2. When did you learn to tie shoes that way?
2a. (If from when they were young) Why have you stuck with that method?
2b. (If from when they were older) why did you change the way you tied your shoes?
3. What are some criteria that could be used to evaluate the efficacy of tieing shoes to determine which method is best?
4. If you find a better way to tie your shoes, will you change? Explain.
I am not sure if there is a more mundane or seemingly trivial question to ask someone above the age of 6 than, "How do you tie your shoes?"
But if you think about it and ask some follow up questions like the ones I listed above, I have found that they can help paint a pretty comprehensive picture of the personality of the person responding.
You can learn a lot about: how detailed they are, how creative they are, how open minded they are, their critical reasoning skills, and many other things.
It isn't appropriate to break out in every interview, but when interviewing for senior management or executive positions it is a fun question to use to get to know the candidate much better.
2018년 2월 25일 일요일
2018년 2월 24일 토요일
What I Write About
From my accidental habit of blogging daily, I have written 34 posts already so far this year. Well, 35 if you include this post.
Predictably, I have written the most about Crypto and my current obsession, Cent. A total of 14 posts have been written on those two topics alone.
I have written a total of 10 posts - 5 posts each - about my daily life and other random inspirations. Posts about my life have focused on my habits and routines as well as specific daily moments. Daily inspirations have come from well written articles, podcasts that I want to listen to again, and other random bits and pieces of life that I encountered at some point during my day.
AVC.com and Wolfstreet are both part of my daily routine, but I have broken both of them out into a separate category due to their outsized impact on me. I have written 4 posts inspired by both of them so far.
Reading has been a life long passion. I have read thousands of books in the couple of decades I've been alive. Whilst I am uncertain how many books I will read and re-read this year, I plan to write about most of the books I read and will post a list of every book I read this year at the end of December. So far there have been 3 posts on 2 of the 3 books I have read this year.
My work in the HR department of a major Korean conglomerate has made it into 3 posts. I expect many more blog posts reflecting my unique experiences and lessons learned heading forward.
Who knows what other categories or topics will make it into my writings as the year progresses, but I think it is safe to say the the topics I have written about up until this point will continue to figure prominently in future writings.
If anyone is reading what I write, feel free to let me know what you think of my writing. Let's talk in the comments. Hopefully I can get you paid. And you can help me build up a reader base that helps support this whole thing.
Predictably, I have written the most about Crypto and my current obsession, Cent. A total of 14 posts have been written on those two topics alone.
I have written a total of 10 posts - 5 posts each - about my daily life and other random inspirations. Posts about my life have focused on my habits and routines as well as specific daily moments. Daily inspirations have come from well written articles, podcasts that I want to listen to again, and other random bits and pieces of life that I encountered at some point during my day.
AVC.com and Wolfstreet are both part of my daily routine, but I have broken both of them out into a separate category due to their outsized impact on me. I have written 4 posts inspired by both of them so far.
Reading has been a life long passion. I have read thousands of books in the couple of decades I've been alive. Whilst I am uncertain how many books I will read and re-read this year, I plan to write about most of the books I read and will post a list of every book I read this year at the end of December. So far there have been 3 posts on 2 of the 3 books I have read this year.
My work in the HR department of a major Korean conglomerate has made it into 3 posts. I expect many more blog posts reflecting my unique experiences and lessons learned heading forward.
Who knows what other categories or topics will make it into my writings as the year progresses, but I think it is safe to say the the topics I have written about up until this point will continue to figure prominently in future writings.
If anyone is reading what I write, feel free to let me know what you think of my writing. Let's talk in the comments. Hopefully I can get you paid. And you can help me build up a reader base that helps support this whole thing.
2018년 2월 23일 금요일
Debt & Capital Mindsets
Nick Grossman penned a nice article yesterday that included a novel analysis of procrastination and self-improvement.
Both involve short amounts of time: the former involves the avoidance of something in lieu of some other short-term choice, whilst the latter involves engaging in short, productive acts.
In either case the results are compounding.
Each time you put off doing something it increases the time not spent on the issue. This can go very quickly from minutes to weeks to months and longer not doing something.
As more time goes by the burden of actually engaging with something likewise compounds. By avoiding something you give yourself less time to do it thus compounding the difficulty of doing it as well as the risk of penalty. If the activity involves health or work you are literally endangering your welfare and livelihood.
On the other hand, plugging away at something in short, sustained bursts will ensure that something gets completed or you become better and better at something.
A couple of steps a day can turn into a great separation over time placing you in a much better place. Moreover, if others haven't taken those same steps then you will be in an even better relative position.
So we can say:
Avoidance is a debt frame of mind, whilst habit setting and steady, self-improvement both exemplify a capital frame of mind.
Both involve short amounts of time: the former involves the avoidance of something in lieu of some other short-term choice, whilst the latter involves engaging in short, productive acts.
In either case the results are compounding.
Each time you put off doing something it increases the time not spent on the issue. This can go very quickly from minutes to weeks to months and longer not doing something.
As more time goes by the burden of actually engaging with something likewise compounds. By avoiding something you give yourself less time to do it thus compounding the difficulty of doing it as well as the risk of penalty. If the activity involves health or work you are literally endangering your welfare and livelihood.
On the other hand, plugging away at something in short, sustained bursts will ensure that something gets completed or you become better and better at something.
A couple of steps a day can turn into a great separation over time placing you in a much better place. Moreover, if others haven't taken those same steps then you will be in an even better relative position.
So we can say:
Avoidance is a debt frame of mind, whilst habit setting and steady, self-improvement both exemplify a capital frame of mind.
2018년 2월 22일 목요일
Foot in the Crypto Door
Over the past couple of weeks I've reached out to a few teams and individuals who are building what are - to me at least - some of the most interesting projects in crypto today.
As it stands, I'm supporting two projects, in the middle of an email exchange with a founder/developer, and waiting for a response from another project.
One project, CryptoCountries, actually reached out to me asking for support with audience engagement and translation work for the Korean market after finding my profile on Ethlance.com. That's pretty cool.
I am also on the small Korean translation team for OpenBazaar supporting the translation of their site for Korean users.
After reading about StakeTree in the Token Economy newsletter a few weeks ago, I reached out directly to Niel de la Rouviere, the 'Chief Catalyst' there. I congratulated him on the great initial interest and traction he has started to receive before offering my translation services and help with any other needs he may have. He is a one man show for now, but I'll keep checking in with him every couple of weeks.
Lastly, I am still waiting for a response from the Cent team. I am most excited about this project, so I really hope there is some aspect of the project that I can get involved with and support. As a gesture of good will I sent them Korean translations of their three Medium posts. We'll see what happens.
I am very bullish on the future of this space, and super excited to be a part of it any way I can.
As it stands, I'm supporting two projects, in the middle of an email exchange with a founder/developer, and waiting for a response from another project.
One project, CryptoCountries, actually reached out to me asking for support with audience engagement and translation work for the Korean market after finding my profile on Ethlance.com. That's pretty cool.
I am also on the small Korean translation team for OpenBazaar supporting the translation of their site for Korean users.
After reading about StakeTree in the Token Economy newsletter a few weeks ago, I reached out directly to Niel de la Rouviere, the 'Chief Catalyst' there. I congratulated him on the great initial interest and traction he has started to receive before offering my translation services and help with any other needs he may have. He is a one man show for now, but I'll keep checking in with him every couple of weeks.
Lastly, I am still waiting for a response from the Cent team. I am most excited about this project, so I really hope there is some aspect of the project that I can get involved with and support. As a gesture of good will I sent them Korean translations of their three Medium posts. We'll see what happens.
I am very bullish on the future of this space, and super excited to be a part of it any way I can.
2018년 2월 21일 수요일
Being Right
So I found another podcast that's worth listening to more than once.
Niall Ferguson was on the 'Waking Up with Sam Harris' podcast and he was dropping knowledge whilst talking about his new book called "The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook."
It's full of interesting bits about networks, hierarchies, and balanced, centrist perspectives, but there was one quote that stood out in particular:
"Sometimes being right condemns you to being in a minority."
Print that on a t-shirt and sell it.
No really, that's what Sam said right after Niall said that;)
Joking aside, I'd buy that shirt, and his book (which I plan on doing asap).
Happy listening.
Niall Ferguson was on the 'Waking Up with Sam Harris' podcast and he was dropping knowledge whilst talking about his new book called "The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook."
It's full of interesting bits about networks, hierarchies, and balanced, centrist perspectives, but there was one quote that stood out in particular:
"Sometimes being right condemns you to being in a minority."
Print that on a t-shirt and sell it.
No really, that's what Sam said right after Niall said that;)
Joking aside, I'd buy that shirt, and his book (which I plan on doing asap).
Happy listening.
2018년 2월 20일 화요일
My AVC.com
I didn't set out to post daily, it just kind of happened. But I like it.
As Fred Wilson put it so succinctly in a recent tweet: "Writing is remembering."
These posts allow me to reflect on the day and return to what was top of mind, or interesting, or thought provoking. Put simply, writing helps me focus on what is worth remembering.
Since I think I will keep this little habit up, now is as good a time as any to pen one of my very quaint dreams: I hope that I can earn a few readers who want to join into a daily discussion below my posts.
I have said it many times, but the comment sections on AVC.com and Wolfstreet are amazing resources. The discussions that go on there by a steady cast of characters is food for my soul on a daily basis.
As an unknown, I know that discussion will never happen here. Why would it? It'll probably never happen on Steemit either. I will write about 'why' later.
My belief is that it will happen on Cent. Very soon (I hope) the site will add a section for content creators. Hopefully it will allow for two-way funding (i.e. a way for me to support those daily, commenting readers and for readers to support my writing). And hopefully I will be able to anoint my own Centurions - my steady cast of commenters.
Hopefully.
Anyways, until that becomes a reality, I will keep plugging away, writing things worth remembering.
2018년 2월 19일 월요일
The Autonomy & Dao of the Korean People
No other book in my life has come close to having as large an impact on both my personal growth and my intellectual development as this book has.
Its title is "The Autonomy & Dao of the Korean People."
I came across it serendipitously as I was browsing a random Korean bookstore just as I was beginning my university studies in Korea.
This book has given me so much. Not only did it help me gain a firm understanding of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (better than any English-language material I've ever come across) that worked a type of therapy on the way I view life, but it introduced me - via footnotes - to the two other major intellectual influences in my life: Lewis Mumford and Martin Heidegger.
I have read and re-read this book so many times that the original binding fell apart. Luckily I took it to a local copy store that re-bound it for me. It is full of my marginalia, notes and underlines.
It is my treasure.
Unfortunately, this book has been out of print for years now, and most Koreans aren't even able to read it anyways because of all of the Chinese characters in it. Of course there is no translation available, but I have translated a few passages throughout the years on this blog that may be of interest to some.
Check out those writings via this link, and I recommend you start with 'Dao and Study'.
2018년 2월 18일 일요일
Cent - Chapter 2 Centurions & CENT
*This is the second part in a fictional forward-looking series based on the site beta.cent.co - click here for Part 1*
The 'beer money' payout marked the first, and perhaps most important, viral hit for Cent.
And at the heart of that decisive change was the decision to anoint an exclusive class of users: the Centurions.
The debate amongst a few Centians and the two founders prior to the decision to introduce this separate user class was heated. The biggest worry was that existing users and potential new users would be turned off by what could be construed as a centralization. They were also afraid it was an unnecessary complication.
Those worries were quickly replaced by a major problem that erupted on the site. Due to the lack of any real mechanism to prevent users from signing up under multiple emails, a number of spam responses posted by single users with multiple accounts began siphoning off major portions of bounties.
Max and Cam tried to minimize the problem by sending these responses to the bottom of the response list by erasing the amount of the bounty they received, but that didn't address the root of the problem. And it didn't prevent those users from receiving those funds, since fund distribution was carried out automatically via a smart contract.
Therefore the founders finally acquiesced to the repeated pleadings of a few, passionate Centians who perceived the problem early on and created the exclusive Centurion class consisting of seven users: Max, Cam, Steven McKie, yours truly and three others
It seems obvious now, but the Centurions did more than simply establish a novel way to mitigate spam accounts and help reinforce the 'beer money' standard.
Through their consistent up/down voting of responses they helped curate the responses that bounty setters were seeking in the first place.
Centurions also made it possible to introduce the tagging system the site sorely needed to facilitate searches for past bounty topics. This allowed old bounties to be re-opened if updates were needed as one example. For each new tag a Centurion added, they were awarded 1% of the 7% of the bounty reserved for Centurions.
A major moment for Cent was when the big names started showing up. The Burniskes. The Navals. The Wilsons. The Centurions were behind this as well.
The Centurions brought a human touch for these new users. They brought them onboard, verified their sns accounts and broadcast their membership. In a time when automation was the singular focus, Cent combined the best of the human experience complimented by the convenience of automation.
Cent became a site for users, run by users. And Centurions were the first employees.
One of the most important contributions the Centurions made was an indirect one. Their introduction essentially laid the framework to launch Cent's native token, CENT.
Cent's token distribution came together almost overnight after the Centurions were introduced. Since the value of the network had been created in advance, there was no need to carry out an ICO. Instead the three classes of users (bounty setters, centurions, bounty responders) received CENT based on how much they contributed to Cent up until that point.
The amount of CENT bounty setters received was 1000x the amount of ETH they previously set as bounties on Cent. Centurions received 700x the amount of ETH they received for their support in CENT. Regular Centians received 300x what they earned in ETH by providing responses and up voting in CENT.
What set CENT apart from ICOs or token distributions that came before it was the distinct utility it gave users right away:
Centurions and CENT were pivotal in the development and growth of Cent. They have proven invaluable to the growth and development of Cent not to mention the additional features and uses of the CENT token were built out later.
The 'beer money' payout marked the first, and perhaps most important, viral hit for Cent.
And at the heart of that decisive change was the decision to anoint an exclusive class of users: the Centurions.
The debate amongst a few Centians and the two founders prior to the decision to introduce this separate user class was heated. The biggest worry was that existing users and potential new users would be turned off by what could be construed as a centralization. They were also afraid it was an unnecessary complication.
Those worries were quickly replaced by a major problem that erupted on the site. Due to the lack of any real mechanism to prevent users from signing up under multiple emails, a number of spam responses posted by single users with multiple accounts began siphoning off major portions of bounties.
Max and Cam tried to minimize the problem by sending these responses to the bottom of the response list by erasing the amount of the bounty they received, but that didn't address the root of the problem. And it didn't prevent those users from receiving those funds, since fund distribution was carried out automatically via a smart contract.
Therefore the founders finally acquiesced to the repeated pleadings of a few, passionate Centians who perceived the problem early on and created the exclusive Centurion class consisting of seven users: Max, Cam, Steven McKie, yours truly and three others
It seems obvious now, but the Centurions did more than simply establish a novel way to mitigate spam accounts and help reinforce the 'beer money' standard.
Through their consistent up/down voting of responses they helped curate the responses that bounty setters were seeking in the first place.
