Same for bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies. That's why I added "good luck converting them".
The original bitcoin seems to be fairly liquid, and reasonably easy to convert in reasonably large volume, though if someone wants to convert any significant amount (say a thousand of them) they'd likely run into serious trouble already.
It's all speculative, highly speculative. Just like most stocks on the stock market (and all short term movements of their value). There are few if any companies that would be able to buy back all their stock at current rates due to the high speculative factor in the price.
It sound more like that they created what is effectively an entirely new currency, after all the two are incompatible.
So somehow, they created a huge amount of value (on paper, at least - good luck converting all these "coins" in real world cash) unless the original BTC has dropped by USD 600 per coin at the same time. Nothing like it is mentioned in TFS.
So originally you had one BTC valued at USD 2,700. After the split you still have your BTC valued at USD 2,700, but on top of that a BTC-Cash that's valued at USD 600. So now your holding has a paper value of USD 3,300.
Weird. But then I've also never really understood the speculation going on in stock markets and futures and commodities and whatnot.
ABP added this option quite some time ago, and afaik even has it enabled by default. I wonder how well that works, overall.
I have the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" check box ticked, yet I don't think I ever see advertising, other than the search ads on Google.com (which I already had explicitly enabled - they're often quite useful for the commercial links). Those ads in part may stay because they are non-intrusive.
Then this site has the "sponsored links" banner at the bottom, I see the same in other sites. Clearly marked as advertising, not intrusive, no problem with me.
More likely: Google considers Opera's couple dozen faithful users as a nice testing ground. They keep an eye on what new ideas Opera comes up with (maybe they even send some of their wildest ideas to Opera), look at how Opera implements the feature, watch what the user base thinks of it, and then takes the good bits, drop the bad bits, and add it to Chrome.
I disagree completely. Ads need to be obtrusive to be effective. If they don't steal your attention away from what you were doing, than they are not doing their job. Ads which blend into the background are not ads that anyone wants to pay for.
Then why are so many people paying big bucks for advertisements in newspapers and magazines? Those ads don't play music, they don't move around, they don't put a floater in front of whatever you're doing, they can't even pop up from the page. Yet it's where still a big part of advertising money goes to.
Also annoying: somehow my email address has gotten around as someone in Dubai who is a position to offer employment, so I get tons of unsolicited CVs and cookie-cutter job applications from people living in Dubai.
I see that as well, started a year or two ago. Usually from Dubai or thereabouts indeed. I have no idea why those folk are randomly sending around their resumes - I assume it's a scam and treat it a such. Could be legitimate (as in: real person really looking for a real job), but even if so I'm not interested.
No idea how they got my e-mail; I have multiple domains and it's mostly if not exclusively the oldest one, a domain that I stopped using (i.e. kept alive but not giving out e-mail addresses based on it) about four years ago, so a few years before those job applications started to come in.
It is more likely that they really got my e-mail from my (dormant, never really used) LinkedIn account, or another business web site that I'm registered with using that old domain.
I've had very personal information emailed to me, bank loan applications etc.
You can have a lot of fun with that, by replying to those things truthfully. Like, "Sorry, I can't sell you this house", or "sorry, I never received your payment", and then when they send you the bank receipt to prove they made payment, reply "well, that's not my account you sent it to". They will be totally confused and so, but can't fail you for lying about anything.
WiFi hotspot EULAs I care least about. For the simple reason that it's very hard to trace back anything I do on that hotspot to me. When connecting to a free WiFi hotspot I usually do this because I have some time on my hands and want to get some work done, not because I want to read legalese. Considering the length of these "agreements" you can probably only get halfway before it's time to move on... leaving you no chance to actually make use of the network.
Today my laptop spent well over an hour installing updates (downloaded them in the background, asked to install it, time was OK for me, but an hour later it was still not finished).
Then when the updates were done, WiFi didn't work any more. A problem with the driver, Windows said.
So using my Linux Mint system I go to the Asus website, download and install their 2015 Win10 drivers (first had to find a USB stick for the transfer, different computer!), no luck.
Browse a bit again, see the suggestion to install the Win8.1 drivers.
So downloaded Win8.1 drivers, installed them, and well, this post proves that this work. Latest Win10 with 2014-dated Win8.1 drivers for the WiFi.
Why can't MS with all its resources not get this work properly? Like in Linux where while I upgrade my system to the latest Mint I can continue working, then a quick reboot later everything Just Works?!
It is, by the way, not the first such issues. Before I've had a driver problem with the touchpad (had to connect a mouse to be able to fix that - downgrade to an older, already installed driver was the solution). Also related to a Windows update.
I think you highly underestimate the production power of China, if you really believe that this is a way to reduce the number of new vehicles that become available. Access to raw materials would be just about the only thing stopping them in that matter.
