There are already direct competitors in the exchange market. If you're paying currency conversion fees you're wasting money because there are many traditional banking firms that perform such tasks for no cost at all.
The reason they big players like Barclays and Lloyds get away with it are because customers in the UK are content with the status quo. You want to talk about horrible banks, look no further than the UK as a prime example.
Banks that don't charge currency conversions fees in the UK are Norwich and Peterborough Building Society (no fees for withdrawal in foreign currency) and Metro Bank (no fee conversion for EU member states).
Xe.com is also a great website for super affordable currency conversions. No fee wire transfers and will always beat out big banks any day.
For US customers, Schwab also has a zero fee debit card for withdrawals both in the US and abroad.
There's absolutely no point to be paying for ATM withdrawals, wire transfers, and even foreign currency conversion. Convince the big banks with you feet and move!
Cryptocurrencies may have a future, but at it's current valuation? I doubt it and until TPTB decide enough is enough the end might be nigh for cryptocurrencies as a whole.
Cryptocurrencies are currently the bubble du jour. As central banks have suppressed interest rates for so long, people are desperate for yield in anyway shape or form.
Cryptocurrencies are the easiest thing to game and blow up into a bubble. People are rushing in and flipping it to a greater fool the same way people were doing this with houses back in the mid 2000s.
Cryptocurrencies certainly have a lot of interesting uses, however their value is a direct threat to government control of currency. They're currently enjoying lax regulatory oversight which anyone with half a brain means that current valuations are bloated and in a perilous position if governments start deciding to heavily regulate it. I know, coindorks will come thrashing about saying "crypto will bypass this and become the next reserve currency!"
No, if governments make ease of conversion into fiat difficult in anyway or outright ban it that will directly impact the price of the coins in the longterm.
If you're using crypto presently, consider it purely a speculative play and continue to take profit along the way. If you've put your entire life savings into anything like this, you're an idiot and need to seriously reconsider your exposure to risk!
Ticket prices are astronomical. $12 a ticket for a family of 4 going to the movies is unheard of.
The higher ticket prices and cost of entry, the more I expect to be blown away by a movie. It's part of the reason people think movies suck today. They're just far more expensive than they used to be.
Back in the 80s and 90s, theater tickets were reasonable and for a family of 4 the cost would be 30-35$ all in for tickets, soda, and popcorn.
Broadway is having the same problem. Ticket prices are way too expensive and the cost then has people reflecting badly on an otherwise good performance.
Either our incomes go up or their costs go down. Either way, cost of entry directly affects enjoyment of entertainment products.
Then you'll continue being a fat, unattractive, and to others lazy.
The other day, I had two equally competent candidates to hire. One was a 350lbs whale, the other was a guy who looked relatively normal.
I always ask my new hires what they do for a hobby. Fatty tells me he's an avid reader and enjoys video games. Normal weight guy tells me he's into the same stuff, plus enjoys power lifting in the morning before he takes his kids to school.
I hired the power lifter. Why? Because he's able to juggle the demands of a job, children, and his personal health unlike the fat lard.
Whine all you want. The reason you're fat is your own fault and your excuses will keep you fat. Thankfully, it isn't a crime yet to discriminate against fatties and I have no qualms doing so.
Ha! You seriously think they would have actually followed through on such an agreement?
I'm sorry, but there was absolutely no way the Soviets were going to readily give up their nuclear weapons. The world really does not operate altruistically like that.
Make no mistake, they would have kept an ace...erhm nuke... in their back pocket. Whether you like him or not, Ronnie choosing otherwise was smart. Getting rid of ones nukes in this day and age is foolish and demotes the country down in the eyes of the UN security council's eyes.
If you have to lick any boot, it's better to be licking the boot of America over that of Russia or worse China.
These coins are in massive bubble right now from speculators and are on rather shaky ground legally as they enjoy legislatures ignorance on how the whole thing works.