Centurions also made it possible to introduce the tagging system the site sorely needed to facilitate searches for past bounty topics. This allowed old bounties to be re-opened if updates were needed as one example. For each new tag a Centurion added, they were awarded 1% of the 7% of the bounty reserved for Centurions.
A major moment for Cent was when the big names started showing up. The Burniskes. The Navals. The Wilsons. The Centurions were behind this as well.
The Centurions brought a human touch for these new users. They brought them onboard, verified their sns accounts and broadcast their membership. In a time when automation was the singular focus, Cent combined the best of the human experience complimented by the convenience of automation.
Cent became a site for users, run by users. And Centurions were the first employees.
One of the most important contributions the Centurions made was an indirect one. Their introduction essentially laid the framework to launch Cent's native token, CENT.
Cent's token distribution came together almost overnight after the Centurions were introduced. Since the value of the network had been created in advance, there was no need to carry out an ICO. Instead the three classes of users (bounty setters, centurions, bounty responders) received CENT based on how much they contributed to Cent up until that point.
The amount of CENT bounty setters received was 1000x the amount of ETH they previously set as bounties on Cent. Centurions received 700x the amount of ETH they received for their support in CENT. Regular Centians received 300x what they earned in ETH by providing responses and up voting in CENT.
What set CENT apart from ICOs or token distributions that came before it was the distinct utility it gave users right away:
- It allowed bounty setters to feature their bounties on the main Cent feed (the number of CENT they attached to their bounty was clearly displayed on active bounties)
- Centians could attach CENT to their responses to ensure it featured at the top of all responses whilst the bounty was active. (Note: that CENT was distributed across all responses (including theirs) that received net positive up votes for that bounty proportional to the total number of up votes received)
- Centians could attach CENT to other responses that, when combined with up votes would ensure that response was featured higher in the responses and go directly to the responder after the bounty ended; if the response was down voted the response was displayed towards the bottom of the responses and distributed to responses that receives net positive up votes when the bounty expired
- Whilst the number of Centurions was initially fixed at seven, after CENT was introduced, each Centurion was required to stake a minimum amount of CENT. After that, anyone could become a Centurion if they staked an amount of CENT equal to 100% more than the most recent amount of CENT staked by the newest Centurion. (E.g. if the last Centurion staked 1000 CENT, the next centurion would have to stake 2000, the next 4000, the next 8000 etc...).
Centurions and CENT were pivotal in the development and growth of Cent. They have proven invaluable to the growth and development of Cent not to mention the additional features and uses of the CENT token were built out later.
2018년 2월 17일 토요일
Cryptoassets
Definitions are important. They help shape our conceptions, expectations and interactions.
I don't know why but the following definition popped into my head about 'cryptoassets' and it seems kind of perfect.
Cryptoassets are shapeless representative units of value in digital wrappers that provide malleable functionality.
Cryptoassets include: cryptocommodities, cryptocurrencies, cryptotokens, and cryptocollectibles.
This definition was definitely influenced by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar's excellent, epynonymously titled book 'Cryptoassets'. Check that out if you haven't yet.
Have a happy weekend everybody.
I don't know why but the following definition popped into my head about 'cryptoassets' and it seems kind of perfect.
Cryptoassets are shapeless representative units of value in digital wrappers that provide malleable functionality.
Cryptoassets include: cryptocommodities, cryptocurrencies, cryptotokens, and cryptocollectibles.
This definition was definitely influenced by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar's excellent, epynonymously titled book 'Cryptoassets'. Check that out if you haven't yet.
Have a happy weekend everybody.
2018년 2월 16일 금요일
Locked Doors & Open Windows
Often times during negotiations you hit what at first may seem like an insurmountable impasse. I like to refer to these as locked doors.
The door may be locked for a number of reasons. Often times it is locked because of the 'form' a request or demand takes.
During contract extensions many people try to add new or extra benefits. Granting one employee a benefit that others do not have can be a slippery slope.
The Asian rumor mill is a very real thing and unfortunately exceptions that are granted to a few always seem to find their way out into the open. Once that happens you have the potential for thousands of employees demanding that very same benefit.
Hence we prefer not to grant new benefits. This fact upsets many staff with experience working for more international employers that have - to put it bluntly - much more professional HR departments.
As the global HR manager in charge of recruitment and contract extensions for these international professionals, I usually find myself in the middle of two houses with locked front doors during negotiations because of the demand for extra benefits.
But what are benefits, really? At the end of the day, whilst a specific benefit such as additional leave or a company car may mean or signify a great deal for an individual person, they are simply items with a specific dollar value.
It is very easy - much easier than most think - to justify a salary bump for a respected employee. Where I work is no different.
So when I report on the status of negotiations to my direct boss and corporate HR, I state the benefit that has been requested, and very quickly provide the dollar value and percentage increase in salary that it represents.
I get unofficial approval for that salary increase - or at least an increase that is very close - every time.
Despite the door being locked to a new benefit request, there was a window open to it in a different form.
When I go back to the candidate or colleague I am very upfront with them. After explaining that their request for new benefits is not possible, I pause and let them know there may be another way.
Letting them know the dollar value of their requested benefit (and when appropriate the formula used to make the calculation) is usually enough to give them the feeling that I am taking their case seriously and may even be on their side.
It is never a problem to get someone to take extra money. Letting them know that a certain percentage of their salary or salary increase represents 'x' benefit is just as effective - if not more so - as the actual provisioning of said benefit.
When you run up against a locked door during your next negotiation, look for an open window.
The door may be locked for a number of reasons. Often times it is locked because of the 'form' a request or demand takes.
During contract extensions many people try to add new or extra benefits. Granting one employee a benefit that others do not have can be a slippery slope.
The Asian rumor mill is a very real thing and unfortunately exceptions that are granted to a few always seem to find their way out into the open. Once that happens you have the potential for thousands of employees demanding that very same benefit.
Hence we prefer not to grant new benefits. This fact upsets many staff with experience working for more international employers that have - to put it bluntly - much more professional HR departments.
As the global HR manager in charge of recruitment and contract extensions for these international professionals, I usually find myself in the middle of two houses with locked front doors during negotiations because of the demand for extra benefits.
But what are benefits, really? At the end of the day, whilst a specific benefit such as additional leave or a company car may mean or signify a great deal for an individual person, they are simply items with a specific dollar value.
It is very easy - much easier than most think - to justify a salary bump for a respected employee. Where I work is no different.
So when I report on the status of negotiations to my direct boss and corporate HR, I state the benefit that has been requested, and very quickly provide the dollar value and percentage increase in salary that it represents.
I get unofficial approval for that salary increase - or at least an increase that is very close - every time.
Despite the door being locked to a new benefit request, there was a window open to it in a different form.
When I go back to the candidate or colleague I am very upfront with them. After explaining that their request for new benefits is not possible, I pause and let them know there may be another way.
Letting them know the dollar value of their requested benefit (and when appropriate the formula used to make the calculation) is usually enough to give them the feeling that I am taking their case seriously and may even be on their side.
It is never a problem to get someone to take extra money. Letting them know that a certain percentage of their salary or salary increase represents 'x' benefit is just as effective - if not more so - as the actual provisioning of said benefit.
When you run up against a locked door during your next negotiation, look for an open window.
2018년 2월 15일 목요일
Cent - Chapter 1 Beer Money
*This is the first part in a fictional forward-looking series based on the site beta.cent.co*
It started out as a Quora-like imitator with a novel bounty smart contract attached to it.
Then it added a section for musicians to set bounties to attract fans who could fund them. Then a space for bloggers. Next a Reddit-esque platform. On and on it went.
It started out as a Quora-like imitator with a novel bounty smart contract attached to it.
Then it added a section for musicians to set bounties to attract fans who could fund them. Then a space for bloggers. Next a Reddit-esque platform. On and on it went.
The next thing we knew the big names showed up. The Navals. The Burniskies. The Wilsons.
That's when Cent blew up. And after that, nothing was ever the same.
--------------------
Cent was already different before it took everything over. It solved the decentralized organization problem before anyone else.
But I want to take you back through the series of events that led up to that defining moment in history.
The first step towards solving the decentralized organization was Cent's introduction of a hybrid 'centralized-decentralized' model led by a small coterie of users called Centurions.
The Centurions numbered only seven in total and included the two co-founders, Max and Cam. They helped curate the site by distributing weighted votes.
Before Centurions were introduced, every registered user or Centian was able to up/down vote the responses of any other users.
This led to pitiful payouts for all Centians. They were lucky if they made a few cents. It wasn't very attractive to new users let alone for those Centians who made well thought out and sincere responses.
For every bounty posted on the original Cent feed, at first hundreds, then pretty soon thousands of responses were submitted by Centians vying for a piece of the bounty.
And the Centurions faithfully read every response.
Each Centurion had the power to distribute 10% of each bounty across corresponding responses. Regular users were - and to this day still are - able to up/down vote any post distributing 20% of each bounty.
For their efforts voting and curating responses, 7% and 3% of each bounty were distributed equally to Centurions and regular Centians respectively.
So for an easy example, imagine that someone placed a bounty of $1000 soliciting feedback on a new song they composed.
Exactly 100 Centians responded, of which seven were clearly outstanding. Every Centurion voted, and the seven outstanding responses received all of their votes. Half of all Centian votes also went to those seven responses. The other half of their votes were evenly distributed amongst 75 responses.
Thus when the bounty paid out, the seven top responses received 80% or $800 distributed proportionally to the percentage of the total number of votes they received. The 75 Centians who were up-voted received 10% or $100 which translated to about $1.33 per response, and each Centurion received $10 with 3% or $30 distributed to any other Centians who voted.
Back when the Centurions first appeared the bounties were considerably lower - they averaged around $10~$30 apiece. On special occasions you may have seen a $100 bounty, usually set by the esteemed Sir Mckie himself.
After the Centurions came onto the scene, every Centian who posted was still pretty much guaranteed to take home a few pennies per response which was unprecedented for any social network at the time, but for those who gave the best responses, they were bringing in legit 'beer money' payouts.
That 'beer money' was a major game changer.
2018년 2월 14일 수요일
Reading Books & People
The more books you read, the better reader you become.
Because books are written by people about either people or things people do, reading books also helps you read people.
You pay more attention to subtleties like past events, context, tone and word choice when you read books or people. There really is no difference.
Some people, like books, are harder to read than others, but if you have time and patience nothing and no one are absolutely unreadable.
It's a common refrain these days though that people really don't read anything. They skim or look something (usually very short) over from time to time, but beyond that they really don't read anymore.
If you don't read a lot of books, there must be some impact. Since reading sharpens your ability to detect and understand subtleties, by not reading your perception and understanding may remain dull and common.
Perhaps this explains the numerous misunderstandings that arise between people.
Whilst the work place demands absolutely clear and direct prose in communication, if you spoke to friends and loved ones in such a manner life would become as dull and staid as a generic floor in some corporate office.
These days, however, I have heard that several loved ones "need me to be clearer and more direct" about future plans and events that are in no way clear or directly knowable ahead of time.
Last night I heard it again. After I was told that, I took a long sip of my wonderfully bitter, slightly hoppy and perfectly fragrant Omija Ale, and thought, "How sad that no one seems to be able to read me."
I guess I expect more of others. If anyone bothered to read between my lines, or remember who I have always been and the loving words shared over long talks they would hear all that they apparently want stated directly, and more.
Reading isn't special. What reading allows for, though, is a richness and fullness of our human experience.
I would expect others to want to live as rich and full a life as possible, but since this requires people to read, maybe my lowly expectations of others are simply too high.
That is just so damn sad.
But at least I have you though, right?
Happy Valentines Day everybody;)
Because books are written by people about either people or things people do, reading books also helps you read people.
You pay more attention to subtleties like past events, context, tone and word choice when you read books or people. There really is no difference.
Some people, like books, are harder to read than others, but if you have time and patience nothing and no one are absolutely unreadable.
It's a common refrain these days though that people really don't read anything. They skim or look something (usually very short) over from time to time, but beyond that they really don't read anymore.
If you don't read a lot of books, there must be some impact. Since reading sharpens your ability to detect and understand subtleties, by not reading your perception and understanding may remain dull and common.
Perhaps this explains the numerous misunderstandings that arise between people.
Whilst the work place demands absolutely clear and direct prose in communication, if you spoke to friends and loved ones in such a manner life would become as dull and staid as a generic floor in some corporate office.
These days, however, I have heard that several loved ones "need me to be clearer and more direct" about future plans and events that are in no way clear or directly knowable ahead of time.
Last night I heard it again. After I was told that, I took a long sip of my wonderfully bitter, slightly hoppy and perfectly fragrant Omija Ale, and thought, "How sad that no one seems to be able to read me."
I guess I expect more of others. If anyone bothered to read between my lines, or remember who I have always been and the loving words shared over long talks they would hear all that they apparently want stated directly, and more.
Reading isn't special. What reading allows for, though, is a richness and fullness of our human experience.
I would expect others to want to live as rich and full a life as possible, but since this requires people to read, maybe my lowly expectations of others are simply too high.
That is just so damn sad.
But at least I have you though, right?
Happy Valentines Day everybody;)
2018년 2월 13일 화요일
Time & Place
Yesterday I read a pretty interesting article about digital nomads in the NY Times.
It went in depth about a specific brand of live-work spaces. At first glance the whole idea seems pretty appealing. The spaces themselves are clean, cheap and located in amazing cities.
But the digital nomad lifestyle doesn't seem to be sustainable over the long term.
The money quote for me in the article was this:
"Living anywhere is a lot like living nowhere.
Haid [the operator of the global live-work spaces] sees nomadism as a solution to our technologized, globalized lives, but it seems less like a fix than like an extension or intensification of the same condition."
Place is important. Context is important. A business trip in Hawaii is never a vacation, so why would "living" as a digital nomad skipping from Bali or Berlin to Bombay where you were always potentially working be any different?
It went in depth about a specific brand of live-work spaces. At first glance the whole idea seems pretty appealing. The spaces themselves are clean, cheap and located in amazing cities.
But the digital nomad lifestyle doesn't seem to be sustainable over the long term.
The money quote for me in the article was this:
"Living anywhere is a lot like living nowhere.
Haid [the operator of the global live-work spaces] sees nomadism as a solution to our technologized, globalized lives, but it seems less like a fix than like an extension or intensification of the same condition."
Place is important. Context is important. A business trip in Hawaii is never a vacation, so why would "living" as a digital nomad skipping from Bali or Berlin to Bombay where you were always potentially working be any different?
2018년 2월 12일 월요일
Cent & Mumfordian Design Principles
It seems like the more people think about cryptoeconomics, the more they bring up Friedrich von Hayek. And that's cool. I read 'The Road to Serfdom' and 'The Use of Knowledge in Society' when I was an undergraduate too.
Maybe I need to re-read Hayek (I plan to), but given the very early, immature stage crypto finds itself, I think that it may be of more use for individuals and teams who are building some of the first consumer facing dapps to look for other figures whose ideas may be able to offer more immediate and practical insights.
