You may be wondering why @bristoliver rather cryptically RT’d a chart that I posted last night. The answer is not just that he loves quadratic fits on log axes, but that this chart may –and I stress may– hint at a vaccine effect amongst the over 80s THREAD
ok, I lied. but strictly it's not a new graph, just a new trendline (now a quadratic on the log plot). looks um... quite a good fit. so I'd say that was interesting. pic.twitter.com/qkgyMf1ya8
— James Ward (@JamesWard73) January 27, 2021
Been thinking about where we are, where we might be going, what effect vaccines might have and how to tell. This thread may not happen all at once, and will get a bit mathematical in a couple of places (sorry!), but I will put in pictures. It's yet another argument for log scales
— Oliver Johnson (@BristOliver) January 24, 2021






More from Crypto
Out of curiosity I dug into how NFT's actually reference the media you're "buying" and my eyebrows are now orbiting the moon
Short version:
The NFT token you bought either points to a URL on the internet, or an IPFS hash. In most circumstances it references an IPFS gateway on the internet run by the startup you bought the NFT from.
Oh, and that URL is not the media. That URL is a JSON metadata file
Here's an example. This artwork is by Beeple and sold via Nifty:
https://t.co/TlJKH8kAew
The NFT token is for this JSON file hosted directly on Nifty's servers:
https://t.co/GQUaCnObvX
THAT file refers to the actual media you just "bought". Which in this case is hosted via a @cloudinary CDN, served by Nifty's servers again.
So if Nifty goes bust, your token is now worthless. It refers to nothing. This can't be changed.
"But you said some use IPFS!"
Let's look at the $65m Beeple, sold by Christies. Fancy.
https://t.co/1G9nCAdetk
That NFT token refers directly to an IPFS hash (https://t.co/QUdtdgtssH). We can take that IPFS hash and fetch the JSON metadata using a public gateway:
https://t.co/CoML7psBhF
Short version:
The NFT token you bought either points to a URL on the internet, or an IPFS hash. In most circumstances it references an IPFS gateway on the internet run by the startup you bought the NFT from.
Oh, and that URL is not the media. That URL is a JSON metadata file
Here's an example. This artwork is by Beeple and sold via Nifty:
https://t.co/TlJKH8kAew
The NFT token is for this JSON file hosted directly on Nifty's servers:
https://t.co/GQUaCnObvX

THAT file refers to the actual media you just "bought". Which in this case is hosted via a @cloudinary CDN, served by Nifty's servers again.
So if Nifty goes bust, your token is now worthless. It refers to nothing. This can't be changed.
"But you said some use IPFS!"
Let's look at the $65m Beeple, sold by Christies. Fancy.
https://t.co/1G9nCAdetk
That NFT token refers directly to an IPFS hash (https://t.co/QUdtdgtssH). We can take that IPFS hash and fetch the JSON metadata using a public gateway:
https://t.co/CoML7psBhF

I've just read one of the most lucid, wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary critiques of cryptocurrency and blockchain I've yet to encounter. 1/
It comes from David "DSHR" Rosenthal, a distinguished technologist whose past achievements including helping to develop X11 and the core technologies for Nvidia.
https://t.co/tkAMShno4k 2/
Rosenthal's critique is a transcript of a lecture he gave to Stanford's EE380 class, adapted from a December 2021 talk for an investor conference. 3/
It is a bang-up-to-date synthesis of many of the critical writings on the subject, glued together with Rosenthal's own deep technical expertise. He calls it "Can We Mitigate Cryptocurrencies' Externalities?"
The presence of "externalities" in Rosenthal's title is key. 4/
Rosenthal identifies blockchainism's core ideology as emerging from "the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley and the cypherpunks," and states that "libertarianism's attraction is based on ignoring externalities."
This is an important critique of libertarianism. 5/