As a store of value, cryptocurrencies are trash. As a speculative investment vehicle, you can damn well be sure some of us are flipping each leg up for profit.
Eliminate corporate taxes on businesses with HQs and/or manufacturing plants located in the US and simply tax any income an individual makes.
Businesses are what make and drive wealth. Make it easy for them to make money and everyone wins. European style wealth redistribution and regulation is the reason why the Europe measures their GDP gains in half a percent (if any).
And count dividends and corporate gains against regular income and not discount it with some bullshit separate tax.
This encourages domestic business growth. Take it a step further and restrict income distribution by multinationals to locales with favorable income taxes too. This can be easily done with a combination of enforcement and legislation.
And no, automation isn't a problem and won't be a serious issue for the workplace at a minimum for 50+ years. Drones won't be delivering packages, self driving cars will continue to be dangerous and mediocre, bipedal robots will still hundreds of thousands of dollars, and overall automation will still be purpose built and expensive to test and implement./unpopular opinion
The real reason he was arrested was because the security agencies were using the malware to actively try and discredit Bitcoin by dropping a massive software leak on the entire world. Had more people opted to "pay" the ransom, it would have offered proof to the powers that be that cryptocurrencies are dangerous and convertibility into real fiat should be banned.
Will such proof stop bitcoin? No, but making it more difficult to convert from BTC to fiat will drive the price way down south.
Who in their right mind thought these tools would be useful to a consumer? Are people out there really that dense to think that a device like this isn't sending every waking minute of their lives to some spook at the NSA?
Every time I hear someone go on and on about how the "Internet of Things" is the next great land rush, I laugh. The sooner this and 360 VR die the better.
Much like 3D glasses, 360 VR is a silly gimmick that appeals to a very small hardcore group of early adopters.
360 VR does not have a future outside of a small niche. To the average non-video game player/early tech adopter, the headsets are big, bulky, and dorky (sis said it not me).
Have you seen your average TV baseball demographic? Do you really think they're going to spend money on something like this? This is a silly fad that will be replaced with the next silly entertainment gimmick designed to encourage consumers to keep buying new equipment every 1 to 2 years.
The only way this would be successful is if Intel gave away its 360 VR headsets for free to thousands of fans in those cities.
The sooner 360VR dies for Immersive VR, the better.
I used to do this using Google back in 2004 searching for publicly accessible web cams and the strings that their web viewer used. Some even allowed you to control them which was awesome. If you're too stupid to add a password to any iot device, you deserve the pain that comes.
A lot of start ups try to repackage something mundane into something sexy (ex Juiceroo). It doesn't work. It's hard, but when I find a startup with some patents, I take notice.
Actual innovation is hard which is why there's so much BS out there.
America is an empire. If America didn't have it's empire level military someone else would by vying for that position. Blunt and honest fact, Europe's welfare states and the rest of the world's healthcare systems are subsidized by American citizens. Whether that will continue for much longer is to be seen. It will be a glorious day when the ungrateful socialists of the world realize that their freebies weren't free lunches.
Here's an honest question for fools like yourself. Which boot would you rather be licking?
America China Russia
I'll take my chances with America. Maybe when the rest of the world descends into an oppresive Islamic state that's enslaving women and killing LGBTs, people will recall the good 'ol days when America silently protected them and their ungrateful selves.
This isn't new. The town of Hershey PA is a factory town built by Milton's desire to leave a crazy legacy. I'm surprised a billionaire like Zuckerberg hasn't incorporated a town in his name yet.
Asian driver jokes aside, I find this policy to be unfairly critical of a large segment of the population who aren't senile or suffering from a major illness. There should be a yearly form that your doctor signs off on saying your vision and response time is as good as any. From that, i doubt Japanese seniors aren't a horrible road threat as it may seem to their insurance companies.
