Wise Blue Dragon

He was unlike other dragons that hoarded money and avoided contact with humans, he had a job in a human city: consultant.

People would come seeking his wisdom and ask the most impossible solutions.

-Please, how can we defeat the mage Moluit now that he has taken over the ancient staff of power?
-Gather the strongest druid in the realm and awake the ghost of Dilmur, the protector of the forest.
-We can’t do that, our law would forbid such ritual from taking…
-I have no answer that does not involve Dilmur. Next.

A knight carrying a comatose little girl entered his room.
-How can I remove the curse of the nine witches that has befallen my sister?
-That is complicated.
-…
-I will need time to read my ancient scrolls of healing.

He calmly read the scrolls.

-She will need to drink a potion made of 3 nightshades and 1 mandrake root boiled for 10 minutes in a dark underground room on a full moon.

-Thank you so much.

-You’re welcome.

The next visitor entered, the king of a large realm in the northern part of the world.

-I want to be immortal.

-*sigh*

-So…

-You can’t be immortal unless you are born a dragon, you could however achieve a few hundred years of lifespan by making a very obscure rite.

-Teach me that ritual please.

-It involves murdering dragons, I would rather not teach it to you.

… and that was the last guest of the day.

Inflationary Cryptocurrency

I have been thinking about making a cryptocurrency that would be infinity, you’d solve a mathematical problem and earn credits depending on the difficult, everyone would be able to earn credits regardless of the total amount of credits existing. The main challenge would be to convince people to hold those credits, that could be done by creating contracts akin to the ones banks have with one another; you’d have a rate being paid to people holding those inflationary credits. No lottery.

Comment on Bloomberg Article

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-24/putin-says-dont-mess-with-mother-russia

What is worrying is that the post 1990s narrative Putin laid out — in which the U.S. has ignored, humiliated, encircled and isolated Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union — is one most Russians whole-heartedly believe. They, too, can’t imagine that ordinary unarmed citizens — whether in Kiev, the Arab Spring countries or elsewhere — might act of their own volition, rather than as pawns in a U.S. game.

Everything is truly connected. There are only two distinctions to be made:
-Whether the connections can be explained-Whether the connection is strong or not

I’m increasingly skeptical of independence and liberty outside anonymous authorship.

There was other article on Bloomberg that claimed Yahoo! was being hypocritical by demanding the NSA to keep its hands off their data while handing names to the Chinese government. Well, I think it’s even worse than that, I think Yahoo! was siding with the Chinese because they thought they offered better advantages over cooperating with the US.

However, I also think Bloomberg(and the public) is naive in thinking any company can choose not to take sides; that option isn’t on the table for anyone who needs connections and money to manage a business(that is, anyone, period).

The fact that recordings of old data reveal more about us than we know led me to think we would embark into some kind of utopia where everyone knew everyone and politicians had to be honest with the people and with other politicians. Alas, what is really happening is that the power is still lying but avoiding consequences by changing its shape more rapidly. Alliances are forming and dissolving so fast that it might even be causing the gridlock in Washington.

The forbidden flask

He hurriedly hid the flask that he had received from his elders, the forbidden elixir shall not fall in the enemy’s hands.

Many years later…

Two adventurer stop amidst a desert.

Ellis got off his camel, he had glimpsed something.
What are you doing? – his companion, a young Elf by the name of Calista inquired.
I saw something bright on the dunes – the adventurer said while digging the sand.

He unearthed the forbidden flask and started reading its inscription:
“Eternal life free from bodily illnesses”

After opening the flask’s cap he started drinking the elixir – Are you sure that is safe? ‘Been buried for many years it seems. – Calista said to an apathetic Ellis.

They decided to call their quest off, that oligarch’s treasury was very well hidden, besides they had just found a valuable elixir that was now running in Ellis’ veins. Even the adorned flask itself could be worth something in the city’s market.

