I only need 50 miles a day of range almost the entire year. But about 5% of the time, I need 300+ miles of range with the ability to "recharge" in 15 minutes.
Owning a single vehicle that does both tasks costs less than buying two vehicles. It also costs less than buying the EV and renting a truck for the road trips, we don't really have in place a system to do that well, and frankly I don't want to take someone else's beater rental vehicle on a family road trip, I want to take MY vehicle on a family road trip.
While you are correct in the sense that if you drive enough, the savings of not buying fuel do add up...
The use case where that is true is narrow...
There are plenty of very efficient small cars that can be purchased for $10K+ fewer dollars than the Volt. Over 5 years of ownership, you'll be hard pressed to burn $10K in gas in a small 4 person car over the cost of recharging a Volt.
Add to that the resale of a Volt in 5 years is likely to be terrible as they keep dropping the price, it makes for an even worse investment.
It may well get there, but the people pushing for it today like to ignore a few details that explain why EVs are hardly a rounding error in vehicle sales.
It isn't because people want to waste money, it is because people have done the math and it makes no sense, unless you're "a true believer".
Riiiiiiiiight, so that bargin $15K ICE car is never going to need maintenance? I have a Volt and my maintenance cost is 0 so far for 2 years. I doubt I will reach the first scheduled maintenance (which can be at 75,000 miles depending on usage patterns) and is just an oil change for the generator which can easily be done myself for $10 in oil. The parent said its about COST, not price. Costs like maintenance that EVs don't really have in practice are not free for ICEs. EVs are cheaper for 90% of drivers daily usage patterns at this point. Not some minor slice of the market, but most of the market. You would have to drive less than 1000 miles a year for an EVs to not to pay off at this point. You are just considering gas costs, but maintenance costs can easily exceed gas costs, especially for cheaper or older ICE cars. Plus the time I don't spend waiting at tollbothes (yea HOV lanes). Just make sure not to lease the Volt as you don't get the $7500 federal tax credit that way.
My commute is 40 miles each way. What EV do I buy that ensures me I can get to work and back home on a single charge, accounting for common traffic jams and problems that causes for actual range, and accomodates the lack of charging slots at work?
It would be OK if I paid less than a 30% premium over typical retail price, even better if I pay only a 50% premium over the typical price of a 5-year-old used vehicle, though I generally drive 10-year-old vehicles. I know, that rules out lots of vehicles.
Electric is still not for me.
A Volt would cut your gas usage in half, and if you have charging at the office, then it would be probably 90%. And its $26K after tax credits. Quit making excuses, your choices are about you and not about the EVs available anymore if you can afford a new car. If not, then it will probably be another 3-5 years for you.
If the night security guard at a bank falls asleep, and someone robs the bank without him noticing- you wouldn't charge the security guard with bank robbery.
At least they should be fired for falling asleep while the bank is robbed. Where those involved fired?
Doesn't mean that CA companies don't try to get you to sign Non-competes all the same. Of course, I've signed many documents over the years working at different startups that I knew couldn't be enforced against me. On more than one occasion, I've told the person asking me to sign, "Of course I'll sign this, there is no way it would ever hold up in court" and then told them here are the CA statutes you are violating and why this contract is worthless. Oh, and BTW, I've changed my mind on the salary, its now $20K/yr more because you don't know how to hire a good lawyer and the expected value of those options are basically 0 because of that. Shockingly, I've had some startups actually pay me the extra $20K...the others I just turned down and soon after found a better startup. Frankly, if a CA startup asks you to sign a non-compete, run simply because that startup is almost certainly going to fail.
Jobs was a sociopath, but the reason people reacted to him the way they did is because they believed what he was saying was the truth (or at least he really believed it was the truth). In our society, people are lied to so often that anything that looks like the honest truth is very appealing. I know what investors seem to love it when I talk in nasty brutal terms about software, our business, or our competitors. When it comes in an unvarnished form, things have a ring of truth that can't be emulated by a marketing droid, even when the marketing bot happens to be telling the truth. Jobs was able to coast on this fact for a long time before he had to learn to at least act like a decent human being.
No, not 25x more productive, try more like 1000x more productive. Or try this on for size, I've known quite a few engineers that had negative productivity ie if they stopped doing their job, their team actual becomes more productive. How many times more productive is an average engineer over an engineer with negative productivity? N/A? Infinity?
