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>Courts, law enforcement and contract law.

That's the wrong answer. The existence of tokens predates the existence of government. It's the next step after barter. The correct answer is reputation. A vendor who cheats his customers builds up a bad reputation, and the only way he can keep doing it is by changing customer bases, for example by moving to a different town. Think of the traveling snake oil salesman who moves on once people realize his remedies don't work.


The courts etc are there so we don’t have to create a posse and ride out to find the snake oil salesman. You _can_ have commerce without them but it’s much higher friction. So if a crypto wants me to abandon the existing systems it needs to show it creates less friction.

Crypto’s use case isn’t for the layman. It’s for countries that aren’t aligned with America to have a separate currency system. Doubly useful for bypassing sanctions.

It's also a useful mechanism by which criminals can store their wealth so that it can't easily be seized by law enforcement.

There's no need for a mob, government-backed or not. A vendor who scams his customer base is harvesting its good will, and eventually it will run out and he'll no longer able to do business.

How is that dehumanizing when (by the parameters you've set) you're required to do it because you're human?

Because you are used as a tool for other people.

Is that any more dehumanizing than just working a job in general?

Not all jobs are equally dehumanizing, and not everyone finds the same things equally dehumanizing, especially in the context of what one's job is described as is part of the overall experience. If I'm hired with the expectation of writing software, I don't want to be expected to run out and get coffee for my coworkers so that they can write software better. That doesn't mean that I think everyone will find going on coffee runs dehumanizing, or that writing software can't be dehumanizing for some people; the point is that I value my autonomy in deciding to accept a job with the parameters that work for me, and I happen to find that I'm most happy when I can proactively contribute things that help my coworkers rather than passively being a part of their environment or having expectations change without my consent (e.g. being told after multiple years working remotely that I need to start going into an office or "voluntarily" leave).

I really think those are bad examples. I don't see how someone making what you consider to be an unreasonable request can make one feel dehumanized. Insulted or demeaned? Maybe, sure. But dehumanized? What does that say about your opinion of people who do do coffee runs or who like to work in offices? Nevertheless, I'll roll with it.

I would say it comes down to common practices. Commonly, engineers don't do coffee runs. Commonly, office jobs have always been done in an office, and this status quo has only changed fairly recently (let's say in the last 20 years). History could have played out such that it became common practice for coffee run duty to cycle over everyone in the office, regardless of role, in which case asking you to do it would have been perfectly reasonable, and someone would be right to ask what makes you so special than you can't do something everyone else does. Likewise for remote work. Some places allow it, some don't, and some may transition from one to the other. Since this is known to be the case (no one will believe you if you try to feign ignorance on this), it is reasonable to require to come to the office, no matter how many years you've been doing remote work.

>having expectations change without my consent (e.g. being told after multiple years working remotely that I need to start going into an office or "voluntarily" leave).

When expectations change unilaterally, that usually calls for a renegotiation. The correct response to "we want you to start coming to the office every day" is "okay, then I want $x more every year to cover my additional expenses". Now, it could be that either or neither party is willing to negotiate on such terms, or even that they do negotiate but no consensus is reached, in which case you just have to dissolve the business relationship. What else can you do?


> I really think those are bad examples. I don't see how someone making what you consider to be an unreasonable request can make one feel dehumanized. Insulted or demeaned? Maybe, sure. But dehumanized? What does that say about your opinion of people who do do coffee runs or who like to work in offices?

Being asked to do the exact thing you've signed up for isn't inherently dehumanizing (although it certainly can be; I don't have any trouble imagining that people agree to do jobs that are dehumanizing because they need income and don't have any stronger prospects, but that's an entirely different topic of discussion). I feel like you've missed the context I gave about the initial job one is hired for being different from what they're tasked with doing; I didn't say that having to do coffee runs is inherently going to be dehumanizing, but that it's dehumanizing when you're hired to do something entirely different. Treating people as interchangeable units of labor is pretty much a textbook example of dehumanization in my opinion; we're not cogs who should be freely reassigned by authorities based on their whims, but individuals deserving of some semblance of autonomy and self-determination.

> Some places allow it, some don't, and some may transition from one to the other. Since this is known to be the case (no one will believe you if you try to feign ignorance on this), it is reasonable to require to come to the office, no matter how many years you've been doing remote work.

