Yeah, who can blame the engineers for not thinking ahead a whole TWO YEARS in the future? My grandkids will be having grandkids by then. California will sink into the ocean. The Sun will engulf Mercury. Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way.
It depends on the type of emissions you are looking at. Motorcycles (and I assume scooters) put out a lot more NOx than cars. AFAIK, this is because cars have much more stringent regulations. I don't know why motorcycles are allowed to pollute so much.
Rooftop windmills are not efficient. They are too small and the skyline is too uneven. I read that they don't even break even in energy. Also, the city landscape changes too quickly compared to the optimal lifetime of a windmill.
The technology for putting them in windows isn't mature enough. Photovoltaics on the roofs make some more sense, at least for buildings not in the shade of taller buildings. But it isn't going to provide nearly enough power to power the building.
Rich people are so rich that they have run out of things to invest in. Maybe bubbles are good for the economy. It's just like turbulence theory. An instability forms when the wealth gradient exceeds a certain critical value, and bubbles form which transport money down the gradient. Sure, some poor people lose as well, but for the most part most of the late stage actors in the bubble are wealthy funds and investment banks. After the bubble bursts, the cumulative effect is to transfer some money from the late game actors to the early adopters (mostly middle class geeks). Hopefully, the wealthy actors won't have enough clout to force everyone to bail them out when that happens.
Certain aspects of bitcoin are so braindead stupid that I don't know why everyone hasn't moved on to different currencies. There's only about 1750 transactions per block, and only 1 block every 10 minutes. The energy cost is so high because the "difficulty" is artificially set so high, and the block rate is so low. This is probably to keep the total blockchain size from growing out of control, since it was never designed with scalability in mind.
The whole artificial scarcity aspect of it is driven pure greed by the founders and early adopters. There's no reason why a digital currency needs to be limited in such a way.
We don't need a tax credit for electric cars. We need a tax penalty for polluting. Maybe in this case the result is similar but with fewer arbitrary stipulations which benefit specific megacorps who can afford to buy legislation.
Cars kill as many people by air pollution as by collisions--the difference is that air pollution is always a hit and run.
There's just a huge amount of variation in photos of the top of the head because of hats, hairstyles, etc. so it probably takes much more training to get that part right. The face is much more consistent among beautiful actors.
True, but you run the risk of losing your private key or having it stolen. I feel this is orders of magnitude more likely than a court seizing my accounts. But I can easily see how drug dealers could come to a different conclusion.
Transaction times are fine and costs [bitinfocharts.com] are nowhere near what you pay for e.g. SWIFT or Western Union transfers.
https://blockchain.info/charts... So you think a 142 minute (Oct 20, 2017) confirmation time and $3 transaction fee (Oct 20, 2017) is fine? Maybe if you are buying a house or a pallet of drugs or something. And who uses Western Union other than Nigerian princes?
Currency isn't supposed to generate wealth. It supposed to store wealth and make transactions easier. If it is generating wealth then it isn't a good currency. Of course, you are talking about investment, not a currency. But my point is that as long as people are treating Bitcoin as an investment, it really isn't much good as a currency. And if it isn't good as a currency, what good is it for? You are only investing in it because you hope someone else will buy it from you for more. It has no intrinsic value. It's no good for currency since transaction times are too long and transaction costs are too high. Eventually, people will figure out that Bitcoin is worthless. The only value it generates is taken from the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.
If you want to design a crypto-currency that actually functions as currency, you gotta design something that isn't used as an investment. Otherwise, speculators are going to ruin it.
Most interesting questions are not defined precisely enough to have exact answers. The answer is fuzzy. In this example, the word "person" doesn't have a precise meaning, but just some vague context-sensitive meaning which we mostly agree on based on our shared upbringing. In some cases, some authority will make a more precise but arbitrary definition for the purposes of law. For example, legally blind. Legal person. So, if you split the brain, do you split the person? It depends on if some authoritative body declares it to be so.
Absolutely! That would be a very exciting development indeed, if it were to happen. Consider the Michelson-Morley experiment. It _failed_ to detect the aether. And it is one of the most famous experiments in history.
I'm having a hard time choosing between spending my $1000 on an iphone or this. https://www.theguardian.com/te... I guess I have more money than sense.
You have to factor in commute time, eating, and running errands. And then something as common (in US) as an 11 hour day would be easily taking away sleep from people.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, who can blame the engineers for not thinking ahead a whole TWO YEARS in the future? My grandkids will be having grandkids by then. California will sink into the ocean. The Sun will engulf Mercury. Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way.
hence, karoshi
It depends on the type of emissions you are looking at. Motorcycles (and I assume scooters) put out a lot more NOx than cars. AFAIK, this is because cars have much more stringent regulations. I don't know why motorcycles are allowed to pollute so much.
