This is one reason why I think Nano (Nano.org) will eclipse Bitcoin for pure transfer of value transactions. Nano uses a block lattice that doesn't require mining. The transactions are instant and feeless b/c of this. There is a tiny bit of PoW on the sender's device to prevent spam transactions.
I suspect it would either be too small to be a deterrent, big enough to be wasteful at scale, or both. Is there really a sweet spot that avoids both of those?
You sound a lot like me. I have had tons of trouble making myself work, even on my passion projects that I have invested significant amounts of my own money in. I would recommend that you read Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. He was a chronic procrastinator who turned things around. I would combine this with renting a desk at a coworking space and keeping regular work hours, though they might only be four or six hours per day (8 is too much if you are actually working).
The only people who would have solved the captcha faucet to get coins at virtually next to nothing value at that time would be the ones who believed in the project right from the start which to me is a fair distribution scheme. ICO based distribution is usually more greed driven. In this case the developers and team were more motivated in building a new innovative blockchain protocol as opposed to raising money by simply issuing ERC20 tokens. Speaks a lot about the project in itself. And the team has even succeeded in building a beautiful, disruptive scalable protocol and currency with no transaction fee. I've tried RaiBlocks and so far have been impressed.
Which in itself is a mechanism that just spreads the incentive to hype and post to all social media channels trying to pump a coin amongst a larger pool of individuals, many of whom are desperate enough to get rich that they are willing to sit and click through captchas for pennies.
Or in other words, just gets you a larger initial pool of astroturfers online.
I've worked in the visual effects industry for many years and this is incredibly interesting. In vfx to create a face replacement, we would have to create a 3D model of a head and then texture it with photos/scans of a the desired face. Then we would 3D track this cgi head onto an actor in the shot and then animate the face either by hand or using motion capture data from the stand-in actor's face. Then you'd light and render the cgi head and composite it into the shot.
It's pretty incredible that there's a completely different way to do a head swap. Of course, the vfx method gives the artist complete control over what the face/head does.
It seems like one of the disadvantages of Satoshi being anonymous is that Bitcoin wasn't trademarked, which allows for forks like Bitcoin Cash to use the name Bitcoin. I think this is kind of an interesting case of why trademarks are important as having both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash must be very confusing to new users on Coinbase.
At least when governments fork Bitcoin and force people and financial organizations to use it instead of other digital currencies, they can still call it Bitcoin legally.
It may be that your bank is charging you an international transaction fee and that is the second charge you are seeing. This happened to me the other day with Coinbase. If you buy from Coinbase with a credit card the transaction actually gets processed in London. Some American banks will charge you a 3% fee for this international transaction. So it will look like Coinbase has charged you twice, but actually the second charge is from your bank.
I can attest to the fact that LA rents have gone insane in the last maybe 5 years. A run-down 1 bedroom apartment in a working-class neighborhood of LA (Palms) without central air and no dishwasher will rent for $1700/month at the minimum. I'm currently apartment hunting in LA and it's brutal.
I'm with you. I'm luckily 'stuck' in my studio ($1221/mo) but at least it's a nice area, near a subway, and central to a lot of job opportunities. Even though I'm looking for jobs, I really can't consider any that are going to have me moving and paying more for rent without a significant step-up in salary. We have very high rents here (high demand due to lack of housing) and very low wages (due to amount of people, I guess?).
I don't know if I would consider Palms 'working class' but it definitely is advantageous in being cheaper than other places since the whole town of Palms is essentially all apartment buildings and located near job centers in Culver City, Venice, and Santa Monica up the road / Expo line.
If you like the idea of Tezos, have a look at Cardano. It has on-chain governance voting, formal verification, and the ability to upgrade the protocol without the need for hard forks. Basically, all the stuff that got me interested in the Tezos project.
I think I saw someone shilling for Cardano in a different thread as well. While I won’t deny you your excitement about cryptocurrency, imagine how boring HN would be if every discussion about this topic devolved into “check out this coin that I am invested in, check out that coin” etc.
I don't think that letting people who are interested in Tezos know about a coin with very similar features is "pumping" the currency. Tezos has some really interesting features, but they have stumbled with the ICO and delayed their release. As someone who was waiting for Tezos to launch I was excited to hear about Cardano and I'm sure there are other Tezos enthusiasts here who are happy to learn about the existence of similar coin. To say that I'm "pumping" the coin implies that I will dump the coin, when I'm really just interested in the Tezos technology, which is also present in Cardano.