This is honestly a pretty absurd conclusion. Because I'm aware that some companies have certain policies, I'm implicitly agreeing to literally any of those policies by agreeing to employment to any single one? Plenty of companies require their employees to be clean-shaven, but someone who has worked for a company for years is told they need to either shave their beard or quit without severance, I can't imagine any argument I would find compelling about why that would be reasonable. I'm sure you'll be able to come up with plenty of arguments about why you also think this example is absurd, but so far everything you've described is extremely abstract, so it's not clear to me whether there are any real-world examples you wouldn't reject based on not being an exact match to the hypothetical you've described.

> The correct response to "we want you to start coming to the office every day" is "okay, then I want $x more every year to cover my additional expenses". Now, it could be that either or neither party is willing to negotiate on such terms, or even that they do negotiate but no consensus is reached, in which case you just have to dissolve the business relationship. What else can you do?

In some societies (but not the United States), a company unilaterally trying to change the terms of employment in a way that the employee disagrees with is grounds for the employee to receive severance. There are examples even in American society of companies being forced to restore positions to people who were terminated for reasons found to be unlawful.

I fundamentally disagree with the presumption that I need to be willing to present a company with an amount of money for them to force me to change my circumstances; if they're the ones who want to change things, the onus should be on them to convince me, or else they should be required to compensate me for their unwillingness to continue with the previous agreement. This isn't how things work with "at-will" employment though, and the number of software companies in the United States that offer anything other than at-will employment beyond finite length contracts are at most a rounding error above zero. This doesn't mean I have to think this is fair or reasonable; quite a lot of things in life are unfair or unreasonable without being within our individual abilities to influence, and it's not hypocritical to be willing to point those out even if I'm not willing to risk the livelihood of myself or my family to make a point about it that will in all likelihood change nothing.


>it's dehumanizing when you're hired to do something entirely different. Treating people as interchangeable units of labor is pretty much a textbook example of dehumanization in my opinion; we're not cogs who should be freely reassigned by authorities based on their whims, but individuals deserving of some semblance of autonomy and self-determination.

But you do realize that you're going to be treated that way regardless of whether it's overtly or not, right? That's why you're paid by the hour, not by how much your effort contributes to the bottom line (supposing for a moment that that could be accurately quantified). When you become an employee you do agree to become a cog in a machine. You're not some independent artist making your own way in the world, you're working on someone else's project and following someone else's success criteria, along with a bunch of other people. An employee gives up a small amount of autonomy and self-determination in exchange for stability. If that's not what you want perhaps you should become an entrepreneur.

I honestly don't understand how being asked to perform a wildly different task is much worse that the default state of affairs. If it were me I'd think "hell yeah! You're paying me the same money to go fetch coffee? The hell do I care?"

>I'm implicitly agreeing to literally any of those policies by agreeing to employment to any single one?

No. But it does make those policies not unreasonable. It can't be unreasonable when so many other places have said policies. That the place you're at isn't currently one of them doesn't mean it can't be one in the future, nor does it mean that it changing would be unreasonable. You especially can't put on the surprised Pikachu face when so many companies are doing it. "Wha... What do you mean in this software company they're requiring people to return to the office like they're doing at all the other software companies? This is totally unexpected!"

>In some societies (but not the United States), a company unilaterally trying to change the terms of employment in a way that the employee disagrees with is grounds for the employee to receive severance.

I live in one such country, and most people would still rather negotiate than just be fired with severance, or even just bear with it and start looking for a new job. All severance does is make it so small and medium-sized companies can't fire a lot of people at once. It's still a bigger blow to the employee, even with severance.

>I fundamentally disagree with the presumption that I need to be willing to present a company with an amount of money for them to force me to change my circumstances; if they're the ones who want to change things, the onus should be on them to convince me, or else they should be required to compensate me for their unwillingness to continue with the previous agreement. This isn't how things work with "at-will" employment though, and the number of software companies in the United States that offer anything other than at-will employment beyond finite length contracts are at most a rounding error above zero. This doesn't mean I have to think this is fair or reasonable; quite a lot of things in life are unfair or unreasonable without being within our individual abilities to influence, and it's not hypocritical to be willing to point those out even if I'm not willing to risk the livelihood of myself or my family to make a point about it that will in all likelihood change nothing.

To be honest, I'm not sure what your point is anymore. All I said was that if circumstances change and you and the other party can't come to an agreement, all that's left is to dissolve the business relationship. Everything else around that simple fact, such as the particular terms of the business relationship, seem to me largely inconsequential.


> That's why you're paid by the hour, not by how much your effort contributes to the bottom line (supposing for a moment that that could be accurately quantified).