That tariff is not just for US goods. It's a general import duty. On top of that there's indeed a luxury tax on goods above a certain value, and special taxes for certain other goods.
While China has massive trade surpluses with the US (a shortage of over 200 billion on exports of 324 billion to the US), it's much less for the EU (145 billion shortage on 356 worth of export to the EU), and China has large deficits in trade with other developed economies such as Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
The problem seems to be more with the US being highly uncompetitive than China being so highly competitive.
Furthermore indeed it has alternatives to Western social media, of course it has, and their Taobao/Alibaba/Aliexpress combo makes Amazon look like an also-run. You missed the point there, which is how certain Western companies have been kicked out for not following China's local regulations. That it gave room to home-grown solutions was nice for the Chinese, but Google et.al. could also have chosen to conform to local laws and stay in China.
Uber was founded in 2009. Now we're eight years in, the company has thousands of employees and millions of drivers working for them, yet still called a "startup"?
I think I have to amend my idea of what "startup" means.
The smog was a HUGE issue around the 2008 Olympics already. Nearly a decade ago. You probably don't live nearby so you didn't hear much about it: China forced all factories in the province and neighbouring provinces to shut down starting a few weeks before the Olympics, and they took half the traffic of the roads. That's why there were clear skies during the Olympics. When the world's eye left, it was back to "normal" - traffic and pollution. It seems from your comment that their strategy worked quite well.
China is well aware of its terrible pollution for decades. For the last 10-20 years they've been trying to limit the number of vehicles on the road, with varying success. Congestion is terrible, yet many people can't get cars because they can't afford the license fees - without this system it arguably would have been much worse than it is.
Electric vehicles do nothing to relieve congestion. They just make congestion less polluting, but the number of cars on the road and with it the space they take isn't really changing. To solve congestion other measures are needed, such as reducing the actual number of cars, bringing more EVs on the roads will only make congestion worse.
And with the ongoing brown-outs, especially in summer, the electricity production is another thing that's still not fully solved...
The world is in for a big fucking surprise when China simply declines to play ball.
If that's the case, then "the world" hasn't been paying attention for a few years. I for one don't expect China to care about a country whose president can't even distinguish it from Taiwan, a country that constantly threatens to put up massive import tariffs on Chinese goods (and sometimes does), and where many consider China the "new evil".
Until not so long ago (not sure if it's still the case - rules have been relaxed iirc) the only way for a foreign company to invest in China was through a minority-owned joint venture with a local company.
And if you're still wondering: just look at how well Google and YouTube and Facebook are available in China - they were kicked out years ago and haven't come back.
Of course, having people sick from air so dirty that some people can't breathe is expensive also
Don't forget the social discontent that will rise when the housing market finally collapses. Now the people are overall happy enough to ignore this and other major problems in China... but one event can very well trigger discontent across the board, and keeping the country socially stable is more important than keeping it healthy (the second is just a tool to achieve the first).
China is for many years already trying to limit car sales using high prices for license plates. Doesn't seem to work that well.
The biggest challenge with this push to electric may not be the production of the cars, but the production of the electricity to power them all (hopefully without the use of even more heavy polluting coal power plants).
one thing that might work is for Amazon to partner with small rural stores. If the customer picked up their order at the store then there could be a slight discount, because Amazon would save on that final mile of delivery which is the most expensive.
Isn't that happening already? In large parts of the world (including super densely populated Hong Kong) it is already very normal to have packages delivered via the local 7-11 or OK shop, or have it placed in a locker. That while e-commerce in this highly connected city is still in its infancy, most people prefer to buy in shops: not (much) more expensive, no waiting for your item, can see before you buy, less risk.
I often order stuff online, and like this option. Not only saves it money on delivery, it also means I don't have to be home to accept the parcel but can go pick it up when I have the time and not when the delivery courier happens to be around (I sometimes have to wait up to a week because of no-one being in during the day, or whenever the courier happens to be around).
An autoformatter in the "view code" option would be a great help, indeed. All that javascript without line breaks could be made so much more readable if it'd be reformatted with sensible line breaks and indentation, ideally with keyword highlighting and so. Of course still no comments but at least it'd make the stuff somewhat readable.
But is it deposit payers that kept the umbrellas? Or other passers-by that just picked one up (mind: no fixed deposit locations, hang them at any convenient roadside railing)?
Slashdot Mirror
That's how the low cost carriers found their inroads in the current market. It'll happen again in such a scenario.
That assumes that autopilot is at least as good as a human pilot in every situation.
Why in every situation? Why not at least as good overall? There may be situations the human does better, other situations the autopilot does better.
