I remember installing the bitcoin software on my desktop way back when. I thought it was going to be another one of those seti at home type things where my machine dutifully ticked away at some huge dataset and i could periodically look at it to see some number grow.

like seti at home, i lost interest. I wanted my cycles back for diablo II or something. I kept some txt files around for a while with my btc on it, then, eventually lost track of that disk. C'est la vie. it's kind of fun to think of how many millions i've lost. It's not like missing out on millions isn't a regular occurrence in my life now. there was that .com stock that suddenly dried up too.

As is often pointed out, we aren't the customers of these platforms. Finally, i get something out of being the product!

my biggest fear is losing one in the toilet.

This!

there are some cocktails for which a company has aquired some kind of legal rights to the name. for example, if you sell a drink called the painkiller, you are required to use pusser's rum.

i would think that most of the slashdot crowd would find that kind of rule abhorrent. Thankfully, those protections don't extend to drinks you make in your own home. When i make a painkiller, i put whatever the hell dark rum i want in there. suck it pusser's

I would imagine we have computer technology that allows us to keep someone alive that we didn't have in the past. In the past, that person would have simply died sooner.

unfortunately, the conspiracy theorists will just say that consumers only have access to the rice sized dog chips. bill gates is keeping the super nano tracker technology secret for his nefarious plans.

This is true, but there are other rules of Capitalism that state you should try to keep your business afloat by spending other people's money.

Tax laws are complicated, but the dumbed down version is: if you are given something of value, you owe the IRS based on the market value on the day you aquired it.

I have to pay when i receive my RSUs. People who win cars, homes, or any other significant prize have to pay under the same rules. I think it even applies to receiving something digital like bitcoin.

That box is probably a real nightmare tax situation to be honest.

what about that spray they use for the shoes at the bowling alley?

unless the disease is a zombie outbreak. There needs to be legislation that mandates euthanasia for bite victims, even your children. We'd probably need mandatory masks too, it's not going to save you from a zombie, but anyone who turns with a mask on will have a much harder time biting people as a zombie. flatten the curve.

this morning.

for me, i want to live near the beach, and the mountains. I don't mind that my home here is a quarter of the size of the home i owned in wisconsin, or that it costs 4x as much. I'd live in this area, ok maybe i'd consider moving down somewhere else along the south coast, where its still equally expensive.

i was thinking the same thing. all the image processing code i have ever written takes the pixel data and converts it to numbers, then maths the numbers to either form a new image, or find something in the image.

if i do make some pixel data at some step of the process, it's so i can display it on screen for dramatic effect. i might add some high tech looking green targeting reticles to make it really look like it's doing something for the user. Then i'll intentionally slow my processing down because if those interstitial images fly by too fast, it's not as engaging for the user.

my guess is the images are made so it looks cool.

i'm surprised that quantized spacetime doesn't come up more as an explanation for the star trek transporters. it implies that everything must teleport the minimum unit constantly.

Jumping around the universe is literally a fundamental component of all motion. you no longer have to wonder if you are dead and cloned. (well... as an effect of the transporter. I guess if you think about it a lot you have to wonder if you are still you if you've moved 2 meters through the universe) The transporter it's simply imparting enough energy to move you more than the minimum unit. It's hand wavey, but it seems a bit less hand wavey.

i liked WebCrawler because the logo was cute.