I'm not paid by the hour. Yes, my salary is quantified in a unit of time, but if you're lumping hourly and yearly wage jobs in together to contrast them with working on commission, you're ignoring a lot of details that make a huge difference in the actual experience people in their jobs, and my point is that I think even small details add up and make a difference in how fulfilled people feel in their jobs in the long run.

> When you become an employee you do agree to become a cog in a machine. You're not some independent artist making your own way in the world, you're working on someone else's project and following someone else's success criteria, along with a bunch of other people. An employee gives up a small amount of autonomy and self-determination in exchange for stability. If that's not what you want perhaps you should become an entrepreneur.

As far as I can tell, this is pretty much covered by the last part of my previous comment: just because the world works in a certain way that I can't change doesn't mean that I have to accept it as fair and not criticize it. I don't think it's hypocritical for me to make a choice based on the stability that it affords myself and my family but think it's unfair that people have to make choices like that in the first place. The fact that most companies unilaterally decide the terms of employment and employees have no actual power to negotiate is something I can call out as unfair even if I still end up accepting that it would cost me more to refuse to participate in it.

> No. But it does make those policies not unreasonable. It can't be unreasonable when so many other places have said policies. That the place you're at isn't currently one of them doesn't mean it can't be one in the future, nor does it mean that it changing would be unreasonable. You especially can't put on the surprised Pikachu face when so many companies are doing it. "Wha... What do you mean in this software company they're requiring people to return to the office like they're doing at all the other software companies? This is totally unexpected!"

I disagree that "everyone is doing it" makes it inherently reasonable. You're misconstruing my criticism as surprise. I'm not obligated to refrain from criticizing bad things because they're expected.

> I live in one such country, and most people would still rather negotiate than just be fired with severance, or even just bear with it and start looking for a new job. All severance does is make it so small and medium-sized companies can't fire a lot of people at once. It's still a bigger blow to the employee, even with severance.

You're certainly entitled to disagree with me about this. I don't find your claim that severance only has negative effects compelling though, and I'm entitled to disagree with your claim on this as well.

> To be honest, I'm not sure what your point is anymore. All I said was that if circumstances change and you and the other party can't come to an agreement, all that's left is to dissolve the business relationship. Everything else around that simple fact, such as the particular terms of the business relationship, seem to me largely inconsequential.

My point is that I think the way a lot of companies do things is unfair, and the fact that they do them doesn't inherently make them fair. If you think this is a pointless opinion, you're certainly welcome to ignore or criticize it, as you have been doing, but I don't happen to think your criticisms are particularly convincing.


>Historically, to prove the earth is round, people have relied on the sun shining directly overhead on wells in different cities.

That wasn't to prove the Earth is round (and it doesn't prove it). Eratosthenes assumed two things when he performed his experiment: 1) the Earth is round, and 2) the Sun is an infinite distance away. By just this experiment he would have been unable to distinguish between this situation and the Earth being flat while the Sun being only a finite distance overhead (and in fact a fair bit closer than it actually is). Eratosthenes and his contemporaries were already convinced of the roundness of the planet, and he simply wanted to measure it.

>But this approach proves it without the need to refer the sun.

A flat-earther would just tell you that you're not able to maintain a straight path over such long distances without relying on external guides that would definitely put you on curved paths. If the Earth is flat and you stand at 0 N 0 E, how do you move in a straight line East of there? I.e. continuously moving towards the South because the polar coordinates curve towards your left as you progress.


>the Earth is flat and you stand at 0 N 0 E, how do you move in a straight line East of there?

This is something that was more or less solved a long time ago with surveying instruments. You don't have to move in a straight line, you build triangles out of sight lines.


I can kinda see how that would work, but it presents the challenge that whatever route you plan, it cannot go over water for more than a few kilometers.

I don't think it would be that different than the arc measurements that were actually done, you triangulate a bunch of points to work out distances and angle sufficiently precisely:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_measurement


That doesn't help you if you're moving West to East, though.

EDIT: Also, that's to measure distance, not direction.


You can survey West to East just as well:

https://www.noaa.gov/digital-collections/collections/4774/it...

https://amerisurv.com/2012/10/27/the-longest-line/

And measurements of, say, very precise equilateral triangles, necessarily imply certain interior angles, which you can compare to the actual angles they make. For instance, on a flat plane, you can fit six equilateral triangles sharing one point to make a hexagon. On a sphere if you make them big enough you'll find that they don't quite fit.


>https://www.noaa.gov/digital-collections/collections/4774/it...

