f3llowtraveler

Try hailing a cab in Manhattan once it starts raining.

You think 60% in taxes scales better than 2%?

In Zug, Switzerland they have an excellent health care system with universal coverage. They also have very nice roads and a high standard of living, and low unemployment. They also have a strong defense based on armed neutrality, which kept them out of both world wars.

The income tax is 2%.

So if you are paying more than that, you are probably getting ripped off.

Yeah but they don't have an automatic veto before legislation goes into effect. As he said, they only examine the issue, if at all, years later.

Bitcoin is not free, it's just cheaper than legacy banking alternatives.

> anyone who accepts payment from them is guilty of a crime

That could never happen in a free country.

Also there's nothing stopping someone from evaporating the coins via mining fees. So you'd have to have dictatorial control over all miners as well.

> Once you have a central authority that everyone trusts

...Which we most definitely do not have.

> Some possible mechanisms include forbidding all brick and mortar + other non-anonymous entities from interacting with anonymous ones

That could never happen in a free country.

Reversibility itself is the most extreme example of things gone terribly wrong.

I am extremely disturbed by this report.

I have been a faithful Apple user for years, but this single report causes me to seriously consider switching to Linux for good.

If our math says black holes do not exist, maybe the system of math itself is wrong.

If violence weren't central, why would people even care to argue about it in the first place?

Increased regulation of health care == increased cost of health care.

The future of payments is Bitcoin.

I don't see how they could admit it into evidence without the packet logs. The defense would have no opportunity to examine the same evidence.

Lesson #1: only use software that encrypts the data on the client side before storing it on the server.

A physical button is what I want.

All that matters: Does Dropbox encrypt my data on the client side, before storing it on the server?

Or does Dropbox have the power to pilfer through my data, along with official snoopers and hackers?

How about a hardware switch that physically cuts the electricity to the microphone, the camera, the transmitter, and even the battery itself?

With my own phone, I'd love to be able to switch that off/on. Why is that option not available to me?

MPLv2 is compatible with both the GPL and the App Store.

Fantastically rare? Do a google search, it's a huge percentage.

I thought America had free markets?

So then why do people need permission from government councils in order to compete in Internet access?

For me it has nothing to do with .NET's qualities.

Rather, it has to do with trust issues arising from the fact that I lived through the 90s and I remember what it was like when MS was dominant.

Unfortunately Apple is stepping into the same hubristic trap. I will probably have trouble trusting them for decades as a result.

As long as all cars involved in a crash are insured, then the insurance companies can split the cost equally. If any additional liability can be pinned on one car or another, or one manufacturer or another, then they can pay additional costs proportional to that liability. In any case, the number of deaths, claims, and the cost of insurance will be much lower than it is today so likely few will have any complaints.

Hell, that's nothing. Here's something truly criminal: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageo...

The problem with the new plans is the same as the problem with the old plans: there's no free market. People don't have any "choices" except what's forced onto them in a "market" where everything is all sewn up vertically. The insurance companies are writing the legislation. They were writing it before Obamacare, and they're writing it now. The only difference is, now they are writing more of it.

Bitcoin code was used for Namecoin, which provides decentralized DNS as well as decentralized CA (credentials free of any certificate authority.)

Bitcoin can be used for proving notice. (Replacing say, newspaper classified ads for the same purpose.) Bitcoin will become the ultimate notary.

Bitcoin makes it possible to wire gold. For example, you walk into a gold shop and hand him some physical gold in return for BTC, which you send to your grandma in Asia. She then walks into a gold shop in Africa and leaves with physical gold.

...Thus, Bitcoin can be used for wiring anything.

Bitcoin, via colored coins, makes it possible to issue real-world assets without having to trust a central entity to control the ledger.

Bitcoin makes it possible to run exchanges anonymously, at a profit.

Similarly, Bitcoin makes it possible to operate bazaars anonymously at a profit. (Silk Road being one infamous example.)

Similarly, Bitcoin makes it possible to operate prediction markets anonymously at a profit. These have the potential to drive scientific progress as well as political change.

...Basically, Bitcoin makes it possible to operate many many things anonymously at a profit.

Bitcoin makes it possible to eliminate capital controls. There's the basic concept of using Bitcoin to move funds across controlled borders, but it goes much deeper.

...For example, let's say that there are capital controls in Argentina, which drive up the Bitcoin price to 130% of its price in the USA. This means that a beef exporter in Argentina, who prices his beef in Bitcoins, will be able to undercut all the other Argentinean beef exporters by 15%, while simultaneously earning 15% more money for his sales. Therefore Bitcoin is destined to eliminate all capital controls.

Why doesn't this web page mention Snowden at all? For example, the fact that he was right, and is a hero, and deserves to have all charges dropped?

Weren't all these people collaborating with authorities at the expense of our liberties -- and aren't they still?

The price of Bitcoin in January was $13 -- no one was willing to pay more than $20 for a Bitcoin back then.

But BTC is trading for over $900 now... and plenty of people are paying.

What you do not understand is that Bitcoin is a new technology, that gives us capabilities that we never had before. Just like other powerful new technologies, it will slowly eat its way through every aspect of society until it has changed the world and everyone's life.

The same as happened with electricity, with the computer, with the Internet itself.

If you want to know where Bitcoin is going, take a look at the adoptions of other important technologies:

http://www.uversity.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Comm...

Austerity is where you coerce a huge amount of money from the population, ostensibly in order to pay for services, but then because you ran up a huge debt, you instead use that tax revenue to cover the interest payments on that debt, instead of using the revenue to pay for the services you originally promised.

Of course then the people suffer as all their food and education are cut, and the New Yorker writes articles saying "Austerity Doesn't Work."

But in fact what they should be saying is, "Coercing Money From People Is Wrong." That money never should have been coerced in the first place. Then the people would have been able to spend it however they wanted, instead of having to get all upset that a bunch of politicians and bankers blew the money (surprise, surprise.)

The people should also be ashamed of themselves to whatever degree they voted for coercion in the first place. They were bribed into doing so by promises of services -- services they didn't get -- the promise of which was enough for them to justify in their minds the robbing of their fellow man.

Well when everybody is robbing everybody, only poverty can result. The moral of the story isn't that austerity failed -- it's that we shouldn't be violating people's property rights in the first place, and we certainly shouldn't be bribing others to vote for it.