Technology, books, travel, and linguistics
Lecture 6: Bitcoin Miner interactions and Game Theory Game Theory: P x S -> R x P P: Players S: Strategies R: Rewards Examples For the prisoner’s dilemma, tit-for-tat with some positive randomization is the best strategy. Trench soldiers in […]
Lecture 5: Bitcoin mining How to mine Bitcoin Download and run Bitcoin-core to run full Bitcoin node Listen for a new transaction, assemble a pre-block Solve the puzzle (~270 attempts) Broadcast the block Profit The network runs on port 8333. Non-responding […]
Lecture 4: Blockchains 80 bytes block consists of 32 bytes previous block hash, 32 bytes transactions Merkle tree hash, timestamp, bits, nonce, etc. Each block is <= 1MB to minimize the propagation times. Therefore, large transactions require more service fee […]
Lecture 3: Bitcoin overview There are three Bitcoin protocols Consensus Protocol – decides what the ledger is Transaction Protocol – assigns meaning to the ledger Network Protocol – the P2P protocol which decides what new should be added to the […]
Lecture 2: Creating a digital currency Desirable properties of a good digital ledger No deletion Temporal ordering Global consensus Semantic correctness Live – writable, no DOS, no censorship Attempts to create a digital currency in the increasing order of sophistication. […]
Lecture 1: Introduction Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency with distributed trust. The blockchain is a public append-only ledger. The append-only property is sufficient for having a currency. Hash functions: H: M -> T where |M| >> |T| that is space of […]
Maui is a small but beautiful island of Hawai’i. Here is a recommended 4-day itinerary for Maui. This itinerary is a slightly modified version of what I was able to do. The public transport on the island is poor. For solo travel […]
Earlier, the Software world was rigidly divided between closed and open-source software. Microsoft Windows is closed-source, GNU/Linux is open-source. Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes are closed-source, LibreOffice is open-source. Turbo C++ is closed-source, and GCC is open-source. But now, a […]
Don’t use platform fragments (android.app.Fragment), they have been deprecated and can trigger version-specific bugs. Use the support library fragments (android.support.v4.app.Fragment) instead. A Fragment is created explicitly via your code or recreated implicitly by the FragmentManager. The FragmentManager can only recreate […]
We sailed on the Windstar cruise in French Polynesia. On a 7-day cruise, we stopped on six different islands, including two days in Bora Bora. The cruise ship has a crew of 99 and 74 staterooms for~150 passengers. This ratio […]