tepe1

I think XML is better than protobufs when it comes to long-term even storage. Three very big problems with protobufs:

(1) Protobufs are not self-describing. There is a meta-model but you can't really understand the data unless you have access to the schema. This means just to be safe you might end up storing the schema beside every message or at least a reference to the schema. Welcome to the schema management business.

(2) Protobufs aren't extensible. In practice this means any time a system wants to introduce a new field they have to submit a proposal to some sort of highly centralized "Architecture Group." This is followed by lots of debate. Then, if you're lucky, it gets put in and a few systems adopt it. With XML you can slice off namespaces and let people innovate in those namespaces.

(3) Protobufs aren't human readable. At the end of the day this means you need special tools to do anything with them. Meanwhile XML can actually be imported directly into Excel.

There's a whole ecosystem of powerful technologies around XML that make it work very well in this case. People underestimate how valuable this is because they're still not thinking of the log as its own first-class product.

That said, perfect is the enemy of good. This could be a good step in the right direction and migrating to XML in the future would be pretty easy because it becomes a very simple event transformation.

Virtually all of these currencies are very vulnerable to what's called a "Sybil attack." Bitcoin is no different [1].

Of course, to economists the concept of a "Sybil attack" is nonsense. Imagine if tomorrow the US Congress voted to give every citizen a billion dollars. Would this be a Sybil attack on the US dollar? Or would it be democracy at work? There's no difference. At the end of the day the majority (of the authority) sets the rules and does literally decide what happens.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#Sybil_attack

What you're saying is absolutely nothing new. There's a lot of FUD and confusion in this thread (no surprise) but this has been apparent from the very beginning. "A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy" [1] makes the essential nature of cryptoeconomics very clear. In short: (a) all currencies are social phenomena (b) all the fancy math does is replace the "men with guns" that protect physical currencies -- that is, currencies must be economically defensible and (c) what actually gives real-world currencies their value is the presence of a tax authority who creates the currency and then demands it back at some later point [2]. PoS creates an absolute demand for the currency; it is nothing more than a formalization of currency power.

> So, aside from being a geeky toy and new market for gambling, where has cryptocurrency actually succeeded?

A better question is -- why are there so many currencies to begin with? Why isn't there a single currency that everybody uses?

Once you understand the answer to this question the value of cryptocurrencies become clear. You said it yourself: currency is inherently a contextual and social value construct. Different communities have different values. Communities that develop currency power will always triumph over communities that don't because they can collaborate more effectively. Currencies don't "succeed," communities succeed -- and they do this partly by leveraging currency power. The answer to your question is right in front of you but you just don't want to see it: the cryptocurrency development communities themselves are already wildly successful and have demonstrated the ability to raise enormous funds and collaborate effectively.

[1] https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-p...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boHE_dR159k

> It's my opinion that most women don't want to be programmers/ICs deep down, but in a bubble environment many women will gravitate towards CS because it's where the action is in the economy, and feminists pave the way with aggressive affirmative action campaigns that make programming an artificially attractive choice for women.

Why is this your opinion?

Have you spoken to a lot of women? Have you conducted any kind of surveys or polls? Or are you just making up whatever fits your biases?

> It's like James mentions in his memo, from a logical perspective it's completely arbitrary to want to move women into software because it's mostly men

The naivete of HN never fails.

It's perfectly rational for any business to want more women. Or minorities. Or even more children. Every business in the world wants the deepest and biggest talent pool possible.

And of course, this is the real issue. Once programming is demystified and women do enter the field in force it'll be pretty hard for deeply mediocre javascript monkeys to command six figure salaries, won't it?

All the fuss, all the whining -- it's completely self-serving. The idea that women can thrive in law, medicine and hard sciences but they can't master CSS is laughable.

But here's the thing: it's not mastermind feminists who are driving this. It's capitalism. People can whine about feminism and uppity women taking their jerbs -- this is absolutely nothing new. Still, despite pervasive discrimination, the market is going to produce that talent. There was a time when people thought programming was difficult. Only eleet hackers could thrive in Sillicon Valley. Now middle schoolers build Android Apps in a couple of days.

In the end businesses are going to search endlessly for more and better talent, people will gravitate to the jobs that produce the most stable income streams, and everybody is going to strive to keep the market open and fair. You can fight this or whine about fantasy feminist schemes or you can embrace a future where the field has been dramatically opened to all comers.