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  1. Re:Don't be too quick to pass judgement on this on on Elon Musk Lays Out His Evidence That NYT Tesla Test Drive Was Staged · · Score: 1

    "he KNEW he was going to run out of charge because he took a 61 mile drive with a 32 mile reading on the charge indicator " -- this really kills any credibility of the nyt author and is clearly evident on the NYT graphic accompanying the original article

    that he drove around in circles near a charger, trying to kill the battery is a fair part of the test IMO.

    i don't know if he had an agenda, but it was definitely at least partly his decision (whether due to malice, stupidity or laziness) to start a 61 mile drive with 32 miles of indicated range

  2. Re:I didn't say Inflation led to Depression. on Online Gambling Site Bets On Bitcoin To Avoid U.S. Laws · · Score: 1

    1) don't care

    2) i agree basically with what you've said except I see it as a damping effect, something which makes growth more difficult. Although there is an argument to be made about what effect people's expectations will have - e.g. if people know the future, they can plan for it - as well as counterexamples in goods that are already subject to deflation - e.g., computer parts.

    3) There can still be fractional reserve banking and therefore credit. If they use bitcoin directly, i.e. deposits, withdrawals, loans, bonds in bitcoin, then there will be problems with liquidity in times of distress and no one to bail anyone out. Hence, we will not likely see the same sort of growth in credit that we have seen in the past 100 years. However, some people might think this is a good thing!

    Bitcoin just represents a new choice...

  3. Re:Who cares, the mining game is over anyways. on Bitcoin Mining Reward About To Halve · · Score: 1

    Pretty naive perspective. Three things can cause mining to become more profitable.

    What if BTCUSD goes up to say $100/BTC? Putting aside whether that's realistic for now, the point is there is relationship between profitability of mining and the BTCUSD ratio.

    What happens if miners start to shut down and leave? Difficulty goes down, each MH returns more BTC per unit time.

    More services start to pop up, like SatoshiDice, that impose a transaction fee. Have you seen the growth in transaction fees graph at blockchain.info? http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees Right now, it's miniscule (1% of mining revenue) but over time, as the block reward goes to zero, will determine the profitability of mining.

  4. Re:I never understood bitcoin on Vast Bulk of BitCoins Are Hoarded, Not Used · · Score: 1

    Wow. Bitcoin is not just about easy Internet money transfers. It's a distributed/decentralized system of accounting between N untrusted parties where N can be arbitrarily large. In my view, it is the seedling of the future of financial infrastructure simply because it is more efficient and cost effective. The latter is in view of society as a whole. I see it as becoming to the financial industry what robotics was to manufacturing.

    That's a digression though. The big "broken spoke in the wheel" has to do with the power we give banks and the risks for society posed by the defacto standard of bailing them out when they're in trouble. It creates the wrong incentives.

    From http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=227162

    "Our theoretical analysis shows that an economic underground can come to life if firms have an incentive to go broke for profit at society's expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success). Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations."

  5. Re:The irony of "creating jobs" on US Regaining Manufacturing Might With Robots and 3D Printing · · Score: 1

    The original point of higher ed was to give the kids of the idle rich something interesting to think about for the rest of their lives

    I'm genuinely interested. Could you provide a source for this statement?

  6. Check out the HTC One V on Don't Super-Size My Smartphone! · · Score: 1

    It bucks the trend of {bigger,faster}=better. Its 3.7" screen with a single core processor is typical of phones two generations old spec wise. OTOH it is the right size, it has amazing battery life (48 hours or more between charging typical for me) and does not get uncomfortably warm when in use. OTOOH, the stock firmware is really bad but that can be fixed.

  7. Re:Governments can't inflate the currency on With Euro Zone Problems, Bitcoin Experiencing Boost In Legitimacy · · Score: 1

    Since there is less money for the same amount of goods, this means that the currency goes up in value

    Is this a fair assumption? Economies don't stand still... there are new goods and services introduced every year. Doesn't this account for the increase value in a unit of currency?

