ADVERT :  Digital Ocean is giving you one month free VPS.Try it out HERE       Bronze Age diplomacy was pretty wild. Two rulers who were on the same footing called one another "brother" and you were supposed to refer to a superior ruler (like of Egypt) as "father" and we have records of kings getting really pissed off about this.Archaeologists looking at the early material culture of the Philistines realized that they were exiled/refugee Mycenaeans (Greeks) during the migrations which brought about the collapse of the Bronze Age     The traditional "heart shape" doesn't look like a heart b/c it's (probably!) the seed of the silphium plant. It was "worth its weight in [gold]" from the 6th c BCE til it was extinct from over-farming in the 2nd c BCE. It's demand was purely from its ability to induce abortion. "Satan" in ancient Hebrew means both "adversary" and "advocate...

 ADVERT : Digital Ocean is giving you one month free VPS.Try it out HERE      A post with my notes from ‘Seneca: Letters from a Stoic’ Background: Seneca (c.4 B.C. - A.D. 65) was a Roman advisor to Emperor Nero. These are a collection of letters written near the end of his life to his friend, Lucilius, It is not the man who has too little that is poor, but the man who hankers after more.Live in such a way that there is nothing which you could not as easily tell your enemy as keep to yourself. Limiting one’s desires actually helps to cure one of fear. The two of them march in unison like a prisoner and the escort he is handcuffed to. Both belong to a mind in suspense, to a mind in a state of anxiety through looking into the future. Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come.     Retire into yourself as much as you can. Assoc...

   ADVERT: Digital Ocean is giving you one month free VPS.Try it out HERE         Economists and traditional valuation experts claim that for most anything to be *valued* it must have cash flows.These experts then go on to say currencies can't be valued, they can only be *priced.*   So then the "fundamental value" of stocks and other cash producing assets is based on currencies that have no fundamental value? Logic seems fragile at best, like building a castle with air. Of course, this debate comes up frequently around #crypto valuations. People addicted to their cash flows have a hard time seeing how a new asset class can have new fundamental value, without seeing the flaws in their own thinking.       For our entire history, humans have decided how to value things. Valuation methods continue to evolve for stocks and many other assets, why shouldn't new ones be born for #crypto?   What...

  Digital Ocean is giving you one month free VPS.Try it out HERE    #Crypto market views summary: - Past - Present - Key Themes - Price - Future  Past: - Crypto experienced the largest bubble in financial markets' history. - Bubble caused by retail euphoria, crypto virality, large players front-running CME futures open, and potentially market manipulation (i.e. USDT).   Past: - There's evidence of market manipulation, fake volume, pump-and-dump schemes, and shilling of vaporware by well known crypto promoters. - Market crashed as inflow of new investors dwindled and regulators worldwide started an onslaught. Present: - Most crypto is vaporware (aka *hitcoins). - Retail investors got burnt. - Large players, early investors, and crypto developers and founders dumped on retail (e.g. LTC's creator SatoshiLite).- HODL is the most damaging meme in history. The result of getting financial advice from those who don't kno...

Digital Ocean is giving you one month free VPS.Try it out HERE  Blockchains will replace networks with markets.       Humans are the networked species. The first species to network across genetic boundaries and thus seize the world. Networks allow us to cooperate when we would otherwise go it alone. And networks allocate the fruits of our cooperation. Overlapping networks create and organize our society. Physical, digital, and mental roads connecting us all. Money is a network. Religion is a network. A corporation is a network. Roads are a network. Electricity is a network...       Networks must be organized according to rules. They require Rulers to enforce these rules. Against cheaters. Networks have "network effects." Adding a new participant increases the value of the network for all existing participants. Network effects thus create a winner-take-all dynamic. The leading network tends towards becoming the only network. ...

 Digital Ocean is giving $10  to try it out. HERE Ok, so I got this to a point that it might be useful... here's a mini post that'll explain what the heck is going on. Tl;Dr - I made a UART controlled glitch on an iCE40 icestick FPGA board... code is here: So, let's pick up where we left off... This is our setup - we have an STM32F103 target, and we're going to see how accurately we can glitch this IC by manipulating the power supply on the GND side using a MOSFET triggered by an FPGA. We had this running on an AVR before, but... please take my word for it, the code from last time will work on this chip. So, first, we make some modifications and remove the power line filter caps from the PCB. Here's the view after some minor surgery and a meditation with a hot air reflow gun: (NB - I try to avoid removing ALL the caps off a board. Some are needed by the c...

You can find more posts like this in this forum .So lets get started. What are the open problems in the blockchain and what are some existing approaches to solve these problems? First, we have to examine the history of blockchain from a technical and also conceptual standpoint. Bitcoin started with the goal of being a global currency implying that it was going to be the store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of accounts. The problem is that right now, we're primarily in the store of value era. From a timing stand point economic transactions are primarily done through escrow proxies (ICOs) or high end real estate (people selling crypto and receiving btc). Crypto has not reached the point of merchant adoption and I would argue that this is normal. eiaine has an eloquent article which she explains that a currency needs to be HODL and be valuable and then be a medium of exchange. The currency is very volatile and then because it's volatile, it has a problem becoming a unit...