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Smart contracts are not recognized as legal contracts and don’t offer the same protections. They are more like stored procedures in that they are scripts that execute on a blockchain.

Vitalek Buterin, founder of Ethereum regrets naming them smart contracts.

See also:

• NFTs are a subset of ownership

Smart contracts that run on a distributed ledger effectively need to work forever to be useful. Working forever requires maintenance and security—the longer a computer program runs, the more exposure it has to change and the opportunity to be exploited.

However, programming as an industry has little experience with this kind of operating model. It’s not surprising to see large scale exploits or errors. I think we will be surprised when maintenance burdens and tech debt cause issues for higher level abstractions (DeFi) or stifle development of the underlying protocols.

See also:

• An Engineer’s Hype-Free Observations on Web3 literary notes
• Smart contracts are not legal contracts
• Smart contracts and their accompanying blockchain need to exist long enough for the Lindy Effect to kick in
• Web3

NFTs lack the legal and regulatory protection of other forms of property. In the event of a dispute, there is no oversight. This fundamental principle of crypto projects (decentralization, no middle man, zero trust) limits what can be represented as a non-fungible token.

See also:

• An Engineer’s Hype-Free Observations on Web3 literary notes
• Smart contracts are not legal contracts and since NFTs are implemented as smart contracts this might have some bearing on the rights of ownership (but I’m not a lawyer!)
• Web3

Distributed autonomous organzations (DAOs) have more in common with limited liability corporations (LLCs) than C Corporations. There is near infinite variability possible in an LLC’s operating agreement similar to how DAOs can be grant DAOs, investment DAOs, protocol DAOs, and many more. C Corps on the other hand have converged on, more or less, a standard—Delaware C Corp and a well-known governance structure based on ownership of stock.

See also:

• Smart contracts are not legal contracts
• Continuous organizations don’t make sense for high growth startups
• Web3

List of places that will pay you to move and work remotely:

• Augusta, Maine ($15,660)
• Baltimore, Maryland ($5,000)
• Beaumont, Texas ($2,000)
• Bemidji, Minnesota ($4,000)
• Bloomfield, Iowa ($10,000)
• Bloomington, Indiana ($6,600)
• Britt, Iowa ($10,000)
• Charleston, West Virginia ($5,000)
• Curtis, Nebraska ($3,000)
• Daviess County, Indiana ($5,000)
• French Lick, Indiana ($5,477)
• Greene County, Indiana ($5,000)
• Greensburg, Indiana ($7,000)
• Harmony, Minnesota ($12,000)
• Jasper, Indiana ($5,000)
• Johnstown, Pennsylvania ($5,000)
• La Villa, Texas ($3,000)
• Lewisburg, West Virginia ($20,000)
• Mankato, Kansas ($3,000)
• Montpelier, Vermont ($15,000)
• Morgantown, West Virginia ($20,000)
• Muncie, Indiana ($5,000)
• Natchez, Mississippi ($8,500)
• Newton, Iowa ($12,500)
• Northwest, Arkansas ($10,750)
• Ontario, Oregon ($10,000)
• Osceola, Iowa ($3,000)
• Quincy, Illinois ($5,000)
• Rutherford County, Tennessee ($10,000)
• Southwest, Michigan ($16,000)
• Stillwater, Oklahoma ($7,500)
• The Shoals, Alabama ($10,000)
• Tulsa, Oklahoma ($10,000, 1200 moved over last 3 years)
• West Lafayette, Indiana ($8,245)
• Topeka, Kansas ($11,000)

See also:

• American workers are willing to take a pay cut to work remote

Using a fingerprint as authentication is trivial to break using a picture of fingerprint, some acetate, and wood glue. As a comment in the HN thread pointed out, the problem with biometrics is when they are used as passwords to authenticate who you are.

The Millenium Tower in downtown SF is sinking. Before it’s completing, the concrete skyscraper had already sunk 16 inches—building code allows for 6 inches of sinkage.

It’s construction is supported using 950 friction piles to evenly distribute the weight. This is a common technique, but the skyscraper far heavier than previously built.

Below the friction piles is an ice-age-old layer of mud known as Old Bay Clay. Possibly due to other construction in the area, Old Bay Clay is settling faster than anticipated which is causing the Millenium Tower to sink and lean to one side.

Read about What Really Happened at the Millenium Tower?

Values of a community or organization are embedded in every UI decision. There is a difference in values when a company’s homepage touts their biggest sales or a stream of every transaction. Whether or not they meant it, it’s still an artifact of values.

From this tweet by @digitalcoleman.

See also:

• Maybe judging quality by whatever is visible is more of a value judgment.
• Steve jobs famously said “design is how it works”. Ideally there is intention behind the values that are on display.

Emacs is not a great text editor in and of itself—it’s a building material for the best text editor you can make for yourself.

I find this to be absolutely true as I stare at my 1700 line init.el that customizes Emacs to my needs. There is a way to do pretty much anything you could want with enough fiddling.

Read Why Emacs: Redux by Bozhidar Batsov.

Baboons are really good at finding water. Baboons also really love salt. A bushman trying to survive in the wild can use a baboon’s innate ability to find water when it’s too scarce to find.