I love what IOHK have been doing with Cardano. There are lots of really notable faces[1] and institutions working on this project, and I'm excited to see what they bring to the Haskell and greater mathematics communities.
Here is a good whiteboard summary of Cardano[2], by Charles Hoskinson, who is co-creator of Ethereum as well as Cardano and other associated notable works.
>by Charles Hoskinson, who is co-creator of Ethereum as well as Cardano and other associated notable works.
As it happens, he's also the creator or Ethereum Classic, a hard fork of Ethereum, not unlike what Bcash is to Bitcoin (i.e. an attempt at co-opting the brand and capturing value by confusing newcomers).
Apparently he tried to inflate the ETC coin supply by 20% and give the new coins to his company IOHK, which of course didn't sit well with the ETC community:
I completely support this idea. Additionally, I think the USA needs to move away from anything that doesn't reflect majority rule. For example, abolish the Senate, end the electoral college, end gerrymandering, and reform campaign financing.
The USA could be a lot more democratic than it is at present and until that is fixed, you will keep seeing a minority of the population control policies that affect the whole nation.
The Senate doesn't reflect majority rule based on population. California has 38.3 million residents, Wyoming has 600K residents [1] but both states have 2 senate votes. Due to this, Wyoming residents have much greater voting power in the Senate than residents of CA.
Hmm, well perhaps (I'm venturing into the unknown here) the problem isn't really protecting the majority from the minority (or vice versa) but protecting the weak from the powerful. When I see proposals like:
>end gerrymandering, and reform campaign financing
I think those are good because they weaken the powerful (the current majority party and the rich) to enable the weak. But I also believe that without the senate the political power of Wyomingers (Wyomans?) is going to be a lot weaker than the political power of Californians so I see the senate as overall good.
Why should we focus so much on the majority and not the relative power of those that compose the majority (or minority?)
Well, the real question to me is do we think of people who live in Wyoming as "Wyomingers" and those in CA as Californians? I don't think so. We just think of everyone in the USA as Americans. So why should it be that some Americans (those who live in Wyoming) having outsized voting power over national laws? A minority of Americans is controlling the country via the methods I mentioned. It doesn't seem to be working out very well. We need to make sure that the majority of Americans have veto power over things like electing Donald Trump, the current tax bill, the attempts to end Obamacare.
>Well, the real question to me is do we think of people who live in Wyoming as "Wyomingers" and those in CA as Californians?
I think we talk about it that way all the time, both where I live (which is a lot closer to Wyoming than California) and in places which are closer to California that Wyoming. The common issues of the day are all ones of class division and I think that geographical division really plays into it. When we really split into Wyomingers and Californians though is when we start talking about any common political issue.
>We just think of everyone in the USA as Americans.
Oh lord, how I wish this were true. Do you think Californians treat me like a Californian? Or do you think that maybe they treat me a little bit different? And do you think when a Californian transplants here they get treated like a Wyoman? Or do you think they get treated a bit different? There's a divide there, the hundreds or thousands of miles between the coasts and the middle is more than a physical divide, it's also a cultural and political one.
>It doesn't seem to be working out very well. We need to make sure that the majority of Americans have veto power over things like electing Donald Trump, the current tax bill, the attempts to end Obamacare.
Let's be real here though, the above is completely partisan thinking. Look I'm basically as far left as they come and I live in deep red country - your impulse is totally wrong. Take a look at this map: http://i0.wp.com/metrocosm.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/el...
You want to take that map and give even more power to the blue spots? I don't see the fairness. The senate exists because the coastal elites who founded this country were smart enough to realize that coastal city elites would run the whole thing if it weren't for some mechanism to help rural areas balance the scale.
>So why should it be that some Americans (those who live in Wyoming) having outsized voting power over national laws? A minority of Americans is controlling the country via the methods I mentioned.
Because it makes sure they're heard, it's protecting a weak minority from a powerful majority. I can agree with you on all the other things like gerrymandering but the senate exists for a good reason - it forces you to care about all the people who exist in rural areas or "flyover country" instead of writing them off like you'd really like to.
This whole idea of "coastal elites" and "flyover states" is just a tool that those with real power (corporations and special interests) are using to divide Americans so that they are easier to control. If you were the NRA looking to make sure that "bump stocks" don't get banned after a gunman shoots hundreds of people in Vegas using them, where would you focus your resources? On the Senate, of course! Because the House can't do anything without the Senate's approval and influencing 41 Senators is a lot easier than trying to influence hundreds of members of the House.