The amount of time it takes to write a piece of code isn't about the time designing it, or about how long it took to type in the code, or the testing, or the plan. The ONLY major factor in speed of development is the debugging time, which is a sum of a sequence of random variables of random length. For better engineers who might average 1/10th the number of initial mistakes in the code (ie the length of the random sequence), and who might also find and fix problems in 1/10th the time, you easily get 100x more productive than some average. Or more likely you work in a cube farm far, far away from those 100X and 1000X engineers who have the choice to work other places.
You are confusing the cost of the drugs and the cost of the prohibition of drugs. Its a bit like molesting someone and then complaining that they aren't stable later in life.
This hand has the pattern AAAAB where A and B are from distinct kinds. The number of such hands is (13-choose-1)(4-choose-4)(12-choose-1)(4-choose-1). The probability is 0.000240.
Frankly, even though you've been to Burning Man, I don't feel you're competent to be suggesting improvements to the exodus traffic problem. You've been there once, and you came in and left on a fast-track bus which was able to bypass the entire process you're trying to critique. Had you been through it a few times and seen how traffic exodus works for people who are actually in the thick of it, I doubt you'd have bothered trying to micromanage the queues.
This is not an answer to the question posed in the article, which was, "Why wouldn't this work?"
I have an answer for why wouldn't this work. It takes about 60 minutes under ideal conditions to drive from a camp in BRC to the edge of the playa where you get on the little 2 lane highway. Packing times for an average carload of burners hitting the road is about 5 +- 3 hours. The ability of any group to predict when they can head out is highly variable given that they can really only choose when to start packing. Having 30 minute windows is a recipe for disaster. Nobody would hit their window. There would be disputes about what window we were currently in, etc. Practically, to anyone ever in exodus, this idea is patently absurd despite the solid mathematics. The problem is that the mathematically model used to do this analysis is woefully simplified from the actual complexities of exodus. Everyone ever been in exodus would know this. That's perhaps why burners keep suggesting you try it before trying to tell everyone else. There are perhaps 1000 burners who understand queueing theory better than this guy. Why do you think you understand something about the situations that we don't?
If you have ever been in the core of a major theme camp, you will recognize this situation instantly. Running a major theme camp is a huge undertaking with a 5 or 6 figure budget and a lot of complex engineering. Last year, our camp had 4000 amps of power distributed over 3 acres. There was a water system for processing several 1000 gallons of grey water, a full gourmet kitchen and facilities for 300 people. Every year some newbie comes up and tells us we are doing something wrong and we should do it differently. What they don't understand is that we tried their approach several years ago and it doesn't work for reasons that might not be so obvious. After awhile, it gets tiresome re-explaining the same things to different newbies each year and the crew starts getting jaded and starts just telling people if they don't like it, don't camp here anymore. Basically, this guy is getting the same response, just at a playa wide level.
Well, the population of the towns of Gerlock and Empire would be financially devastated if they did that. See, up road 447 is basically a few ranches and some old mining towns full of older folks who have lived there for decades and are now largely stuck there. Empire was largely supported by a gypsum mine that closed 3 years ago. If BM didn't occur once a year and inject about $5-10m into their economy, those towns would entirely collapse. The BORG is sensitive to that but over the last few years local government officials have become more and more greedy (the brand new $75,000 police cars for a town of 500 people didn't help). If the BM decides to pull up stakes and move, that area will be ruined and the locals will suffer greatly.
Also, the Black Rock Desert isn't really something that needs protecting. The leave-no-trace ethic is more of a political statement than a practical effort at 0 trace. Many people have misinterpreted this into an absurd standard. The rest of the year on the Black Rock Desert is largely unused except for the occasional small rocket launch, attempt at a land speed record, or a filming commercial that usually leaves about as much trash behind afterwards as the week of BM does. Largely due to the fact that they don't have to care if they litter as the local government is dependent upon them to get a bit of $$ to help support a largely failing local economy. Its absurd to think 50,000 people can be in one place for a week without leaving any mark. Its also absurd to think that BM isn't the closest thing that we have in the US to a true leave-no-trace event. If you've ever been around after a large event and seen entire stadiums covered in trash after a 2 hour concert, then the bit of trace BM leaves after a week is absolutely amazing. If you want to blast them for that, they you are entirely missing the point (perhaps they are too), but the ones that put the idea of leave no trace in to their head have accomplished their goals and then some. Its the cleanest gathering of people in the US every year when measured by the amount of trash or trace left afterwards. That's actually pretty amazing.