For me at least, I think that the time has come to look back at Lewis Mumford, and in particular his work and insights on cities and their development in history.
As prolific a writer and polymath as Mumford was in early twentieth century America, outside of a small group of urban planners today, he and his numerous works have all but been forgotten, but not by me.
In his later works, particularly in the National Book Award winning 'The City in History' and in the second book of his The Myth of the Machine series entitled 'The Pentagon of Power,' the dual concepts of 'Materialization' and 'Etherialization' figured prominently in his thoughts on cities and cultures.
Although Mumford originally came across these terms in Arnold Joseph Toynbee's 'A Study of History', Mumford made them his own.
Materialization is the process wherein a subjective, pre-linguistic idea becomes embodied materially in objective reality. It always starts with an idea so faint that it's barely a dream. As a helpful example, think about the original dream that brought together the first cypherpunks. These original cypherpunks, over a period of decades, kept the seed of the idea alive by relentlessly, but very slowly, studying, researching and discussing - which is to say incubating - their nascent idea until that fateful day Satoshi Nakamoto appeared.
Mumford refers to the stage of materialization when an idea becomes inextricably intertwined with a person as 'incarnation'. This person normally strikes a chord with a large group in society who have been yearning for something different than their rigid depersonalized surroundings. Sort of like how, amidst the occupy movements and the frustration with the system in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 that many felt, Satoshi and the idea of Bitcoin appeared who in turn saw a group of devoted disciples from around the world spring up who helped give voice and intellectual formulation to the idea of crypto.
It is at this point, when the subjective thoughts about the idea begin to manifest as objective reality. The formulation, ideation, and elaboration of 'the idea' by many people in their daily experience of living bridges that original dream with the realities of social life. Think about all of the unique insights that people have just started deriving over the past few years from Satoshi's white paper that have been incorporated in new projects and collectives. This wider socialization of the idea Mumford calls 'incorporation'.
And this is where we find ourselves today. It is here that the design of these projects and collectives needs to be fully thought through in order to ensure the best possible long-term outcome.
Let's take Cent as an example. Just like Mumford's conception of incorporation, a conscious rational effort amongst the community of Centians is just beginning to create distinct habits, customs, routines, practices, rituals and procedures that will shape its future. But it is still raw. Its initial design needs to account for the inevitability that, over time, the original organizing idea of the Centian culture will become played out and rigid in some ways. In Mumfordian terms, the expectation that the original organizing idea will become fully embodied needs to be reflected within the design set during incorporation in order to allow for new ideas to take hold in the future.
To paint a few very broad strokes this could roughly mean that whilst a few Centurions may be introduced early to Cent to help curate a culture that I have described elsewhere (here and here), the decentralization of this centrally set institution needs to also be baked into the original design. The same holds for future airdrops or any other future plan. That near future, and more importantly the far future beyond that, needs to be set *loosely* and allowed for today.
If the original design doesn't allow for new ideas and uses to manifest out of the original culture and associated infrastructure, there will be a breakdown, or in Mumfordian terms 'de-materialization' will occur. This breakdown is an example of the negative side of 'etherialization'. For a project like Cent users would begin defecting to other networks that better incorporate the urges and impulses behind their new idea that is seeking expression.
If, on the other hand good design is employed, the positive forces of etherialization will play off of the existing creative culture by transmuting its energies into more refined forms (e.g. symbols). Technical infrastructure (e.g. market mechanisms, incentive architectures) will become simplified in design and operation. The longer etherialization is allowed to continue, the larger the environment will be, both in space and time, for further user development.
According to Mumford, good city design ensures continuity by providing both stability and creativity. Existing institutions and structures take on symbolic meaning. At the same time they provide collective support to help translate new ideas into habits, customs and new design choices that will be applied to the city in the future that will, in turn, impact the next generation in new and surprising ways.
In simple terms, the goal of good design should be to build containers in both a technical infrastructural sense as well as creative cultural sense that, with minor changes here or there, can last over time to hold new generations of dreams.
In 'The City in History' Mumford wrote, "The rhythm of life in cities seems to be an alternation between materialization and etherialization." Whilst designing dapps and their incentive architectures, the relation of and interplay between it and the waxing and waning forces of materialization and etherialization that the community will exert needs to inform the design. If Cent can accomplish that it will be able to set up something that will continually enrich and nourish generations of Centians.
Maybe I need to re-read Hayek (I plan to), but given the very early, immature stage crypto finds itself, I think that it may be of more use for individuals and teams who are building some of the first consumer facing dapps to look for other figures whose ideas may be able to offer more immediate and practical insights.
For me at least, I think that the time has come to look back at Lewis Mumford, and in particular his work and insights on cities and their development in history.
As prolific a writer and polymath as Mumford was in early twentieth century America, outside of a small group of urban planners today, he and his numerous works have all but been forgotten, but not by me.
In his later works, particularly in the National Book Award winning 'The City in History' and in the second book of his The Myth of the Machine series entitled 'The Pentagon of Power,' the dual concepts of 'Materialization' and 'Etherialization' figured prominently in his thoughts on cities and cultures.
Although Mumford originally came across these terms in Arnold Joseph Toynbee's 'A Study of History', Mumford made them his own.
Materialization is the process wherein a subjective, pre-linguistic idea becomes embodied materially in objective reality. It always starts with an idea so faint that it's barely a dream. As a helpful example, think about the original dream that brought together the first cypherpunks. These original cypherpunks, over a period of decades, kept the seed of the idea alive by relentlessly, but very slowly, studying, researching and discussing - which is to say incubating - their nascent idea until that fateful day Satoshi Nakamoto appeared.
Mumford refers to the stage of materialization when an idea becomes inextricably intertwined with a person as 'incarnation'. This person normally strikes a chord with a large group in society who have been yearning for something different than their rigid depersonalized surroundings. Sort of like how, amidst the occupy movements and the frustration with the system in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 that many felt, Satoshi and the idea of Bitcoin appeared who in turn saw a group of devoted disciples from around the world spring up who helped give voice and intellectual formulation to the idea of crypto.
It is at this point, when the subjective thoughts about the idea begin to manifest as objective reality. The formulation, ideation, and elaboration of 'the idea' by many people in their daily experience of living bridges that original dream with the realities of social life. Think about all of the unique insights that people have just started deriving over the past few years from Satoshi's white paper that have been incorporated in new projects and collectives. This wider socialization of the idea Mumford calls 'incorporation'.
And this is where we find ourselves today. It is here that the design of these projects and collectives needs to be fully thought through in order to ensure the best possible long-term outcome.
Let's take Cent as an example. Just like Mumford's conception of incorporation, a conscious rational effort amongst the community of Centians is just beginning to create distinct habits, customs, routines, practices, rituals and procedures that will shape its future. But it is still raw. Its initial design needs to account for the inevitability that, over time, the original organizing idea of the Centian culture will become played out and rigid in some ways. In Mumfordian terms, the expectation that the original organizing idea will become fully embodied needs to be reflected within the design set during incorporation in order to allow for new ideas to take hold in the future.
To paint a few very broad strokes this could roughly mean that whilst a few Centurions may be introduced early to Cent to help curate a culture that I have described elsewhere (here and here), the decentralization of this centrally set institution needs to also be baked into the original design. The same holds for future airdrops or any other future plan. That near future, and more importantly the far future beyond that, needs to be set *loosely* and allowed for today.
If the original design doesn't allow for new ideas and uses to manifest out of the original culture and associated infrastructure, there will be a breakdown, or in Mumfordian terms 'de-materialization' will occur. This breakdown is an example of the negative side of 'etherialization'. For a project like Cent users would begin defecting to other networks that better incorporate the urges and impulses behind their new idea that is seeking expression.
If, on the other hand good design is employed, the positive forces of etherialization will play off of the existing creative culture by transmuting its energies into more refined forms (e.g. symbols). Technical infrastructure (e.g. market mechanisms, incentive architectures) will become simplified in design and operation. The longer etherialization is allowed to continue, the larger the environment will be, both in space and time, for further user development.
According to Mumford, good city design ensures continuity by providing both stability and creativity. Existing institutions and structures take on symbolic meaning. At the same time they provide collective support to help translate new ideas into habits, customs and new design choices that will be applied to the city in the future that will, in turn, impact the next generation in new and surprising ways.
In simple terms, the goal of good design should be to build containers in both a technical infrastructural sense as well as creative cultural sense that, with minor changes here or there, can last over time to hold new generations of dreams.
In 'The City in History' Mumford wrote, "The rhythm of life in cities seems to be an alternation between materialization and etherialization." Whilst designing dapps and their incentive architectures, the relation of and interplay between it and the waxing and waning forces of materialization and etherialization that the community will exert needs to inform the design. If Cent can accomplish that it will be able to set up something that will continually enrich and nourish generations of Centians.
2018년 2월 11일 일요일
New Habits & Daily Routines
In terms of setting a new habit, in my experience, the 3-week threshold is the determining benchmark to focus on.
The easiest analogy to make would be getting into an exercise routine after not working out for a while - after you get your first longish run or workout in it fucking hurts.
You literally feel sore for a good two weeks, but if you make it to the third week without giving up, chances are you will not only be able to keep it up, but it won't hurt anymore and you will reap the healthful benefits.
This holds for non-physical activities as well, just instead of overcoming physical pain you need to get over either feeling like you just don't have the time to do something or general procrastination.
Now for my morning and evening routines (I will omit simple universals like 'brushing teeth').
Morning
The easiest analogy to make would be getting into an exercise routine after not working out for a while - after you get your first longish run or workout in it fucking hurts.
You literally feel sore for a good two weeks, but if you make it to the third week without giving up, chances are you will not only be able to keep it up, but it won't hurt anymore and you will reap the healthful benefits.
This holds for non-physical activities as well, just instead of overcoming physical pain you need to get over either feeling like you just don't have the time to do something or general procrastination.
Now for my morning and evening routines (I will omit simple universals like 'brushing teeth').
Morning
- Wake up at 4:43 am, 100 pushups
- Short 2.5 km run with the wife
- 2 sets of 30 pull-ups (1x over grip, 1x under grip)
- Drink a tasty smoothie (e.g. celery, lemon, ginger, apple, spinach, carrot, banana)
- Hand grind coffee beans, aeropress into a takeout cup to be sipped on the 40 minute morning bus commute to the office
- Read a chapter of a paper book on the bus
- Post the blog entry I wrote the night prior
- Arrive at the office around 7 am, read Fred Wilson's daily blog post at avc.com, check bloomberg.com, read email newsletter (either Ben Thompson's "Stratechery", Nick Quah's "Hotpod", Azeem Azhar's "Exponential View" or "스타트업 위클리" or "Token Economy")
- Listen to a podcast on the 50 minute bus ride home (e.g. a16z, Exponent, Recode/Decode, Waking up with Sam Harris, The Daily, Software Engineering Daily, The Wolf Den)
- 100 push ups
- Watch an hour or so of TV shows or documentaries with the wife whilst eating
- Write tomorrow's blog post
- Bed around 10ish and bed talk with the wife
2018년 2월 10일 토요일
'Adult in the Room' Arguments
Student loan debt has skyrocketed to $1.5 Trillion. That is $500 Billion more than auto loans or credit card debts which are both around $1 Trillion each.
In less than 10 years, between Q1 2008 and Q4 2017, student loan balances have rocketed into the stratosphere shooting up 141%, from $619.3 billion to $1.49 trillion, or multiplying 2.4 times over that period.
The problem has become impossible to ignore, and now - of course - the "adults" are weighing in with their two cents.
Wolfstreet is one of my favorite websites for no non-sense financial analysis. Similar to avc.com, Wolfstreet also maintains a vibrant commentariat that acts as an amazing supplement to articles.
Commenters run the full spectrum of political beliefs and there are numerous non-American posters, but just as avc.com predominately leans liberal-left, commenters on Wolfstreet lean conservative-right.
Popular refrains by so-called adults to the Wolfstreet article that broke down the consumer debt issue (including student loans) can be summarized in two, nearly identical, examples: "No one put a gun to the kids head forcing them to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans" and "I scrimped and saved to make my payments over 20 years - I played by the rules - so why should these people get a free ride?"
Now excuse me whilst I take umbrage in my umbros.
Essentially, as people who say and think such things would have us believe, adults play by the rules and thus need to be accountable for their actions.
That perspective, however, is distorted, incorrect and unhelpful in the discussion of the growing social problem of student loan debt for two reasons:
Let me draw an extreme comparison to demonstrate the dangerous implications of their ignorance.
In Nazi Germany there were three distinct groups: leaders, followers, and persecuted. The leaders (i.e. higher ranking Nazi Party members and officials) made the rules. The followers (i.e. all "regular" German adults and kids) simply followed the rules and examples of the leaders. The persecuted (i.e. Jews and anyone else who for whatever reason or action found themselves afoul of the rules) were persecuted according to the rules.
After that terrible state of affairs ended, who was punished? We all know it was the leaders - the rule makers and example setters - that were punished; not the average, rule-following adults.
What is problematic about the beliefs and assertions of the "adults" who believe student loan debt should never ever be forgiven, is that, if anything, they have completely internalized the now obviously flawed rules set by those is positions of power. They have internalized them so completely that they accept and even advocate persecution, not just for others, but for themselves potentially as well.
Instead of actually holding the leaders (i.e. "the real adults in the room") accountable for fostering a society where most believe tertiary education (and thus the accompanying debt burden) is an essential step to securing a stable future, or at least arguing for changes that will reduced the severity of the situation, these commenters are advocating maintaining the oppressive regime of the status quo.
No wonder the "adults" of post-Nazi Germany were so reluctant to discuss their lives in Nazi Germany - they had to have eventually realized that they were just as bad as the Nazi leaders themselves not to mention the more direct, decisive role they played in ensuring the persecution of those who ran afoul of the rules.
Anyways, stay out of debt kiddies. There are a ton of options, particularly abroad, where you can go and study to avoid the being forced into oppressive US debtor camps that US universities have become for anyone who isn't super rich.
In less than 10 years, between Q1 2008 and Q4 2017, student loan balances have rocketed into the stratosphere shooting up 141%, from $619.3 billion to $1.49 trillion, or multiplying 2.4 times over that period.
The problem has become impossible to ignore, and now - of course - the "adults" are weighing in with their two cents.
Wolfstreet is one of my favorite websites for no non-sense financial analysis. Similar to avc.com, Wolfstreet also maintains a vibrant commentariat that acts as an amazing supplement to articles.
Commenters run the full spectrum of political beliefs and there are numerous non-American posters, but just as avc.com predominately leans liberal-left, commenters on Wolfstreet lean conservative-right.
Popular refrains by so-called adults to the Wolfstreet article that broke down the consumer debt issue (including student loans) can be summarized in two, nearly identical, examples: "No one put a gun to the kids head forcing them to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans" and "I scrimped and saved to make my payments over 20 years - I played by the rules - so why should these people get a free ride?"
Now excuse me whilst I take umbrage in my umbros.
Essentially, as people who say and think such things would have us believe, adults play by the rules and thus need to be accountable for their actions.