Like I said before, you can't do that over water. It constrains the shape of the triangle you can measure.


I'm not sure how that matters for this purpose, they used these surveys to measure the shape of the Earth (specifically, the circumference, and later the flattening- ie, plenty precise enough to measure the curvature more or less directly).

Is the idea that land is spherical while the oceans are flat? Do this survey on each continent, including Antarctica, again just constructing big triangles and measuring the deviation from flatness. Eventually your model of the flat earth looks like a bunch of pieces of an eggshell separated by flat water that just happens to assemble into an egg- or rather an ellipsoid- if rearranged, up to and including the expected flattening at the poles.

With sufficient elbow grease you could extend a survey from the far north of the Americas down to the south, measuring the curvature as you went, eventually finding that you must be almost upside-down compared to where you'd started.


> A flat-earther would just tell you that you're not able to maintain a straight path over such long distances without relying on external guides that would definitely put you on curved paths.

Do flat-earther reject the existence of LASER, too?


Flat-earthers don't accept that a flat plane implies infinite line of sight (especially at sea), so who knows.

Reasoning is the manipulation and transformation of symbols (i.e. stand-ins for real objects) by well-defined rules, often with the object of finding equivalences or other classes of relationships between seemingly unrelated things.

For example, logical reasoning is applying common logical transformations to propositions to determine the truth relationship between different statements. Spatial reasoning is applying spatial transformations (rotation, translation, sometimes slight deformation) to shapes to determine their spatial relationship, such "can I fit this couch through that doorway if I rotate it in some way?"

Reasoning has the property that a valid reasoning applied to true data always produces a correct answer.


>You wouldn't say it was impossible for Carthage to have conquered Rome, would you?

Okay, but is space having 3 dimensions instead of 2 also an accident of history, or part of the fundamental structure of the universe?

For that matter, it's not obvious to me that history as it actually unfolded is not also part of the fundamental structure of the universe.


Don't take manufacturers' recommendations so literally. I've been running 6 WD Greens in raidz for 81000 hours with no issues. Home media library etc. At the end of the day, any CMR disk is basically the same as any other, excluding manufacturing defects.

What do you mean? The MAC address is used to identify the device within the same network segment. A program running on the device cannot derive location information just from the MAC address. It's a meaningless number. What the MAC address can do is make you visible to other devices in the same network segment. So for example, a wireless router can know you're nearby because your known MAC address has joined the network, but this is a problem regardless of what apps your phone is running.

That's what the GP was saying, I think. Once they get the MAC address, they can find you. Not via software on the phone, from exfiltrating and using shady third parties that collect data from access points, etc.

Okay, but if there's collusion between the app developers and external routers then it doesn't matter if the MAC is randomized. The app can still see the current MAC address and report it, and you can still be located, if nothing else, to within the range of a wireless router. Nothing is solved by randomizing the MAC address.

They started randomizing MAC addresses for privacy reasons, particularly for mobile devices, to prevent tracking of devices across networks.

I understand that. I'm saying it has nothing to do with apps on the device itself using the MAC for location.

>A door stops airflow? No.

I mean, it literally does. Put something that smokes in a bathroom, open the window, close the door, and caulk the gaps. See how much smoke phases through the door.


I forgot HN isn’t exactly the demographic that tries this and finds out exactly how well it works. I guess for this demographic, I’d suggest telling your tenants it’s okay to smoke in the bathroom as long as the door is closed and the fan is on.

>I'm pretty sure in JS it would be [...]

That doesn't make sense. That would mean the awaiting function doesn't have access to the result of the Promise (since it can proceed before the Promise is fulfilled), which would break the entire point of promises.


Doesn't this make await a no-op? In what way are async functions asynchronous if tasks do not run interleaved?

They are async across operations that do 'yield', i.e. when the function eventually runs an i/o operation or sleep or similar. Those are the points where the functions can be interleaved. Simply awaiting another function is _not_ one of those points: await here only means the called function might yield to the scheduler at some point in its execution (it doesn't have to!), not that the calling function will yield immediately.

Isn't asyncio.sleep one of those functions? "other" should be able to appear between "parent before" and "parent after".

Yes, but not between "parent before" and "child start" (or between "child end" and "parent after")

Ah, OK. That makes sense.

Tasks are async funcs that have been spawned with asyncio.create_task or similar, which then schedules its execution. A timer of zero doesn't spawn anything so the coroutine just executes in the same frame as the caller so yes it essentially a noop.

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