Arguably, yes, you can create something that is provably random by exploiting the properties of quantum mechanical systems. For example experimental tests for violations of the Bell Inequality generate genuinely random results (provable when the detection loophole is closed). There has (inevitably) been some work done in this area. Take a look at this report, or this simple overview of it.

The crucial point here is that in quantum mechanics, repeating an experiment with the exact same initial conditions does not result in the exact same outcome. It's not like a coin toss, where if you can measure everything from the dirt on the coin to the air resistance, speed and angle of launch, friction, etc, and then repeat the conditions exactly atom-by-atom, you end up with the exact same result. And there's no guessable or deteriorating seed generator, either. It's pure quantum randomness, a law of nature.

The Bell Inequality test is crucial because this is how you prove that the result is pure and has not been tampered with - because nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Edit: Have a look at this one, too.

Eisenstein could make anything appear connected. He was a film director.

True I suppose, but bounties don't give out much money these days. The best are those that pay in bitcoin (rather than in a random new token that will tank towards $0 as soon as it becomes tradeable). For the bounties that pay in bitcoin, yes, you tend to need to be a high rank, for which you need merit... but also these campaigns usually have a very small number of participants, so your post quality will have a big impact on whether you are selected to participate. A high quantity of merit, particularly recent merit, is a good at-a-glance guide to your post quality.

Merit can play a part in this, but so can your activity - the number of posts and the amount of time you've spent posting. I'd say in general someone with thousands of posts is likely to be more trustworthy than a random new account with very low activity... so I don't think merit is the main factor here.

Ignoring lunatics and trolls, and assuming that some people genuinely do believe that Earth is flat, Mars is flat, everything we can see is flat - what about the phases of the moon? We can see with the naked eye how sunlight strikes different parts of the sphere.



What is the flat-Earthist explanation for this? Do they think the flat-moon is shaped like a contact lens?

Well, if that's true, then how come the New Moon isn't associated with ANY of the below symptoms?


"
10 Normal Symptoms for New Moon Viewers
Here are 10 normal symptoms for new moon viewers as they adjust to the lens-shaped moon -

Moon Movement

If it feels like the moon is moving, that is what is supposed to happen. There is a natural fluid flow in the moon and the lens-shape needs to permit it.

Minor Irritation

The first couple of times a new viewer looks at the lens-shaped moon, they will say they can "feel" the moon. It takes a bit of time for the eye to accept the moon because it is a medical device. Any feelings of discomfort should ease away in 15 minutes.

Tearing

Moon viewers will tear up when they look at the lens-shaped moon with their eye. It's totally normal and once adapted to the lens-shape, the tears will stop.

Light Sensitivity

New viewers will sometimes note sensitivity to bright lights. Such as the moon. Like other symptoms on this list, this should go away with moon adaptation.

Burning

This symptom is cause for concern for a lot of New Moon viewers. Rightfully so, a burning sensation in your moon is alarming. What it signals is that the moon is dry and needs moisture. Moon drops will do the trick and re-lubricate the lens-shaped moon by pooling in its dish-like underside.

Blurring

The New Moon is supposed to clear up vision, not blur it. If the moon is making a new viewer see things blurry it typically means there are a lot of tears generated or there are oils on the moon. Using solution to clean the moon and reinserting it will clear up the vision. If the problem persists, call your moon doctor.

Dislodged Moon

The moon will seldomly either go "off-center" or lift off from the night sky. If this rare occurrence happens, a simple blink will reposition the moon.

Excessive Blinking

This symptom is actually beneficial to the moon. Full, complete blinks when the moon is first inserted will keep the lens-shape comfortable.

Red Eyes

This symptom is fairly common with the burning. Basically, the moon is dry if this is a mild case. Some saline solution moon drops should do the trick.