It comes from David "DSHR" Rosenthal, a distinguished technologist whose past achievements including helping to develop X11 and the core technologies for Nvidia.
https://t.co/tkAMShno4k 2/
Rosenthal's critique is a transcript of a lecture he gave to Stanford's EE380 class, adapted from a December 2021 talk for an investor conference. 3/
It is a bang-up-to-date synthesis of many of the critical writings on the subject, glued together with Rosenthal's own deep technical expertise. He calls it "Can We Mitigate Cryptocurrencies' Externalities?"
The presence of "externalities" in Rosenthal's title is key. 4/
Rosenthal identifies blockchainism's core ideology as emerging from "the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley and the cypherpunks," and states that "libertarianism's attraction is based on ignoring externalities."
This is an important critique of libertarianism. 5/
I'm sure someone else has explained this, but it is just so cool and I want to explain how this works.
So Curve is awesome for swaps between similar assets, right? The fact that they trade very close to each other is a key part about how Curve works, using it's custom swap invariant function.
That's step 1
Step 2 is that Synthetix is awesome for creating "synthetic assets" (aka synths) which are assets that trade like other assets, that are backed by another, entirely different asset. Basically, a plastic banana that I can buy and sell like a real banana.
Synthetix has a feature that lets you swap between any two synths with zero slippage and a flat fee. That's because it is simply converting the sythentic asset into another synthetic asset, the backing for the synth doesn't change it just uses a different price oracle now.
This is important. Absolutely no slippage, at any size
Swap $1m sUSD for $1m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
Swap $10m sUSD for $10m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
swap $100m sUSD for $100m sBTC? Well, there isn't that many synths in Curve, yet but you get the point. The only limit is the pool depth
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) January 15, 2021
So Curve is awesome for swaps between similar assets, right? The fact that they trade very close to each other is a key part about how Curve works, using it's custom swap invariant function.
That's step 1
Step 2 is that Synthetix is awesome for creating "synthetic assets" (aka synths) which are assets that trade like other assets, that are backed by another, entirely different asset. Basically, a plastic banana that I can buy and sell like a real banana.
Synthetix has a feature that lets you swap between any two synths with zero slippage and a flat fee. That's because it is simply converting the sythentic asset into another synthetic asset, the backing for the synth doesn't change it just uses a different price oracle now.
This is important. Absolutely no slippage, at any size
Swap $1m sUSD for $1m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
Swap $10m sUSD for $10m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
swap $100m sUSD for $100m sBTC? Well, there isn't that many synths in Curve, yet but you get the point. The only limit is the pool depth
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To people who are under the impression that you can get rich quickly by working on an app, here are the stats for https://t.co/az8F12pf02
📈 ~12000 vistis
☑️ 109 transactions
💰 353€ profit (285 after tax)
I have spent 1.5 months on this app. You can make more $ in 2 days.
🤷♂️
I'm still happy that I launched a paid app bcs it involved extra work:
- backend for processing payments (+ permissions, webhooks, etc)
- integration with payment processor
- UI for license activation in Electron
- machine activation limit
- autoupdates
- mailgun emails
etc.
These things seemed super scary at first. I always thought it was way too much work and something would break. But I'm glad I persisted. So far the only problem I have is that mailgun is not delivering the license keys to certain domains like https://t.co/6Bqn0FUYXo etc. 👌
omg I just realized that me . com is an Apple domain, of course something wouldn't work with these dicks
📈 ~12000 vistis
☑️ 109 transactions
💰 353€ profit (285 after tax)
I have spent 1.5 months on this app. You can make more $ in 2 days.
🤷♂️

I'm still happy that I launched a paid app bcs it involved extra work:
- backend for processing payments (+ permissions, webhooks, etc)
- integration with payment processor
- UI for license activation in Electron
- machine activation limit
- autoupdates
- mailgun emails
etc.
These things seemed super scary at first. I always thought it was way too much work and something would break. But I'm glad I persisted. So far the only problem I have is that mailgun is not delivering the license keys to certain domains like https://t.co/6Bqn0FUYXo etc. 👌
omg I just realized that me . com is an Apple domain, of course something wouldn't work with these dicks