They set a salt trap by digging a small hole and put salt in it. The baboon sticks their hand in to grasp the salt, but can’t remove their hand without letting go of the salt thus becoming trapped. The bushman captures the baboon and then gives it all the salt it will eat (a lot). The baboon gets thirsty. The bushman lets the baboon out and follows it. The baboon, thirsty, immediately goes and finds the nearest water source.

From Dave Chappelle’s interview on CBS This Morning where he used this as an analogy for being trapped by fame and fortune.

Some people argue that there is no such thing as “good taste” in art. However, you can prove that it exists by trying to prove that it does not.

If you take the position that good taste does not exist then you must accept that there are no differences in the quality of judgment of art between people and therefore any art is good art. If any art can be “good art” then everything is equivalent and there must not be a difference between artists. Therefore there is no such thing as a “good artist” either.

From Is There Such a Thing as Good Taste? by Paul Graham.

See also:

• Taste, as it exists for designing products, is a refined sense of judgement and finding balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole.
• good taste is an intuition about power

Good taste is a closeness between what you perceive as power vs what is power, independent of who is observing it. This understanding of the difference between real and represented is an intuition of power.

Read the comment by motohagiography.

See also:

• Taste is the refined sense of judgement and finding balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole
• Good taste must exist because good artists exist

A sales narrative is a cohesive story that explains why customers need your product.

What makes up a problem-solution-specifics narrative?

• Identify the problem, who has it, and what it costs
• What’s changed in the world to make this solveable in a new way and what that means for the problem
• How the new solution works to solve the problem
• Proof that validates your solution

From Founding Sales.

See also:

• A sales pitch is the opposite of a VC pitch, it’s less about you and more about them
• Sell solutions not software and describe the solution in terms the buyer uses to evaluate it
• Developing a sales narrative is an iterative process, it might also help identify product problems
• Shape of Stories

There was a meme in on Twitter that you should unfollow VCs and follow artists. With the advent of NFTs however, art Twitter is now filled with crypto hawkers that can be quite grating. (Photographers seem to be immune to this so far—is there not NFT photographs?).

Updated advice for making Twitter more enjoyable in 2021? Unfollow artists and follow archaeologists. They’re content is fascinating with great pictures of ancient artifacts and architecture.

See also:

• Living a rich digital life means not having ads blasted at you constantly

When things are going poorly it feels like you are pushing your users. Sales are harder, finding new users is harder, etc. When things are going well it feels like users are pulling you. Users are driving you to get what they need, everything feels easier.

See also:

• Pull helps you build an initial product a small group of users love
• Pull is closer to product market fit
• High retention products are the most viral, it’s difficult to imagine a completely sales oriented (push) product that would also be high retention

Read the full transcript

The term “creator economy” and the lexicon around it has broad appeal—who doesn’t want to be a “creator” or a “builder”? Being “indie” is associated with being cool and (slightly) counter-culture.

It’s also aspirational. For many, I suspect the creator economy is more of a “part-time creator economy” or “dream job economy”. After all, it is one of the more difficult wealth-creation mechanisms out there.

See also:

• No one identifies as conventional minded

A good analogy might be graduating from university and getting your first job. You might have been really really great at school, studying, getting good grades, whatever, but then realize it translates very poorly to that first job. So much was taken care of without you realizing it and very little prepares you for doing the job other than, well, doing the job.

Starting a company, especially after coming from a stint at a larger company, is a lot like that.

GitHub powered (Commentor needs to oauth GitHub to comment)

• Utterances uses GitHub issues
• Gitalk uses GitHub issues
• Giscus uses GitHub discussions

A group of pioneers taking the Oregon Trail to California in 1847 became trapped in the Sierras due to snow storms. They ran out of food and resorted to cannibalism. Interestingly, there are many places named after them near Lake Tahoe.

See also:

• Shipwrecked boys didn’t devolve into savagery, but trapped pioneers resorted to cannibalism

One can think of depression and anxiety as two ends of a spectrum. Depression often involves ruminating on things that have happened in the past. Anxiety often involves worrying about the future where something might happen.

Being present by definition means you are not living in the past or the future. This is the space of mindfulness, being aware of the present moment and the contents of your mind without being swept away in thought.

(I’m not sure who to attribute this to, but it is not an original thought).

See also:

• Awareness is key to being present
• The rate of depressive symptoms in US adults quadrupled during the pandemic
• Stress and anxiety are cumulative

Crypto is a hotbed of scams, but we shouldn’t be so surprised. It’s not that crypto enables new kinds of scams, but it’s a forum for old scams to be used again. Eventually, legislation and oversight will kick in and it will be harder for scammers to scam. In turn, they will take their playbook of scams and reuse them someplace else.

This Twitter thread from @foone describes a “poke” scam where an NFT’s price is inflated and pawned off on an unsuspecting victim. This is a centuries old scam made new in crypto. However, it’s unlikely to persist once the IRS starts tracking transactions and taxing crypto investments (scammers will move on to the next scam or the next forum).

See also:

• Web3

I’m an optimist with anxiety—constantly fretting about the future, but optimistic that it will work out fine. This neatly sums up how I feel most days.

I suspect many entrepreneurs are a similar combination. It’s difficult to take on such an endeavor while being pessimistic.

I would go one step further to say default optimism is rational, regardless of what you do.

See also:

• Depression is living in the past, anxiety is living in the future