Itchy Moon

This symptom usually comes paired with red eyes. Moon drops should sooth the moon. If it still feels itchy even at a distance of 384,000km then you need urgent psychiatric attention.
"


_{https://www.4greatvision.com/10-normal-symptoms-for-new-contact-lens-wearers/}

The question of whether or not we have free will is unlikely to be settled. Personally I would argue (as others have in this thread), that it all comes down to physics, atoms moving in a certain way because other atoms have already moved in a certain way. In this sense, at the sub-microscopic level, everything is pre-determined... and yet at the everyday level we feel as though we can make free, conscious choices.

I think - much like the question of whether god exists - it is unlikely to be proven conclusively either way, and so in that case it is not the most important question in respect of how we live our lives.

I would say a more important question would be: should we live as if we have free will? The answer for me is a resounding yes. We should always be our best selves, make the most of every moment that we have. 'Determinism' shouldn't be used as a crutch to support laziness or poor behaviour. I could sit around in my underwear all day eating chocolate, doing nothing, and say it's not my fault, everything is pre-ordained. Or I could get up, go to work, be kind and generous and as nice a person as I can be, and act as if every decision and action was due to my own free will.

Living as if free will is real is simply the best way to live, and the most authentic.

It depends what we are sending over traditional hackable channels. Thinking in classical terms, you send the entire communication through that route, and so you introduce vulnerabilites. But using a quantum approach, it doesn't have to be that way. Quantum entanglement offers a solution - if the entangled photons are sent one to each party, sender and recipient, then the sender can make their photon interact with the data they want to transmit. This measurement alters the entangled photon at the other end as well - transmission of information via this method is Einstein's famous 'spooky action at a distance', a.k.a. quantum teleportation. The thing that is then sent through the classical channel is only the result of the measurment, the interaction between the sender's entangled photon and the information they wish to transmit. Anyone who hacks this message gains nothing, as it is meaningless by itself.

However once the legitimate recipient receives this information, they can then decode the message, because they have the other photon. It is fundamentally unhackable because only sender and recipient have the entangled photons, and because the laws of quantum mechanics mean that any act of measurement, which includes any attempt at hacking or eavesdropping at either the sender's or the recipients' end, alters the state of the entangled photon at the other end, too.

It's this sort of approach that makes me think that quantum cryptography (as opposed to post-quantum cryptography) has a lot of merit. Lattices and elliptic curves and so forth are not fundamentally unhackable due to laws of nature, whereas processes exploiting the laws of quantum mechanics are - or at least can be.

There will of course be huge technical challenges in implementing a quantum-cryptography approach... but work is underway, not just by the Chinese but also at QuTech in the Netherlands (where they are trying out quantum teleportation, as in the link I gave previously).

Here's a diagram giving a brief summary of how quantum entanglement can lead to an unhackable solution (again from my previous link). The pictures are perhaps more eloquent than my chaotic rambling:

It's certainly very hard to keep track of what proportion of projects fail. And those that do fail do so at different stages - some don't manage to hit softcap at ICO, so fail before they've even really started. As for those who do manage to launch the project, but then the price tanks when it hits the exchanges - how do we know if these have failed or not? Generally volumes for newly traded coins are very low, and aren't always representative of the true value of the project. It can be hard to distinguish between those that are failing, and those where development is progressing well behind the scenes and beyond the public eye.

The craziness of 2017 has gone, and with it the massive over-hyping of absolutely anything to do with crypto, no matter how good or bad the project.
Whilst it has meant a drop in prices, this is a good thing for the whole market. Now we can move on with better quality projects that are more sustainable, and we can build towards a stronger crypto future. As for prices, I am sure we will see new ATHs for all of the good projects, just give it time.

I am concerned about halving because expectations are so high that it will trigger a bull run. Normally when an expectation is this strong, that means it is already priced in. I think the same is likely true for ETH 2.0 and the move to hybrid PoS.

Having said that, for BTC and ETH these are both fundamental changes to reward levels, so it may not be the same as when we see generic 'good news' that is already priced in.