That perspective, however, is distorted, incorrect and unhelpful in the discussion of the growing social problem of student loan debt for two reasons:
- It is the result of a flawed assumption wherein they (the adults) are in-charge, when in reality, regular adults are simply rule followers, not rule makers, and;
- It doesn't account for the possibility that they, "the adults" themselves, are also at the root of the problem.
Let me draw an extreme comparison to demonstrate the dangerous implications of their ignorance.
In Nazi Germany there were three distinct groups: leaders, followers, and persecuted. The leaders (i.e. higher ranking Nazi Party members and officials) made the rules. The followers (i.e. all "regular" German adults and kids) simply followed the rules and examples of the leaders. The persecuted (i.e. Jews and anyone else who for whatever reason or action found themselves afoul of the rules) were persecuted according to the rules.
After that terrible state of affairs ended, who was punished? We all know it was the leaders - the rule makers and example setters - that were punished; not the average, rule-following adults.
What is problematic about the beliefs and assertions of the "adults" who believe student loan debt should never ever be forgiven, is that, if anything, they have completely internalized the now obviously flawed rules set by those is positions of power. They have internalized them so completely that they accept and even advocate persecution, not just for others, but for themselves potentially as well.
Instead of actually holding the leaders (i.e. "the real adults in the room") accountable for fostering a society where most believe tertiary education (and thus the accompanying debt burden) is an essential step to securing a stable future, or at least arguing for changes that will reduced the severity of the situation, these commenters are advocating maintaining the oppressive regime of the status quo.
No wonder the "adults" of post-Nazi Germany were so reluctant to discuss their lives in Nazi Germany - they had to have eventually realized that they were just as bad as the Nazi leaders themselves not to mention the more direct, decisive role they played in ensuring the persecution of those who ran afoul of the rules.
Anyways, stay out of debt kiddies. There are a ton of options, particularly abroad, where you can go and study to avoid the being forced into oppressive US debtor camps that US universities have become for anyone who isn't super rich.
2018년 2월 9일 금요일
2018년 2월 8일 목요일
Thin Air
I hate when people say things like:
"You knew Bitcoin et al. were created out of thin air (or less)..."
~ Javert Chip
If this person used "out of thin air" in a sense evoking the process behind how most commercially produced nitrogen is made - which is to say "out of thin air" - then I have no qualms with their use of that expression.
But no one uses that phrase like that.
What is super ironic though, is how right they actually are in their wrongness.
'Bitcoin et al.' were created out of the nearly unlimited digital possibility constantly provisioned by networked computers atop which, methods from several distinct fields of cryptography, game theory, software engineering, programming and a few other fields were pulled together and combined in just the right order.
Being able to mine the first bitcoin on 3 January 2009 and not on 2 January 2009 is no different than how nitrogen was unable to be harvested from the atmosphere before chemistry had advanced enough to where knowledge and techniques could be applied to the atmosphere in just the right way.
If you think deep enough, ever since the atmosphere first formed, or from the time that the first networked computer system was set up, the possibilities of both nitrogen harvesting and bitcoin mining had always existed. It's just that those possibilities were concealed.
Because those possibilities were concealed, they were 'impossible'. Every possibility that has not yet been revealed is by definition impossible.
Pulling something out of thin air used to be impossible, and then one day, it was possible - it became true. In Greek 'aletheia' means truth. It's literal translation is 'unconcealed'. Truth is just the revealing of possibility.
So when someone mocks another's idea by saying it is 'impossible' because they are too thick to realize that concealed possibilities are continually being revealed, just tell them to go fuck themselves. That is, after all, how their life literally ceased being an impossibility and became possible to begin with.
"You knew Bitcoin et al. were created out of thin air (or less)..."
~ Javert Chip
If this person used "out of thin air" in a sense evoking the process behind how most commercially produced nitrogen is made - which is to say "out of thin air" - then I have no qualms with their use of that expression.
But no one uses that phrase like that.
What is super ironic though, is how right they actually are in their wrongness.
'Bitcoin et al.' were created out of the nearly unlimited digital possibility constantly provisioned by networked computers atop which, methods from several distinct fields of cryptography, game theory, software engineering, programming and a few other fields were pulled together and combined in just the right order.
Being able to mine the first bitcoin on 3 January 2009 and not on 2 January 2009 is no different than how nitrogen was unable to be harvested from the atmosphere before chemistry had advanced enough to where knowledge and techniques could be applied to the atmosphere in just the right way.
If you think deep enough, ever since the atmosphere first formed, or from the time that the first networked computer system was set up, the possibilities of both nitrogen harvesting and bitcoin mining had always existed. It's just that those possibilities were concealed.
Because those possibilities were concealed, they were 'impossible'. Every possibility that has not yet been revealed is by definition impossible.
Pulling something out of thin air used to be impossible, and then one day, it was possible - it became true. In Greek 'aletheia' means truth. It's literal translation is 'unconcealed'. Truth is just the revealing of possibility.
So when someone mocks another's idea by saying it is 'impossible' because they are too thick to realize that concealed possibilities are continually being revealed, just tell them to go fuck themselves. That is, after all, how their life literally ceased being an impossibility and became possible to begin with.
2018년 2월 7일 수요일
Gradatim Ferociter
"Step by Step, Ferociously"
Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day.
Setbacks are temporary.
Naysayers are best ignored.
~Blue Origin (Amazon) Motto
Steady progress toward seemingly impossible goals will win the day.
Setbacks are temporary.
Naysayers are best ignored.
~Blue Origin (Amazon) Motto
2018년 2월 6일 화요일
Risk as a Function of Perception
I am just about to wrap up Brad Stone's "The Everything Store," his book on Jeff Bezos and the inception, initial rise followed by hard times, and ultimate success of Amazon.
Usually biographies humanize their subjects, but in this case, Bezos has essentially become a god in my eyes. An angry god to be sure, and one that knows the devil is in the details.
Beyond Bezos though, what really struck and stuck with me, was how the book perfectly captured the anxiety and fear that permeated the markets during the bear cycle and ultimate dot.com bubble pop back in 2000.
At that time Amazon's stock fell to less than $10, losing hundreds of millions of dollars for shareholders and employees. And they were getting *trashed* in the media.
Amazon's then treasurer summed up the fear and anxiety perfectly: "The most anxiety-inducing thing about [the Wall Street bears and negative media] was that the risk [of going to zero] was a function of perception and not the reality."
The real danger was that the negative media might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that strain of bearish thinking actually took hold for awhile. Large numbers of people illogically thought the Internet revolution and all its invention would just disappear.
It feels like this history is rhyming again today as the crypto sector has just lost hundreds of billions off its network value virtually overnight.
The bears and perma-critics are smugly declaring defeat for cryptocurrencies. Many retail investors probably didn't know anything about the underlying tech so they probably think crypto dead too.
But just as Amazon and its cohort of other dot.com bubble survivors have shown, these sorts of revolutions have a way of upending short-term criticism over the long run. As the internet continues to prove, it has had an extremely powerful non-linear impact on every single other sector.
Amazon used the power of the internet to provide customers - end users - with a level of instant, personalized satisfaction that was impossible before it. That in turn has helped it become a real contender to become the everything store for the whole freaking world.
The seeds carried by the sudden deluge of blockchain and cryptocurrency speculation have just been laid. Already flowers are starting to appear giving a preview of what may be possible soon for end users. It's amazing how quickly they have taken root, and I am sure that there will be an Amazon (or ten or hundred) that'll bloom and grow atop this new technology soon.
Usually biographies humanize their subjects, but in this case, Bezos has essentially become a god in my eyes. An angry god to be sure, and one that knows the devil is in the details.
Beyond Bezos though, what really struck and stuck with me, was how the book perfectly captured the anxiety and fear that permeated the markets during the bear cycle and ultimate dot.com bubble pop back in 2000.
At that time Amazon's stock fell to less than $10, losing hundreds of millions of dollars for shareholders and employees. And they were getting *trashed* in the media.
Amazon's then treasurer summed up the fear and anxiety perfectly: "The most anxiety-inducing thing about [the Wall Street bears and negative media] was that the risk [of going to zero] was a function of perception and not the reality."
The real danger was that the negative media might turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that strain of bearish thinking actually took hold for awhile. Large numbers of people illogically thought the Internet revolution and all its invention would just disappear.
It feels like this history is rhyming again today as the crypto sector has just lost hundreds of billions off its network value virtually overnight.
The bears and perma-critics are smugly declaring defeat for cryptocurrencies. Many retail investors probably didn't know anything about the underlying tech so they probably think crypto dead too.
But just as Amazon and its cohort of other dot.com bubble survivors have shown, these sorts of revolutions have a way of upending short-term criticism over the long run. As the internet continues to prove, it has had an extremely powerful non-linear impact on every single other sector.
Amazon used the power of the internet to provide customers - end users - with a level of instant, personalized satisfaction that was impossible before it. That in turn has helped it become a real contender to become the everything store for the whole freaking world.
The seeds carried by the sudden deluge of blockchain and cryptocurrency speculation have just been laid. Already flowers are starting to appear giving a preview of what may be possible soon for end users. It's amazing how quickly they have taken root, and I am sure that there will be an Amazon (or ten or hundred) that'll bloom and grow atop this new technology soon.
2018년 2월 5일 월요일
Paul Martino's Advice for Cent
I was re-listening to one of my favorite podcasts of 2017, the Paul Martino episode on the Software Engineering Daily podcast that I included in my lists of all things good the other day.
In the episode Paul recounts a few of the mis-steps he and his team made working on an early, initially successfull, but ultimately failed social networking site called Tribe.
Paul gives listeners a full five-course meal of food for thought, but what really grabbed my attention was this: "[Tribe] didn't pay any attention to curating who their initial user base was."
The initial users themselves set the tone for the site, and usually earlier than many would expect. Once set, it is nearly impossible to alter.
In Tribe's case, they got all the 'burning man' users that were purged enmasse from Friendster. In the end, this super alternative crowd was no match for *that* social network that started with a highly curated group of users from the Ivy League.
Cent of course is my favorite site these days. It is a little less than half a year old (154 days to be precise) and based on the number of responses-per-bounty, it's user base is growing into a globally diverse group.
But like Tribe before it, Cent seems open to accepting everyone. Since any account can upvote anyone else, basically everyone who posts a response gets a piece of the bounty.
If we were a commons, everyone would be starving. Cent is, in effect, curating poverty.
As fellow Centian @paulkay put it: It's just too damn hard to earn beer money on Cent.
Cent isn't the only blockchain-based app or site to pay out crypto for user generated work either. Earn and Steemit are more popular and successful. Despite the shortcommings of those sites, several of their users bring in very large returns.
Add to that Earn's highly selective, curated lists and the fact that it has convinced a bunch of really big names to sign up and the differences become clear.
Cent's novelty is very exciting to be sure, but passionate users will leave soon if there are sites that provide better incentives.
As I have proposed elsewhere, I believe there is a novel way to solve this issue: institute a new user-class called Centurions, who alone have the ability to upvote or downvote responses.
They would become the keepers of the site, and since upvoters receive 10% of each bounty, they would have a financial incentive to continue improving the site and user experience.
Most responses would still receive a nominal payout for their contibutions, but Centurions would ensure that users receive larger portions of bounties by guaranteeing the majority of upvotes go to "higher quality" posts. This would provide a great benefit to bounty setters. The higher payouts would also help draw in new users. New users would raise the overall calibre of responses and incentivize people to post more bounties.
Allowing each user to see which posts each Centurion has upvoted (like Disqus upvotes) would further help improve the overall experience.
And anyone who makes a certain number of posts that receive a certain number of upvotes would become a Centurion, kind of like a decentralized knighting. Over time those minimum criteria would increase as a way to ensure that quality standards remain high.
Lastly, when it comes time to airdrop CENT tokens, by introducing the Centurion class it should be easier to find clear metrics by which to determine who contributed the most to the site. A token-curated-registry approach could then be implemented so that anyone willing to temporarily stake their credentials could apply.
Cent, together with Centurions, would be curating constantly improving users who contribute responses of increasing quality.
Cent needs to start curating quality. Here's hoping they do.
In the episode Paul recounts a few of the mis-steps he and his team made working on an early, initially successfull, but ultimately failed social networking site called Tribe.
Paul gives listeners a full five-course meal of food for thought, but what really grabbed my attention was this: "[Tribe] didn't pay any attention to curating who their initial user base was."
The initial users themselves set the tone for the site, and usually earlier than many would expect. Once set, it is nearly impossible to alter.
In Tribe's case, they got all the 'burning man' users that were purged enmasse from Friendster. In the end, this super alternative crowd was no match for *that* social network that started with a highly curated group of users from the Ivy League.
Cent of course is my favorite site these days. It is a little less than half a year old (154 days to be precise) and based on the number of responses-per-bounty, it's user base is growing into a globally diverse group.
But like Tribe before it, Cent seems open to accepting everyone. Since any account can upvote anyone else, basically everyone who posts a response gets a piece of the bounty.
If we were a commons, everyone would be starving. Cent is, in effect, curating poverty.
As fellow Centian @paulkay put it: It's just too damn hard to earn beer money on Cent.
Cent isn't the only blockchain-based app or site to pay out crypto for user generated work either. Earn and Steemit are more popular and successful. Despite the shortcommings of those sites, several of their users bring in very large returns.
Add to that Earn's highly selective, curated lists and the fact that it has convinced a bunch of really big names to sign up and the differences become clear.
Cent's novelty is very exciting to be sure, but passionate users will leave soon if there are sites that provide better incentives.
As I have proposed elsewhere, I believe there is a novel way to solve this issue: institute a new user-class called Centurions, who alone have the ability to upvote or downvote responses.
They would become the keepers of the site, and since upvoters receive 10% of each bounty, they would have a financial incentive to continue improving the site and user experience.
Most responses would still receive a nominal payout for their contibutions, but Centurions would ensure that users receive larger portions of bounties by guaranteeing the majority of upvotes go to "higher quality" posts. This would provide a great benefit to bounty setters. The higher payouts would also help draw in new users. New users would raise the overall calibre of responses and incentivize people to post more bounties.
Allowing each user to see which posts each Centurion has upvoted (like Disqus upvotes) would further help improve the overall experience.
And anyone who makes a certain number of posts that receive a certain number of upvotes would become a Centurion, kind of like a decentralized knighting. Over time those minimum criteria would increase as a way to ensure that quality standards remain high.
Lastly, when it comes time to airdrop CENT tokens, by introducing the Centurion class it should be easier to find clear metrics by which to determine who contributed the most to the site. A token-curated-registry approach could then be implemented so that anyone willing to temporarily stake their credentials could apply.
Cent, together with Centurions, would be curating constantly improving users who contribute responses of increasing quality.
Cent needs to start curating quality. Here's hoping they do.
2018년 2월 4일 일요일
Organization Isn't Centralization
Organization helps to strengthen linkages between independent actors
Linkages in decentralized entities are longer and naturally weaker than in centralized organizations.
