Everyone has heard that "bad money drives out good," but not many know its origin. Theoretically, the superior should prevail over the inferior. So how does bad money win? The story goes that ancient coins were minted from precious metals like gold and silver. However, their quality and purity varied. Everyone wanted to hold onto the better quality, higher purity coins and would spend the inferior ones first when making purchases. As a result, the circulation of bad money far exceeded that of...

Last week, I explained three advanced Signal techniques. By popular demand (well, a population of one), this time I’ll introduce another ten simple and easy-to-use secret tricks. Feel free to “self-test” and see how familiar you are with Signal, on a scale of 0-10.0. Disappearing messagesMessage self-destruction is a widely known feature of Signal. Users who don’t use it probably think the convenience of searching old messages is more important than privacy. To set a self-destruct timer for m...

In this age of ubiquitous social networking, I may look trendy with accounts on all the major apps, but deep down, I’m old-school: these days, I really only use Signal and Proton Mail. Let me take this chance to apologize to those who’ve messaged me on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms but never got a response; but if you’re reading this, you probably know that the only way to reach me is to email kin@ckxpress.com . Though more and more people have email addresses, fewer and fewer actu...

Last week, I wrote about how I set up ckxpress.com with WordPress, which I’ve used for 20 years. Today, let’s talk about the opposite: the blogging platform like.community is shutting down, with operations ending on May 14, 2025. First, some background. LikeCoin’s first flagship product was the LikeCoin button, which could be embedded in blogs like WordPress and Medium. Readers could “like” articles, and authors would receive LikeCoin from the Creator Fund and from “Civic Liker”, essentially ...

On April 21, 2005, I registered ckxpress.com and set up my personal website. It has now been 20 years, during which I’ve published 1,250 articles totaling 1.18 million words. Although the domain still has seven years until expiration, I just paid for an additional three years of registration fees to hold ckxpress.com for another 10 years. If it weren’t for the limit set by ICANN, I might have registered it for another 100 years.Blogging ResumeIf I were applying for a job as a blogger, my resu...

Dear friends, Spring has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere—how are you all doing? It’s been nearly four years since I started my own newsletter after the closure of Apple Daily. To mark this week’s 200th issue, I’d like to talk a bit about writing itself, as a kind of commemoration. Before I began writing, I naturally assumed I’d be talking about AI. But after rereading my 100th issue, “Why I Persist in Writing,” which I wrote not long after ChatGPT launched, I realized that my views on AI’s...

去年中我以綠皮書建議 LikeCoin 升級 v3，經過半年多醞釀與討論、四個月的開發，現已進入直路，邁向最終目標。 下面以條列及圖表，扼要說明 LikeCoin v3 升級的方方面面，從背景開始講起，說到最終升級完成所需的步驟，以便社群掌握總體情況。 一、升級背景 LikeCoin 推出初期（2018、19 年），以太坊手續費高、吞吐量低，因此 v2 改用自家公鏈；時至今日以太坊已經相當成熟，當年的弊病已經徹底解決，雖然用戶體驗尚有提升空間，但亦可望於帳戶抽象化（account abstraction）推出後進一步改善，逐漸邁向大規模應用，因此 LikeCoin 決定升級 v3 遷回以太坊。

謹以此文獻給意志堅定的 D。回港才一天，週一 0500 就爬起床，首班機飛台北出席 d/acc day 聽演講，並以 d/hk 為題分享。d/acc 的理念往後有機會再另文詳談，本週想先跟大家聊聊 DHK 那個 D。 有讀者問過我週報取材的心得。就如 idea is cheap，實踐才珍貴，我認為題材滿街都是，真正困難的是展開；即使最熟悉的議題，我都得寫上半天。我的日程放著一大堆待寫題目，已經排到 9 月的第 221 期，但幾乎每週真正下筆時，寫的都是因為各種原因插隊的議題，像這週因為 d/hk 的分享，把一直擱著未寫的「D」出土。DHK 那些 D很多人都知道，DHK 本來叫作 #decentralizehk，當年簡化品牌的時候，好友 R 力主 DeHK，還主動幫忙查看 dehk.org 等域名的佔用情況。很多人都聽過 DeFi、DeX 等，令 DeHK 的意思呼之欲出...

我的漂流寫作又再變本加厲。執筆當下為 3 月 25 日，希臘的獨立日，我正身在雅典，在衛城的巴特農神殿腳下，蹲坐在憲法廣場附近的馬路邊寫週報，等待閱兵典禮開始。看著坦克、裝甲車及軍隊經過，兩旁群眾夾道歡迎，既因這個民主發祥地取得獨立高興，又為這些裝備無用武之地而慶幸。 邊旅遊邊幹活之際，多得各位支持，創世 Liker+ 的 100 名額剛已售罄。為先照顧好 100 名早期支持者，Liker+ 的訂閱將暫停，直至另行通告。成為道友 Pro，支持 DHK dao我身邊有不少同樣身處區塊鏈產業的朋友，大家價值觀相若，對事情的判斷大同小異，但這裡談一個例外。好幾位朋友都認為以太坊的去中心程度永遠及不上比特幣，要去中心就要去 Vitalik，只要他一天還在，以太坊就無法做到真正去中心。另外，不少朋友認為 Proof of Work 比 Proof of Stake 優勝，即使後者在今天成為主流，不過是必要之惡，或權衡後的取捨。 我不同意以上看法，本文先聊前者，他日另文再談 PoS。淺談去中心化我雖然開宗明義表示不認同 Vitalik 是以太坊去中心化的障礙，但經常為相關議題糾結，說的是我自...

上週介紹的創世 Liker+「AI 書僮」，名額還剩 38 位，請把握最後機會訂閱，永久鎖定特惠月費。 Liker+：買書獲 5% 回贈，不設上限（以 LikeCoin 派發）；創辦人直接回覆查詢，聽取意見；優先使用各項新功能；AI 書僮（稍後推出）；定價 9.99 鎂/月，或 99.99 鎂/年。 首 100 位訂閱額外可享：AI 朗讀書本服務（將整合到閱讀器）；「創世 Liker+」紀念紋章；特價 3.99 鎂/月或 39.99 鎂/年，永不加價。創世 Liker+因著 AI 書僮的企劃，有讀者問我是否也跟隨大隊，從 web3 轉軌 AI 了，慨嘆區塊鏈果真是過眼雲煙。 不，web3 依然是我核心關注的課題，而且如之前所說，我會再投入至少三年在 LikeCoin，完成十年之約。web3 也好、AI 也好，只要能體現人文精神，讓 Liker Land 更加好用和更有意義，都令我興致勃勃。 重點不在轉軌與否，而是 web3 與 AI 如何改善閱讀和出版？提升效率，摧毀生態我曾說，AI 是要促進生產效率，區塊鏈是要改善生產關係。AI 的價值主張很簡單，不外乎為你代勞，提高效率，減省...