I remember back in the early 2000s hearing about hacker threats to key infrastructure like power plants, water filtration, and the like. The solution then is if you don't air gap your mission critical systems, you're an idiot and shouldn't be in a job.
How is 2017 any different to then and why is "muh Russia" the most shouted phrase while happily ignoring China, Israel, Pakistan, and well every other country with a vested interest in national and corporate espionage?
I regularly travel all around southern california and the HOV lanes are always always slower than the regular lanes. What's worse is having to stop in a HOV lane while regular traffic lanes keep moving. This is compounded by idiots who insist on going exactly 65mph (or worse 55-60 because muh fuel economy) instead of the speed of traffic which regularly hits 76-78.
What they need to do is set the speed limit in HOV lanes to 80mph and set a minimum speed of70mph (enforced by camera). That would solve the slow poke problem and encourage car pooling by speeding up travel time.
There's nothing good about this at all for a consumer. Maybe for a lazy has been corporation like HP who can wallow in their simplistic and outdated designs that barely need to change. This is a sign that a market has reached stagnation and has nowhere else to go. As a hardware and computer nerd, this is a dark age.
I was given a record collection and a hi-fi record player. Mostly classical, some classic rock. It's cool to show off and immensely satisfying when you put the needle onto the record, but most of the time I just fire up Pandora and be done with it. And no, the distortion doesn't sound better at all.
Gotta love the pedantics trying to argue over minutia with their autistic "fact checking." Trump should have said that Bezos uses WaPo as a tax dodge and as his personal billionaire soap box. Let's however not let pesky details get in the way of our 15 minutes of Trump hate!
Slashdot Mirror
The point being, it's a bubble.
And anything that shakes confidence in cryptocurrencies will destroy that confidence and subsequently destroy it's price.
There are already direct competitors in the exchange market. If you're paying currency conversion fees you're wasting money because there are many traditional banking firms that perform such tasks for no cost at all.
The reason they big players like Barclays and Lloyds get away with it are because customers in the UK are content with the status quo. You want to talk about horrible banks, look no further than the UK as a prime example.
Banks that don't charge currency conversions fees in the UK are Norwich and Peterborough Building Society (no fees for withdrawal in foreign currency) and Metro Bank (no fee conversion for EU member states).
Xe.com is also a great website for super affordable currency conversions. No fee wire transfers and will always beat out big banks any day.
For US customers, Schwab also has a zero fee debit card for withdrawals both in the US and abroad.
There's absolutely no point to be paying for ATM withdrawals, wire transfers, and even foreign currency conversion. Convince the big banks with you feet and move!
Cryptocurrencies may have a future, but at it's current valuation? I doubt it and until TPTB decide enough is enough the end might be nigh for cryptocurrencies as a whole.
Cryptocurrencies are currently the bubble du jour. As central banks have suppressed interest rates for so long, people are desperate for yield in anyway shape or form.
Cryptocurrencies are the easiest thing to game and blow up into a bubble. People are rushing in and flipping it to a greater fool the same way people were doing this with houses back in the mid 2000s.
Cryptocurrencies certainly have a lot of interesting uses, however their value is a direct threat to government control of currency. They're currently enjoying lax regulatory oversight which anyone with half a brain means that current valuations are bloated and in a perilous position if governments start deciding to heavily regulate it. I know, coindorks will come thrashing about saying "crypto will bypass this and become the next reserve currency!"
No, if governments make ease of conversion into fiat difficult in anyway or outright ban it that will directly impact the price of the coins in the longterm.
If you're using crypto presently, consider it purely a speculative play and continue to take profit along the way. If you've put your entire life savings into anything like this, you're an idiot and need to seriously reconsider your exposure to risk!
Ticket prices are astronomical. $12 a ticket for a family of 4 going to the movies is unheard of.
The higher ticket prices and cost of entry, the more I expect to be blown away by a movie. It's part of the reason people think movies suck today. They're just far more expensive than they used to be.