Organization, when carried out well, can help to make linkages in decentralized entities more robust, elastic, and egalitarian, whilst good organization in centralized entities can help enhance efficencies between linkages.
Poor organization will negatively affect both decentralized and centralized entities.
Linkages in decentralized entities are longer and naturally weaker than in centralized organizations.
Organization, when carried out well, can help to make linkages in decentralized entities more robust, elastic, and egalitarian, whilst good organization in centralized entities can help enhance efficencies between linkages.
Poor organization will negatively affect both decentralized and centralized entities.
2018년 2월 3일 토요일
I am a Repeater
I'm a repeater.
I like to re-read, re-listen, and re-watch the good stuff.
There's nothing better than coming across something that makes you feel so good you want to read, listen, or watch it again. And in some cases again and again.
This basic urge towards repetition strikes me as perhaps one of the core building blocks of humanity.
For those of you on the lookout for good stuff, I've put together a few lists of good books, podcasts and movies. Overtime I'll update the lists accordingly. So check them out now and later. And be good.
Books
Movies/Shows*
I like to re-read, re-listen, and re-watch the good stuff.
There's nothing better than coming across something that makes you feel so good you want to read, listen, or watch it again. And in some cases again and again.
This basic urge towards repetition strikes me as perhaps one of the core building blocks of humanity.
For those of you on the lookout for good stuff, I've put together a few lists of good books, podcasts and movies. Overtime I'll update the lists accordingly. So check them out now and later. And be good.
Books
- Martin Heidegger - The Question Concerning Technology, Early Greek Thinking, What is Called Thinking
- Peter Thiel - Zero to One
- Phil Knight - Shoe Dog
- 김범수 - 어제를 버려라
- 이동식 - 한국인의 주체성과 도
- 홍정욱 - 7막 7장
- Herbert Marcuse - Eros & Civilization
- J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit
- J.D. Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
- Jean Craighead George - My Side of the Mountain
- Lewis Mumford - Technics and Civilization, The City in History
- Recode/Decode - Andrew Mason, John Zimmer
- Software Engineering Daily - Paul Martino
- Invest Like the Best - Chris Dixon, Ali Hamed, Chris Burniske
- A16Z - Stewart Butterfield, Jim Gilliam (NationBuilder)
- The Digiday Podcast - Bryan Goldberg (Episode 1, Episode 2)
- Waking Up with Sam Harris - The Intellectual Dark Web, Niall Ferguson
- The Ezra Klein Show - Ben Thompson
- The Future Thinkers Podcast - Vinay Gupta
- The Joe Rogan Experience - Peter Guuliano, Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson
Documentaries
- Adam Curtis - The Century of the Self, HyperNormalisation
- The Prize: Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power
- Ugly Delicious
- There Will be Blood
- The Social Network
- The Founder
- The Paper Chase
- Paid In Full
- Requiem for a Dream
- Menace II Society
- The Ghost Writer
- 비열한 거리
- Mad Men*
- Billions*
- Parts Unknown - Rene Redzepi (S02E04)*
2018년 2월 2일 금요일
BTFD & BUIDL
For anyone that's been active in cryptoland for more than a minute has most definitely ridden the coaster of dips. Probaby more than a few times too.
Over the past few days that coaster has really been doing work. I'm sure a lot of coiners have lost their expensive lunches. And you probably still feel sick.
But for more experienced coiners, the dips barely register as a tickle in their tummy. As Chris Burniske said, living through these types of market panics become badges of honor in cryptoland.
On top of that, though, they are amazing buying opportunities. You can help offset losses by buying the dips before they tick up again. They tend to be the most valuable investments in the long run.
That said, you need to pick the coins that best represent solid tech and future development. Of course there is Bitcoin Core, but the Ethereum community is really putting in work buidling [sic] the future out with DEXs, StakeTree, Cipher mobile browser, Cent, Cryptokitties and several other projects that you can use today.
'Buy what you know' was the dominant investment adage back in the '80s and it is my contention that it should be the basis of most investments in crypto today.
So BTFD (buy the fucking dip) and develop an investment bias for teams that BUIDL.
Over the past few days that coaster has really been doing work. I'm sure a lot of coiners have lost their expensive lunches. And you probably still feel sick.
But for more experienced coiners, the dips barely register as a tickle in their tummy. As Chris Burniske said, living through these types of market panics become badges of honor in cryptoland.
On top of that, though, they are amazing buying opportunities. You can help offset losses by buying the dips before they tick up again. They tend to be the most valuable investments in the long run.
That said, you need to pick the coins that best represent solid tech and future development. Of course there is Bitcoin Core, but the Ethereum community is really putting in work buidling [sic] the future out with DEXs, StakeTree, Cipher mobile browser, Cent, Cryptokitties and several other projects that you can use today.
'Buy what you know' was the dominant investment adage back in the '80s and it is my contention that it should be the basis of most investments in crypto today.
So BTFD (buy the fucking dip) and develop an investment bias for teams that BUIDL.
2018년 2월 1일 목요일
Elements of a Bounty
I have been thinking a lot about bounties these days.
What has been most surprising - although in hindsight it shouldn't have been - is how many people active in the crypto and blockchain space hear one thing when they hear or think of a bounty.
They think of a bug bounty - a specific task that has one winning response.
And then they code for that.
Why that is surprising in a regrettable sense is simple: they are coding the corresponding smart contract too tight. In other words, they should code for a wider array of potential use cases.
This is what Max Brody and Cameron have done with Cent. They have really re-imagined the bounty, and the use cases of their more widely thought bounty contract have grown into the double digits.
I can fully appreciate that now.
But that doesn't mean I can't learn anything from thinkers still stuck in an old paradigm.
On the contrary, I was able to learn the proper taxonomy of a bounty yesterday reading a series of articles. There are four (4) elements of a bounty:
What has been most surprising - although in hindsight it shouldn't have been - is how many people active in the crypto and blockchain space hear one thing when they hear or think of a bounty.
They think of a bug bounty - a specific task that has one winning response.
And then they code for that.
Why that is surprising in a regrettable sense is simple: they are coding the corresponding smart contract too tight. In other words, they should code for a wider array of potential use cases.
This is what Max Brody and Cameron have done with Cent. They have really re-imagined the bounty, and the use cases of their more widely thought bounty contract have grown into the double digits.
I can fully appreciate that now.
But that doesn't mean I can't learn anything from thinkers still stuck in an old paradigm.
On the contrary, I was able to learn the proper taxonomy of a bounty yesterday reading a series of articles. There are four (4) elements of a bounty:
- Issuance
- Fulfillment
- Acceptance
- Payment
- Invitation to Bid (ITB)
- Bids
- Ranking
- Rank-based payment
In construction, ITBs are essentially invitations made to contractors to design a new piece of infrastructure. Often, to compensate each bidder for the time and resources required to put together a proper bid, a trivial sum will be provided to those who issue bids that are not initially disqualified.
Each question on Cent is an ITB. Users that submit bids that provide value either to the original poster or any other user can be rewarded with a portion of the bounty by being up-voted. Less effort is wasted (i.e. uncompensated) and more value is created, for multiple parties.
Such an incentive structure, as basic and simple as it is, can be used for all types of cases outside of trying to identify bugs in some code.
Cent still has a long way to go, but it is important to highlight that it has made possible something that really wasn't possible prior to it's creation. And that is probably why I can't stop thinking about it.
Each question on Cent is an ITB. Users that submit bids that provide value either to the original poster or any other user can be rewarded with a portion of the bounty by being up-voted. Less effort is wasted (i.e. uncompensated) and more value is created, for multiple parties.
Such an incentive structure, as basic and simple as it is, can be used for all types of cases outside of trying to identify bugs in some code.
Cent still has a long way to go, but it is important to highlight that it has made possible something that really wasn't possible prior to it's creation. And that is probably why I can't stop thinking about it.
2018년 1월 31일 수요일
The Importance of Names
Just like English begins with ABC, my mornings always start with AVC.com. And those comments.
The comment section on AVC.com is probably one of the most undervalued properties on the internet today. You have a collection of over a hundred steady commenters, most of whom are current/former CEOs, large corporate executives, startup founders/employees, sages, CEO whisperers, and other heavy hitters who are penning some of the deepest business insights around.
Presumably just for the Disqus upvotes.
And then there is JLM. I don't think any description of this legendary AVC commenter would do him justice. And he would agree with me more than I do myself on that (inside joke).
His comment yesterday was something special though. Fred posted about a leadership bootcamp that USV is offering to some of their smaller portfolio firms.
JLM lauded the effort since trainings carry the highest ROI in business. Then he made a suggestion: since Fred is imparting such high level, transcendental wisdom, the training course itself should have a name that conveys a similar sense of significance. Afterall, bootcamps refer to the training that 'boots' or new army recruits receive.
The money quote though went as follows:
"There is a fascinating story of how the Army came to call Special Forces Special Forces. It revolves around the necessity for the name to set it apart from the entire army immediately without being odd. It worked. The second you hear somebody is SF, you get it."
The power names hold is immense. Amazon's original 'J-Team' comes to mind, as does Samsung Group's now defunct (i.e. re-named) Future Strategy Group aka 미래전략실 aka 미전실 aka The Chairman's Office.
When we have the chance to name something - which, when you think about it is exceedingly rare - we should give serious thought to what exactly we are naming.
Anyways, just need to head over and read the comments, and then you will get it.
The comment section on AVC.com is probably one of the most undervalued properties on the internet today. You have a collection of over a hundred steady commenters, most of whom are current/former CEOs, large corporate executives, startup founders/employees, sages, CEO whisperers, and other heavy hitters who are penning some of the deepest business insights around.
Presumably just for the Disqus upvotes.
And then there is JLM. I don't think any description of this legendary AVC commenter would do him justice. And he would agree with me more than I do myself on that (inside joke).
His comment yesterday was something special though. Fred posted about a leadership bootcamp that USV is offering to some of their smaller portfolio firms.
JLM lauded the effort since trainings carry the highest ROI in business. Then he made a suggestion: since Fred is imparting such high level, transcendental wisdom, the training course itself should have a name that conveys a similar sense of significance. Afterall, bootcamps refer to the training that 'boots' or new army recruits receive.
The money quote though went as follows:
"There is a fascinating story of how the Army came to call Special Forces Special Forces. It revolves around the necessity for the name to set it apart from the entire army immediately without being odd. It worked. The second you hear somebody is SF, you get it."
The power names hold is immense. Amazon's original 'J-Team' comes to mind, as does Samsung Group's now defunct (i.e. re-named) Future Strategy Group aka 미래전략실 aka 미전실 aka The Chairman's Office.
When we have the chance to name something - which, when you think about it is exceedingly rare - we should give serious thought to what exactly we are naming.
Anyways, just need to head over and read the comments, and then you will get it.
2018년 1월 30일 화요일
God Level
Dominic is one of my best mates at work. He is about five years older than me, but we let our language down and we speak like friends.
Everyday either before the bullshit, or in the midst of it, we make sure to grab a coffee together; well I get a coffee, Dominic usually gets a tea or a syrup-less juice.
We talk about a ton of stuff. Mostly though, we talk about all the 'what the hell' elements of our company, cryptocurrency investing, and life in general. He has a lot more life than I do since he already has a daughter and a Korean apartment all his own - "In the North" as he describes it.
The other day we somehow got on the subject of how difficult it is for some to have kids. It was particularly hard for Dominic and his wife when they were both living apart, him in Singapore and her in Korea. They would meet every month to...do the damn thing, but they weren't successful for the longest time.
One day his senior pulls him aside and asks him, point blank, if Dominic was serious about having a kid. He realized he wasn't all in. But then he thought on it. He loved his wife - they'd been dating since high school after all - and he knew there wasn't anyone else he'd like to spend the rest of his life with let alone have a kid with.
So he focused his mind and then cleared it. Dominic referred to this mind state as 'God Level'. And sure enough, a few weeks after his wife visited the next time, he received the call. He was going to be a father.
I've heard similar stories before, so there is definitely something to it. Achieving 'God Level' isn't just good for making babies either. Having a focused and clear mind makes you an unstoppable force in the office, or on the field, or on Twitter, or on your blog that no one reads;) It just makes life better.
So take a breath, question yourself, be honest, then let it go and move forward.
Everyday either before the bullshit, or in the midst of it, we make sure to grab a coffee together; well I get a coffee, Dominic usually gets a tea or a syrup-less juice.
We talk about a ton of stuff. Mostly though, we talk about all the 'what the hell' elements of our company, cryptocurrency investing, and life in general. He has a lot more life than I do since he already has a daughter and a Korean apartment all his own - "In the North" as he describes it.
The other day we somehow got on the subject of how difficult it is for some to have kids. It was particularly hard for Dominic and his wife when they were both living apart, him in Singapore and her in Korea. They would meet every month to...do the damn thing, but they weren't successful for the longest time.
One day his senior pulls him aside and asks him, point blank, if Dominic was serious about having a kid. He realized he wasn't all in. But then he thought on it. He loved his wife - they'd been dating since high school after all - and he knew there wasn't anyone else he'd like to spend the rest of his life with let alone have a kid with.
So he focused his mind and then cleared it. Dominic referred to this mind state as 'God Level'. And sure enough, a few weeks after his wife visited the next time, he received the call. He was going to be a father.
I've heard similar stories before, so there is definitely something to it. Achieving 'God Level' isn't just good for making babies either. Having a focused and clear mind makes you an unstoppable force in the office, or on the field, or on Twitter, or on your blog that no one reads;) It just makes life better.
So take a breath, question yourself, be honest, then let it go and move forward.
2018년 1월 29일 월요일
Dogfooding
So just after writing about 'dogfooding' yesterday, I discovered an amazing example running live on the Ethereum mainnet right now. It's called StakeTree and it is pretty special.
It fell into my lap as soon as I opened one of my favorite Monday morning email newsletters: Token Economy.
I am subscribed to about six email newsletters that I can't live without:
It fell into my lap as soon as I opened one of my favorite Monday morning email newsletters: Token Economy.
I am subscribed to about six email newsletters that I can't live without:
- Stratechery
- Hotpod
- Token Economy
- 스타트업위클리 (Startup Weekly)
- Exponential View
- Benedict Evan's Newsletter
Up until today the first two newsletters were the only ones that let users pay them. And of course the only way to pay was with a credit card.
Credit cards are sorta kinda convenient for users, but they are terrible for anyone that accepts them, since they have to eat multiple non-trivial charges for *every* transaction they receive. Not only is there a roughly $0.30 fixed fee, but there is an additional fee of anywhere from 1.5% to 3.5% of the total amount charged!
Now the two gentlemen behind Token Economy (@stefanobernardi and @yanroux) have finally decided not only to give readers a way to pay them, but they made the bold move to eschew traditional credit card payments for ETH payments instead. StakeTree is a new Business-as-a-Tool (BaaT) that, simply put, is a smart contract-powered Kickstarter Drip on Ethereum.
