Thank you very much for sharing. This is very helpful feedback to those of us who are investigating the marketing potential of Steemit. I expect some of us will be discussing your reply to me over at Bitcointalk.org in the Altcoin Discussion section. For example, you will notice @smooth is a whale here (look at his Wallet). We are trying to gauge if Steemit can cross the chasm from “blockchain nerds” to the general population.
I’m a computer programmer and since 2013 a blockchain technology researcher.
Hi @anonymint
I really appreciate your concern for my Dad. He is slated to participate in a clinical trial at Duke. I will tell him about the curcumin. We need all the help we can get.
Also thanks for the link and the advise about BitcoinTalk.org....there is a lot going on there.
Let's keep in touch.
Since you are an expert at this...where would you suggest the newbie person start? Algorithms and hashing etc. I learned about them in school, but I really need something simple to digest.
I tried reading bits and pieces of the white paper...that contains some very good information, but I get the impression that steem is still in beta state and there is some tweaking still going on.
I would like to suggest a tag just for beginners or those interested in the basics of blockchain
and how steem fits into the who crypto currency family.
The faq was a good start, but it does not give the explanation why.
Also the whole encryption key/password security issue is not for beginners.
If you need a newbie to test ideas on....let me know. I am always interested in learning more. I am not exactly a geek, but I am not the average general population chick either.... I guess you could say that I am a hybrid of geek ( because I have a masters in CS...(from way back in 1994)) but I am just a regular CAROLINA Girl trying to keep pace with technology too.
Thanks for the updates!
Best wishes for your father. Seriously very high dosages of concentrated curcumin entirely shrunk tumors of some pancreatic cancers according to a clinical study I read online. It is a long shot, but it can also help sooth the inflammation as well. It is one of the most powerful natural treatments you can reach for and I think it has been tested along with chemo and been beneficial. But I maybe not yet tested for his specific cancer type. If the prognosis (% survival 5 years out, etc) for his cancer at stage 4 is not good, then my stance would be might as well try everything I can. I have been in a desperate but only chronic (i.e. not terminal) health quagmire also related to my gut (not sure if it is a tumor or not), but not so definitively critical as your fathers’.
I see your rewards for this blog just jumped to $600+ because that whale I mentioned has upvoted your post. So you will see that current vote weighting algorithm for Steem is votes x votes, i.e. squared. So if a whale (with 1000 times more SP weight than the minnows) upvotes a post that had 5 times less culmulative SP vote weight, then the post’s rewards (and to some degree site ranking) are boosted approximately 5 x 5 = 25 times. Also the system is still being actively developed and so these algorithms might possibly change. I am not one of the developers of this system. They are for example @dan (@dantheman), @ned, and @theoretical.
Well if you can handle us males fighting and insulting each other (apologies for that), some of the discussions in the Altcoin Discussion forum of Bitcointalk.org provide expert discussion.
I also heard the white paper needs to be updated. But I think the fundamentals will not change significantly. But reading the white paper does not insure we understand it entirely. I read it quickly in June, read it again in July, and still made some mistakes in my understanding of all the implications of the design.
I am going to ask some others if they could reply to suggest to you some learning resources.
I will definitely remember you and your offer to help on testing. I agree on needing more beginner’s information and well organized for them.
Edit: the learning resources I am aware are really not very concise and well organized:
https://medium.com/zapchain-magazine/the-best-places-on-the-internet-to-learn-about-bitcoin-a4733f9f3ac7