It's the same with the presidential election. If you're the NRA, what's easier for you to influence? A popular vote or our current electoral college system where only a few swing states matter?
If you're saying that the electoral college and the Senate are a means of protecting those in the "flyover states", then I would just you how that's working out? Do you think "Wyomingers" are the ones who are going to benefit from repealing the estate tax? The House, Senate, and Executive branch are all controlled by Republicans who should, in theory, be advocating for "Wyomingers" and yet they seem to only be working on behalf of the interests of the wealthy, special interests, and corporations.
Just abolish the states all together as far as I'm concerned and let's have one unified America, which would be much harder for special interests and corporations to influence.
>This whole idea of "coastal elites" and "flyover states" is just a tool that those with real power (corporations and special interests) are using to divide Americans so that they are easier to control.
No, it's a well defined cultural and political divide. Maybe the powerful exploit it but it exists independently of them.
>If you're saying that the electoral college and the Senate are a means of protecting those in the "flyover states",
I am.
>then I would just you how that's working out? Do you think "Wyomingers" are the ones who are going to benefit from repealing the estate tax? The House, Senate, and Executive branch are all controlled by Republicans who should, in theory, be advocating for "Wyomingers" and yet they seem to only be working on behalf of the interests of the wealthy, special interests, and corporations.
Sure because you picked a terrible example. But Wyomingers sure are glad there's a senate when gun control comes up. And they're glad there's a senate when Abortion comes up. And they're glad there's a senate when basically any political issue comes up which divides mostly along geographic boundaries.
You'll sit here and decry the influence corporations have on our country but at the same time want to ignore huge swaths of america.
Middle America exists, it votes and maybe instead of trying to reduce its political power you should try to convince the people in those states.
>If you were the NRA looking to make sure that "bump stocks" don't get banned after a gunman shoots hundreds of people in Vegas using them, where would you focus your resources? On the Senate, of course!
This is the most shit example I can imagine you using. (1) The NRA doesn't care if bump stocks get banned. (2) A bump stock ban is totally meaningless feel-good legislation. Go to youtube and search "rubberband bump fire." A bump stock is just a "cooler" way of doing the same thing you can do with any rubberband or even a shoestring. (3) A bump stock ban is the perfect example of city people with no understanding of an issue trying to legislate it. Maybe next time you should come ask us in flyover land. (;
There are existing answers to these questions. It's not a grand mystery.
Instead of merely repeating the questions, you should explain why the answers to those questions are wrong.
I think you're overly consumed with the political dramas of the present and haven't really thought through questions about what a good system of governance looks like.
Here's my proposal for tweaking the USA's current government so that it better represents the will of a majority of Americans: 1) abolish the Senate 2) end the electoral college 3) end gerrymandering 4) reform campaign financing.
Yes, and this would be fine if the senate did not exist. But the senate can kill anything that the house proposes. So Wyoming has undue influence over what the (correctly balanced) house tries to make law.
And the house can not vote for something the senate passes too...I'm not sure how you think the House is even remotely "correctly balanced" Both parties Gerrymander like it's their only job to keep their own little fiefdoms intact.
The house is not the balanced piece when it comes from the perspective of the states themselves. The smaller states then would have very little say in how the country at large operates.
Because it's harder to corrupt a "pure" democracy. If you have a policy that is bad for the population at large, but good for your own interests, in a "pure" democracy then you will have to convince a majority of the voters to vote against their own interests.
It appears relatively easy to get a majority to vote against their best interest. Case in point: Trump getting elected. If all that's needed to win a vote is populism and ad money, then you can be damn sure that people will vote not just against unalienable rights of minorities but will also against sell out their best long-term interests to short-term ones or to "principles" that sound good because they've been constantly repeated on Fox News or CNN.
Even without demographics taken into account, a country that's not accountable to a base set of unchangeable rules is a scary thing.
I'm proposing that the concept of states is obsolete now and we need to move to what I'd call a "unified America" policy, where we get as close as possible to a majority rule system of democracy. The best way I can think of to achieve that is to abolish the Senate and the electoral college.
If you think our current system of governance is working well, then please say so. If you think our system isn't working well, then please let me know how you propose to fix it.