Those who want to support Token Economy, for example, need only open the Token Economy Drip fund page on StakeTree using their Cipher browser on mobile or metamask enabled chrome browser on desktop, enter their desired ETH suppprt level and click send. That's it. The StakeTree Drip smart contract then trustlessly ensures 10% of your payment is distributed to Token Economy each week for the next 10 weeks. The amount distributed and the drip period are also variable I believe.
As I mentioned yesterday, the BaaT value is something I really see as taking hold in the short-term. @nieldr, the creator of StakeTree, is using StakeTree to crowdsource support for further development. That's dogfooding at its finest and he's already received over 6 ETH. Token Economy has received 5.69 ETH or almost USD 7,000 in under 24 hours! I really think that the StakeTree BaaT will be hitting a lot of home runs for a lot of people in the near future.
The rate of development in the Ethereum ecosystem is quite amazing. Really useful, decentralized, trustless tools like StakeTree are starting to come to market now that are proving *We* will gladly pay gas to power the underlying network that enables these trustless dapps, but that *We* don't need intermediaries and middle-men taking large percentages of our money anymore.
I cannot wait to *use* the many new BaaTs that are about to hit the market. If everything goes right, I think we will see an innovative blogging BaaT in the near future that will incorporate a very simple, but powerful cryptoeconomic incentive design atop a few dead simple smart contracts. It will be a perfect compliment (I think at least) to what the boys behind Cent have been doing.
In the meantime, stay sluggin'.
2018년 1월 28일 일요일
New Blockchain-native Values
Times, they are a changing. How will these changes affect our values in the short, middle and long-term? Which values will be rewarded more as a result?
If you are involved with any cryptoassets or blockchain research, these questions probably sound familiar, if they're not already top of mind.
Below are a few examples of new values that I think we will see emerge in the not so distant future, as well as values that I expect to be rewarded more as cryptoassets and blockchain-native dapps take hold and spread across our daily lives.
If you are involved with any cryptoassets or blockchain research, these questions probably sound familiar, if they're not already top of mind.
Below are a few examples of new values that I think we will see emerge in the not so distant future, as well as values that I expect to be rewarded more as cryptoassets and blockchain-native dapps take hold and spread across our daily lives.
- Paying for everything - including paying to be paid
- Business as a Tool (BaaT) - *not* business as a venture - where value is created and controled by all users of that decentralized tool (the concept of 'dogfooding' or using your own product, will become more and more important)
- Preference for smaller, exclusive, economically self-sufficient, digital circles (in the smallest Swiss administrative divisio sense) around which will form membership that in certain instances will become more prized than entry into an elite country club for example
- Strong trend towards Tribalism/Community-ism in the digital world that will in turn begin to shape and impact the oranization of the physical world
- Immediate and intimiate connections with others will be expected (the line between digital identities and offline identities will blur, and as a result see increased societal validation for the former)
2018년 1월 27일 토요일
Saturday Shopping
My Saturdays follow a very loose, but usually pretty regular routine.
Wake up around 9am, have a cup of hand ground, aeropressed coffee, run + pull-ups, shower/get ready, long walk, book reading at whichever cafe is our favorite at the time, dinner, drinks, topped off by a walk home if we still have enough gas in the tank.
Yesterday the wife and I added two things to our normal itinerary: bookstore & camera shopping.
After finishing a much needed soul warming bowl of 국밥 at 광화문국밥 we stopped by Kyobo Book Centre's Gwanghwamun location and both scooped a few books. She picked up '플러피의 샌드위치와 수프' a nice clean, simple recipe book for soup and sandwiches by 오쿠무라 카요 and I got 'The Everything Store' about Jeff Bezos and Amazon by Brad Stone.
Since finishing Trump's 'The Art of the Deal' I've been trying to find my next book to dive into and I think I found it. I just need to quickly wrap up Margaret Atwood's slightly wry, very bleak, and extremely dystopian 'The Handmaid's Tale' on loan to me from a friend and colleague. (Happy New Year).
On top of that, we have been in the market for a new camera recently. A few years back I received a good enough Samsung point and click from work that my wife has really enjoyed. It's been amazing watching her learn how to take some really good pictures. Her Instagram game is pretty tight as a result.
But we have definitely hit a performance limit with that camera, so we agreed that it is time for an upgrade. Instead of a DSLR which I owned in the past (Nikon D90 with 18-200mm VR lens - a perfect combo that would still hold up today), portability and convenience are just as important as performance to us, so we set our sights on a good mirrorless option.
And the mirrorless market has really come a long way in a short time - there are some fantastic cameras out there. In the end though we decided on a Sony A7R III with Zeiss T* FE 55m f/1.8 lens.
On top of heading to Sony's flagship Seoul store on three separate occasions, Ken Rockwell's Reviews are second to none when it comes to camera shopping for the most in-depth, unbiased reviews around, and just as when I originally bought my D90 in 2009, it played the biggest factor in helping us decided on this camera/lens pair. Of course Youtube was also helpful for double and triple checking that decision.
Can't wait to see what kind of pictures we can snap with that bad boy when we pick it up early February.
Wake up around 9am, have a cup of hand ground, aeropressed coffee, run + pull-ups, shower/get ready, long walk, book reading at whichever cafe is our favorite at the time, dinner, drinks, topped off by a walk home if we still have enough gas in the tank.
Yesterday the wife and I added two things to our normal itinerary: bookstore & camera shopping.
After finishing a much needed soul warming bowl of 국밥 at 광화문국밥 we stopped by Kyobo Book Centre's Gwanghwamun location and both scooped a few books. She picked up '플러피의 샌드위치와 수프' a nice clean, simple recipe book for soup and sandwiches by 오쿠무라 카요 and I got 'The Everything Store' about Jeff Bezos and Amazon by Brad Stone.
Since finishing Trump's 'The Art of the Deal' I've been trying to find my next book to dive into and I think I found it. I just need to quickly wrap up Margaret Atwood's slightly wry, very bleak, and extremely dystopian 'The Handmaid's Tale' on loan to me from a friend and colleague. (Happy New Year).
On top of that, we have been in the market for a new camera recently. A few years back I received a good enough Samsung point and click from work that my wife has really enjoyed. It's been amazing watching her learn how to take some really good pictures. Her Instagram game is pretty tight as a result.
But we have definitely hit a performance limit with that camera, so we agreed that it is time for an upgrade. Instead of a DSLR which I owned in the past (Nikon D90 with 18-200mm VR lens - a perfect combo that would still hold up today), portability and convenience are just as important as performance to us, so we set our sights on a good mirrorless option.
And the mirrorless market has really come a long way in a short time - there are some fantastic cameras out there. In the end though we decided on a Sony A7R III with Zeiss T* FE 55m f/1.8 lens.
On top of heading to Sony's flagship Seoul store on three separate occasions, Ken Rockwell's Reviews are second to none when it comes to camera shopping for the most in-depth, unbiased reviews around, and just as when I originally bought my D90 in 2009, it played the biggest factor in helping us decided on this camera/lens pair. Of course Youtube was also helpful for double and triple checking that decision.
Can't wait to see what kind of pictures we can snap with that bad boy when we pick it up early February.
2018년 1월 26일 금요일
FUMU
Acronyms are fun. They're like riddles that give you an easily reusable concept once you know what they stand for.
At lunch yesterday I learned a new acronym that is kinda perfect. It describes brilliantly a very specific instance of corporate absurdity.
Every office has at least one or two terrible co-workers. Just nasty folks that everyone is rooting for to fuck up so they can get fired. But often - for whatever reason - those nasty folks have some pretty powerful connections that, directly or indirectly, lead to HR. So that when they do fuck up, instead of getting their asses handed to them, they get shuffled out into a different project or part of the organization, which more often than not is an actual or perceived promotion.
This is a 'Fuck Up Move Up' or 'FUMU' (pronounced: Foo-moo).
At lunch yesterday I learned a new acronym that is kinda perfect. It describes brilliantly a very specific instance of corporate absurdity.
Every office has at least one or two terrible co-workers. Just nasty folks that everyone is rooting for to fuck up so they can get fired. But often - for whatever reason - those nasty folks have some pretty powerful connections that, directly or indirectly, lead to HR. So that when they do fuck up, instead of getting their asses handed to them, they get shuffled out into a different project or part of the organization, which more often than not is an actual or perceived promotion.
This is a 'Fuck Up Move Up' or 'FUMU' (pronounced: Foo-moo).
2018년 1월 25일 목요일
Shame & Disappointment
Working in Korea as an expat can be tough. I have one colleague though whose situation is probably one of the toughest I've seen. He is a true professional though. For two years he put his hard hat on everyday, and tried to slog his way through the bullshit. He hoped - we all hope - that maybe things would start to change if he kept fighting the good fight working like a professional. And sometimes, rarely, we really do help. That is, after all, why they say they needed us when they hired us in the first place.
The other day though he asked me to lunch. I knew what was comming, but I asked if he'd mind if a mutual friend of ours joined. He said he would mind. Since I'm the overseas HR manager of a specific product division and he works in an unrelated corporate function our relationship has always been more casual than professional. But over the past half year or so I have become his unofficial HR rep. So I knew this was obviously going to be a working lunch.
Refreshingly lunch was a lot more positive than I had been anticipating. When many people decide to quit, they make up their mind months or years before they actually end up giving their notice. In the time leading up to 'the announcement' they often become caustically critical and bitter about everything. My colleague probably quit 9 to 12 months ago, but now he was finally ready to make it real.
After he told me he was ready to make his decision official we ended up using the rest of lunch talking about the timing of his notice, the proper channels to go through, how the severance and pension refunds would go - standard HR stuff. Ordinarily his function's HR would have handled this, but as they don't even have an ounce of professionalism, that was obviously out the question to begin with. And then he hit me with it. He wasn't angry. That feeling passed a while ago. No. "Now," he said, "I just feel shame and disappointment."
All I could do was nod.
There wasn't anything more I could do or say either. The only thing I know is that there is so very much more work to be done to ensure others don't end up feeling shame and disappointment. A high bar I know. Mostly I need to double down on influencing the right people so that spots open up for the right people to come in and effect broader changes (in terms of mindset, managerially, and procedurally). That's worth fighting for, at least for the time being.
The other day though he asked me to lunch. I knew what was comming, but I asked if he'd mind if a mutual friend of ours joined. He said he would mind. Since I'm the overseas HR manager of a specific product division and he works in an unrelated corporate function our relationship has always been more casual than professional. But over the past half year or so I have become his unofficial HR rep. So I knew this was obviously going to be a working lunch.
Refreshingly lunch was a lot more positive than I had been anticipating. When many people decide to quit, they make up their mind months or years before they actually end up giving their notice. In the time leading up to 'the announcement' they often become caustically critical and bitter about everything. My colleague probably quit 9 to 12 months ago, but now he was finally ready to make it real.
After he told me he was ready to make his decision official we ended up using the rest of lunch talking about the timing of his notice, the proper channels to go through, how the severance and pension refunds would go - standard HR stuff. Ordinarily his function's HR would have handled this, but as they don't even have an ounce of professionalism, that was obviously out the question to begin with. And then he hit me with it. He wasn't angry. That feeling passed a while ago. No. "Now," he said, "I just feel shame and disappointment."
All I could do was nod.
There wasn't anything more I could do or say either. The only thing I know is that there is so very much more work to be done to ensure others don't end up feeling shame and disappointment. A high bar I know. Mostly I need to double down on influencing the right people so that spots open up for the right people to come in and effect broader changes (in terms of mindset, managerially, and procedurally). That's worth fighting for, at least for the time being.
2018년 1월 24일 수요일
Human Proof of Work (PoW)
I saw a tweet the other day that - for some reason or other - I didn't 'heart' or re-tweet so I couldn't find it to reference, but has still nonetheless stuck with me.
The basic gist of the tweet was this: Graduating and receiving a diploma from university is the human equivalent of Proof of Work. It signals to others that you were able to literally put the time and effort into something and can be trusted in some way now that, before receipt of that document, would have been perceived as higher risk or not even considered at all.
Although the poster was drawing a direct link with the consensus mechanism for Bitcoin, I was reminded of my late Great Uncle John. The last summer before heading off to college I was visiting his beach house down in Rehobeth, Delaware.
He and I were chatting when he asked me if the rumors were true that I was heading to Pittsburgh in the autumn to study. I replied yes, and then he put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me with a serious expression (which was out of character for a man who was *always* laughing) and he just said: "A degree is just a piece of paper to prove to others you are willing to put some hard work in and stick around for a little, so make sure you get one."
It was a simple comment, but so many people stil believe that which I guess makes it profound. I can appreciate that profundity, but like many these days, I just can't help but feel that such an expensive and time consuming PoW model is no longer necessary anymore - there are far cheaper, much quicker and more varied ways to verify the same thing.
Anyways after seeing that tweet and thinking about Uncle John, I started to think of some other human PoW examples besides 'graduating from a 4 year college' and I came up with this list:
These are all things that people can do that, whilst difficult and time consuming, tend to result in regular, consistent recognition if not outright admiration from others.
So then I got to thinking, which PoW examples could be changed to a human equivalent of Proof of Stake? How different would those examples look after switching to PoS? How many more people would benefit if it was not only much easier to accomplish something, but if that accomplishment would also provide an equal if not better reward or response from others?
There are many daily activities in many peoples lives that could be accomplished with a fraction of the effort and time, but still provide a similar if not better result as the traditional PoW activity. And this is where I think a lot of Dapps are going to find extremely broad adoption by allowing an easy but powerful way for anyone to stake their reputation, wealth or confidence in order to quickly and efficiently do work that gets them the results they need. I have a few ideas cooking myself that I hope to share soon.
If you are curious about this stream of thought, I recommend you check out the article by @twobitidiot on Medium entitled “Skin-in-the-Game Coins” and pay particular attention to the section on 'Token Curated Registries' which is essentially a human PoS consensus design architecture.
Source: https://medium.com/@twobitidiot/skin-in-the-game-coins-da0afdfdc650
The basic gist of the tweet was this: Graduating and receiving a diploma from university is the human equivalent of Proof of Work. It signals to others that you were able to literally put the time and effort into something and can be trusted in some way now that, before receipt of that document, would have been perceived as higher risk or not even considered at all.
Although the poster was drawing a direct link with the consensus mechanism for Bitcoin, I was reminded of my late Great Uncle John. The last summer before heading off to college I was visiting his beach house down in Rehobeth, Delaware.
He and I were chatting when he asked me if the rumors were true that I was heading to Pittsburgh in the autumn to study. I replied yes, and then he put his hand on my shoulder, looked at me with a serious expression (which was out of character for a man who was *always* laughing) and he just said: "A degree is just a piece of paper to prove to others you are willing to put some hard work in and stick around for a little, so make sure you get one."
It was a simple comment, but so many people stil believe that which I guess makes it profound. I can appreciate that profundity, but like many these days, I just can't help but feel that such an expensive and time consuming PoW model is no longer necessary anymore - there are far cheaper, much quicker and more varied ways to verify the same thing.
