Year: 2014

Categories
economics financial free market podcast

Life as I see it podcast episode #11 Bitcoin pt.2

 

This is my second podcast about Bitcoin. In it, I mention some links where you can read about some of the potential problems with bitcoins and then talk at length about some of the other potential uses of the protocol. Notice how I keep using the word potential? The links for the pitfalls are rather technical from an economics point of view, I don’t think there is any real discussion of the cryptology or network configuration. Ran across a great article in the NYT. Do read it, I found a lot to be interested in it.

 

How and Why Bitcoin will Plummet in Price by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution

The Marginal Cost of Cryptcurrency by Robert Sams at cryptonomics.org

A list of 83 different cryptocurrencies

Why Bitcoin Matters from the New York Times by Marc Andressen

 

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Categories
art games Philosophy podcast

Life as I See it podcast episode #10 Can Video Games be Art?

 

Can video games be art? Roger Ebert had declared that they couldn’t a fair number of years ago. Jeff Vogel weighed in on this topic and that lead to some discussion in my app.net stream about it. I think the answer to the question revolves around the relationship of the creator to an artwork in relation to the consumer of the artwork. In some ways, artists are unable to experience their own art because they have a very different motivation and experience. I think that playing a game, video or not, is much more akin to participating in the creation of art than it is to be the audience for it. 

 

Ebert on games not being art. He seems to rely mostly on the merits of games instead of making any sort of philosophical argument.

Jeff Vogel on video games and art. If you like old school role playing games make sure to check out his company Spiderweb Software.

Kelle Santiago’s TED talk about how video games are art. Gotta say I’m with Roger Ebert on this, I don’t find her argument compelling.

 

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Categories
economics financial

Life as I see it podcast episode #9 Bitcoin

 

My friend Mary had asked me to talk a bit about Bitcoin. It turned out to be a more complex topic than I had realized. In this podcast I talk about what Bitcoin is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of it, and some of the more important aspects of it. I think the even more powerful aspects of Bitcoin is still to come. I’ll do another podcast about those…

Something I mentioned that I’d get back to but didn’t in the podcast was the ability to do multiple transactions with the same bitcoins. It is possible to game the system but you would have to have 51% of the processing power of the entire bitcoin mining capacity. This became a bit of an issue the other day when the largest group of bitcoin miners announced that they control 45% of the processing power of the whole network. They did come out and say that they had no plans of going over the 51% level. Makes sense that they wouldn’t want to wreck the system, after all, they would be in the position to lose the most if they called into question the integrity of the system.

I mentioned that fees are low because miners are rewarded in bit coins. It isn’t clear how that will change once you can no longer mine new bitcoins.

 

Here are some extra links to read up on Bitcoin:

 

Bitcoin wiki. Wikipedia is always a good place to start for an overview.

Bitcoin values in different currencies. 

Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution talking about the problems of Bitcoin competitors. 

Horace Deidu of Asymco talking on The Critical path podcast about Bitcoin. A rambling, expansive talk on Bitcoin.

 

You can see all of my podcasts at bli.ms/u/eyes. You can subscribe using the RSS feed bli.ms/u/eyes/rss

 

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Categories
technology

Life as I see it podcast episode #8 Hell has frozen over

 

In my quest to ditch Google in as many ways as possible, I have actually gone back to a company that I wrote off a long time ago. I still loath Microsoft software with a passion but I have come around on their services. When someone suggested I try out Office 365 I thought they were nuts. I have zero interest in using Office, maybe even less than zero. I’m pretty sure I would pay money to avoid using Windows or Office ever again. The attraction to Office 365 wasn’t Office, it was the mail system behind it. I use Apple software to access my mail and contacts, I only use Microsoft for the back end. Email providers I had been looking into were going to be about $40 a year. Office 365 small business is $60. For that amount I get spam free email and full Exchange support. What the hell, thought I’d give it a try. Once I got everything set up it worked just fine. With any luck, I’ll be away from Gmail completely very soon.

I thought that me paying money would signal Hell freezing over. It turns out that me seeing usefulness in Microsoft services was a far bigger change. Microsoft has a very straightforward business model. Pay them money and you get services from them. That is in stark contrast to Google which gives you services for free while taking advantage of your information to do… whatever it is they do to profit from it. Apple software (and hardware obviously) with Microsoft services, a great combination.

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Categories
economics

Life as I see it podcast episode #7. Money, what is it?

 

My friend Mary wanted me to talk a little about Bitcoin. I’m going to start that by talking about money in general. There are some interesting things about money that are really important to understand if you want to know how something could be used as money. I’ll do a few more podcasts before I finish up the topic. Dunno when that’ll happen though..

Categories
technology

Life as I see it podcast #6, I hate you Google! Again…

 

Google’s latest shenanigans are making me reevaluate what services I really want to be using from them. On the prowl for a different email provider, any suggestions? Must have two factor authentication and good spam filtering.

Categories
Uncategorized

Happy New Year!

 

A look back at 2013 and what 2014 might have in store for me. Special thanks to my friends on app.net and family that got me through the rough parts of the year! Discovering how easy it was to make podcasts through app.net really made a difference during my darker days. I feel like I’m going in the right direction, looking forward to what 2014 has in store for me:)