Look, people are involved and people are fallible and technology can't really prevent that. BTC as a protocol is solid and wasn't comprised. The very immature institutions that have sprung up around BTC are currently failing at their task that you have every right to criticize them. Hopefully the market will sort out some winners that can function in their institutional roles in the BTC ecosystem safely and securely.
But don't confuse BTC for a bank and right now don't confuse it for a currency. Currently, BTC is a commodity because of its volatile value against fiat currencies. Someday that might change at which point BTC begins behaving like a currency. It fills/will fill a real need for many people, probably not you but others and that's what really matters here. When the BTC institutions can behave in as secure and trustworthy a way as other financial institutions (and really is that a very high bar anymore) then it will be very much like any other currency with a measurable market cap and liquid exchanges. Until then its volatile and probably only for miners and speculators (and gamblers).
And a ponzi scheme always needs an increasing amount of money to keep going (ie next year more $$ needs to go in than last year). That doesn't seem to be a feature of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Ask any miner and they've gone through peaks and valleys due to volatile prices and changing difficulties that brings the system into balance. It always balances out, the good and the bad (ie bad you paid 47 BTC for a ASIC miner in August 2013 that probably will never mine 47 BTC, good your other 147 BTC are now worth 80k USD). Its hard and rare to get rich honestly with BTW but you can make a bit of extra cash right now and that's a feature of a healthy and growing market.
Purely electric cars have a footprint too, grid electricity has a footprint, on average, about the same as a 50mpg car -- more or less depending on where in the country you are -- or what country you're in.
Bzzzzt....sorry but you are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off there. A pure EV can go about 3-4 miles/ kwh. An ICE at 33 kwh per gallon of gas / (40 miles / gallon) is about 0.8 miles / kwh. In addition, electric power generated in a central location is generated about 3x as cleanly. So an EV has about 1/10th the carbon footprint on a millage basis. So that's what, the equivalent of 400 miles to the gallon? Oh, and I forgot about the fact that ICEs waste 90% of their power in inefficiencies against the ideal and an electric motor is usually about 75% efficient. Basically, an EV produces 1/10th the carbon footprint of an ICE based upon mileage. But kept telling people that EVs don't help too much. You are really a credit to the human race.
Mining is pretty much only on AMD graphics cards which nobody in their right mind uses for real graphics. I don't think the two are related. Its probably more due to the number of people playing video games on their PCs.
Yea, I used to have the worst problems with the nVidia drivers on laptop (Quadro 3000M, hell yea) until I realized that the problems were all caused by my weird dev configurations I was using. When I switched back to the lastest gcc version everything magically worked again. I think the drivers are using some weird configuration of the linker or something (maybe caused by the new linker version released a couple of years ago). So some of the driver problems are caused by the fact that we developers tinker with the compiler settings and recompile kernels which create problems with binary blobs even when part of the driver is recompiled on the fly. So try to create a script that resets the standard gcc toolchain (and one that sets it back to your custom settings) and your nVidia driver problems should go away as long as you remember to reset your toolchain when you install GPU driver updates.
Hey, I have the perfect solution! After each deposit, the bitcoin exchanges should print the critical bitcoin info out on paper (encrypted first with a private key) then destroy the electronic copy. Then, in case they get robbed by a physical thief who is also a hacker, they should destroy all copies of the private key. See? It's perfect.