Edit: Remembered after looking into a bloomberg article that you use camels,not horses, on the desert. Hahaha, silly mistake.

Crystal Society

Every time humanity got more than 90% of its members killed by disease they called it a “Owari”, after the Japanese word for end.
It was 3821 years after the 4th Owari, humanity was still alive but enslaved.

Society was ruled by sentient crystals collectively known as the “Crystal System”.

Every human left was forbidden normal means of reproduction, new humans came about by genetic engineering of selected specimens and every human had a colored stone placed on her or his forehead called commanding stone.

Crystals themselves, in their adult form passing the 20 foot barrier and weighing more than 1 ton didn’t move or change the environment by themselves, they simply issued orders to humans’ commanding crystals to do their bid.

The election of the crystal king had just occurred, a new crystal tinted in green was to replace a smaller blackish one.

That’s not how he saw it, he could see crystal’s innards in ways other humans couldn’t. He knew that Saeya was to replace Ridah. Not only he knew their names, when squinting his eyes he could see a faintly human shape inside the crystals themselves. Saeya was a young slim woman in her early 30s, Ridah was a middle aged male.

That human had a disease. He needed to be corrected. And the day for the procedure was today.
He waited anxious in the hospital for his commanding stone to order him to get up.
His stone was to be replaced by an even more oppressive one, if that failed he would go to the land of past crystals, an euphemism the crystal society used for dying.

The surgery went awry and he passed.

The crystal society was relieved, another bug fixed.

Bitcoin doomed?

I have been thinking, if Bitcoin relies on processing speed and processing speed doubles every two years… consider the following:

2 year worth of dehashing(proof-of-work) in 2010 is symbolized by 2Times2010

2010-2012: 2Times2010
2012-14: 4Times201014-16: 8Times2010
16-18: 16Times2010

If in 2018 somebody wanted to change who owned the first bitcoins, he or she would need 2Times2010+4Times2010+8Times2010+16Times2010= 30Times2010, which is 2Times2010 less than what one would get by turning the whole bitcoin network against itself for 2 years(2018-2020), in fact that remains true no matter which year one picks: someone in 2060 would need to turn the bitcoin network(or network of equivalent processing power) for 2 years too. The fact that bitcoin is growing faster than 2 times every two years worsens that math(requires less present time to beat past recordings). Think about it, if in any two year period down the road the internet(or the people controlling present processing power) decides that bitcoin sucks: bitcoin is gone.

We have elected fools for longer periods of time for the most powerful posts in the world. Doesn’t sound promising.

Of course, this attack is largely theoretical and doesn’t minimize current usefulness in having an electronic medium not controlled by any government. I think that if bitcoin falls it is going to be replaced by something similar.

3 things that are going to dominate the future of the Internet.

1. Fully connected networks; you will be able to host anything in a network(for free) and have it up 24/7 even though your computer contributes just 2 irregular hours of hosting to other nodes in the network.

2. Anonymous networks; suddenly your product becomes popular but you have no idea how many people have seem the ad, where they saw it and even who made the ad in the first place.

3. Remixed content; this one already dominates the internet but will become even more widespread as the internet becomes anonymous and hosting becomes free(in all senses of the word).

A consequence of anonymous networks: art with embedded ads, also already a reality, will become even more widespread.

The Red Dragon

The red dragon’s scales reflected the scorching sun.
His two friends lied burnt on the ground, his enemy was alive but weak, just one more strike and he’d have saved Lanceville from that creature’s greed.He readied his wrist and gave his best shot.
The dragon parried his sword with its right claw and burned him alive with its flame breath.
The city’s gold was added to the already humongous treasury of the dragon.

Rough Patch

I’m going trough some problems in the mental realm and not really feeling much inclination to write, hence my lack of posts recently; I’ll try to change that if possible.

Thinking about creating a text centered search engine and/or authoring posts with third party copyrighted images(hopefully without backlash from artists)