  8. Re:Governments can't inflate the currency on With Euro Zone Problems, Bitcoin Experiencing Boost In Legitimacy · · Score: 1

    I believe the encouragement to spend effect is over-rated. It's negligible in comparison to other factors like immediate need or market opportunities for greater returns.

    In this day and age, I think encouragement to *conserve* is much more useful.... which you get with a "deflationary currency"

  9. Re:I don't want them making money out of my earnin on With Euro Zone Problems, Bitcoin Experiencing Boost In Legitimacy · · Score: 1

    If you're saving anything substantial in any way, you're ultimately hoping that whatever it is will keep its value. Be it cash in a bank or bitcoins... there's really no difference in the fact that you're relying on something to keep its value.

    That said, being Canadian (for better or worse), I also trust banks more than bitcoin (likewise for better or worse).

    But I am also aware that according to statistics, given a fixed pile of wealth, spreading your wealth around is safer than "putting all your eggs in one basket".

  10. Re:....someone get that link... on With Euro Zone Problems, Bitcoin Experiencing Boost In Legitimacy · · Score: 1

    AFAIK, the bitcoin protocol itself has never been compromised.

    What has happened is the security of several individual exchanges have been breached. MtGox, Bitomat, Bitcoinica to name a few. But this is not entirely bitcoin's fault.

    Bitcoin's role is only that it allowed the attackers to escape with the money.

  11. for fuck's sake... it's just a bit of glue! on iFixit's Kyle Wiens On the War On DIY Electronics · · Score: 1

    it's not like they used rivets or welded it shut. i've taken the glass off a mbp unibody and i imagine it's about the same level of care needed. it isn't that difficult with a heat gun and a suction cup. all of about $20 at the local hardware store.

    note maybe ifixit should be capitalizing on a market opportunity rather than whinging. i can't imagine it would be too hard to fashion a rug to heat just the edges to the correct temperature and make the whole process so that they don't have to wait til their hangovers are gone, about midweek, to repair these things

    how many tools does a car mechanic have? how many of them are custom to some specific make?

  12. Re:Much less here then meet the eye on Indie Film Premieres On BitTorrent Before Cinema · · Score: 1

    Cursory search for "successful self published book" gives:

    "Supposedly......the most successful self-published book of all time would be "The Celestine Prophecy" by James Redfield. According to Publishing Trends, The Celestine Prophecy was the #1 international bestseller of 1996 (#2 in 1995). It spent over 3 years on the New York Times bestsellers list. As a completely self-published bppk it solf more than 100,000 by word of mouth, and was then picked up by Warner Brothers Books."

    ALso, wasn't Accelerando (Stross) self-published or did he just release it after the fact with a copyleft license?

  13. Re:The Flow of Money Problem on Amir Taaki Answers Your Questions About Bitcoin · · Score: 1

    I think there's an underlying assumption in your writing: that there is no inherent good in people so they will evade taxes or sell drugs if given the chance. As for myself, I don't think that's true of the majority...

  14. Re:Gold? on Amir Taaki Answers Your Questions About Bitcoin · · Score: 1

    Except for secure electronic payments. Luckily, there is a boatload of research on digital cash protocols, and it would be relatively straightforward to establish digital cash that is backed by gold.

    I don't know if you're writing that tongue in cheek but on face value, it doesn't seem plausible due to the need for centralization. See "e-gold Ltd" - shut down by the feds.

  15. WRT Intel on AMD Fusion System Architecture Detailed · · Score: 1

    Anyone else notice the similarity between Llano's and Arrandale's memory controller configuration, i.e., that both put the MC on the GPU and have the CPU talk to the GPU via some protocol for data? Okay, in Llano's case there's the option of going directly to memory through WCs but still.