Its called a Paper Wallet and they do exist. Even Mt. Gox used them for their cold storage. Which is one of the reasons why people don't believe the tx malleability theory. I've been following BitCoin quite closely lately and/. is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off on these theory and news about bitcoin. Its been quite disappointing as usually/. has much better comments on tech subjects. There are 3 reasonable theories:
Insiders (due to Theft or Incompetence or bad market positions)
US Govt seized the cold wallet keys
Lost cold wallet keys
On February was the largest day in BitCoin history for coin days destroyed. Basically, someone moved a large cache of Bitcoins that hadn't be moved in years (ie the Mt. Gox cold storage). Whoever has those coins knows what happened at Mt Gox but I doubt they got those coins via the TX Mal bug (maybe a small amount was stolen but not anywhere close to ~700,000 BTC). I'll let you guys figure out what actually happened but my guess is the Govt has the cold wallets and have a gag order on Mt. Gox. Using taint tools it should be possible to figure out what happened to all of those coins. If they never moved, its likely the US Govt. has them. If they move and split in complex ways, it more likely that an insider is trying to launder the BTC.
You must be kidding? VS C++ (I use it every day) is easily the worst C++ compiler there is. Hell, Borland compilers from the late 90s still have better C++ standards support than VS C++ today!
One quick add to that link, they estimate that miners are spending 90% of their mining income on power for their rigs. This ignores ASIC miners where only about 5-10% of the value of the Bitcoins mined gets spent on power (on average, I'm using CA power in the USA so my power rates are probably higher than miners in other parts of the world). Also, ASIC miners are probably 60% miners by hashrate, at least currently and will be more like 95% in the next year. So basically take all the values in that article and divide by 10. Other than that, its pretty accurate. And before you get all hot and bothered about mining again, all the Bitcoin mostly goes to buy the ASIC miners to keep up with the quickly growing mining industry. Take a look at the difficultly charts before buying anything, its a tough business.
I feel like you think I'm missing something important, and would like to know what it is.
You are, its that Bitcoin is far weirder than you seem to understand. Consider for a second what a Bitcoin is...theoretically it is an international currency (that hopefully will be stable one day) that is inherently deflationary. What does that mean to normal people? That a Bitcoin wallet is a swiss bank account they can carry around and control themselves. This is because the new supply of Bitcoin is constantly decreasing so the price of Bitcoins to other currencies should rise over time. This emulates the interest that savings accounts would usually pay. It can also transfer money internationally in a safe way in 1/1000th the time the banks do it. And it solves all sorts of problems with micro-payments. For instance, a coke machine that takes non-paper money (ie CC, Debt Card, other electronic payment etc) isn't really economically viable without Bitcoin. With Bitcoin you could make a machine with a QR code on the front and when you want a coke you send a small amount of Bitcoin to the wallet indicated by the QR code. Now I know this isn't practical due to the time it takes to verify a Bitcoin transaction but you get the idea. Whoever can shrink that transaction time will get very rich.
2/3rds of the world's people currently don't have a stable local currency in which they can save for the future. So Bitcoin enables anyone with a cell phone to have a Swiss Bank Account that they can convert into the local fiat currency each day to insulate them from hyperinflation. Think about how that might someday change how people in the 3rd world live. For the first time, thinking and planning for the future would be rewarded instead of next year's government deciding that all their savings are actually worthless now.
Now I realize that currently the price of Bitcoin is volatile as hell. I understand that currently its a risky investment plaything of traders. But having a stable pool of traders to stabilize conversion rates to other currencies is necessary requirement for any type of currency. And over time the price should stabilize as more players come to the table. The real worry is that the banks figure out that Bitcoin actually competes with their retail banking business. If they ever figure that out, they'll outlaw Bitcoin in a heartbeat. This is the only real risk to Bitcoin based businesses, traders and economies. Hopefully the powers that be will be asleep at the switch on this one. They were for most other business changes that software brought about. Look at the music industry, 14 years after Napster, they still make a fraction of what they made when Napster was around. And yet they still are filing lawsuits against their own customers.
Slashdot Mirror
Which electric cars don't support Level 1 charging? Not the Leaf, Volt, or Tesla.
^ This...
I only need 50 miles a day of range almost the entire year. But about 5% of the time, I need 300+ miles of range with the ability to "recharge" in 15 minutes.
Owning a single vehicle that does both tasks costs less than buying two vehicles. It also costs less than buying the EV and renting a truck for the road trips, we don't really have in place a system to do that well, and frankly I don't want to take someone else's beater rental vehicle on a family road trip, I want to take MY vehicle on a family road trip.
A Volt does this now. Quit making excuses...
While you are correct in the sense that if you drive enough, the savings of not buying fuel do add up...
