hashtones

Great article! Especially the parts about jumping to self-righteous conclusion, instead of making a space of peace available to the person whose come to you with trouble (that you can often very likely solve with a little bit of attention and care).

What would be really cool if the "hacker community" actually tried to live up to at least the standard set out by the 'Hacker Manifesto' so many years ago...

Not to mention, it's not so much because we forget them, but by writing them down they can be later cued and synchronized to other ideas for fruitful promulgation.

One interesting fact that you may not know is that the often assumed symbolic notation of algebra (and the rest of mathematics) is fairly recent: that is, the likes of Euler and Fermat were known to write out the entirety of the mathematical logic as a "word problem".

Why I bring this up, is because often I've thought that the innovators of mathematics probably benefited from this action: probably it is what enabled them to solve and derive problems we still today have difficulty resolving.

I bring this up to highlight a point about the philosophical underpinnings of mathematics--that as necessary as it is to understand the syntax and grammar of mathematics today, it is just as necessary to wrestle with the ideas in a form more palpable to your mind: language.

So what I'm saying, really, is that if you find yourself having difficulty with mathematics, as much as it is a matter of "doing the work" (solving the problem, crunching the number) as it is with any other skill, it is as equally important (and maybe even "more" helpful) to approach and take on the logical reasoning as a function of what you can put into words... At least, doing so, I think and hope it would help you render yourself more capable of tackling mathematics.

A good book to start you off in this way, is Bertrand Russel's Introduction to the Mathematical Philosophy. If you have to read it several times, it's been shown rewatching something as higher playerback speed is more effective than just reading it once, so don't be afraid to reread sections (or even in math) as many times as it takes for the knowledge to become explicit to you.

Oh and Khan Academy is a great resource.

Finally, if you have some money you can definitely find a math tutor--if you can find one who you can relate to / who speaks to you, it'll make a radical difference too.

Hope this helps!

Afterward: if you want a problem that'll stump any mathematician, take a look at the Collatz Conjecture: very simple, but understanding it might help you understand how to approach problems in mathematics (although this one has still yet to be proven, and as Paul Erdos said, mathematics is still not yet equiped to prove it, despite how simple it is).

Too bad page rank became the bastard child of SEO bots instead of the novel, mathematically innovative tool it was.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West

https://www.nyrb.com/products/when-we-cease-to-understand-th...

In case anyone missed this point too, blockchain technology enables the notion of robotic singularity. Not saying that's what it is, but when your robot (or car) is connected to an immutable ledger, it has access to everything every other robot (or car) senses, so for instance robots connected to a blockchain can synchronize their orchestration (so, for instance, making it more possible to produce self driving cars).

Author needs to DIY research and see that web3 is more than just btc and eth. I remember first programming for Android 2.3 back in the day, and the bubble of the late 90s. Now everyone and their kid has a smart phone (yes I know 1/3 of the world apparently isn't digitally connected, but that rate and global literacy are rising higher than they've ever been in history).

I am no fan of conning people out of their money, and there is plenty of that. But when people talk shit about web3 they sound as ignorant as people do when they talked shit about the early internet. You think gas fees are high? I remember when 56k was fast, and now look where we are (5G). Especially when a person, who I'd presume is intelligent enough to code and write such a piece, should know better: if you want to pick a fight with web3, at least pick a real enemy and not contribute to the FUD that web3 already has enough of.

Author should have looked into Dfinity's ICP as it is blockchain technology implemented not as a financial fad or for trendy hype (or even to try and resolve settlement layer solutions), but as a technological basis empowering developers to utilize this new technology we have (blockchain) to build and connect the world with it.

*On an unrelated note, I also find it disappointment that while developers are smart people, they haven't yet figured out how to organize collectively. Ironic and tragic that the gains of the social and labor rights movements translated into the luxury of wealth, time and opportunity for a generation of kids to grow up and have the ability to disrupt entire economic industries, but still are either self centered (or don't know any better) to a make difference in raising precedent the rest of the world deals with. How many software developers do you know that have been encouraged, maybe even unknowingly, to burnout (literally abusing their developer's own creative and productive desire) by their employers? And to think our (coders) best example of social progress is just Jobs (think different) or Musk (here's a hint: unless you plan on leaving the rest of the Earth behind, maybe focus on also improving the possible trajectories the rest of the world can get on board with).

Anyways.

If you want to jump to the cutting edge of Web 3.0 options, you might consider Dfinity and their reification of smart contract use value in the form of canisters: you can deploy your static or dynamic React (or even React Native) project "fully Web 3.0" enabled by dropping in their js-agent library into your project and get all the decentralized, distributed trustless (and if you look at their stress tests/network moments reliable) benefits of a Web 3.0 backend more easily than you'd ever imagine (their CanCan tiktok clone is ~<1000 lines of code, source is on Github).

Apologies if Cloudflare is actually "a competitor" with Fleek (a similar hosting option built on Dfinity) I'm not trying to spam or shamelessly self promote (not affiliated with any enumerated here), I just mention this because the ease of use (between using Eth or Icp to adopt Web 3.0) is a difference of day and night; and if you are a developer looking to get into Web 3.0 you'll thank me later.