Yeah, I would prefer to see this effort being done for AMD GPUs. They're not as powerful, but at least everything is open source and developer friendly. They should be rewarded for that.
AMD GPUs actually have fairly powerful hardware. However, despite being open source, calling them "developer friendly" is rather generous. Just look at how TinyCorp struggled with AMD ROCm before resorting to writing a completely sovereign stack.
I think a steelmanned version of their comment is that crypto apps are proprietary, which I think is mostly true. There are open source apps, but most of the big ones are all proprietary.
Sorry, I should've been way more clear. But this is what I was getting at. If the average person wants to buy or trade in crypto, they don't reach for an open source solution, they'll use a proprietary service. I know that's built ontop of a lot of great open source tech, but the final 'app' people interact with isn't open. The fact that pix doesn't have an open source app just strikes me as a weird reason not to use it.
I interpreted it as: crypto is proprietary in that it is bespoke. Crypto prior to ethereum didn't even have a concept of compatibility. Forks of existing crypto could be considered proprietary with respect to each other and with respect to the original project being forked. The need for bridging to other chains/coins as well as the need for on/off-ramps also speaks to the somewhat-proprietary nature of modern cryptocurrencies.
All that said, however, crypto isn't proprietary compared to traditional banking or other payment transfer tech in the ways that make crypto, well, crypto - the lack of third party intermediaries. Anyone can develop for crypto, and the capabilities of the network can be extended by properties of crypto tokens.
Any individual crypto token or network may be open source or proprietary with respect to its development and acceptance of outside contributions, but the ecosystem as a whole is amazingly interconnected and interoperable. This seems incongruous conceptually when crypto is framed in terms of being proprietary, because crypto is constantly reinventing itself in plain view, through entirely new networks and tokens, and out of sight, through the efforts of working groups and individuals to support and maintain existing projects.
I think it's entirely fair to call crypto proprietary, and also fair to find it not to be, but there's a world of difference between how proprietary bitcoin or even ethereum is compared to something like xrp. Who controls the network and who controls development are the key differentiating features among these axes to my mind.
Crypto could potentially be the best or worst of both open and proprietary worlds, but in the best case, crypto can be open in ways that are good, and only proprietary in ways that are necessary and sufficient.
I still don't really get this. Do you mean that frent-ends have proprietary code?
Contracts on-chain can be slightly inscrutable in their bytecode format, but it's pretty uncommon for smart contracts to not be published with source code and a verifiable build.
> Do you mean that front-ends have proprietary code?
Yes, sorry for not being clear, but this is what I meant. When the average person uses crypto, they're not using an open source app to buy/sell it. They'll be doing it through a propriety service, with a non-open source front-end. That service will build on top of a lot of great open source tech yes, but the final layer is very likely a private company.
I know there are open source options, but my understanding is the overwhelming majority of human trades won't be using them. My point is, refusing to use pix because there's not an open source mobile app is odd to me.
Just came across your comment when googling this and was wondering if you had any thoughts. My understanding is that when startups have the insane levels of advertising on Youtube that Ground News does, it's because they're expected to eventually monopolize the market and generate huge revenue in the long run.
How would that work for Ground News? $2.50/month subscriptions for news aggregation seems a bit un-unicorny, even with data collection and other forms of soft monetization. Do you think it's actually that viable, or are they going to massively pivot?
Many (most?) symmetric algorithms simply generate a stream of pseudo-random bits, which are then used to XOR the plaintext. This stream is deterministic, which means that the same key "in" will produce an identical bit-stream "out".
This means that if the same key is reused, and the plaintext is predictable, then you'll see patterns in the output. Those patterns can be used to figure out the key. Heck, you don't even need the key! Just register a bunch of distinct user names (or whatever you can control), and observe the change in the encrypted token. Eventually you can collect enough data to generate arbitrary tokens, or at least tokens with some useful values under your control. You can also exploit different error response codes, which is a common design fault because "decryption failure", "parser failure", and "access denied" tend to go through different code-paths and throw different exception types.
The solution is to mix in a block of random bits to break this determinism. This is the initialization vector (IV). The developers -- of course -- failed to do this and used a constant.
Even that is insufficient, because most encryption algorithms provide only confidentiality. They don't provide authenticity ("signing"), which is more important for tokens.
(An aside: authenticated encryption algorithms are starting to get popular, and these provide both at once efficiently.)
Essentially, it doesn't matter how "secure" an algorithm is, it won't achieve security if it is misused and applied for the wrong purpose.
> This is the initialization vector (IV). The developers -- of course -- failed to do this and used a constant
Oh, at that point you're not even using the algorithm anymore. Why is this even possible in the library? I would've assumed that any sensible implementation would handle the initialization vector for you, and manually setting it up would require very verbose explicit configuration.
You've completely missed the point of the parent comment. It doesn't matter if it occasionally hallucinates, because there are many use cases where that's okay and you can generate enormous value anyway.
i disagree with that. the point is that there are good and harmless uses of AI. the possibility of dangerous uses does not necessarily warrant the complete dismissal of AI unless a complete dismissal is the only way to protect us from harm caused by use of AI.
Despite it being cherrypicked, it is a valid case. Hence it would seem you're knowingly disagreeing with a fact because it doesn't fit your purpose, which is disingenuous.
> They are still not an adequate substitute for Zig's comptime feature. For one and in a sense they are much more limited than comptime functions in Zig
The syntactic restrictions don't really matter; it's still Turing-complete. The key difference is that types are values in Zig but not in Rust, which is a core design feature of the language and can't be changed easily.
I get what you're saying, but this reasoning has always rubbed me the wrong way.
You will often hear scammers and con artists justify what they do by saying it's the only way they have to support their family. It's like, why is your family more important than any other family in the world? It's still a selfish act.
disagree. feeding your own family IS more important to you. it has to be, because that is your responsibility. you are not responsible for other families. not at the expense of your own.
the question is rather: why is unethical behavior the only way to feed your family?
in case of the suggestion to just quit after 9 months i would say that if there is no other way to get work, then what choice do they have? this is similar to lying about the intention to have children. some might consider lying unethical, but it is so important that it is in fact legally protected in some countries.
that's a very philosophical question, and i am happy to engage in a discussion if you like. let me start with that i believe that it is the very purpose of humanity to contribute to an ever advancing civilization. so yes, i do consider myself responsible for the wellbeing of society. in fact i am making that very choice right now, living with my family in a developing country so that i can make a meaningful contribution there and teach my children important values of life, instead of going back home where i could live on social benefits because caring for my children would prevent me from getting a job.
but at the end of the day i can't let my children starve to achieve that goal, nor am i responsible to feed all my neighbors who sometimes struggle to actually afford all their daily necessities. there has to be a balance somewhere. and as i said the balance is to not resort to unethical behavior. but that's not the same thing as giving other families a higher priority than my own which is what you are suggesting (you are not explicitly saying it, but the opposite reading of "why is your family more important than others?" is "why should other families be more important than yours?".)
i brought these children into the world, and my responsibility is towards them first. this does not mean that i ignore the needs of others, if i can help them. it also does not mean that i focus on giving my children an advantage over others, or that i protect them from their own mistakes. all i am doing is to make sure that they are healthy and learn, in school and in life. that is my priority because it is my responsibility alone. noone else is going to do that for me. i am the only one who can make sure that it happens. caring for society on the other hand is a group responsibility, not an individual one. i can and do contribute to that, but only as much as my primary responsibility of caring for my children allows.
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