The use case where that is true is narrow...
There are plenty of very efficient small cars that can be purchased for $10K+ fewer dollars than the Volt. Over 5 years of ownership, you'll be hard pressed to burn $10K in gas in a small 4 person car over the cost of recharging a Volt.
Add to that the resale of a Volt in 5 years is likely to be terrible as they keep dropping the price, it makes for an even worse investment.
It may well get there, but the people pushing for it today like to ignore a few details that explain why EVs are hardly a rounding error in vehicle sales.
It isn't because people want to waste money, it is because people have done the math and it makes no sense, unless you're "a true believer".
Riiiiiiiiight, so that bargin $15K ICE car is never going to need maintenance? I have a Volt and my maintenance cost is 0 so far for 2 years. I doubt I will reach the first scheduled maintenance (which can be at 75,000 miles depending on usage patterns) and is just an oil change for the generator which can easily be done myself for $10 in oil. The parent said its about COST, not price. Costs like maintenance that EVs don't really have in practice are not free for ICEs. EVs are cheaper for 90% of drivers daily usage patterns at this point. Not some minor slice of the market, but most of the market. You would have to drive less than 1000 miles a year for an EVs to not to pay off at this point. You are just considering gas costs, but maintenance costs can easily exceed gas costs, especially for cheaper or older ICE cars. Plus the time I don't spend waiting at tollbothes (yea HOV lanes). Just make sure not to lease the Volt as you don't get the $7500 federal tax credit that way.
Range is the issue.
My commute is 40 miles each way. What EV do I buy that ensures me I can get to work and back home on a single charge, accounting for common traffic jams and problems that causes for actual range, and accomodates the lack of charging slots at work?
It would be OK if I paid less than a 30% premium over typical retail price, even better if I pay only a 50% premium over the typical price of a 5-year-old used vehicle, though I generally drive 10-year-old vehicles. I know, that rules out lots of vehicles.
Electric is still not for me.
A Volt would cut your gas usage in half, and if you have charging at the office, then it would be probably 90%. And its $26K after tax credits. Quit making excuses, your choices are about you and not about the EVs available anymore if you can afford a new car. If not, then it will probably be another 3-5 years for you.
All reasonable points...
Offer the Chevy Volt for $20K and they could sell half a million of them a year...
At $35K, it is a non-starter...
It begins and ends there, all other arguments are really academic...
Its $25K after the tax credits. Quit making excuses...you sound like the ranchers in TX that pray for rain as they deny Climate Change.
If the night security guard at a bank falls asleep, and someone robs the bank without him noticing- you wouldn't charge the security guard with bank robbery.
At least they should be fired for falling asleep while the bank is robbed. Where those involved fired?
Non-compete agreements are typically illegal in California.
Not illegal, just unenforceable. Big difference.
Doesn't mean that CA companies don't try to get you to sign Non-competes all the same. Of course, I've signed many documents over the years working at different startups that I knew couldn't be enforced against me. On more than one occasion, I've told the person asking me to sign, "Of course I'll sign this, there is no way it would ever hold up in court" and then told them here are the CA statutes you are violating and why this contract is worthless. Oh, and BTW, I've changed my mind on the salary, its now $20K/yr more because you don't know how to hire a good lawyer and the expected value of those options are basically 0 because of that. Shockingly, I've had some startups actually pay me the extra $20K...the others I just turned down and soon after found a better startup. Frankly, if a CA startup asks you to sign a non-compete, run simply because that startup is almost certainly going to fail.
Jobs was a sociopath, but the reason people reacted to him the way they did is because they believed what he was saying was the truth (or at least he really believed it was the truth). In our society, people are lied to so often that anything that looks like the honest truth is very appealing. I know what investors seem to love it when I talk in nasty brutal terms about software, our business, or our competitors. When it comes in an unvarnished form, things have a ring of truth that can't be emulated by a marketing droid, even when the marketing bot happens to be telling the truth. Jobs was able to coast on this fact for a long time before he had to learn to at least act like a decent human being.
