Developer Journal February 26, 2023

- 1owenkellogg

Having chosen to come down here to the office this morning rather than head up the bus to the slopes of Soldeu I discover that my computer cannot connect to the internet here so I have decided to write my thoughts for preparation on this Sunday. The reason I came here to work is because I feel a sort of anxiety about the state of powco.dev and that it does not currently work for anyone. Also I feel like my vision for onchain developer contracts would make me a lot more money more quickly if I go all the way to fully scrypt-based contracts and skip the RUN token infrastructure altogether or simply use it to augment the scrypt programs. Step one for RUN or script is sitll simply creating the transaction such that org, repo, issue number, title, and description are embedded in to token script outputs. There would then need to be no interactivity whatsoever and the satoshis can become locked in the issue for all of time given the issue is non-interactive.

A first step toward making the issue contract interactive is by providing a bail out mechanism like Daniel described for all games. In this case the bailout mechanism would allow one to spend the satoshis contained within the issue, thus destroying the issue from the blockchain unspent outputs. That is to say in another style that the bits on which the issue was residing are freed up to host another tenant on the blockchain data registry. By default the bailout or eject method shall allow the creators of the contract to eject the satoshis, for now since there are no additional players in the system. Once other players have deposited bits into the contract the eject method may become in-operable, or perhaps it allows for ejection of only the satoshis that were originally deposited and no more.

In order to skip RUN and go directly to scrypt I must create a single function that accepts a github issue record and outputs a txid of a new transaction, ultimately saving that txid in the github issue database record. At that point the powco dev api will return a txid correctly for every issue known. However there must also be a second function that detects this type of powcodev contract and can properly parse the contract metadata. That way any application upon discovering the Dev Issue Contract can parse it and index it properly, a primary example being the pow.co feed displaying details of the Issue simply by parsing its raw transaction hex. Additionally the real time stream processor will be upgraded to include this Dev Issue filter-detector and output a reliable real time even stream to message exchanges, the database indexes, and end user apps.

To attain maximum increase in my smart contract programming skills through this exercise I may elect to write automated end to end tests that actually use the blockchain live to transact using the smart contract. By calling its methods with all reasonable cases of valid and invalid parameters and then asserting the correctness of the results, my contracts' user base and paying customers will have the highest confidence. On Circle CI there shall be configured an environment variable for the private keys needed to operate the end to end tests. That key may be a hierarchical key from which the test program derives all of the accounts required to operate the multi-party contract. Each sub-account will have access to a certain set of bits in unspent outputs so that they may uniquely operate their portion.

Rather than requiring the test operation to know all of the sub-accounts and their addresses, having to pre-fund the correct amount for each participant, instead automate all of that. There shall be rules set out in a declarative fashion such that the system is able to allocate all the right bits to all the right keys upon startup of the program. Declaratively describing the account balance requirements means users of the module describe the desired end state and let the program decide how to transition to that state. That method is opposed to an imperative syntax where each developer would have to determine which operations are needed to get the correct coins to the correct addresses, and then write them into a step-by-step program. The way this declarative smart contract test setup language will work is you say how many satoshis or specific outputs you want for any number of various locking scripts, and then the program creates them all in a single setup transaction.

Throughout the tests all satoshis should be used by locking and unlocking the smart contract with different methods under certain conditions. At the end of the test suite a global teardown method shall return (or attempt to return) all satoshis back to the original addresses assuming they are still under pay-to-pubkey-hash scripts available to the original private keys. This same style of test suite for interactive multiplayer smart contracts can be super valuable for all scrypt developers so it shall be made into a template so that many more developers, especially myself now and in the future, will be able to deploy powerfully valuable programs on bitcoin at a tiny fraction of the current cost of development.

Narcissism, the Antipode to the Self-Actualizer

Daniel Krawisz

Narcissism is a personality trait that is characterized by a deep insecurity and an addiction to a sense of superiority, which is pursued through fantasy, pursuit of undeserved admiration from others, and envy. Maslow identified health with growth and inhibition of growth with neurosis. The psychology of narcissism is extremely anti-growth because narcissists are strongly engaged in self-deception about there own superiority, and hence can't easily see a need to growth. A narcissists are in many ways the opposite of the self-actualizer.

Everyone is narcissistic to some degree, so narcissism can be understood as a cognitive bias that, like all cognitive bias, is addressed by seeking out outside perspectives. Children are all narcissists but as they grow up they tend to learn from experience to be more empathetic and authentic.

Narcissistic personality disorder is defined in the DSM V and is an extreme form of the personality trait discussed here. Narcissists have trouble seeing themselves as the cause of their own problem, so few pursue therapy. There is a very big social problem caused by narcissism that is not addressed by the psychiatric understanding of narcissism because narcissists tend hurt other people instead of going in to therapy.

Narcissists want the highest status even if they have to destroy society in order to get it. They have a need for control because they know that if they let people come and go as they please, they would go and not come back.

