sense to keep throwing on all kinds of safety equipment simply to handle every black swan event you can think of -- remember, they do log airplane location remotely and continuously; it's just that that still wasn't enough in this case.

You might as well advocate that planes start giving everyone a parachute, without realizing it makes flight so unaffordable as to push people to less safe modes of transportation.

Comments like these promote a worse understanding of the issues.

But it's *not* critical to the performance of the job they're *actually* trying to.

Think about it: can they still hobnob, cut backroom deals, wield enormous power, and keep that power? Yep, they're doing that just fine. Tech ignorance isn't holding them back from that at all!

So, like PayPal then?

The topic is "does relying on an IDE make you a bad programmer". And I say yes by analogy to the carpenter situation: *relying* on a powersaw -- being able to cut wood only that way -- makes you a bad carpenter.

If your understanding of cutting wood has atrophied to "uh, flick the switch and push the wood into the blade", then yeah, it has worsened your expertise as a carpenter -- because you've lost the understanding that would allow you to cut wood with a plain ol' handsaw and are forced to backlog until the real experts can replace it when it breaks.

Just because it's a retarded idea, doesn't mean an engineer hasn't tried it on a production design.

It's just that the downside of this design choice is a lot more obvious now that we know a condition in which you absolutely do not what a computer between your brakes and your wheels.

Agree in principle, but I'm not sure this fails that standard to the extent that it's relevant for science to work. Sure, a human may not directly understand the entire proof. However, like with the Four Color Theorem, they can verify:

- A proof checker would catch errors if there were any, and has failed to.
- The thing it purports to prove is in fact (a representation) of the theorem the submitter claims to have proven.
- The proof generator generates only valid steps.

Could there be errors in the process? Sure. But it's definitely something that humans can do science with.

If the law says to cart $oppressed_group to the internment camps, then stopping it is a crime and people who work as guards for the camps are gonna oppose attempts to stop it.

See, I can pretend to be insightful too!

You mean, a writer with a particular worldview convinced you that there was a time where smaller businesses held a relatively benevolent position compared to upstream larger businesses.

Does that argument also prove how gas station owners were pro-consumer good guys against oil companies?

Why didn't competition between auto-makers hold down prices, and how did middlemen help with that?

Well, why didn't he test the mortar against every every brick he'd be using in the wall before he put it up?

Er, I guess bricklayers don't have some of the luxuries programmers do ...

Because enforcement is so tepid and inconsistent. If you download a movie illegally, do you expect someone to come looking for you?

Definitely! But some customers believed they were getting a genuine speedup from the quantum effects and it being a true quantum computer. I think it's relevant to *them* whether they could accomplish the same thing with (classical) commodity hardware and a grad student to implement the (classical) algorithm, which seems to be the case.

I seriously doubt that it's it.

a) Law schools get away with a lot worse in terms of stating graduate placements and salaries and charge a LOT more and take a much bigger commitment.

b) They're not going to law off the moment these schools drop specific guarantees of placement