No, not 25x more productive, try more like 1000x more productive. Or try this on for size, I've known quite a few engineers that had negative productivity ie if they stopped doing their job, their team actual becomes more productive. How many times more productive is an average engineer over an engineer with negative productivity? N/A? Infinity? The amount of time it takes to write a piece of code isn't about the time designing it, or about how long it took to type in the code, or the testing, or the plan. The ONLY major factor in speed of development is the debugging time, which is a sum of a sequence of random variables of random length. For better engineers who might average 1/10th the number of initial mistakes in the code (ie the length of the random sequence), and who might also find and fix problems in 1/10th the time, you easily get 100x more productive than some average. Or more likely you work in a cube farm far, far away from those 100X and 1000X engineers who have the choice to work other places.
Who mod'ed this terrible post as a 5? For the record, the parent is describing the exact opposite of innovation.
You are confusing the cost of the drugs and the cost of the prohibition of drugs. Its a bit like molesting someone and then complaining that they aren't stable later in life.
If MIT had to give up some of their IPv4 addresses, maybe we'd get IPv6 openafs this century ;)
AFS (in OpenAFS) stands for Andrew File System. Andrew, as in Andrew Carnegie, as in Carnegie Mellon, not MIT.
The fact that president Obama has ancestors that were clearly discriminated against does not mean he is discriminated against.
Uh, you might want to check up on your history a little.
So might you, his father was from Kenya, not Mississippi
This hand has the pattern AAAAB where A and B are from distinct kinds. The number of such hands is (13-choose-1)(4-choose-4)(12-choose-1)(4-choose-1). The probability is 0.000240.
Frankly, even though you've been to Burning Man, I don't feel you're competent to be suggesting improvements to the exodus traffic problem. You've been there once, and you came in and left on a fast-track bus which was able to bypass the entire process you're trying to critique. Had you been through it a few times and seen how traffic exodus works for people who are actually in the thick of it, I doubt you'd have bothered trying to micromanage the queues.
This is not an answer to the question posed in the article, which was, "Why wouldn't this work?"
I have an answer for why wouldn't this work. It takes about 60 minutes under ideal conditions to drive from a camp in BRC to the edge of the playa where you get on the little 2 lane highway. Packing times for an average carload of burners hitting the road is about 5 +- 3 hours. The ability of any group to predict when they can head out is highly variable given that they can really only choose when to start packing. Having 30 minute windows is a recipe for disaster. Nobody would hit their window. There would be disputes about what window we were currently in, etc. Practically, to anyone ever in exodus, this idea is patently absurd despite the solid mathematics. The problem is that the mathematically model used to do this analysis is woefully simplified from the actual complexities of exodus. Everyone ever been in exodus would know this. That's perhaps why burners keep suggesting you try it before trying to tell everyone else. There are perhaps 1000 burners who understand queueing theory better than this guy. Why do you think you understand something about the situations that we don't?
If you have ever been in the core of a major theme camp, you will recognize this situation instantly. Running a major theme camp is a huge undertaking with a 5 or 6 figure budget and a lot of complex engineering. Last year, our camp had 4000 amps of power distributed over 3 acres. There was a water system for processing several 1000 gallons of grey water, a full gourmet kitchen and facilities for 300 people. Every year some newbie comes up and tells us we are doing something wrong and we should do it differently. What they don't understand is that we tried their approach several years ago and it doesn't work for reasons that might not be so obvious. After awhile, it gets tiresome re-explaining the same things to different newbies each year and the crew starts getting jaded and starts just telling people if they don't like it, don't camp here anymore. Basically, this guy is getting the same response, just at a playa wide level.
Well, the population of the towns of Gerlock and Empire would be financially devastated if they did that. See, up road 447 is basically a few ranches and some old mining towns full of older folks who have lived there for decades and are now largely stuck there. Empire was largely supported by a gypsum mine that closed 3 years ago. If BM didn't occur once a year and inject about $5-10m into their economy, those towns would entirely collapse. The BORG is sensitive to that but over the last few years local government officials have become more and more greedy (the brand new $75,000 police cars for a town of 500 people didn't help). If the BM decides to pull up stakes and move, that area will be ruined and the locals will suffer greatly.