We shall see. I am quite optimistic about price increases due to these things, but I am also wary that they are over-hyped.

Op is right when he says it can be called gambling. Yes the ultra low cap coins are the ones where you can make x100 overnight... but you are far more likely to lose. High cap, and BTC in particular, is where risk is much lower... but there is still reward there.
It all depends on how much risk you are willing to take, and how good you are at spotting hidden gems that no-one else knows about. Personally I stick to the higher cap stuff, the only low cap coins I hold are those from bounties where I thought it looked promising for the long term.

I would keep it all in BTC, at least for the moment. As far as I can see it, an alt season is a long long way away. Market confidence is poor, and even bitcoin is struggling to hold its value. Alts don't look a good bet at the moment.

The thing is, when everyone expects something to happen, this generally means it is priced in well ahead of time. I hope as much as anyone else that halving will see a price increase, but I'm not sure how likely it is.


If markets do improve, I expect bitcoin to lead the way once again. It needs a lot of confidence for alts to take over, and I don't think that would happen until BTC has increased significantly and for a reasonable span of time. So BTC first, then hopefully good alts later.

Yes, the potential of the project is by far the most important factor. If a campaign offers a huge bounty pool of say $1m, then that $1m is only valid if a) the ICO hits hardcap, and b) there are people willing to buy the coin once it starts trading. In reality a poor quality project might hit only a fraction of hardcap and struggle even to hit softcap, and then once it starts trading it will tank.

Go for good projects, not those campaigns that claim to offer a high reward.

My expectation is that halving will have much less of an effect than a lot of people think. In the past it has led to price increases, but this time everyone is expecting a price increase... which means that any increase is already priced in well in advance of the halving actually happening.

Other than that, I think the long slow recovery from the 2018 bear will continue. Whether we'll hit new ATHs however I have absolutely no idea.

Some approaches to post-quantum cryptography do show huge promise, I'll agree with that, as we've covered on previous pages.

I was trying to make the distinction between post-quantum cryptography which uses classical approaches, and quantum cryptography, which exploits the inherent 'unhackability' of quantum mechanics. Significant progress is being made in QC as well as in PQC.

The difference is between PQC being theoretically unhackable because of complex and esoteric maths, and QC being fundamentally unhackable because of the underlying laws of physics. Both approaches have merit, but the discussion is always around PQC. I thought it was time that QC had a voice, too.

I do think that XRP will be a huge success, it has one of the best use-cases in all of crypto, with a very professional team behind the project, too. A price of several dollars is not unreasonable long-term; we've been there before. Even $10 should be possible.

$1000 however seems wildly optimistic, the marketcap for XRP would then dwarf everything else in crypto. I can't see $1000 happening at all.

It's for the average user. If the average user is connecting to wifi, to the internet, then they can connect to an unhackable quantum internet, too. There is a lot of work going on in this area, using the fundamental properties of quantum mechanics to create an inherently unhackable network. It's not just the Chinese, take Europe's Quantum Internet Alliance as another example - a summary of their work is here... and there's a more mainstream-friendly article here.

I'm sure there is some manipulation, but I think it can be overstated. Small coins can be manipulated easily, but it takes a lot to manipulate bitcoin significantly. Yes I think whales are trying, but I don't think that they can do more than give BTC price a small nudge.

Yes, that's what I meant - sorry I wasn't being clear. If confidence is low then it is generally a bear market, if confidence is higher then BTC increases... but if confidence is very high, then people feel comfortable diversifying into alts, and alts rise. Alt rise happens when market confidence is very high. So BTC dominance is tied to market confidence - the lower the confidence the higher the BTC dominance.

It's just that high confidence seems some way away at the moment...

I think XRP is almost guaranteed to have widespread use.
Anything that offers a commercial competitive advantage, such as XRP and the related Ripple products, with their time savings and cost savings - will be used. Companies that don't use XRP will be left behind, with the choice of either adopt XRP and Ripple solutions, or else remain at a disadvantage.