    And then, this FSA crap seems to be going in the direction of Sandy Bridge, i.e., a unified L3 cache... as much as I like AMD, they do seem like their following in Intel's footsteps. This new architecture reminds me a little of Larabee. Not that I know much about either, but IIRC in Demers' keynote he mentioned something like 24 CUs per chip... which seems way too low, I must have heard him wrong or there must be a factor of 40 or so I'm missing somewhere...

  16. Re:Preemptive Multitasking? on AMD Fusion System Architecture Detailed · · Score: 1

    From what I understand (I attended the AMD summit in question), Llano cannot multitask natively, although through the driver you should be able to do it and much more efficiently than in the past. I believe set up time for kernels has been drastically reduced with Llano, since there's no PCIE layer. Their future APUs will be introducing hardware scheduling so this will be better then...

  17. Re:Bitcoin features on Bitcoin Used For the Narcotics Trade · · Score: 1

    "Crashes of exactly the kind I described have happened multiple times throughout history. The US, with it's rapidly growing economy, was hit by them several times in the 19th century - despite multiple gold rushes and expanding gold mining activities."

    And look where the US is today... hardly a spec in the economic big picture...

  18. Re:Bitcoin features on Bitcoin Used For the Narcotics Trade · · Score: 1

    With current precision, a single bitcoin would have to be worth 1 million to have equivalent precision to the USD. That is, when 1c USD equals 0.00000001 BTC. As I understand it, the precision can be expanded practically to infinity, e.g., using big number libraries far beyond the precision of your average joe's ALU.

  19. Re:Bitcoin features on Bitcoin Used For the Narcotics Trade · · Score: 1

    There have already been some great posts about how deflation actually reflects progress better than inflation. I tend to agree with that and further think it's just a different way of seeing the same value: a hot dog is worth what a hot dog is no matter what you use to pay for it, theoretically. So there's no change in anything except our perception of value. Given that, I'd argue the status quo should be to "hoard", actually it's much more like conserve. Consider that, at some point, we're talking about the stimulation of certain sectors of industry, e.g., whaling or clear-cutting, but also in general. I don't think an inflationary currency accurately reflects the cost of those activities...

  20. Re:Bitcoin features on Bitcoin Used For the Narcotics Trade · · Score: 1

    Admittedly I may not understand this that well but my impression is that it's flexible enough that it can be patched in the future for things such as SHA-256 going out of style.

  21. Re:Attacks on Hacking a Car With Music · · Score: 1

    Thanks for clearing that up, it was indeed not claimed. I believe you said you would be surprised if it wasn't possible.

  22. Attacks on Hacking a Car With Music · · Score: 1

    This is a follow-up to http://www.autosec.org/pubs/cars-oakland2010.pdf where they demonstrate various attacks of varying levels of danger from relatively innocuous (turn the horn on permanently) to kind of scary (disable brakes and power steering). In a talk, Stefan claimed to have the ability to remotely drive as well, i.e., steer/accelerate/brake.

  23. Re:Dirk Meyer: Engineer who made marketing mistake on AMD CEO Dirk Meyer Resigns · · Score: 1

    1) Dirk wasn't CEO til 08, well after AMD64 and Barcelona. Bulldozer was scrapped *by* Dirk IIRC

    2) AMD had nothing to compete with the atom in that market. Sure, they were first, but with a Geode IIRC slower than an Atom which is already pathetically slow.

    3) This is arguable, it falls under the strategy where AMD needed to focus on core business. Whether or not you buy that or you believe they should've switched core business or whatever is where its arguable. I think from AMD's fiscal performance, Dirk probably did the right thing.

  24. Another site... similar idea on iPhone DSLR Prototype 1.0 · · Score: 1
  25. Re:FP? Wow! on Apple Easter Egg · · Score: 1

    Around the year 2000, I'd been walking home from school one day and some guy had a 660AV on his doorstep so I rang his bell and he gave it to me. He said it was broken but all it needed was a battery. I played around with it, oooh ahhh retro mac with video, I said. Ultimately, it left my hands along with a IIci, a IIfx, a 610, and a couple 6100s for a couple cases of beer.