Also, the Black Rock Desert isn't really something that needs protecting. The leave-no-trace ethic is more of a political statement than a practical effort at 0 trace. Many people have misinterpreted this into an absurd standard. The rest of the year on the Black Rock Desert is largely unused except for the occasional small rocket launch, attempt at a land speed record, or a filming commercial that usually leaves about as much trash behind afterwards as the week of BM does. Largely due to the fact that they don't have to care if they litter as the local government is dependent upon them to get a bit of $$ to help support a largely failing local economy. Its absurd to think 50,000 people can be in one place for a week without leaving any mark. Its also absurd to think that BM isn't the closest thing that we have in the US to a true leave-no-trace event. If you've ever been around after a large event and seen entire stadiums covered in trash after a 2 hour concert, then the bit of trace BM leaves after a week is absolutely amazing. If you want to blast them for that, they you are entirely missing the point (perhaps they are too), but the ones that put the idea of leave no trace in to their head have accomplished their goals and then some. Its the cleanest gathering of people in the US every year when measured by the amount of trash or trace left afterwards. That's actually pretty amazing.
http://www.bbc.com/news/busine...
Look, people are involved and people are fallible and technology can't really prevent that. BTC as a protocol is solid and wasn't comprised. The very immature institutions that have sprung up around BTC are currently failing at their task that you have every right to criticize them. Hopefully the market will sort out some winners that can function in their institutional roles in the BTC ecosystem safely and securely.
But don't confuse BTC for a bank and right now don't confuse it for a currency. Currently, BTC is a commodity because of its volatile value against fiat currencies. Someday that might change at which point BTC begins behaving like a currency. It fills/will fill a real need for many people, probably not you but others and that's what really matters here. When the BTC institutions can behave in as secure and trustworthy a way as other financial institutions (and really is that a very high bar anymore) then it will be very much like any other currency with a measurable market cap and liquid exchanges. Until then its volatile and probably only for miners and speculators (and gamblers).
And a ponzi scheme always needs an increasing amount of money to keep going (ie next year more $$ needs to go in than last year). That doesn't seem to be a feature of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Ask any miner and they've gone through peaks and valleys due to volatile prices and changing difficulties that brings the system into balance. It always balances out, the good and the bad (ie bad you paid 47 BTC for a ASIC miner in August 2013 that probably will never mine 47 BTC, good your other 147 BTC are now worth 80k USD). Its hard and rare to get rich honestly with BTW but you can make a bit of extra cash right now and that's a feature of a healthy and growing market.
Purely electric cars have a footprint too, grid electricity has a footprint, on average, about the same as a 50mpg car -- more or less depending on where in the country you are -- or what country you're in.
Bzzzzt....sorry but you are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off there. A pure EV can go about 3-4 miles/ kwh. An ICE at 33 kwh per gallon of gas / (40 miles / gallon) is about 0.8 miles / kwh. In addition, electric power generated in a central location is generated about 3x as cleanly. So an EV has about 1/10th the carbon footprint on a millage basis. So that's what, the equivalent of 400 miles to the gallon? Oh, and I forgot about the fact that ICEs waste 90% of their power in inefficiencies against the ideal and an electric motor is usually about 75% efficient. Basically, an EV produces 1/10th the carbon footprint of an ICE based upon mileage. But kept telling people that EVs don't help too much. You are really a credit to the human race.
Mining is pretty much only on AMD graphics cards which nobody in their right mind uses for real graphics. I don't think the two are related. Its probably more due to the number of people playing video games on their PCs.
Yea, I used to have the worst problems with the nVidia drivers on laptop (Quadro 3000M, hell yea) until I realized that the problems were all caused by my weird dev configurations I was using. When I switched back to the lastest gcc version everything magically worked again. I think the drivers are using some weird configuration of the linker or something (maybe caused by the new linker version released a couple of years ago). So some of the driver problems are caused by the fact that we developers tinker with the compiler settings and recompile kernels which create problems with binary blobs even when part of the driver is recompiled on the fly. So try to create a script that resets the standard gcc toolchain (and one that sets it back to your custom settings) and your nVidia driver problems should go away as long as you remember to reset your toolchain when you install GPU driver updates.
Hey, I have the perfect solution! After each deposit, the bitcoin exchanges should print the critical bitcoin info out on paper (encrypted first with a private key) then destroy the electronic copy. Then, in case they get robbed by a physical thief who is also a hacker, they should destroy all copies of the private key. See? It's perfect.