Same for bitcoin and all the other cryptocurrencies. That's why I added "good luck converting them".
The original bitcoin seems to be fairly liquid, and reasonably easy to convert in reasonably large volume, though if someone wants to convert any significant amount (say a thousand of them) they'd likely run into serious trouble already.
It's all speculative, highly speculative. Just like most stocks on the stock market (and all short term movements of their value). There are few if any companies that would be able to buy back all their stock at current rates due to the high speculative factor in the price.
It sound more like that they created what is effectively an entirely new currency, after all the two are incompatible.
So somehow, they created a huge amount of value (on paper, at least - good luck converting all these "coins" in real world cash) unless the original BTC has dropped by USD 600 per coin at the same time. Nothing like it is mentioned in TFS.
So originally you had one BTC valued at USD 2,700. After the split you still have your BTC valued at USD 2,700, but on top of that a BTC-Cash that's valued at USD 600. So now your holding has a paper value of USD 3,300.
Weird. But then I've also never really understood the speculation going on in stock markets and futures and commodities and whatnot.
ABP added this option quite some time ago, and afaik even has it enabled by default. I wonder how well that works, overall.
I have the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" check box ticked, yet I don't think I ever see advertising, other than the search ads on Google.com (which I already had explicitly enabled - they're often quite useful for the commercial links). Those ads in part may stay because they are non-intrusive.
Then this site has the "sponsored links" banner at the bottom, I see the same in other sites. Clearly marked as advertising, not intrusive, no problem with me.
More likely: Google considers Opera's couple dozen faithful users as a nice testing ground. They keep an eye on what new ideas Opera comes up with (maybe they even send some of their wildest ideas to Opera), look at how Opera implements the feature, watch what the user base thinks of it, and then takes the good bits, drop the bad bits, and add it to Chrome.
I disagree completely. Ads need to be obtrusive to be effective. If they don't steal your attention away from what you were doing, than they are not doing their job. Ads which blend into the background are not ads that anyone wants to pay for.
Then why are so many people paying big bucks for advertisements in newspapers and magazines?
Those ads don't play music, they don't move around, they don't put a floater in front of whatever you're doing, they can't even pop up from the page. Yet it's where still a big part of advertising money goes to.
Also annoying: somehow my email address has gotten around as someone in Dubai who is a position to offer employment, so I get tons of unsolicited CVs and cookie-cutter job applications from people living in Dubai.
I see that as well, started a year or two ago. Usually from Dubai or thereabouts indeed. I have no idea why those folk are randomly sending around their resumes - I assume it's a scam and treat it a such. Could be legitimate (as in: real person really looking for a real job), but even if so I'm not interested.
No idea how they got my e-mail; I have multiple domains and it's mostly if not exclusively the oldest one, a domain that I stopped using (i.e. kept alive but not giving out e-mail addresses based on it) about four years ago, so a few years before those job applications started to come in.
It is more likely that they really got my e-mail from my (dormant, never really used) LinkedIn account, or another business web site that I'm registered with using that old domain.
I've had very personal information emailed to me, bank loan applications etc.
You can have a lot of fun with that, by replying to those things truthfully. Like, "Sorry, I can't sell you this house", or "sorry, I never received your payment", and then when they send you the bank receipt to prove they made payment, reply "well, that's not my account you sent it to". They will be totally confused and so, but can't fail you for lying about anything.
WiFi hotspot EULAs I care least about. For the simple reason that it's very hard to trace back anything I do on that hotspot to me. When connecting to a free WiFi hotspot I usually do this because I have some time on my hands and want to get some work done, not because I want to read legalese. Considering the length of these "agreements" you can probably only get halfway before it's time to move on... leaving you no chance to actually make use of the network.
Also, they're so long that by the time you're finished reading your allotted free WiFi connection time has long expired!
Today my laptop spent well over an hour installing updates (downloaded them in the background, asked to install it, time was OK for me, but an hour later it was still not finished).
Then when the updates were done, WiFi didn't work any more. A problem with the driver, Windows said.
So using my Linux Mint system I go to the Asus website, download and install their 2015 Win10 drivers (first had to find a USB stick for the transfer, different computer!), no luck.
Browse a bit again, see the suggestion to install the Win8.1 drivers.
So downloaded Win8.1 drivers, installed them, and well, this post proves that this work. Latest Win10 with 2014-dated Win8.1 drivers for the WiFi.
Why can't MS with all its resources not get this work properly? Like in Linux where while I upgrade my system to the latest Mint I can continue working, then a quick reboot later everything Just Works?!
It is, by the way, not the first such issues. Before I've had a driver problem with the touchpad (had to connect a mouse to be able to fix that - downgrade to an older, already installed driver was the solution). Also related to a Windows update.