Anyways after seeing that tweet and thinking about Uncle John, I started to think of some other human PoW examples besides 'graduating from a 4 year college' and I came up with this list:
- Growing Twitter followers organically
- Climbing the corporate ladder
- Building up Reddit reputation
- Earning regular avc.com upvotes
- Attending church regularly
- Creating a successsful newsletter
- Having a baby with your spouse
- (Feel free to add more)
These are all things that people can do that, whilst difficult and time consuming, tend to result in regular, consistent recognition if not outright admiration from others.
So then I got to thinking, which PoW examples could be changed to a human equivalent of Proof of Stake? How different would those examples look after switching to PoS? How many more people would benefit if it was not only much easier to accomplish something, but if that accomplishment would also provide an equal if not better reward or response from others?
There are many daily activities in many peoples lives that could be accomplished with a fraction of the effort and time, but still provide a similar if not better result as the traditional PoW activity. And this is where I think a lot of Dapps are going to find extremely broad adoption by allowing an easy but powerful way for anyone to stake their reputation, wealth or confidence in order to quickly and efficiently do work that gets them the results they need. I have a few ideas cooking myself that I hope to share soon.
If you are curious about this stream of thought, I recommend you check out the article by @twobitidiot on Medium entitled “Skin-in-the-Game Coins” and pay particular attention to the section on 'Token Curated Registries' which is essentially a human PoS consensus design architecture.
Source: https://medium.com/@twobitidiot/skin-in-the-game-coins-da0afdfdc650
2018년 1월 23일 화요일
Living Economics Experiments
I read the Nathaniel Popper piece that appeared in todays NYT, and as always it was great. The man regularly offers up the most entertaining, unbiased perspectives on the frothiest, most exciting sector since the dotcom boom and bust.
When I read something good, there are usually a few lines that I end up re-reading a few times. That way they end up sticking with me long after I close the tab or shut the book. This time was no different.
I have been thinking a lot about the simplistic power well designed cryptoeconomic incentive architectures will be able to wield lately, so my red hot embers were stoked when I read, "..virtual currencies are all living economics experiments, testing how different sorts of incentives create different behaviors."
It is precisely this economic incentive aspect of all crytpoassets - not just cryptocurrencies, but cryptocommodities, cryptotokens, and cryptocollectibles as well - that I think will start to draw more and more attention to itself and away from the ICO bubble that is starting to slide down the slope of a waning crecent moon.
Currently Bitcoin, with its own carrot and stick incentive strucure built into and around the Proof of Work (PoW) consenus mechanism, is the first, most prominent example of a cryptoeconomic incentive architecture performing in the wild, but as Nathaniel said, "...these incentives don’t always work as expected. That uncertainty is what makes it so interesting to watch — and to report on."
From out of this uncertainty I believe that there are many more low hanging fruit of much simpler and more easily approachable incentive structures that people will start to look for, adopt and actually use. A good, but still incomplete example can be found in a Dapp called Cent.
Cent offers a dead simple concept: any user with an email and ethereum wallet address responds to questions or posts. Based on the portion of upvotes their specific response receives by the community, they receive a corresponding share of the original bounty that was attached to the prompt or question as a way to incentivize responses in the first place. Super simple, and it works, er, sort of.
But it is still early days, and much, much more is still left to come. So stay plugged in my friends.
When I read something good, there are usually a few lines that I end up re-reading a few times. That way they end up sticking with me long after I close the tab or shut the book. This time was no different.
I have been thinking a lot about the simplistic power well designed cryptoeconomic incentive architectures will be able to wield lately, so my red hot embers were stoked when I read, "..virtual currencies are all living economics experiments, testing how different sorts of incentives create different behaviors."
It is precisely this economic incentive aspect of all crytpoassets - not just cryptocurrencies, but cryptocommodities, cryptotokens, and cryptocollectibles as well - that I think will start to draw more and more attention to itself and away from the ICO bubble that is starting to slide down the slope of a waning crecent moon.
Currently Bitcoin, with its own carrot and stick incentive strucure built into and around the Proof of Work (PoW) consenus mechanism, is the first, most prominent example of a cryptoeconomic incentive architecture performing in the wild, but as Nathaniel said, "...these incentives don’t always work as expected. That uncertainty is what makes it so interesting to watch — and to report on."
From out of this uncertainty I believe that there are many more low hanging fruit of much simpler and more easily approachable incentive structures that people will start to look for, adopt and actually use. A good, but still incomplete example can be found in a Dapp called Cent.
Cent offers a dead simple concept: any user with an email and ethereum wallet address responds to questions or posts. Based on the portion of upvotes their specific response receives by the community, they receive a corresponding share of the original bounty that was attached to the prompt or question as a way to incentivize responses in the first place. Super simple, and it works, er, sort of.
But it is still early days, and much, much more is still left to come. So stay plugged in my friends.
2018년 1월 22일 월요일
Insight into the Korean Crypto Ban on Foreigners
So yesterday I published a little #tweetstorm over on Twitter (@bread_krumbs) about why, seemingly all of a sudden, several exchanges have issued statements saying soon they will prohibit *all* foreigners from making fiat deposits into their exchange accounts.
It has been well received over on Twitter so I thought I'd re-post it here as well.
Check it out below, and feel free to follow me for more Korea-related musings.
0/ I'd bet money that Korbit will claw back their prohibition on fiat deposits from *all* foreigners that was announced over the weekend. The same goes for any other exchange that issued/plans to issue a similar ban.
I'll explain.
1/ According to Korbit, their announcement was issued in order to comply with government guidelines. No mention of which one though, since various pieces of the government have made several announcements over the past month or so.
2/ So I did a little homework. Luckily the government has a useful site (정부24) that lets you search official government announcements and reports.
I ran searches for: 가상통화, 가상화폐, 디지털 화폐, and 디지털머니 (both spaced and unspaced variants).
3/ The searches returned a little over 50 unique releases dating back to 14 July 2014.
Only about 8 releases or documents attached to releases contained the words 외국인(foreigner) and/or 비거주자(non-resident).
The first release to include those words dates to 13 December 2017.
4/ That report contained the first public guidelines to regulate crypto in Korea. On the foreigner issue it said:
"...measures should be taken to ban non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from transacting [on Korean exchanges]..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273333
5/ A summary of that meeting report was released the same day and contained identical phrasing: "...measures will be taken to prevent non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from opening new accounts and trading..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273342
6/ On 28 December 2017 three releases included mention of a ban related to foreigners:
1. [보도자료] 가상통화 관련 관게차관회의
2. [보도참고] 가상통화 관련 금융권 점검회의
3. 가상통화 거래 실명제 실시...거래소 폐쇄 특별법도 검토
Only 비거주자 are subject to the ban in 1 & 2 (외국인 was omitted even), but the third is less clear...
7/ Article 3 included the promise that new speculative demand (e.g. from foreigners(외국인) generally) would be blocked by introducing identity verification systems to exchanges.
This detail doesn't alter, but adds to Releases 1 & 2.
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1286463
8/ However, a shoddy article in the Segye Ilbo (2 January 2018) claimed the Korean gov hadn't defined foreigner(외국인) nor when restrictions should be carried out causing confusion amongst exchanges that led some to ban foreigner trading.
http://m.segye.com/view/20180102004847
9/ On 3 January 2018, in a release addressing numerous errors in the Segye Ilbo article, the gov stated:
"Once the scope of the restriction on foreigners is set it will be implemented since banks are already able to determine if a foreigner is residing in Korea or abroad."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1292917
10/ WTF.
Between 12~28 December 2018 the government was clear that trading restrictions for foreigners will be limited to non-residents.
So Korbit's proposed prohibition on deposits from *all* foreigners seems to be due to the confused 3 January 2018 release.
11/ As this proposed prohibition seems to stem from a single release written by a confused and/or tired public official, I feel it'll only end up applying to non-resident foreigners.
But one can't discount Klownism - the funny way logic seems not to apply here sometimes...
It has been well received over on Twitter so I thought I'd re-post it here as well.
Check it out below, and feel free to follow me for more Korea-related musings.
0/ I'd bet money that Korbit will claw back their prohibition on fiat deposits from *all* foreigners that was announced over the weekend. The same goes for any other exchange that issued/plans to issue a similar ban.
I'll explain.
1/ According to Korbit, their announcement was issued in order to comply with government guidelines. No mention of which one though, since various pieces of the government have made several announcements over the past month or so.
2/ So I did a little homework. Luckily the government has a useful site (정부24) that lets you search official government announcements and reports.
I ran searches for: 가상통화, 가상화폐, 디지털 화폐, and 디지털머니 (both spaced and unspaced variants).
3/ The searches returned a little over 50 unique releases dating back to 14 July 2014.
Only about 8 releases or documents attached to releases contained the words 외국인(foreigner) and/or 비거주자(non-resident).
The first release to include those words dates to 13 December 2017.
4/ That report contained the first public guidelines to regulate crypto in Korea. On the foreigner issue it said:
"...measures should be taken to ban non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from transacting [on Korean exchanges]..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273333
5/ A summary of that meeting report was released the same day and contained identical phrasing: "...measures will be taken to prevent non-resident(foreigners) [비거주자(외국인)] from opening new accounts and trading..."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1273342
6/ On 28 December 2017 three releases included mention of a ban related to foreigners:
1. [보도자료] 가상통화 관련 관게차관회의
2. [보도참고] 가상통화 관련 금융권 점검회의
3. 가상통화 거래 실명제 실시...거래소 폐쇄 특별법도 검토
Only 비거주자 are subject to the ban in 1 & 2 (외국인 was omitted even), but the third is less clear...
7/ Article 3 included the promise that new speculative demand (e.g. from foreigners(외국인) generally) would be blocked by introducing identity verification systems to exchanges.
This detail doesn't alter, but adds to Releases 1 & 2.
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1286463
8/ However, a shoddy article in the Segye Ilbo (2 January 2018) claimed the Korean gov hadn't defined foreigner(외국인) nor when restrictions should be carried out causing confusion amongst exchanges that led some to ban foreigner trading.
http://m.segye.com/view/20180102004847
9/ On 3 January 2018, in a release addressing numerous errors in the Segye Ilbo article, the gov stated:
"Once the scope of the restriction on foreigners is set it will be implemented since banks are already able to determine if a foreigner is residing in Korea or abroad."
https://www.gov.kr/portal/ntnadmNews/1292917
10/ WTF.
Between 12~28 December 2018 the government was clear that trading restrictions for foreigners will be limited to non-residents.
So Korbit's proposed prohibition on deposits from *all* foreigners seems to be due to the confused 3 January 2018 release.
11/ As this proposed prohibition seems to stem from a single release written by a confused and/or tired public official, I feel it'll only end up applying to non-resident foreigners.
But one can't discount Klownism - the funny way logic seems not to apply here sometimes...
2018년 1월 21일 일요일
The Art of the Deal
I have been reading 'The Art of the Deal' by Donald J. Trump (with Tony Schwartz) for about two weeks now and I'm just about finished. Normally, with a book as easy and entertaining to read as this I would have finished in 4~5 days, but I have really been drawing this reading out. It has just completely defied my intially low expectations, which after reflection I realize were unfounded in the first place since everyone I've met who has actually read the book has had nothing but positive things to say about it.
What has surprised me most are the many, many insights into Trump's decision making process that seem to very clearly explain why he says and does things as president in his very unorthodox and un-politicianly way.
To be clear before we go on, I have no horse in the race of American politics - I have never been registered to vote nor do I plan on doing so, perhaps until it is time for me to run myself - but I have been observing Trumps involvement in politics with a detached interest for a while now. The starkly polarizing reactions that Trump seems to elicit from typical Americans - the die hard supporters versus those who see Trump as the second comming of Hitler - should cause anyone who has a properly functioning brain to want to find out a little more about who this polarizing figure really is. And what better way is there to do that than by reading or listening to the mans thoughts. Thoughts that - crucially - came from a time before he was a politician, because, well, you just can't trust anything a politician says.
If there is one thing that seperates Trump the politician from every other politician, it is his seeming indifference to bad press. It wouldn't seem off base to suggest that Trump seems to thrive off of bad press. When Trump was pursuing the construction of the Trump Tower, he described the resulting controversey and negative publicity thusly: "Even though the publicity was almost entirely negative, and there was a great deal of it, and that drew a tremendous amount of attention to Trump Tower. Almost immediately we saw an upsurge in the sales of apartments. I'm not saying that's a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But...controversy, in short, sells."
A few years later when Trump was receiving resistence from New York City politicians despite making numerous offers that he would like to offer his help to rebuild the Wollman ice rink instead, he made the following observation: "If there's one thing I've learned from dealing with politicians over the years, it's that the only thing guaranteed to force them into action is the press - or, more specifically, fear of the press...Bad press translates into potential lost votes, and if a politician loses enough votes, he won't get reelected. If that happens, he might have to go out and take a 9 to 5 job. That's the last thing most politicians want to do."
There are many more instances where Trump makes comments specific to particular deals, or offers up thoughts on what seperates good businessmen from bad ones, or explains how he chooses people to lead projects (the best and most competent, regardless of experience) that offer a window into his actions and decisions today. In particular his thoughts on family then, help explain his preference for installing many of his immediate and extended family nembers in high positions today - something that isn't exclusive to Trump in the history of the presidency, but something that receives a lot of focus today. "There is nothing to compare with family if they happen to be competent, because you can trust family in a way you can never trust anyone else."
We are all human, and Trump is no different. If you have an open mind and are curious about why President Trump seems so different, I highly recommend you pick up 'The Art of the Deal' and give it a read. Thanks to this book I'll be focusing more on what I think the long-term goals Trump is focusing on are and evaluating him on 1) the necessity and importance of those goals and 2) if he actually achieves those goals or not. I will look for potential angles that could explain how his punking of the media could help serve some tactical purpose of helping to move the goal-posts closer to the end zone of those goals. And I know it'll be interesting too, because as Trump puts it: "There is no typical week in my life."
What has surprised me most are the many, many insights into Trump's decision making process that seem to very clearly explain why he says and does things as president in his very unorthodox and un-politicianly way.
To be clear before we go on, I have no horse in the race of American politics - I have never been registered to vote nor do I plan on doing so, perhaps until it is time for me to run myself - but I have been observing Trumps involvement in politics with a detached interest for a while now. The starkly polarizing reactions that Trump seems to elicit from typical Americans - the die hard supporters versus those who see Trump as the second comming of Hitler - should cause anyone who has a properly functioning brain to want to find out a little more about who this polarizing figure really is. And what better way is there to do that than by reading or listening to the mans thoughts. Thoughts that - crucially - came from a time before he was a politician, because, well, you just can't trust anything a politician says.
If there is one thing that seperates Trump the politician from every other politician, it is his seeming indifference to bad press. It wouldn't seem off base to suggest that Trump seems to thrive off of bad press. When Trump was pursuing the construction of the Trump Tower, he described the resulting controversey and negative publicity thusly: "Even though the publicity was almost entirely negative, and there was a great deal of it, and that drew a tremendous amount of attention to Trump Tower. Almost immediately we saw an upsurge in the sales of apartments. I'm not saying that's a good thing, and in truth it probably says something perverse about the culture we live in. But...controversy, in short, sells."