Its called a Paper Wallet and they do exist. Even Mt. Gox used them for their cold storage. Which is one of the reasons why people don't believe the tx malleability theory. I've been following BitCoin quite closely lately and /. is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off on these theory and news about bitcoin. Its been quite disappointing as usually /. has much better comments on tech subjects. There are 3 reasonable theories:
On February was the largest day in BitCoin history for coin days destroyed. Basically, someone moved a large cache of Bitcoins that hadn't be moved in years (ie the Mt. Gox cold storage). Whoever has those coins knows what happened at Mt Gox but I doubt they got those coins via the TX Mal bug (maybe a small amount was stolen but not anywhere close to ~700,000 BTC). I'll let you guys figure out what actually happened but my guess is the Govt has the cold wallets and have a gag order on Mt. Gox. Using taint tools it should be possible to figure out what happened to all of those coins. If they never moved, its likely the US Govt. has them. If they move and split in complex ways, it more likely that an insider is trying to launder the BTC.
- VS 2013 C++ is ahead of GNU with support.
You must be kidding? VS C++ (I use it every day) is easily the worst C++ compiler there is. Hell, Borland compilers from the late 90s still have better C++ standards support than VS C++ today!
This doesn't compile in VC C++
int main(char* argv[]) {
printf("hello world\n");
int c = 0;
return c;
}
but this does...
int main(char* argv[]) {
int c = 0;
printf("hello world\n");
return c;
}
One quick add to that link, they estimate that miners are spending 90% of their mining income on power for their rigs. This ignores ASIC miners where only about 5-10% of the value of the Bitcoins mined gets spent on power (on average, I'm using CA power in the USA so my power rates are probably higher than miners in other parts of the world). Also, ASIC miners are probably 60% miners by hashrate, at least currently and will be more like 95% in the next year. So basically take all the values in that article and divide by 10. Other than that, its pretty accurate. And before you get all hot and bothered about mining again, all the Bitcoin mostly goes to buy the ASIC miners to keep up with the quickly growing mining industry. Take a look at the difficultly charts before buying anything, its a tough business.
I feel like you think I'm missing something important, and would like to know what it is.
You are, its that Bitcoin is far weirder than you seem to understand. Consider for a second what a Bitcoin is...theoretically it is an international currency (that hopefully will be stable one day) that is inherently deflationary. What does that mean to normal people? That a Bitcoin wallet is a swiss bank account they can carry around and control themselves. This is because the new supply of Bitcoin is constantly decreasing so the price of Bitcoins to other currencies should rise over time. This emulates the interest that savings accounts would usually pay. It can also transfer money internationally in a safe way in 1/1000th the time the banks do it. And it solves all sorts of problems with micro-payments. For instance, a coke machine that takes non-paper money (ie CC, Debt Card, other electronic payment etc) isn't really economically viable without Bitcoin. With Bitcoin you could make a machine with a QR code on the front and when you want a coke you send a small amount of Bitcoin to the wallet indicated by the QR code. Now I know this isn't practical due to the time it takes to verify a Bitcoin transaction but you get the idea. Whoever can shrink that transaction time will get very rich.
2/3rds of the world's people currently don't have a stable local currency in which they can save for the future. So Bitcoin enables anyone with a cell phone to have a Swiss Bank Account that they can convert into the local fiat currency each day to insulate them from hyperinflation. Think about how that might someday change how people in the 3rd world live. For the first time, thinking and planning for the future would be rewarded instead of next year's government deciding that all their savings are actually worthless now.
Now I realize that currently the price of Bitcoin is volatile as hell. I understand that currently its a risky investment plaything of traders. But having a stable pool of traders to stabilize conversion rates to other currencies is necessary requirement for any type of currency. And over time the price should stabilize as more players come to the table. The real worry is that the banks figure out that Bitcoin actually competes with their retail banking business. If they ever figure that out, they'll outlaw Bitcoin in a heartbeat. This is the only real risk to Bitcoin based businesses, traders and economies. Hopefully the powers that be will be asleep at the switch on this one. They were for most other business changes that software brought about. Look at the music industry, 14 years after Napster, they still make a fraction of what they made when Napster was around. And yet they still are filing lawsuits against their own customers.