Your proposals don't make a lot of sense.
Rooftop windmills are not efficient. They are too small and the skyline is too uneven. I read that they don't even break even in energy. Also, the city landscape changes too quickly compared to the optimal lifetime of a windmill.
The technology for putting them in windows isn't mature enough. Photovoltaics on the roofs make some more sense, at least for buildings not in the shade of taller buildings. But it isn't going to provide nearly enough power to power the building.
Rich people are so rich that they have run out of things to invest in.
Maybe bubbles are good for the economy. It's just like turbulence theory. An instability forms when the wealth gradient exceeds a certain critical value, and bubbles form which transport money down the gradient. Sure, some poor people lose as well, but for the most part most of the late stage actors in the bubble are wealthy funds and investment banks. After the bubble bursts, the cumulative effect is to transfer some money from the late game actors to the early adopters (mostly middle class geeks).
Hopefully, the wealthy actors won't have enough clout to force everyone to bail them out when that happens.
It takes more than 10 minutes, not less than 1 second.
You can sleep in a house.
Certain aspects of bitcoin are so braindead stupid that I don't know why everyone hasn't moved on to different currencies.
There's only about 1750 transactions per block, and only 1 block every 10 minutes. The energy cost is so high because the "difficulty" is artificially set so high, and the block rate is so low. This is probably to keep the total blockchain size from growing out of control, since it was never designed with scalability in mind.
I don't think orthogonal means what you think. You need to consume energy to waste it.
Also, heating your home with resistive heating is wasteful because heat pumps can be ~4 times more efficient (heating per energy consumed).
The whole artificial scarcity aspect of it is driven pure greed by the founders and early adopters. There's no reason why a digital currency needs to be limited in such a way.
We don't need a tax credit for electric cars. We need a tax penalty for polluting. Maybe in this case the result is similar but with fewer arbitrary stipulations which benefit specific megacorps who can afford to buy legislation.
Cars kill as many people by air pollution as by collisions--the difference is that air pollution is always a hit and run.
Can somebody shoot the journalists and then read the PNAS article and report on what it really says?
Yeah, the more surprising thing about this story is that he just disappeared without telling them.
There's just a huge amount of variation in photos of the top of the head because of hats, hairstyles, etc. so it probably takes much more training to get that part right. The face is much more consistent among beautiful actors.
True, but you run the risk of losing your private key or having it stolen. I feel this is orders of magnitude more likely than a court seizing my accounts. But I can easily see how drug dealers could come to a different conclusion.
Transaction times are fine and costs [bitinfocharts.com] are nowhere near what you pay for e.g. SWIFT or Western Union transfers.
https://blockchain.info/charts...
So you think a 142 minute (Oct 20, 2017) confirmation time and $3 transaction fee (Oct 20, 2017) is fine? Maybe if you are buying a house or a pallet of drugs or something. And who uses Western Union other than Nigerian princes?
Currency isn't supposed to generate wealth. It supposed to store wealth and make transactions easier. If it is generating wealth then it isn't a good currency. Of course, you are talking about investment, not a currency. But my point is that as long as people are treating Bitcoin as an investment, it really isn't much good as a currency. And if it isn't good as a currency, what good is it for? You are only investing in it because you hope someone else will buy it from you for more. It has no intrinsic value. It's no good for currency since transaction times are too long and transaction costs are too high. Eventually, people will figure out that Bitcoin is worthless. The only value it generates is taken from the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid.
If you want to design a crypto-currency that actually functions as currency, you gotta design something that isn't used as an investment. Otherwise, speculators are going to ruin it.
Do they fail to understand or do they not care? It's not their problem if you spend 2 hours a day driving.
These will be gone by 2027.
Cable TV
Landlines
Bitcoin
Most interesting questions are not defined precisely enough to have exact answers. The answer is fuzzy. In this example, the word "person" doesn't have a precise meaning, but just some vague context-sensitive meaning which we mostly agree on based on our shared upbringing. In some cases, some authority will make a more precise but arbitrary definition for the purposes of law. For example, legally blind. Legal person. So, if you split the brain, do you split the person? It depends on if some authoritative body declares it to be so.
Absolutely! That would be a very exciting development indeed, if it were to happen.
Consider the Michelson-Morley experiment. It _failed_ to detect the aether. And it is one of the most famous experiments in history.
But with Brian and Steven's help, I guess I can be a computer engineer!
I'm having a hard time choosing between spending my $1000 on an iphone or this.
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
I guess I have more money than sense.
You have to factor in commute time, eating, and running errands. And then something as common (in US) as an 11 hour day would be easily taking away sleep from people.
Users will just block it either way.