A few years later when Trump was receiving resistence from New York City politicians despite making numerous offers that he would like to offer his help to rebuild the Wollman ice rink instead, he made the following observation: "If there's one thing I've learned from dealing with politicians over the years, it's that the only thing guaranteed to force them into action is the press - or, more specifically, fear of the press...Bad press translates into potential lost votes, and if a politician loses enough votes, he won't get reelected. If that happens, he might have to go out and take a 9 to 5 job. That's the last thing most politicians want to do."
There are many more instances where Trump makes comments specific to particular deals, or offers up thoughts on what seperates good businessmen from bad ones, or explains how he chooses people to lead projects (the best and most competent, regardless of experience) that offer a window into his actions and decisions today. In particular his thoughts on family then, help explain his preference for installing many of his immediate and extended family nembers in high positions today - something that isn't exclusive to Trump in the history of the presidency, but something that receives a lot of focus today. "There is nothing to compare with family if they happen to be competent, because you can trust family in a way you can never trust anyone else."
We are all human, and Trump is no different. If you have an open mind and are curious about why President Trump seems so different, I highly recommend you pick up 'The Art of the Deal' and give it a read. Thanks to this book I'll be focusing more on what I think the long-term goals Trump is focusing on are and evaluating him on 1) the necessity and importance of those goals and 2) if he actually achieves those goals or not. I will look for potential angles that could explain how his punking of the media could help serve some tactical purpose of helping to move the goal-posts closer to the end zone of those goals. And I know it'll be interesting too, because as Trump puts it: "There is no typical week in my life."
2017년 12월 31일 일요일
A Cryptoeconomic Solution for Modern Oppression
Today there is nothing as oppressive as the expectation of unremunerated attention.
Attention should be understood here as a temporary donation of, at the very least, one's time. This presupposes that actions, objects, programs or messages that attract and capture the attention and time of others *do not* constitute a sufficiently compensatory benefit.
Uncompensated attention should cease to be an assumed expectation or requirement to engage in atomic experiences (e.g. reading or commenting on blogs, voting in elections). Instead, inducing or attracting said attention in exchange for *any* form of acceptable remuneration should be pursued. In my view this is only possible by adopting and applying newly emergent economic incentive architectures facilitated by tools provisioned by cryptoassets and blockchain technology (particularly with regards to 'Smart Contracts'). By pursuing such a strategy we seek to emancipate our global citizenzry from the de facto compulsion to relinquish and forfeit valuable personal time and information in exchange for unremunerated experiences.
Thus, my claim is as follows: All experiences should be *potentially* remunerative.
As the title of this post indicates, we are seeking a cryptoeconomic solution - or at the very least an orientation towards a solution - to the problem of unremunerated attention. It may be helpful if we provide a brief definition here. Cryptoeconomics should be understood as an emerging field of study of how we use digital incentives to drive specific resources and behaviors on decentralized networks that lead to some globally desired result such as security or network effects. There is a site called Cent that has been accessible to anyone around the world with an internet connection at beta.cent.co that is conducting an extremely novel and at the same time deceptively simple cryptoeconomic experiment.
First of all, despite only being around for three months or so, Cent has already established itself as a community - to be sure it is still small by modern internet standards. It aspires to be the de(cent)ralized reddit-meets-quora that in(cent)ivizes users by way of Ether (ETH) bounties. Users pose questions or requests to the community that, crucially, carry with them a set bounty denominated in ETH to incentivize as many respondants as possible, and based on the number of upvotes respondants get from other respondants, they will receive a proportional share of that bounty. The key innovation here is that the payout is carried out by a Smart Contract that runs on the Ethereum network - after a question is submitted it triggers an unstoppable automatic application wherein a pre-set timer begins its countdown with payouts released automatically as soon as the bounty period expires.
So to summarize: Cent allows users to offer ETH (digital incentive) in order to drive other users to provide quality responses vying for that Ether which attracts new users who provide ever more quality responses and pose new questions with bounties to attract new users repeat ad infinitum. They have bootstrapped an active community where users are referred to as Centians. Hundreds of bounties have been set and respondants have received thousands of dollars worth of ETH for their attention. Users even receive a portion of the bounty simply for either upvoting or downvoting responses. This is an *almost* perfectly structured incentive architecture. Almost.
The shortcommings - in my view - stem from how the question/bounty-posing feature has been incentivized - or the lack thereof - and the potential for abuse and gaming of the system as it is set up today. Whilst there may be marginal benefit in being able to relatively reliably source a certain amount of responses, it is a shame that there is no way to at least subsidize bounty setters. As a result bounty values have remained trivial, ranging between $3~20 (relative to the given value of ETH to USD at the time a question/bounty is set). Trivial bounties beget half-hearted responses.
Additionally, there is the growing problem of users setting up multiple accounts to game the system and win a larger share of the bounty. There is currently no mechanism in place to prevent someone from setting up multiple accounts in order to game the system by upvoting their own posts and downvoting others. It isn't hard to imagine even passionate contributers becomming frustrated over time if their attention is undercompensated whilst scammers are receiving 3~5x more, at least. Of course if these issues are not addressed they will most likely inhibit any real growth for Cent and its community. Fellow Centian @Maxsterly has already voiced frustration regarding the inability to subsidize question/bounty-setters and multiple users including @dreambig and @soothsayer have complained about the scammers with multiple accounts. Operating a system based off of decentralized logic makes it more difficult - but not impossible - to minimize or prevent such behaviour.
So to conclude I would like to propose a few potential novel solutions:
Firstly, Cent should provide the option for users to 'tip' bounties that they have an interest in. Tips could be split 50:50 between a) the user who set the bounty and b) the bounty itself by adding to it thus incentivizing better responses.
Secondly, Cent should designate those Centians who have been active and provided thoughtful responses over time as arbiters of up upvoting; create a class of 'Centurions' if you will. This will a) eliminate the negative impact that gamers could and have had whilst b) ensuring that Centians who provide original and thoughtful responses are duly compensated. Of course there should be a mechanism created that allows newer Centians to become Centurions as well. A sufficiently decentralized approach could be setting up a hard threshold. Say that if a Centian receives over 100 upvotes across a minimum of at least 5 posts then they are automatically upgraded to Centurion status.
Projects like Cent are paving the way forward towards a very exciting future. The creators behind Cent deserve a lot of praise and all the support they need. Hopefully the proposed improvements I have included may be of some assistance in creating not just a better user experience on Cent, but a better future for everyone around the world.
Attention should be understood here as a temporary donation of, at the very least, one's time. This presupposes that actions, objects, programs or messages that attract and capture the attention and time of others *do not* constitute a sufficiently compensatory benefit.
Uncompensated attention should cease to be an assumed expectation or requirement to engage in atomic experiences (e.g. reading or commenting on blogs, voting in elections). Instead, inducing or attracting said attention in exchange for *any* form of acceptable remuneration should be pursued. In my view this is only possible by adopting and applying newly emergent economic incentive architectures facilitated by tools provisioned by cryptoassets and blockchain technology (particularly with regards to 'Smart Contracts'). By pursuing such a strategy we seek to emancipate our global citizenzry from the de facto compulsion to relinquish and forfeit valuable personal time and information in exchange for unremunerated experiences.
Thus, my claim is as follows: All experiences should be *potentially* remunerative.
As the title of this post indicates, we are seeking a cryptoeconomic solution - or at the very least an orientation towards a solution - to the problem of unremunerated attention. It may be helpful if we provide a brief definition here. Cryptoeconomics should be understood as an emerging field of study of how we use digital incentives to drive specific resources and behaviors on decentralized networks that lead to some globally desired result such as security or network effects. There is a site called Cent that has been accessible to anyone around the world with an internet connection at beta.cent.co that is conducting an extremely novel and at the same time deceptively simple cryptoeconomic experiment.
First of all, despite only being around for three months or so, Cent has already established itself as a community - to be sure it is still small by modern internet standards. It aspires to be the de(cent)ralized reddit-meets-quora that in(cent)ivizes users by way of Ether (ETH) bounties. Users pose questions or requests to the community that, crucially, carry with them a set bounty denominated in ETH to incentivize as many respondants as possible, and based on the number of upvotes respondants get from other respondants, they will receive a proportional share of that bounty. The key innovation here is that the payout is carried out by a Smart Contract that runs on the Ethereum network - after a question is submitted it triggers an unstoppable automatic application wherein a pre-set timer begins its countdown with payouts released automatically as soon as the bounty period expires.
So to summarize: Cent allows users to offer ETH (digital incentive) in order to drive other users to provide quality responses vying for that Ether which attracts new users who provide ever more quality responses and pose new questions with bounties to attract new users repeat ad infinitum. They have bootstrapped an active community where users are referred to as Centians. Hundreds of bounties have been set and respondants have received thousands of dollars worth of ETH for their attention. Users even receive a portion of the bounty simply for either upvoting or downvoting responses. This is an *almost* perfectly structured incentive architecture. Almost.
The shortcommings - in my view - stem from how the question/bounty-posing feature has been incentivized - or the lack thereof - and the potential for abuse and gaming of the system as it is set up today. Whilst there may be marginal benefit in being able to relatively reliably source a certain amount of responses, it is a shame that there is no way to at least subsidize bounty setters. As a result bounty values have remained trivial, ranging between $3~20 (relative to the given value of ETH to USD at the time a question/bounty is set). Trivial bounties beget half-hearted responses.
Additionally, there is the growing problem of users setting up multiple accounts to game the system and win a larger share of the bounty. There is currently no mechanism in place to prevent someone from setting up multiple accounts in order to game the system by upvoting their own posts and downvoting others. It isn't hard to imagine even passionate contributers becomming frustrated over time if their attention is undercompensated whilst scammers are receiving 3~5x more, at least. Of course if these issues are not addressed they will most likely inhibit any real growth for Cent and its community. Fellow Centian @Maxsterly has already voiced frustration regarding the inability to subsidize question/bounty-setters and multiple users including @dreambig and @soothsayer have complained about the scammers with multiple accounts. Operating a system based off of decentralized logic makes it more difficult - but not impossible - to minimize or prevent such behaviour.
So to conclude I would like to propose a few potential novel solutions:
Firstly, Cent should provide the option for users to 'tip' bounties that they have an interest in. Tips could be split 50:50 between a) the user who set the bounty and b) the bounty itself by adding to it thus incentivizing better responses.
Secondly, Cent should designate those Centians who have been active and provided thoughtful responses over time as arbiters of up upvoting; create a class of 'Centurions' if you will. This will a) eliminate the negative impact that gamers could and have had whilst b) ensuring that Centians who provide original and thoughtful responses are duly compensated. Of course there should be a mechanism created that allows newer Centians to become Centurions as well. A sufficiently decentralized approach could be setting up a hard threshold. Say that if a Centian receives over 100 upvotes across a minimum of at least 5 posts then they are automatically upgraded to Centurion status.
Projects like Cent are paving the way forward towards a very exciting future. The creators behind Cent deserve a lot of praise and all the support they need. Hopefully the proposed improvements I have included may be of some assistance in creating not just a better user experience on Cent, but a better future for everyone around the world.
2017년 11월 30일 목요일
Politics, Populism, Disappointment, and Hegemony
Politics
A set of dynamic systems, driven by conflict, and by adaptations and counter-adaptation, leading to tactical arms races...
No given mode of politics is historically inviolable.
Political tactics are a dynamic field of forces.
Populism
A type of political logic by which a collection of different identities are knitted together against a common opponent and in search of a new world
Disappointment
Indexes a yearning for a lost future
Hegemony
Ruling by the engineering of consent (according to the dictates of one particular group)
But it is NOT to be identified as a system of domination.
Should be understood as a complex, emergent mode of power, dependent on the ability of groups within society to influence others in much more diffuse ways.
It emerges out of the interactions and practices of a diverse array of groups, agents, and organizations in society. It doesn't flatten difference, but emerges out of the interplay of difference.
~ Antonio Gramsci
All from "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams
A set of dynamic systems, driven by conflict, and by adaptations and counter-adaptation, leading to tactical arms races...
No given mode of politics is historically inviolable.
Political tactics are a dynamic field of forces.
Populism
A type of political logic by which a collection of different identities are knitted together against a common opponent and in search of a new world
Disappointment
Indexes a yearning for a lost future
Hegemony
Ruling by the engineering of consent (according to the dictates of one particular group)
But it is NOT to be identified as a system of domination.
Should be understood as a complex, emergent mode of power, dependent on the ability of groups within society to influence others in much more diffuse ways.
It emerges out of the interactions and practices of a diverse array of groups, agents, and organizations in society. It doesn't flatten difference, but emerges out of the interplay of difference.
~ Antonio Gramsci
All from "Inventing the Future" by Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams
2017년 10월 31일 화요일
2017년 9월 30일 토요일
Erotic Algorithms
Erotocism: A thirst for otherness where the "other" is very often a new self...
~ Octavio Paz
Algorithm: A methodological set of steps to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
~ Octavio Paz
Algorithm: A methodological set of steps to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
2017년 8월 31일 목요일
Miguel - Skywalker
Outstanding so I stand out
More babes than a bath house
Top gun I'm like Tom Cruise
I play for keeps and I don't lose
You more than love it cuz I'm cool as a breeze
So pick a poison, yeah I got what you need
Nonchalant got the green on rotation all night
We gonna keep it psychadelic like a cap and stem
Catch a wave on us
Take a shot, make a friend, just enjoy the moment
Luke Skywalkin' on these haters
Celebrate everyday like a birthday
Things come to those who wait up
Don't wait to jump in too long
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
More babes than a bath house
Top gun I'm like Tom Cruise
I play for keeps and I don't lose
You more than love it cuz I'm cool as a breeze
So pick a poison, yeah I got what you need
Nonchalant got the green on rotation all night
We gonna keep it psychadelic like a cap and stem
Catch a wave on us
Take a shot, make a friend, just enjoy the moment
Luke Skywalkin' on these haters
Celebrate everyday like a birthday
Things come to those who wait up
Don't wait to jump in too long
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
Don't sleep you gotta stay up
2017년 7월 31일 월요일
The Paradox of Historical Knowledge
Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless.
But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance.
The more data we have and the better we understand history, the quicker it changes.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance.
The more data we have and the better we understand history, the quicker it changes.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
2017년 7월 14일 금요일
Off Key
Off key
But she likes me
Arms entwined
But time unwinds
Somehow foreign
But here born in
I'm deep bottled
Her, near tee-totaled
Oatmeal raison
Red velvet cake 'n
Wearin' same shirts 'n
Words left unsaid
But heard in bed
Somehow so different
But of same filiment
Cuddling atop covers
Alarm breaks slumber
But she still likes me
Off key
But she likes me
Arms entwined
But time unwinds
Somehow foreign
But here born in
I'm deep bottled
Her, near tee-totaled
Oatmeal raison
Red velvet cake 'n
Wearin' same shirts 'n
Words left unsaid
But heard in bed
Somehow so different
But of same filiment
Cuddling atop covers
Alarm breaks slumber
But she still likes me
Off key
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