Back in the 80s and 90s, theater tickets were reasonable and for a family of 4 the cost would be 30-35$ all in for tickets, soda, and popcorn.
Broadway is having the same problem. Ticket prices are way too expensive and the cost then has people reflecting badly on an otherwise good performance.
Either our incomes go up or their costs go down. Either way, cost of entry directly affects enjoyment of entertainment products.
Then you'll continue being a fat, unattractive, and to others lazy.
The other day, I had two equally competent candidates to hire. One was a 350lbs whale, the other was a guy who looked relatively normal.
I always ask my new hires what they do for a hobby. Fatty tells me he's an avid reader and enjoys video games. Normal weight guy tells me he's into the same stuff, plus enjoys power lifting in the morning before he takes his kids to school.
I hired the power lifter. Why? Because he's able to juggle the demands of a job, children, and his personal health unlike the fat lard.
Whine all you want. The reason you're fat is your own fault and your excuses will keep you fat. Thankfully, it isn't a crime yet to discriminate against fatties and I have no qualms doing so.
Ha! You seriously think they would have actually followed through on such an agreement?
I'm sorry, but there was absolutely no way the Soviets were going to readily give up their nuclear weapons. The world
really does not operate altruistically like that.
Make no mistake, they would have kept an ace ...erhm nuke... in their back pocket. Whether you like him or not, Ronnie choosing otherwise was smart. Getting rid of ones nukes in this day and age is foolish and demotes the country down in the eyes of the UN security council's eyes.
If you have to lick any boot, it's better to be licking the boot of America over that of Russia or worse China.
These coins are in massive bubble right now from speculators and are on rather shaky ground legally as they enjoy legislatures ignorance on how the whole thing works.
As a store of value, cryptocurrencies are trash. As a speculative investment vehicle, you can damn well be sure some of us are flipping each leg up for profit.
Eliminate corporate taxes on businesses with HQs and/or manufacturing plants located in the US and simply tax any income an individual makes.
Businesses are what make and drive wealth. Make it easy for them to make money and everyone wins. European style wealth redistribution and regulation is the reason why the Europe measures their GDP gains in half a percent (if any).
And count dividends and corporate gains against regular income and not discount it with some bullshit separate tax.
This encourages domestic business growth. Take it a step further and restrict income distribution by multinationals to locales with favorable income taxes too. This can be easily done with a combination of enforcement and legislation.
And no, automation isn't a problem and won't be a serious issue for the workplace at a minimum for 50+ years. Drones won't be delivering packages, self driving cars will continue to be dangerous and mediocre, bipedal robots will still hundreds of thousands of dollars, and overall automation will still be purpose built and expensive to test and implement. /unpopular opinion
Instead of a car making horrific errors in judgment, why not have it safely pull over and say, "I'm lost, please ask for directions."
Better yet, set it up so the female voice pulls over and asks for help and the male voice just keeps going until it thinks it reached the destination.
The real reason he was arrested was because the security agencies were using the malware to actively try and discredit Bitcoin by dropping a massive software leak on the entire world. Had more people opted to "pay" the ransom, it would have offered proof to the powers that be that cryptocurrencies are dangerous and convertibility into real fiat should be banned.
Will such proof stop bitcoin? No, but making it more difficult to convert from BTC to fiat will drive the price way down south.
He was arrested because he foiled their plans.
Always listening device,
Who in their right mind thought these tools would be useful to a consumer? Are people out there really that dense to think that a device like this isn't sending every waking minute of their lives to some spook at the NSA?
Every time I hear someone go on and on about how the "Internet of Things" is the next great land rush, I laugh. The sooner this and 360 VR die the better.
And raise you a privacy screen filter and noise canceling headphones.
No way i'm letting all of these noisy do nothings around me see my occasional facebook posting while my code is compiling!
Much like 3D glasses, 360 VR is a silly gimmick that appeals to a very small hardcore group of early adopters.