I think you highly underestimate the production power of China, if you really believe that this is a way to reduce the number of new vehicles that become available. Access to raw materials would be just about the only thing stopping them in that matter.
That tariff is not just for US goods. It's a general import duty. On top of that there's indeed a luxury tax on goods above a certain value, and special taxes for certain other goods.
While China has massive trade surpluses with the US (a shortage of over 200 billion on exports of 324 billion to the US), it's much less for the EU (145 billion shortage on 356 worth of export to the EU), and China has large deficits in trade with other developed economies such as Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
The problem seems to be more with the US being highly uncompetitive than China being so highly competitive.
Furthermore indeed it has alternatives to Western social media, of course it has, and their Taobao/Alibaba/Aliexpress combo makes Amazon look like an also-run. You missed the point there, which is how certain Western companies have been kicked out for not following China's local regulations. That it gave room to home-grown solutions was nice for the Chinese, but Google et.al. could also have chosen to conform to local laws and stay in China.
Eight years ago self-driving vehicles were so much science fiction that it can never have been part of a long term strategy.
Uber was founded in 2009. Now we're eight years in, the company has thousands of employees and millions of drivers working for them, yet still called a "startup"?
I think I have to amend my idea of what "startup" means.
The smog was a HUGE issue around the 2008 Olympics already. Nearly a decade ago. You probably don't live nearby so you didn't hear much about it: China forced all factories in the province and neighbouring provinces to shut down starting a few weeks before the Olympics, and they took half the traffic of the roads. That's why there were clear skies during the Olympics. When the world's eye left, it was back to "normal" - traffic and pollution. It seems from your comment that their strategy worked quite well.
China is well aware of its terrible pollution for decades. For the last 10-20 years they've been trying to limit the number of vehicles on the road, with varying success. Congestion is terrible, yet many people can't get cars because they can't afford the license fees - without this system it arguably would have been much worse than it is.
Electric vehicles do nothing to relieve congestion. They just make congestion less polluting, but the number of cars on the road and with it the space they take isn't really changing. To solve congestion other measures are needed, such as reducing the actual number of cars, bringing more EVs on the roads will only make congestion worse.
And with the ongoing brown-outs, especially in summer, the electricity production is another thing that's still not fully solved...
The world is in for a big fucking surprise when China simply declines to play ball.
If that's the case, then "the world" hasn't been paying attention for a few years. I for one don't expect China to care about a country whose president can't even distinguish it from Taiwan, a country that constantly threatens to put up massive import tariffs on Chinese goods (and sometimes does), and where many consider China the "new evil".
Until not so long ago (not sure if it's still the case - rules have been relaxed iirc) the only way for a foreign company to invest in China was through a minority-owned joint venture with a local company.
And if you're still wondering: just look at how well Google and YouTube and Facebook are available in China - they were kicked out years ago and haven't come back.
In a few years electric vehicles will be cheaper than gas powered vehicles. This will help accelerate this process even more.
Of course, having people sick from air so dirty that some people can't breathe is expensive also
Don't forget the social discontent that will rise when the housing market finally collapses. Now the people are overall happy enough to ignore this and other major problems in China... but one event can very well trigger discontent across the board, and keeping the country socially stable is more important than keeping it healthy (the second is just a tool to achieve the first).
China is for many years already trying to limit car sales using high prices for license plates. Doesn't seem to work that well.
The biggest challenge with this push to electric may not be the production of the cars, but the production of the electricity to power them all (hopefully without the use of even more heavy polluting coal power plants).
one thing that might work is for Amazon to partner with small rural stores. If the customer picked up their order at the store then there could be a slight discount, because Amazon would save on that final mile of delivery which is the most expensive.
Isn't that happening already? In large parts of the world (including super densely populated Hong Kong) it is already very normal to have packages delivered via the local 7-11 or OK shop, or have it placed in a locker. That while e-commerce in this highly connected city is still in its infancy, most people prefer to buy in shops: not (much) more expensive, no waiting for your item, can see before you buy, less risk.
I often order stuff online, and like this option. Not only saves it money on delivery, it also means I don't have to be home to accept the parcel but can go pick it up when I have the time and not when the delivery courier happens to be around (I sometimes have to wait up to a week because of no-one being in during the day, or whenever the courier happens to be around).
If that competition was viable before, what stops it from coming back?
An autoformatter in the "view code" option would be a great help, indeed. All that javascript without line breaks could be made so much more readable if it'd be reformatted with sensible line breaks and indentation, ideally with keyword highlighting and so. Of course still no comments but at least it'd make the stuff somewhat readable.
But is it deposit payers that kept the umbrellas? Or other passers-by that just picked one up (mind: no fixed deposit locations, hang them at any convenient roadside railing)?