Cult leaders are classic narcissists who pursue admiration by creating nonsense to fool people who don't read it too closely and keeping them away from competing ideas. Central banker is the ideal job for a narcissist because it allows him to live as a parasite while enabling him to control everything and be worshiped by everyone. However, a typical narcissist is simply an emotional abuser.

Narcissists catch victims by connecting to the victim's inner narcissist. They search for lonely people and begin with love bombing. Someone with experience might see this as suspicious because it is undeserved, but someone without experience will not know that good relationships begin with people showing caution toward one another. As the relationship progresses, the narcissist lures the victim into a position of dependency and cuts them off from their friends.

Just as the narcissist is an addict, he or she drives addiction in the victim to keep him or her in the relationship. Narcissists give their lonely victims tiny amounts of attention that leaves them unsatisfied and desiring more. The victim gets engaged in a game of trying to get more of what they want. People leave narcissist relationships when they understand that they cannot control the narcissist and really they are being controlled.

An important study of narcissism was done by Ayn Rand in The Fountainhead with the character of Elsworth Toohey, although his character is too self-aware to be truly realistic. Other characters that flesh out the theme of borrowed lives, such as Gail Wynand and Peter Keating, also show strong signs of narcissism. Howard Roark can be seen as exemplifying the self-actualizer.

The comedy duo of Hardy and Laurel is a classic relationship of Narcissist and victim. Laurel is not a bad guy but he is low in intelligence and easily dominated. Although he does not offer much value, Hardy is abusive towards Lauel inseparable from him because he is the only one who can make him feel superior.

Narcissism is very big in comedy because narcissists are funny characters when viewed from a distance. They are self-sabotagers who lie to themselves in a very obvious way. Other important movies and TV shows with narcissist characters are The King of Comedy, Being John Malcovitch, National Lampoon's Vacation, and The Office, both the British and American versions. Narcissism is very prominent in comedy because narcissists are self-sabotages who do ridiculous things that are very funny from a distance.

Some important youtube accounts for understanding narcissism are Dr. Les Carter, Dr. Ramani, and Dr. Frank Yeomans. Please click the links to watch important introductory videos!

Although narcissism is not the only way to be evil, it is the biggest source of evil in society today. Psychopaths tend to live on the outskirts of society, whereas narcissists have ways of getting right to the center, where they can end up doing a lot more damage. People who pursue fame may be driven by narcissism, so we are in a situation now where messages that are broadcast and heard by many people were composed by narcissists. Obviously, politicians are pretty much all narcissists.

Narcissism is very important in our Byzantine generals problem because the narcissist character explains why someone would want to be a dishonest actor who would use deception to subvert the system rather than desire to be an honest actor who benefits by being an honest actor within the system. Recognizing narcissists is difficult because they come in disguise as good people, but they will seek to subvert anything greater than themselves.

The key to defeating narcissists is to ignore them and to serve yourself by paying attention to people who give you real love or good information. This is not an easy task because the narcissist's disguise is very good. Everyone needs love, and that makes them vulnerable. We can built a better society by rearranging the network to put narcissists at the edge where they belong.

Bad Audio Is A Hate Crime!

I have professional experience in radio broadcasting, and I HIGHLY recommend this inexpensive microphone, if you are looking for one:

Audio-Technica 2005 USB Dynamic Microphone

Mic Benefits:

1. It is a "dynamic" mic, meaning it will strongly reject outside noise.
2. It hooks into your computer via USB but also has professional standard mic hookup.
3. It has surprisingly high quality when compared to other microphones in this price range.

Inexpensive Pro Setup

The AT2005USB is powered from the computer via USB, and with the savings you get, you can buy a wind screen (generally around $0.50), and a stand of some kind so that you don't have to hold it.

Choice of stand depends on your setup, but I like table stands like this one because they take up the least floor and desk space.

Here is a video put together by a friend of mine in the radio business helping people who are starting out.

I clipped it at the timestamp 33 minutes and 48 seconds in because that is the relevant part to this mic.

You don't want an omni mic like a headset for a podcast.

It will pick up everything, and the diaphragm is too small to get that creamy radio audio. That sounds bad. You want a directional mic pointed at your mouth.

The listeners don't want to hear what's happening in your kitchen or emergency vehicles passing by your studio. That's distracting from your important message.

Get this inexpensive mic and use it.

It's inexpensive and easy. Unless the things you are saying are unimportant and dangerous. Then use a low quality condenser or omni mic and make sure to pick up lots of background noises while you and your guests are speaking.

Make your guests wear headphones.

You can expect your guests to have horrible mic technique and tons of background noise, so they will pump the volume way up on their laptop and feed a nasty echo right back to you whenever you are speaking. This makes your podcast unlistenable!

The simple fix is to insist that they find a pair of headphones or earbuds at least 30 minutes before the show starts, plug them in or make sure they are charged, and use them throughout the show. Bad guest audio will completely ruin your episode and waste your time, their time, and your audience's time.

Finally, find someplace quiet.

Ideally, go into a sound-treated room and shut the door. If you can't do that, at least make the people around you aware that you are recording audio and politely ask them if you can have silence in your vicinity for the next hour.