360 VR does not have a future outside of a small niche. To the average non-video game player/early tech adopter, the headsets are big, bulky, and dorky (sis said it not me).
Have you seen your average TV baseball demographic? Do you really think they're going to spend money on something like this? This is a silly fad that will be replaced with the next silly entertainment gimmick designed to encourage consumers to keep buying new equipment every 1 to 2 years.
The only way this would be successful is if Intel gave away its 360 VR headsets for free to thousands of fans in those cities.
The sooner 360VR dies for Immersive VR, the better.
I used to do this using Google back in 2004 searching for publicly accessible web cams and the strings that their web viewer used. Some even allowed you to control them which was awesome. If you're too stupid to add a password to any iot device, you deserve the pain that comes.
A lot of start ups try to repackage something mundane into something sexy (ex Juiceroo). It doesn't work. It's hard, but when I find a startup with some patents, I take notice.
Actual innovation is hard which is why there's so much BS out there.
Europe's welfare states and the rest of the world's healthcare systems are subsidized by American citizens.
Proof please- jingoism is no substitute for facts.
For your laziness:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=America+s...
America is an empire. If America didn't have it's empire level military someone else would by vying for that position. Blunt and honest fact, Europe's welfare states and the rest of the world's healthcare systems are subsidized by American citizens. Whether that will continue for much longer is to be seen. It will be a glorious day when the ungrateful socialists of the world realize that their freebies weren't free lunches.
Here's an honest question for fools like yourself. Which boot would you rather be licking?
America
China
Russia
I'll take my chances with America. Maybe when the rest of the world descends into an oppresive Islamic state that's enslaving women and killing LGBTs, people will recall the good 'ol days when America silently protected them and their ungrateful selves.
This isn't new. The town of Hershey PA is a factory town built by Milton's desire to leave a crazy legacy. I'm surprised a billionaire like Zuckerberg hasn't incorporated a town in his name yet.
Asian driver jokes aside, I find this policy to be unfairly critical of a large segment of the population who aren't senile or suffering from a major illness. There should be a yearly form that your doctor signs off on saying your vision and response time is as good as any. From that, i doubt Japanese seniors aren't a horrible road threat as it may seem to their insurance companies.
I remember back in the early 2000s hearing about hacker threats to key infrastructure like power plants, water filtration, and the like. The solution then is if you don't air gap your mission critical systems, you're an idiot and shouldn't be in a job.
How is 2017 any different to then and why is "muh Russia" the most shouted phrase while happily ignoring China, Israel, Pakistan, and well every other country with a vested interest in national and corporate espionage?
I regularly travel all around southern california and the HOV lanes are always always slower than the regular lanes. What's worse is having to stop in a HOV lane while regular traffic lanes keep moving. This is compounded by idiots who insist on going exactly 65mph (or worse 55-60 because muh fuel economy) instead of the speed of traffic which regularly hits 76-78.
What they need to do is set the speed limit in HOV lanes to 80mph and set a minimum speed of70mph (enforced by camera). That would solve the slow poke problem and encourage car pooling by speeding up travel time.
There's nothing good about this at all for a consumer. Maybe for a lazy has been corporation like HP who can wallow in their simplistic and outdated designs that barely need to change. This is a sign that a market has reached stagnation and has nowhere else to go. As a hardware and computer nerd, this is a dark age.
I was given a record collection and a hi-fi record player. Mostly classical, some classic rock. It's cool to show off and immensely satisfying when you put the needle onto the record, but most of the time I just fire up Pandora and be done with it. And no, the distortion doesn't sound better at all.
Gonna say you're a liar. My hebrew translation says otherwise.
Nice try cuck.
Gotta love the pedantics trying to argue over minutia with their autistic "fact checking." Trump should have said that Bezos uses WaPo as a tax dodge and as his personal billionaire soap box. Let's however not let pesky details get in the way of our 15 minutes of Trump hate!